Asian History Commons^™

‘It All Comes From Me’: Bahu Begam And The Making Of The Awadh Nawabi, Circa 1765–1815, Nicholas J. Abbott

History Faculty Publications

This article examines the durable, yet largely overlooked, claims of Bahu Begam (1727–1815) to dynastic wealth and authority in the Awadh nawabi (1722–1856), a North Indian Mughal ‘successor state’ and an important client of the East India Company. Chief consort (khass mahal) to Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula (r. 1754–75) and mother to his successor Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (r. 1775–97), Bahu Begam played a well-documented role in the regime’s tumultuous politics, particularly during Warren Hastings’s tenure as the Company’s governor-general (1773–85) and his later parliamentary impeachment. But despite her prominent political influence, little attention has been paid to the substance of her …

Retelling Mecca: Shifting Narratives Of Sacred Spaces In Volga-Ural Muslim Hajj Accounts, 1699–1945, Danielle Ross

History Faculty Publications

This article examines how Volga-Ural Muslims narrated their encounters with the sacred spaces visited during the hajj. It examines nine accounts hajj composed from the 1690s to the 1940s, to consider how changes in international politics, Russia’s domestic politics, and the culture of Islamic learning within the Volga-Ural Muslim community led to writers to revise narratives of why the sacred spaces of Mecca were sacred, how best to experience the power of these sacred spaces, and how these sacred spaces fit into the local culture of Volga-Ural Islam under Russian and Soviet rule.

The Yellow Emperor’S Inner Transmission Of Acupuncture By Zhenhai Yang (Review), David Luesink

History Faculty Publications

Review of The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Transmission of Acupuncture.

ISBN: 9789882371132

Male Same-Sex Relations In Socialist China, Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Confrontations With Colonialism: Resistance, Revivalism And Reform Under British Rule In Sri Lanka 1796-1920, Vol 1, C. R. De Silva

History Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) In one of the most challenging and thought-provoking history books published in Sri Lanka in the last decade, P. V. J. Jayasekera has used a wide variety of sources to challenge a number of existing interpretations relating to Sri Lanka under British colonial rule in the nineteenth century. While the book is based partly on his own doctoral dissertation completed in 1970, in Jayasekera’s own words “The scope and the foci of the original study have been substantially changed” (p. ix) in view of new theoretical approaches in the study of colonial history and the debates on history …

Peradeniya's Contribution To The Rewriting Of The History Of Sri Lanka, Chandra Richard De Silva

History Faculty Publications

In the last 75 years, scholars at and alumni of Peradeniya have transformed the writing of the history of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has had a long and distinguished tradition of chronicles and histories. However, with the advent of colonial rule, with exceptions like the hatan kavyas, the writing of the history of Sri Lanka fell largely into the hands of the colonizers. Though the rewriting of history by Sri Lankans through the critical reading of sources began before 1942 as a response to the colonial depiction of local history, with the foundation of the University at Peradeniya there …

Sex In China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: 'Recasting The Region: Language, Culture And Islam In Colonial Bengal', Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

The origins and growth of Bengali Muslim identity have been the center of several studies till date. Most have concentrated on the politics of Muslim separatism in the 1930s with the politicization of the eastern Bengal’s peasantry and subsequent support for the Pakistan Movement. Neilesh Bose, in his Recasting the Region: Language Culture and Islam in Colonial Bengal shifts focus from politics to the Bengali literary sphere where Bengali Muslim intellectuals created a particular regional identity distinct from both mainstream Urdu Muslim and Hindu Bengali culture. This particular Bengali Muslim identity, Bose argues, was produced and established through writings of …

Review: 'Hindu Muslim Riots', Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

Communal violence in India, especially between Hindus and Muslims, have for long been the center of scholarly research. From the 1990s, historians, and anthropologists have innovatively analyzed colonial and Partition related riots to understand why and how they happened and the contextual development of communal identities. Political scientists have put forth thought-provoking paradigms of urban communal rioting in the wake of the Hindu Muslim riots of 1992 and 2002. All, it would seem, owe an intellectual debt to sociologist Richard Lambert’s much-cited dissertation of 1951, now published six decades later. Given that the publication is mostly an unchanged version of …

Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family, And Gender In China (Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities And The Game Of Weiqi In China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Partition, Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

The Partition of India in 1947 is one of the most significant events in South Asian history. It refers to the political division of the Indian subcontinent that marked the end of British colonial rule in the region. There were three partitions in 1947—of British India and of the provinces of Bengal and Punjab—that created the new nation-states of India and a spatially fragmented West and East Pakistan. While the end of the Second World War, political outcomes of the provincial elections in 1946 and contingency were factors, long-term organizing efforts of communal organizations, both Hindu and Muslim, were also …

Men And Masculinities In Contemporary China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

New Uses Of Family History In China: Economic Development And Political Unification, Cecilia Chien

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Response To Professor Wu Zongjie’S ‘Interpretation, Autonomy, And Transformation: Chinese Pedagogic Discourse In A Cross-Cultural Perspective', Thomas D. Curran

History Faculty Publications

In response to an essay by Prof Wu Zongjie that was published in the Journal of Curriculum studies [43(5), (2011), 569–590], I argue that, despite dramatic changes that have taken place in the language of Chinese academic discourse and pedagogy, evidence derived from the fields of psychology and the history of Chinese educational reform suggest that patterns of Chinese thought and culture have proven resistant to change. Not only have deeply rooted tendencies to perceive the world in ways that may be distinguished from Western analogues persisted but, not unlike contemporary school reformers, educators in the early twentieth century typically …

A Study Of Modern Mass Education Bureaus (Book Review), Thomas D. Curran

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Zhou, Huimei. 近代民众教育馆 = A Study of Modern Mass Education Bureaus. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press, 2012. ISBN 9787303137077 (pbk.)

