Leadership transfer in the Asian revolution: Mao Zedong and the Asian Cominform

On the eve of the victory of the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong became interested in creating an Asian Cominform. Although Stalin agreed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should lead the Asian revolution and agreed in principle to the idea of an Asian Cominform, he was not in favour of immediate action. After hearing Moscow's opinion, the CCP started to train communist cadres from Asian countries. The CCP gained actual leadership of the Asian revolution after China's entry into the Korean War. Although the Asian Cominform was not formally established, China became the centre of the Asian revolution in the 1950s.     

The green revolution game

Abstract

Teaching qualitative methods in the context of an existing research methods course presents a number of problems. Qualitative methods tend to be marginalised and constrained by traditional expectations of teachers and taught to elicit a polarised response from students. A number of factors contribute to this reaction: the paucity of library resources, a perception that qualitative methods are frivolous and challenge traditional values and the difficulty of teaching large numbers. As the course has developed, a number of innovations have been introduced to combat these reactions and they are described and evaluated in a short article by James Sidaway appended to this paper.     

The missing revolution: The totalitarian democracy in light of 1776

During much of his prolific career, the late historian Jacob Talmon was preoccupied with revolutionary movements, and was especially unsettled by, and attracted to, the force displayed by the French and Russian Revolutions. The young United States’ long and bloody war against the British Empire, followed by the creation of a republican novus ordo seclorum, supposedly fitted Talmon's revolutionary model and narrative. Hence, it is hard to account for the complete absence of the American Revolution from Talmon's extensive and celebrated trilogy.

This paper examines how Talmon understood revolutions and how the major historiographical schools interpreting the American Revolution could not accommodate, for different reasons, Talmon's paradigm of the nature and essence of revolutions. The paper further demonstrates how not only the failings of different historical interpretive schemes convinced Talmon to ignore the American Revolution. Rather, since the American Revolution could be conceived either as Lockean or Machiavellian, but in any event not as Rousseauian, Talmon overlooked its Atlantic nature; he chose to focus solely on messianic Europe. The paper will thus analyze the meaning and consequence of the fact that Talmon left the examination of the pursuit of happiness to Americanists, and chose to leave 1776 out of his corpus. Indeed, a missing revolution.     

The literate revolution in Polynesia

Abstract

Pearl oysters are among the most important natural resources of the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia. For over a century and a half, Tuamotuan pearl oysters have been commercially harvested by diving methods. Regulation by the French has allowed intensive exploitation by external extrepreneurs, leading to stock decline. Available archival documentation, primarily in the form of government communications and legal papers, reveals a long history of recurrent struggles involving islanders, external entrepreneurs, and colonial administrations. Today, a new and highly successful pearl farming industry has been developed, but problems have emerged which mirror those in the former diving industry.