During the years 1851 to 1864 a central feature of the Chinese political scene was the Taiping rebellion. This was a peasant movement led by disappointed candidates in the official examinations and unlettered men of native military and organizational genius who capitalized upon the economic distress of the time and the declining ability of the Manchu rulers to take the principal cities of the Yangtze valley and at one point to threaten Peking itself. The rebels maintained their capital in Nanking from 1853 until 1864. From this point they waged intermittent campaigns in the provinces from Hunan and Hupeh east to the sea and thus denied the ruling dynasty the rich lower-Yangtze revenue for more than a decade. The rebellion was active at one time or another in fourteen of the eighteen provinces of the empire. Antidynastic societies not part of the Taiping movement used the embarrassment of the dynasty to disrupt areas which the Taipings did not reach. From the military point of view the Ch'ing dynasty was probably threatened most seriously in 1853 when the rebels got to within thirty miles of Tientsin. But if the Taiping troops were never again able to invade Chihli, neither were the imperial soldiers capable of regaining the Yangtze basin. After 1853 it required eleven years of punitive expeditions, the training of a new type of provincial militia, and incidental foreign aid to put down the rebellion.

The study of Russo-Japanese relations falls naturally into two parts: a period primarily of private initiative (ca. 1700 to ca. 1850) and one of government leadership (ca. 1850 to present). This is a survey of the earlier phase of Russo-Japanese contacts.

In 1941–42 Dr. Robert B. Hall, professor of geography at the University of Michigan, investigated Japanese settlements throughout Latin America. Since his survey was made in the months just before and after Pearl Harbor, when Japan was winning successive victories, Professor Hall found the Japanese at a high peak of morale which sometimes bordered on arrogance. Subsequently, as the Allies gained the upper hand, the total situation of the Japanese underwent a marked decline. Under these circumstances it seemed likely that a postwar study might provide a valuable insight into several aspects of sociocultural change. Plans for a follow-up of Dr. Hall's work by the writer were discussed in 1947, and a decision was made to concentrate on Peru.

The first major effort of Soviet Russia to win the sympathies of China and to establish direct contact with its government was a manifesto of July 25, 1919. Previously the Bolsheviks had directed their propaganda and diplomatic efforts at the Entente Powers, with only occasional words for “the oppressed peoples of the East.” As Siberia was being rewon and its armies were approaching the long Sino-Soviet frontier, the Kremlin now focused greater attention on the Far East with its vast potential of revolutionary resources and its reservoir of anti-imperialist, anti-Western sentiments.

It has been a common belief of students of Chinese history that the “One Hundred Days of Reform” of 1898 got under way only after Weng T'ungho, the imperial tutor and associate grand secretary, popularly known to foreigners as China's prime minister, strongly recommended the reformer K'ang Yu-wei to the Emperor Te-tsung in the spring of that eventful year. So strong has been this impression that Weng was alleged to have said that his own official career hinged upon whether or not K'ang could make a favorable impression upon the emperor in June 1898. Weng, therefore, has been regarded as the sponsor if not the official leader of the reform party. A critical examination of the contemporary Chinese sources, however, reveals that in the spring of 1898, when nationwide reform was in the air, Weng was in reality an opponent of systematic innovation, although he had previously endorsed K'ang and his program. It is the aim of this article to test the truth of the common belief that Weng was the key high official who persistently patronized the reform movement.

Various interpretations have been offered to explain the nature of Taiping society. The earliest ones were given by those who witnessed the progress of the movement and who either took part in suppressing and ultimately destroying it or suffered as victims of its wanton destruction. The attitude of this group is exemplified by Tseng Kuo-fan's “Proclamation, ” Chang Te-chien's Tse-ch'ing hui-tsuan (Prepared by order of Tseng)a, Ku Shen's Hu-hsüeh shenghuan chi (Narrow escape from the tiger's den), b Ming Hsin Tao Jen's Fa-i ch'uchi (The first account of the hair rebels), Ch'en Hsi-ch'i's Yüeh-i hsien-ning shih-mo chi (A complete account of the occupation of Hai-ning by the Yüeh rebels), c and a host of others. These accounts, as Teng Chih-ch'eng remarked in his “Preface to Wang Shih-to's I-ping jih-chi (Wang's diary), because of the fact that the authors were the actual victims, “only give tragic scences of burning and massacre and condemn the unorthodox and vulgar nature of the institutions and writings [of the rebels].

