ARTICLES

Migration and Settlement of the Yuezhi-Kushan: Interaction and Interdependence of Nomadic and Sedentary Societies
Xinru Liu
pp. 261-292
Abstract: Interactions and interdependence between nomadic and agricultural peoples are important topics of world history. This article seeks to track the migration and transformation of the Yuezhi-Kushan from a nomadic people residing on the borders of agricultural China to the ruling elite of an empire embracing much of central Asia and south Asia. Interactions between nomadic and sedentary peoples had impacts on both Yuezhi-Kushan society and the agricultural societies that traded with the nomads (such as China) or that were ruled by nomads (such as India).

Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Piracy: Maritime Violence in the Western Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf Region during a Long Eighteenth Century
Patricia Risso
pp. 293-319
Abstract: Maritime hostility can be perceived as warfare, social banditry, commercial competition, or piracy. This essay defines maritime violence as indiscriminate seizure of sea-borne or coastal property, under threat or use of force, and then applies the definition to disputed incidents in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf region. While economic and political factors are important in explaining different interpretations, this essay emphasizes cultural factors, particularly language and diplomatic rhetoric. The vocabularies of English, Arabic, and Arabic-influenced languages provide insight into cross-cultural misunderstandings.

From Rapid Change to Stasis: Official Responses to Cholera in British-Ruled India and Egypt, 1860-c. 1921
Sheldon Watts
pp. 321-374
Abstract: This paper identifies a sharp shift in cholera policies in British India. Before mid-1868, medical authorities permitted sanitation officials to accept that this lethal disease was brought into new areas by human movement, and it allowed them to apply appropriate control measures. Then, with the opening of the Suez Canal across Egypt, the Imperial Government in London (reflecting the interests of investors) compelled officials in India to deny that cholera was carried by infected persons or that its movement could be stopped by cordons or quarantine of ships. Medically sound control measures were forbidden, at first on ideological grounds. After about 1899 bureaucratic inertia worked to the same end. This paper examines the consequences in India and Egypt to 1920 — a huge, unnecessary loss of life.

Decolonization, Democratization, and Communist Reform: The Soviet Collapse in Comparative Perspective
Robert Strayer
pp. 375-406
Abstract: This article seeks to situate the collapse of the Soviet Union in a set of broader comparative contexts, each of which illuminates particular aspects of late Soviet history. It treats that history first as an end-of-empire story, comparing it with other disintegrating empires of the twentieth century, then as a democratization narrative juxtaposed to those of other authoritarian regimes in southern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and east Asia over the past three decades, and finally as a communist reform process gone awry, comparing it to an analogous and apparently more successful process in China.

REVIEW ARTICLE

Are Coal and Colonies Really Crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the Great Divergence
P. H. H. Vries
pp. 407-446
Abstract: In this review article the author offers an extensive analysis of Kenneth Pomeranz’s book, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, the latest in a series of works that focus on the classical question why sustained industrial growth began in northwestern Europe and not someplace else. The author systematically analyzes Pomeranz’s arguments and confronts them with those of other scholars, especially David S. Landes, André Gunder Frank, and R. Bin Wong, and also with recent literature on the economic history of northwestern Europe, China, and Japan.

BOOK REVIEWS

Peter Bogucki. The Origins of Human Society.
Reviewed by John H. Bodley
pp. 447-450

Brian Fagan. From Black Land to Fifth Sun: The Science of Sacred Sites.
Reviewed by Colin Renfrew
pp. 450-452

Iris Berger and E. Frances White. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History.
Reviewed by Ifi Amadiume
pp. 452-457

Barbara N. Ramusack and Sharon Sievers. Women in Asia: Restoring Women to History.
Reviewed by Nupur Chaudhuri
pp. 457-459

Guida Jackson. Women Rulers Throughout the Ages: An Illustrated Guide.
Reviewed by Bella Vivante
pp. 460-462

M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth, eds. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume IV, The Age of Achievement: A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century. Part One, The Historical, Social, and Economic Setting.
Victor Mair, ed. The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia. 2 vols.
Reviewed by Thomas Barfield
pp. 462-464

Mark J. Hudson. The Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands.
Reviewed by Mark McNally
pp. 465-467

Hugh Elton. Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Reviewed by Lawrence Okamura
pp. 468-469

Peter Wells. The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe.
Reviewed by Hugh Elton
pp. 470-472

Peter Partner. God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam.
Reviewed by Susan H. Farnsworth and Mary Lynn Rampolla
pp. 472-476

Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan, eds. The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy.
Richard C. Foltz. Mughal India and Central Asia.
Reviewed by David Christian
pp. 476-479

P. Nick Kardulias, ed. World-Systems Theory in Practice: Leadership, Production, and Exchange.
Reviewed by Peter Bogucki
pp. 479-482

Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik. The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present.
Reviewed by Arturo Giráldez
pp. 482-485

Judy Bieber, ed. Plantation Societies in the Era of European Expansion.
Reviewed by Kim D. Butler
pp. 485-488

Anthony Pagden. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500-c. 1800.
David Armitage, ed. Theories of Empire, 1450-1800.
Reviewed by David Robyak
pp. 489-495

Kenneth Pomeranz. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.
Reviewed by Edward R. Slack Jr.
pp. 495-498

Alex Calder, Jonathan Lamb, and Bridget Orr, eds. Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769-1840.
Reviewed by Anne Perez Hattori
pp. 498-501

Sundiata A. Djata. The Bamana Empire by the Niger: Kingdom, Jihad and Colonization, 1712–1920.
Risto Marjomma. War on the Savannah: The Military Collapse of the Sokoto Caliphate under the Invasion of the British Empire, 1897-1903.
Reviewed by Bruce Vandervoort
pp. 501-505

Lata Mani. Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India.
Reviewed by John R. Pincince
pp. 505-508

Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri, eds. Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race.
Reviewed by Julia Clancy-Smith
pp. 508-511

Carolyn Hamilton. Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Imagination.
Reviewed by Emily S. Burrill
pp. 512-514

Aviva Chomsky and Aldo Lauria-Santiago, eds. Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean.
Reviewed by Mark Thurner
pp. 514-516

J. R. McNeill. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century.
Reviewed by David Christian
pp. 516-518

Elizabeth Sinn. The Last Half Century of the Chinese Overseas.
Reviewed by James A. Cook
pp. 518-521

INDEX TO VOLUME 12