Asian history Books

Book SynopsisIn early modern Korea, the Chosŏn state conducted an extermination campaign against the Kaesŏng Wang, descendants of the preceding Koryŏ dynasty. It was so thorough that most of today's descendants are related to a single survivor. Before long, however, the Chosŏn dynasty sought to bolster its legitimacy as the successor of Koryŏ by rehabilitating the surviving Wangs—granting them patronage for performing ancestral rites and even allowing them to attain prestigious offices. As a result, Koryŏ descendants came to constitute elite lineages throughout Korea. As members of the revived aristocratic descent group, they were committed to Confucian norms of loyalty to their ruler. The Chosŏn, in turn, increasingly honored Koryŏ legacies. As the state began to tolerate critical historical narratives, the early plight of the Wangs inspired popular accounts that engendered sympathy. Modern forces of imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, urbanization, industrialization, and immigration transformed the Kaesŏng Wang from the progeny of fallen royals to individuals from all walks of life. Eugene Y. Park draws on primary and secondary sources, interviews, and site visits to tell their extraordinary story. In so doing, he traces Korea's changing politics, society, and culture for more than half a millennium. Trade Review"By tracing the fortunes of the Kaesŏng Wang after their expulsion from the Koryŏ palace, Park uncovers the surprising intersection of family background and political power that allowed some of the descendants of Koryŏ royalty to prosper, enhancing our understanding of Korean social history."—Donald L. Baker, The University of British Columbia"Park's meticulous study of the Wang lineage and Chosŏn society weaves its way across the arc of the entire Chosŏn period, revealing both how this community and Korean society more broadly was and still is heavily focused on lineage."—James B. Lewis, University of Oxford"Premodern Korean history is, unfortunately, an underrepresented field in East Asian and world history. Fortunately, Park is probably the most productive scholar in the premodern Korean field, and his latest work does not disappoint. In this study, Park traces the twists and turns in the historical memory of the Wang royal clan, and the Wang descent group in general, from their loss of power that accompanied the fall of the Koryo dynasty (1392) to the present...Highly recommended."—M. J. Wert, CHOICE"Park presents an interesting insight into an East Asian society's political, social, and familial structures and how it marked dynastic transition."—Carl Young, Histoire sociale/Social History"A Genealogy of Dissentis well written, well organized, and a great addition to texts not only on early modern Korean history, but also on genealogical history.... Academics and non-academics alike who are interested in what happened to the Koryŏ dynasty after the dynastic transition will find the book useful."—Christine Mae Sarito, SehepunkteTable of ContentsPrologue 1. Death and Resurrection, 1392–1450 2. Search for a Ritual Heir, 1450–1589 3. The Court and Society, 1589–1724 4. Renewed Attention to the Koryŏ Legacies, 1724–1864 5. Modernity, Kinship, and Individuals, 1864–1910 Epilogue

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Book SynopsisAround the turn of the twentieth century, disorders that Chinese physicians had been writing about for over a millennium acquired new identities in Western medicine—sudden turmoil became cholera; flowers of heaven became smallpox; and foot qi became beriberi. Historians have tended to present these new identities as revelations, overlooking evidence that challenges Western ideas about these conditions. In Forgotten Disease, Hilary A. Smith argues that, by privileging nineteenth century sources, we misrepresent what traditional Chinese doctors were seeing and doing, therefore unfairly viewing their medicine as inferior. Drawing on a wide array of sources, ranging from early Chinese classics to modern scientific research, Smith traces the history of one representative case, foot qi, from the fourth century to the present day. She examines the shifting meanings of disease over time, showing that each transformation reflects the social, political, intellectual, and economic environment. The breathtaking scope of this story offers insights into the world of early Chinese doctors and how their ideas about health, illness, and the body were developing far before the advent of modern medicine. Smith highlights the fact that modern conceptions of these ancient diseases create the impression that the West saved the Chinese from age-old afflictions, when the reality is that many prominent diseases in China were actually brought over as a result of imperialism. She invites the reader to reimagine a history of Chinese medicine that celebrates its complexity and nuance, rather than uncritically disdaining this dynamic form of healing.Trade Review"The writing of the history of diseases has played a crucial but often invisible role in shaping Chinese medicine as we know it today. Forgotten Disease challenges the dominant historiography with great insights, enabling us to relate anew to the past and to reopen possibilities for further developing this living tradition." -- Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Academia Sinica * Taiwan *"Forgotten Disease makes significant contributions to the history both of Chinese medicine, and of medicine in a globalizing era. By resisting the easy translation of 'jiaoqi' into a biomedical entity, this book stands as a stellar example of how historians of Asian medicine can decenter the West." -- Ruth Rogaski * Vanderbilt University *"This fascinating, meticulous study of the unstable concept of foot qi provides a welcome perspective on Chinese medical thought and highlights the pitfalls of retrospective diagnosis. It is a valuable contribution to the nuanced and deeper understanding of Asian medical traditions with broader lessons for all medical historians." -- William C. Summers * Yale University *"Smith traces jiaoqi's history from its first mention in a fourth-century Chinese medical formulary as an affliction of northerners when living in "South China" to its thirteenth-century identity as a northerner's dietary disorder, through a sixteenth-century shift to a disease of consumption akin to gout, and into modern permutations from beriberi to athlete's foot in East Asia....Its potential readership...extend[s] to historians of Western medical imperialism, colonial medicine, East Asian public health history, and the global history of public health." -- Marta Hanson * Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review *"[T]his is a highly original monograph. Its greatest accomplishment is that, in contrast to a medical history about foot qi in China and Japan, Forgotten Disease uses foot qi to think more thoroughly about medical history in China and Japan." Alexander R. Bay, Asian MedicineTable of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis chapter summarizes why biomedical translations of old Chinese disease concepts are problematic. It introduces the Chinese disease name foot qi (jiao qi) and gives examples from three different periods to show how differently the name has been used over the course of Chinese history and why beriberi is an incomplete translation. The chapter then describes three contributions the book makes to current historical scholarship: it defends the "framing disease" approach to disease history and extends it to Chinese concepts; it helps create a more nuanced picture of how modern Chinese and Western medicine coevolved, supplanting an older idea that they were diametric opposites that collided in the early twentieth century; and it questions the notion that Western imperialism improved health in modernizing East Asia. By introducing past ways of thinking about the body, the book also encourages a critical, comparative perspective on current medical knowledge. 1Foot Qi in Early Chinese Medicine chapter abstractThis chapter introduces foot qi (jiao qi) as it was understood when it first appeared in books in the fourth century. Foot qi first appeared in a drug formulary called Emergency Formulas to Keep Up One's Sleeve by Ge Hong, where it appears as a regionally bounded disease common south of the Yangzi River, to which migrants from the north were especially vulnerable. The chapter explores how political circumstances combined with classical medical beliefs about regional constitutions to make foot qi seem like a disease that threatened out-of-place bodies. The chapter also argues that foot qi's early history shows it to have been a commonly used disease name with a lot of flexibility and ambiguity. 2Competing for Medical Authority over Disease chapter abstractThis chapter shows how literate doctors in medieval China, both those employed by the government and those practicing privately, attempted to claim knowledge about foot qi (jiao qi) that surpassed that of laypeople. It centers on two seminal texts in Chinese medicine: Chao Yuanfang's Sources and Symptoms of All Disease and Sun Simiao's Formulas Worth a Thousand in Gold. Their attempts to redefine foot qi reveal how competitive the unregulated medical marketplace of Sui and Tang China was; learned physicians, whom many today erroneously believe to have had the most authority, faced challenges to their authority from rivals and even from patients and patients' friends and relatives. The chapter also shows that medieval foot qi was a chronic disease that could repeatedly afflict a wealthy and powerful patient over a long period of time, making it a particularly visible site where competition among healers played out. 3Simplifying and Standardizing Disease chapter abstractThis chapter shows how the drug formularies produced by an active Chinese government in the tenth and eleventh centuries standardized and simplified the definition of foot qi (jiao qi) that learned doctors had created. The formularies, linked to a new system of public pharmacies, facilitated self-treatment and removed elements of diagnosis that only a classically educated physician could perform. Physicians complained that official formularies dumbed down diagnosis of all disease, especially foot qi. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, private printers abridged the official formularies, and the spread of woodblock printing technology enabled knockoffs to be cheaply disseminated and become widely influential. These formularies produced the only features of classical foot qi that were later incorporated into the modern concept of beriberi—the idea that the disease came in wet, dry, and fulminating types—revealing a similar reductive, standardizing impulse in both Song dynasty and modern biomedicine. 4The Northerner's Dietary Disorder chapter abstractThis chapter examines a major change in the understanding of foot qi (jiao qi) in the twelfth century. Li Gao (Li Dongyuan), one of the most famous physicians of the Jin-Yuan period known for innovation in Chinese medicine, added a new "northern" etiology to the old idea that foot qi was caused by environmental poisons entering the body through the skin, which he saw as a "southern" type of the disease. He thought northerners had tighter pores than southerners and were less susceptible to environmental poisons but more vulnerable to ailments caused by eating and drinking too much rich food and alcohol. Northerners' foot qi was thus a dietary disorder. The chapter argues that this changed understanding reflects the new prominence of ideas about northern and southern constitutions in Chinese medicine, influenced by the long political division of north from south China between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. 5Getting Rich and Getting Sick chapter abstractThis chapter argues that writings about foot qi (jiao qi) in fifteenth- through nineteenth-century China show the effects of rising prosperity on both health and the medical occupation. Late-imperial sources, including the new case-records genre, reveal a disease resembling modern gout, consisting of intermittent foot pain and swelling. Doctors perceived this as the dietary foot qi first described in the twelfth century but argued about whether it was exclusive to northerners as their predecessors had suggested. The significance of northern and southern identity had waned now that China was politically reunified, but less-elite healers still claimed knowledge about regional constitutions, diseases, and therapies to assert special authority. Scholars writing about foot qi generally ignore sources from this period because the ailment they describe does not match beriberi, the officially recognized definition of foot qi today, but the chapter rejects such a present-centered approach. 6Creating Beriberi in Meiji Japan chapter abstractThis chapter examines the late nineteenth-century Japanese epidemics of the vitamin deficiency disorder beriberi, which Japanese doctors identified as epidemics of foot qi (pronounced kakke in Japanese). Previous histories have presented the association between kakke and the disease beriberi as the discovery of a truth: that foot qi was really a thiamine deficiency that had long plagued East Asia. This chapter argues instead that the nineteenth-century beriberi epidemics were historically new and were caused by Meiji Japan's modernization on a Western model, including changes to foodways. Because practitioners of kampō (classical Sino-Japanese medicine) had lower status and support in Meiji Japan than Western-style doctors, it was the latter who redefined this old disease concept for the modern age. The redefinition reflected Western imperialism, not only because it dismissed indigenous ways of understanding disease but also because imperialism had made thiamine deficiencies more common to begin with. 7Foot Qi's Multiple Meanings in Modern East Asia chapter abstractThis chapter examines how a modern biomedical interpretation—that foot qi was really the vitamin deficiency beriberi—was accepted by the Chinese elite in the early twentieth century, even though there had never been a beriberi crisis in China as there had been in Japan. It argues that it was because of Western medicine's prestige that modernizers in China accepted Western disease concepts as the "true" definitions of Chinese medicine disease names. Subordinating traditional disease concepts to Western ones devalued Chinese medicine by making it seem that only Western medicine could properly diagnose and treat disease; consequently, foot qi nearly disappeared from Chinese medicine. Laypeople, however, continued to apply the name to an ailment more relevant to them than beriberi, namely athlete's foot. And interest in other nonberiberi meanings of classical foot qi has recently revived. The chapter thus highlights the persistent diversity of ideas in East Asian medicine. Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion summarizes why it is important to approach modern translations of old Chinese disease names as this book has approached foot qi: as the products of social, political, economic, and intellectual factors, rather than as transparent discoveries of biological truth. Such an approach undermines the false impressions that Chinese medicine is a monolithic tradition unchanged over several thousand years and that its ideas and practices have always been antithetical to those of Western medicine. It also questions the assumption that the diseases Westerners found in Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were timeless features of life there, miraculously ameliorated by Western medicine's innovations. And it allows us to appreciate premodern ideas about illness that may help us face emergent diseases today. This approach is especially important now as the terminology of Chinese medicine is being standardized to facilitate its globalization.

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Book SynopsisAround the turn of the twentieth century, disorders that Chinese physicians had been writing about for over a millennium acquired new identities in Western medicine—sudden turmoil became cholera; flowers of heaven became smallpox; and foot qi became beriberi. Historians have tended to present these new identities as revelations, overlooking evidence that challenges Western ideas about these conditions. In Forgotten Disease, Hilary A. Smith argues that, by privileging nineteenth century sources, we misrepresent what traditional Chinese doctors were seeing and doing, therefore unfairly viewing their medicine as inferior. Drawing on a wide array of sources, ranging from early Chinese classics to modern scientific research, Smith traces the history of one representative case, foot qi, from the fourth century to the present day. She examines the shifting meanings of disease over time, showing that each transformation reflects the social, political, intellectual, and economic environment. The breathtaking scope of this story offers insights into the world of early Chinese doctors and how their ideas about health, illness, and the body were developing far before the advent of modern medicine. Smith highlights the fact that modern conceptions of these ancient diseases create the impression that the West saved the Chinese from age-old afflictions, when the reality is that many prominent diseases in China were actually brought over as a result of imperialism. She invites the reader to reimagine a history of Chinese medicine that celebrates its complexity and nuance, rather than uncritically disdaining this dynamic form of healing.Trade Review"The writing of the history of diseases has played a crucial but often invisible role in shaping Chinese medicine as we know it today. Forgotten Disease challenges the dominant historiography with great insights, enabling us to relate anew to the past and to reopen possibilities for further developing this living tradition." -- Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Academia Sinica * Taiwan *"Forgotten Disease makes significant contributions to the history both of Chinese medicine, and of medicine in a globalizing era. By resisting the easy translation of 'jiaoqi' into a biomedical entity, this book stands as a stellar example of how historians of Asian medicine can decenter the West." -- Ruth Rogaski * Vanderbilt University *"This fascinating, meticulous study of the unstable concept of foot qi provides a welcome perspective on Chinese medical thought and highlights the pitfalls of retrospective diagnosis. It is a valuable contribution to the nuanced and deeper understanding of Asian medical traditions with broader lessons for all medical historians." -- William C. Summers * Yale University *"Smith traces jiaoqi's history from its first mention in a fourth-century Chinese medical formulary as an affliction of northerners when living in "South China" to its thirteenth-century identity as a northerner's dietary disorder, through a sixteenth-century shift to a disease of consumption akin to gout, and into modern permutations from beriberi to athlete's foot in East Asia....Its potential readership...extend[s] to historians of Western medical imperialism, colonial medicine, East Asian public health history, and the global history of public health." -- Marta Hanson * Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review *"[T]his is a highly original monograph. Its greatest accomplishment is that, in contrast to a medical history about foot qi in China and Japan, Forgotten Disease uses foot qi to think more thoroughly about medical history in China and Japan." Alexander R. Bay, Asian MedicineTable of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis chapter summarizes why biomedical translations of old Chinese disease concepts are problematic. It introduces the Chinese disease name foot qi (jiao qi) and gives examples from three different periods to show how differently the name has been used over the course of Chinese history and why beriberi is an incomplete translation. The chapter then describes three contributions the book makes to current historical scholarship: it defends the "framing disease" approach to disease history and extends it to Chinese concepts; it helps create a more nuanced picture of how modern Chinese and Western medicine coevolved, supplanting an older idea that they were diametric opposites that collided in the early twentieth century; and it questions the notion that Western imperialism improved health in modernizing East Asia. By introducing past ways of thinking about the body, the book also encourages a critical, comparative perspective on current medical knowledge. 1Foot Qi in Early Chinese Medicine chapter abstractThis chapter introduces foot qi (jiao qi) as it was understood when it first appeared in books in the fourth century. Foot qi first appeared in a drug formulary called Emergency Formulas to Keep Up One's Sleeve by Ge Hong, where it appears as a regionally bounded disease common south of the Yangzi River, to which migrants from the north were especially vulnerable. The chapter explores how political circumstances combined with classical medical beliefs about regional constitutions to make foot qi seem like a disease that threatened out-of-place bodies. The chapter also argues that foot qi's early history shows it to have been a commonly used disease name with a lot of flexibility and ambiguity. 2Competing for Medical Authority over Disease chapter abstractThis chapter shows how literate doctors in medieval China, both those employed by the government and those practicing privately, attempted to claim knowledge about foot qi (jiao qi) that surpassed that of laypeople. It centers on two seminal texts in Chinese medicine: Chao Yuanfang's Sources and Symptoms of All Disease and Sun Simiao's Formulas Worth a Thousand in Gold. Their attempts to redefine foot qi reveal how competitive the unregulated medical marketplace of Sui and Tang China was; learned physicians, whom many today erroneously believe to have had the most authority, faced challenges to their authority from rivals and even from patients and patients' friends and relatives. The chapter also shows that medieval foot qi was a chronic disease that could repeatedly afflict a wealthy and powerful patient over a long period of time, making it a particularly visible site where competition among healers played out. 3Simplifying and Standardizing Disease chapter abstractThis chapter shows how the drug formularies produced by an active Chinese government in the tenth and eleventh centuries standardized and simplified the definition of foot qi (jiao qi) that learned doctors had created. The formularies, linked to a new system of public pharmacies, facilitated self-treatment and removed elements of diagnosis that only a classically educated physician could perform. Physicians complained that official formularies dumbed down diagnosis of all disease, especially foot qi. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, private printers abridged the official formularies, and the spread of woodblock printing technology enabled knockoffs to be cheaply disseminated and become widely influential. These formularies produced the only features of classical foot qi that were later incorporated into the modern concept of beriberi—the idea that the disease came in wet, dry, and fulminating types—revealing a similar reductive, standardizing impulse in both Song dynasty and modern biomedicine. 4The Northerner's Dietary Disorder chapter abstractThis chapter examines a major change in the understanding of foot qi (jiao qi) in the twelfth century. Li Gao (Li Dongyuan), one of the most famous physicians of the Jin-Yuan period known for innovation in Chinese medicine, added a new "northern" etiology to the old idea that foot qi was caused by environmental poisons entering the body through the skin, which he saw as a "southern" type of the disease. He thought northerners had tighter pores than southerners and were less susceptible to environmental poisons but more vulnerable to ailments caused by eating and drinking too much rich food and alcohol. Northerners' foot qi was thus a dietary disorder. The chapter argues that this changed understanding reflects the new prominence of ideas about northern and southern constitutions in Chinese medicine, influenced by the long political division of north from south China between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. 5Getting Rich and Getting Sick chapter abstractThis chapter argues that writings about foot qi (jiao qi) in fifteenth- through nineteenth-century China show the effects of rising prosperity on both health and the medical occupation. Late-imperial sources, including the new case-records genre, reveal a disease resembling modern gout, consisting of intermittent foot pain and swelling. Doctors perceived this as the dietary foot qi first described in the twelfth century but argued about whether it was exclusive to northerners as their predecessors had suggested. The significance of northern and southern identity had waned now that China was politically reunified, but less-elite healers still claimed knowledge about regional constitutions, diseases, and therapies to assert special authority. Scholars writing about foot qi generally ignore sources from this period because the ailment they describe does not match beriberi, the officially recognized definition of foot qi today, but the chapter rejects such a present-centered approach. 6Creating Beriberi in Meiji Japan chapter abstractThis chapter examines the late nineteenth-century Japanese epidemics of the vitamin deficiency disorder beriberi, which Japanese doctors identified as epidemics of foot qi (pronounced kakke in Japanese). Previous histories have presented the association between kakke and the disease beriberi as the discovery of a truth: that foot qi was really a thiamine deficiency that had long plagued East Asia. This chapter argues instead that the nineteenth-century beriberi epidemics were historically new and were caused by Meiji Japan's modernization on a Western model, including changes to foodways. Because practitioners of kampō (classical Sino-Japanese medicine) had lower status and support in Meiji Japan than Western-style doctors, it was the latter who redefined this old disease concept for the modern age. The redefinition reflected Western imperialism, not only because it dismissed indigenous ways of understanding disease but also because imperialism had made thiamine deficiencies more common to begin with. 7Foot Qi's Multiple Meanings in Modern East Asia chapter abstractThis chapter examines how a modern biomedical interpretation—that foot qi was really the vitamin deficiency beriberi—was accepted by the Chinese elite in the early twentieth century, even though there had never been a beriberi crisis in China as there had been in Japan. It argues that it was because of Western medicine's prestige that modernizers in China accepted Western disease concepts as the "true" definitions of Chinese medicine disease names. Subordinating traditional disease concepts to Western ones devalued Chinese medicine by making it seem that only Western medicine could properly diagnose and treat disease; consequently, foot qi nearly disappeared from Chinese medicine. Laypeople, however, continued to apply the name to an ailment more relevant to them than beriberi, namely athlete's foot. And interest in other nonberiberi meanings of classical foot qi has recently revived. The chapter thus highlights the persistent diversity of ideas in East Asian medicine. Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion summarizes why it is important to approach modern translations of old Chinese disease names as this book has approached foot qi: as the products of social, political, economic, and intellectual factors, rather than as transparent discoveries of biological truth. Such an approach undermines the false impressions that Chinese medicine is a monolithic tradition unchanged over several thousand years and that its ideas and practices have always been antithetical to those of Western medicine. It also questions the assumption that the diseases Westerners found in Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were timeless features of life there, miraculously ameliorated by Western medicine's innovations. And it allows us to appreciate premodern ideas about illness that may help us face emergent diseases today. This approach is especially important now as the terminology of Chinese medicine is being standardized to facilitate its globalization.

