In the South Asian setting, the fields of gender history and family history are still predominantly concerned with relatively elite social groups. Few studies have examined issues of gender and the family in the history of Dalit, low-caste, and socially marginalized communities, especially those that were labelled ‘criminal tribes’ from the mid-nineteenth century on. This article explores the ways in which gender patterned criminalized communities’ experiences of everyday colonial governance under Part I of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) in the first two decades that it was enforced in northern India. In this early period, the colonial government did not closely regulate marriage practices, domestic arrangements, or the gendered organization of labour within communities categorized as ‘criminal tribes’. Nevertheless, notions of sexuality and gender underlay colonial knowledge of the ‘criminal tribes’, which emerged in dialogue with middle-class Indian gender and caste politics. Moreover, the family unit was the central target of the CTA surveillance and policing regime, which aimed to produce ‘industrious’ families. Officially endorsed forms of labour had complex implications for criminalized communities in the context of North Indian gender norms and strategies of social mobility. Gender power dynamics also shaped criminalized peoples’ interpersonal, embodied interactions with British and Indian colonial officials on an everyday basis. Meanwhile, different forms of leverage and evasion were open to men and women to cope with their criminalization and so the colonial state was experienced in highly gendered ways.

Studies of Punjabi partition-related refugee resettlement have revealed a gap between official accounts and those provided by migrants. The former seek to legitimize the state by narrating its role in the transformation of helpless refugees into productive citizens. First hand accounts on the other hand frequently write the state out of the rehabilitation process. This paper seeks firstly to illustrate these processes at work by contrasting the narrative account contained in the Government of India publication, The Story of Rehabilitation, with interview material collected amongst former refugees. It then goes on to reveal the presence of state agency in cases of rehabilitation, despite refugee denial. Finally, it explores the refugee-state tensions arising from migrants’ experience of local level bureaucratic and police services’ corruption, which goes some way towards explaining the narrative dissonances.

Twentieth-century industrialization in the agricultural landscapes of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam took a very different form from other places, characterized less by a continuous spread of large-scale technology than by its destruction in mid-century and the subsequent spread of small technology which powered scooters, water pumps, and boats. The numbers of these portable motors, an everyday technology in 1960, rose from a few thousand units in 1963 to millions in the present day. The colonial and post-colonial state in Vietnam played a key role in the demise of large technology and, ultimately, of the water infrastructure. Its failures during wartime spurred farmers to adopt cheap, small engines to survive; however, the state's role was complex during this time. Several key factors, including the influence of American aid programmes and the contributions of Taiwanese agricultural advisers, especially those pushing high-yield rice, favoured the adoption of small engines. From an ecological viewpoint, the post-1960 explosion in the use of small motors, especially as water pumps, has brought people and states in Southeast Asia to an ecological impasse as unrestricted use has impacted on water tables, salinity levels, and the long-term sustainability of agriculture in many places. This paper examines the state's indirect role in shaping this silent revolution, and it considers the political and ideological factors underpinning its history.

This article explores the joking relations that constitute conviviality in one of the largest marginal bazaars in Moscow. The marketplace is known as a hub for migrant workers and traders, and is often stigmatized in the media. It remains one of the largest commercial nodes in the bazaar network that stretches across and beyond much of ex-Soviet Eurasia. Scholars of conviviality have often claimed that convivial living represents more than hilarity and laughter; exactly how laughter actually happens and what sets of relations and interactions make it possible have been largely left out of the discussion. I will explore how a certain joking repertoire both connects Russian customers with migrant sellers and traders from Central Asia, Vietnam, Ukraine, and elsewhere, and animates relations between sellers themselves. I argue that these relations are characterized by volatility, which incorporates play and improvisation within different registers of uncertainty, conflict, enjoyment, proximity, and—ultimately—virtuality.

