An open letter/review

Abstract

I first read about you and your book, The Woman Warrior, in the book review sections of several magazines and Sunday newspapers. I read Susan Brownmiller's interview with you in “Mademoiselle” magazine, Jane Kramer's review of your book in the New York Times, and Nan Robertson's interview with you, also in the Times. In addition, several white feminist friends were telling me I should read your book “because it is a powerful, feminist story by a Chinese American woman.” So I read your book.     

The Concept of “the State” in Modern Political Thought

Quentin Skinner's magisterial The Foundations of Modern Political Thought was first published in 1978. A commemorative volume appeared almost thirty years later. My aim in this paper is less to revisit this last discussion by questioning either the importance or the impact of Skinner's book, both of which seem to me undeniable, than it is to unsettle a few of the assumptions that not only inform The Foundations and much of the work that it inspired, but which are all too often taken for granted. In particular, I note some limitations both of Skinner's use of the term “modern” and of his understanding of political thought before concluding that it may be time to reconsider the category of modern political thought.     

Analyzing China's socialist revolution

Abstract

Recent trends in “China scholarship” include two dominant sets of goals and foci in examining China's socialist revolution. Exponents of the more traditional view, represented here by Lucian Pye's Mao Tse-tung, seek to explain it away as a pathological deviation from “normality” in social development. The extremism of Pye's book makes it almost a caricature of the worst in the first trend. By the same token this extremism makes the prejudices and assumptions on which this trend is based easier to perceive than would be the case with other more subtle works. The less traditional and less frequently published view, represented here by Nee and Peck's China's Uninterrupted Revolution attempts to comprehend the Chinese Revolution, historically and philosophically, as a meaningful process directed at increasing human liberation.     

A tribute to Leo Cawley, 1944–1991

Abstract

In the late sixties, after his tour of active duty as a marine in Vietnam from 1965 to 66, Leo Cawley returned to the United States and became an economics major at Columbia University. There he joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Columbia University chapter of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), whose national organization founded the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. In March and April of 1972 he traveled to the People's Republic of China with the second CCAS delegation. Leo reviewed Waldemar A. Nielson's The Big Foundations in volume 6, number 3 of BCAS in 1974, and from 1985 to 1987 he was book review editor for BCAS. Leo also contributed money to BCAS even in the last year of his life when his medical expenses were skyrocketing. Above all, however, Leo stood for everything BCAS has stood for over the years, and he was a close friend and inspiration to some of BCAS's staunchest supporters.     

A tribute to Phyllis Andors, 1942–1992

Abstract

Phyllis Andors died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City on 10 February 1992. In the late sixties Phyllis was one of the founding members of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars that gave rise to the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (BCAS), and in 1975 she edited as well as contributed an article and a book review to two BCAS special issues on women in Asia. Most recently, BCAS published her article “Women and Work in Shenzhen” in volume 20, number 3 (July–September 1988). Phyllis was a very active and much appreciated member of the BCAS editorial board since 1987, not only refereeing articles and contributing money but also taking on special projects such as investigating how BCAS might get grants and being the main editor of a proposed BCAS book about women in Asia. We at BCAS are grateful to Phyllis's husband, Steve, for providing us with much of this tribute to Phyllis so that our readers can join us in appreciating who she was and her unique contribution to those around her and the world.     

B. Reviews and notes of recent bibliographies

i. The Islamic Near East and North Africa: An Annotated Guide to Books in English for Non‐Specialists. By David W. Littlefield, Littleton, Colorado, Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1977. pp.375. $19.50.

ii. A select bibliography of Yemen Arah‐Eepublic and People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. Compiled by Simoné L. Mondesir. University of Durham Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 1977. pp. iii, 59. £3.00.     

