Nationalism and modernism in the East Turkestan Republic, 1933–34

This study explains the intellectual history and ideology of the Turkic insurgency and the East Turkestan Republic in Kashgar in 1933–34. Texts in periodicals from the period suggest that the insurgency was defined by its intellectual elites more as a nationalist enterprise than as a religious one. The insurgency's ideologists established important national attributes of the East Turkestani nation, particularly its national name, homeland, symbology, and history, and they also articulated East Turkestani national interests, particularly political independence, representative government, and modernization. Regardless of the arguably low degree of social penetration of the ideas of the elites among common society and the small extent to which policy was actually implemented, the intertwining of East Turkestani national identity and interests with political self-government and modernization was an ideological concept that had a profound impact on all subsequent administrations in Xinjiang.     

Negotiating power and authority in the desert: the Arab Bedouin and the limits of the Ottoman state in Hijaz, 1840–1908

This article explores the techniques and strategies used by Ottoman authorities to control the Bedouin with a specific focus on the province of Hijaz between 1840 and 1908. Using primary sources from the Ottoman and British archives, it argues that the Ottoman Empire developed a ‘politics of negotiation’ towards the tribes in its attempt to secure cities and major pilgrimage and trade routes against tribal attack. The principal agents of the empire who made this negotiated governance possible were the amir of Mecca and the governor of Hijaz. As a result of this policy, imperial authorities had to give significant concessions to the tribes, and they thus incorporated them into the province's imperial order. When the Ottoman economy went through a crisis, as in the 1900s, negotiated governance and order faced great problems.     

Imperialism and incorporation—the case of Chinese Silk

Abstract

In the last decade, studies of the silk industry and trade have been at the center of the continuing debate over China's development in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although silk, like the other case studies, has limitations for unveiling the overall picture of China's “underdevelopment,” the silk industry, as Lillian Li and other writers point out, provides a particularly valuable vantage point for exploring the debate because: (1) silk was China's most important export, accounting for one-third of total export value in the mid—nineteenth century and one-fifth in the early twentieth century; (2) China's silk industry was centered in the two regions around Canton and Shanghai that were the most important centers of imperialist penetration; (3) silk exports provide a case for comparison with Japan, since Japan and China were the two leading exporters of raw silk in the world market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most critical point, I sense, is the fact that Japan's silk industry was the major, indeed the only, competitor for China's silk industry. And Japan also happened to be the most important imperialist power that Chinese scholars have pointed to in explaining the failure of China's silk industry. Therefore I would stress their relations as well as comparisons of their performance.     

Confrontation and co‐operation in the Indian Ocean

The end of the Cold War has created new dangers and opportunities. The formation of an Indian Ocean Rim trading bloc has the potential to benefit some of the poorest people in the world. Regional maritime co‐operation could provide the catalyst for alleviating poverty on the Indian Ocean Rim by giving a spurt to incomes and employment from the seas.     

Migrants' strategies of coping and patterns of accommodation in the oil‐rich Gulf societies: evidence from the UAE

This paper presents an overview of ethnographic documentation of the foreign migrants’ strategies and patterns of accommodation in the oil‐rich Arab Gulf socieites. Documentary evidence is drawn from the UAE in the form of short case studies of families and individuals of both Arab and Asian migrant groups as well as field observations. The evidence is presented as an illustration of similar processes taking place across the Gulf. The migrants investigated represent low‐income workers and a few middle‐income technicians and professionals. Globalization is used as a general guiding theoretical framework to provide integration and coherence to the modes of presentation and explanation of the ethnographic material. Particular attention is given to the differing political economics of the labour‐receiving and labour‐sending countries in order to account for the prevalence of certain strategies of coping among migrants, and also to explain the slight variations found among Arab and Asian migrants.     

