This thesis presents and analyses Chinese, Tibetan, and British sources relating to the British Mission to Tibet of 1904. It balances accounts provided by the British officers and men with modern Chinese sources. It analyses both polarised sides of the history, whilst remaining critical of all sources. British historical accounts analysed in chapter one are balanced with Chinese narratives that present the Mission as an invasion of the Motherland and its unity. Chapter two examines the role of propaganda in modern China, and how different media are used to guide the Tibetan and Chinese populations’ understanding of their history and nation. Chapters three and four provide an original translation of Bod kyi rig gnas lo rgyus dpyad gzhi’i rgyu cha bdams bsgrigs, a textbook written from a Chinese nationalistic perspective. The introductory chapter providing the Chinese narrative of the build-up to the Mission is studied in chapter three, and chapter four analyses the bloody advance into Tibet. The translation and analysis in chapter five of the letters of the Dalai Lama to the King of Nepal, the Tongsa Pönlop, and the Chögyal of Sikkim place the Mission in pan-Himalayan context, and show how the Tibetan Government sought to counter the Mission. It is the first study to provide a historical Tibetan perspective of events. Chapter six analyses the divisive issue of looting during the Mission. It examines the psychology of those who looted Tibet, and the role the items taken play in shaping the image of Tibet in the West. Modern Chinese propaganda sources from the new media are analysed in chapter seven, and demonstrate how they have been used to compliment and propagate the established narrative. The conclusions analyse the impact of the Mission, and the lessons that may be learnt for those that play the ‘New Great Game.’

This thesis is a comprehensive re-examination of Maritime Southeast Asia's (or the Nusantara's) Islamic conversion history between the late thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Traditionally, academia has attributed this event to Muslim traders and/or Sufis from either India and/or the Middle East. During the late twentieth century, however, a number of scholars began to consider the possibility of Chinese Muslim involvement. The resulting discussions focused on a re-evaluation of Javanese history in the context of attempts to re-conceptualise pre-modern Nusantara trade (considered the catalyst for Islamisation) as fundamentally orientated towards Southern China, where Muslims played a significant commercial role from the seventh through to the early fifteenth centuries. Despite the intrinsic merits of these efforts, however, they have all been limited by an overwhelming focus on Java and a tendency to examine the relevant issues over only a very narrow time span. This thesis seeks to rectify these problems. First, it will evaluate the validity of the new commercial framework over a much longer period – from the rise of Śrīvijaya in the seventh century CE to the establishment of the early seventeenth-century European trade monopolies. This longue dureé view will provide a much stronger basis for both conclusively re-orientating pre-modern Nusantaran trade towards China and also positing it as the catalyst for conversion, with Chinese Muslims at its heart. Second, the thesis will look beyond Java to examine the conversion histories of several other important Nusantara locations (Samudera-Pasai, Melaka and Brunei), as accessed through early written texts (indigenous, European and Chinese) and archaeology. The thesis then, and thirdly, couples this examination with a consideration of the Islamic influences which came to bear on the Nusantara’s early intellectual and architectural expressions of Islam. Ultimately, by taking this broad chronological, geographical and cultural approach, the thesis aims to more reliably assess the possibility that Chinese Muslims influenced the Nusantara’s initial Islamisation process.

