In the increasingly global economy, commentators often cite education as a key source of competitive advantage for nations locked in economic contention on the world stage. Byron Marshall examines the evolution of Japanese schools over the past 120 years. Emphasizing the political discourse and conflict that have surrounded Japanese education, the author focuses on the three main issues of central versus local control, elitism versus equality, and nationalism versus universalism. The prewar education system in Japan was formulated in the 1870s and modeled after the Western system of public...

In this evocative essay on the cultural and social history of a unique and fragile city, Jonathan Porter examines Macau as an enduring but ever-changing threshold between two worlds, the West and China. Founded by the Portuguese in 1557, Macau emerged as a vibrant commercial and cultural hub in the early seventeenth century. The city then gradually evolved, flourishing first as a Eurasian community in the eighteenth century and then as an increasingly Chinese city in the nineteenth century. Poised on the periphery of two worlds, an isolated but global crossroads, Macau's unique cultural and...

The intersection of Islamic history and Indian Ocean history is vast but inadequately explored. It is essential to understanding how and why Islam influenced Asia and to determining the extent to which maritime success affected the mostly land-based Muslim political powers. This area of research has elicited a lively debate involving scholars as diverse as William McNeill, K. N. Chaudhuri, Niels Steensgaard, Philip Curtin, and Janet Abu-Lughod. Merchants and Faith provides an insightful overview of this debate and addresses the major questions raised by it: What were the relationships...