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Book SynopsisThe Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days, but armistice talks occupied more than two of those years, as more than 14,000 Chinese prisoners of war refused to return to Communist China and demanded to go to Nationalist Taiwan, effectively hijacking the negotiations and thwarting the designs of world leaders at a pivotal moment in Cold War history. In The Hijacked War, David Cheng Chang vividly portrays the experiences of Chinese prisoners in the dark, cold, and damp tents of Koje and Cheju Islands in Korea and how their decisions derailed the high politics being conducted in the corridors of power in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. Chang demonstrates how the Truman-Acheson administration's policies of voluntary repatriation and prisoner reindoctrination for psychological warfare purposes—the first overt and the second covert—had unintended consequences. The "success" of the reindoctrination program backfired when anti-Communist Chinese prisoners persuaded and coerced fellow POWs to renounce their homeland. Drawing on newly declassified archival materials from China, Taiwan, and the United States, and interviews with more than 80 surviving Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war, Chang depicts the struggle over prisoner repatriation that dominated the second half of the Korean War, from early 1952 to July 1953, in the prisoners' own words.Trade Review"This book represents a giant step forward in our understanding of the prisoner-of-war issue in the Korean War. The research on the Chinese prisoners is extraordinary, the stories of individuals compelling, and the analysis of the context in which they made choices balanced and persuasive." -- William Stueck * author of The Korean War: An International History *"David Cheng Chang's superlative research reveals the use of Chinese POWs as pawns in the larger Cold War standoff between the US and China during the Korean War. His cogent analysis encourages us to think about the aftermath of the war and the lives of those who made the 'voluntary choice' to join or who faced 'forced conformity.'" -- Barak Kushner * author of Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice *"The Hijacked War provides a most provocative look at the political and ethical consequences of the Korean War. Through the untold story of Chinese POWs' deportation, David Cheng Chang describes how, against the backdrop of the battle between democracy and communism, the Korean War's stakes implicated power games, historical contingencies, and human rights. His meticulous study brings to light a poignant lesson of the war—that freedom may generate violence, and democracy may beget betrayal. The book offers the long-missing piece to the jigsaw of the Cold War narrative on the East Asian front. And importantly, it compels us to ponder the price we pay for the war and peace of our own time." -- David Der-wei Wang * author ofThe Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China *"Chang's exceptionally vivid prisoner's-eye account, based on camp archives and interviews with ex-POWS, leads him to condemn the key U.S. policymakers, including President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, for their 'arrogance, ignorance, and negligence.'" -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *"David Cheng Chang fills a void in the literature on the Korean War with this important book describing the experiences of Chinese prisoners of war (POWs) during the conflict and assessing the impact of their incarceration and release... Chang delivers on his pledge to answer the questions of who these POWs were, why they chose to return home or not, and whether their choice was voluntary." -- James I. Matray * Journal of Cold War Studies *"The winner of the Korean War, ironically, turns out to be Chiang Kai-shek...The Hijacked War tells the violent and tragic story of Chiang's unacknowledged victory in Korea." -- John Delury * Global Asia *"The Hijacked War is a welcome and important intervention into Korean War historiography. Chang's focus on the lived experiences of those involved in POW discussions and camps suggests the ways that local stories can reorient our understanding of events, particularly a conflict that is often told in terms of high politics and military strategy." -- Gretchen Heefner * The Journal of Asian Studies *"Besides being thus far the most in-depth exploration of Chinese POWs, The Hijacked War will be valuable to scholars studying the Korean War frontline and infiltration campaigns....Based on solid scholarship, Chang's POW biographies offer unique perspectives." -- Liu Zhaokun * Journal of American-East Asian Relations *"An ambitious China-centric work that nonetheless wonderfully captures the ambiguity and confusion associated with the breakup of the Japanese Empire and the related uncertainty of the two Koreas, The Hijacked War holds interest for a range of fields, reaching out to scholars of Northeast Asia, along with more nation-oriented subdisciplines of East Asian studies." -- John P. DiMoia * Cross-Currents *"David Cheng Chang offers an intriguing alternative explanation for the skewed anti-repatriation decision on the part of Chinese POWs and its impact on the Korean War....Hijacked War is no doubt an excellent contribution to Korean War POW studies. Those interested in the Korean War and POWs will find it very inspiring and worth reading." -- Son Daekwon * Pacific Affairs *"This well-written book poses some tough questions regarding the Chinese prisoner repatriation issue in the Korean War, a topic deserving of further scholarly examination." -- Esther T. Hu * Journal of Chinese Military History *"By moving beyond diplomatic history, Chang closes a major gap in the historiography on Chinese intervention in Korea by painstakingly unpacking the complex psyches of the Chinese POWs."With Chang's historical account, we can finally understand the myriad factors that led to Chinese POWs defecting from China to Taiwan at a two-to-one ratio (a stunning ratio compared to 7,826 non-repatriates and 75,823 repatriates among the North Korean POWs). In this twinned flipping of the script, Chang recasts Chinese POWs as the central actors of the Korean War to argue that 'the brightest minds of the mightiest power on earth [United States] were taken captive by the [Chinese] captives' (12)." -- Sandra H. Park * Journal of Korean Studies *"In telling the stories of Chinese POWs, Chang's stress on social history points to other topics in Chinese military history, such as recruitment, indoctrination, political control, awards and punishments, and other aspects of prisoner policy. Personal stories bring fresh insights into Communist POWs' motivations and perceptions. In their own words, they provide compelling firsthand accounts of their war experiences in Korea as well as their family lives before and after the war. Their stories deepen our understanding of the war." -- Xiaobing Li * Michigan War Studies Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThe Introduction establishes the centrality of the Chinese prisoners in the second half of the war and suggests a new periodization highlighting the war over prisoners. The Korean War was in fact two wars: the first was fought over territory from June 1950 to June 1951; the second was fought over prisoners from late 1951 to July 1953. While the first war restored the territorial status quo ante bellum, the second war's only visible outcome was the "defection" of some fourteen thousand Chinese prisoners to Taiwan and seven thousand North Korean prisoners to South Korea—nearly doubling the length of the war and inflicting numerous casualties on all sides, including 12,300 American deaths in the last two years. The war was hijacked by misguided US policies and a core of Chinese anti-Communist prisoners. This chapter suggests that this surprise outcome was one reason the war became America's "forgotten war." 1Fleeing or Embracing the Communists in the Chinese Civil War chapter abstractThis chapter traces the divergent Civil War experiences of several future POWs: a Nationalist paratrooper, a Nationalist-turned-Communist doctor, three Taiwanese teenagers who joined the Nationalist army and fought on the mainland, a Tsinghua University student-turned-Communist underground agent, two Whampoa Military Academy cadets fleeing Manchuria, a forcibly conscripted Sichuanese turned a proud PLA soldier, and several idealistic students. While the Communists' ruthless persecution of the rich horrified some young people, their vastly superior discipline, vigor, and purposefulness—in contrast to the Nationalists—held powerful political and emotional appeal, especially for young people who had been neglected or oppressed under the Nationalist regime. 2Reforming Former Nationalists chapter abstractThis chapter examines the thought reform experiences of Nationalist officers, Whampoa cadets, and enlisted men in the Communist army in 1950, some of whom later became defectors and anti-Communist prisoner leaders and activists in Korea. Meticulously planned, thoroughly implemented, and backed by the threat of violence, Communist thought reform combined intense indoctrination with mandatory participation and performance. By the end of 1950, after a year-long indoctrination, or "thought reform," ex-Nationalist personnel—"liberated soldiers"—seemed to have completely surrendered to their captors, physically, emotionally, and sometimes intellectually as well. While the Communist ideology and methods won some converts, others remained unconvinced. To survive, however, these dissenters had to hide their resentment under the guise of complete submission. Thanks to their extensive and painful experiences under the Communists, ex-Nationalists acquired the essential Communist techniques: relentless indoctrination with mandatory participation and performance and iron discipline reinforced by mutual surveillance. 3Desperados and Volunteers chapter abstractThe Chinese People's Volunteer Army (CPV) was a misnomer artfully chosen to camouflage China's strategic intentions and lure the Americans into underestimating China's commitment and strength in Korea. It was made up of PLA units with the same designation; more than 60 to 70 percent of its troops consisted of former Nationalists. New recruits were also added. While some were drafted by local government using hoaxes, others volunteered for the army in a desperate move to escape local persecution during the "Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries"—the "bloody honeymoon" in the first year of the People's Republic. Going to war in Korea gave those disaffected young men their final opportunity to escape Communist China. 4Chiang, MacArthur, Truman, and NSC-81/1 chapter abstractThis chapter first shifts the focus to Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek fled and made his final stand, fearing an imminent Communist invasion in spring 1950. With the outbreak of the Korean War, Washington reversed its hands-off policy and committed to deny Taiwan to the Communists. General MacArthur's visit to Taiwan from July 31 to August 1, 1950, gave Chiang's regime a morale boost and opened the door to future intelligence collaboration. President Truman and General MacArthur met on Wake Island on October 15. Crossing the 38th parallel had been a foregone conclusion, as Truman had signed NSC-81/1 four days before the Inchon landing, authorizing a rollback in North Korea. Contrary to the popular belief that they focused on China's possible intervention, their main discussion item was the postwar rehabilitation of the entire Korean peninsula, including the reorientation or reindoctrination of POWs—another mandate of NSC-81/1. 5Defectors and Prisoners in the First Three Chinese Offensives chapter abstractThis chapter covers the first three Chinese offensives from late October 1950 to early January 1951, during which the CPV achieved near complete surprise and decisively defeated the UN Command (UNC) troops in a series of epic battles, including the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. Despite the UNC's utter defeat and hasty retreat, 1,245 Chinese prisoners were captured by the end of December 1950. This chapter sketches the experiences of several defectors, who risked their lives to cross the lines to surrender and provided valuable intelligence that might have saved American lives. Some of them later became anti-Communist prisoner leaders in POW camps. 6Ridgway's Turnaround, MacArthur's Exit, and Taiwan's Entry chapter abstractThis chapter studies the critical period from January to April 1951, when General Matthew Ridgway, the new Eighth Army commander, successfully turned around the war in Korea. The UNC repelled the Chinese Fourth Offensive and launched a counteroffensive. During the intense fighting, more Chinese prisoners were captured. Taking great risks, defectors escaped and surrendered to the UNC, including some of the future anti-Communist POW leaders. Even though MacArthur was dismissed by President Truman in April, he left a little-known but highly consequential legacy: the hiring of more than seventy interpreters from Taiwan, some of whom would play an instrumental role in the rise of anti-Communist POWs. In addition, Washington authorized the expansion of the prisoner indoctrination program to include Chinese POWs. 7The Fifth Offensive Debacle chapter abstractThis chapter dissects the Chinese Fifth Offensive (Spring Offensive) debacle, especially the destruction of the CPV 180th Division—one of the most humiliating defeats in Chinese Communist military history. Over three months, 15,510 CPV soldiers were captured—more than 70 percent of the 21,074 Chinese prisoners captured in the entire war. Drawing on both Chinese and American military sources, this chapter reconstructs the Chinese offensive and UNC counteroffensive and siege. It shows Chinese military leadership at all levels—from General Peng Dehuai's general headquarters, to the III Army Group, and to the 60th Army and the 180th Division—was arbitrary, careless, and disorderly. In the final stage of its siege, the 180th Division's commanders made the decision to "disperse and escape"—a code word for abandoning their troops. Using oral history and prisoner interrogation reports, this chapter also traces CPV soldiers' battle experiences and defectors' escapes in intimate detail. 8Civil War in the POW Camps chapter abstractThis chapter investigates the rise of Chinese anti-Communist prisoners in UNC prison camps in Pusan and on Koje Island, where more than 150,000 Chinese and North Korean POWs were held. Unlike the North Korean prisoners, whose military organization remained largely intact, the Chinese Communist officers sought to hide their identities to avoid interrogation by G-2 and persecution by the US Army. Chinese defectors served as trusties, cooperating with G-2 to identify Communist officers for interrogation and helping prison authorities arrest Communist "troublemakers." As mandated by Washington, the Civil Information and Education program began its reindoctrination project in August 1952, relying on educated anti-Communist prisoners as instructors. Chinese anti-Communist POWs combined Communist methods of thought control and mandatory participation with Nationalist methods of physical punishment. They established control over the two largest Chinese compounds, 72 and 86, with a combined population of more than sixteen thousand. 9The Debate over Prisoner Repatriation in Washington, Panmunjom, and Taipei chapter abstractChapter 9 delineates the origin and evolution of Washington's policy on prisoner repatriation, which unexpectedly became the main stumbling block in armistice negotiations in Panmunjom. While Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai took the negotiations extremely seriously and assembled China's first team of negotiators, President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson paid scant attention, leaving the talks in the hands of military officers without assistance from diplomats and China experts. Voluntary repatriation was first introduced as a bargaining position; but once it was publicized, the United States found it impossible to retreat from this moralistic position. As top officials withheld unsavory facts and vexing complexities, Truman made the final decision to uphold voluntary repatriation. "The Chinese have influenced the course of events in Koje-do and at Panmunjom," lamented the US ambassador. 10Screening: "Voluntary Repatriation" Turns Violent chapter abstractIn early April 1952, Communist negotiators acquiesced to the UNC's proposal to screen prisoners in order to determine a "round number" of prisoners wishing to return. While the screening process itself was free, horrific violence had occurred on the eve of the screening. This chapter documents the widespread torture and several cases of murder of pro-Communist prisoners by anti-Communist trusties, who succeeded in intimating fellow prisoners from choosing repatriation. In anti-Communist-controlled Compounds 72 and 86, more than 85 percent of the sixteen thousand prisoners refused repatriation. Just as the armistice line of 1953 changed little from the battle line of summer 1951, it is no exaggeration to say that the final breakdown of repatriation choices had been determined in the months leading up to April 1952. 11General Dodd's Kidnapping and General Boatner's Crackdown chapter abstractThis chapter narrates Koje prison commandant General Francis Dodd's kidnapping by North Korean prisoners and his successor Haydon Boatner's crackdown on North Korean and Chinese Communist prisoners, who had been separated from the anti-Communists. With methodical planning and a firm hand, "Old China Hand" Boatner tamed the newly formed Chinese Communist Compound 602. He also broke up North Korean Compound 76, whose prisoners had kidnapped Dodd, and restored order on Koje Island. But his success was short-lived, as he was soon promoted and headed stateside. 12China Hands on Koje and Cheju chapter abstractThis chapter examines the roles played by several low-ranking "Old China Hands" on Koje and Cheju island. Philip Manhard, a junior Foreign Service officer who began learning Chinese in 1948, was posted on Koje per Acheson's instructions. He authored several reports highly critical of the UNC prison authorities and anti-Communist trusties. The openly anti-Communist Catholic Chaplain Thomas O'Sullivan also served as an interpreter and became involved in the death of a Communist prisoner. MP Captain Joseph Brooks, who claimed that his Chinese wife and child had been killed by the Communists, became increasingly hostile toward Chinese Communist prisoners. Trouble was brewing on Cheju Island. 13October 1 Massacre on Cheju chapter abstractChapter 13 investigates the deadly incident on October 1, 1952, that resulted in the deaths of fifty-six Chinese pro-Communist prisoners. US internal investigation reports and interviews with several Chinese witnesses and an American soldier who fired into the crowd debunk the US official claim of a mass prison break. In the lead-up to the incident, there had been a period of high-octane confrontation and mutual insults. The prison authorities had ordered guards to "shoot to kill" prisoners for any and all aggressive actions. The military police unit was led by the openly hostile Captain Brooks; Communist prisoners were commanded by equally bellicose leaders, who secretly ordered the assassination of Brooks. A clash was all but inevitable. 14Exchanges and "Explanation" chapter abstractChapter 14 examines the repatriation of pro-Communist prisoners in August and September 1953 and the subsequent 90-day "Explanation" for the anti-Communists and their eventual release to Taiwan in January 1954. This chapter also turns to the story of the twelve Chinese and seventy-six Korean prisoners who chose neutral nations and went to India. It highlights the roles played by the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (NNRC) and the Custodial Forces of India, which administered the anti-Communist prisoners at Panmunjom. The prisoners' experiences are told through oral histories, including those of China- and Taiwan-bound prisoners, and two neutral-nation-bound prisoners, a Chinese and a North Korean, who chose neutral nations and are now living in Argentina. 15Prisoner-Agents of Unit 8240 chapter abstractChapter 15 uncovers the hitherto unknown history of prisoner-turned-agents. Between late 1951 and early 1954, several hundred Chinese prisoners disappeared from prison camps and were declared to have "escaped." They were drafted by a US military intelligence unit—the Far East Command Liaison Detachment (Korea), the 8240th Army Unit. After some crude training, they infiltrated into North Korea by air, by sea, or by land, and had to return to the UNC side on foot. More than half of these prisoner-agents—probably more than two hundred—were killed or captured during missions, and some of the captured were executed by the PRC. The program practically destroyed the best educated and most committed Chinese anti-Communist prisoners. This chapter draws on interviews with several of the seventy survivors who went to Taiwan, detailing their narrow escape from death and the loss of their comrades. 16Aftermath chapter abstractThis chapter sketches prisoners' postwar lives in Taiwan, the PRC, and India, and subsequently Latin America. None of the 7,110 POWs who were repatriated to China between April 1953 and January 1954 went home directly, as they were subjected to a yearlong investigation that resulted in the expulsion of 91.8 percent of the 2,900 Communist members from the CCP, dishonorable discharge of 4,600 repatriates from the PLA counting from the date of their capture, the expulsion of some 700 men from the PLA, and the arrest of a small number of traitors and spy suspects. No one was allowed to rejoin the PLA. What followed was lifetime stigma and persecution. In contrast, few of the 14,000 Taiwan-bound prisoners were allowed to quit the military, where they were closely monitored. While some prisoners became victims of the White Terror, others found opportunities in Taiwan's increasingly free and prosperous society. Conclusion chapter abstractVoluntary repatriation and prisoner reindoctrination, the twin US policies in the second half of the Korean War—the war over the prisoners—were major failures, as they achieved none of their original objectives and denied the rights of the majority of prisoners while protecting only a minority. No one had anticipated the price for paying lip service to fighting the Chinese Communists—with propaganda and psychological warfare—could be so dear. The United States had paid a punishing price for its arrogance toward the Chinese and its ignorance about the Chinese Communists in the Korean War, but few understand why the war was fought for three years instead of one. It is a lesson that remains to be learned.

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Book SynopsisWhat if we could imagine hierarchy not as a social ill, but as a source of social hope? Taking us into a "caste of thieves" in northern India, Nobody's People depicts hierarchy as a normative idiom through which people imagine better lives and pursue social ambitions. Failing to find a place inside hierarchic relations, the book's heroes are "nobody's people": perceived as worthless, disposable and so open to being murdered with no regret or remorse. Following their journey between death and hope, we learn to perceive vertical, non-equal relations as a social good, not only in rural Rajasthan, but also in much of the world—including settings stridently committed to equality. Challenging egalo-normative commitments, Anastasia Piliavsky asks scholars across the disciplines to recognize hierarchy as a major intellectual resource.Trade Review"It's difficult to overemphasize the effect of this narrative: the brio with which it is written, the verve of its characters, the author's intellectual panache. This scintillating re-reading of hierarchy, most poignant where it has supposedly been banished, picks apart one of anthropology's greatest conundrums and poses profound questions for evaluations based on social equivalence." -- Marilyn Strathern * University of Cambridge *"Moving away from the ideas of ineffability and stasis that attach to understandings of caste, Piliavsky puts forward a courageous, refreshingly original position on hierarchy." -- Dilip Menon * University of Witwatersrand *"An extraordinary work. A major rethinking of the social productivity of hierarchical relations, this is ethnographically grounded anthropological theorizing at its best. It should fundamentally transform contemporary conversations about the nature of social life." -- Joel Robbins * University of Cambridge *"By exploring the politics of everyday patronage, this compelling study of a 'caste of thieves' addresses one of the most important debates in the sociology of South Asia." -- Filippo Osella, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies * Sussex University *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts0Prologue chapter abstractIn 1991 a hamlet in southern Rajasthan, where the author conducted her research, was nearly razed by a pogrom. Decades later, its perpetrators felt no regret or remorse for the violence. Their victims were Kanjars, a caste of professional thieves and the most marginal local community. Parsing out the moral logic of the pogrom, Piliavsky argues that Kanjars are untouchable among the untouchables not because they are ritually most polluted, but because they are socially least attached. Asymmetrical ties with patrons are essential to the local calculus of people's worth, making hierarchical norms central to the logic of social ambitions. Challenging the egalo-normative commitments of writings on social mobility and aspiration in South Asia, and engaging critically the work of Louis Dumont, the prologue introduces the book's central argument: that hierarchy—as opposed to inequality—can drive social ambition, recognition, and hope. 1Hierarchy as Hope chapter abstractMany in India look to hierarchy as a social good that helps them pursue better lives. Social scientists, conversely, tend to see in hierarchy a system of oppressive stasis. In a wide-ranging reflection on social theory, chapter 1 outlines how its egalo-normative bearings and the old Christian idea of hierarchy as a "pyramid" have produced a caricature of hierarchy as a motionless whole, making it impossible to see why people the world over value it. It argues that hierarchies of all kinds always involve a logic of mutual responsibility structured by difference. Expressed in the idiom of patronal or parent-child relations, these norms do not imply or produce stasis; rather, they are inherently asymmetric, unstable, and dynamic. Outlining how hierarchical norms play out in patronal relations in Rajasthan, Piliavsky challenges the hoary contrast between "holism" and individualism, and outlines a vision of hierarchical individuality. 2The Lords of Begun chapter abstractChapter 2 reveals Begun, a market town, whose layout and history reflect major hierarchical principles. The town is organized concentrically around a citadel—the home of the local hereditary lord, the Rao—according to degrees of intimacy to the royal family, not by degrees of ritual purity and pollution. The highest ranking castes, with homes in the town center, are the Rao's closest, most experienced servants, while those lower and farther out have been more loosely employed by others. Developing an old argument about "centrality" as the organizing principle of caste, this chapter shows that the town and its social hierarchy were traditionally organized like a family, where the Rao was styled as a "father" and his servants as "children." The respective obligations to care for one's servants and to serve one's master are framed in this familial moral idiom that is pivotal to the broader logic of hierarchy. 3The People Who Were Not There chapter abstractWhile relations with Kanjars are denied in polite company, local aristocrats, farmers, and policemen engage them as watchmen, thieves for hire, and dispute negotiators. As such, Kanjars enter the innermost domains of life, while being denied public recognition. Both beneficiaries and victims of their invisibility, they profit from being employed as "secret agents," while ultimately losing out on the recognition that only openly recognized bonds with patrons afford. While running an often lucrative trade, Kanjars remain reputationally offstage—invisible, masterless, unattached—and so, in the eyes of others, lack a proper, cogent self, and thus any social value. For them, the moral significance of patronal attachments is really and truly a matter of life and death. The moral and social outsider can be disposed of casually, with no moral consequence or qualms. 4The Perils of Masterless People chapter abstractThe history of people who have come to be known as Kanjars is a story of a long and frustrated search for patrons, who would care for them and imparting on the community the existentially crucial belonging they long for. Tracing Kanjar history to the 16th century, when the name "Kanjar" first applied to itinerant entertainers at the Mughal court in Delhi, the chapter follows the story of North India's "vagrant" communities engaged as bards, spies, prostitutes and watchmen-cum-thieves for centuries and until this day. "Kanjar," a name of disrepute (today synonymous with "whore," "bastard," or "pimp"), stuck to communities that failed to attach themselves securely to reputable masters, while those succeeding in doing so had acquired more attractive monikers and position in life. While showing the enduring moral significance of asymmetrical bonds, this history also demonstrates the extraordinary historical lability of caste. 5How to Make and Eat a Goddess in Nine Days chapter abstractOnce a year Kanjars, like other Hindus, stage the festival of Navaratri, the nine days during which they celebrate their patron goddesses. For Kanjars, however, the festival carries special significance. As a people who lack suitable ties with human patrons, Kanjars valorize their attachments to goddesses, seeing them as the chief source of their collective self. Through the microcosm of the ritual process, and the minutiae of the exchange that takes place in its course, the chapter demonstrates the existential significance of patron-servant ties and the mutual constitution that these involve. Here, while the goddesses are manufactured by their Kanjar servants, Kanjars quite literally eat the goddesses, and so take on their substance, or khandān. The same logic of mutual constitution guides relations with human patrons. 6Who and Whose chapter abstractA masterless, unattached people in the eyes of others, Kanjars do have human patrons, who play a decisive role in ranking inside the community. The Kanjar caste is divided into those who work as bards, watchmen or thieves, and prostitutes. The segments of the caste are ranked, it is argued, not through moral judgments of their occupation, but on the basis of how tightly their work ties them to particular, precisely specified patrons. The more narrowly specified are these ties, the better the segment's standing. Kanjars involved in prostitution entertain an unrestricted array of patrons and so rank lowest of all, while the thieves with (actual or remembered) bonds to jajmāns among Rajputs, farmers, and the police rank the highest. What matters for social integrity is the integrity of social bonds. Here to be is to belong. 7The New Lords of Begun chapter abstractThis chapter takes readers into the thick of the electoral politics of Begun. Following two Kanjars, the Rao of Begun, and other political players during the 2008 state election campaign, the chapter shows how the hierarchical principles described in Begun shape the democratic process: orienting political strategies, inflecting voters' judgment, and structuring the rise and fall of political fortunes. The expectation to care for one's people, which lies at the heart of hierarchy as a moral logic of responsibility, gives rise to pervasive disappointment and gives meaning to a distinctive local sense of "corruption," as a failure of relations, rather than a failure of public office. Hierarchy emerges as the chief normative frame of local democracy. 8Every Man a King chapter abstractUnderstood as a moral logic of mutually beholden relations, hierarchy is not confined to provincial India. It is the basic idiom, it is argued here, of social ambition and hope, anywhere in the world where these are valued. While assertively egalitarian societies (mostly small-scale communities) curb personal ambitions, hierarchy—or difference that makes a difference—is fundamental to one's ability to improve one's life. In contemporary metropolitan imaginations, where equality is now (formally) the topmost sacrosanct value, hierarchical norms have not been supplanted, they have been transvalued. People have not been leveled, but have been leveled up through the hierarchical idioms of "respect" and "dignity," which have become the pivotal tropes of current global egalitarianism. Hierarchy is thus not only important in rural North India, but remains a powerful structuring force within stridently egalitarian moralities, the "egalitarian" social settings, which make, in Huey Long's words, "every man a king."

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Book SynopsisMuslim South Asia is widely characterized as a culture that idealizes female anonymity: women's bodies are veiled and their voices silenced. Challenging these perceptions, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley highlights an elusive strand of autobiographical writing dating back several centuries that offers a new lens through which to study notions of selfhood. In Elusive Lives, she locates the voices of Muslim women who rejected taboos against women speaking out, by telling their life stories in written autobiography. To chart patterns across time and space, materials dated from the sixteenth century to the present are drawn from across South Asia – including present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Lambert-Hurley uses many rare autobiographical texts in a wide array of languages, including Urdu, English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Malayalam to elaborate a theoretical model for gender, autobiography, and the self beyond the usual Euro-American frame. In doing so, she works toward a new, globalized history of the field. Ultimately, Elusive Lives points to the sheer diversity of Muslim women's lives and life stories, offering a unique window into a history of the everyday against a backdrop of imperialism, reformism, nationalism and feminism.Trade Review"Journeying into the autobiographies of South Asian Muslim women, Lambert-Hurley does more than 'unveil' forgotten, sometimes secluded, lives. Rich in personal reflection and historical nuance. This is a wonderfully sensitive account of the gendered self and the subtle interleaving of individual identity and collective presence. Elusive Lives is a remarkable, original, agenda-setting book." -- David Arnold * University of Warwick *"Elusive Lives lucidly brings to life a panoramic range of autobiographical writings and the South Asian women who have penned them, never losing sight of the momentous and the eloquent in the everyday. This compelling study treats us to the detective work of excavating these texts, while keeping central the ongoing question of what 'autobiography' is. This beautifully written book is a pleasure to read. The author's passion and care for the works she wants us to hear are anything but elusive." -- Marilyn Booth * University of Oxford *"Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia is a extremely readable, brilliantly structured and well researched scholarly contribution written with great commitment, and of great importance to all who study autobiography, especially women's autobiography, in South Asia." -- Maria Puri * Cracow Indological Studies *"Elusive Lives is an excellent, wonderfully written, and spectacularly researched trendsetting book. Lambert-Hurley has produced a thought-provoking, historically important, and genuinely interesting work that will stand as a firm foundation for future work."––Jack A. W. Bowman, H-Socialisms"Siobhan Lambert-Hurley's Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia is a deeply researched, sophisticated, and beautifully written study of South Asian Muslim women's autobiographical life writing from the earliest known examples to the late twentieth century. Lambert-Hurley brings rich perspective to her study." -- Barbara Metcalf * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: The ultimate unveiling chapter abstractWhat does it mean to write autobiography in a cultural context, like Muslim South Asia, that idealizes women's anonymity? Framed as "the ultimate form of unveiling," the introduction links the book to a feminist project of decoding a gendered self and a history of the everyday. South Asian Muslim women are defined as a category before their autobiographical writings are introduced as a largely modern phenomenon connected to Muslim reformism. The book's analysis is situated within the context of Muslim autobiography and historical approaches to autobiography. Methods and sources are also considered in terms of the book's move beyond individual authors and texts to a broad base of materials constituting the autobiographical sample. It elucidates the complicated and sometimes haphazard research process by which materials were recovered from smaller libraries and private collections in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—with the home, the street, and the market as an archive. 1Life/history/archive chapter abstractA major concern of theorists has been to define autobiography as a genre apart from other literary forms. Applying these debates to Muslim South Asia, chapter 1 considers how to find and fit "real-life" historical sources into the theoretical boxes dreamt up by academics often limited to European and North American materials. In doing so, it explores the range of possible sources to be included in a "life history archive"—from autobiographical biographies and biographical autobiographies to travelogues, reformist literature, novels, devotionalism, letters, diaries, interviews, speeches, film, and ghosted narratives. Ultimately, it settles on the term autobiographical writing to capture the constructed life in written form while linking to autobiography's global canon. The heterogeneous practices of South Asian Muslim women—not always complete, coherent, linear, self-centered, or driven by personality—are thus opened to analysis. 2The sociology of authorship chapter abstractThis study is limited to the autobiographical writings of South Asian Muslim women. The majority of authors from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first century may be characterized as elite: upper- or middle-class or, in the context of Muslim South Asia, sharif to indicate "noble" status. Many were also highly educated—often to the degree level and beyond in the twentieth century. In most cases, this education enabled authors to pursue an occupation when few women and even fewer elite Muslim women did so: as women at court, educationalists, writers, politicians, and performers. The function of autobiography as a vehicle for sharif redefinition above all, but also nationalism, historicism and didacticism, literary creativity, and performance is thus highlighted alongside a more general impulse: to narrate a life momentous for Muslim women living at a particular time and place. 3The autobiographical map chapter abstractIn what ways does an author's physical location, religious affiliation, linguistic choice, and (un)intended readership affect why and how South Asian Muslim women write their lives? In terms of motivation, this chapter demonstrates autobiography's links to sharif redefinition in the reformist and princely locations that act as hubs for women's autobiographical expression. It also points to how socioeconomic, cultural, and historical specificities enabled women's autobiography to flourish within certain Muslim locations in the modern era. Women's associations with urban conurbations underline the city's role in offering cultural leadership to autobiographical expression and a home to religious minorities wanting to "talk back." In terms of autobiographical construction, performative models are employed to argue for the importance of specific audiences in shaping how Muslim women crafted their autobiographical outputs at different historical moments: from the colonial to the postcolonial, the reformist to the nationalist, the regional to the global. 4Staging the self chapter abstractHow do different literary milieus—published/unpublished, magazine/book, translated/edited—shape an autobiography's form and content? This chapter underlines how different processes of production introduced new actors—editors, translators, cowriters, and publishers—that could be as complicit as the author in the construction of a gendered Muslim self. A detailed case study of Begam Khurshid Mirza's autobiography—which appeared in four iterations—is employed here to consider "a performer in performance." The analysis shows how the author's identity and assumptions as a Pakistani actress, wife, and mother could be overwritten by a protective family, feminist editors, and an Indian press keen to tailor her interests, perspectives, emotions, and sexuality to their own expectations. The chapter's conclusions, though elaborated with reference to Muslim South Asia, have important implications for how historians and gender scholars interrogate individual texts for women's agency and subjectivity. 5Autobiographical genealogies chapter abstractGender theorists have long articulated a "difference" model applicable to women's autobiography—but do women actually write their lives differently than men? This chapter interrogates this theoretical frame by using a closed case study of one extended family in which the cultural milieu was largely shared to examine how autobiography's form, style, and content were contingent on gender and time. Chosen for analysis is Bombay's Tyabji clan on account of its many and varied contributions to the autobiographical genre, including family diaries, travelogues, speeches, memoirs, autobiographies, and articles that date from the mid-nineteenth century to the near present. Ultimately, the model for theorizing women's autobiography in terms of gender difference is shown to fall short when applied to the Tyabji case. By essentializing women and men across cultures and time, it fails to recover the specific subjectivities associated with different global locations at particular historical moments. Coda: Unveiling and its attributes chapter abstractThe coda returns to the metaphor of unveiling to explicate the gendered historical phenomenon of autobiographical writing in Muslim South Asia. It argues that to write autobiography—to narrate childhood, marriage, domestic life, everyday rituals, trials and tribulations, perhaps even one's thoughts and feelings—is to transcend the most severe limits on women's bodies and voices alike. At the same time, it uses the ambiguity of unveiling in real-life situations to point to how the unveiling in autobiography may not be total or straightforward. It may be symbolic, convoluted, partial, or paradoxical. It may be undertaken only by particular individuals or groups for particular purposes at particular moments. Moreover, the historical parameters—when and where, but also how and why—are crucial to understanding how this bold act was constructed and construed.

