‘China Under Xi Jinping: A New Assessment’ is one of the first scholarly books on Xi’s China during the Pandemic, which contains several features that are unmatched by existing scholarship. First, all the authors have studied and taught Chinese and American history or politics in both China and the United States for decades. They accordingly are quite familiar with and possess deep understandings of the history, politics, ideology, and society in both countries and therefore their resea...

Every society has an energy profile, that is, an array of energy sources, ranging in complexity from human power to nuclear fusion, that can be ranked according to their relative importance to that society. From about 4000 BE onward, animal muscle power becomes integrated into the energy profiles of many societies. The forms this integration takes include riding, carrying burdens, pulling wheeled vehicles and sleighs, operating mills and irrigation devices, and pulling plows, threshing sleds,...

Spanning Malaysia’s post-independence period, and using the repression-mobilization nexus as a key theoretical framework, this study outlines how its Christian community delicately and simultaneously defends its religious rights without being construed as anti-Islam in the face of state-led “Islamization”. By primarily focusing on the 1980s to the contemporary period, while considering subnational differences between East and West Malaysia, this study charts the changes in the community...

Between 1848 and 1914, around 5,800 Swiss Mercenaries enlisted in the Dutch Colonial Army (KNIL) to fight in the Dutch East Indies, now modern-day Indonesia. This book traces the paths of these mercenaries beyond the boundaries of the Dutch Empire, shedding light on the intricacies of nineteenth-century military labour markets. It delves deep into their social backgrounds, motivations, intimate relationships, and their role in the violent expansion of the colonial empire. In doing so, it unve...

The book outlines a dramatic history of the failed liberalization of Japanese private law during the Meiji era. Once Japan overthrew the shogunate and fully opened up to contact with the world, modernization of the backward country and its fragmented customary legal system became a crucial objective of the new ruling elites. The initiated codification of law included the drafting of the first Civil Code, designed to revolutionize the traditional societal ties in Japan. The legal project, seem...