This thesis contains a critical edition, translation and study of the Amanaska, which is a medieval Sanskrit yoga text of one hundred and ninety-eight verses in two chapters (adhyāya). Seventy-five manuscripts have been consulted for this edition and thirty-two were selected for the full collation on the basis of stemmatic analysis on a sample collation of all the manuscripts. The critical apparatus contains references to parallel verses in other works and the notes to the translation provide further information on the content, terminology and obscure passages of the text by citing other Sanskrit works, in particular, earlier Tantras and medieval yoga texts, as well as a Nepalese commentary on the Amanaska. The first part of the Introduction contains a summary of the text and an examination of the colophons of all the available manuscripts in order to establish the proper titles of the text and each of the chapters. Unlike previous editors, I have adopted the title Amanaska because it is found in the great majority of manuscript colophons. The title of previous printed editions, Amanaskayoga, appears to derive from nineteenth-century manuscript catalogues. The authorship of the text has been discussed in light of the claim made in recent Indian scholarship that it was written by Gorakṣanātha, the pupil of Matysendranātha. I conclude that the author is unknown. Discrepancies between the chapters, in particular, various incongruities in content and differences in the limits of dating, strongly suggest that both chapters were originally composed as separate works. Unlike previous editions, this one is based on the north-Indian recension. There is evidence that the north-Indian recension has preserved a more coherent version of the first chapter. The additional verses of the south-Indian recension have been edited and included separately in appendix A. The first part of the Introduction also includes fourteen sections on the content of the Amanaska. The first six of these sections are on absorption (laya), the practice of eliminating reality levels (tattva) and Layayoga, and the following sections cover yogic powers (siddhi), Śāmbhavī Mudrā, the term amanaska and the Amanaska's known sources for verses on the no-mind state. The final section called, 'Amanaska: the Effortless Leap to Liberation' examines the salient teachings of the Amanaska in light of previous ascetic, yogic and tantric traditions, in an attempt to answer questions about whom its intended audience may have been and its place within India's history of yoga. The first part of the Introduction concludes with a discussion of yoga texts which have been either directly or indirectly influenced by the Amanaska. Seeing that many of these texts have not been critically edited or translated, I have discussed their date of composition and their content in addition to the material that derives from the Amanaska. The second part of the Introduction provides essential details on the seventy-four manuscripts consulted for this edition, brief comments on the shortcomings of the previous printed editions and an explanation of the editing methodology. The recensions of the text are discussed in this section as well as my editorial policy. The critical edition and translation of the Amanaska are presented together. Each Sanskrit verse is followed by the translation and its critical apparatus is at the bottom of the page. The endnotes to each verse are located at the end of its respective chapter. Appendices B-E include four stemmatic diagrams along with brief descriptions of each hyparchetype, a list of symbols and abbreviations and an outline of the conventions used in the critical apparatus.

“Contested Childhoods” links together three major areas of historical inquiry: war and criminality, law and social change, and the law as it relates to children, in the first half of twentieth-century China. The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 has eclipsed the historical significance of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government and the importance of its role during the wartime period. This study examines how the outbreak of China’s War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) served as a crucial catalyst to the construction of ideas of criminality and its relation to children during the wartime period. It examines the different measures by which Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government (1928-1949) attempted to handle the rise in levels of criminality involving juveniles. The study analyses how an increase in criminality during the wartime period challenged how ideas on and about children and childhood were in understood within Chinese society. Moreover, it argues that wartime conditions served as a crucial catalyst prompted the construction of a new judicial and legal framework that was aimed at delineating the boundaries between childhood and adulthood during this period.

The dissertation examines the foundations of modern Arab national thought in nineteenth-century works of Buṭrus al Bustānī (1819-1883) and Aḥmad Fāris al Shidyāq (1804-1887) in which occurred an intersection of language-making practices and a national pedagogic project. It interrogates the centrality of language for Arab identity formation by deconstructing the metaphor "language is the mirror of the nation," an overarching slogan of the nineteenth century, as well as engaging with twentieth-century discussions of the Arab nation and its Nahḍa. The study seeks to challenge the conventional historiography of Arab thought by proposing a re-theorisation of the Arab Nahḍa as an Enlightenment-Modernity construct that constitutes the problematic of the Arab nation. The study investigates through literature and literary tropes the makings and interstices of the historical Arab Nation: the topography of its making. It covers a series of primary understudied sources: Bustānī's enunciative Nafīr Sūriyya pamphlets that he wrote in the wake of the 1860 civil wars of Mount Lebanon and Damascus: his translation of Robinson Crusoe, dictionary, and encyclopaedia. As well as Shidyāq's fictional autobiography, linguistic essays and treatise, and travel writings on Europe. The dissertation engages with these works to show how the 'Nahḍa' is a constituted by inherently contradictory and supplementary projects. It forms a moment of fracture in history and temporality – as does the Enlightenment in Europe – from which emerges a seemingly coherent national narrative.

