The subject of agricultural growth is a matter of central importance in the evaluation of the impact of colonial rule on India. Given that the agricultural sector provided a very large share of total output and employment, movements in the per capita agricultural output would be a good indicator of changes in per capita income. Despite the usual caveats made about the dangers of using per capita income as a measure of welfare, a sustained fall in such income would imply a failure of state economic policy in a crucial respect.

For the last few years an imaginative programme for training Buddhist monks in basic health care has been in operation in Thailand. The scheme, originally based on two wats (temples) in Bangkok, is now being extended to the Northeast where poverty and malnutrition are most acute. The originator of the programme, Dr Prawase Wasi, a distinguished haematologist, has received several awards for his work, which is increasingly recognized as a major landmark in the implementation of health care in developing countries.

The study of coercion and how it is applied within a political system is useful for a number of reasons. As a strategy of control and management it is in itself worthy of investigation. Moreover, an examination of how coercion is applied can tell us much about the nature of a particular polity. Indeed, as Weber emphasized, the state itself is distinguished from other political systems to the extent that it successfully upholds the claim to the legitimate application of force. The willingness of a regime to use coercion against opponents or dissidents, or to regulate the political participation of the ordinary citizenry, has a direct bearing upon such questions as human rights, democratic values, authoritarianism, and the degree of consensus within a given polity.

Economic nationalism may seem rather too grand a term for the contents of this paper. And indeed, I have not attempted any analysis of the economics of economic nationalism. My concern is with the nationalist element in the equation, in particular the basic perceptions of nationalists inside Korea who responded to the plight of their colonially oppressed nation. The question, ‘Is economic nationalism viable under colonial occupation?’ may be answered negatively in Korea's case. But one may equally assert that all nationalist movements and all economic action, of left or right, were not viable in Korea at this time. Even if a certain theory of the determinative role of economic superstructures is employed, I suspect this question of viability may generate only fruitless dispute over whether we strictly mean non-viability or simply failure. Hence I willingly leave the theoretical aspects of the case to those equipped to deal with them.