China and swapo: The role of the people's republic in Namibia's liberation and post‐independence relations

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the People's Republic of China's relations with Namibia. Prior to liberation, China maintained cordial links with SWAPO, yet was constrained by the close ties the organisation had with Moscow and its allies. However, the absence of any alternative to SWAPO meant that China refrained from supporting any rival organisation to the Soviet‐backed movement, as it did in Zimbabwe or Angola, and the struggle for independence was largely devoid of the Sino‐Soviet dispute found elsewhere in Southern Africa liberation struggles. Upon independence, China was thus in a position where it sought to continue linkages with the SWAPO government, as part of its policy of bolstering itself internationally through the utilization of Third World support. Namibia for its part was eager for investment and economic development, and China has been seen as a useful country to do business with.     

The British army in the east and India to‐day

The Soviet Union and The Pacific By Gerald Segal. London. Unwin Hyman. 1990. Pp. 236. Notes. Bibliog. Index. £30.00 Hb £10.95 Pb

The Red Star and The Lotus. The Political Dynamics of Indo‐Soviet Relations. By S. S. Rai. London. Sangam Books. 1990. Pp. 347. Index. £17.95

India and the Soviet Union. Trade and Technology Transfer. By Santosh Mehrotra. Cambridge University Press. 1991. Pp. 242. Notes. Bibliog. Index. £30.00     

Barking or biting? Media and parliamentary investigation of right‐wing extremism in the Bundeswehr

Over the winter of 1997–98 Germany was rocked by a series of investigative media reports over right‐wing extremist incidents within its armed forces, painting a disturbing picture of racist violence and neo‐Nazi sympathies in the Bundeswehr. In response to the media reports and the ensuing public outcry, the Bundestag instituted a Committee of Investigation over political extremism in the Bundeswehr. The Committee concluded that, despite the severity of the some of the incidents investigated, most were initiated by extremist individuals who sought to use their military service to further their political goals, but it found no evidence of widespread right‐wing trends within the ranks. This affair proved the value of Germany's wide media freedoms as an inherent element in the stability of the German democracy and enhanced the ‘public watchdog’ function of the German media.     

Towards a new paradigm for pan‐African knowledge production and application in the context of the African renaissance

Abstract

The article argues that the primary purpose of education, both formal and non‐formal, is the development of interrelated and interdependent sets of human capacity to think, to know and to act by honing social consciousness or awareness, values and skills. Investing in education is therefore viewed as investment in the development of social capital that combines with material resources and other non‐material phenomena to produce goods and services, as well as a favourable spiritual environment for human sustenance and development.

Education in Africa needs a fundamental paradigm change which entails, among other things, focusing on confronting, with a view to correcting and departing from, hegemonic knowledge and knowledge systems that are predicated on racist paradigms that have deliberately and otherwise distorted, and continue to distort, the reality of who Africans really are. The article visits some of the terrains most in need of this change: contestations about the roles Africans and Africa have played in human civilisation during the four main historical periods to date: Africa's leadership as the cradle of humankind or the Naissance of Humanity; Africa's leadership in all fields of knowledge and human achievements at the beginning of modern civilisation up to about the fourteenth century AD; the fifteenth century AD to the present which marks the only period in human development when Africa and Africans have been dominated and marginalised by mainly European civilisation and its global projections; and, the emerging era of the renaissance of Africa and other marginalised peoples.

A model curriculum that requires supplementation by the specific characteristics of each country that adopts it is suggested as a step towards this paradigm change. This modest effort at constructing a model curriculum is informed by the understanding that all Africans and peoples of African descent need to possess some basic, shared common knowledge about Africa, the Diaspora and the world ‐ and to acquire critical approaches to contextualised learning.     

Positioning Norm, Principle and Interest in Chinese Foreign Policy —— The Case of the Myanmar Issue

There are different driving forces behind Chinese foreign policy decision-making. Norms, principles, and interests and the subtle combinations of them, I argue in this paper, are the major driving forces on the input side, while the domestic situation of a specific country and international pressure undercut China’s policy deliberations. By contrast, the form of government of a specific country under discussion is not an important variable. In this paper, I use China’s policy toward Myanmar as a case study. The findings prove that the integration of norms, principle and practical interests has formed the powerful impetus that drives China’s policies toward Myanmar. Among these factors, the interests China has identified in general and stability on its “doorstep” in particular play a dominant role, while the norm of human security and the principle of non-interference are embedded in its policy deliberations.