Reaching the other side

Abstract

To talk about Vietnam now is to get caught in a flurry of accusations and counter accusations, from the Chinese and Kampucheans, the Western press, and the Vietnamese themselves. At a time when Vietnam is entangled in military disputes and deepening party disputes with its socialist neighbors, it may seem anachronistic to go back and relive the spring days of 1975 when, after decades of war, Vietnam was euphorically reunited and freed from foreign invaders. One is tempted to read into those momentous days a foreshadowing of the conflicts to come. There is another reason to review Vietnam's spring liberation, however, and the reason goes beyond the fact that a good book has been written about the subject. Central to current disputes about Vietnam is an assessment of the meaning and practice of socialist transformation. Reaching the Other Side, by Earl S. Martin, is an eyewitness account of the earliest days of socialist Vietnam's postwar transition. In the pages of Martin's book, concrete form is given to the dreams and difficulties facing the newly reunited Vietnam. Martin offers a quiet, detailed account of the socialist government's early answers to those challenges.     

Spring offensive 1972

Abstract

These four essays on Confucius, Mo Zi, Shang Yang and Zhuang Zi were published as a book in the Soviet Union in 1970 by Vitaly A. Rubin, a dissident Russian Jewish intellectual who has only recently found sanctuary in Israel. As Steven I. Levine makes clear in his preface, Rubin's book is best understood not simply as an objective analysis of ancient Chinese philosophy, but rather as a personal commentary on the Soviet regime today. In fairness to Rubin as a Sinologist, however, I will first summarize his scholarly views before commenting on the broader implications of his work.     

Kasravi: the integrative nationalist of Iran

Sistemul sau întocmirea religiei muhammedane. By Dimitrie Cantemir. Translation, introduction, and notes by Virgil Cândea. Bucure?ti: Editura Minerva, 1977. Pp.lxxiv + 687. Lei 38.

People of Salé: Tradition and Change in a Moroccan City, 1830–1930 by Kenneth L. Brown. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976. Pp. xx, 265.

Nédroma: L'Evolution d'une Médina by Gilbert Grandguillaume. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976. Pp. xvi, 195.

The Struggle for Palestine by J. C. Hurewitz. New York: Schocken Books, 1976. Pp. 404, index.

The Shuster Mission and the Constitutional Revolution by Robert A. McDaniel. Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1974. Pp. 259. Maps. Index.

The Gecekondu by Kemal H. Karpat. Cambridge University Press. 1977. Pp. 7 + 291, Tables. Notes. Bibliog. Index. £18.

The Limits to Power: Soviet Policy in the Middle East, edited by Yaacov Ro'i. Croom Helm. London. 1979. Pp. 376. £10.95.

Israel, the West Bank and International Law by Allan Gerson. Frank Cass, 1978. Pp: xvii + 285. £16.

The Economic and Political Development of the Sudan by Francis A. Lees &; Hugh C. Brooks. Macmillan 1977. Pp. 172, £8.95.

Trade and Investment In the Middle East by Rodney Wilson. London: Macmillan, 1977. Pp. 152. £12.

Oil and Empire: British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil 1900–1920 by Marian Kent. The Macmillan Press Ltd. and the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1976. £10.

Arabia of the Wahhabis by Harry St. John B. Philby, Second Edition. London: Frank Cass. 1977. Map. Pp. XIV + 422. £15.50.

Iran: Dictatorship and Development by Fred Halliday. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979. Pp. 348, £1.50.

Iran: the Illusion of Power by Robert Graham. London: Croom Helm, 1978. Pp. 228, £7.95.

The Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean in International Politics edited by Abbas Amirie. Tehran: Institute for International Political and Economic Studies, 1975. Pp. 418, no price indicated.     

War on error and the Southern fire: How terrorism analysts get it wrong

Abstract

This extended, five-part critique of Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand interrogates how terrorism experts have interpreted the recent escalation of violence in the Thai southern border provinces. It does so by questioning the authors' use of sources, and draws on a range of alternative Thai-and English-language sources to suggest that the authors have reached poorly founded conclusions. The first part considers the contemporary context of terrorism studies and argues that it is important to understand Conflict and Terrorism as a knowledge product influenced by that discipline. The second presents an overview of competing theories concerning events in Thailand, as background to the conclusions presented in Conflict and Terrorism. The third evaluates the book's conclusion that Thailand faces a renewed insurgency, largely driven by domestic factors and carried out by definable actors. The fourth part examines the authors' claim concerning the importance of a booklet titled Berjihad di Patani, which is said to have motivated insurgents involved in the 28 April 2004 “uprising.” The fifth will attend to some significant factual and interpretative errors that severely undermine the credibility of the book. Overall, the critique demonstrates that various interpretations of what is happening in the South of Thailand remain plausible, and the article concludes that the authors of Conflict and Terrorism were too poorly equipped to deal with these competing interpretations to offer any insights into the conflict.     