Although by 1900, over 60% of the British missionary workforce in South Asia was female, women’s role in mission has often been overlooked. This thesis focuses upon women of the two leading Anglican societies – the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS) – during a particularly underexplored and eventful period in mission history. It uses primary material from the archives of SPG at Rhodes House, Oxford, CMS at the University of Birmingham, St Stephen’s Community, Delhi, and the United Theological College, Bangalore, to extend previous research on the beginnings of women’s service in the late-nineteenth century, exploring the ways in which women missionaries responded to unprecedented upheaval in Britain, India, and the worldwide Anglican Communion in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In so doing, it contributes to multiple overlapping historiographies: not simply to the history of Church and mission, but also to that of gender, the British Empire, Indian nationalism, and decolonisation. Women missionaries were products of the expansion of female education, professional opportunities, and philanthropic activity in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain. Their vocation was tested by living conditions in India, as well as by contradictory calls to marriage, career advancement, familial duties, or the Religious Life. Their educational, medical, and evangelistic work altered considerably between 1917 and 1950 owing to ‘Indianisation’ and ‘Diocesanisation,’ which sought to establish a self-governing ‘native’ Church. Women’s absorption in local affairs meant they were usually uninterested in imperial, nationalist, and Anglican politics, and sometimes became estranged from the home Church. Their service was far more than an attempt to ‘colonise’ Indian hearts and minds and propagate Western ideology. In reality, women missionaries’ engagement with India and Indians had a far more profound impact upon them than upon the Indians they came to serve.

This thesis studies Han Dynasty stone carved tombs in Central and Eastern China. These multi-chambered tombs were constructed from carved stone slabs, and were very popular among the Han people. However, such horizontal stone structures were entirely new, and were a result of outside stimuli rather than an independent development within China. The stone carved tombs were a result of imitating royal rock-cut tombs, while the rock-cut tombs were stimulated by foreign examples. Moreover, many details of stone carved tombs also had Western features. These exotic elements were incorporated to satisfy specific requirements of the Han people, and reflected the desire to assimilate exotica within Chinese traditions. Some details within stone carved tombs showed high level of stone working technologies with Western influences. But in general the level of stone construction of the Han period was relatively low. The methods of construction showed how unfamiliar the Western system was to the Han artisans. Han Dynasty stone carved tombs were hybrids of different techniques, including timber, brick and stone works. From these variations, Han people could choose certain types of tombs to satisfy their specific ritual and economic needs. Not only structures, but also pictorial decorations of stone carved tombs were innovations. The range of image motifs is quite limited. Similar motifs can be found in almost every tomb. Such similarities were partly due to the artisans, who worked in workshops and used repertoires for the carving of images. But these also suggest that the tombs were decorated for certain purposes with a given functional template. Together with different patterns of burial objects and their settings, such images formed a way through which the Han people gave meaning to the afterworld. After their heyday, stone carved tombs ceased being constructed in the Central Plains as the Han Empire collapsed. However, they set a model for later tombs. The idea of building horizontal stone chamber tombs spread to Han borderlands, and gradually went further east to the Korean Peninsula. The legacy and spread of the Chinese masonry tradition was closely related to the political circumstances of late Han and post-Han period. The spread of stone chamber tombs in Northeast Asia is presented as a part of a long history of interactions between different parts of Eurasia.