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Book SynopsisIn Mandarin Brazil, Ana Paulina Lee explores the centrality of Chinese exclusion to the Brazilian nation-building project, tracing the role of cultural representation in producing racialized national categories. Lee considers depictions of Chineseness in Brazilian popular music, literature, and visual culture, as well as archival documents and Brazilian and Qing dynasty diplomatic correspondence about opening trade and immigration routes between Brazil and China. In so doing, she reveals how Asian racialization helped to shape Brazil's image as a racial democracy. Mandarin Brazil begins during the second half of the nineteenth century, during the transitional period when enslaved labor became unfree labor—an era when black slavery shifted to "yellow labor" and racial anxieties surged. Lee asks how colonial paradigms of racial labor became a part of Brazil's nation-building project, which prioritized "whitening," a fundamentally white supremacist ideology that intertwined the colonial racial caste system with new immigration labor schemes. By considering why Chinese laborers were excluded from Brazilian nation-building efforts while Japanese migrants were welcomed, Lee interrogates how Chinese and Japanese imperial ambitions and Asian ethnic supremacy reinforced Brazil's whitening project. Mandarin Brazil contributes to a new conversation in Latin American and Asian American cultural studies, one that considers Asian diasporic histories and racial formation across the Americas.Trade Review"Mandarin Brazil is an excellent example of the New Latin American Ethnic Studies that has developed over the last decade. Lee's book demonstrates that ideas about immigrants are critical to the formation of Brazilian national identity and that Chinese racialization cannot be separated from broader social, economic, and cultural relations that emerged from a heritage of slavery and an elite desire for 'whiteness.'" -- Jeffrey Lesser * Emory University *"A richly textured and meticulously researched study of Chinese racialization in Brazil. Lee elegantly weaves together the 'minor' fragments of Chinese cultural representation to analyze the shifting meanings of Chinese personhood in Brazil against the broader context of global race-making that arose with European colonial expansion and that continued in nation-building projects. A must-read for anyone studying Brazil, Latin America, Chinese diaspora, and Asians in the Americas." -- Lok Siu * University of California at Berkeley *"I enthusiastically recommend Lee's book as a contribution to Brazilian, Asian, Latin American, Asian American, and Race and Ethnic Studies. Those interested in Performance Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies would also benefit from reading Lee's work. Its careful interweaving of history, politics, and literature from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, which spans five centuries, is meticulously researched and richly conveyed to its readers."––Zelideth María Rivas, Transmodernity"Lee's work is pathbreaking. Mandarin Brazil is required reading for interdisciplinary scholars of Asian migrations in the Americas as well as scholars of Brazilian and Latin American history, and its evocative source base will make the book an attractive option for undergraduate courses in Latin American history, Spanish and Portuguese, and ethnic studies."––Fredy González, H-Net"Mandarin Brazilis an important contribution to the historiography of postcolonial Brazil that demonstrates the crucial role of representations of the Chinese in the construction of Brazil's national myth of racial democracy. More broadly, Paulina Lee's work is an important piece of the larger scholarship on the circumoceanic memory of exploitative labor and processes of cultural construction of the racial Other."––Thais R. S. de Sant' Ana, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies"Mandarin Brazil is a thought-provoking work of scholarship relevant to a variety of fields: Brazilian history and culture, Asian American studies, migration history, the history of Portuguese imperialism, post-colonial studies, Lusophone literatures, and others....For historians, this work also sheds light on the stimulating possibilities of often-overlooked primary sources, such as songs, in transnational and global history studies." -- Helena Lopes * Reviews in History *"Mandarin Brazil is an edifying work...Bridging the historical and culture gap between Brazil and Asia, the book weaves together a mélange of complex racial and ethnic identities that were instrumental to the development of modern Brazil....[A] great addition to the growing historiography of the Asian-Latino Studies." -- Jian Gao * Brasiliana *"The interpretative force of Ana Paulina Lee's study of aspects of Chineseness and circumoceanic memory, with a spatial focus on Brazil, is a solid and relevant incentive for exponential growth of research that can strengthen Brazil-China relations. Although there are no consistent historical ties that bring the two countries together, and both are still largely unknown to each other, there are still traces (reconstructed, resignified, and reinvented in time) of old representations and old circumoceanic memories that need to be reckoned with." -- Marcelo Mac Cord * Luso-Brazilian Review *"Mandarin Brazil makes major contributions to understanding the politics of Asians and Asianness in the Americas." -- Heidi Tinsman * Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Circumoceanic Memory: Chinese Racialization in Brazilian Perspective chapter abstractThis chapter lays out the book's main theoretical framework, circumoceanic memory, and discusses the book's methodology for compiling an archive of Chinese racialization. It contextualizes Chinese racialization within the history of slavery's racial regimes. Drawing on critical race and cultural memory studies, it explores how Chinese racialization overlaps with other processes of racialization such as whiteness and blackness. It disentangles racial and eugenic ideology from liberal ideology to examine how discussions about race, free labor, and liberty became coterminous in defining Brazilian national identity as an aspect of an emerging global, racialized national consciousness. 1Brazil's Oriental Past and Future chapter abstractThis chapter investigates the Portuguese conceptual framework regarding China and shows how these perceptions changed during Brazil's colonial period in relation to the trade in Oriental material goods and Asian labor. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Portuguese empire established a global trade route that linked the economies and cultures of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. This chapter examines multilateral economic and political interests as well as mutual acts of cultural appropriation such as those that occurred in the trade in porcelain, export porcelain, and chinoiserie decor. It explores how the trade in foreign luxury items circulated images and motifs about Asia and Europe to Asian and European consumers alike. This chapter argues that the global trade in foreign luxury goods that also trafficked in human labor played a critical role in shaping racialized ideas about exploitable and disposable labor. 2Emancipation to Immigration chapter abstractThis chapter analyzes the developments that led Chinese laborers to Brazil, through analyzing documents written by late Qing dynasty diplomats and officials who traveled to Brazil to open up Chinese immigration routes. Qing officials used a word for immigration that had a synonymous meaning with colonization (yizhi). Brazil, to them, presented a viable option for both due to its vast territory and inclusive citizenship laws. The chapter discusses late Qing officials' concerns in opening immigration and trade routes between China and Brazil in relation to Brazilian abolitionists' preoccupations with emancipation, national independence, and the new nation's desire to whiten its racial makeup. This chapter also explores the cultural work that illustrations about Qing dynasty officials served, including caricatures of mandarins that appeared in abolitionist print journals. 3Performing Yellowface and Chinese Labor chapter abstractThis chapter examines fin-de-siècle Rio de Janeiro vaudeville and the carnivalesque constructions of yellowface performance. Arthur Azevedo, arguably the most renowned playwright in Brazilian theatrical history, declared that theater was not purely about entertainment; it was also a critical site to deliberate citizenship and nation. Azevedo used the genre of vaudeville to turn Rio de Janeiro into a topsy-turvy world where race, gender, and sexuality were in flux. This chapter maps instances in which the fictional portrayals of mandarins transposed the visits of late Qing officials. These plays used satire as a form of political contestation aimed at divesting from Chinese immigration, which the playwrights portrayed as a new mode of labor colonization. The stage conveyed fears about the perceived threat that Chinese labor would usher in a new era of unfree "yellow" labor and thus impede the road to racial whitening, modernity, abolition, and national independence. 4The Chinese Question in Brazil chapter abstractThis chapter brings together a series of wandering and fragmentary depictions of Chinese laborers in the writings of Machado de Assis and Eça de Queiroz. The vast majority of these chronicles have not been published or translated into English or studied within the context of abolition and Chinese immigration. This chapter provides a comparative reading of these chronicles and essays, paying particular attention to the authors' references to late Qing dynasty officials and Chinese migrants, in order to discuss how Brazilian authors angled literary production to enter into the global Chinese question debate. The authors' writings allow us to observe how shifting perceptions of race influenced new modes of Chinese racialization in Brazil. 5Between Diplomacy and Fiction chapter abstractThis chapter brings together a set of diplomatic and fictional writings by the author/diplomats Eça de Queiroz, Aluísio Azevedo, and Luis Guimarães Filho. While these authors are celebrated for their contributions to Luso-Brazilian letters, they also all served as diplomats for Portugal or Brazil and participated in debates on Chinese and Japanese immigration. I discuss the constitutive role that their diplomatic poetics played in shaping immigration policy and international relations between Brazil, China, and Japan. 6The Yellow Peril in Brazilian Popular Music chapter abstractBrazilian popular music production functions as a specific regime of representation and declaration, thereby sharing social, political, and economic realities and playing a critical role in staging new imaginaries of citizenship. Twentieth-century constructions of Chineseness in Brazilian popular music reformulated the pseudoscience of eugenics through creating ideas about "constructive" or "degenerative" miscegenation. Songs about racial mixing with the Chinese were always tied to larger concerns about Brazil's geopolitical alliances during World War II or economic alignments. Lyrics and melodies about the Chinese negotiated ideas about Brazilian national identity and mestiço nationalism wherein we can observe how music production that depicted Chinese sexuality and gender in relation to the figure of the mulata are bound to a Brazilian collective memory of slavery and sexual violence, even if the origins of that past are disremembered in national memory. Conclusion: Imaginative Geographies of Brazil and China chapter abstractThis chapter ties together the main themes of the book regarding Sino-Portuguese trade, the African slave trade, Chinese (Asiatic labor), and Brazilian racial democracy in a twentieth-century context. It analyzes how sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1900–1987) appropriated the imperialist spatial-conceptual framework of the Orient to advance the Brazilian national myth of racial democracy as a way of contesting white supremacist ideology spreading around the world in places like the United States, Europe, and South Africa. Finally, it addresses the topic of the Chinese in Brazil today and concludes with contemporary news stories about the continuing forms of unfree and enslaved Chinese labor in Brazil to show the existence of ongoing modes of Chinese racialization that recapitulate old ideas and clichés in new settings.

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Book SynopsisIn Mandarin Brazil, Ana Paulina Lee explores the centrality of Chinese exclusion to the Brazilian nation-building project, tracing the role of cultural representation in producing racialized national categories. Lee considers depictions of Chineseness in Brazilian popular music, literature, and visual culture, as well as archival documents and Brazilian and Qing dynasty diplomatic correspondence about opening trade and immigration routes between Brazil and China. In so doing, she reveals how Asian racialization helped to shape Brazil's image as a racial democracy. Mandarin Brazil begins during the second half of the nineteenth century, during the transitional period when enslaved labor became unfree labor—an era when black slavery shifted to "yellow labor" and racial anxieties surged. Lee asks how colonial paradigms of racial labor became a part of Brazil's nation-building project, which prioritized "whitening," a fundamentally white supremacist ideology that intertwined the colonial racial caste system with new immigration labor schemes. By considering why Chinese laborers were excluded from Brazilian nation-building efforts while Japanese migrants were welcomed, Lee interrogates how Chinese and Japanese imperial ambitions and Asian ethnic supremacy reinforced Brazil's whitening project. Mandarin Brazil contributes to a new conversation in Latin American and Asian American cultural studies, one that considers Asian diasporic histories and racial formation across the Americas.Trade Review"Mandarin Brazil is an excellent example of the New Latin American Ethnic Studies that has developed over the last decade. Lee's book demonstrates that ideas about immigrants are critical to the formation of Brazilian national identity and that Chinese racialization cannot be separated from broader social, economic, and cultural relations that emerged from a heritage of slavery and an elite desire for 'whiteness.'" -- Jeffrey Lesser * Emory University *"A richly textured and meticulously researched study of Chinese racialization in Brazil. Lee elegantly weaves together the 'minor' fragments of Chinese cultural representation to analyze the shifting meanings of Chinese personhood in Brazil against the broader context of global race-making that arose with European colonial expansion and that continued in nation-building projects. A must-read for anyone studying Brazil, Latin America, Chinese diaspora, and Asians in the Americas." -- Lok Siu * University of California at Berkeley *"I enthusiastically recommend Lee's book as a contribution to Brazilian, Asian, Latin American, Asian American, and Race and Ethnic Studies. Those interested in Performance Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies would also benefit from reading Lee's work. Its careful interweaving of history, politics, and literature from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, which spans five centuries, is meticulously researched and richly conveyed to its readers."––Zelideth María Rivas, Transmodernity"Lee's work is pathbreaking. Mandarin Brazil is required reading for interdisciplinary scholars of Asian migrations in the Americas as well as scholars of Brazilian and Latin American history, and its evocative source base will make the book an attractive option for undergraduate courses in Latin American history, Spanish and Portuguese, and ethnic studies."––Fredy González, H-Net"Mandarin Brazilis an important contribution to the historiography of postcolonial Brazil that demonstrates the crucial role of representations of the Chinese in the construction of Brazil's national myth of racial democracy. More broadly, Paulina Lee's work is an important piece of the larger scholarship on the circumoceanic memory of exploitative labor and processes of cultural construction of the racial Other."––Thais R. S. de Sant' Ana, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies"Mandarin Brazil is a thought-provoking work of scholarship relevant to a variety of fields: Brazilian history and culture, Asian American studies, migration history, the history of Portuguese imperialism, post-colonial studies, Lusophone literatures, and others....For historians, this work also sheds light on the stimulating possibilities of often-overlooked primary sources, such as songs, in transnational and global history studies." -- Helena Lopes * Reviews in History *"Mandarin Brazil is an edifying work...Bridging the historical and culture gap between Brazil and Asia, the book weaves together a mélange of complex racial and ethnic identities that were instrumental to the development of modern Brazil....[A] great addition to the growing historiography of the Asian-Latino Studies." -- Jian Gao * Brasiliana *"The interpretative force of Ana Paulina Lee's study of aspects of Chineseness and circumoceanic memory, with a spatial focus on Brazil, is a solid and relevant incentive for exponential growth of research that can strengthen Brazil-China relations. Although there are no consistent historical ties that bring the two countries together, and both are still largely unknown to each other, there are still traces (reconstructed, resignified, and reinvented in time) of old representations and old circumoceanic memories that need to be reckoned with." -- Marcelo Mac Cord * Luso-Brazilian Review *"Mandarin Brazil makes major contributions to understanding the politics of Asians and Asianness in the Americas." -- Heidi Tinsman * Journal of Asian Studies *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Circumoceanic Memory: Chinese Racialization in Brazilian Perspective chapter abstractThis chapter lays out the book's main theoretical framework, circumoceanic memory, and discusses the book's methodology for compiling an archive of Chinese racialization. It contextualizes Chinese racialization within the history of slavery's racial regimes. Drawing on critical race and cultural memory studies, it explores how Chinese racialization overlaps with other processes of racialization such as whiteness and blackness. It disentangles racial and eugenic ideology from liberal ideology to examine how discussions about race, free labor, and liberty became coterminous in defining Brazilian national identity as an aspect of an emerging global, racialized national consciousness. 1Brazil's Oriental Past and Future chapter abstractThis chapter investigates the Portuguese conceptual framework regarding China and shows how these perceptions changed during Brazil's colonial period in relation to the trade in Oriental material goods and Asian labor. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Portuguese empire established a global trade route that linked the economies and cultures of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. This chapter examines multilateral economic and political interests as well as mutual acts of cultural appropriation such as those that occurred in the trade in porcelain, export porcelain, and chinoiserie decor. It explores how the trade in foreign luxury items circulated images and motifs about Asia and Europe to Asian and European consumers alike. This chapter argues that the global trade in foreign luxury goods that also trafficked in human labor played a critical role in shaping racialized ideas about exploitable and disposable labor. 2Emancipation to Immigration chapter abstractThis chapter analyzes the developments that led Chinese laborers to Brazil, through analyzing documents written by late Qing dynasty diplomats and officials who traveled to Brazil to open up Chinese immigration routes. Qing officials used a word for immigration that had a synonymous meaning with colonization (yizhi). Brazil, to them, presented a viable option for both due to its vast territory and inclusive citizenship laws. The chapter discusses late Qing officials' concerns in opening immigration and trade routes between China and Brazil in relation to Brazilian abolitionists' preoccupations with emancipation, national independence, and the new nation's desire to whiten its racial makeup. This chapter also explores the cultural work that illustrations about Qing dynasty officials served, including caricatures of mandarins that appeared in abolitionist print journals. 3Performing Yellowface and Chinese Labor chapter abstractThis chapter examines fin-de-siècle Rio de Janeiro vaudeville and the carnivalesque constructions of yellowface performance. Arthur Azevedo, arguably the most renowned playwright in Brazilian theatrical history, declared that theater was not purely about entertainment; it was also a critical site to deliberate citizenship and nation. Azevedo used the genre of vaudeville to turn Rio de Janeiro into a topsy-turvy world where race, gender, and sexuality were in flux. This chapter maps instances in which the fictional portrayals of mandarins transposed the visits of late Qing officials. These plays used satire as a form of political contestation aimed at divesting from Chinese immigration, which the playwrights portrayed as a new mode of labor colonization. The stage conveyed fears about the perceived threat that Chinese labor would usher in a new era of unfree "yellow" labor and thus impede the road to racial whitening, modernity, abolition, and national independence. 4The Chinese Question in Brazil chapter abstractThis chapter brings together a series of wandering and fragmentary depictions of Chinese laborers in the writings of Machado de Assis and Eça de Queiroz. The vast majority of these chronicles have not been published or translated into English or studied within the context of abolition and Chinese immigration. This chapter provides a comparative reading of these chronicles and essays, paying particular attention to the authors' references to late Qing dynasty officials and Chinese migrants, in order to discuss how Brazilian authors angled literary production to enter into the global Chinese question debate. The authors' writings allow us to observe how shifting perceptions of race influenced new modes of Chinese racialization in Brazil. 5Between Diplomacy and Fiction chapter abstractThis chapter brings together a set of diplomatic and fictional writings by the author/diplomats Eça de Queiroz, Aluísio Azevedo, and Luis Guimarães Filho. While these authors are celebrated for their contributions to Luso-Brazilian letters, they also all served as diplomats for Portugal or Brazil and participated in debates on Chinese and Japanese immigration. I discuss the constitutive role that their diplomatic poetics played in shaping immigration policy and international relations between Brazil, China, and Japan. 6The Yellow Peril in Brazilian Popular Music chapter abstractBrazilian popular music production functions as a specific regime of representation and declaration, thereby sharing social, political, and economic realities and playing a critical role in staging new imaginaries of citizenship. Twentieth-century constructions of Chineseness in Brazilian popular music reformulated the pseudoscience of eugenics through creating ideas about "constructive" or "degenerative" miscegenation. Songs about racial mixing with the Chinese were always tied to larger concerns about Brazil's geopolitical alliances during World War II or economic alignments. Lyrics and melodies about the Chinese negotiated ideas about Brazilian national identity and mestiço nationalism wherein we can observe how music production that depicted Chinese sexuality and gender in relation to the figure of the mulata are bound to a Brazilian collective memory of slavery and sexual violence, even if the origins of that past are disremembered in national memory. Conclusion: Imaginative Geographies of Brazil and China chapter abstractThis chapter ties together the main themes of the book regarding Sino-Portuguese trade, the African slave trade, Chinese (Asiatic labor), and Brazilian racial democracy in a twentieth-century context. It analyzes how sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1900–1987) appropriated the imperialist spatial-conceptual framework of the Orient to advance the Brazilian national myth of racial democracy as a way of contesting white supremacist ideology spreading around the world in places like the United States, Europe, and South Africa. Finally, it addresses the topic of the Chinese in Brazil today and concludes with contemporary news stories about the continuing forms of unfree and enslaved Chinese labor in Brazil to show the existence of ongoing modes of Chinese racialization that recapitulate old ideas and clichés in new settings.

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Book Synopsis"Mafia" has become an indigenous South Asian term. Like Italian mobsters, the South Asian "gangster politicians" are known for inflicting brutal violence while simultaneously upholding vigilante justice—inspiring fear and fantasy. But the term also refers to the diffuse spheres of crime, business, and politics operating within a shadow world that is popularly referred to as the rule of the mafia, or "Mafia Raj." Through intimate stories of the lives of powerful and aspiring bosses in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this book illustrates their personal struggles for sovereignty as they climb the ladder of success. Ethnographically tracing the particularities of the South Asian case, the authors theorize what they call "the art of bossing," providing nuanced ideas about crime, corruption, and the lure of the strongman across the world. Trade Review"Through meticulous and uniquely collaborative ethnography, Mafia Raj opens readers' eyes to the murky world of bosses in South Asia. With unforgettable portraits of the gangsters, politicians, hustlers, and extortionists dotting the region, this is the rare scholarly account that upends our commonly accepted notions of democracy, formality, and legitimacy."—Milan Vaishnav, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"Why does the figure of 'the boss,' in its various guises, loom so large in South Asia? In answering this question, the authors of this engagingly written book make a path-breaking contribution to the study of South Asian politics."—John Harriss, Simon Fraser University"The authors, who are experts in anthropology and South Asian studies at several European institutions, illustrate the 'art of bossing'—techniques and methods used by such figures to climb to power and maintain their sovereignty. While some of these strategies are shared by their counterparts in different parts of the world, South Asian gangsters demonstrate a unique strength: their involvement in and utilization of electoral democracy, which, ironically, keeps them in power...This book is a timely scholarly work on a little-studied aspect of South Asian politics...Recommended."—A. Y. Lee, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Backdrops 2. The Rookie 3. The Bluffer 4. The Henchman 5. The Adjudicators 6. Lady Dabang 7. The Godfather 8. The Legend Conclusion: The Art of Bossing

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Book SynopsisMuslim South Asia is widely characterized as a culture that idealizes female anonymity: women's bodies are veiled and their voices silenced. Challenging these perceptions, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley highlights an elusive strand of autobiographical writing dating back several centuries that offers a new lens through which to study notions of selfhood. In Elusive Lives, she locates the voices of Muslim women who rejected taboos against women speaking out, by telling their life stories in written autobiography. To chart patterns across time and space, materials dated from the sixteenth century to the present are drawn from across South Asia – including present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Lambert-Hurley uses many rare autobiographical texts in a wide array of languages, including Urdu, English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Malayalam to elaborate a theoretical model for gender, autobiography, and the self beyond the usual Euro-American frame. In doing so, she works toward a new, globalized history of the field. Ultimately, Elusive Lives points to the sheer diversity of Muslim women's lives and life stories, offering a unique window into a history of the everyday against a backdrop of imperialism, reformism, nationalism and feminism.Trade Review"Journeying into the autobiographies of South Asian Muslim women, Lambert-Hurley does more than 'unveil' forgotten, sometimes secluded, lives. Rich in personal reflection and historical nuance. This is a wonderfully sensitive account of the gendered self and the subtle interleaving of individual identity and collective presence. Elusive Lives is a remarkable, original, agenda-setting book." -- David Arnold * University of Warwick *"Elusive Lives lucidly brings to life a panoramic range of autobiographical writings and the South Asian women who have penned them, never losing sight of the momentous and the eloquent in the everyday. This compelling study treats us to the detective work of excavating these texts, while keeping central the ongoing question of what 'autobiography' is. This beautifully written book is a pleasure to read. The author's passion and care for the works she wants us to hear are anything but elusive." -- Marilyn Booth * University of Oxford *"Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia is a extremely readable, brilliantly structured and well researched scholarly contribution written with great commitment, and of great importance to all who study autobiography, especially women's autobiography, in South Asia." -- Maria Puri * Cracow Indological Studies *"Elusive Lives is an excellent, wonderfully written, and spectacularly researched trendsetting book. Lambert-Hurley has produced a thought-provoking, historically important, and genuinely interesting work that will stand as a firm foundation for future work."––Jack A. W. Bowman, H-Socialisms"Siobhan Lambert-Hurley's Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia is a deeply researched, sophisticated, and beautifully written study of South Asian Muslim women's autobiographical life writing from the earliest known examples to the late twentieth century. Lambert-Hurley brings rich perspective to her study." -- Barbara Metcalf * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: The ultimate unveiling chapter abstractWhat does it mean to write autobiography in a cultural context, like Muslim South Asia, that idealizes women's anonymity? Framed as "the ultimate form of unveiling," the introduction links the book to a feminist project of decoding a gendered self and a history of the everyday. South Asian Muslim women are defined as a category before their autobiographical writings are introduced as a largely modern phenomenon connected to Muslim reformism. The book's analysis is situated within the context of Muslim autobiography and historical approaches to autobiography. Methods and sources are also considered in terms of the book's move beyond individual authors and texts to a broad base of materials constituting the autobiographical sample. It elucidates the complicated and sometimes haphazard research process by which materials were recovered from smaller libraries and private collections in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—with the home, the street, and the market as an archive. 1Life/history/archive chapter abstractA major concern of theorists has been to define autobiography as a genre apart from other literary forms. Applying these debates to Muslim South Asia, chapter 1 considers how to find and fit "real-life" historical sources into the theoretical boxes dreamt up by academics often limited to European and North American materials. In doing so, it explores the range of possible sources to be included in a "life history archive"—from autobiographical biographies and biographical autobiographies to travelogues, reformist literature, novels, devotionalism, letters, diaries, interviews, speeches, film, and ghosted narratives. Ultimately, it settles on the term autobiographical writing to capture the constructed life in written form while linking to autobiography's global canon. The heterogeneous practices of South Asian Muslim women—not always complete, coherent, linear, self-centered, or driven by personality—are thus opened to analysis. 2The sociology of authorship chapter abstractThis study is limited to the autobiographical writings of South Asian Muslim women. The majority of authors from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first century may be characterized as elite: upper- or middle-class or, in the context of Muslim South Asia, sharif to indicate "noble" status. Many were also highly educated—often to the degree level and beyond in the twentieth century. In most cases, this education enabled authors to pursue an occupation when few women and even fewer elite Muslim women did so: as women at court, educationalists, writers, politicians, and performers. The function of autobiography as a vehicle for sharif redefinition above all, but also nationalism, historicism and didacticism, literary creativity, and performance is thus highlighted alongside a more general impulse: to narrate a life momentous for Muslim women living at a particular time and place. 3The autobiographical map chapter abstractIn what ways does an author's physical location, religious affiliation, linguistic choice, and (un)intended readership affect why and how South Asian Muslim women write their lives? In terms of motivation, this chapter demonstrates autobiography's links to sharif redefinition in the reformist and princely locations that act as hubs for women's autobiographical expression. It also points to how socioeconomic, cultural, and historical specificities enabled women's autobiography to flourish within certain Muslim locations in the modern era. Women's associations with urban conurbations underline the city's role in offering cultural leadership to autobiographical expression and a home to religious minorities wanting to "talk back." In terms of autobiographical construction, performative models are employed to argue for the importance of specific audiences in shaping how Muslim women crafted their autobiographical outputs at different historical moments: from the colonial to the postcolonial, the reformist to the nationalist, the regional to the global. 4Staging the self chapter abstractHow do different literary milieus—published/unpublished, magazine/book, translated/edited—shape an autobiography's form and content? This chapter underlines how different processes of production introduced new actors—editors, translators, cowriters, and publishers—that could be as complicit as the author in the construction of a gendered Muslim self. A detailed case study of Begam Khurshid Mirza's autobiography—which appeared in four iterations—is employed here to consider "a performer in performance." The analysis shows how the author's identity and assumptions as a Pakistani actress, wife, and mother could be overwritten by a protective family, feminist editors, and an Indian press keen to tailor her interests, perspectives, emotions, and sexuality to their own expectations. The chapter's conclusions, though elaborated with reference to Muslim South Asia, have important implications for how historians and gender scholars interrogate individual texts for women's agency and subjectivity. 5Autobiographical genealogies chapter abstractGender theorists have long articulated a "difference" model applicable to women's autobiography—but do women actually write their lives differently than men? This chapter interrogates this theoretical frame by using a closed case study of one extended family in which the cultural milieu was largely shared to examine how autobiography's form, style, and content were contingent on gender and time. Chosen for analysis is Bombay's Tyabji clan on account of its many and varied contributions to the autobiographical genre, including family diaries, travelogues, speeches, memoirs, autobiographies, and articles that date from the mid-nineteenth century to the near present. Ultimately, the model for theorizing women's autobiography in terms of gender difference is shown to fall short when applied to the Tyabji case. By essentializing women and men across cultures and time, it fails to recover the specific subjectivities associated with different global locations at particular historical moments. Coda: Unveiling and its attributes chapter abstractThe coda returns to the metaphor of unveiling to explicate the gendered historical phenomenon of autobiographical writing in Muslim South Asia. It argues that to write autobiography—to narrate childhood, marriage, domestic life, everyday rituals, trials and tribulations, perhaps even one's thoughts and feelings—is to transcend the most severe limits on women's bodies and voices alike. At the same time, it uses the ambiguity of unveiling in real-life situations to point to how the unveiling in autobiography may not be total or straightforward. It may be symbolic, convoluted, partial, or paradoxical. It may be undertaken only by particular individuals or groups for particular purposes at particular moments. Moreover, the historical parameters—when and where, but also how and why—are crucial to understanding how this bold act was constructed and construed.