Captains of erudition

Abstract

W. A. Nielsen's book The Big Foundations is an informed survey of the American foundation scene. Writing from a vantage point within the citadels of big-time philanthropy, Nielsen takes a chatty and discursive approach to a subject that in fact deserves much more. It seems that the insider's privilege of access can be a handicap as well as an asset, and that a subject of this importance needs critical scrutiny from independent researchers.     

Engaging the issues

From the editors: In 2005 Monthly Review Press (New York) published a book entitled China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle, written by Martin Hart-Landsberg (a coeditor of Critical Asian Studies) and Paul Burkett. (The content of the book had appeared earlier, in the July-August 2004 issue of Monthly Review [vol. 56, no. 3].) We invited the editors of Critical Asian Studies to participate in a roundtable discussion of the issues that Hart-Landsberg and Burkett have raised. Responses from CAS editors Victor Lippit, Gene Cooper, Alvin So, Mobo C.F. Gao, and Tai-lok Lui appear in the September 2005 issue of the journal (vol. 37, no. 3). A rejoinder by Hart-Landsberg and Burkett is presented here.     

Editor's Note: Special Feature – China,India, and the Future of Great-Power Politics

Abstract

This review essay is based upon Shuja Nawaz' Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within and Ayesha Siddiqa's Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy. Based upon these two author's insightful volumes, this essay explores the roles of both military and civilian actors and institutions in the undermining of Pakistan's constitutional rule of law. While conventional wisdom places the onus disproportionately upon the military's penchant for interventionism, this review essay contends that the army has intervened only with the active assistance of civilian institutions which are subsequently further eroded with every military takeover. Thus any long-term solution to democratize Pakistan must focus both upon the army's presumed “right” and “obligation” to intervene in Pakistan's political system while simultaneously strengthening and professionalizing those civilian institutions needed for providing good governance with accountability.     

The Korean War: An International History,by William Stueck

Abstract

William Stueck's The Korean War: An International History will be required reading for all scholars of the war for some time to come. Intensively researched, the book is a readable, but detailed account of Korean War diplomacy accompanied by nearly twenty pages of bibliography.     

Slavic Reciprocity and Greek-Cypriot Enosis as the Nineteenth-Century Forms of the Law of Progress

In the context of Hobsbawm's thesis about the nineteenth-century law of progress, the author studies Kollár's and Štúr's conception of Slavic reciprocity, which he compares with the Greek Great Idea (Megali Idea) and the Greek-Cypriot idea of enosis. He came to the conclusion that there is greater similarity, especially between Štúr's conception and enosis, since they both required state-political as well as territorial unification of Slavs or Greeks, unlike Kollár's conception, which was, rather, a cultural and literary reciprocity project. As a historical paradox, the author considers the fact that the practical and feasible conception of enosis was never carried out, while Kollár's theoretical conception and Štúr's highly unlikely model became, in a modified form, a reality after the First and Second World Wars.     