This paper examines the colonial representation of tribal raids in the Northeast frontier of India and argues that, rather than being the ‘lawless and predatory habits of the savage hill tribes’, it was an expression of hill politics. The Kukis raided British territory when they discovered that an extension of the colonial boundary threatened their very existence as an independent state-evading population. It traces how the Kukis re-ethnicized themselves in the hills by evolving a system that is state-repellent, protected by a vast strip of forested jungle around their settlements commonly known as the ‘hunting ground’. It locates the ‘raid’ in the context of the difference in the perception of space and territoriality between the colonial state and indigenous polities. Colonial spatial ideology and its hill-valley binary are seen to play a vital role in animating tension on the frontier. The raid is thus understood as the ultimate weapon of resistance against an established state by an independent ‘not-a-state-subject’ people in defence of their autonomy and essentially represents non-state practices against state appropriations. Instead of being ‘unruly’, the raid is seen as a form of organized and premeditated resistance based on the consciousness of the hillmen's lived world order.

This article explores the ways in which the Arthasastra (The Science of Wealth or The Science of Power), an ancient text rediscovered in 1905, was interpreted by Indian politicians and commentators. It seeks to explain why the text's popularity changed so drastically over time, and why, despite the excitement about it in the first 20 years following its reappearance, it was largely ignored in the Gandhian and Nehruvian eras, until a striking revival of interest from the late 1980s onwards. It argues that these changes in the text's fortunes can be explained partly as a result of significant shifts in elite Indian political culture. It also suggests that we need to reassess our analysis of the fundamental fault-lines in Indian politics, questioning Chatterjee's and Nandy's argument on the centrality of tensions between Gandhian ‘indigenous’ thought and Nehruvian ‘Western’ modernity, and arguing for the importance of the conflict between a moral politics, endorsed by both Gandhi and Nehru, and a ‘pragmatic’ politics justified by the Arthasastra.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on an aspect of seventeenth century Anglo-Dutch relations that has hitherto been virtually neglected: the rivalry over the Banda Islands. I will point out how economic antagonism between England and the Dutch Republic, a topic that as a rule is mainly regarded in a European context, also erupted in the East-Indian sphere of expansion, even in remote areas such as Banda. Unlike in Europe, in Asia conflicting economic interests immediately and repeatedly resulted in open violence. This was stopped in 1619 by a treaty of cooperation that paradoxically enabled the Dutch to establish themselves even more firmly in these islands, and in the Indonesian Archipelago as a whole, in a way detrimental to the English.

By an edict of 15 February 1805 the Governor-General ordered the Chinese moneylenders from the town of Buitenzorg to report to the Commissioner of Native Affairs how much money the inhabitants of the Buitenzorg Regency owed them. Non-compliance with this order would result in cancellation of the debts. The Commissioner compiled a list, based on these reports, dated 30 June 1805. In 45 pages, consisting of 672 entries, the debtors of and debts to 26 Chinese are listed. The debtors and debts are listed under their creditor, the Chinese moneylender. The entries are probably given as they were reported by the Chinese themselves, although there is no logic in the ordering of the names. An ‘ideal’ entry yields the following data: name of moneylender, name of debtor, his place of residence, year that the debt was incurred, amount of money borrowed with sawahs (wet rice fields) as collateral, number of pétak (embanked ricefield) sawah, amount borrowed with buffaloes as a collateral, number of buffaloes, amount of cash borrowed (without securities), amount of credit for merchandise, amount of annual interest, number of years paid, number of years still to be paid.

The exaltation of achievement as a measure of collective and individual worth and moral agency has been one of the defining features of Asian developmentalism. Yet in today's age of globalized neoliberal attainment monitoring, the question of who and what an achiever actually is within an achievement-conscious society is far from straightforward or uncomplicated. In Vietnam, the notion of doing well and creditably for self and nation can be deeply problematic for those called upon, either officially or by living and ancestral kin, to embody qualities of attainment and creditable life-course functioning in ways recognizable to those who reward and monitor aspiring achievers. Building on recent fieldwork in Vietnam, this paper explores the ways young Hanoians have engaged with a rapidly changing set of ideas about how the country's tightly regulated schooling and examination system can both unleash and constrain the potential for new and ‘creative’ forms of attainment on the part of the nation's most promising and productive citizen-achievers.