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Book Synopsis"Mafia" has become an indigenous South Asian term. Like Italian mobsters, the South Asian "gangster politicians" are known for inflicting brutal violence while simultaneously upholding vigilante justice—inspiring fear and fantasy. But the term also refers to the diffuse spheres of crime, business, and politics operating within a shadow world that is popularly referred to as the rule of the mafia, or "Mafia Raj." Through intimate stories of the lives of powerful and aspiring bosses in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this book illustrates their personal struggles for sovereignty as they climb the ladder of success. Ethnographically tracing the particularities of the South Asian case, the authors theorize what they call "the art of bossing," providing nuanced ideas about crime, corruption, and the lure of the strongman across the world. Trade Review"Through meticulous and uniquely collaborative ethnography, Mafia Raj opens readers' eyes to the murky world of bosses in South Asia. With unforgettable portraits of the gangsters, politicians, hustlers, and extortionists dotting the region, this is the rare scholarly account that upends our commonly accepted notions of democracy, formality, and legitimacy."—Milan Vaishnav, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"Why does the figure of 'the boss,' in its various guises, loom so large in South Asia? In answering this question, the authors of this engagingly written book make a path-breaking contribution to the study of South Asian politics."—John Harriss, Simon Fraser University"The authors, who are experts in anthropology and South Asian studies at several European institutions, illustrate the 'art of bossing'—techniques and methods used by such figures to climb to power and maintain their sovereignty. While some of these strategies are shared by their counterparts in different parts of the world, South Asian gangsters demonstrate a unique strength: their involvement in and utilization of electoral democracy, which, ironically, keeps them in power...This book is a timely scholarly work on a little-studied aspect of South Asian politics...Recommended."—A. Y. Lee, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Backdrops 2. The Rookie 3. The Bluffer 4. The Henchman 5. The Adjudicators 6. Lady Dabang 7. The Godfather 8. The Legend Conclusion: The Art of Bossing

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Book SynopsisThe completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later. But while the Transcontinental has often been celebrated in national memory, little attention has been paid to the Chinese workers who made up 90 percent of the workforce on the Western portion of the line. The Railroad could not have been built without Chinese labor, but the lives of Chinese railroad workers themselves have been little understood and largely invisible. This landmark volume explores the experiences of Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West.Trade Review"The long-awaited The Chinese and the Iron Road makes visible the previously invisible Chinese railroad workers who built America's first transcontinental railroad. They are given names, family lives, homes, spiritual beliefs, and agency. The research is astounding. The wide variety of interdisciplinary, international, and collaborative perspectives—from archaeology to family history—is revelatory and a model for future collaborative projects. This timely and essential volume preserves the humanity of the often-ignored and forgotten immigrant worker, while also uncovering just how important Chinese American railroad workers were in the making of America and its place in the world."—Erika Lee, author of The Making of Asian America"Destined to become the go-to resource about Chinese railroad workers in the American West. This anthology assembles an international, interdisciplinary team of leading scholars to conduct the most extensive and thoughtful exploration of these near-mythic, yet heretofore scantly researched, historical subjects producing insights not only into the material conditions of their labor and lives but also the ideological implications of their ubiquity contrasted against their individual illegibility."–Madeline Hsu, author of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority"To understand the emergence of the United States as a major player on the world stage, we must recognize the importance of its two-ocean power, which the transcontinental railroad made possible. Deeply researched and richly detailed, The Chinese and the Iron Road brings to life the Chinese immigrants whose work was essential to the railroad's construction."—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History"When I wrote a play in the early 1980s about Chinese workers on the American transcontinental railroad, information was scarce, and often of questionable accuracy. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin's meticulously researched and beautifully written book fills this critical gap in our nation's history. The Chinese and the Iron Road brings to life the stories of workers who defied incredible odds and gave their lives to unite these states into a nation."—David Henry Hwang, Tony Award–winning playwright of The Dance and the Railroad and M. Butterfly"[An] eclectic and comprehensive study that brings visibility to the monumental and very intimate human stories too long submerged beneath the pageantry of the golden spike ceremony."—Timothy Dean Draper, Journal of American Ethnic History"Scholars Gordon Chang [and Shelley Fisher Fishkin] deserve praise for this...memorial, a commemoration to the almost entirely nameless thousands whose labor became the biographical [Stanford] university itself."—William Deverell, Pacific Historical Review"Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin's monumental edited work The Chinese and the Iron Road is an impressive collection of interdisciplinary essays....This collection is essential and provides tools for scholars seeking to understand not only the lives of Chinese railroad workers but also the U.S. West and any other groups that left behind few written sources. Specialists and lay readers alike are encouraged to read this engaging work."—Stephanie Hinnershitz, Journal of American History"[This] exciting collection of scholarly articles represents a major contribution to labor history and to the new wave of Chinese-American studies that is global in scope but intensely focused on recovering and illuminating the lives of the ten- to fifteen- thousand Chinese workers who constructed the Central Pacific Railroad section of the Transcontinental Railroad."—Robert Cliver, Technology and Culture"[Detailed] and informative. The anthology shows the care that these authors and scholars who are part of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project took in trying to piece together a largely unknown narrative. The sheer attempt of such a project is commendable."—Marimas Hosan Mostiller, China Review International"[A] generous and beautiful [offering] to the ghosts of California's landscapes, necessary for the deep reckoning that is sorely needed in that storied place."—Douglas Cazaux Sackman, Reviews in American HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction —Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Hilton Obenzinger 1. Chinese Railroad Workers and the US Transcontinental Railroad in Global Perspective —Gordon H. Chang 2. Chinese Labor Migrants to the Americas in the Nineteenth Century: An Inquiry into Who They Were and the World They Left Behind —Evelyn Hu-DeHart 3. The View from Home: Dreams of Chinese Railroad Workers Across the Pacific —Zhang Guoxiong, with Roland Hsu 4. Overseas Remittances of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Yuan Ding, with Roland Hsu 5. Chinese Railroad Workers' Remittance Networks: Insights Based on Qiaoxiang Documents —Liu Jin, with Roland Hsu 6. Archaeological Contributions to Research on Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Barbara L. Voss 7. Living between Misery and Triumph: The Material Practices of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Barbara L. Voss 8. Landscapes of Change: Culture, Nature, and the Archaeological Heritage of Transcontinental Railroads in the North American West —Kelly J. Dixon, with contributions by Gary Weisz, Christopher Merritt, Robert Weaver, and James Bard 9. The Health and Well-being of Chinese Railroad Workers —J. Ryan Kennedy, Sarah Heffner, Virginia Popper, Ryan P. Harrod, and John J. Crandall 10. Religion on the Road: How Chinese Migrants Adapted Popular Religion to an American Context —Kathryn Gin Lum 11. Tracking Memory: Encounters between Chinese Railroad Workers and Native Americans —Hsinya Huang 12. Railroad Frames: Landscapes and the Chinese Railroad Worker in Photography, 18651869 —Denise Khor 13. 'Les fils du Ciel': European Travelers' Accounts of Chinese Railroad Workers —Greg Robinson 14. The Chinese Railroad Worker in United States History Textbooks: A Historical Genealogy, 1849-1965 —William Gow 15. Representing Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Chinese Historiography and Literature, 19492015 —Yuan Shu 16. History Lessons: Remembering Chinese Railroad Workers in Dragon's Gate and Donald Duk —Pin-chia Feng 17. The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory —Shelley Fisher Fishkin 18. The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 18801885 —Zhongping Chen 19. Beyond Railroad Work: Chinese Contributions to the Development of Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada —Sue Fawn Chung 20. The Remarkable Life of a Sometimes Railroad Worker: Chin Gee Hee, 18441929 —Beth Lew-Williams 21. The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America's Fraught Relationship with the China Men —Gordon H. Chang

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Book SynopsisMao Zedong's land reform campaigns comprise a critical moment in modern Chinese history, and were crucial to the rise of the CCP. In Land Wars, Brian DeMare draws on new archival research to offer an updated and comprehensive history of this attempt to fundamentally transform the countryside. Across this vast terrain loyal Maoists dispersed, intending to categorize poor farmers into prescribed social classes, and instigate a revolution that would redistribute the land. To achieve socialist utopia, the Communists imposed and performed a harsh script of peasant liberation through fierce class struggle. While many accounts of the campaigns give false credence to this narrative, DeMare argues that the reality was much more complex and brutal than is commonly understood—while many villagers prospered, there were families torn apart and countless deaths. Uniquely weaving narrative and historical accounts, DeMare powerfully highlights the often devastating role of fiction in determining history. This corrective retelling ultimately sheds new light on the contemporary legacy of land reform, a legacy fraught with inequality and resentment, but also hope.Trade Review"Richly documented and elegantly written, Land Wars reveals the contradictions and ironies intrinsic to the Chinese Communist Party's theory and practice of land reform. A welcome addition to the literature on the Communist revolution, it offers a counter narrative to the stories told in William Hinton's Fanshen in many ways."—Huaiyin Li, University of Texas at Austin"Land Wars successfully challenges still deeply-entrenched Chinese Communist mythologies about the nature and dynamics of the 1945-1952 land reform. DeMare's penetrating discussion of ferocious, ritualized class struggle campaigns skillfully demonstrates how land reform was not about economic change. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the imposition of Communist political control at the grassroots."—Paul G. Pickowicz, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Chinese Studies, University of California, San Diego"DeMare handles the topic of land reform in a refreshing way, using skillful story-telling....[His] compelling land reform research is no doubt methodologically innovative and of great significance in uncovering untold stories of rural China's grassroots revolution."—Shaofan An, Journal of Chinese History"The socialist practices in the early People's Republic of China have received ample scholarly attention in recent years. Brian DeMare's Land Wars is a very thorough, thought-provoking study that complicates extant literature and will certainly deepen readers' understanding of the essence of Chinese socialism."—Guo Wu, Journal of Asian StudiesTable of Contents0. Introduction: The Story of Mao's Revolution 1. Arriving: Work Teams 2. Organizing: The Search for Bitterness 3. Dividing: Creating Peasants and Landlords 4. Struggling: Inside the Furnace of Revolution 5. Turning: The Promise of Fanshen 6. Conclusion: Agrarian Revolution in Retrospect

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Book SynopsisIn the 1930s, a cohort of professional human scientists coalesced around a common and particular understanding of objectivity as the foundation of legitimate knowledge, and of fieldwork as the pathway to objectivity. Into the Field is the first collective biography of this cohort, evocatively described by one contemporary as the men of one age. At the height of imperialism, the men of one age undertook field research in territories under Japanese rule in pursuit of "objective" information that would justify the subjugation of local peoples. After 1945, amid the defeat and dismantling of Japanese sovereignty and under the occupation and tutelage of the United States, they returned to the field to create narratives of human difference that supported the new national values of democracy, capitalism, and peace. The 1968 student movement challenged these values, resulting in an all-encompassing attack on objectivity itself. Nonetheless, the legacy of the men of one age lives on in the disciplines they developed and the beliefs they established about human diversity.Trade Review"A very refreshing look at race, culture, and objectivity in modern Japan. This engaging book considers critical issues of the twentieth century: historical continuity, power and knowledge in the empires and the Cold War, and the politics of generations. Sophisticated yet lucidly written, it is accessible and highly stimulating for academics and non-academics alike."—Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota"Kingsberg Kadia's important study allows a glimpse into Japan's postwar re-imagination of itself through the lens of American social science and through the study of its former empire. Her careful archival work exposes the negotiations of human scientists as they attempted to situate Japan in a global order promoting democracy and cosmopolitanism."—Amy Borovoy, Princeton University"Into the Field pays close attention to the interplay between ideas, institutions, and individuals, setting a high standard for the history of the social and human sciences."—George Steinmetz, University of Michigan"[Kingsberg Kadia] utilizes an impressive variety of sources, and the book shines where she inserts Japanese social science endeavors into a broader global context.Into the Fieldis an excellently researched, fascinating study."—Annika A. Culver, H-Diplo"[Kingsberg] Kadia's book . . . shines most in its analyses of how Izumi's generation, across the tempestuous middle decades of the twentieth century, used ethnology continuously to revise and recreate Japanese national identity according to temperamental geopolitical fluctuations."—Hansun Hsiung, University of Durham, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society"Into the Field is an important, thought-provoking, impressively researched contribution to our understanding of how human scientists shaped Japan's views of itself and others in the twentieth century."—Timothy S. George, Pacific AffairsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Men of One Age 1. The Origins of Fieldwork in the Japanese Empire 2. Group Fieldwork in Wartime 3. Objectivity under the U.S. Occupation 4. From "Race" to "Culture" 5. Others into Japanese 6. Japanese into Others 7. Excavating National Identity in the Antipodes 8. 1968 and the Passing of the Field Generation

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Book SynopsisThe completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later. But while the Transcontinental has often been celebrated in national memory, little attention has been paid to the Chinese workers who made up 90 percent of the workforce on the Western portion of the line. The Railroad could not have been built without Chinese labor, but the lives of Chinese railroad workers themselves have been little understood and largely invisible. This landmark volume explores the experiences of Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West.Trade Review"The long-awaited The Chinese and the Iron Road makes visible the previously invisible Chinese railroad workers who built America's first transcontinental railroad. They are given names, family lives, homes, spiritual beliefs, and agency. The research is astounding. The wide variety of interdisciplinary, international, and collaborative perspectives—from archaeology to family history—is revelatory and a model for future collaborative projects. This timely and essential volume preserves the humanity of the often-ignored and forgotten immigrant worker, while also uncovering just how important Chinese American railroad workers were in the making of America and its place in the world."—Erika Lee, author of The Making of Asian America"Destined to become the go-to resource about Chinese railroad workers in the American West. This anthology assembles an international, interdisciplinary team of leading scholars to conduct the most extensive and thoughtful exploration of these near-mythic, yet heretofore scantly researched, historical subjects producing insights not only into the material conditions of their labor and lives but also the ideological implications of their ubiquity contrasted against their individual illegibility."–Madeline Hsu, author of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority"To understand the emergence of the United States as a major player on the world stage, we must recognize the importance of its two-ocean power, which the transcontinental railroad made possible. Deeply researched and richly detailed, The Chinese and the Iron Road brings to life the Chinese immigrants whose work was essential to the railroad's construction."—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History"When I wrote a play in the early 1980s about Chinese workers on the American transcontinental railroad, information was scarce, and often of questionable accuracy. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin's meticulously researched and beautifully written book fills this critical gap in our nation's history. The Chinese and the Iron Road brings to life the stories of workers who defied incredible odds and gave their lives to unite these states into a nation."—David Henry Hwang, Tony Award–winning playwright of The Dance and the Railroad and M. Butterfly"[An] eclectic and comprehensive study that brings visibility to the monumental and very intimate human stories too long submerged beneath the pageantry of the golden spike ceremony."—Timothy Dean Draper, Journal of American Ethnic History"Scholars Gordon Chang [and Shelley Fisher Fishkin] deserve praise for this...memorial, a commemoration to the almost entirely nameless thousands whose labor became the biographical [Stanford] university itself."—William Deverell, Pacific Historical Review"Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin's monumental edited work The Chinese and the Iron Road is an impressive collection of interdisciplinary essays....This collection is essential and provides tools for scholars seeking to understand not only the lives of Chinese railroad workers but also the U.S. West and any other groups that left behind few written sources. Specialists and lay readers alike are encouraged to read this engaging work."—Stephanie Hinnershitz, Journal of American History"[This] exciting collection of scholarly articles represents a major contribution to labor history and to the new wave of Chinese-American studies that is global in scope but intensely focused on recovering and illuminating the lives of the ten- to fifteen- thousand Chinese workers who constructed the Central Pacific Railroad section of the Transcontinental Railroad."—Robert Cliver, Technology and Culture"[Detailed] and informative. The anthology shows the care that these authors and scholars who are part of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project took in trying to piece together a largely unknown narrative. The sheer attempt of such a project is commendable."—Marimas Hosan Mostiller, China Review International"[A] generous and beautiful [offering] to the ghosts of California's landscapes, necessary for the deep reckoning that is sorely needed in that storied place."—Douglas Cazaux Sackman, Reviews in American HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction —Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Hilton Obenzinger 1. Chinese Railroad Workers and the US Transcontinental Railroad in Global Perspective —Gordon H. Chang 2. Chinese Labor Migrants to the Americas in the Nineteenth Century: An Inquiry into Who They Were and the World They Left Behind —Evelyn Hu-DeHart 3. The View from Home: Dreams of Chinese Railroad Workers Across the Pacific —Zhang Guoxiong, with Roland Hsu 4. Overseas Remittances of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Yuan Ding, with Roland Hsu 5. Chinese Railroad Workers' Remittance Networks: Insights Based on Qiaoxiang Documents —Liu Jin, with Roland Hsu 6. Archaeological Contributions to Research on Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Barbara L. Voss 7. Living between Misery and Triumph: The Material Practices of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Barbara L. Voss 8. Landscapes of Change: Culture, Nature, and the Archaeological Heritage of Transcontinental Railroads in the North American West —Kelly J. Dixon, with contributions by Gary Weisz, Christopher Merritt, Robert Weaver, and James Bard 9. The Health and Well-being of Chinese Railroad Workers —J. Ryan Kennedy, Sarah Heffner, Virginia Popper, Ryan P. Harrod, and John J. Crandall 10. Religion on the Road: How Chinese Migrants Adapted Popular Religion to an American Context —Kathryn Gin Lum 11. Tracking Memory: Encounters between Chinese Railroad Workers and Native Americans —Hsinya Huang 12. Railroad Frames: Landscapes and the Chinese Railroad Worker in Photography, 18651869 —Denise Khor 13. 'Les fils du Ciel': European Travelers' Accounts of Chinese Railroad Workers —Greg Robinson 14. The Chinese Railroad Worker in United States History Textbooks: A Historical Genealogy, 1849-1965 —William Gow 15. Representing Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Chinese Historiography and Literature, 19492015 —Yuan Shu 16. History Lessons: Remembering Chinese Railroad Workers in Dragon's Gate and Donald Duk —Pin-chia Feng 17. The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory —Shelley Fisher Fishkin 18. The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 18801885 —Zhongping Chen 19. Beyond Railroad Work: Chinese Contributions to the Development of Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada —Sue Fawn Chung 20. The Remarkable Life of a Sometimes Railroad Worker: Chin Gee Hee, 18441929 —Beth Lew-Williams 21. The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America's Fraught Relationship with the China Men —Gordon H. Chang

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Book SynopsisMao Zedong's land reform campaigns comprise a critical moment in modern Chinese history, and were crucial to the rise of the CCP. In Land Wars, Brian DeMare draws on new archival research to offer an updated and comprehensive history of this attempt to fundamentally transform the countryside. Across this vast terrain loyal Maoists dispersed, intending to categorize poor farmers into prescribed social classes, and instigate a revolution that would redistribute the land. To achieve socialist utopia, the Communists imposed and performed a harsh script of peasant liberation through fierce class struggle. While many accounts of the campaigns give false credence to this narrative, DeMare argues that the reality was much more complex and brutal than is commonly understood—while many villagers prospered, there were families torn apart and countless deaths. Uniquely weaving narrative and historical accounts, DeMare powerfully highlights the often devastating role of fiction in determining history. This corrective retelling ultimately sheds new light on the contemporary legacy of land reform, a legacy fraught with inequality and resentment, but also hope.Trade Review"Richly documented and elegantly written, Land Wars reveals the contradictions and ironies intrinsic to the Chinese Communist Party's theory and practice of land reform. A welcome addition to the literature on the Communist revolution, it offers a counter narrative to the stories told in William Hinton's Fanshen in many ways."—Huaiyin Li, University of Texas at Austin"Land Wars successfully challenges still deeply-entrenched Chinese Communist mythologies about the nature and dynamics of the 1945-1952 land reform. DeMare's penetrating discussion of ferocious, ritualized class struggle campaigns skillfully demonstrates how land reform was not about economic change. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the imposition of Communist political control at the grassroots."—Paul G. Pickowicz, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Chinese Studies, University of California, San Diego"DeMare handles the topic of land reform in a refreshing way, using skillful story-telling....[His] compelling land reform research is no doubt methodologically innovative and of great significance in uncovering untold stories of rural China's grassroots revolution."—Shaofan An, Journal of Chinese History"The socialist practices in the early People's Republic of China have received ample scholarly attention in recent years. Brian DeMare's Land Wars is a very thorough, thought-provoking study that complicates extant literature and will certainly deepen readers' understanding of the essence of Chinese socialism."—Guo Wu, Journal of Asian StudiesTable of Contents0. Introduction: The Story of Mao's Revolution 1. Arriving: Work Teams 2. Organizing: The Search for Bitterness 3. Dividing: Creating Peasants and Landlords 4. Struggling: Inside the Furnace of Revolution 5. Turning: The Promise of Fanshen 6. Conclusion: Agrarian Revolution in Retrospect

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Book SynopsisSayyid Fadl, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, led a unique life—one that spanned much of the nineteenth century and connected India, Arabia, and the Ottoman Empire. For God or Empire tells his story, part biography and part global history, as his life and legacy afford a singular view on historical shifts of power and sovereignty, religion and politics. Wilson Chacko Jacob recasts the genealogy of modern sovereignty through the encounter between Islam and empire-states in the Indian Ocean world. Fadl's travels in worlds seen and unseen made for a life that was both unsettled and unsettling. And through his life at least two forms of sovereignty—God and empire—become apparent in intersecting global contexts of religion and modern state formation. While these changes are typically explained in terms of secularization of the state and the birth of rational modern man, the life and afterlives of Sayyid Fadl—which take us from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian Ocean worlds to twenty-first century cyberspace—offer a more open-ended global history of sovereignty and a more capacious conception of life.Trade Review"For God or Empire is a gripping global history of the Indian Ocean world, with striking theoretical implications. Wilson Chacko Jacob both recounts the story of modern state sovereignty and troubles it from the grounds of divine sovereignty that cannot be simply read as political theology. A brilliant critical historical inquiry into the present of state sovereignty, threaded with and opposed by life's other trajectories." -- Samera Esmeir * University of California, Berkeley *"Wilson Chacko Jacob joins the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds within a hitherto hidden global history to explore the making and movement of ideas. A forceful intellectual intervention in the way we understand sovereignty." -- Faisal Devji * University of Oxford *"[A] robust biographical rendering which also paints an inverted picture of the modern political subject....For God or Empire is a refreshing and vital theoretical intervention in the study of the Indian Ocean and for intellectual history more broadly." -- Taushif Kara * H-Diplo *"For God or Empire is at once an impressively scholarly, highly imaginative, and hugely challenging book....this is a very fine analysis, presenting an in-depth account of a remarkable man living through a turbulent historical era." -- Pnina Werbner * Pacific Affairs *

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Book SynopsisDuring the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British Indian Army possessed an illusion of racial and religious inclusivity. The army recruited diverse soldiers, known as the "Martial Races," including British Christians, Hindustani Muslims, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, Pathans from northwestern India, and "Gurkhas" from Nepal. As anti-colonial activism intensified, military officials incorporated some soldiers' religious traditions into the army to keep them disciplined and loyal. They facilitated acts such as the fast of Ramadan for Muslim soldiers and allowed religious swords among Sikhs to recruit men from communities where anti-colonial sentiment grew stronger. Consequently, Indian nationalists and anti-colonial activists charged the army with fomenting racial and religious divisions. In Faithful Fighters, Kate Imy explores how military culture created unintended dialogues between soldiers and civilians, including Hindu nationalists, Sikh revivalists, and pan-Islamic activists. By the 1920s and '30s, the army constructed military schools and academies to isolate soldiers from anti-colonial activism. While this carefully managed military segregation crumbled under the pressure of the Second World War, Imy argues that the army militarized racial and religious difference, creating lasting legacies for the violent partition and independence of India, and the endemic warfare and violence of the post-colonial world.Trade Review"This astute cultural history of the British Indian Army moves beyond the binary of loyalty and rebellion to track the assemblage of beliefs and bodily practices at stake in war and peace across empire's frontier regions. No other book captures so well the psychic life of war's devotional cultures, whether on the colonial battlefield or off."—Antoinette Burton, Swanlund Endowed Professor of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign"Faithful Fighters shows that violence and militarization associated with martial identities were widely adopted in Indian nationalist cultures, with profound consequences for the future. The book makes crucial contributions to South Asian, military, and colonial history."—Heather Streets-Salter, Northeastern University"Faithful Fighters is an important addition to the growing body of scholarly work on the colonial Indian army, and the project of global militarization that underwrote modern European imperialism. Through new materials and archives, Imy's major contribution is to the overlooked imbrication of anticolonialism and military culture in these contexts."—Leela Gandhi, John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English, Brown University"[Imy] paints a compelling picture of...various communities projecting their own ideations onto the colonial state, which in turn forced it to react and adapt....Faithful Fighters should prove to be an engaging and interesting read for anyone interested in Indian military history in the twentieth century."—Thirumalai Achintya, H-War"[An] intelligent and thought-provoking look into the complicated nature of power dynamics and relationship building available to both the British Empire and the indigenous groups of South Asia during the early twentieth century....This book is a must read for those interested in the Indian Army's social history and those iinterested in the construction of race and national identity. Imy's addition to the growing literature on the Indian Army expands on the social and cultural aspect of the military organization, and her analysis is inestimable."—Victor Curiel, The Middle Ground Journal"In Faithful Fighters, Kate Imy undertakes a refreshing investigation into the Indian Army between the 1910s and 1930s to trace the roots and development of religious militarism and racial masculinity in the colonial military institution of British India."—Yi Li, Journal of Asian Studies"There is much to like about Faithful Fighters' rich description of colonial efforts to recruit loyal soldiers in the British Indian army. Imy does an excellent job of highlighting the racial, gender, and class-based assumptions of British military policy, as well as the complex identities and agency of Indian soldiers... This will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the military's role in identity formation and the challenges of building loyalty in multiethnic societies."—Max Z. Margulies, Armed Forces & SocietyTable of Contents1. Spiritual Swords and Martial Violence 2. Borders, Boundaries, and Belonging 3. Purifying the Soldier 4. The Government's Salt from Fast to Famine 5. A Nation at Odds with Nationalism 6. Martial Masculinity in the Fascist Utopia

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Book SynopsisFrom 1868–1872, German geologist Ferdinand von Richthofen went on an expedition to China. His reports on what he found there would transform Western interest in China from the land of porcelain and tea to a repository of immense coal reserves. By the 1890s, European and American powers and the Qing state and local elites battled for control over the rights to these valuable mineral deposits. As coal went from a useful commodity to the essential fuel of industrialization, this vast natural resource would prove integral to the struggle for political control of China. Geology served both as the handmaiden to European imperialism and the rallying point of Chinese resistance to Western encroachment. In the late nineteenth century both foreign powers and the Chinese viewed control over mineral resources as the key to modernization and industrialization. When the first China Geological Survey began work in the 1910s, conceptions of natural resources had already shifted, and the Qing state expanded its control over mining rights, setting the precedent for the subsequent Republican and People's Republic of China regimes. In Empires of Coal, Shellen Xiao Wu argues that the changes specific to the late Qing were part of global trends in the nineteenth century, when the rise of science and industrialization destabilized global systems and caused widespread unrest and the toppling of ruling regimes around the world. Trade Review"Historian Wu has written a brilliant and original cultural history of industrialization in late Qing China . . . Thoroughly grounded in the archives and research in both Chinese and German sources (no mean feat), the book examines the powerful interactions of Chinese and Western entrepreneurs and Qing and Western officials in creating an industrial China . . . Highly recommended" -- J. Roger * CHOICE *"Shellen Wu's new book is a fascinating and timely contribution to the histories of China . . . Empires of Coal looks carefully at the importance of mining [...] to the political economy of late imperial China . . . It will be required reading for anyone interested in the entanglement of science, technology, and modernity in global history." -- Carla Nappi * New Books in East Asian Studies *"Refreshing and subtle, this book's engagement with issues of imperialism, China's relationship to European science, and environmental history provides a fascinating reminder of the tight linkages between them all." -- Joanna Waley-Cohen * NYU Shanghai *"This book narrates how, from the 1860s to the 1910s, China entered into a modern, industrializing world driven by fossil fuels. The topic could not carry greater contemporary relevance for China and the world, and only a few other historians have written on it in the past." -- Micah Muscolino * Oxford University *"Wu's study...places China's nineteenth-century development in a global context and adds comparative value to its historical experience." -- Joanna Waley-Cohen * The English Historical Review *"[An] interesting and important set of insights into the history of coal mining, coal imperialism, and the science and political economy of coal in China....[This study] adds a fascinating and novel layer of analysis of German imperialism and engineering at work in China...that has been missing in many of the wider discussions of imperialism and global transformations during the time period." -- Jack Patrick Hayes * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Fueling Industrialization in the Age of Coal chapter abstractIn order to understand how and why a momentous change of the Chinese worldview occurred in the late nineteenth century, chapter 1 begins with a discussion of pre-modern forms of geological knowledge in China 2Ferdinand von Richthofen and the Geology of Imperialism chapter abstractChapter Two examines Richthofen's contributions to Chinese views of its own mineral resources. Richthofen's career spanned the zenith of European colonial expansion in the nineteenth century, concomitant with the golden age of the railroads and steamers. His academic work on China connected the geography of the eastern seaboard to the Central Asian landmass. Yet his enduring legacy in China remains his observations of Chinese mines and estimates of Chinese mineral potential. 3Lost and Found in Translation: Geology, Mining, and the Search for Wealth and Power chapter abstractChapter Three discusses missionary translations of geology works in the nineteenth century. In the act of translation, geology became further entangled with the role of science in imperialism and the wealth and power of the West. Nineteenth century missionary translations of science in the treaty ports tell only a small part of the story. Focusing on the deficiencies of these translations would only miss the greater accomplishment of these foreign and Chinese translators of Western science texts as cultural intermediaries. These late nineteenth century translations introduced the field of geology to the Chinese public, but in the tumultuous political and economic environment of the late Qing period it was mining and control over mining rights that added urgency to the adoption of modern geology. 4Engineers as the Agents of Science and Empire, 1886-1914 chapter abstractChapter Four examines the large-scale modern enterprises opened in the interior by the Chinese themselves, including influential government figures such as Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong. This chapter focuses on the people who made possible the expansion of the first modern Chinese industries while also promoting European influence on China's future development—engineers who carried their skills from technical schools and mining academies in Europe to the far reaches of empire. The German engineers who began working for Chinese industries transitioned easily when Germany acquired a leasehold in Shandong province in 1898. 5Nations, Empires, and Mining Rights (1895-1911) chapter abstractChapter Five examines the late Qing reform of mining laws and the nation-wide movement to reclaim mining rights. In particular, this chapter uses as a case study the example of two German mining companies in Shandong during the colonial period (1898-1914), and the Chinese response to the foreign scramble for mining concessions. Like the geological surveys taking place across the globe during nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mining regulations became a point of tension between colonizers and the colonized. The Chinese promulgation of mining regulations, based on Japanese and European precedents, demonstrate that by the last years of the Qing dynasty, they had joined the ranks of nations that viewed mineral resources as the key to wealth and power. 6Geology in the Age of Imperialism chapter abstractChapter Six examines continuities and changes in Chinese views on mining from the imperial period through the Republican era. During the late Qing period, control over natural resources became a symbol of sovereignty against foreign encroachment. The study of geology became a means of resistance against imperialism. In the Chinese discourse the positivist views of Western geology in this period transformed into a matter of anti-imperialist struggle with strong social Darwinian undertones. Republican era geologists actively tried to construct a history of geology motivated by Han nationalism, with the efforts of the late-Qing period largely erased from their revision. 7Epilogue chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the implications of the book and its significance for the literature on Chinese industrialization and modern Chinese history.

