Tsunayoshi (1646-1709), the fifth Tokugawa shogun, is one of the most notorious figures in Japanese history. Viewed by many as a tyrant, his policies were deemed eccentric, extreme, and unorthodox. His Laws of Compassion, which made the maltreatment of dogs an offense punishable by death, earned him the nickname Dog Shogun, by which he is still popularly known today. However, Tsunayoshi's rule coincides with the famed Genroku era, a period of unprecedented cultural growth and prosperity that Japan would not experience again until the mid-twentieth century. It was under Tsunayoshi that for the first time in Japanese history considerable numbers of ordinary townspeople were in a financial position to acquire an education and enjoy many of the amusements previously reserved for the ruling elite. Based on a masterful re-examination of primary sources, this exciting new work by a senior scholar of the Tokugawa period maintains that Tsunayoshi's notoriety stems largely from the work of samurai historians and officials who saw their privileges challenged by a ruler sympathetic to commoners. Beatrice Bodart-Bailey's insightful analysis of Tsunayoshi's background sheds new light on his personality and the policies associated with his shogunate. "The Dog Shogun" is a thoroughly revisionist work of Japanese political history that touches on many social, intellectual, and economic developments as well. As such it promises to become a standard text on late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century Japan.

In the wake of the Indian Mutiny, the 1860s and 1870s marked an important period of change and imperial consolidation for the British. Here the author examines the imperial policies of Robert Cecil, the third marquis of Salisbury, who served as secretary of state for India for two administrations during this key era, which marked a significant turning point for relations with the local princes. Clearly defining the office of secretary of state, Salisbury was responsible for policies designed to ensure the smooth running of an empire whose administration was made more difficult by the British Parliament, which possessed the right to oversee Indian affairs. Hoping to prevent a frontier war, Salisbury stressed the importance of promoting progressive change in such a way as to avoid arousing Indian opposition. This conservative approach to Indian government was able to countenance radical ideas, but it did give rise to the hostility of Western-educated Indians who sought more say in the governing of India. At this time, their opposition lacked weight, but Salisbury warned of future dangers should the British fail to promote the welfare of the Indian peasant and to solve India's financial difficulties. Salisbury would carry with him ideas developed at this time to his future posts as foreign secretary and prime minister. Brumpton's study complements existing research into imperial ideology and the official mind of India under the British.

The years 1978 and 1979 were dramatic throughout south and western Asia. In Iran, the Pahlavi dynasty was toppled by an Islamic revolution. In Pakistan, Zulfigar Ali Bhutto was hanged by the military regime that toppled him and which then proceeded to implement an Islamization programme. Between the two lay Afghanistan whose "Saur Revolution" of April 1978 soon developed into a full scale civil war and Soviet intervention. The military struggle that followed was largely influenced by Soviet-US rivalry but the ideological struggle followed a dynamic of its own.;Drawing on a wide range of sources, including such previously unused archival material as British Intelligence reports, this is a detailed study of the Afghan debate on the role of Islam in politics from the formation of the modern Afghan state around 1800 to the present day.

In earlier times, for the Chinese, Korea was 'the country of courteous people from the east', and for westerners 'the land of the morning calm' or 'hermit kingdom'. In this fascinating collection of writings on times past in Korea the author helps to lift the veil on this once closed country, providing the reader with a wide selection of first-hand accounts by travellers who 'discovered' Korea - some as snapshots by those passing through, others more detailed evaluations of Korean culture and everyday life by those who spent time there. The collection covers a period of over 400 years - from Hendrik Hamel's journal of the 1600s to early 20th century records, such as Roy C. Andrew's 1918 published account of his expedition, entitled Exploring Unknown Corners of the 'Hermit Kingdom'.

This volume of the Collected Writings of Modern Western Scholars on Japan series, published under the Japan Library imprint, collects the work of Richard Storry on contempory issues and the history of Japan.

In the spring of 1865, when Japan was in the grip of a major civil war, 18 samurai and an interpreter risked their lives to embark secretly on a voyage to the unknown lands of the barbarian west. Their destination was Britain - at the hub of a vast empire. These were the Satsuma students, some of them still in their teens, all carrying orders from their domains to travel abroad. It was an extraordinary and daring expedition. Their experience of life in the west not only transformed their perception of the outside world, but through their diverse activities in later life, had a profound impact on commerce, education and culture in Meiji Japan. First published in 1974, Inuzuka Takaaki's study is still the classic work on the Satsuma students' revealing tale of discovery.

From the commercial and industrial transformation of Osaka in the late 19th century to the role and status of Japanese multinationals in Europe: these two themes represent both the time-span and the breadth of this volume which draws on a cross-section of key papers given at the 1994 triennial conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies (Economics/Economic Social History section) at Copenhagen.

