French economists and Bernese agrarians: The marquis de Mirabeau and the economic society of Berne

Physiocracy is still sometimes seen as an oddly archaic programme of agricultural development. The aim of this paper is to show that one of the Physiocrats’ prime concerns was to take the subject of agriculture out of international relations. The fiscal regime that was central to Physiocracy was designed to make every large territorial state self-sufficient and, by doing so, to break the connection between modern great power politics, the international division of labour, and the politics of necessity. From this perspective, the memorandum that Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, sent to the Berne Economic Society in 1759, contains an early indication of what, had the Physiocratic programme ever been implemented in full, a world reformed on Physiocratic lines might have looked like.     

A contribution to the study of post-depositional alterations of pottery using TL dating analysis

In luminescence dating, the potassium concentration significantly contributes to the dose rate value in the age estimation. Within this study, fine-grain thermoluminescence dating has been applied on sherds of calcareous pottery of known age, excavated at a Roman site in Mallorca, Spain. For those of the samples that showed signs of severe potassium leaching, according to chemical and mineralogical examination, the thermoluminescence analysis provided overestimated dates. By using the known archaeological age of the samples, a corrected dose rate value can be estimated which provides the potassium concentration averaged for the burial period. Finally, a step-like model can then be used to estimate the fraction of the burial period after which most of the alteration effects took place.     

European influence on Russian neurology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

In this study we consider the development of clinical neurology in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries focusing on European influence on Russian medicine. Russian physicians readily accepted newly described clinical signs, theories, and classification of nervous diseases designed in Europe. This influence initiated neurology's separation from general medicine and its transformation into a new clinical discipline. In Russia this happened already in the 1860s, decades before the similar trend in Europe. The Russian example is nearly unknown in the general history of neurology. It illustrates the relationships between physiology and practical neurology at the moment of establishment of the new discipline. It also shows that the Russian physicians of the time readily accepted European medical knowledge putting it immediately into medical practice and education.     

Book reviews

CHINA

ERIC KIT‐WAI MA.Culture, Politics, and Television in Hong Kong. London: Routledge, 1999. 242 pp. Introduction, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. £55.00, hardcover.

LILY XIAO HONG LEE and SUE WILES. Women of the Long March: the Never Before Told Story. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999. 308 pp. Photographs, preface, chronology, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. A$24.95, paper.

MARIE‐CLAIRE BERGÈRE. Sun Yat‐sen (trans. Janet Lloyd). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. xii, 480 pp. Illustrations, introduction, endnotes, bibliography, index. A$90.00, hardcover.

JAPAN, KOREA

MASARU KOHNO. Japan's Postwar Party Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. xiii, 172 pp. US$65.00, hardcover; US$19.95, paper.

SHARON A. MINICHIELLO (ed). Japan's Competing Modernities: issues in Culture and Democracy 1900–1930. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. xiii, 394 pp. Illustrations, foreword, preface, introduction, index. US$54.00, hardcover; US$25.95, paper.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

DICK VAN DER MEIJ. India and Beyond: essays in Honour of Frits Staal. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 696 pp. $US110.00, hardcover.

ASHISH KOTHARI, NEEMA PATHAK, R. V. ANURADHA and BANSURI TANEJA (eds). Communities and Conservation. Natural Resource Management in South and Central Asia. New Delhi: Sage, 1998. 505 pp. Rs. 495, hardcover; Rs. 325, paper.

JAMES BROW. Demons and Development: the Struggle for Community in a Sri Lankan Village. (Hegemony and Experience. Critical Studies in Anthropology and History, Series Editors Hermann Rebel and William Roseberry). Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. xviii, 218 pp. Index. US$45.00, hardcover; US$19.95, paper.

REIDAR DALE. Evaluation Frameworks for Development Programmes and Projects. New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 1998. 150 pp. Index. Rs. 275, hardcover; Rs. 145, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

HANS ANTLOV and SVEN CEDERROTH (eds). Leadership on Java: gentle Hints, Authoritarian Rule. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1994. viii, 197 pp. £25.00, paper.

CORNELIA ANN KAMMERER and NICOLA TANNENBAUM (eds). Merit and Blessing in Mainland Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective. Monograph 45, Yale Southeast Asian Studies, 1996. 263 pp. No price given, paper.

IAN CHALMERS and VEDI HADIZ (eds). The Politics of Economic Development in Indonesia: contending Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Author notes, preface, acknowledgments. xxx, 269 pp. £60.00, hardcover.     

Publications briefly noted

ONG JIN HUI, TONG CHEE KIONG and TAN ERN SER (eds). Understanding Singapore Society . Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1997. xxiv, 608 pp. US$29.00, paper.

MARIA MIES. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: women in the International Division of Labour . New Edition. Melbourne: Spinifex, 1999. xix, 272 pp. A$29.95, paper.

V. R. SAVAGE, L. KONG and W. NEVILLE. The Naga Awakens: growth and Change in Southeast Asia . Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998. US$39.00, hardcover; US$29.00, paper.

ALAN LAWRANCE. China under Communism . London: Routledge, 1998. xii, 158 pp. US$15.99; £9.99, paper.

FREDERICK C. TEIWES with WARREN SUN. China's Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders in the Unfolding of the Great Leap Forward , 1955–1959. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. xvii, 319 pp. US$27.50, paper.

ANDREW WALDER (ed). Zouping in Transition: the Process of Reform in Rural North China . Harvard Contemporary China Series, 11. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. US$45.00; £29.95, hardcover; US$19.95; £13.50, paper.

J. A. G. ROBERTS. A Concise History of China . Basingstoke: Macmillan; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. US$45.00, hardcover; US$16.95, paper.

NIELS MULDER. Filipino Images: culture of the Public World . Quezon City: New Day, 2000. 232 pp. P300 (US$45.00), paper.