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Book SynopsisIn the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, booming demand for natural resources transformed China and its frontiers. Historians of China have described this process in stark terms: pristine borderlands became breadbaskets. Yet Manchu and Mongolian archives reveal a different story. Well before homesteaders arrived, wild objects from the far north became part of elite fashion, and unprecedented consumption had exhausted the region's most precious resources. In A World Trimmed with Fur, Jonathan Schlesinger uses these diverse archives to reveal how Qing rule witnessed not the destruction of unspoiled environments, but their invention. Qing frontiers were never pristine in the nineteenth century—pearlers had stripped riverbeds of mussels, mushroom pickers had uprooted the steppe, and fur-bearing animals had disappeared from the forest. In response, the court turned to "purification;" it registered and arrested poachers, reformed territorial rule, and redefined the boundary between the pristine and the corrupted. Schlesinger's resulting analysis provides a framework for rethinking the global invention of nature.Trade Review"Schlesinger has written a tremendously important book. Through rigorous multi-archival and multi-lingual research, he brings the most valuable perspectives from the "New Qing History" into dialogue with scholarship on late imperial Chinese environmental history, thereby enriching our understanding of both fields. This is scholarship of the highest order." -- Micah Muscolino * Oxford University *"Schlesinger offers many refreshing surprises as he punctures the idea of Manchuria as the Qing's last pristine wilderness. By showing just how disastrous the consumption of natural products could be on the environment and Manchu identity, he demonstrates the relevance of the Qing for understanding environmental consequences in our own world." -- Timothy Brook * University of British Columbia *"Offering an exhaustively researched study using Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese sources, Jonathan Schlesinger describes in compelling detail the integration of Inner Asian sensibilities into Chinese metropolitan life and the creation of zones of indigenous purity on the frontier. The story of an elite desire for fur and other luxuries paired with a market-driven obsession with authenticity will find familiar echo today to anyone who has ever been in an airport duty-free shop." -- Mark C. Elliott * Harvard University *"This is a particularly fine example of the fresh insights that can be gained by viewing history from multiple angles...Environmental historians, historians of empire, of migration and diasporas, and of globalization and the early modern world of goods, should all read this book. They will find much to ponder." -- Joanna Waley-Cohen * China Review International *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: chapter abstractIn 1886, the explorer H. Evan James claimed to discover pristine nature in Manchuria; the only order in Manchuria, he enthused, was Nature itself. Strikingly, a century and half earlier, China's Qianlong emperor (r. 1735-1795) celebrated the region in similar language. Still further, his court went to extraordinary lengths to defend both the Manchu homeland and its unspoiled nature. What, then, constituted pristine nature in the Qing? 1The View from Beijing chapter abstractA momentous change occurred in eighteenth-century China: fur, together with other products that seemed both exotic and natural, became popular. What meaning did natural objects have in everyday life? Using archival and literary evidence, pawnshop records, travel accounts, and sumptuary laws, the chapter shows how consumer patterns and marketplace understandings of nature shifted through the course of the eighteenth century. From a world where no Chinese word existed for products such as "marten" and "Manchurian pearl," consumers ushered in a new one where connoisseurship of furs marked elite status, and words existed for every part of each animal's anatomy. Though faux furs, farmed ginseng, and imitation wild Mongolian mushrooms flooded the street, knowing consumers sought the real thing: undyed, uncultivated products from the far north. While at first a court fashion, by the mid-eighteenth century nature was for sale throughout the streets of Beijing. 2Pearl Thieves and Perfect Order chapter abstractSomething strange happened in Manchuria under Qing rule: its freshwater mussels disappeared. Stranger still, the Qing empire did everything in its power to preserve them: draft soldiers; fortify passes; patrol rivers; send boats and horses and silver and men. It streamlined the bureaucracy and revamped the local administration. "Nurture the mussels and let them grow," the emperor ordered; let Manchuria have mussels. Chapter explores what happened: the collapse of the pearl fishery the attempts, in the language of the Qing court, to "nurture the mussels." The court put its full weight behind efforts to create a long-term sustainability: it reorganized the administrative structure, empowered territorial governors, and created militarized off-limits areas. Poachers were arrested; the mussels allowed to rest. Through a detailed description of the tribute system, the ecological crisis, and the court's response, the chapter documents how a reinvented Manchuria came to be. 3The Mushroom Crisis chapter abstractAs the pearl crisis raged, a rush for wild steppe mushroom moved to the center of the imperial agenda in Mongolia. Unheralded and forgotten, steppe mushrooms were big business in the Qing; by the 1820s, thousands of undocumented workers crossed the internal boundary from China to Mongolia each year in search of mushrooms. The chapter opens with the case of a passport forger whose arrest triggered a court edict against mushroom picking in 1829; we have little else of the affair in Chinese. The archives in Ulaanbaatar, however, contain hundreds of documents that detail the long, violent conflict that culminated in his arrest. By analyzing the confessions of mushroom pickers and the depositions of local officials, the chapter reconstructs the history of the mushroom rush and explores how a recreating a "pure" and pristine environment in Mongolia became the top concern of the court. 4The Nature in the Land of Fur chapter abstractIn the borderland with Russia, a similar crisis emerged with furs: From the Altai Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, sables, then foxes, then squirrels vanished from the forest. In response, the Qing state again mobilized itself for another "purification" campaign: it repatriated trespassers, reinforced the boundary line around hunting zones, and attempted to ensure the long-term sustainability of fur-bearing animals. The chapter documents the interconnections between local, regional, and global fur trades in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and provides a case study of the environmental crisis in Tannu Uriankhai lands, in modern Tannu Tuva. There too, the archives show, the Qing court attempted to "purify" local nature and remake it as pristine. Conclusion: chapter abstractThe resulting analysis of these dynamics provides a framework for rethinking the global invention of nature. We cannot understand the invention of "pure" nature, both within and beyond the China, without a more nuanced and multifocal understanding of empires or the archives they produced. Putting peripheral places like Mongolia at the center of our histories, and learning to look both ways across frontiers, allows us to gain new vantages on how to transcend entrenched distinctions between foreign and frontier, coast and continent, East and West. Ultimately, modern "nature" and Qing "purity" belong to a broader, global matrix of historical inventions. Nature as we know today has deep, imperial roots.

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Book SynopsisAt the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of Central Asians made the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Traveling long distances, many lived for extended periods in Ottoman cities dotting the routes. Though technically foreigners, these Muslim colonial subjects often blurred the lines between pilgrims and migrants. Not quite Ottoman, and not quite foreign, Central Asians became the sultan's spiritual subjects. Their status was continually negotiated by Ottoman statesmen as attempts to exclude foreign Muslim nationals from the body politic were compromised by a changing international legal order and the caliphate's ecumenical claims. Spiritual Subjects examines the paradoxes of nationality reform and pan-Islamic politics in late Ottoman history. Lâle Can unravels how imperial belonging was wrapped up in deeply symbolic instantiations of religion, as well as prosaic acts and experiences that paved the way to integration into Ottoman communities. A complex system of belonging emerged—one where it was possible for a Muslim to be both, by law, a foreigner and a subject of the Ottoman sultan-caliph. This panoramic story informs broader transregional and global developments, with important implications for how we make sense of subjecthood in the last Muslim empire and the legacy of religion in the Turkish Republic. Trade Review"Spiritual Subjects is a beautifully and imaginatively crafted history of the hajj as a social, cultural, political, and spiritual phenomenon. Lâle Can humanizes the Central Asian pilgrims, telling their stories with the same grace and veneration that they showed in the course of their spiritual journey. A remarkable work that critically reexamines legal and cultural questions of Central Asian Muslim belonging to Ottoman imperial and Turkish national communities."—Christine Philliou, University of California, Berkeley"In this beautifully written book, Lâle Can offers us a striking new vision of the late Ottoman Empire and its relationship with pilgrims from Central Asia. Part study of Ottoman transformation, part social history of travel and the hajj, Spiritual Subjects will reshape our understanding of Islam in the late Ottoman order."—Adeeb Khalid, Carleton College"Spiritual Subjects offers a powerful message. Outlining the history of the Central Asian Ottoman-period Hajj, this book narrates a tale that has previously been known only in partial relief. The story Lâle Can tells here deftly opens up a fascinating new world to readers."—Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University"Can's ability to weave first-person voice with historical analysis is effective, even moving, and she does so without detracting from the deep erudition and archival foundations of the work. Here Spiritual Subjects welds governmental questions of imperial citizenship international law and the Ottoman Empire's nationalization reforms, as well as grassroots questions of Sufi social and pietistic networks, in a seamless and riveting narrative."—Faiz Ahmed, Iranian Studies"Lâle Can's Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire is a meticulously researched and beautifully crafted book on the Central Asian hajj and Ottoman management of religious mobility."—Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Jadaliyya"Spiritual Subjects is a fascinating story of movement, faith, and integration that acknowledges the geopolitical concerns and considerations of imperial rivalry at the end of empire but pushes that to the background in order to bring to life the experiences of what Can calls 'ordinary' people."—Mustafa Tuna, Journal of Islamic Studies"Spiritual Subjects is not only an important study with a new and fascinating perspective on our understanding of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century hajj but also a fundamental reading for Ottomanist scholars who wish to better understand a global perspective of Istanbul at the end of empire."—Tyler Kynn, The Middle Ground Journal"Can's well-crafted study encourages us to see the humanity in the juxtapositions of pilgrims and a state and society that struggled to accommodate them in a time, not unlike our own, when foreign travelers were frequently depicted as vectors of threat and disease instead of the diverse set of individuals, motivations, and aspirations they inevitably include."—Benjamin J. Fortna, American Historical Review"Spiritual Subjects is a masterful study of deep learning and analytical sophistication. It bridges Ottoman, Russian, Chinese, Islamic, and global history subfields with grace, style, and creativity, presenting novel and important insights on a strikingly wide and diverse set of themes."—Robert D. Crews, International Journal of Middle East StudiesTable of Contents1. Rewriting the Road to Mecca 2. Sufi Lodges as Sites of Transimperial Connection 3. Extraterritoriality and the Question of Protection 4. Petitioning the Sultan 5. From Pilgrims to Migrants and De Facto Ottomans Conclusion: A Return to Sultantepe

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Book SynopsisIn the 1930s, a cohort of professional human scientists coalesced around a common and particular understanding of objectivity as the foundation of legitimate knowledge, and of fieldwork as the pathway to objectivity. Into the Field is the first collective biography of this cohort, evocatively described by one contemporary as the men of one age. At the height of imperialism, the men of one age undertook field research in territories under Japanese rule in pursuit of "objective" information that would justify the subjugation of local peoples. After 1945, amid the defeat and dismantling of Japanese sovereignty and under the occupation and tutelage of the United States, they returned to the field to create narratives of human difference that supported the new national values of democracy, capitalism, and peace. The 1968 student movement challenged these values, resulting in an all-encompassing attack on objectivity itself. Nonetheless, the legacy of the men of one age lives on in the disciplines they developed and the beliefs they established about human diversity.Trade Review"A very refreshing look at race, culture, and objectivity in modern Japan. This engaging book considers critical issues of the twentieth century: historical continuity, power and knowledge in the empires and the Cold War, and the politics of generations. Sophisticated yet lucidly written, it is accessible and highly stimulating for academics and non-academics alike."—Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota"Kingsberg Kadia's important study allows a glimpse into Japan's postwar re-imagination of itself through the lens of American social science and through the study of its former empire. Her careful archival work exposes the negotiations of human scientists as they attempted to situate Japan in a global order promoting democracy and cosmopolitanism."—Amy Borovoy, Princeton University"Into the Field pays close attention to the interplay between ideas, institutions, and individuals, setting a high standard for the history of the social and human sciences."—George Steinmetz, University of Michigan"[Kingsberg Kadia] utilizes an impressive variety of sources, and the book shines where she inserts Japanese social science endeavors into a broader global context.Into the Fieldis an excellently researched, fascinating study."—Annika A. Culver, H-Diplo"[Kingsberg] Kadia's book . . . shines most in its analyses of how Izumi's generation, across the tempestuous middle decades of the twentieth century, used ethnology continuously to revise and recreate Japanese national identity according to temperamental geopolitical fluctuations."—Hansun Hsiung, University of Durham, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society"Into the Field is an important, thought-provoking, impressively researched contribution to our understanding of how human scientists shaped Japan's views of itself and others in the twentieth century."—Timothy S. George, Pacific AffairsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Men of One Age 1. The Origins of Fieldwork in the Japanese Empire 2. Group Fieldwork in Wartime 3. Objectivity under the U.S. Occupation 4. From "Race" to "Culture" 5. Others into Japanese 6. Japanese into Others 7. Excavating National Identity in the Antipodes 8. 1968 and the Passing of the Field Generation

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Book SynopsisFor centuries, Persian was the language of power and learning across Central, South, and West Asia, and Persians received a particular basic education through which they understood and engaged with the world. Not everyone who lived in the land of Iran was Persian, and Persians lived in many other lands as well. Thus to be Persian was to be embedded in a set of connections with people we today consider members of different groups. Persianate selfhood encompassed a broader range of possibilities than contemporary nationalist claims to place and origin allow. We cannot grasp these older connections without historicizing our conceptions of difference and affiliation. Mana Kia sketches the contours of a larger Persianate world, historicizing place, origin, and selfhood through its tradition of proper form: adab. In this shared culture, proximities and similarities constituted a logic that distinguished between people while simultaneously accommodating plurality. Adab was the basis of cohesion for self and community over the turbulent eighteenth century, as populations dispersed and centers of power shifted, disrupting the circulations that linked Persianate regions. Challenging the bases of protonationalist community, Persianate Selves seeks to make sense of an earlier transregional Persianate culture outside the anachronistic shadow of nationalisms. Trade Review"Few questions are more vexed in the study of early modern Asia, with evidence more evanescent, than how people identified before nationalism. Drawing on dozens of Persian texts, Mana Kia scrutinizes their conceptions of place, movement, memory, lineage, origins, and onomastics to denaturalize the nationalist ties between land and language. Persianate Selves is an invaluable vade mecum for navigating the transregional Persianate past." -- Nile Green * editor of The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca *"Persianate Selves disturbs our national imaginaries and challenges the way we write Persianate history. Instead of dynastic, ethnic, and blood bound categories, we encounter kindred voices who embody Persianate adab and reveal multiple experiences of place. Whether one contests or agrees, we will all have to engage with the different terms of analysis Mana Kia offers in this pioneering work." -- Kathryn Babayan * University of Michigan *"Persianate Selves traverses a now-vanished cosmopolitan world and suggests a fascinating new approach to conceptualizing a shared cultural space. This engaging book is sure to generate considerable discussion among scholars interested in the intellectual cultures of the world before the nationalist divide." -- Muzaffar Alam * University of Chicago *"Besides its scholarly contribution, Persianate Selves is an indispensable and highly recommended book for world leaders, policymakers and anyone interested in curing their monological ways of thinking about Islamic pasts." -- Aqsa Ijaz * Dawn *"In dislodging protonationalist categories in the understanding of affiliation, belonging, and selfhood, Kia offers sharp analytic tools for rethinking what it meant to be Persian before the rise of nationalism." -- Alireza Doostdar * Critical Inquiry *"Dissecting notions of home, landscape, kinship and memory, Kia provides us with a radically new framework for understanding Persianate culture. ... An excellent scholarly study worthy of close study for anyone looking to make sense of our past and present." -- Usman Butt * The New Arab *"Mana Kia's book is a rich and multilayered contribution to the scholarship that addresses questions of cosmopolitanism and hybridity, the possibilities of selves and collectives, the relevance of place and origin in the language ideologies, and the cultural and linguistic meanings people endow to physical spaces. ... The book itself is a beautiful ode to symbiosis, lineage and learning in the making of a cultural self." -- Irena Grigoryan * Journal of Belonging, Identity, Language, and Diversity *"Kia's subtle reconstructions of eighteenth-century Persian ways of belonging should provoke anyone engaged with the textual legacies of adab to read with eyes unblinkered by nationalism." -- Prashant Keshavmurthy * International Journal of Middle East Studies *"Persianate Selves... is novel in its use of Derridean deconstruction to distill shared forms of belonging and affiliation during the political disarray of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Kia is part of a growing and important chorus of scholars who are questioning primordialist conceptualizations of identity by challenging widely held assumptions that Persian is a language that has always belonged to Iran or that its use in India was a foreign import, out of place and unnatural. More broadly, Kia's work holds a mirror up to historians of precolonial contexts, encouraging us to think more carefully about the fundamental conceptual and descriptive language that we use to describe how people inhabited those worlds." -- Naveena Naqvi * History and Theory *

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Book SynopsisIn India, the eight states that border Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of China are often referred to as just "the Northeast." In the Name of the Nation offers a critical and historical account of the country's troubled relations with this borderland region. Its modern history is shaped by the dynamics of a "frontier" in its multiple references: migration and settlement, resource extraction, and regional geopolitics. Partly as a result of this, the political trajectory of the region has been different from the rest of the country. Ethnic militias and armed groups have flourished for decades, but they coexist comfortably with functioning electoral institutions. The region has some of India's highest voter turnout rates, but special security laws produce significant democracy deficits that are now almost as old as the Republic. That these policies have been enforced to foment national unity while multiple alternative conceptions of the "nation" animate politics in the region forces us to reflect on the very foundations of the nation form. Sanjib Baruah offers a nuanced account of this impossibly complicated story, asking how democracy can be sustained, and deepened, in these conditions. Trade Review"In this book, Sanjib Baruah provides scholars and students up-to-date facts, new revelations, astute analysis, and basic background for understanding history and politics in northeast India. This is also essential reading for anyone concerned with the quality of sovereignty in India, where national state territorialism is rife with contradictions, ambiguities, militarism, and conflicting allegiances."—David Ludden, New York University"With In the Name of the Nation, Sanjib Baruah completes an impressive trilogy of books on India's Northeast. This book unravels the paradoxes of postcolonial life in the periphery of the nation-state with theoretical elegance, intimate knowledge, and political commitment. It is a wonderful read that sets a new standard for South Asian scholarship."—Bengt G. Karlsson, Stockholm University"Elegantly written and cogent, Baruah's simultaneous 'insider-outsider' analysis of the region known generically as 'India's Northeast' is rich, nuanced, and multilayered. It captures the long-lasting impact of colonial policies and their present-day legacies, particularly in terms of how the 'center' and the 'peripheries' were imagined. A superb book for anyone wishing to understand how issues of citizenship, identity, and nation-making play out in the region today."—Urvashi Butalia, author of The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India"This is an important, accessibly written scholarly work that illuminates what democracy means by viewing it from the margins. A must-read for those interested in the contemporary politics of the Indian northeast and for those interested in the theory, history, and practice of democracy."—Kanchan Chandra, New York University"Carefully composed in a highly readable style, this book is an important contribution to the study of democracy, nationalism and vernacular politics on the Indian subcontinent and beyond."—Ashild Kolas, Journal of Peace Research"Baruah offers enormous insights into the causes of intensifying resistance, armed or otherwise, to harshly centralised political decision-making in India. The grasp of comparative politics that informs the author's analyses also contributes towards an understanding of increasing authoritarianism in South Asia and beyond."—Siddiq Wahid, India Today"This survey of [northeastern India] is an excellent guide to its diversity and complexity and is characterized by a heartfelt criticism of the actions of the Indian government, guided by Baruah's scholarly authority and personal experiences. Highly recommended."—R. D. Long, CHOICE"This is a rare gem of a book....While grappling with contentious issues of present politics, Sanjib Baruah provides depth, context and perspective."—Mahesh Rangarajan, The Indian Express"This is a reflective book, borne out of several decades of engagement[It] can be read as a prescient ledger of how things came to pass in Northeast India."—Sanjay Barbora, The India Forum"Baruah's intimate history and ethnography shows how neglect, corruption, uneven development, and repression—and recently the rise of Hindu nationalism at the federal level—have intensified the Northeast's alienation from the rest of the country."—Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs"[This] deceptively slim volume condenses a lifetime of deep intellectual, scholarly and normative engagement with the Northeast into an erudite and insightful analysis. It is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the violent and chequered career of postcolonial nationalism in India, and the complex details of the history and present of its Northeast."—Sankaran Krishna, South Asia"[A] magnificent work of scholarship and is most timely....The author's main contribution lies in raising awareness about the issues faced by the Northeast and its people and in highlighting the need for alternative politics in the region. It is indispensable for social scientists interested in understanding the society and politics of the region and for policymakers dealing with the issues of Northeast India."—Ganeshdatta Poddar, Journal of Contemporary Asia"In the Name of the Nationis a stellar exposure of the fractal nature of the relationship between India and its Northeast, one rich in insights for anyone seeking to understand not just contemporary India, but also the pitfalls of postcolonial, would-be nation-states. It will be read for a long time yet."—Berenice Guyot-Rechard, H-Net Reviews"In the Name of the Nation is an essential read that helps us better understand how ordinary people can reclaim moral sovereignty in the face of state violence. In the process, Northeast India is reconceived as central, not peripheral, to the history of Indian territorial sovereignty." –Ahona Panda, The Indian Economic and Social History Review"This monograph will be of particular interest to scholars of Asian political economy who wish to better understand the legacy of colonialism in postcolonial societies. The lucidity of the prose makes the monograph amenably suitable for general readership as well."—Tathagata Dutta, New Zealand Journal of Asian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: 1. The Invention of Northeast India 2. Partition's Long Shadow: Nation and Citizenship in Assam 3. Development and the Making of a Postcolonial Resource Frontier 4. The Naga Conflict: Ceasefire Politics and Elusive Peace 5. Discourse of Insurgency and the Pedagogy of State Violence 6. The Strange Career of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act Conclusion:

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Book SynopsisDuring the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British Indian Army possessed an illusion of racial and religious inclusivity. The army recruited diverse soldiers, known as the "Martial Races," including British Christians, Hindustani Muslims, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, Pathans from northwestern India, and "Gurkhas" from Nepal. As anti-colonial activism intensified, military officials incorporated some soldiers' religious traditions into the army to keep them disciplined and loyal. They facilitated acts such as the fast of Ramadan for Muslim soldiers and allowed religious swords among Sikhs to recruit men from communities where anti-colonial sentiment grew stronger. Consequently, Indian nationalists and anti-colonial activists charged the army with fomenting racial and religious divisions. In Faithful Fighters, Kate Imy explores how military culture created unintended dialogues between soldiers and civilians, including Hindu nationalists, Sikh revivalists, and pan-Islamic activists. By the 1920s and '30s, the army constructed military schools and academies to isolate soldiers from anti-colonial activism. While this carefully managed military segregation crumbled under the pressure of the Second World War, Imy argues that the army militarized racial and religious difference, creating lasting legacies for the violent partition and independence of India, and the endemic warfare and violence of the post-colonial world.Trade Review"This astute cultural history of the British Indian Army moves beyond the binary of loyalty and rebellion to track the assemblage of beliefs and bodily practices at stake in war and peace across empire's frontier regions. No other book captures so well the psychic life of war's devotional cultures, whether on the colonial battlefield or off."—Antoinette Burton, Swanlund Endowed Professor of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign"Faithful Fighters shows that violence and militarization associated with martial identities were widely adopted in Indian nationalist cultures, with profound consequences for the future. The book makes crucial contributions to South Asian, military, and colonial history."—Heather Streets-Salter, Northeastern University"Faithful Fighters is an important addition to the growing body of scholarly work on the colonial Indian army, and the project of global militarization that underwrote modern European imperialism. Through new materials and archives, Imy's major contribution is to the overlooked imbrication of anticolonialism and military culture in these contexts."—Leela Gandhi, John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English, Brown University"[Imy] paints a compelling picture of...various communities projecting their own ideations onto the colonial state, which in turn forced it to react and adapt....Faithful Fighters should prove to be an engaging and interesting read for anyone interested in Indian military history in the twentieth century."—Thirumalai Achintya, H-War"[An] intelligent and thought-provoking look into the complicated nature of power dynamics and relationship building available to both the British Empire and the indigenous groups of South Asia during the early twentieth century....This book is a must read for those interested in the Indian Army's social history and those iinterested in the construction of race and national identity. Imy's addition to the growing literature on the Indian Army expands on the social and cultural aspect of the military organization, and her analysis is inestimable."—Victor Curiel, The Middle Ground Journal"In Faithful Fighters, Kate Imy undertakes a refreshing investigation into the Indian Army between the 1910s and 1930s to trace the roots and development of religious militarism and racial masculinity in the colonial military institution of British India."—Yi Li, Journal of Asian Studies"There is much to like about Faithful Fighters' rich description of colonial efforts to recruit loyal soldiers in the British Indian army. Imy does an excellent job of highlighting the racial, gender, and class-based assumptions of British military policy, as well as the complex identities and agency of Indian soldiers... This will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the military's role in identity formation and the challenges of building loyalty in multiethnic societies."—Max Z. Margulies, Armed Forces & SocietyTable of Contents1. Spiritual Swords and Martial Violence 2. Borders, Boundaries, and Belonging 3. Purifying the Soldier 4. The Government's Salt from Fast to Famine 5. A Nation at Odds with Nationalism 6. Martial Masculinity in the Fascist Utopia

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Book SynopsisAt the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of Central Asians made the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Traveling long distances, many lived for extended periods in Ottoman cities dotting the routes. Though technically foreigners, these Muslim colonial subjects often blurred the lines between pilgrims and migrants. Not quite Ottoman, and not quite foreign, Central Asians became the sultan's spiritual subjects. Their status was continually negotiated by Ottoman statesmen as attempts to exclude foreign Muslim nationals from the body politic were compromised by a changing international legal order and the caliphate's ecumenical claims. Spiritual Subjects examines the paradoxes of nationality reform and pan-Islamic politics in late Ottoman history. Lâle Can unravels how imperial belonging was wrapped up in deeply symbolic instantiations of religion, as well as prosaic acts and experiences that paved the way to integration into Ottoman communities. A complex system of belonging emerged—one where it was possible for a Muslim to be both, by law, a foreigner and a subject of the Ottoman sultan-caliph. This panoramic story informs broader transregional and global developments, with important implications for how we make sense of subjecthood in the last Muslim empire and the legacy of religion in the Turkish Republic. Trade Review"Spiritual Subjects is a beautifully and imaginatively crafted history of the hajj as a social, cultural, political, and spiritual phenomenon. Lâle Can humanizes the Central Asian pilgrims, telling their stories with the same grace and veneration that they showed in the course of their spiritual journey. A remarkable work that critically reexamines legal and cultural questions of Central Asian Muslim belonging to Ottoman imperial and Turkish national communities."—Christine Philliou, University of California, Berkeley"In this beautifully written book, Lâle Can offers us a striking new vision of the late Ottoman Empire and its relationship with pilgrims from Central Asia. Part study of Ottoman transformation, part social history of travel and the hajj, Spiritual Subjects will reshape our understanding of Islam in the late Ottoman order."—Adeeb Khalid, Carleton College"Spiritual Subjects offers a powerful message. Outlining the history of the Central Asian Ottoman-period Hajj, this book narrates a tale that has previously been known only in partial relief. The story Lâle Can tells here deftly opens up a fascinating new world to readers."—Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University"Can's ability to weave first-person voice with historical analysis is effective, even moving, and she does so without detracting from the deep erudition and archival foundations of the work. Here Spiritual Subjects welds governmental questions of imperial citizenship international law and the Ottoman Empire's nationalization reforms, as well as grassroots questions of Sufi social and pietistic networks, in a seamless and riveting narrative."—Faiz Ahmed, Iranian Studies"Lâle Can's Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire is a meticulously researched and beautifully crafted book on the Central Asian hajj and Ottoman management of religious mobility."—Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Jadaliyya"Spiritual Subjects is a fascinating story of movement, faith, and integration that acknowledges the geopolitical concerns and considerations of imperial rivalry at the end of empire but pushes that to the background in order to bring to life the experiences of what Can calls 'ordinary' people."—Mustafa Tuna, Journal of Islamic Studies"Spiritual Subjects is not only an important study with a new and fascinating perspective on our understanding of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century hajj but also a fundamental reading for Ottomanist scholars who wish to better understand a global perspective of Istanbul at the end of empire."—Tyler Kynn, The Middle Ground Journal"Can's well-crafted study encourages us to see the humanity in the juxtapositions of pilgrims and a state and society that struggled to accommodate them in a time, not unlike our own, when foreign travelers were frequently depicted as vectors of threat and disease instead of the diverse set of individuals, motivations, and aspirations they inevitably include."—Benjamin J. Fortna, American Historical Review"Spiritual Subjects is a masterful study of deep learning and analytical sophistication. It bridges Ottoman, Russian, Chinese, Islamic, and global history subfields with grace, style, and creativity, presenting novel and important insights on a strikingly wide and diverse set of themes."—Robert D. Crews, International Journal of Middle East StudiesTable of Contents1. Rewriting the Road to Mecca 2. Sufi Lodges as Sites of Transimperial Connection 3. Extraterritoriality and the Question of Protection 4. Petitioning the Sultan 5. From Pilgrims to Migrants and De Facto Ottomans Conclusion: A Return to Sultantepe