Imperialism and Chinese nationalism: Germany in Shantung,By John F. Schrecker

Abstract

Professor Schrecker's book is basically a defense of Qing foreign policy during the 1895-1911 period. He demonstrates a concern of nationalism in late Qing with protecting the legal sovereignty of the Chinese state by showing how turn-of-the-century governors Yuan Shi-kai, Zhou Fu, and Yang Shi-xiang labored to defend the territorial integrity of Shandong [Shantung] province against German imperialism. The book's strength lies in Schrecker's conceptual analysis of Chinese foreign policy and its intellectual roots in the late nineteenth century. He argues cogently and with originality that in their concern for defending “sovereignty,” officials like Yuan Shi-kai combined the militant conservative qing-i school of the 1880s with the internationalist approach after 1895 of radical reformers like Kang You-wei. But Schrecker also argues that Qing foreign policy succeeded in stopping German imperialism in Shandong by 1911 and in terms of the empire as a whole that “in the last decade of the dynasty the Chinese government made considerably more progress in its struggle against imperialism than has generally been believed.” (p. 254) In such judgments about the success of late Qing foreign policy, he betrays the bias of what Bulletin readers have come to know as the Harvard school of apologetics for Western and Japanese imperialism. Schrecker deserves credit for drawing attention to the nationalist posture which the late Qing took after 1901 but he goes too far in his defense of the dynasty and the “progress” actually made against Western and Japanese imperialism.     

More Soviet works on Iran

Richard Frye's The Heritage of Persia, translated as Naslyediye Irana, Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ History Section, 1972,468 pp.

Nicolas de Khanikoff's Mémoire sur la partie meridionale de I'Asie Centrale (originally published in Paris in 1862), translated as Ekspyeditisya v Khorasan, Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1973, 216 pp.

Sadeq Chubak, translated from the Persian as hbrannoye (Selections), Moscow, Khudodzhyestvynennaya Lityeratura Press, 1972,224 pp.

Lityeratura narodov Vostoka (The literature of the Peoples of the East), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1970, 190 pp.

Dzh. Dorri, Pyersidskaya satirichyeskaya proza: traditsiya i novatorstvo (Satirical Persian Prose: Tradition and Innovation), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1977, 216 pp.

Iranskoye Yazikoznaniye: Istoriya, etimologiya, tipologiya (Iranian Linguistics: History, Etymology, Typology), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Linguistics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1976, 224 pp.

M. D. Milanyan's Gosudarstvyenniy stroy sovryemyennogo Irana (The Governmental Structure of Contemporary Iran), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Government and Law in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1973,128 pp.

Ye. A. Doroshyenko's book, Shiitskoye dukhovyenstvo v sovryemyennom Irane (The Shiite Clergy in Contemporary Iran), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1975,172 pp.

Sh. M. Badi's Gorodskiye sryedniye sloi Irana (The Urban Middle Classes of Iran), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1977,232 pp.

A. Rasadi's Innostranniy kapital v Iraneposlye vtoroy mirovoy voyni (1945–1967 eg.) (Foreign Capital in Iran After the Second World War, 1945–1967), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, 1973,126 pp.

N. S. Tikhonov's Zapadnogyermanskiy kapital v Iranye (West‐German Capital in Iran), Baku, Elm Press for the Institute of the Peoples of the Near and Middle East of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, 1972, 100 pp.

U. Z. Sharipov's Byudzhyet i byudzhyetnaya sistyema Irana (The Budget and the Budgetary System of Iran), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1976, 156 pp.

Istoriya Irana (The History of Iran) was prepared by the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad State University and published in Moscow, Moscow University Press, 1977, 488 pp.

Iran: ochyerki novyeyshyey istorii (Iran: Essays on Its Recent History), Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1976, 470 pp. Edited by A. Z. Arabadzhyan     

The historian's quest: Joseph R. Levenson

Abstract

Ever since Confucius remarked that he would not discuss the strange and supernatural, Chinese scholars have delighted in jotting down sensational and unusual events. This is such a favorite pastime that at least two books with the title Zibuyu (What the master refused to say) appeared in imperial times. The one by Yuan Mei (1916–97) has become a biji (jottings) classic. There are several editions published in recent years both in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China. This collection is full of ghost stories and strange tales, including records of “shrimp man,” “ape man,” and so on. Yuan Mei, while not particularly known for his moral rectitude, was nevertheless firmly rooted in the Confucian tradition.     

New light on the origins of the Vietnam-Kampuchea conflict

Abstract

“Don't make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.”

—Security regulation no. 8 for inmates at the Pol Pot regime's Tuol Sleng prison, Phnom Penh, 1977–8.