Review articles

Raymond Plant, Hegel, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1973, $11.30, $6.15 paper.     

THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES: A PORTRAIT OF THEIR SOCIETY: Second Edition KENNETH MADDOCK

Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books. 1982. Pp. x+ 197. Map, figures, notes, bibliography. index. Price: $A7.95.     

Book reviews

CHINA

YI‐TSI MEI FEUERWERKER. Ideology, Power, Text: self‐Representation and the Peasant ‘Other’ in Modern Chinese Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 321 pp. $A90.00, hardcover.

PO‐CHING YIP and DON RIMMINGTON. Basic Chinese: a Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge, 1998. vii, 221 pp. £12.99, paper.

MARY ANN FARQUHAR. Children's Literature in China: from Lu Xun to Mao Zedong. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. $US62.50, hardcover.

RAY HUANG. Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History. Discourses, Syntheses, and Comparisons. Armonk, NY; London, England: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. viii, 274 pp. Tables, graphs, notes, index. US$56.95, hardcover; US$22.95, paper.

GLORIA HEYUNG CHUN. Of Orphans and Warriors: inventing Chinese American Culture & Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000. 198 pp. Introduction, notes, bibliography, index. US$59.00, hardcover; US$19.00, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

PURNENDRA JAIN (ed). Australasian Studies of Japan: essays and Annotated Bibliography (1989–1996). Rockhampton, Queensland: Central Queensland University Press, 1998. 341 pp. Introduction, essays, annotated bibliography, index. $A34.95, paper.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

S. R. N. MURTHY. Vedic View of the Earth — aGeological Insight into the Vedas. Reconstructing Indian History and Culture, no. 14. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1997. xxvi, 306 pp. Preface, figures, glossary, bibliography, index. Rs 400, hardcover.

SUBRATA K. MITRA and V. B. SINGH (eds). Democracy and Social Change in India: a Cross‐Sectional Analysis of the National Electorate. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 339 pp. Introduction, tables, figures, appendices, bibliography, index. Rs 425, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

ALBERT LAU. A Moment of Anguish: Singapore in Malaysia and the Politics of Disengagement. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998. viii, 312 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. US$39.00, hardcover; US$25.00, paper (outside ASEAN and Hong Kong).

MICHAEL D. BARR. Lee Kuan Yew: the Beliefs Behind the Man. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph Series no. 85, 2000. £40.00, hardcover.

GENERAL ASIA

HUNG‐MAO TIEN and TUN‐JEN CHENG (eds). The Security Environment in the Asia‐Pacific. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. 368 pp. Tables, index. A$24.95, paper.     

No Idle Past: Uses of History in the 1830 Indian Removal Debates

I n April and May 1830, heated debates occurred in Congress over whether to remove the Cherokee Indians from certain sections of Georgia and resettle them further west, in what would become Oklahoma. Numerous accounts exist examining the events surrounding removal, which resulted in the notorious "Trail of Tears," and the various motivations of the debate participants. Historians have attributed desire for removal to land hunger, humanitarian concern for the Indians'welfare, a desire to shore up national security, and blatant racism. Some see it as part of a continuing struggle against the perceived Indian enemy, and even as a component of the new rhetorical struggle between the Democrats and Whigs as they sought to define political participation during the Second Party system.¹ No author yet, however, has undertaken an examination of the ways in which the debaters manipulated past events in constructing their arguments either in support of removal or against this policy. This article deals specifically with the uses to which history was put in the 1830 congressional debates on Indian removal.