This dissertation examines the adoption and maturing of a neoclassical form of Confucianism in medieval Korea (875-1545) in relation to the long and complex roads to building a centralizing aristocratic order. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Koryŏ (918-1392) sought to build a new type of government after overthrowing the bone-rank oligarchy of middle and late Silla (654-935), which proved irreplaceable. This institutional challenge prompted the Koryŏ court to turn to Neo-Classicism, a resurgent brand of Confucian nativism from the Northern Song (960-1127) that provided a range of ideas and blueprints for building a stable bureaucratic state. Koryŏ's Neo-Classicists envisioned a sociopolitical order in which the king and his courtiers enjoyed an institutionalized protection of their status and a recruitment system that drew staff from a pool of provincial candidates. Two bouts of reform contributed to the gradual realization of this vision. The First Wave (1046-1122) bolstered the monarchy's fiscal capacity and military capabilities, and the Second Wave (1170-1258) expanded the influence of the civil examination system to an unprecedented scale. However, the Mongol rule between 1258 and 1351 proved to be the cataclysmic moment. In a hostile environment, yangban courtiers serving both Mongol and Korean rulers perfected a patrimonial order based on patronage, marriage, and Neo-Classicist learning. The late-Koryŏ yangban completed the localization of Neo-Classicism with a new collective identity and converted Neo-Classicism into an ideology for legitimating the state's aggressive acculturation of the subject population. In 1392, the dynastic change to Chosŏn (1392-1910) happened despite the opposition of most yangban. Nonetheless, the early Chosŏn court eventually incorporated the yangban into the central bureaucracy and the late-Koryŏ Neo-Classicist ideas laid the new regime's institutional and ideological foundation. / East Asian Languages and Civilizations

This dissertation situates Indian nationalist politics in a broad, international context of anti-imperialist movements beginning in the late colonial and interwar period. The archival record is rich with sources on the international and transnational connections of the Indian National Congress (INC); however, scholarship on the independence movement almost exclusively concentrates on the micro-histories of `locality, province, and nation' or the `subalterns' of India. Instead, this project contributes a much-needed international perspective to Indian colonial history. As a case study, this dissertation traces the relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru, then a prominent leader of the Indian independence movement and later India's first prime minister (1947-1964), and the League against Imperialism (LAI), a significant, yet little studied organization founded in Brussels in February 1927. The League offered a significant space for Nehru, and by extension the Indian National Congress, to interact and build partnerships with political leaders in other colonies, mandates and dependencies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; as well as North American and European social reformers concerned with working class and racial equality. A history of Nehru and his League connections underscores the significance of the international terrain in which Indian nationalists contested empire. In this project I argue that the making of Indian anti-colonial nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s emerged as a complex set of interactions on the ground in India, but also beyond the colonial borders of the subcontinent. / History

<p>Upon their arrival in China, priests of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, quickly began writing their opinions and observations of the Ming Dynasty, of the Manchu invasion, and of the subsequent Qing Dynasty. These priests arrived in China with both secular and religious goals, and these goals created the context for their comments, coloring their writings. However, when the Jesuits praised the Qing Dynasty, they began to use particularly European metaphors in their descriptions of the Manchus, from appearance and mannerisms to policies. While the Jesuit descriptions serve as informative material, they are not objective, detached observations. In terms of their opinions, Jesuit writings offer historians critical information about the Jesuits themselves and about the Manchus as a distinctively non-Chinese dynasty, despite their efforts to Sinofy themselves in the eyes of the Han Chinese majority. </p>

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The present social, political, legal and economic status of women in India has been the result of many kaleidoscopic changes during the last 150 years. As the pace of enlightenment and progress has been quicker and marked during the present century a more detailed study is made of this period. An attempt is made in this work to trace the various trends, activities, factors, efforts and forces which contributed to the general amelioration in the position of women as individuals, as integral constituents of the family and as members of society. The subject is treated historically in the first three chapters in order to facilitate a clearer perspective for the understanding and evaluation of the progress made. Chapter I deals briefly with the status of women during Vedic times (before 2500 B.C.) when the women enjoyed almost equal status with men in order to show that enlightened attitude was not foreign to Indian society and culture. The second chapter gives briefly the gradual deterioration from the Smriti period (500 B.C. to 500 A.D. ) to the end of the nineteenth century which marked the beginning of an enlightened attitude. Chapter III traces mainly the contribution of social reformers, the growth of women's institution and the immense awakening as a consequence of political struggle during the present century. The next seven chapters deal topically with the relation of women to marriage and family life, the customs of child marriage and enforced widowhood, social evils like purdah (veil) and prostitution, education of women and their legal, political and economic status during the last fifty years. In the last chapter an effort is made to collect the threads and give an overall picture of the status of women with a few suggestions for further progress.

