This is an in-depth account of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, a uniquely cosmopolitan institution established in the wake of China's defeat in the Opium Wars (1842 to 43), and a central feature of the Treaty Port system. The British-dominated service was headed by the famous Robert Hart who founded a far-reaching customs administration that also encompassed other responsibilitie…
This book charts new territory both theoretically and methodologically. Drawing on MacDougall’s notion of social aesthetics, it explores the sensory dimensions of privilege through a global ethnography of elite schools. The various contributors to the volume draw on a range of theoretical perspectives from Lefebvre, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Appadurai, Kress and van Leeuwen to both broaden and crit…
Published in 1822, but completed in manuscript form almost 100 years earlier, this work was designed to accompany Beschi's earlier Grammar of Common Tamil. While the latter enabled the student to speak the language, this reissue offers a way into reading Tamil's classical literature with its complexity of thought and technique. One of the earliest and most distinguished pioneers in the field of…
The language of Bangladesh, West Bengal and parts of Tripura and Assam, Bengali is an Indo-Aryan language originating from Sanskrit. With over 230 million speakers, it is the sixth most spoken language in the world today. Published in 1778, this was one of the first grammars of Bengali ever compiled. The English orientalist Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751–1830) prepared the work during his emp…
Alfred Percival Maudslay (1850–1931) was a British colonial administrator and archaeologist who is widely considered the founder of modern Mesoamerican archaeology. After graduating from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1872 Maudslay made his first visit to Guatemala before becoming a colonial administrator working in Trinidad and Fiji. After retiring from colonial service in 1880 he returned to G…
The office of governor general (tsung-tu) was the highest provincial post throughout the Ch’ing dynasty. As such, it was a vital link in the control of a vast empire by a very small and alien ruling elite. This is primarily a biographical and statistical analysis of the incumbents of that office. By analyzing the biographical data of those who held the position of governor-general, much may b…
In 1883, the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines was tasked with assisting and supporting an Aboriginal population that had been devastated by a brutal dispossession. It began its tenure with little government direction – its initial approach was cautious and reactionary. However, by the turn of the century this Board, driven by some forceful individuals, was squarely focus…
A literary mirror is the first English-language work to comprehensively analyse Indonesian-language literature from Bali from a literary and cultural viewpoint. It covers the period from 1920 to 2000. This is an extremely rich field for research into the ways Balinese view their culture and how they respond to external cultural forces. This work complements the large number of existing studies …
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. What are the pleasures of reading translations of South Asian literature, and what does it take to enjoy a translated text? This volume provides opportunities to explore such questions by bringing together a whole set of new translations by David Shulman, noted scholar of South Asia. The translated selectio…
The first major interpretation of recent South Asian diasporic writing in specifically transatlantic terms.The book is organised around four key themes: home and nation; travel and return; racial mixing; and food and eating. Ruth Maxey offers readings of canonical and less well-known South Asian American and British Asian writers and texts and of key cinematic works. She explores the formal and…