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Book SynopsisIn India, the eight states that border Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of China are often referred to as just "the Northeast." In the Name of the Nation offers a critical and historical account of the country's troubled relations with this borderland region. Its modern history is shaped by the dynamics of a "frontier" in its multiple references: migration and settlement, resource extraction, and regional geopolitics. Partly as a result of this, the political trajectory of the region has been different from the rest of the country. Ethnic militias and armed groups have flourished for decades, but they coexist comfortably with functioning electoral institutions. The region has some of India's highest voter turnout rates, but special security laws produce significant democracy deficits that are now almost as old as the Republic. That these policies have been enforced to foment national unity while multiple alternative conceptions of the "nation" animate politics in the region forces us to reflect on the very foundations of the nation form. Sanjib Baruah offers a nuanced account of this impossibly complicated story, asking how democracy can be sustained, and deepened, in these conditions. Trade Review"In this book, Sanjib Baruah provides scholars and students up-to-date facts, new revelations, astute analysis, and basic background for understanding history and politics in northeast India. This is also essential reading for anyone concerned with the quality of sovereignty in India, where national state territorialism is rife with contradictions, ambiguities, militarism, and conflicting allegiances."—David Ludden, New York University"With In the Name of the Nation, Sanjib Baruah completes an impressive trilogy of books on India's Northeast. This book unravels the paradoxes of postcolonial life in the periphery of the nation-state with theoretical elegance, intimate knowledge, and political commitment. It is a wonderful read that sets a new standard for South Asian scholarship."—Bengt G. Karlsson, Stockholm University"Elegantly written and cogent, Baruah's simultaneous 'insider-outsider' analysis of the region known generically as 'India's Northeast' is rich, nuanced, and multilayered. It captures the long-lasting impact of colonial policies and their present-day legacies, particularly in terms of how the 'center' and the 'peripheries' were imagined. A superb book for anyone wishing to understand how issues of citizenship, identity, and nation-making play out in the region today."—Urvashi Butalia, author of The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India"This is an important, accessibly written scholarly work that illuminates what democracy means by viewing it from the margins. A must-read for those interested in the contemporary politics of the Indian northeast and for those interested in the theory, history, and practice of democracy."—Kanchan Chandra, New York University"Carefully composed in a highly readable style, this book is an important contribution to the study of democracy, nationalism and vernacular politics on the Indian subcontinent and beyond."—Ashild Kolas, Journal of Peace Research"Baruah offers enormous insights into the causes of intensifying resistance, armed or otherwise, to harshly centralised political decision-making in India. The grasp of comparative politics that informs the author's analyses also contributes towards an understanding of increasing authoritarianism in South Asia and beyond."—Siddiq Wahid, India Today"This survey of [northeastern India] is an excellent guide to its diversity and complexity and is characterized by a heartfelt criticism of the actions of the Indian government, guided by Baruah's scholarly authority and personal experiences. Highly recommended."—R. D. Long, CHOICE"This is a rare gem of a book....While grappling with contentious issues of present politics, Sanjib Baruah provides depth, context and perspective."—Mahesh Rangarajan, The Indian Express"This is a reflective book, borne out of several decades of engagement[It] can be read as a prescient ledger of how things came to pass in Northeast India."—Sanjay Barbora, The India Forum"Baruah's intimate history and ethnography shows how neglect, corruption, uneven development, and repression—and recently the rise of Hindu nationalism at the federal level—have intensified the Northeast's alienation from the rest of the country."—Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs"[This] deceptively slim volume condenses a lifetime of deep intellectual, scholarly and normative engagement with the Northeast into an erudite and insightful analysis. It is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the violent and chequered career of postcolonial nationalism in India, and the complex details of the history and present of its Northeast."—Sankaran Krishna, South Asia"[A] magnificent work of scholarship and is most timely....The author's main contribution lies in raising awareness about the issues faced by the Northeast and its people and in highlighting the need for alternative politics in the region. It is indispensable for social scientists interested in understanding the society and politics of the region and for policymakers dealing with the issues of Northeast India."—Ganeshdatta Poddar, Journal of Contemporary Asia"In the Name of the Nationis a stellar exposure of the fractal nature of the relationship between India and its Northeast, one rich in insights for anyone seeking to understand not just contemporary India, but also the pitfalls of postcolonial, would-be nation-states. It will be read for a long time yet."—Berenice Guyot-Rechard, H-Net Reviews"In the Name of the Nation is an essential read that helps us better understand how ordinary people can reclaim moral sovereignty in the face of state violence. In the process, Northeast India is reconceived as central, not peripheral, to the history of Indian territorial sovereignty." –Ahona Panda, The Indian Economic and Social History Review"This monograph will be of particular interest to scholars of Asian political economy who wish to better understand the legacy of colonialism in postcolonial societies. The lucidity of the prose makes the monograph amenably suitable for general readership as well."—Tathagata Dutta, New Zealand Journal of Asian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: 1. The Invention of Northeast India 2. Partition's Long Shadow: Nation and Citizenship in Assam 3. Development and the Making of a Postcolonial Resource Frontier 4. The Naga Conflict: Ceasefire Politics and Elusive Peace 5. Discourse of Insurgency and the Pedagogy of State Violence 6. The Strange Career of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act Conclusion:

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Book SynopsisTenacious patterns of ethnic and economic inequality persist in the rural, largely minority regions of China's north- and southwest. Such inequality is commonly attributed to geography, access to resources, and recent political developments. In Corporate Conquests, C. Patterson Giersch provides a desperately-needed challenge to these conventional understandings by tracing the disempowerment of minority communities to the very beginnings of China's modern development. Focusing on the emergence of private and state corporations in Yunnan Province during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the book reveals how entrepreneurs centralized corporate power even as they expanded their businesses throughout the Southwest and into Tibet, Southeast Asia, and eastern China. Bringing wealth and cosmopolitan lifestyles to their hometowns, the merchant-owners also gained greater access to commodities at the expense of the Southwest's many indigenous minority communities. Meanwhile, new concepts of development shaped the creation of state-run corporations, which further concentrated resources in the hands of outsiders. The book reveals how important new ideas and structures of power, now central to the Communist Party's repertoire of rule and oppression, were forged, not along China's east coast, but along the nation's internal borderlands. It is a must-read for anyone wishing to learn about China's unique state capitalism and its contribution to inequality.Trade Review"An important book. Accounting, management, and business history masquerade as mundane technical fields. But C. Patterson Giersch, historian of borderlands and ethnicity, shows how deceptive this façade can be, tracing the commercial 'networks of exclusion' that helped parcel out Asia's interior between Chinese and British imperialisms. The discoveries in this book are indispensable to our understanding of how modern China as we know it came to be." -- Rian Thum * University of Nottingham *"In Modern China, it is well-known fact that economic development and the concentration of wealth are profoundly uneven, particularly along ethnic and geographic lines. But why? In a bold new work that is at once empirically rich, tenaciously local, and vividly narrated, C. Patterson Giersch charts out the deep, late imperial origins of Chinese economic inequality." -- Thomas S. Mullaney * Stanford University *"[Giersch's] attention to the details of life in the borderlands is impressive, and the arguments about the role of local corporations in forging a path for intensifying central control of the economy and the usefulness of ethnic prejudice in this effort are convincing. Recommended." -- K. E. Stapleton * CHOICE *"In this ground-breaking book, [Giersch] has offered the reader important insights regarding the balance between local control and state directives in the twentieth-century economic development of southwest China." -- James Anderson * H-Asia *"Giersch, a brilliant writer who tells an engaging story about visionary figures, entices readers throughout the book with potential alternatives to disempowered development: What would have happened if indigenous communities were allowed to pursue their own developmental agenda? What could have been different if non-Han elites were more involved in the management of borderlands resources? Giersch encourages readers to boldly imagine how history could have unfolded differently. Tai elite Fang Kesheng ... for example, petitioned in1947for economic cooperation between the Chinese state and indigenous elites. If his proposal were taken more seriously, he might have been able to push back against the'power of private corporations'and the'developmental discourse of subordination'(p.192). Maoheng, once a trading giant in Yunnan, made significant progress in mechanizing textile production before the party-state took over management...and forced Yunnanese trade towns into'agrarian isolation'(p.200), all in the name of economic planning and borderlands development. Ifind the unfortunate turn of events heartrending ... "This well-researched book offers nuanced information and critical analysis about the rise and demise of private corporations in Yunnan and their implications on modern Chinese history. It is an important reading to anyone interested in the politics of economic development and ethnic inequality in Southwest China and beyond." -- Chun-Yi Sun * China Review International *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1The Muleteers chapter abstractChapter 1 explains the nineteenth-century origins of private corporations created in key merchant communities in Yunnan Province, China. It focuses on corporate governance, including profit-sharing and bookkeeping practices that allowed Yunnanese entrepreneurs to transform intrafirm kinship and friendship relations into incentive-based ownership-employee relations, thereby centralizing corporate power in the general manager's headquarters. This allowed the firms to expand their reach over vast distances and into Southeast Asia while maintaining relatively disciplined corporate governance. Since Chinese businesses are treated here as historical institutions rather than timeless entities based on idealized Confucian family values, the chapter demonstrates why successful firms were formed by Han Chinese entrepreneurs as well as certain minority ethnic groups. 2Families chapter abstractChapter 2 reveals how merchant communities in Yunnan, China, adapted to the stresses and opportunities of modern corporate life by preparing children for a world in which men and boys spent most of their time away from home. The chapter uses local sources to reveal how, even as kinship was deemphasized within the corporations, merchant communities relied on reconfigured gender norms and kinship institutions to hold together dispersed, mobile families through the writing of genealogies and the erection of lineage temples. Created with corporate profits, the genealogies and temples represented the construction of a new culture of obligations that would ideally force men to return home. Pressure was applied to wives, moreover, to be disciplined household managers, which was difficult because increasing wealth brought the desire to project prestige by building grand houses and consuming conspicuously. 3The Revolutionaries chapter abstractChapter 3 focuses on twentieth-century international businessmen from Yunnan, China, who, though they worked abroad, sought revolutionary change in their hometowns. The chapter begins with Burma-based merchants who participated in the 1911 revolution against the last Chinese dynasty. It then examines merchants who were active in promoting educational change for Chinese children in Burma and used that experience to promote rural reform, especially educational reform, at home. The chapter argues that the reformers were influenced by Chinese nationalism, which fueled their opposition to the British colonial education system because it led their children to assimilate. Concerned that their children were "falling into another race," the reformers developed a curriculum promoting learning in modern academic subjects as well as in Chinese language and nationalism. 4The Excluded chapter abstractChapter 4 examines the expansion of Yunnan trade corporations into the eastern Tibet region known as Kham. Drawing from the idea of translocality, the chapter explains how outside firms came to dominate much of Kham's regional trade, effectively excluding indigenous people from enjoying the benefits of commercialization. To fully understand this history, the trade corporations are placed in a larger political context, revealing how Han nationalists increasingly depicted borderlands minorities as backward and how radical officials such as "the butcher" Zhao Erfeng studied international colonialism as a guide for eradicating indigenous political and economic leadership, to be replaced by state and private corporations. These trends originated the process of modern patterns of ethnic inequality that still plague China today. 5Mining chapter abstractChapter 5 introduces the powerful vision, first articulated in 1876, of mechanizing Yunnan's mining industry by creating state-led corporations. In the 1880s, when the first modern mining corporation was created in Yunnan, it was part of an array of state initiatives to industrialize and modernize China, a story that is familiar. By retelling this story from a borderlands perspective, the chapter demonstrates for the first time how the concerns with industrial development were influenced by changing ideas about ethnicity as well as schemes to transform territorial governance from pluralistic practices of empire, in which indigenous elites were legitimate leaders, to the direct rule of the nation-state in which cultural and ethnic difference were no longer tolerated. In this first fifty years of modern industrialization, the concepts of Chinese development came to be linked to hierarchies of ethnic and racial difference. 6The Technocrat chapter abstractChapter 6 focuses on Miao Yuntai, an official who built pioneering financial and industrial institutions designed to develop Yunnan, China, during the 1930s. Miao started with Gejiu Tin, first incorporated in 1905, making it a successful exporter of refined tin, and then established other successful corporations. Miao's approach to economic development was based on his experiences in the United States and his perception of Yunnan as backward and ethnically diverse, leading him to create innovative state-run corporations that emphasized managerial autonomy, responsiveness to ownership, and the creation of competitive products. Miao was ahead of the national government in both rationalizing and implementing state-run industry in China, as well as in removing control over local resources from local people, making him one of the most important figures in China's developmental history. 7Corporations, the State, and Ethnic Difference chapter abstractChapter 7 examines China's wartime and civil war periods (1937<->1949), and it brings together the book's major stories about private corporations, state-run corporations, and the development of borderlands regions. After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, it was the Yunnan provincial government that first harnessed private firms for the wartime effort. After the arrival of the National Government in the Southwest, the Yunnanese economic and corporate institutions, built in the 1930s, would be joined by central institutions in complex partnerships that sought greater state control. These were the first efforts by a Chinese state to enhance its power by taking business from private firms. The efforts were part of broader development plans that sought to impose state power over private firms and over borderlands' resources and communities, including the Tai of western Yunnan. The efforts anticipated the extraordinary growth of state power under the Communist regime. Epilogue: Conquest of Corporations chapter abstractThe Epilogue follows the book's main narratives into the 1950s. It explains how the Tai of western Yunnan would gain "autonomy" as they had hoped, only to discover that autonomy under the Communist state meant disempowerment and inequality enforced by government institutions, including state corporations. It further explains how private corporations would first contribute to postwar economic recovery, only to decline as the new state closed markets and then purposefully dismantled the transprovincial networks of communication and organization that had nurtured the corporations for several generations. They were replaced by the bureaucratic management systems of the new government and Communist Party, which were designed for a planned economy that operated largely without markets. The innovative Yunnan state-run firms would become the foundations of the province's planned economy—the foundation of the province's supposedly new era that had actually been poured in the old era.

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Book SynopsisIn 1938, one year into the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese military found itself in dire medical straits. Soldiers were suffering from deadly illnesses, and were unable to receive blood transfusions for their wounds. The urgent need for medical assistance prompted an unprecedented flowering of scientific knowledge in China and Taiwan throughout the twentieth century. Wayne Soon draws on archives from three continents to argue that Overseas Chinese were key to this development, utilizing their global connections and diasporic links to procure much-needed money, supplies, and medical expertise. The remarkable expansion of care and education that they spurred saved more than four million lives and trained more than fifteen thousand medical personnel. Moreover, the introduction of military medicine shifted biomedicine out of elite, urban civilian institutions and laboratories and transformed it into an adaptive field-based practice for all. Universal care, practical medical education, and mobile medicine are all lasting legacies of this effort.Trade Review"Wayne Soon's excellent book shows how elite diasporic actors were a powerful force in the development of Chinese biomedicine. They injected their visions into policy discussions, mobilized their networks, and led with an authority based on their experiences and expertise. Drawing on an impressive range of sources, Soon breaks new ground in illustrating how diaspora is a rich category of analysis for knowledge and institutional production."—Shelly Chan, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz"Global Medicine in China could not be more-timely or more relevant. As we face a life-altering pandemic in the twenty-first century, this study provides powerful historical lessons about how the local and global have always been intertwined in the history of public health and modern medicine. Opening with the Manchurian Plague of 1911 and moving to wartime medicine, the book sheds important light on how overseas Chinese diasporic figures played a crucial role in the making of biomedicine in modern China. This book is a must read for all of us today as we are reminded daily of the global entanglements of health and politics."—Eugenia Lean, Columbia University"Global Medicine in China demonstrates the central roles Overseas Chinese played to integrate biomedicine into the military medicine of war-torn Republican China. This illuminating transnational history integrates major biomedical transformations within the dramatic political convulsions of mid-century China."—Marta Hanson, Johns Hopkins University"Wayne Soon's book on the rise of global medicine in China in the first half of the twentieth century addresses its lessons directly to the People's Republic of China in the midst of a global pandemic—transparency and global cooperation are key to coming to terms with a health crisis... It offers a necessary corrective to a false dichotomy that medical developments were either indigenous or imperialist interventions."—David Luesink, Technology and Culture"Although scholars have paid plenty of attention to Dr Wu Lien-Teh, the efforts of other prominent medical personalities and Overseas Chinese as a whole have as yet been under-researched. Soon's new book represents a timely effort to fill this academic gap and offers a new lens through which to understand how China and the world have been connected through the Chinese diaspora."—Yan Yang, Journal of Chinese Overseas"This meticulous study is based upon research in more than twenty archives and libraries on three continents. In addition to re-centering the role of the Chinese diaspora in global health history, Soon follows both monetary donations and disagreements about how to best develop biomedicine across boundaries, both geopolitical and temporal."—Rachel Core, Bulletin of the History of MedicineTable of ContentsIntroductory Chapter: Diasporic Medicine 1. Prewar International Strategies 2. Wartime Military Medicine 3. Making Blood Banking Work 4. Transnational Politics of Military Medical Education 5. Reconstructing Biomedicine across the Taiwan Straits Concluding Chapter: Legacies of Wartime Medicine

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Book SynopsisTenacious patterns of ethnic and economic inequality persist in the rural, largely minority regions of China's north- and southwest. Such inequality is commonly attributed to geography, access to resources, and recent political developments. In Corporate Conquests, C. Patterson Giersch provides a desperately-needed challenge to these conventional understandings by tracing the disempowerment of minority communities to the very beginnings of China's modern development. Focusing on the emergence of private and state corporations in Yunnan Province during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the book reveals how entrepreneurs centralized corporate power even as they expanded their businesses throughout the Southwest and into Tibet, Southeast Asia, and eastern China. Bringing wealth and cosmopolitan lifestyles to their hometowns, the merchant-owners also gained greater access to commodities at the expense of the Southwest's many indigenous minority communities. Meanwhile, new concepts of development shaped the creation of state-run corporations, which further concentrated resources in the hands of outsiders. The book reveals how important new ideas and structures of power, now central to the Communist Party's repertoire of rule and oppression, were forged, not along China's east coast, but along the nation's internal borderlands. It is a must-read for anyone wishing to learn about China's unique state capitalism and its contribution to inequality.Trade Review"An important book. Accounting, management, and business history masquerade as mundane technical fields. But C. Patterson Giersch, historian of borderlands and ethnicity, shows how deceptive this façade can be, tracing the commercial 'networks of exclusion' that helped parcel out Asia's interior between Chinese and British imperialisms. The discoveries in this book are indispensable to our understanding of how modern China as we know it came to be." -- Rian Thum * University of Nottingham *"In Modern China, it is well-known fact that economic development and the concentration of wealth are profoundly uneven, particularly along ethnic and geographic lines. But why? In a bold new work that is at once empirically rich, tenaciously local, and vividly narrated, C. Patterson Giersch charts out the deep, late imperial origins of Chinese economic inequality." -- Thomas S. Mullaney * Stanford University *"[Giersch's] attention to the details of life in the borderlands is impressive, and the arguments about the role of local corporations in forging a path for intensifying central control of the economy and the usefulness of ethnic prejudice in this effort are convincing. Recommended." -- K. E. Stapleton * CHOICE *"In this ground-breaking book, [Giersch] has offered the reader important insights regarding the balance between local control and state directives in the twentieth-century economic development of southwest China." -- James Anderson * H-Asia *"Giersch, a brilliant writer who tells an engaging story about visionary figures, entices readers throughout the book with potential alternatives to disempowered development: What would have happened if indigenous communities were allowed to pursue their own developmental agenda? What could have been different if non-Han elites were more involved in the management of borderlands resources? Giersch encourages readers to boldly imagine how history could have unfolded differently. Tai elite Fang Kesheng ... for example, petitioned in1947for economic cooperation between the Chinese state and indigenous elites. If his proposal were taken more seriously, he might have been able to push back against the'power of private corporations'and the'developmental discourse of subordination'(p.192). Maoheng, once a trading giant in Yunnan, made significant progress in mechanizing textile production before the party-state took over management...and forced Yunnanese trade towns into'agrarian isolation'(p.200), all in the name of economic planning and borderlands development. Ifind the unfortunate turn of events heartrending ... "This well-researched book offers nuanced information and critical analysis about the rise and demise of private corporations in Yunnan and their implications on modern Chinese history. It is an important reading to anyone interested in the politics of economic development and ethnic inequality in Southwest China and beyond." -- Chun-Yi Sun * China Review International *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1The Muleteers chapter abstractChapter 1 explains the nineteenth-century origins of private corporations created in key merchant communities in Yunnan Province, China. It focuses on corporate governance, including profit-sharing and bookkeeping practices that allowed Yunnanese entrepreneurs to transform intrafirm kinship and friendship relations into incentive-based ownership-employee relations, thereby centralizing corporate power in the general manager's headquarters. This allowed the firms to expand their reach over vast distances and into Southeast Asia while maintaining relatively disciplined corporate governance. Since Chinese businesses are treated here as historical institutions rather than timeless entities based on idealized Confucian family values, the chapter demonstrates why successful firms were formed by Han Chinese entrepreneurs as well as certain minority ethnic groups. 2Families chapter abstractChapter 2 reveals how merchant communities in Yunnan, China, adapted to the stresses and opportunities of modern corporate life by preparing children for a world in which men and boys spent most of their time away from home. The chapter uses local sources to reveal how, even as kinship was deemphasized within the corporations, merchant communities relied on reconfigured gender norms and kinship institutions to hold together dispersed, mobile families through the writing of genealogies and the erection of lineage temples. Created with corporate profits, the genealogies and temples represented the construction of a new culture of obligations that would ideally force men to return home. Pressure was applied to wives, moreover, to be disciplined household managers, which was difficult because increasing wealth brought the desire to project prestige by building grand houses and consuming conspicuously. 3The Revolutionaries chapter abstractChapter 3 focuses on twentieth-century international businessmen from Yunnan, China, who, though they worked abroad, sought revolutionary change in their hometowns. The chapter begins with Burma-based merchants who participated in the 1911 revolution against the last Chinese dynasty. It then examines merchants who were active in promoting educational change for Chinese children in Burma and used that experience to promote rural reform, especially educational reform, at home. The chapter argues that the reformers were influenced by Chinese nationalism, which fueled their opposition to the British colonial education system because it led their children to assimilate. Concerned that their children were "falling into another race," the reformers developed a curriculum promoting learning in modern academic subjects as well as in Chinese language and nationalism. 4The Excluded chapter abstractChapter 4 examines the expansion of Yunnan trade corporations into the eastern Tibet region known as Kham. Drawing from the idea of translocality, the chapter explains how outside firms came to dominate much of Kham's regional trade, effectively excluding indigenous people from enjoying the benefits of commercialization. To fully understand this history, the trade corporations are placed in a larger political context, revealing how Han nationalists increasingly depicted borderlands minorities as backward and how radical officials such as "the butcher" Zhao Erfeng studied international colonialism as a guide for eradicating indigenous political and economic leadership, to be replaced by state and private corporations. These trends originated the process of modern patterns of ethnic inequality that still plague China today. 5Mining chapter abstractChapter 5 introduces the powerful vision, first articulated in 1876, of mechanizing Yunnan's mining industry by creating state-led corporations. In the 1880s, when the first modern mining corporation was created in Yunnan, it was part of an array of state initiatives to industrialize and modernize China, a story that is familiar. By retelling this story from a borderlands perspective, the chapter demonstrates for the first time how the concerns with industrial development were influenced by changing ideas about ethnicity as well as schemes to transform territorial governance from pluralistic practices of empire, in which indigenous elites were legitimate leaders, to the direct rule of the nation-state in which cultural and ethnic difference were no longer tolerated. In this first fifty years of modern industrialization, the concepts of Chinese development came to be linked to hierarchies of ethnic and racial difference. 6The Technocrat chapter abstractChapter 6 focuses on Miao Yuntai, an official who built pioneering financial and industrial institutions designed to develop Yunnan, China, during the 1930s. Miao started with Gejiu Tin, first incorporated in 1905, making it a successful exporter of refined tin, and then established other successful corporations. Miao's approach to economic development was based on his experiences in the United States and his perception of Yunnan as backward and ethnically diverse, leading him to create innovative state-run corporations that emphasized managerial autonomy, responsiveness to ownership, and the creation of competitive products. Miao was ahead of the national government in both rationalizing and implementing state-run industry in China, as well as in removing control over local resources from local people, making him one of the most important figures in China's developmental history. 7Corporations, the State, and Ethnic Difference chapter abstractChapter 7 examines China's wartime and civil war periods (1937<->1949), and it brings together the book's major stories about private corporations, state-run corporations, and the development of borderlands regions. After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, it was the Yunnan provincial government that first harnessed private firms for the wartime effort. After the arrival of the National Government in the Southwest, the Yunnanese economic and corporate institutions, built in the 1930s, would be joined by central institutions in complex partnerships that sought greater state control. These were the first efforts by a Chinese state to enhance its power by taking business from private firms. The efforts were part of broader development plans that sought to impose state power over private firms and over borderlands' resources and communities, including the Tai of western Yunnan. The efforts anticipated the extraordinary growth of state power under the Communist regime. Epilogue: Conquest of Corporations chapter abstractThe Epilogue follows the book's main narratives into the 1950s. It explains how the Tai of western Yunnan would gain "autonomy" as they had hoped, only to discover that autonomy under the Communist state meant disempowerment and inequality enforced by government institutions, including state corporations. It further explains how private corporations would first contribute to postwar economic recovery, only to decline as the new state closed markets and then purposefully dismantled the transprovincial networks of communication and organization that had nurtured the corporations for several generations. They were replaced by the bureaucratic management systems of the new government and Communist Party, which were designed for a planned economy that operated largely without markets. The innovative Yunnan state-run firms would become the foundations of the province's planned economy—the foundation of the province's supposedly new era that had actually been poured in the old era.

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Book SynopsisA Financial Times Best Book of the Year The first book that examines India's mega-publicity campaigns to theorize the global transformation of the nation-state into an attractive investment destination. The early twenty-first century was an optimistic moment of global futures-making. The chief narrative was the emergence of the BRICS nations—leading stars in the great spectacle of capitalist growth stories, branded afresh as resource-rich hubs of untapped talent and potential, and newly opened up for foreign investments. The old third-world nations were rapidly embracing the script of unbridled capitalism in the hope of arriving on the world stage. If the tantalizing promise of economic growth invited entrepreneurs to invest in the nation's exciting futures, it offered utopian visions of "good times," and even restoration of lost national glory, to the nation's citizens. Brand New Nation reaches into the past and, inevitably, the future of this phenomenon as well as the fundamental shifts it has wrought in our understanding of the nation-state. It reveals the on-the-ground experience of the relentless transformation of the nation-state into an "attractive investment destination" for global capital. As Ravinder Kaur provocatively argues, the brand new nation is not a mere nineteenth century re-run. It has come alive as a unified enclosure of capitalist growth and nationalist desire in the twenty-first century. Today, to be deemed an attractive nation-brand in the global economy is to be affirmed as a proper nation. The infusion of capital not only rejuvenates the nation; it also produces investment-fueled nationalism, a populist energy that can be turned into a powerful instrument of coercion. Grounded in the history of modern India, the book reveals the close kinship among identity economy and identity politics, publicity and populism, and violence and economic growth rapidly rearranging the liberal political order the world over.Trade Review"A hugely thoughtful and innovative analysis of the phenomenon known as 'India Inc.'. Skillfully written—with a good measure of irony, humor, and bite—this book will set the standard for our understanding of this topic and period." -- Sumathi Ramaswamy, James B. Duke Professor of History and International Comparative Studies * Duke University *"Brand New Nation takes us on a tour—a tour de force, really—of the changing trajectory of the nation-state: specifically, its transformation from a liberal democratic polity into a business enterprise, underpinned by the neoliberal faith in the capacity of markets to produce utopic futures. Ravinder Kaur has a wonderfully acute eye for the telling example, the revealing case, the moment of historical rupture that opens a window onto the process of nation branding and the corporatization of the state. As a result, Brand New Nation is a riveting read—in addition to being a pathbreaking piece of work." -- John Comaroff * Harvard University *"Ravinder Kaur convincingly argues that the era of 'happy globalization' is over in India and that it is largely responsible for the dominant repertoire of national-populism under Modi. It is not only the new middle class that has asserted itself after the 1991 liberalization that is very supportive of Hindu nationalism, but the aspiring categories coming from the plebeians are also finding a sense of belonging in Hindutva politics. Kaur's book is a truly remarkable exploration of the unintended political consequences of economic developments, as in India capitalism and religious national-populism have clear affinities." -- Christophe Jaffrelot, Research Director * Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique *"[Brand New Nation] offers a new, enriching, and also, counter-intuitive perspective....This important book is a must-read." -- Roshan Kishore * Hindustan Times *"This book addresses...[many] questions with clarity and insight, and is an important read for all interested in contemporary India, media and cultural studies, and the making of a hegemonic imaginary." -- Aparna Gopalan * New Books Network *"This is an original and highly provocative book." -- Martin Wolf * Financial Times *"[Kaur] peels off layers and layers of contemporary Indian history to prove, on her own terms, that the 'manifestation of Hindu cultural nationalism and market liberalisation' owe their dominance to each other....Following the course of Kaur's arguments is a sheer treat." -- Ullekh NP * Open Magazine *"Ravinder Kaur has written a perceptive, compelling, and very engaging book. This is the first systematic treatment of the remaking of politics and ideology in the wake of the economic resurgence in India and offers a radical rethinking of nationalism." -- Tirthankar Roy * H-Asia *"Kaur's work is a lyrical tale of pitching India to the world as an 'attractive destination for investment capital.'... She shines in every page of Brand New Nation, and every page is a treat of elegant writing, sharp insights, and nuanced analysis." -- Tarique Niazi * Global Policy *"Brand New Nationis atour de forcethat sheds light on how post-colonial India has changed and is changing rapidly. Kaur's book opens our eyes to those changes." -- Karthik Nachiappan * The Wire *

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Book SynopsisBetween 1946 and 1952, the British Raj, the world's largest colony, was transformed into the Republic of India, the world's largest democracy. Independence, the Constituent Assembly Debates, the founding of the Republic, and India's first universal franchise general election occurred amidst the violence and displacement of the Partition, the uncertain and contested integration of the princely states, and the forceful quelling of internal dissent. This book investigates the ways in which these violent conjunctures constituted a postcolonial regime of sovereignty and shaped the historical development of democracy in India at the foundational moment of decolonization and national independence. From Raj to Republic presents a multifaceted history of sovereignty and democracy in India by linking together the princely state of Hyderabad's attempt to establish itself as an independent sovereign state, the partitioning of Punjab, and the communist-led revolutionary movement in the southern Indian region of Telangana. A national, territorial, republican, and liberal polity in India emerged out of a violent and contested process that forged new power relations and opened up historical trajectories with lasting consequences for modern India. Trade Review"A brilliantly original account of India's Partition. Refusing to confine Partition to the remaking of borders and religious identities, Purushotham places its violence alongside other conflicts to argue that independent India fashioned its sovereignty by their forcible assimilation into a nation that no longer owed its authority to the colonial state."—Faisal Devji, University of Oxford"Purushotham vividly reconstructs the anguish and violence that preoccupied the early democratic republic as it emerged from under the debris of British imperial rule. This is a provocative and compelling new study of the chaotic history surrounding the reorganization of regional power and statehood in post-Partition India."—Sudipta Sen, University of California, Davis"Throughout the book, Purushotham demonstrates that he is a skilled historian. His work is grounded in the archive, and he capitalises on the fact that files from the Ministry of States at the National Archives of India have been opened, providing a rich picture of political developments over the years of independence, partition and the integration of the princely states. In addition, he deploys materials from state archives, non-official institutions, newspapers, published reports and memoirs to good effect."—Taylor Sherman, H-Soz-Kult"[A]n empirically and theoretically rich account of the constitutive role of violence in the forging of India's new republic. This book will be particularly useful for scholars interested in this period of South Asian history, and I would also enthusiastically recommend it to those concerned with theories and ideas of sovereignty, democracy, citizenship, and violence more generally."—Oliver Godsmark, Pacific AffairsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Sovereignty, Violence, and Democracy, 1946<->52 1. Azad Hyderabad in the Age of Empire and Nationalism 2. The Battle for Hyderabad 3. Foundational Violence: State and Society in Partitioned Punjab 4. Nation and Narration: Testimony, Citizenship, and Sovereignty 5. An Indian Yan'an: Telangana, 1946<->52 6. The Camp and the Citizen Epilogue: From Raj to Republic, 1946<->52