<p> My dissertation explores a cultural history of the body as reflected in meditative and therapeutic forms of the Chinese martial arts in nineteenth and early twentieth-century China. Precursors of the more familiar present-day <i> taijiquan</i> <b>[special characters omitted]</b> and <i> qigong</i> <b>[special characters omitted],</b> these forms of martial arts techniques focus on the inward cultivation of <i>qi</i> <b> [special characters omitted]</b> and other apparently ineffable energies of the body. They revolve around the harnessing of &ldquo;internal strength&rdquo; or <i>neigong</i> <b>[special characters omitted].</b> These notions of a strength derived from an invisible, intangible, yet embodied <i> qi</i> came to represent a significant counterweight to sports, exercise science, the Physical Culture movement, physiology, and other Western ideas of muscularity and the body that were being imported into China at the time. </p><p> What role would such competing discourses of the body play in shaping contemporary ideas of embodiment? How would it raise the stakes in an era already ideologically charged with the intertwined issues of nationalism and imperialism, and so-called scientific modernity and indigenous tradition? This study is an inquiry into the epistemological and ontological ramifications of the idea of <i>neigong</i> internal strength, tracing the popular spread of the idea and its impact in late Qing and Republican China vernacular discourse. I pay particular attention to how the notion of &ldquo;internal strength&rdquo; might shed light on thinking about the body in the period. Using the notion of <i>neigong</i> as a lens, this project examines the claims of the internal forms of Chinese martial arts, and the cultural work that these claims perform in the context of late Qing and Republican China. I locate the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the key formative period when the idea first found popular conceptual purchase, and explore how the notion of <i>neigong</i> internal strength became increasingly steeped in the cultural politics of the time.</p><p> Considering the Chinese internal martial arts not only as a form of bodily practice but also as a mode of cultural production, in which a particular way of regarding 'the body' came to be established in Chinese vernacular culture, may additionally yield rich theoretical fodder. How might such claims about a different kind of &ldquo;internal strength&rdquo; revisit or disrupt modernist assumptions about the body? The project highlights the neglected significance of the internal martial arts as a narrative of the Chinese body. More broadly, it suggests fresh avenues for scholarship on the body, in showing how these other-bodily "ways of knowing" took on meaning in the period and beyond.</p>

The Imperial University played a significant political role in China’s imperial past. When established in the ancient Zhou, its mission was predominantly to nurture prospective officials for eventual service in government. This marks the inseparability of education and politics from the very onset of the University’s founding. Nevertheless, its diminished success in producing officials under subsequent dynasties caused a comparable diminution in the political significance of the metropolitan school. Not until the Northern Song, founded by the Zhao clan, did signs emerge of a resurrection of sorts. Three major educational reforms were attempted in the reigns of Renzong, Shenzong, and Huizong (ca. 1040-1126). In each reform, the emperor and the reform proponents envisioned an expanding role of political significance for the Imperial University. This dissertation focuses on the evolution of the metropolitan educational institutions, namely the Directorate of Education and the Imperial University, in the Northern Song. By investigating the record of conduct and extant writings as pertains to the institutional settings of the Imperial University as well as wide range of biographical sources for Northern Song men, mainly staff, students, and graduates of the Imperial University, the author seeks to gain insights into how Song emperors and policy advocates perceived the Imperial University as a political institution, how the staff and teachers at the University performed their assigned roles, and how students and graduates of the Northern Song Imperial University contributed to the political life. After highlighting the role of the Imperial University in the previous dynasties, reviewing the secondary literatures in connection with education in Song China, as well as illustrating the sources and methodology to be used in the introductory chapter, a comprehensive survey of the development of the metropolitan schools covering the entire Northern Song then follows. This narrative history not only highlights the innovations in the educational institutions per se, but also sheds light on a range of political phenomena during various stages in the Northern Song: how aristocracy evolved into meritocracy; how the reformers and conservatives created myths for political sake; how emperor Shenzong strengthened its autocratic rule by way of a comprehensive regulatory framework; how scholar-officials rebuffed in defending the “genealogy of the way”; and how the scholarly vision in recruiting officials through a countrywide school network was realized. The conclusion contains an analytical discussion of the political role of the Imperial University in late Northern Song: a tool of control and indoctrination, as well as a channel to select morally upright officials. The central issue is how successful could the Directorate of Education and the Imperial University perform these political functions. Through this study, hopefully a fuller picture of this elitist educational institution during one of its most flourishing periods in Imperial China can be restored. It is also envisioned that the political impact could be re-emphasized in future studies of political institutions, a perspective which has often been ignored in recent Chinese and Western scholarships where social history is dominant.