The initial reaction of the foreigner upon his first contact with Chinese law and legal system is one of frustration and noncomprehension. Those given to facile generalization are apt to declare either that China is devoid of any serious juridical tradition or that it is still in a primitive state of legal development. But both of these conclusions are clearly false since the Middle Kingdom has a long and complex legal history, and, while certain jural notions of responsibility which characterize Western law have not come into being in the East, their absence is not proof of arrested growth but merely that jural problems are envisaged in another fashion in the Sinitic body politic. The basic fact which the foreigner slowly comes to recognize is that, while the need for justice is constant in any culture, in Chinese society it is attained in a unique fashion.

Among the railway concessions obtained by Britain from the Chinese government during the battle for concessions in 1898 was one covering a line that would branch off from the Shanghai-Nanking Railway (another British concession) at Soochow, run southwestward to Hangchow, at the head of the Ch'ien-t'ang estuary, and turn southeastward to terminate at the treaty port of Ningpo. Traversing the coastal areas of Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, a fertile and well-populated region, the economic possibilities of this railway had been long recognized by the British. After an unsuccessful attempt to make it an Anglo-German enterprise in 1897-98, the concession was granted to the British and Chinese Corporation, a British syndicate formed that year by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and Jardine, Matheson and Company for the furtherance of British railway interest in China. The line was to be financed and constructed by the corporation under the nominal ownership of the Chinese Imperial Railway Administration.

The leadership of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in the opening of Japan to Western commerce has received just renown. Rarely, however, does one hear even the most casual reference to Perry's other activities in the Far East. Of these activities, perhaps the most neglected is his controversy with Humphrey Marshall over the diplomatic policy to be pursued by the United States regarding the Taiping rebellion.

During the first century of contact with the outside world, the history of Ponape has been marked by a series of violent outbreaks against Americans, Spaniards, and Germans. The causes and implications of these surprisingly effective uprisings, in which two governors of the island were killed, have become the direct concern of the American people. Ponape has been governed by the U. S. Navy since 1945, and was assigned to the United States by the United Nations in 1947 as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

The success of the Chinese Communists in defeating their adversaries and consolidating their power is in large measure attributable to their capture of the sympathy and support of students and intelligentsia. This was the culmination of a long historical development. Repeated Kuomintang failures, social, economic, and political, drove more and more of the literate class into the Communist camp. This group now comprises some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the new regime, and they have been given the task of consolidating the Communist position among workers, peasants, and businessmen. There are dissenters, but few will risk open criticism of Marxist theory, Russian orientation, or party policy. This paper deals with the pronouncements and actions of a group of scholars and educators in the field of sociology who have been particularly prominent in their support and implementation of the policies of the new regime.

Lewis Hodous in both experience and achievement was a remarkably balanced and integrated personality. He experienced, understood, and appreciated the influence and value of three great national cultural patterns, and he united significant elements of each one in his mature outlook on human life. He combined, without internal conflict, religious devotion and scientific scholarship; while with all his keenness of mind and scientific objectivity he was persistently concerned in generous and kindly relations with individual persons. In achievement he was an effective and distinguished Christian missionary in China, a notable teacher of religions in America, and an outstanding Sinologist, contributing greatly to the development of Chinese and Asiatic studies in the United States.

The Major steps taken in the settlement of the Indonesian dispute on November 1, 1949, at the Hague and the subsequent transformation of the East Indian Archipelago into a modern national state have thrown into even sharper focus the recent significant changes in the political constitution of the once great colonial powers. The solution of the Indonesian problem has in no small measure been based on a recognition of the mutual economic and cultural interdependence of the two disputants. With this recognition the political factors of the problem have lost much of their controversial nature. The future of the Netherlands Commonwealth, on the basis of a harmonious co-operation in the realms of trade, agriculture, industry, and cultural exchange between the various partners, seems assured. Although the period of armed conflict between Indonesians and Dutch would justify the assumption that the Dutch wished to continue exclusive political control over the Indies it now seems that Dutch recognition of Indonesian national sovereignty might eliminate any lingering suspicion in the minds of Indonesian nationalists. The question of political liberty, once regarded, even by the United Nations mediators, as the nub of a possible settlement of the conflict has lost much if not all of its meaning. Colonial sovereignty, and all that it entails, has now come to an end.

After graduation from Yale College in 1928 Raymond Kennedy began, almost fortuitously, a career in Far Eastern affairs by teaching for a year at the Brent School in the Philippines, Then, a year later, he became a field representative for General Motors in what was then called the Netherlands East Indies. As the peripatetic automobile salesman discovered the cultural riches of the fabulous Indies, he became progressively less interested in American machines and more fascinated by Indonesian people. This led him to give up his commercial job and return to his alma mater in New Haven for graduate study in anthropology and sociology. He knew well that “he who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. ” Thus began the academic career of one of American's pioneer scholars in the field of Southeast Asian studies.