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Book SynopsisFar from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in the Third World shaped the worldview of many North Koreans and helped them imagine a unified anti-imperialist front that stretched from the boulevards of Pyongyang to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the beaches of Cuba. This book tells the story of North Korea's transformation in the Third World from model developmental state to reckless terrorist nation, and how Pyongyang's actions, both in the Third World and on the Korean peninsula, ultimately backfired against the Kim family regime's foreign policy goals. Based on multinational and multi-archival research, this book examines the intersection of North Korea's domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea's developmental model appealed to the decolonizing world.Trade Review"By calling attention to relations with the Third World as a critical component of North Korea's developing national identity, Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader offers a significant and refreshing contribution to understanding the historical development of North Korea that moves beyond the familiar narrative of an emerging state situated amongst China and the Soviet Union in the Cold War context." —Hanmee Kim, Wheaton College"Benjamin R. Young's book is beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and absolutely eye-opening. Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader provides an unprecedented look into the causes and consequences of North Korea's struggle for international influence." —Mitchell Lerner, Ohio State University"North Korea has been an isolated nation since the 1990s, but interestingly Young points out odd relics of a time the so-called Hermit Kingdom reached out to the world, such as Kim Il Sung Avenue in Mozambique's capital Maputo. For the casual Korea watcher this book is a surprise: it shows the country's story hasn't been all bad."—Frank Beyer, Asian Review of Books"This is a serious work of history, not a light read, but it's really well researched. More importantly, it manages to say something new and interesting about North Korea, which frankly is rare. Young shows how North Korea was once extremely active in the Third World, building movements against western imperialism that today look militantly quixotic but at the time had revolutionary potential. The dense networks of exchange and patronage that North Korea forged, across the Third World but in Africa especially, added to its own sense of purpose and informed its vision of unification of the Korean Peninsula."—Van Jackson, The Duck of Minerva"Today, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, is widely viewed as a dangerous rogue state that is irrationally pursuing nuclear weapons despite international condemnation and the crushing poverty of its own people... Benjamin Young's Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader turns this picture on its head by taking the reader back to a time when North Korea was competing with the world's superpowers by presenting itself as an alternative model of development for Third World audiences."—Daniel Connolly, The Middle Ground Journal"Guns, Guerrillas and the Great Leader rightly underlines the North as the Cold War success story. In the long post war liberation struggles and the aftermath with the sweet success of victory there were appreciations for solidarity and quests for new maps. The North had provided the first home and away."—Glyn Ford, Asian Affairs"[Young's] monograph is a valuable contribution to North Korean, Cold War, and Third World studies, as it provides detailed factual information on Pyongyang's interactions with over twenty Third World states. Its colourful description of the heavy-handed methods of North Korean diplomacy makes it easier to understand why many non-aligned countries, having initially embraced the DPRK, soon became disillusioned with its behaviour. At the same time, the author also demonstrates that North Korea did manage to retain a foothold in certain developing countries even after a series of regime changes, precisely because of the same opportunistic pragmatism that repulsed some other Third World leaders."—Balázs Szalontai, Pacific Affairs"Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader is a gem among several new books on North Korean diplomacy and leadership. The book is also very accessible to a wider general audience. Despite the book's weighty subject matter, its title alludes to some of the fascinating anecdotes that fill its pages, thus making Young's first monograph a thoroughly enjoyable read."—Andrew Yeo, H-Diplo"The book is fascinating as it sets out in readable form that inter-Korean legitimacy battle in the early decades of the two states, an era when literally any sovereign territorywith a vote in the UNbecame a sought-after target for both North and South, all the way down to small island chains in the waters of the Caribbean and Pacific."—Christopher Green, H-Diplo"Young has written a compelling and thoughtful book on a subject that has received little attention until now. Given readers' seemingly inexhaustible curiosity about all things North Korea, this is no small feat for a first book. I look forward to reading what comes next."—Bridget Coggins, H-DiploTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Building a Reputation, 1956–1967 2. Kimilsungism beyond North Korean Borders, 1968–1971 3. Kim Il Sung's "Korea First" Policy, 1972–1979 4. Kim Jong Il's World and Revolutionary Violence, 1980–1983 5. Survival by Any Means Necessary, 1984–1989 Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe assertion that even institutions often viewed as abhorrent should be dispassionately understood motivates Arkotong Longkumer's pathbreaking ethnography of the Sangh Parivar, a family of organizations comprising the Hindu right. The Greater India Experiment counters the urge to explain away their ideas and actions as inconsequential by demonstrating their efforts to influence local politics and culture in Northeast India. Longkumer constructs a comprehensive understanding of Hindutva, an idea central to the establishment of a Hindu nation-state, by focusing on the Sangh Parivar's engagement with indigenous peoples in a region that has long resisted the "idea of India." Contextualizing their activities as a Hindutva "experiment" within the broader Indian political and cultural landscape, he ultimately paints a unique picture of the country today.Trade Review"This vivid ethnography of Hindu nationalist militants in Northeast India brings to life an encounter of contrary convictions. It explores how enthusiasts for the idea of a singular Indic identity feel forced to adapt their tactics in a region where this identity is soundly challenged. Subtle and surprising, this extraordinary study is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Hindu nationalist politics."—Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam"Arkotong Longkumer presents readers an original, impressive study on the religious foundations and anxieties of Indian nationalism. This is powerful work that intimately engages with issues of sovereignty, democracy, secularism, and culture in postcolonial India."—Sanjay Barbora, Tata Institute of Social Sciences"This is the first book accounting for the rise of Hindutva in India's Northeast. Longkumer's deeply ethnographical approach allows him to painstakingly analyze the modus operandi of the Hindu nationalist activists at the grassroots level in a part of India where ethnic tensions are mounting dangerously."—Christophe Jaffrelot, CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS and King's College London"Longkumer must be commended for writing a pioneering book on the protean forms of Hindutva today. His most striking contribution might be to remind us that even the most unsavoury forms of political imaginaries can become palatable over time through careful and creative forms of persuasion."—Uday Chandra, Pacific Affairs"Arkotong Longkumer'sThe Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeastis a well-reasoned warning on the rise of Hindutva in the northeast of India. Drawing from his PhD work, his continuing engagement with foot soldiers of the Sangh, and his keen observations, the book provides a rich ethnographic account of the twists and turns of the dominant forces tied to the Indian nation-state, in particular Hindutva. In doing so, he engages with the larger project ofAkhand Bharat, the notional [sic] entity that extends over several countries all the way from Afghanistanto southeast Asia."—Richard Kamei, The India Forum"This book is an essential read for scholars of Northeast India, Hindu nationalism, indigeneity, and beyond... Deeply grounded in a relational mode of analysis while engaging a range of humanistic social sciences, Longkumer vividly renders the territorial imaginaries and anxieties driving the most recent iteration of postcolonial expansionism in the region while also shining a light on an alternate landscape of desire and possibility."—Mabel Denzin Gergan, Politics, Religion, & Ideology"Whether it is of drawing spatial and temporal continuities with 'Bharatvarsh' via a retelling of myth and history, or of manufacturing a shared basis for being and becoming 'indigenous', or of identifying and exorcising elements that are deemed 'foreign' so that the 'indigene' may be claimed for Hindutva, or of appropriating and iconising personalities to fit within the 'nationalist' as well as the 'anti-foreign' narrative, [The Greater India Experiment] provides a rich description of how the Sangh Parivar carefully and creatively inserts itself into the crevices of life in the Northeast."—John Thomas, Biblio"[The Greater India Experiment] is significant in its multi-dimensional refletion of and on the complex socio-political and religious landscape of the Northeast... This book is a fine example of the mediating role that a rigorous ethnography can play in seriously engaging with conflicting political and religious worldviews."—Ishita Mahajan, Contemporary South Asia"The role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in redefining the cultures, education, and religious identities as well as histories of India, especially by aligning certain narratives and figures like Rani Gaidinliu to the Hindutva narrative, is not yet fully understood, especially in the predominantly tribal and Christian North East India.TheGreater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeastby Arkotong Longkumer is therefore a timely and welcome publication."—Tanka Bahadur Subba, Economic & Political Weekly"For anyone interested in how the BJP came to dominate all-India politics, this work is essential reading. For cultural anthropologists, it is a study in objectivity. Much more than a political and cultural study, however, Longkumer's book is a deep dive into an unfinished project. We do not know how it will turn out, and the writer makes no attempt to forecast the future. Still, he does give us all the information we need to keep track of the BJP's ongoing attempt to win the soul of India's Northeast."—Janet M. Powers, ReligionTable of Contents2. The Northeast and Time's Relentless Melt 3. Hindutva Worldings: Whose Way of Life? 4. Prophecy and the Hindu State 5. Christian Hindu and Nationalizing Hindutva 6. Rani Gaidinliu: A Semiotic Challenge to the Nation-State 7. Citizenship, Elections, and the Bharatiya Janata Party 8. Hindutva Becoming and the Greater India Experiment

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Book SynopsisWhat if we could imagine hierarchy not as a social ill, but as a source of social hope? Taking us into a "caste of thieves" in northern India, Nobody's People depicts hierarchy as a normative idiom through which people imagine better lives and pursue social ambitions. Failing to find a place inside hierarchic relations, the book's heroes are "nobody's people": perceived as worthless, disposable and so open to being murdered with no regret or remorse. Following their journey between death and hope, we learn to perceive vertical, non-equal relations as a social good, not only in rural Rajasthan, but also in much of the world—including settings stridently committed to equality. Challenging egalo-normative commitments, Anastasia Piliavsky asks scholars across the disciplines to recognize hierarchy as a major intellectual resource.Trade Review"It's difficult to overemphasize the effect of this narrative: the brio with which it is written, the verve of its characters, the author's intellectual panache. This scintillating re-reading of hierarchy, most poignant where it has supposedly been banished, picks apart one of anthropology's greatest conundrums and poses profound questions for evaluations based on social equivalence." -- Marilyn Strathern * University of Cambridge *"Moving away from the ideas of ineffability and stasis that attach to understandings of caste, Piliavsky puts forward a courageous, refreshingly original position on hierarchy." -- Dilip Menon * University of Witwatersrand *"An extraordinary work. A major rethinking of the social productivity of hierarchical relations, this is ethnographically grounded anthropological theorizing at its best. It should fundamentally transform contemporary conversations about the nature of social life." -- Joel Robbins * University of Cambridge *"By exploring the politics of everyday patronage, this compelling study of a 'caste of thieves' addresses one of the most important debates in the sociology of South Asia." -- Filippo Osella, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies * Sussex University *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts0Prologue chapter abstractIn 1991 a hamlet in southern Rajasthan, where the author conducted her research, was nearly razed by a pogrom. Decades later, its perpetrators felt no regret or remorse for the violence. Their victims were Kanjars, a caste of professional thieves and the most marginal local community. Parsing out the moral logic of the pogrom, Piliavsky argues that Kanjars are untouchable among the untouchables not because they are ritually most polluted, but because they are socially least attached. Asymmetrical ties with patrons are essential to the local calculus of people's worth, making hierarchical norms central to the logic of social ambitions. Challenging the egalo-normative commitments of writings on social mobility and aspiration in South Asia, and engaging critically the work of Louis Dumont, the prologue introduces the book's central argument: that hierarchy—as opposed to inequality—can drive social ambition, recognition, and hope. 1Hierarchy as Hope chapter abstractMany in India look to hierarchy as a social good that helps them pursue better lives. Social scientists, conversely, tend to see in hierarchy a system of oppressive stasis. In a wide-ranging reflection on social theory, chapter 1 outlines how its egalo-normative bearings and the old Christian idea of hierarchy as a "pyramid" have produced a caricature of hierarchy as a motionless whole, making it impossible to see why people the world over value it. It argues that hierarchies of all kinds always involve a logic of mutual responsibility structured by difference. Expressed in the idiom of patronal or parent-child relations, these norms do not imply or produce stasis; rather, they are inherently asymmetric, unstable, and dynamic. Outlining how hierarchical norms play out in patronal relations in Rajasthan, Piliavsky challenges the hoary contrast between "holism" and individualism, and outlines a vision of hierarchical individuality. 2The Lords of Begun chapter abstractChapter 2 reveals Begun, a market town, whose layout and history reflect major hierarchical principles. The town is organized concentrically around a citadel—the home of the local hereditary lord, the Rao—according to degrees of intimacy to the royal family, not by degrees of ritual purity and pollution. The highest ranking castes, with homes in the town center, are the Rao's closest, most experienced servants, while those lower and farther out have been more loosely employed by others. Developing an old argument about "centrality" as the organizing principle of caste, this chapter shows that the town and its social hierarchy were traditionally organized like a family, where the Rao was styled as a "father" and his servants as "children." The respective obligations to care for one's servants and to serve one's master are framed in this familial moral idiom that is pivotal to the broader logic of hierarchy. 3The People Who Were Not There chapter abstractWhile relations with Kanjars are denied in polite company, local aristocrats, farmers, and policemen engage them as watchmen, thieves for hire, and dispute negotiators. As such, Kanjars enter the innermost domains of life, while being denied public recognition. Both beneficiaries and victims of their invisibility, they profit from being employed as "secret agents," while ultimately losing out on the recognition that only openly recognized bonds with patrons afford. While running an often lucrative trade, Kanjars remain reputationally offstage—invisible, masterless, unattached—and so, in the eyes of others, lack a proper, cogent self, and thus any social value. For them, the moral significance of patronal attachments is really and truly a matter of life and death. The moral and social outsider can be disposed of casually, with no moral consequence or qualms. 4The Perils of Masterless People chapter abstractThe history of people who have come to be known as Kanjars is a story of a long and frustrated search for patrons, who would care for them and imparting on the community the existentially crucial belonging they long for. Tracing Kanjar history to the 16th century, when the name "Kanjar" first applied to itinerant entertainers at the Mughal court in Delhi, the chapter follows the story of North India's "vagrant" communities engaged as bards, spies, prostitutes and watchmen-cum-thieves for centuries and until this day. "Kanjar," a name of disrepute (today synonymous with "whore," "bastard," or "pimp"), stuck to communities that failed to attach themselves securely to reputable masters, while those succeeding in doing so had acquired more attractive monikers and position in life. While showing the enduring moral significance of asymmetrical bonds, this history also demonstrates the extraordinary historical lability of caste. 5How to Make and Eat a Goddess in Nine Days chapter abstractOnce a year Kanjars, like other Hindus, stage the festival of Navaratri, the nine days during which they celebrate their patron goddesses. For Kanjars, however, the festival carries special significance. As a people who lack suitable ties with human patrons, Kanjars valorize their attachments to goddesses, seeing them as the chief source of their collective self. Through the microcosm of the ritual process, and the minutiae of the exchange that takes place in its course, the chapter demonstrates the existential significance of patron-servant ties and the mutual constitution that these involve. Here, while the goddesses are manufactured by their Kanjar servants, Kanjars quite literally eat the goddesses, and so take on their substance, or khandān. The same logic of mutual constitution guides relations with human patrons. 6Who and Whose chapter abstractA masterless, unattached people in the eyes of others, Kanjars do have human patrons, who play a decisive role in ranking inside the community. The Kanjar caste is divided into those who work as bards, watchmen or thieves, and prostitutes. The segments of the caste are ranked, it is argued, not through moral judgments of their occupation, but on the basis of how tightly their work ties them to particular, precisely specified patrons. The more narrowly specified are these ties, the better the segment's standing. Kanjars involved in prostitution entertain an unrestricted array of patrons and so rank lowest of all, while the thieves with (actual or remembered) bonds to jajmāns among Rajputs, farmers, and the police rank the highest. What matters for social integrity is the integrity of social bonds. Here to be is to belong. 7The New Lords of Begun chapter abstractThis chapter takes readers into the thick of the electoral politics of Begun. Following two Kanjars, the Rao of Begun, and other political players during the 2008 state election campaign, the chapter shows how the hierarchical principles described in Begun shape the democratic process: orienting political strategies, inflecting voters' judgment, and structuring the rise and fall of political fortunes. The expectation to care for one's people, which lies at the heart of hierarchy as a moral logic of responsibility, gives rise to pervasive disappointment and gives meaning to a distinctive local sense of "corruption," as a failure of relations, rather than a failure of public office. Hierarchy emerges as the chief normative frame of local democracy. 8Every Man a King chapter abstractUnderstood as a moral logic of mutually beholden relations, hierarchy is not confined to provincial India. It is the basic idiom, it is argued here, of social ambition and hope, anywhere in the world where these are valued. While assertively egalitarian societies (mostly small-scale communities) curb personal ambitions, hierarchy—or difference that makes a difference—is fundamental to one's ability to improve one's life. In contemporary metropolitan imaginations, where equality is now (formally) the topmost sacrosanct value, hierarchical norms have not been supplanted, they have been transvalued. People have not been leveled, but have been leveled up through the hierarchical idioms of "respect" and "dignity," which have become the pivotal tropes of current global egalitarianism. Hierarchy is thus not only important in rural North India, but remains a powerful structuring force within stridently egalitarian moralities, the "egalitarian" social settings, which make, in Huey Long's words, "every man a king."

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Book SynopsisThe assertion that even institutions often viewed as abhorrent should be dispassionately understood motivates Arkotong Longkumer's pathbreaking ethnography of the Sangh Parivar, a family of organizations comprising the Hindu right. The Greater India Experiment counters the urge to explain away their ideas and actions as inconsequential by demonstrating their efforts to influence local politics and culture in Northeast India. Longkumer constructs a comprehensive understanding of Hindutva, an idea central to the establishment of a Hindu nation-state, by focusing on the Sangh Parivar's engagement with indigenous peoples in a region that has long resisted the "idea of India." Contextualizing their activities as a Hindutva "experiment" within the broader Indian political and cultural landscape, he ultimately paints a unique picture of the country today.Trade Review"This vivid ethnography of Hindu nationalist militants in Northeast India brings to life an encounter of contrary convictions. It explores how enthusiasts for the idea of a singular Indic identity feel forced to adapt their tactics in a region where this identity is soundly challenged. Subtle and surprising, this extraordinary study is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Hindu nationalist politics."—Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam"Arkotong Longkumer presents readers an original, impressive study on the religious foundations and anxieties of Indian nationalism. This is powerful work that intimately engages with issues of sovereignty, democracy, secularism, and culture in postcolonial India."—Sanjay Barbora, Tata Institute of Social Sciences"This is the first book accounting for the rise of Hindutva in India's Northeast. Longkumer's deeply ethnographical approach allows him to painstakingly analyze the modus operandi of the Hindu nationalist activists at the grassroots level in a part of India where ethnic tensions are mounting dangerously."—Christophe Jaffrelot, CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS and King's College London"Longkumer must be commended for writing a pioneering book on the protean forms of Hindutva today. His most striking contribution might be to remind us that even the most unsavoury forms of political imaginaries can become palatable over time through careful and creative forms of persuasion."—Uday Chandra, Pacific Affairs"Arkotong Longkumer'sThe Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeastis a well-reasoned warning on the rise of Hindutva in the northeast of India. Drawing from his PhD work, his continuing engagement with foot soldiers of the Sangh, and his keen observations, the book provides a rich ethnographic account of the twists and turns of the dominant forces tied to the Indian nation-state, in particular Hindutva. In doing so, he engages with the larger project ofAkhand Bharat, the notional [sic] entity that extends over several countries all the way from Afghanistanto southeast Asia."—Richard Kamei, The India Forum"This book is an essential read for scholars of Northeast India, Hindu nationalism, indigeneity, and beyond... Deeply grounded in a relational mode of analysis while engaging a range of humanistic social sciences, Longkumer vividly renders the territorial imaginaries and anxieties driving the most recent iteration of postcolonial expansionism in the region while also shining a light on an alternate landscape of desire and possibility."—Mabel Denzin Gergan, Politics, Religion, & Ideology"Whether it is of drawing spatial and temporal continuities with 'Bharatvarsh' via a retelling of myth and history, or of manufacturing a shared basis for being and becoming 'indigenous', or of identifying and exorcising elements that are deemed 'foreign' so that the 'indigene' may be claimed for Hindutva, or of appropriating and iconising personalities to fit within the 'nationalist' as well as the 'anti-foreign' narrative, [The Greater India Experiment] provides a rich description of how the Sangh Parivar carefully and creatively inserts itself into the crevices of life in the Northeast."—John Thomas, Biblio"[The Greater India Experiment] is significant in its multi-dimensional refletion of and on the complex socio-political and religious landscape of the Northeast... This book is a fine example of the mediating role that a rigorous ethnography can play in seriously engaging with conflicting political and religious worldviews."—Ishita Mahajan, Contemporary South Asia"The role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in redefining the cultures, education, and religious identities as well as histories of India, especially by aligning certain narratives and figures like Rani Gaidinliu to the Hindutva narrative, is not yet fully understood, especially in the predominantly tribal and Christian North East India.TheGreater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeastby Arkotong Longkumer is therefore a timely and welcome publication."—Tanka Bahadur Subba, Economic & Political Weekly"For anyone interested in how the BJP came to dominate all-India politics, this work is essential reading. For cultural anthropologists, it is a study in objectivity. Much more than a political and cultural study, however, Longkumer's book is a deep dive into an unfinished project. We do not know how it will turn out, and the writer makes no attempt to forecast the future. Still, he does give us all the information we need to keep track of the BJP's ongoing attempt to win the soul of India's Northeast."—Janet M. Powers, ReligionTable of Contents2. The Northeast and Time's Relentless Melt 3. Hindutva Worldings: Whose Way of Life? 4. Prophecy and the Hindu State 5. Christian Hindu and Nationalizing Hindutva 6. Rani Gaidinliu: A Semiotic Challenge to the Nation-State 7. Citizenship, Elections, and the Bharatiya Janata Party 8. Hindutva Becoming and the Greater India Experiment

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Book SynopsisBetween 1946 and 1952, the British Raj, the world's largest colony, was transformed into the Republic of India, the world's largest democracy. Independence, the Constituent Assembly Debates, the founding of the Republic, and India's first universal franchise general election occurred amidst the violence and displacement of the Partition, the uncertain and contested integration of the princely states, and the forceful quelling of internal dissent. This book investigates the ways in which these violent conjunctures constituted a postcolonial regime of sovereignty and shaped the historical development of democracy in India at the foundational moment of decolonization and national independence. From Raj to Republic presents a multifaceted history of sovereignty and democracy in India by linking together the princely state of Hyderabad's attempt to establish itself as an independent sovereign state, the partitioning of Punjab, and the communist-led revolutionary movement in the southern Indian region of Telangana. A national, territorial, republican, and liberal polity in India emerged out of a violent and contested process that forged new power relations and opened up historical trajectories with lasting consequences for modern India. Trade Review"A brilliantly original account of India's Partition. Refusing to confine Partition to the remaking of borders and religious identities, Purushotham places its violence alongside other conflicts to argue that independent India fashioned its sovereignty by their forcible assimilation into a nation that no longer owed its authority to the colonial state."—Faisal Devji, University of Oxford"Purushotham vividly reconstructs the anguish and violence that preoccupied the early democratic republic as it emerged from under the debris of British imperial rule. This is a provocative and compelling new study of the chaotic history surrounding the reorganization of regional power and statehood in post-Partition India."—Sudipta Sen, University of California, Davis"Throughout the book, Purushotham demonstrates that he is a skilled historian. His work is grounded in the archive, and he capitalises on the fact that files from the Ministry of States at the National Archives of India have been opened, providing a rich picture of political developments over the years of independence, partition and the integration of the princely states. In addition, he deploys materials from state archives, non-official institutions, newspapers, published reports and memoirs to good effect."—Taylor Sherman, H-Soz-Kult"[A]n empirically and theoretically rich account of the constitutive role of violence in the forging of India's new republic. This book will be particularly useful for scholars interested in this period of South Asian history, and I would also enthusiastically recommend it to those concerned with theories and ideas of sovereignty, democracy, citizenship, and violence more generally."—Oliver Godsmark, Pacific AffairsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Sovereignty, Violence, and Democracy, 1946<->52 1. Azad Hyderabad in the Age of Empire and Nationalism 2. The Battle for Hyderabad 3. Foundational Violence: State and Society in Partitioned Punjab 4. Nation and Narration: Testimony, Citizenship, and Sovereignty 5. An Indian Yan'an: Telangana, 1946<->52 6. The Camp and the Citizen Epilogue: From Raj to Republic, 1946<->52

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Book SynopsisThe Taliban made piety a business of the state, and thereby intervened in the daily lives and social interactions of Afghan women. Pious Peripheries examines women's resistance through groundbreaking fieldwork at a women's shelter in Kabul, home to runaway wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters of the Taliban. Whether running to seek marriage or divorce, enduring or escaping abuse, or even accused of singing sexually explicit songs in public, "promiscuous" women challenge the status quo—and once marked as promiscuous, women have few resources. This book provides a window into the everyday struggles of Afghan women as they develop new ways to challenge historical patriarchal practices. Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi explores how women negotiate gendered power mechanisms, notably those of Islam and Pashtunwali. Sometimes defined as an honor code, Pashtunwali is a discursive and material practice that women embody through praying, fasting, oral and written poetry, and participation in rituals of hospitality and refuge. In taking ownership of Pashtunwali and Islamic knowledge, in both textual and oral forms, women create a new supportive community, finding friendship and solidarity in the margins of Afghan society. So doing, these women redefine the meanings of equality, honor, piety, and promiscuity in Afghanistan.Trade Review"Pious Peripheries brings the reader into a diverse and opinionated world of Afghan women thrown together only because they all refused to abide by gendered social norms. Sonia Ahsan's willingness to step aside and allow these remarkable women to speak for themselves is a tremendous strength." -- Thomas Barfield * Boston University *"The extraordinary achievement of Pious Peripheries lies in Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi's astute explanation of how Afghan women exercise agency despite their subjugation to often brutal male authority. In this stunning ethnography, she skillfully shows how courageous women navigate the dynamics of piety and promiscuity to achieve seemingly inaccessible freedoms." -- Michael Herzfeld * Harvard University *"Pious Peripheries offers a compelling challenge to the idea that Afghan women need 'saving.' Via a highly original and intrepid ethnography, Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi reveals how, from the margins of Afghan society, a community of formidable women is fashioning their own distinctive claims about Islam, Pashtun identity, sexuality, and the state." -- Robert D. Crews * Stanford University *"Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi's Pious Peripheries disrupts conventional categories of piety and secularism to bring to light the immense resourcefulness of Afghan women living at society's margins. Erudite and deeply empathic, with lucid vignettes that will stick in your memory, this is a must-read for anyone interested in feminism, Islam, and the tormented history of Afghanistan." -- Julie Billaud * Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies *"Boldly and poetically defying patriarchy, the runaway women of Pious Peripheries become the surprising harbingers of an emancipatory politics in war-torn Afghanistan. Immortalized by Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi's brave and soulfully crafted ethnography, these women's nomadic existence shatters myopic notions of religious identity and expands our sense of where reworlding comes from." -- João Biehl * Princeton University *"For practicing traditionally male-ascribed roles of hospitality, refuge, guest hosting, justice, friendship, love, and courage, Ahsan describes the women (through the Pashto poetic tradition of landay) as using their agentive action to reimagine what is legitimate and authorized and what could be. Most important, these women demonstrate that promiscuity is not the opposite of piety or morality but the potential basis for constructing new and different worlds for women. Recommended." -- B. Tavakolian * CHOICE *"Pious Peripheries is the model of engaged scholarship based on ethnographic research among marginalized groups... The diverse experiences of these runaway women reveal the confluence of concerns about subtle feminist and religious expressions and their yearning to reinvent a new sense of belonging inside the shelter system." -- Joseph Tse-Hei Lee * Acta Via Serica *