This dissertation pursues three overarching themes. The first of these is empirical: to illuminate the actual functioning of the property market in Delhi. After reconstructing the pattern of depression and boom from 1920-40, I argue that these cycles shaped the nature of participation in the market. During the depression of the 1920s many indigenous financial firms came to rely on property rentals and sales. Alongside these, a nascent sector concentrating primarily in real estate came into existence. Compared to planned state intervention, most of Delhi’s urban fabric was created by private construction. Analysis of the state’s relationship to the property market is the second aim of the work. The colonial state both embraced and was constrained by the commodification of land. Though it was the largest landowner in the city, it did not leverage this position. Rather than construction, the state was happier to act on the market indirectly. One means of indirect action concerned forms representations of urban land as commodity. Leases, advertisements and other documents were crucial for its circulation. The strength of the state in the property market derived from its role as enforcer and repository of representations of commodified space. A third aim is to study the forms of struggle engendered by urban property. Struggles over commodification of urban land, when they took collective forms, did not necessarily splinter along class lines. In fact, subsidised housing emerged out of caste, class and nationalist struggles. Conversely, the commodification of land was at issue in struggles that were not ostensibly about property. For instance, this dissertation tracks its salience for understanding communal conflicts over urban shrines. Taken together, the three themes constitute a picture of the city in which forms of capital accumulation – particularly those relating to space – cannot be ignored.

In much existing literature the incidence of sexual violence during Hindu-Muslim conflict has been attributed to the militant ideology of Hindu nationalism. This thesis interrogates this view. It first examines the ideological framework laid down by the founding ideologues of the Hindu nationalist movement with respect to sexual violence. I argue that a justification of sexual violence against Muslim women is at the core of their ideology. In order to examine how this ideology has contributed to the actual incidents, this thesis studies the episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence that occurred in 1969, 1985, 1992 and 2002 in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. An examination of these episodes shows that sexual violence against Muslim women, in both extreme and less extreme forms, were significantly motivated by Hindu nationalist ideology. However, in addition to this ideology, patriarchal ideas that serve to normalize sexual violence as ‘sex’ and sanction its infliction to maintain gendered hierarchies also motivated such crimes. Moreover, this thesis argues that the manifestation of Hindu nationalist and patriarchal motivations in acts of sexual violence was enabled by the breakdown of neighbourhood ties between Hindus and Muslims in 1969 and 2002. By contrast, during the 1985 and 1992 riots Hindus and Muslims strengthened neighbourhood ties despite extensive communal mobilization, which seems to have prevented the perpetration of extreme sexual violence against Muslim women. Thus, by providing a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of Hindu nationalist ideology, and arguing for the significance of the patriarchal ideas and neighbourhood ties in the infliction of sexual violence during conflict, this study contributes to and departs from the existing literature.

Contrary to Westerners' long-maintained denial of fashion in Chinese dress, recent scholarship has provided convincing textual evidence of fashion in early modern China. Research into this fashion commentary has complicated our understanding of Chinese consumption history, yet we still know little about fashion design, production, or dissemination. By prioritising the textual over the visual or material, this history remains confined to the written source, rather than asking what objects might tell us of Qing fashions. Though many fashionable styles of dress survive in Western museums, these are rarely considered evidence of the Chinese fashion system. Instead museum scholarship remains influenced by twentieth-century interpretations of Chinese dress as art; dominated by dragon robes and auspicious symbols, oriented around the trope of the genteel Chinese seamstress. Within this art historical account, nineteenth-century women's dress has been characterized by decay and viewed with disdain. This thesis questions these assumptions through the study of a group of late Qing women's jackets featuring embroidered narrative scenes, arguing that in this style - regulated by market desires rather than imperial edict - fashion formed at the intersection of commerce and culture. Contrary to the prevailing production model in which the secluded gentlewoman embroidered her entire wardrobe, I position the jackets within the mid-Qing commercialization of handicrafts that created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops and sub-contracted female workers. By drawing the contours of Suzhou's commercial networks - a region renowned for its embroidery - I demonstrate how popular culture permeated the late Qing fashion system, and explicate the appearance and conceptualization of the embroidered scenes through contemporary prints and performance. My exploration of how dramatic narrative was represented in female dress culture highlights embroidery's significance as a tool to reflect upon contemporary culture, a finding I support by recourse to representations of embroidery as act and object in Suzhou's vernacular ballads and dramas. Thus, these little-studied jackets not only evidence how fashionable dress articulated women's relationship with popular culture, but also how embroidery expressed contemporary concerns, allowing a re-appraisal of women's role as cultural consumers and producers.