Recent studies of South India in the 19th- and 20th-centuries concentrate primarily on political and social issues. Studies of specifically religious developments, of religious encounter, institutions and movements, particularly of the 19th-century, have been few in number. The prupose of this study is to examine religious institutions, trends and developments in parts of South-east India, focusing on the Tanjore and Trichonopoly districts - areas famous for cultural and religious activity. It is recalled that neither Hinduism and Christianity were totally static forms of religious organization, ritual or belief, but were living traditions always in the process of change and adaptation. Thus, one of the major concerns of this book deals with continuities, conversion and change.

This work includes topics such as international relations affecting Japan, Russia, China and Korea in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Developed in close collaboration with Ian Nish, this book contains a wide and substantial cross-section of writings, thematically structured around essays in the special areas of Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

Continuing the context of Anglo-Japanese exchange and historic connections from the first volume, Volume II incorporates a further 20 studies of key personalities. This includes: Edmund Morel, pioneer railway builder in Meiji Japan; Alexander Shand, an important figure in the development of Japanese banking; Lafcadio Hearn, the great interpreter of Japanese culture; Rev Dr John Batchelor, whose work with the Ainu people of northern Japan is well-known; and, more recently, Shigeru Yoshida, Japan's first post-war prime minister, and Christmas Humphreys, founder of the Buddhist Society, whose work and writings provided a jey post-war bridge in East-West understanding.

In "Frontier Fictions," Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet looks at the efforts of Iranians to defend, if not expand, their borders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and explores how their conceptions of national geography influenced cultural and political change. The "frontier fictions," or the ways in which the Iranians viewed their often fluctuating borders and the conflicts surrounding them, played a dominant role in defining the nation. On these borderlands, new ideas of citizenship and nationality were unleashed, refining older ideas of ethnicity.

Kashani-Sabet maintains that land-based conceptions of countries existed before the advent of the modern nation-state. Her focus on geography enables her to explore and document fully a wide range of aspects of modern citizenship in Iran, including love of homeland, the hegemony of the Persian language, and widespread interest in archaeology, travel, and map-making. While many historians have focused on the concept of the "imagined community" in their explanations of the rise of nationalism, Kashani-Sabet is able to complement this perspective with a very tangible explanation of what connects people to a specific place. Her approach is intended to enrich our understanding not only of Iranian nationalism, but also of nationalism everywhere.

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic clash between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, " "acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar. Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality. Empires of the Sea is a story of extraordinary color and incident, and provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

In this tragic and powerful story, the two Opium Wars of 1839??1842 and 1856??1860 between Britain and China are recounted for the first time through the eyes of the Chinese as well as the Imperial West. Opium entered China during the Middle Ages when Arab traders brought it into China for medicinal purposes. As it took hold as a recreational drug, opium wrought havoc on Chinese society. By the early nineteenth century, 90 percent of the Emperor's court and the majority of the army were opium addicts.
Britain was also a nation addicted-to tea, grown in China, and paid for with profits made from the opium trade. When China tried to ban the use of the drug and bar its Western smugglers from it gates, England decided to fight to keep open China's ports for its importation. England, the superpower of its time, managed to do so in two wars, resulting in a drug-induced devastation of the Chinese people that would last 150 years.
In this page-turning, dramatic and colorful history, The Opium Wars responds to past, biased Western accounts by representing the neglected Chinese version of the story and showing how the wars stand as one of the monumental clashes between the cultures of East and West.
"A fine popular account."-Publishers Weekly
"Their account of the causes, military campaigns and tragic effects of these wars is absorbing, frequently macabre and deeply unsettling."-Booklist

The theme of this volume which is being reissued completely revised and enlarged in the concept of feudalism. Here we have a significant collection ofe ssays by T.J. Byres and by a distinguished group of historians in response to an article by Harbans Mukhia on " was there feudalism in indian history?". This book based on historical scholarship with regard to theoretical formulations on a range of non western countries, from which exciting comparative perspectives emerge.

Relations between the Choson and Qing states are often cited as the prime example of the operation of the "traditional" Chinese "tribute system." In contrast, this work contends that the motivations, tactics, and successes (and failures) of the late Qing Empire in Choson Korea mirrored those of other nineteenth-century imperialists. Between 1850 and 1910, the Qing attempted to defend its informal empire in Korea by intervening directly, not only to preserve its geopolitical position but also to promote its commercial interests. And it utilized the technology of empire--treaties, international law, the telegraph, steamships, and gunboats.

Although the transformation of Qing-Choson diplomacy was based on modern imperialism, this work argues that it is more accurate to describe the dramatic shift in relations in terms of flexible adaptation by one of the world's major empires in response to new challenges. Moreover, the new modes of Qing imperialism were a hybrid of East Asian and Western mechanisms and institutions. Through these means, the Qing Empire played a fundamental role in Korea's integration into regional and global political and economic systems.