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Book SynopsisFrom the 1920s to the eve of the Pacific War in 1941, more than 50,000 young second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) embarked on transpacific journeys to the Japanese Empire, putting an ocean between themselves and pervasive anti-Asian racism in the American West. Born U.S. citizens but treated as unwelcome aliens, this contingent of Japanese Americans—one in four U.S.-born Nisei—came in search of better lives but instead encountered a world shaped by increasingly volatile relations between the U.S. and Japan. Based on transnational and bilingual research in the United States and Japan, Michael R. Jin recuperates the stories of this unique group of American emigrants at the crossroads of U.S. and Japanese empire. From the Jim Crow American West to the Japanese colonial frontiers in Asia, and from internment camps in America to Hiroshima on the eve of the atomic bombing, these individuals redefined ideas about home, identity, citizenship, and belonging as they encountered multiple social realities on both sides of the Pacific. Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless examines the deeply intertwined histories of Asian exclusion in the United States, Japanese colonialism in Asia, and volatile geopolitical changes in the Pacific world that converged in the lives of Japanese American migrants.Trade Review"For far too long, Nisei with life experiences in Japan have been written out of Japanese American history. Michael R. Jin rescues them from the historical oblivion perpetuated by the nationalist narrative of singular loyalty. Based on in-depth bilingual research, Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless gives much deserved complexities to the experiences of forgotten Nisei beyond the label of 'disloyal' or helpless victims. A transnational history at its best!" —Eiichiro Azuma, author of In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire"Michael R. Jin has transformed Nisei transnationalism from anecdote to experience. This is an impressive achievement." —Lon Kurashige, author ofTwo Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States"Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is an important contribution to the fields of immigration and Asian American history due in no small part to Jin's polished writing skills. His combination of clear historical description, context, and analysis with just the right amount of sociological and interpretive language helps to make book both readable and informative.... Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is not simply a study of a marginalized immigrant group 'caught between two worlds.' It portrays a diverse people who had to exercise considerable initiative to navigate multiple social, legal, national, and geopolitical contexts."—John E. Van Sant, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"[Jin] has produced a book that is dramatically innovative in terms of its topic and one that is exceedingly well-written, astutely documented, and deserving of reaching a wide audience of engaged readers."—Art Hansen, Nichi Bei News"While Nisei... have been the subject of numerous studies, those almost entirely treat Nisei as Americans in the United States and fail to address the fact that a noninsignificant number of them had transpacific experiences in the transwar period. By making this latter group his focus, Jin not only works to fill in the gap that exists, but he also presents an interesting framework that offers an alternative to the nation-bounded one that so typically defines modern history. In addition to a reconceptualization of what it meant to be Japanese American during this time, he also offers an important discussion around how these figures are remembered in both the United States and Japan and what the stakes have been around memory making and memorializing."—Emily Anderson, The Journal of Japanese Studies"In offering an alternative way of conceptualizing both diaspora and migration, [Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless] opens the door to new avenues of inquiry and points to new areas of study, including questions that could also be asked about others who participated in an extended transpacific diaspora that was a product not just of two empires.... The potential inherent in the inter-imperial approach that Jin utilizes, in short, is evident not only in what it reveals about the Japanese American diaspora that is his focus but in the fact that it could be usefully extended also to take other imperial networks into account within both a transpacific and a broader worldwide context."—Andrea Geiger, Diplomatic HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Making of a Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific 1. From Citizens to Emigrants: The Japanese American Transnational Generation in the U.S.-Japan Borderlands 2. From Citizens to the Stateless: Migration, Exclusion, and Nisei Citizenship 3. From Citizens to Enemy Aliens: The "Kibei Problem" and Japanese American Loyalty During World War II 4. Beyond Two Homelands: Kibei Transnationalism in the Making of a Japanese American Diaspora 5. Between Two Empires: Nisei Citizenship and Loyalty in the Pacific Theater 6. Buried Wounds of the Secret Sufferers: Memory, History, and the Japanese American Survivors in the Nuclear Pacific Epilogue:

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Book SynopsisThroughout history, speech and storytelling have united communities and mobilized movements. Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern examines this phenomenon in Tamil-speaking South India over the last three centuries, charting the development of political oratory and its influence on society. Supplementing his narrative with thorough archival work, Bernard Bate begins with Protestant missionaries' introduction of the sermonic genre and takes the reader through its local vernacularization. What originally began as a format of religious speech became an essential political infrastructure used to galvanize support for new social imaginaries, from Indian independence to Tamil nationalism. Completed by a team of Bate's colleagues, this ethnography marries linguistic anthropology to performance studies and political history, illuminating new geographies of belonging in the modern era.Trade Review"A brilliant demonstration of how speech genres can shape history, Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern traces the emergence of political oratory in South India, calling new publics into being and driving the rise of the Tamil modern. Bernard Bate's new book is a foundational, richly documented contribution to the study of comparative modernities, South Asian history, and political anthropology, securing his legacy as a worthy heir to Weber and Durkheim in the elucidation of modern social and political formations."—Richard Bauman, Indiana University, Bloomington"This book—assembled by a remarkable group of his colleagues—is a tribute to Bate's monumental effort to place Tamil oratory in its civilizational, genealogical, and comparative context. Bate's argument about Protestant sermonizing as the key to the birth of the modern political subject in Tamil country is a major breakthrough in the study of the linkage of modern politics to poetics and religious oratory."—Arjun Appadurai, New York University"Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern succeeds as the work of an academic community that is motivated by the desire to see that their friend and colleague's research receives the academic reception they believe is its due. It also stands as a monument to the scholarship of an original and gifted anthropologist... It is now for other scholars to take up the trail that Bate has blazed."—L. Michael Ratnapalan, Situations

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Book SynopsisThe popularity of pornography is predicated on the idea that those participating have given their consent. That is what allows the porn industry to dominate the media economy today, generating staggering sums of money. Looking at behind-the-scenes negotiations and abuses in Japan's adult video industry, author Akiko Takeyama challenges this pervasive notion with the idea of "involuntary consent." This phenomenon, she argues, is ubiquitous, not only in the porn industry, but in our everyday lives. And yet modern society, built on beliefs of autonomy, free choice, and equality, renders it all but invisible. Japan's AV industry alone generates a conservatively estimated $5 billion a year. In recent years, it has drawn public attention, and criticism, because of a series of arrests and trials of former talent agency owners and executives. This led to a report calling for a systematic investigation of the industry over the issue of "forced performance." This report has had ripple effects beyond Japan, as the US Department of State subsequently also cited forced performance as a human rights violation. Using this moment as an entry point, Takeyama argues that contract-making writ large is based on fundamentally dualistic terms, implying consent and pleasure on the one hand, and coercion and pain on the other. Because sex workers are employed on a contract basis, they fall outside of the purview of standard labor and employment laws. As a result, they are frequently pressured to comply with what production companies (mostly run by men) expect and often demand. In this ethnography of Japan's porn industry, Akiko Takeyama investigates the paradox of involuntary consent in modern liberal democratic societies. Taking consent as her starting point, Takeyama illustrates the nuances of contract making and the legal structures, or lack thereof, that govern Japan's adult video and sex entertainment industries.Trade Review"Takeyama elegantly sifts through and complicates the seemingly straightforward, transparent, and transactional nature of relations in this industry by arguing for what she calls 'involuntary consent.' In doing so, she is able to sketch the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in Japanese porn's various interactions. Amidst the emergence of porn studies, this book exemplifies the value of an incisive anthropological inquiry, a sensitive eye, and a compassionate yet trenchant analysis. The book provides a valuable case study that can pave the way to comparative, transnational and global scholarly inquiries into porn industries."—Martin F. Manalansan, University of Minnesota"Involuntary Consent is not only a fine-grained ethnography of porn work in Japan, but also a brilliant analysis of the increasingly ambiguous nature of the work contract that Takeyama astutely theorizes as symptomatic of late liberalism in crisis. Scholars who do not work narrowly on labor, pornography, or Japan will also find this book relevant."—Gabriella Lukacs, University of Pittsburgh"Offering the concept of 'involuntary consent,' Takeyama masterfully taps into the space once illegible, that which falls in between consent and coercion. She uses the Japanese adult video industry, a compelling work environment to examine in its own right, as a case study. In a world where we are fixated with "consent" and are taught to make sure to express it or obtain it from others, we have yet to critically unpack it. This is why Takeyama's work is necessary and important. It is theoretically influential, engagingly written, and will easily become a classic. A must read."—L. Ayu Saraswati, author of Scarred: A Feminist Journey Through Pain"A provocative and insightful addition to anti-porn vs. sex-positive feminist debates."—Publishers Weekly"In this extraordinary book, Takeyama pulls the reader into a billion-dollar industry that is often hidden in plain sight, using Japanese pornography to theorize the intersection of gender, labor, power, and consent. With vivid and empathetic writing, she sidesteps any simplistic notion of exploitation or empowerment, and instead describes complex social structures that simultaneously promise and foreclose opportunities. Involuntary Consent provides a brilliant and recognizable portrait of laborers seeking opportunities from compromised positions. Takeyama's balance of insightful analysis and evocative ethnographic writing are a stunning achievement."—Allison Alexy, University of Michigan"Involuntary Consent offers a sharp analysis of the labor politics of Japan's adult video industry that pushes far beyond stale pornography debates centered on questions of representation. Rigorously researched and a highly compelling read, the book challenges dualistic understandings of coercion and consent in liberal democratic societies and introduces fresh questions of gender and sexuality into discussions of precarious labor."—Lieba Faier, University of California, Los Angeles"Choice and consent are often pitted against force and violence in debates and studies about sex work. In this study, Akiko Takeyama reminds us that this binarism misses the point. Through ethnographic research amongst adult video performers in Japan, Involuntary Consent skillfully demonstrates that individual decisions and choices are inseparable from contexts of structural inequality and liberal contractual relations. This is an invaluable study, not only for nuancing and complicating the intersections of coercion and consent/ structure and agency but also for delivering profound insights into the muddle of gendered sexual labour in the pornography industry. An important new contribution to the field of global sex work studies."—Kamala Kempadoo, York University"Involuntary Consent is an ethnographic tour de force. Takeyama offers a masterful and nuanced analysis of consent within Japan's adult video industry, drawing from voices of AV performers, agents, directors, videographers and fans. Anyone interested in voluntary versus forced labor debates, or with legal illusions of rational choice, must read this book. It provides critical insights about liberalism, precarity, and gendered compromises."—Nicole Constable, University of Pittsburgh"This monograph's worth of thick anthropological description is both enlightening and appalling. In the end,Involuntary Consent is at its best when it shows howunremarkable the sex work of the AV industry is—just another lousy gig in a society intractably structured by sexism, widening economic inequality, and neoliberal democracy where no truly good options for individuals exist in the first place. Highly recommended."—C. Brienza, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Involuntary Consent 2. The Actress 3. The Management of Girls 4. The Industry 5. The Male Fan Epilogue

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Book SynopsisFrom its rise in the 1830s to its pinnacle in the 1930s, the opium trade was a guiding force in the Chinese political economy. Opium money was inextricably bound up in local, national, and imperial finances, and the people who piloted the trade were integral to the fabric of Chinese society. In this book, Peter Thilly narrates the dangerous lives and shrewd business operations of opium traffickers in southeast China, situating them within a global history of capitalism. By tracing the evolution of the opium trade from clandestine offshore agreements in the 1830s, to multi-million dollar prohibition bureau contracts in the 1930s, Thilly demonstrates how the modernizing Chinese state was infiltrated, manipulated, and profoundly transformed by opium profiteers. Opium merchants carried the drug by sea, over mountains, and up rivers, with leading traders establishing monopolies over trade routes and territories and assembling "opium armies" to protect their businesses. Over time, and as their ranks grew, these organizations became more bureaucratized and militarized, mimicking—and then eventually influencing, infiltrating, or supplanting—the state. Through the chaos of revolution, warlordism, and foreign invasion, opium traders diligently expanded their power through corruption, bribery, and direct collaboration with the state. Drug traders mattered—not only in the seedy ways in which they have been caricatured but also crucially as shadowy architects of statecraft and China's evolution on the world stage.Trade Review"Despite a vast literature on its eponymous wars, the social history of opium remains largely untold. Thilly's book shows us opium as crop, as commodity, as object of regulation, and as the source of great fortunes. We see the drug touching the lives of a huge range of people: farmers, smugglers, bureaucrats and 'opium kings.' It's a fascinating story, well-told, and rich in contemporary overtones."—Michael Szonyi, Harvard University"Peter Thilly's meticulous study of opium smuggling networks in coastal China is an invaluable addition to the rapidly growing literature on the nineteenth century opium trade, and it throws much-needed light on some under-researched aspects of the connections between drugs and capitalism."—Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies"Using an expansive array of evidence drawn together from collections on three continents, including rare materials from Chinese-language archives, Thilly offers insights into the everyday mechanics of what was largely an illegal and morally reprehensible business. His emphasis on how this trade worked sets the book apart from the many previous political and military histories of opium in China. It is a refreshing and valuable contribution to this literature, as well as a landmark history of illicit enterprise in Asia."—Peter Gibson, Asian Studies Review"Thilly takes a deep dive into the drug history of southern Fujian Province from the early 19th century up to the moment all drug commerce was wiped out in China with the Communist victory of 1949, weaving together a saga of narcotics, politics and commerce that involved colonial traders, warlords, gangsters, politicians and the vast network of Fujianese merchants, who operated the mightiest trade networks in East and South China Seas."—David Frazier, Taipei TimesTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Opium Business in Chinese and World History 1. Local Foundations, 1832–1839 2. Negotiated Illegality, 1843–1860 3. Drug Money and the Fiscal-Military State, 1857–1906 4. "Opium Kings" and Tax Farmers in the Age of Prohibition, 1906–1938 5. New Spatialities in the Global Drug Trade, 1890s–1940s 6. Opium and the Frontier of Japanese Power in South China, 1895–1945 Conclusion: Following the Money, Today and in the Past

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Book SynopsisWhile popular trends, cuisine, and long-standing political tension have made Korea familiar in some ways to a vast English-speaking world, its recorded history of some two millennia remains unfamiliar to most. Korea: A History addresses general readers, providing an up-to-date, accessible overview of Korean history from antiquity to the present. Eugene Y. Park draws on original-language sources and the up-to-date synthesis of East Asian and Western-language scholarship to provide an insightful account. This book expands still-limited English-language discussions on pre-modern Korea, offering rigorous and compelling analyses of Korea's modernization while discussing daily life, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ history, and North Korean history not always included in Korea surveys. Overall, Park is able to break new ground on questions and debates that have been central to the field of Korean studies since its inception.Trade Review"This long-awaited book demonstrates the author's broad expertise, and incorporates recent discoveries of Korean history. Strongly recommended both for readers interested in an introduction to Korean history and for specialists who want to update their knowledge."—Yumi Moon, Stanford University"This book offers a sweeping yet detailed overview of the Korean past. Park's periodization (classical, post-classical, early modern, and late modern) is an innovative interpretation and succeeds in making the Korean narrative relevant to comparative world history."—James B. Lewis, University of Oxford"With discussions on numerous aspects of cultural and economic history—including religion, education, gender, architecture, food, and popular culture—this comprehensive but accessible book is a welcome corrective to earlier work that tended to focus on institutional, intellectual, and political history of Korea as a 'tributary state' in the sinocentric order."—Ross King, University of British Columbia"Korea... is full of details and the writing flows and provides a sweeping overview of Korea from prehistoric times to the modern era, enabling readers to understand and appreciate Korea as a civilization in its own right with admirable cultural, economic and political achievements, rather than as an obscure entity nestled between and fought over by bigger neighbors."—Hilton Yip, Asian Review of Books"Park is one of the few experts in premodern Korean history in the West, and he gives the long premodern past the attention it fully deserves.... The writing is accessible, and the book is an excellent reference for lay readers, college students, and professional historians. Highly recommended."—M. J. Wert, CHOICE"Korea: A History is another essential interdisciplinary work not only for the Korean Studies community but also for wider audiences, transferring a clear-cut and detailed account of the peninsula's history. It is an excellent historical textbook about Korea's political, economic, and social background from its own unique historiographical point of view."—Gabor Sebo, Pacific Affairs"Park has succeeded in writing an innovative and informative overview of Korean history. He has done so by drawing from 'original-language sources and the up-to-date synthesis of East Asian and Western-language scholarship.'"—Jaymin Kim, Acta Koreana

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Book SynopsisChina is unique in modern world history. No other rising power has experienced China's turbulent history in its relations with neighbors and Western countries. Its sheer size dominates the region. With leader Xi Jinping's political authority unmatched, Xi's sense of mission to restore what he believes is China's natural position as a great power drives the current course of the nation's foreign policy. When China was weak, it was subordinated to others. Now, China is strong, and it wants others to subordinate, at least on the issues involving what it regards as core national interests. What are the primary forces and how have these forces driven China's reemergence to global power? This book weaves together complex events, processes, and players to provide a historically in-depth, conceptually comprehensive, and up-to-date analysis of Chinese foreign policy transition since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), arguing that transformational leaders with new visions and political wisdom to make their visions prevail are the game changers. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping are transformational leaders who have charted unique courses of Chinese foreign policy in the quest for security, prosperity, and power. With the ultimate decision-making authority on national security and strategic policies, these leaders have made political use of ideational forces, tailoring bureaucratic institutions, exploiting the international power distribution, and responding strategically to the international norms and rules to advance their foreign policy agendas in the path of China's ascendance. Trade Review"Suisheng Zhao has written the authoritative account of how Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping each conceived and executed three radically different eras of Chinese foreign policy. The Dragon Roars Back shows exactly how Xi is problematic for America and the West, in his harboring grievances, holding grandiose visions for the future, and negligence of the dangers his quest entails."—David M. Lampton, Johns Hopkins—SAIS"The Dragon Roars Back is a masterful exploration into the inner dynamics that have driven China's international interactions since 1949. Suisheng Zhao places China's leaders at the center of his analysis—and perceptively reveals the ideational, cultural, bureaucratic, and contextual factors shaping each leaders' policy preferences. A pathbreaking study."—David Shambaugh, the George Washington University, and author of China's Leaders"Suisheng Zhao has made an enormous contribution to the literature on Chinese foreign policy. China is indeed roaring back, and the issue of how the West responds will shape the policy landscape for decades to come. We need to understand China's policy history far better than we do, and Zhao's scholarship puts all who read this on a far better course to do so."—Christopher R. Hill, Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia/Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State"China's foreign policy over the seventy-plus years of the People's Republic has gone through transformations so remarkable that structural theories cannot explain them. In this deeply informed yet readable study, Suisheng Zhao shows that the twists and turns in China's relationship to the world were imposed by the powerful visions of three transformational leaders - Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping. Understanding how these leaders saw the world and how they tried to change it is essential if we are to understand where Xi Jinping intends to lead China."—Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University"By offering a fresh perspective on Chinese foreign policy, Zhao's framework moves beyond the overemphasis on structural factors in realism, the attribution of behaviour solely to authoritarianism in the regime-type theory, and the focus on bureaucratic politics in institutionalism."—Chi Zhang, The China Quarterly"Zhao's overview of Chinese foreign policy serves as a useful introduction to that history for readers otherwise unacquainted with it. Recommended."—P. Lorge, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Mao Zedong's Revolutionary Diplomacy: Keeping the Wolves from the Door 2. Deng Xiaoping's Developmental Diplomacy: Biding for China's Time 3. Xi Jinping's Big Power Diplomacy: Showing China's Sword 4. Power of the Past over the Present: The Imperial Glory versus the Century of Humiliation 5. Defining National Interests: State versus Popular Nationalism 6. The Party-State Hierarchy: Paramount Leaders versus Institutions 7. Searching for China's Place in the Sun: International Distribution of Power 8. From Revolutionary State to Revisionist Stakeholder: The World Order and Globalization 9. Conclusion: The Mandate of Heaven? China's Quest and Peril

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Book SynopsisDelhi, one of the world's largest cities, has faced momentous challenges—mass migration, competing governing authorities, controversies over citizenship, and communal violence. To understand the contemporary plight of India's capital city, this book revisits one of the most dramatic episodes in its history, telling the story of how the city was remade by the twin events of partition and independence. Treating decolonization as a process that unfolded from the late 1930s into the mid-1950, Rotem Geva traces how India and Pakistan became increasingly territorialized in the imagination and practice of the city's residents, how violence and displacement were central to this process, and how tensions over belonging and citizenship lingered in the city and the nation. She also chronicles the struggle, after 1947, between the urge to democratize political life in the new republic and the authoritarian legacy of colonial rule, augmented by the imperative to maintain law and order in the face of the partition crisis. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Geva reveals the period from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s as a twilight time, combining features of imperial framework and independent republic. Geva places this liminality within the broader global context of the dissolution of multiethnic and multireligious empires into nation-states and argues for an understanding of state formation as a contest between various lines of power, charting the links between different levels of political struggle and mobilization during the churning early years of independence in Delhi.Trade Review"This elegantly written book sheds fresh light on issues of violence, migration, citizenship, and the politics of self-expression. It enriches both the narrativization of Partition and historical understanding of India's contemporary emergence as an ethnic democracy."—Ian Talbot, University of Southampton"In this innovative new history, Rotem Geva explores the sweeping changes that swept over Delhi as a result of India's independence and partition violence in 1947. The millenarian visions that shaped both the Indian nationalist movement and the movement for Pakistan provide a backdrop to the on-the-ground changes wrought by migration, struggles over property, and new forms of religious identity politics and state-making—which transformed the city forever."—David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University"Rotem Geva supplies a concise, perceptive history of 'how the twin events of partition and independence remade Delhi.'"—Michael M. Rosen, The Federalist"For geographers, there is much to cherish, admire, and be inspired by here. Though never absent of framings drawn from subaltern or postcolonial theory, this is an empirically grounded volume which takes us deep into the urban geographies of India's capital. These geographies are material and social, but also literary, journalistic, and emotional."—Stephen Legg, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography"The affective structure of [Delhi Reborn] interweaves disparate or distant events (like the violence of 1857, the partition, or the years of the Emergency) through memories and reportage to situate the memories in a longer lineage of violence. The beauty of this long-term view lies in the fact that instead of framing it as a teleological account of the atrocities that the Muslim community has had to endure in Delhi, it shows how despite the rampant and recurring efforts to displace and hurt families, resistance to these efforts never desist, and take up new forms."—Aprajita Sarcar, H-Soz-KultTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Dreaming Independence in the Colonial Capital 2. Partition Violence Shatters Utopia 3. An Uncertain State Confronts "Evacuee Property" 4. Claiming the City and Nation in the Urdu Press 5. Citizens' Rights: Delhi's Law and Order Legacy Epilogue

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Book SynopsisDelhi, one of the world's largest cities, has faced momentous challenges—mass migration, competing governing authorities, controversies over citizenship, and communal violence. To understand the contemporary plight of India's capital city, this book revisits one of the most dramatic episodes in its history, telling the story of how the city was remade by the twin events of partition and independence. Treating decolonization as a process that unfolded from the late 1930s into the mid-1950, Rotem Geva traces how India and Pakistan became increasingly territorialized in the imagination and practice of the city's residents, how violence and displacement were central to this process, and how tensions over belonging and citizenship lingered in the city and the nation. She also chronicles the struggle, after 1947, between the urge to democratize political life in the new republic and the authoritarian legacy of colonial rule, augmented by the imperative to maintain law and order in the face of the partition crisis. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Geva reveals the period from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s as a twilight time, combining features of imperial framework and independent republic. Geva places this liminality within the broader global context of the dissolution of multiethnic and multireligious empires into nation-states and argues for an understanding of state formation as a contest between various lines of power, charting the links between different levels of political struggle and mobilization during the churning early years of independence in Delhi.Trade Review"This elegantly written book sheds fresh light on issues of violence, migration, citizenship, and the politics of self-expression. It enriches both the narrativization of Partition and historical understanding of India's contemporary emergence as an ethnic democracy."—Ian Talbot, University of Southampton"In this innovative new history, Rotem Geva explores the sweeping changes that swept over Delhi as a result of India's independence and partition violence in 1947. The millenarian visions that shaped both the Indian nationalist movement and the movement for Pakistan provide a backdrop to the on-the-ground changes wrought by migration, struggles over property, and new forms of religious identity politics and state-making—which transformed the city forever."—David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University"Rotem Geva supplies a concise, perceptive history of 'how the twin events of partition and independence remade Delhi.'"—Michael M. Rosen, The Federalist"For geographers, there is much to cherish, admire, and be inspired by here. Though never absent of framings drawn from subaltern or postcolonial theory, this is an empirically grounded volume which takes us deep into the urban geographies of India's capital. These geographies are material and social, but also literary, journalistic, and emotional."—Stephen Legg, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography"The affective structure of [Delhi Reborn] interweaves disparate or distant events (like the violence of 1857, the partition, or the years of the Emergency) through memories and reportage to situate the memories in a longer lineage of violence. The beauty of this long-term view lies in the fact that instead of framing it as a teleological account of the atrocities that the Muslim community has had to endure in Delhi, it shows how despite the rampant and recurring efforts to displace and hurt families, resistance to these efforts never desist, and take up new forms."—Aprajita Sarcar, H-Soz-KultTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Dreaming Independence in the Colonial Capital 2. Partition Violence Shatters Utopia 3. An Uncertain State Confronts "Evacuee Property" 4. Claiming the City and Nation in the Urdu Press 5. Citizens' Rights: Delhi's Law and Order Legacy Epilogue

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Book SynopsisThe rural county of Poyang, lying in northern Jiangxi Province, goes largely unmentioned in the annals of modern Chinese history. Yet records from the Public Security Bureau archive hold a treasure trove of data on the every day interactions between locals and the law. Drawing on these largely overlooked resources, Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman follows four criminal cases that together uniquely illuminate the dawning years of the People's Republic. Using a unique casefile approach, Brian DeMare recounts stories of a Confucian scholar who found himself allied with bandits and secret society members; a farmer who murdered a cadre; an evil tyrant who exploited religious traditions to avoid prosecution; and a merchant accused of a crime he did not commit. Each case is a tremendous tale, complete with memorable characters, plot twists, and drama. And while all depict the enemies of New China, each also reveals details of village life during this most pivotal moment of recent Chinese history. Together, the narratives bring rural regime change to life, illustrating how the Chinese Communist Party cemented its authority through mass political campaigns, careful legal investigations, and sheer patience. Balancing storytelling with historical inquiry, this book is at once a grassroots view of rural China's legal system and its application to apparent counterrevolutionaries, and a lesson in archival research itself.Trade Review"Written in a lively and accessible style, each chapter presents a skillfully crafted and entertaining narrative of events triggered by the PRC party-state's efforts to intervene in one Chinese local society during the early 1950s. A valuable addition to the field."—Micah Muscolino, University of California, San Diego"Through masterful and transparent close readings of criminal cases from the Chinese countryside,Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman models the practice of archival research as detective work. The book not only provides a lively portrait of a period and place in contemporary Chinese history, but also offers a marvelous introduction to the historian's craft for student researchers regardless of field."—Tobie Meyer-Fong, Johns Hopkins University"In this Le Carré-esquely titled gem, DeMare exploits a unique cache of criminal case files to document the impact that regime change had on the lives of four individuals suspected of 'counterrevolution.' Carefully crafted with an impressive capacity to develop narrative scope and intensity, the outcome is remarkable and riveting grassroots history at its best."—Michael Schoenhals, Lund UniversityTable of ContentsThe Setting: The County by the Lake 1. Casefile 1: Bandits, Big Swords, and the Rebel Scholar 2. Casefile 2: Big Tiger, Tyrant of the Mountain 3. Casefile 3: The Case of the Bodhisattva Society 4. Casefile 4: Merchant Zha Goes to Court A Few More Words in Closing

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Book SynopsisThis book offers the first social and intellectual history of Dalit performance of Tamasha—a popular form of public, secular, traveling theater in Maharashtra—and places Dalit Tamasha women who represented the desire and disgust of the patriarchal society at the heart of modernization in twentieth century India. Drawing on ethnographies, films, and untapped archival materials, Shailaja Paik illuminates how Tamasha was produced and shaped through conflicts over caste, gender, sexuality, and culture. Dalit performers, activists, and leaders negotiated the violence and stigma in Tamasha as they struggled to claim manuski (human dignity) and transform themselves from ashlil (vulgar) to assli (authentic) and manus (human beings). Building on and departing from the Ambedkar-centered historiography and movement-focused approach of Dalit studies, Paik examines the ordinary and everydayness in Dalit lives. Ultimately, she demonstrates how the choices that communities make about culture speak to much larger questions about inclusion, inequality, and structures of violence of caste within Indian society, and opens up new approaches for the transformative potential of Dalit politics and the global history of gender, sexuality, and the human.Trade Review"In this brilliant original account of women in Tamasha, Shailaja Paik argues that the extractive sexual economy of caste rests on their desired as well as derided labor. Drawing on rare archival sources and careful ethnography, she calls attention to how the women negotiate stigma, especially in relation to a Dalit emancipatory politics, embarrassed by their 'sexual excess.'"—V. Geetha, author of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India"Paik not only breaks new ground but also builds a foundation. Combining ethnography, archival work, and critical readings of key thinkers, she offers a dazzling interdisciplinary exploration of how Tamasha serves as a metonym for the ways gender, caste, and power construct identity in caste-patriarchal society. This work is one of the many reasons Paik is at the forefront of Dalit feminist studies and why she is one of the most innovative historians of South Asia writing today."—Christian Lee Novetzke, University of Washington"Paik repeatedly identifies herself as a feminist Dalit and attributes this to her unprecedented anthropological access to, and understanding of, contemporary Tamasha artists. She also draws on Marathi-language lyrics, articles, advertisements, and other sources never before available in English. Recommended."—M. H. Fisher, CHOICE"While demonstrating the 'agency' of Tamashe women as a product of complex, contingent historical processes, Paik makes a significant argument about the mutually constitutive binaries of touchability/untouchability, brahmin/untouchable, ashlil/aslee, housewife/prostitute, among others. In doing so, she offers conceptual resources for Indian feminist and Dalit thought to deal with the impasse of the 'prostitute' question. Equally important, Paik develops her earlier emphasis on contingency, context and rupture of Dalit women's agency to illuminate the contingency and temporality of Ambedkar's thinking around manuski, family and caste labour and the material limits that history imposes on its actualisation."—A. Suneetha, Contributions to Indian SociologyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Performing Precarity: Sex-Gender-Caste/Ashlil-Manuski-Assli 1. Policing Dalits and Producing Tamasha in Maharashtra 2. Constructing Caste, Desire, and Danger 3. Ambedkar, Manuski, and Reconstructing Dalit Life-Worlds, 1920-1956 4. Singing Resistance and Rehumanizing Poetics-Politics, Post-1930 5. Claiming Authenticity and Becoming Marathi, Post-1960 6. Forging New Futures and Measures of Humanity Conclusion.: Queering the "Vulgar": Tamasha without Women

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