Prof. Zhou’s book is a general history of the Mass Education Movement that the Guomindang government conducted in the 1920s and 1930s. Topics covered include the movement’s ideological objectives, its organizational characteristics, it activities, and its reception by and impact on local communities. The work is carefully balanced between exposition and analysis, and it is supported generously by evidence drawn from a wide range of primary sources. Those sources include government publications, local gazetteers, …

Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, And The Making Of Modern China, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas Curran.

MacKinnon, Stephen R. Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. (ISBN 9780520254459)

Mobile Warriors And Cosmopolitan Intellectuals: The Legacy Of The Dutch Counterinsurgency In Colonial Aceh, Andrew Goss

History Faculty Publications

Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Netherlands East Indies sought to bring all the people and territory of the Indonesian archipelago under colonial control. In 1873, they turned their attention to the sultanate of Aceh in northern Sumatra, and sent a small invasion force. Their defeat led to 3000 mean being dispatched the following year, and while this force took control of the capital city of Banda Aceh and the lowlands near the coast, they were able to seize the city only after it had been abandoned by the Acehnese, who retreated into the mountainous regions to …

Transmitting The Ideal Of Enlightenment: Chinese Universities Since The Late Nineteenth Century (Book Review), Thomas D. Curran

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Mak, Ricarado K. S., ed. Transmitting the Ideal of Enlightenment: Chinese Universities Since the Late Nineteenth Century. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009.

ISBN 9780761847267

Male Same-Sex Relations In Modern China: Language, Media Representation, And Law, 1900–1949, Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

The article discusses the tension in the Chinese indigenous terminology for male same-sex relations which was similar to Eve Sedgwich's description of the Western modern homosexual/heterosexual definition. It argues that the Western sexological concept of homosexuality was accepted in the early 20th century China and notes that its legal apparatus had no clear stipulations on sex between men. It indicates how writers during the first half of the 20th century were more concerned with the proper gender behavior and the image of the nation than sex itself.

Decent Colonialism? Pure Science And Colonial Ideology In The Netherlands East Indies, 1910–1929, Andrew Goss

History Faculty Publications

This article examines changes within the Dutch civilising mission ideology after the decline of the Ethical Policy. Support of pure science, scientific knowledge that supposedly transcended ideology and politics, allowed the colonial administration to continue to project their rule as decent and moral, even as conflict and repression dominated colonial politics in the 1920s. The argument starts with the construction of pure science after 1910, under the care of J.C. Koningsberger, out of the research traditions at the Department of Agriculture. It next examines the creation of institutions and agendas of pure science. And finally it analyses the absorption of …

The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War In The Communist World, Austin Jersild

History Faculty Publications

A reader of both Russian and Chinese, Lorenz M. Lüthi provides fascinating depth and detail to an unstable Sino-Soviet alliance shaped by strong and ambitious personalities, nationalist sensitivities, cultural misunderstandings, and the perhaps inevitable clash between two societies at very different stages in “socialist” history.

The Jacquinot Safe Zone: Wartime Refugees In Shanghai, Thomas D. Curran

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Ristaino, M. R. (2008). The Jacquinot safe zone: Wartime refugees in Shanghai. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804757935

Disarming The Allies Of Imperialism: The State, Agitation, And Manipulation During China's Nationalist Revolution, 1922-1949 (Book Review), Thomas D. Curran

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Murdock, M. G. (2006). Disarming the allies of imperialism: The state, agitation, and manipulation during China's nationalist revolution, 1922-1949. Ithaca: East Asia Program, Cornell University.

Brokaw, Cynthia J., Commerce In Culture: The Sibao Book Trade In The Qing And Republican Periods (Book Review), Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Brokaw, Cynthia J. Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods. Cambridge:. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

ISBN 9780674024496

China And The Great War: China's Pursuit Of A New National Identity And Internationalization (Book Review), Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Xu, Guozt. China and the Great War: China's Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Between Heaven And Modernity: Reconstructing Suzhou, 1985-1937 (Book Review), Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Carroll, Peter J. Between Heaven and Modernity: Reconstructing Suzhou, 1985-1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Policing Chinese Politics: A History, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Dutton, Michael. Policing Chinese Politics: A History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

ISBN 9780822334774

The Power Of Position: Bejing University, Intellectuals, And Chinese Political Culture, 1898-1929, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Weston, Timothy B. The Power of Position: Bejing University, Intellectuals, And Chinese Political Culture, 1898-1929. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

ISBN 9780520237674

In The Shadow Of The Rising Sun: Shanghai Under Japanese Occupation, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Henriot, Christian and Wen-hsin Yeh, eds. In the Shadow of the Rising Sim: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.