IDENTITY POLITICS IN CENTRAL ASIA

Michael Denison read Modern History at Keble College, Oxford University, where he was the Royal Historical Society's Frampton Prize scholar. He completed an MA at the University of Leeds in European Security Studies and is now writing his PhD at Leeds on the domestic and international dynamics of personal rule. He spent the summers of 2001 and 2002 in Central Asia conducting fieldwork. He has recently returned from Turkmenistan where he participated in a conference hosted by the Turkmen Ministry of Foreign Affairs.     

(RE)EXPERIENCING THE NOW-GONE: YOUTH AND CULTURAL POLITICS IN SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA

The events of the so-called Arab Spring reconnected the young and their culture with images of organized political activism and resulted in huge political resonance. So this may be an appropriate point at which to reconsider the relevance of youth culture politics in the now-gone Soviet Union. The article explores the connections between cultural consumption by the young, ideology, and political ambivalence during Soviet times and considers how the Soviet genre of youth culture politics is being reproduced and continued in an extended form in the post-Soviet setting, specifically in Uzbekistan.     

LETTERS FROM THE RSAA ARCHIVE: SIR AUREL STEIN,COLONEL REGINALD SCHOMBERG AND A SECRET MISSION TO CENTRAL ASIA

In 2004 a collection of thirty-four letters from the Silk Road explorer Sir Aurel Stein was found in the archives of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and catalogued, although not transcribed or studied. Neither of Stein's biographers, Jeannette Mirsky (published 1977), nor Annabel Walker (published 1995) knew about these letters, and there are no references to them in more recent publications either. What is perhaps even more interesting is that the Society's letters are addressed to a man whose name does not appear in any published works on Stein; a man who remains an elusive figure more than half a century after his death – Colonel Reginald Schomberg D.S.O. (1880-1958), an explorer and spy. This article analyses the contents of the letters, which shed light on a secret mission undertaken by Schomberg in Chinese Central Asia in the early 1930s.     

SOUTH ASIA

For nearly a hundred years, to many foreigners “Peking” meant the foreign legation quarter and its colourful western inhabitants. The article gives details of the extraordinary life they led a stone's throw from the Emperor's palace in a city that remained virtually untouched by the modern world. After the Boxer Rising of 1900, the legation quarter became a Treaty Port with its own laws and administration. That status continued through the First World War and beyond. But just as the foreigners were at last beginning to value Peking's uniqueness, the end was in sight. Life changed a lot after the 1937 Japanese invasion of China and, for many, internment followed the attack on Pearl Harbour. But the end came when Treaty port status was abolished for good at the end of the War     

SOUTH EAST ASIA

A brief account of the events leading up to the fall of the Shah, followed by an examination of how those events were seen and evaluated by the British government, especially the Foreign Office department concerned, of which Ivor Lucas was the head. Against this background he also provides an assessment of how far the British Government had realistic alternative policy options.     

GENTLEMAN SPIES IN ASIA

This article covers the gathering of intelligence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Asia, particularly in Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Inevitably, the Great Game and concerns about Russian intentions loomed large. Initially most information was gathered informally, by travellers, by officers on leave, by civilians, by explorers. And although over time there was a gradual move towards greater professionalism, official resources for information-gathering were very limited until the outbreak of the Great War. The article ends with details of the exploits of men such as William Childs, Norman Bray, Reginald Teague-Jones and Ely Sloane.     

ASIA UNDER LATE CAPITALISM

The hubris over the “rise of Asia” obscures the complexities, contradictions, and struggles that actually characterize the region. Given the economic tumult that has enveloped the West, it is not surprising that we find politicians, pundits, and market players enamored with Asia as a source of economic growth. However, this skewed reading of the region, which regularly dovetails neatly with self-interest and resurgent forms of nationalism, belies material realities. On this count, the region remains home to the majority of the world's poor, increasing levels of inequality and vulnerability (even within “the success stories”), social, political, and racial intolerance, and massive environmental degradation. Moreover, Asia's much-vaunted “charm” (often shorthand for the region's cultural, historical, and natural allure) has been seriously threatened by the accumulation at all costs of late capitalism. The author's photographic work over the past decade has attempted to grapple with and communicate some of these realities—a humble intervention to bring down to earth perceptions of the region in which he lives.     

FORGING ACADEMIC LINKS WITH ASIA

The author reviews the potential for forging academic links with Asia, the different models of engagement available, the balance between academic requirements and financial demands, the governance structures required for building successful, sustainable academic links and finally issues of quality assurance of teaching and research programmes being offered either jointly with partners in Asia or through off-shore campuses. This is the edited text of the Anniversary Lecture which he delivered after the Annual General Meeting on 11 June, 2008.     

PROSPECTS FOR BRITISH BUSINESS IN ASIA

This article reflects his address to members of the Society on 12 November 2007.     

GEORGE W. BUSH AND ASIA: IN THE SHADOW OF 11 SEPTEMBER

Traditionally seen as a President consumed by the war on terror, George W. Bush is frequently portrayed as being relatively uninterested in Asia, and unable to outline a vision or a strategy to China, America’s Asian allies and Asian multilateral mechanisms. This article will revisit Bush’s policy on Asia and show a president who guided the United States with a policy that balanced the need to combat global terrorism and locate a focus on Asia. He faced the dilemmas of building cooperative relations with a rising China while trying to foster American alliances and partnerships in Asia, and managing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Utilizing qualitative content analysis as the main research method, the article will demonstrate that the Bush administration had not a lack of focus on Asia and that Bush’s diplomacy to Asia should be recognized as one of the most significant achievements of his presidency.     

THE RAJ RECONSIDERED: BRITISH INDIA's INFORMAL EMPIRE AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE IN ASIA AND AFRICA

This provides a detailed explanation of how the Indian Empire was organised and run. But its main purpose is to argue that the British Indian Empire was in fact much larger than historians of the Raj normally realise because the Empire should be taken to include the Gulf Arab states, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, the Aden Protectorate and the British Somaliland protectorate.     

杜伊斯堡通往亚洲之门（GTA）——筹建中欧洲最大的亚洲／中国消费品专业采购商展示和交易中心简介

中国作为欧洲经济伙伴的地位和作用日益提高.然而,对很多人,尤其是中国和欧洲的中小企业而言,建立商务关系仍然非常困难.商务关系的建立需要有一个长期为中国制造商和欧洲客户提供贸易和聚集机会的场所,需要一个能开创互信经济关系、扫除偏见的门户.因为一提起中国制造,人们首先想到的还是生产迅速、价格低廉.除了这种偏见之外,还有更多的现实问题:比如海关、进口规定、物流等等.这些都极大地妨碍了更紧密、持续和令人信赖的商务关系的建立.因此,建立一个沟通东西方的现代丝绸之路,为双方开拓更大的市场,也就显得愈加重要了.