In January 1635 there arrived in Goa a delegation from the English East India Company. The affluent air and dignified behaviour of its members, not to mention the obviously well-gunned and well-equipped ships that had brought them, greatly impressed the Portuguese, according to the then viceroy, the redoubtable Conde de Linhares. After the solution of the usual niceties of protocol, and after the viceroy had expatiated on the iniquities of England's erstwhile allies, the Dutch, a truce was agreed. So ended something like half a century of war at sea as the English had pushed—and surprisingly slowly, considering their reputation in Europe—into Portugal's Asian preserves. The peace did not, as Linhares had hoped, lead to the downfall of the Dutch, who went on to inflict grievous blows on Portugal in east and west alike. Nor did it establish England and Portugal as ‘senores de tudo’.Nevertheless it opened an era of generally amicable relations between the two countries in Asia, and so forms a convenient point from which to survey their previous history, and to indicate what may be learned from English sources as to the condition and affairs of the Estado da India.

American trade with China was ushered in by the voyage of the Empress of China to Canton in 1784. Within a few years commerce had become so profitable that the United States appointed Major Samuel Shaw to act as the American Consul in China. Very quickly the United States became the number two trader with China and the most serious rival to England. However, American ships were neither as large nor as numerous as those of the British East Indies Company and American merchants possessed neither the financial backing nor the prestige of their British counterpart. The United States was still a weak naval power and traders could not depend on any significant protection from the fleet. Furthermore, the Washington government was unable to exert any appreciable influence on Chinese authorities and they settled into a well-patterned position of following the British lead in the Far East.

China's early economic modernization in the Late Ch'ing period has attracted a great deal of attention from economic historians who have been trying to find out causes for the failure of this attempt, and to measure the impact of Western imperialism. What they have generally ignored is the fact that China at that time was trying to break free from the growing foreign economic control, and to find an alternative to the foreign capital. The alternative was the overseas Chinese capital which, in the belief of the Ch'ing government, was capable of taking over the role of foreign capital in the economic modernization of China. This paper seeks to examine the measures taken by the Ch'ing government to attract overseas Chinese capital, and to analyse why the policy of using overseas Chinese capital failed.

They order these things differently in England. Such comment on the relevance of the British political and economic experience to postsurrender Japan has been overlooked by students ofthe occupation period. The explanation for this neglect appears to vary on national lines. Research interest into Britain's postwar foreign policy in east Asia has been limited until recently by the availability of government material, while American and later Japanese scholars following in their wake seem reluctant to recognize that in name and sometimes in reality the occupation was an allied venture, since this goes against the grain of American unilateralism. Where there has been note of allied contributions to the occupation the references have tended to be perfunctory. Two recent publications might be cited as representative of this trend among American historians. John Dower's voluminous work on Yoshida Shigeru has little on Yoshida's contacts with British occupation personnel despite frequent references to the premier's anglophilia. Justin Williams's version of the occupation is equally Americocentric. The author regards the Far Eastern Commission's role in Japan's enforced democratization as reactionary ‘because SCAP dealt with the real Japan and the FEC with an imaginary Japan. Long after SCAP became immersed in constructing the democratic Japan of the future, the FEC was still preoccupied with teaching a lesson to the Imperial Japan of old.’ As a challenging quotation useful for those setting examinations on the subject it may bear repetition but not a few British and Commonwealth diplomats might be forgiven for suggesting that the remark could be profitably reversed. The distance between the United States' image of Japan and the truth behind the rhetoric remained a persistent theme of despatches from the British mission in Tokyo (UKLIM) to the Foreign Office throughout this period.

For many reasons the June election was unusual. To begin with, it was the first time in twenty-seven years that a general election was called due to the passage of a ‘vote of non-confidence’ in the House of Commons.Moreover, it was a ‘double election’ as the regular triennial election of the House of Councillors was scheduled for the same time. Most uniquely, it was also the first time in Japan's electoral history that an incumbent Prime Minister died in office while in the course of the campaign. Finally, it was seen as the first serious opportunity for the combined opposition forces to terminate the uninterruped one-party rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (hereafter referred to as the LDP) since 1955. Results of the election and the subsequent choice of Suzuki Zenko as the Prime Minister surprised not only observers but also the ‘insiders’ ofJapanese politics. This paper attempts to: (1) elaborate on the background that led to the election; (2) illustrate and analyze the electoral facts; and (3) examine their implications for Japan's party politics in the 1980s.

Muslim law confers supreme authority in marital relations on the husband, to such an extent that the husband can unilaterally and extra-judicially dissolve the matrimonial bond by pronouncement of the verbal formula of divorce (talaq). The wife's position may be to some extent protected by the fact that her deferred dower becomes payable to her upon termination of the marriage by divorce or the death of her husband. However, the dower may either have been set at a minimal amount or have been severely reduced by intervening years of inflation so as to provide neither an affective restraint on the husband's exercise of his power of talaq nor much real assistance to the wife after she has been divorced and turned out of her husband's house. On the other hand, if the dower is set at such an amount as to constitute a real restraint on her husband in regard to his exercise of talaq and the marriage breaks down, the husband may refuse to divorce the Wife by talaq (since by doing so he would incur liability for the dower debt) and may suggest that she agree to a divorce by mutual consent (Khul' or mubara' a). However, a concomitant of a divorce by mutual consent is some financial remuneratioin by the wife to the husband; usually the husband requires the wife to relinquish her rights to dower. The wife may thus easily be placed in position of having to buy her way out of an unhappy marriage.