On one of his many visits to India Kingsley Martin was once asked how he saw the prospects for Western Europe. His reply was that he was very optimistic as most of the leaders of Western Europe then were very old. If the transition from age to youth in national leadership is a sufficient basis for hope, we certainly have much to be grateful for in India. And our young Prime Minister has already struck a very responsive chord among large sections of Indian society by his promise of change. His mother had won the 1980 election on the promise of a ‘Government that works’. Mr Gandhi promised in 1984 a ‘Government that works faster’—thus heralding a promise of greater efficiency in general. When asked about the objective of his new Government, he used the now famous phrase that his objective was to take India into the twenty-first century. Taken at its face value, this was a rather vacuous phrase. It is not necessary for anyone to carry India, Atlas-like, into the twenty-first century. It would arrive at our doorstep in due course, as it will at everyone else's, and most probably without even a whimper.

The system of medicine known today variously as ‘international,’ ‘scientific,’ or ‘Western’ entered South Asia as early as the seventeenth century. For two centuries this system, known in India as allopathic medicine, coexisted with the medical traditions indigenous to South Asia. In 1835 the period of coexistence ended and the adherents of the allopathic tradition began to press claims that they, and only they, should be allowed to direct and staff the medical and health programs of the East India Company and, after 1858, the various Governments of South Asia. Allopathic medical men wished to decide the goal or goals of governmental medical efforts, who was to be allowed to participate in those efforts, and who was to be served by those programs. In short, allopathic medical men wanted control of the development of all facets of health policy in South Asia.

A new class is emerging in rural Kerala. Though it was christened a bourgeoisie by E. M. S. Namboodiripad, the chief minister of Kerala state during the two phases of land reform (1957–59 and 1967–69), it is not an extension of the modern industrial bourgeoisie into a rural society. Rather it is a distinctly new social formation emerging from among the farmers. The opportunities for farmers to adopt bourgeois aspirations have been created by the particular form of Keralaʼns capitalism interacting with recent changes in localized agrarian society.

Although often well-written and carefully researched, many recent studies of the political history of Colonial Malaya seem dated. This is not to say that they are generally pro-British; nevertheless, when considered alongside historical work on many other areas of Southeast Asia, the ‘British Malayan’ histories appear ‘colonial’ in their preoccupations and perspectives. Why does so much Malayan history have this character? One cannot point to a lack of talent.

As European influence expanded in insular Southeast Asia throughout the early modern era, colonial interests shifted from maintaining favorable trade zones along the coasts and rivers to an increasing control of territory and its human populations. The island of Borneo entered the colonial ambit relatively late in this process,Graham Irwin, Nineteenth-Century Borneo: A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry (s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955). but its eventual division between British and Dutch spheres of influence and control has had profound consequences for the peoples that fell under either. There and elsewhere, territorial boundaries sliced across well-established networks of communication, trade, common traditions, and strong ties of kinship. These boundaries came to impose different symbols of formal status on people from the same ethnic groups. From the colonial perspective, boundaries were designed to function negatively, to restrict what was deemed illegal such as smuggling and migration, and positively, to promote legitimate activities like taxation and road construction. The usual colonial attitude was that borders should be precisely defined, clearly demarcated, jealously guarded, and exclusive. A. I. Asiwaju, ‘The Conceptual Framework’, in A. I. Asiwaju (ed.), Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations Across Africa's International Boundaries, 1884-1984 (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1985), pp. 1-18 at pp. 2-3; A. I. Asiwaju, Borderlands Research: A Comparative Perspective. Border Perspectives Paper No. 6 (El Paso: University of Texas, Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, 1983), pp. 2-3; S. Whittemore Boggs, International Boundaries: A Study of Boundary Functions and Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), pp. 10-11. Yet the people so partitioned routinely defied the border divisions, causing no small amount of worry to the colonial states.

The 1870s witnessed mounting tension among East Asian countries. In 1874,. Japan sent an expeditionary force to Taiwan to punish the aborigines there who had, in 1871, killed fifty-four shipwrecked Ryūkyūans (Liu-ch'iuans). By doing so, according to many scholars today, Japan was able to claim retroactively that the Ryūkyūan castaways were legally Japanese subjects, thereby ending the Sino-Japanese dispute over the ambiguous political status of the Ryūkyū Islands (the Chūzan Kingdom of Ryūkyū paid tribute to both China and the Satsuma-han of Japan before the 18705).