Japan, during most of its history, has been ruled by its all-powerful Emperors. But in the 16th century - called by the Japanese the Age of Warring Clans - regional potentates were endlessly fighting one another with their small armies of samurai warriors.Hideyoshi, who called himself the Swordless Samurai, is the Japanese Horatio Alger. He was of peasant origin, but by bonding to powerful Lord Nobunaga, and by being useful to him day and night, Hideyoshi secured a powerful patron. Much later, Hideyoshi broke all class barriers and ultimately became the most powerful man in Japan.Hideyoshi has long been immortalised - so much so that every schoolboy in Japan is taught the moral that good judgement, keen intelligence, and sharp wits will win out over your adversaries almost every time.Hideyoshi's leadership and success precepts are embedded in the narrative as Hideyoshi wins many bloodless battles. He also won many victories, and analyzes his rise to supreme leadership. His sense of what it took -drive, shrewdness, anticipation, and determination - is readily understandable to a western businessman or businesswoman today.

In November 1841 Sir William Macnaghten reduced his payments of what were effectively bribes to the leaders of particular factions in Afghanistan--the precipitation of the events described in this book. The first part provides extracts of the official government account of events between October 1841 and January 1842; the second is extracted from the diaries of two of the survivors--Lieutenant Vincent Eyre and Lady Florentia Sale, both of whom were finally released in September 1842 after eight months of being moved around the region in dread fear of their lives. They provide critical and moving accounts of one of the most appalling captivities in history.

On a dark evening in November 1862, a cheap coffin is buried in eerie silence. There are no lamentations or panegyrics, for the British Commissioner in charge has insisted, 'No vesting will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Mughals rests.' This Mughal is Bahadur Shah Zafar II, one of the most tolerant and likeable of his remarkable dynasty who found himself leader of a violent and doomed uprising. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad, the end of both Mughal power and a remarkable culture.

There is no dearth of literature on partition. What is unique about the collection is that it goes beyond the conventional sources of partition and tries to capture the totality of the experience. The pangs of partition are captured by about forty renowned scholars and intellectuals who share their experience and expertise on the subject in these volumes. An innovative work.

In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe - and which now power China's ascent. And it raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who re-imagined the world in this way? And most importantly - what can it tell us about the world at that time? Brook, like a cartographic detective, has provided answers - including a surprising last-minute revelation of authorship. From the Gobi Desert to the Philippines, from Java to Tibet and into China itself, Brook uses the map (actually a schematic representation of China's relation to astrological heaven) to tease out the varied elements that defined this crucial period in China's history.

On the eve of the twentieth century, few places were as exciting as Shanghai.  Once a wildness of swamps, Asia's "Sin City" evolved into a dazzling modern-day Babylon: redolent with the sickly sweet smell of opium; teeming with illicit sex, crime, and poverty; rife with corruption and glamorous wealth.  In this vibrant history, Stella Dong follows the rise and fall of the city's booming international port, gateway to China's heartland.  In intricate, colorful detail, she examines the misdeeds of its criminal underworld, the passions of its citizens decadent appetites, and the revolutionary spirit of its many political refugees.  Best of all, she captures the essence of the city as if it were a person who had lived a fascinating and tumultuous life.

Among the many shocking violations of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the most notorious was sexual torture. Military personnel justified this abhorrent technique as an effective tool for interrogating Arabs, who are perceived as repressed and especially susceptible to sexual coercion. These abuses laid bare a racist and sexually charged power dynamic at the root of the U.S. conquest of Iraq - a dynamic that reflected centuries of Western assumptions about Arab sexuality. Desiring Arabs uncovers the roots of these attitudes and analyzes the impact of Western ideas - both about sexuality and about Arabs - on Arab intellectual production. Sexual desire has long played a key role in Western judgments about the value of Arab civilization. In the past, Westerners viewed the Arab world as licentious, and Western intolerance of sex led them to brand Arabs as decadent; but as Western society became more sexually open, supposedly prudish Arabs soon became viewed as backward. Rather than focusing exclusively on how these views developed in the West, Joseph A. Massad instead reveals the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. from the nineteenth century to the present in order to chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab notions of cultural heritage and civilization. For instance, he demonstrates how, in the 1980s, the rise of sexual identity politics and human rights activism in the West came to define Arab nationalist, and especially Islamist, responses to sexual desires and practices, and he reveals the implications these reactions have had for contemporary Arabs. A work of impressive scope and erudition, Joseph A. Massad's chronicle of both the history and modern permutations of the debate over representations of sexual desires and practices in the Arab world is a crucial addition to our understanding of a frequently oversimplified and vilified culture.