The slow growth of railways is undoubtedly one of the most astonishing features of the history of modernization in China. The Chinese government often gave as its reasons for opposition to railway development the fact that improved communications would facilitate foreign military expansion, that railways obstructed the feng-shui, that mandarin and peasant alike were opposed to the railway, and that railways destroyed the livelihood of the common people. But, until recently, these explanations have never been given serious consideration, despite the fact that Ch'ing officials discussed railway-policy in these terms in a major debate in 1866–67. This is partly because historians have found it difficult to accept Chinese objections to railway development at their face-value, and partly because Chinese officials themselves, seeing that foreigners were unimpressed by Chinese arguments against railway construction, offered others which they thought would be more acceptable to the Western mind. This essay, however, tries to analyse Chinese objections as a coherent body of thought that might be said to xpress 'Confucian Patriotism'. It considers in detail the events surround-ing the destruction of the Woosung railway.

If one wishes to understand something about the political mobilization of Chinese communist society, then it is necessary to concentrate primarily on the aims behind that political mobilization. The ways in which the Chinese try to direct matters so that those aims may be attained, determine the content and character of the mobilization. An analysis which is mainly concerned with such dimensions of the phenomenon ‘political mobilization’ as intensity, globality, tempo, structuring, organization, etc., is not suited to the Chinese situation, simply because these dimensions are to a large extent determined by, and can be explained by, the meaning and content of the underlying values and aims.

Central Luzon is a fertile plain directly to the north of metropolitan Manila. This region, thoroughly colonized and densely populated, has been a centre of agrarian unrest for decades. In the forties and fifties Central Luzon formed the nucleus of a peasant movement which produced the strongest anti-Japanese guerilla-army in the whole Southeast Asia, the Hukbalahap (an abbreviation of Anti-Japanese People's Army) or in short Huks. The strength of this army came primarily from the fact that the struggle against the national enemy could be combined with the pre-war conflict between the peasants and the landowners.The latter, together with the Constabulary, sided for the most part with the Japanese. At the time of the liberation in 1945 most of the local and provincial administration was in the hands of the Huks. However,having quickly regained the top positions, the political elite, who feared having quickly regained the top positions, the political elite, who feared to this. When this elite first refused to allow the radical people's represen-tatives delegated from Central Luzon to take their seats in parliament,and then attempted to recapture political mastery in Central Luzon by means of force, the Huk movement was compelled to adopt an ever more militant attitude.In the process,the leadership of the popular front set up by the Hukbalahap moved more and more towards the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The result was no less than a complete incorporation of all guerillas into the CPP in 1950. It had already been decided in 1948 that the policy of a parliamentary and legal conflict which had hitherto been pursued was not adiquate,and that force would have to play a decisive role. The Anti-Japanese People's Army was re-christened the People's Liberation Army(HMB).i

The bond between nationalists and communists in the Indonesian independence movement was always close. For this reason the failure of the communist rising of 1926–27 was felt in nationalist circles as a blew for the Movement. It is also typical that the communist rising of 1948 did not lead to a ban on the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, whereas the anti-communist sweeps of 1951 were not received in outside circles with whole-hearted approval. The co-operation between nationalists and communists rested thus on more than a simple battle for independence. The nationalists, just as much as the communists, attributed a positive significance to the public masses, which were to harbour all the prosperity of the nation. These popular masses were supposed to be bowed down by imperialism and capitalilst exploitation, so that the Indonesian nationalists also made the liberation of the popular masses a point of policy.

A Formidable consensus of academic opinion exists on the question of the formation of Malaysia. In its most commonly stated form, this consensus is manifested in an explanation which specifies a date—27 May 1961—and sees Malaysia as the outcome of the attempt to solve the ‘Singapore Problem’. The movement towards Malaysia is, with dull regularity, dated from the Tunku's almost casual, certainly very vague, reference to the need for a ‘closer understanding’ between Singapore, British North Borneo (Sabah), Brunei, and Sarawak, and for ‘a plan whereby these territories can be brought closer together in a political and economic association’ which he made in the course of a speech to the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of South-east Asia on 27 May 1961. The Tunku's initiative arose, it is almost invariably argued, from the fear of future events in Singapore. Since the Republicwould in all probability be granted a separate independence by 1963,the British would no longer be in a position to control the island's internal security, defence and foreign relations. The Federation would be deprived of the Internal Security Council through which it had had (in conjunction with the British) direct control over Singapore's internal Malaya viewpoint if an amenable Singapore government could be guaranteed. By May 1961, however, the opposite appeared imminent. There were indications that the PAP was rapidly losing ground. In the Hong Lim by-election held in late April, its candidate was severely trounced. This, combined with the knowledge that no government had in the past managed to win more than one term of office, and full aware-ness of the seemingly perpetual leftward movement of Singapore politics, ness of the seemingly perpetual leftward movement of Singapore politics, created the impression in Kuala Lumpur that unless something was done, the Republic would become a second Cuba threatening the security of the Federation. The Tunku was convinced, so the argument goes, that the Federation had to ensure control over Singapore's internal security. A reversal of his previous stand on merger was, therefore, necessary. This explanation may be referred to as the security theory on the formation of Malaysia. It has a corollary: having decided that the incorporation of Singapore was necessary, the Tunku had to find a racial counter-balance to the island's Chinese population; the Borneo territories had to be included because it was essential that Singapore be territories had to be included because it was essential that Singapore be brought into the Federation of Malaya. Malaysia was thus the logicalsolution to the Singapore Problem. Among those who have propounded the security theory are Willard Hanna, Arnold Brackman, Gordon Means, George Me. T. Kahin, James Gould, Milton Osborne, Tan Koh Chiang, J. M. Gullick, Emily Sadka, Sir Richard Allen and Justus Van der Kroef.

Few documents in recent history have provoked such controversy as the so-called ‘Tanaka Memorial’. ‘Document’ is perhaps a misnomer, for the original (assuming that there was one) has never been seen by anyone willing to admit its existence. The memorial is said to be a 13,000-word secret petition presented by Prime Minister Baron Tanaka Giichi to Emperor Hirohito on 25 July 1927 outlining a program of economic penetration into Manchuria, China, and Mongolia that would prepare for Japan's subjection of Asia and Europe. Exposed by the Chinese in 1929, the document gained global notoriety during the 1930s. Over vehement Japanese objections and disclaimers, it was translated and circulated in Europe and the United States. Grandiose designs expressed in a language that might have aroused incredulity or mirth in calmer times sounded uncomfortably authentic in the context of Japanese behavior in East Asia and the Pacific between 1931 and 1945.