This paper is a reappraisal of this episode of the ‘Quasi-war’ in East Asia. By going into the Chinese, Japanese, Ryūkyūan, and Western sources, it unfolds some unknown events which directly and indirectly led to the Japanese decision to send forces to Taiwan, as well as the Chinese reactions. The conclusion of this paper refutes the customary view which holds that China had in 1874 ‘renounced her claim over Ryūkyū and yielded to the Japanese claim she had earlier disputed.’ As this paper will show, neither Soejima Taneomi nor Ōkubo Toshimichi had succeeded in securing any Chinese endorsement of Japan's sovereign right over Ryūky¯. Nor did the Sino-Japanese Treaty of 1874, concerning the settlement of the Taiwan crisis, legally settle the Ryūkyū problem, since Ryūky¯ was never mentioned in the Treaty. As a result, the issue continued to trouble Peking and Tokyo in the years that immediately followed.

This article presents new evidence with which to evaluate the validity of the popular picture of religious environmentalism in India. It examines accounts of a large number of incidents described in Indian language newspapers, the colonial archive, and hunting literature published between the 1870s and 1940s, in which British and other sportsmen clashed with villagers in India while out hunting. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the colonial sports-hunting obsession was in its heyday, but opposition to hunting across India was also mounting. Rural villagers, in particular, were often willing to become involved in physical combat with hunters, apparently in order to protect local wildlife. Sportsmen often assumed that it was religious fanaticism that made Hindus defend the lives of what they saw as game animals, trophies, and specimens. The article provides evidence that, in addition to religion, a mixture of other motivations explains Hindu interest in the conservation of certain species. Anti-colonial consciousness, assertions of local authority and territoriality, and an environmental ethic can all be identified as being at work. The end result was the increased conservation of certain species of wildlife.

If it is true that under the mantle of respectability accorded to the Indian epics and Purāāas one finds all manner of ribaldry and indecorous behavior, then perhaps when one delves into the ill-famed world of nauṭankī one will find a much more straightlaced and conservative view of reality than one might expect. Nauṭankī is the popular theatre tradition of the Hindi and Urdu speaking regions of North India, and in particular of Uttar Pradesh. For anyone beginning research on nauṭankī, the issue of its reputation is unavoidable. Hiraman, the innocent cartdriver in Phanishwarnath Renu's Hindi short story The Third Vow, knew from hearsay that nauṭankī shows were not a proper pastime, though he didn't quite know why, and the knowledge didn't prevent him from falling in love with a nauṭankī actress. Similarly, the Hindi drama critics, if they mention nauṭankī at all, repeat vague warnings; the form is crude and debased, not much can be expected from it. Rām Nārāyaā Agravāl, author of Sāngīt, the leading Hindi monograph on the subject, describes its current state as one of commercial ruin, artistic bankruptcy, and sexual display. Female Indian friends simply comment, ‘We were never allowed to see those plays,’ or ‘Why don't you study something nice?’

The relationship between business and politics in preindustrial societies has seldom been clear from historical records. I have argued elsewhere that the major banking firms of Mughal India were central to the imperial system. These ‘great firms’ were not parasites, passively supportive of the state because it preserved the law and order necessary for trade; they were not self-contained caste communities interacting with the government through the leaders of panchayats or guilds. Their functions were as important to the government as those of its official treasurers, and their desertion of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century helped bring about its collapse.

In the early summer of 1875 agrarian rioting occurred in the Bombay Deccan. The disturbances began at Supa, a market village in Bhimthari taluka of Poona District, where on 12 May an unruly peasant mob attacked the houses and shops of the local Gujarati moneylenders. ‘The combustible elements were everywhere ready’1 and the riots spread through the poor, eastern regions of Poona and Ahmednagar Districts. The riots were directed entirely at the village sowkars (moneylenders), to whom most of the peasant agriculturists of the area were indebted.

Previous studies of the rise of warlordism have focused on the devolution of power after the Taiping Rebellion and the failure of political leaders to create a workable order after the 1911 Revolution. This article offers an initial exploration of the fiscal background. Foreign indemnities imposed after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and largescale borrowing by the Qing before 1911 and by the Republic subsequently resulted in a severe fiscal crisis for the central state, with the following consequences.