Note on the Word ‘Baren’ for the British East India Company by John Crawfurd

This is a brief note drawn from Crawfurd’s 1826 Journal. Although brief, it offers an account of the origin of the use of ‘Baren’ that Burmese sometimes used to refer to the British

An Account of Martaban in March and April 1826 by John Crawfurd

In the last sections of his account of his mission to Ava in 1827, John Crawfurd included his journal of his visit to Martaban in the previous year, in order to fill a gap in his 1827 narrative. As he explained: “Our return to Bengal having hindered our excursion to the Saluen and Gain rivers, as well as prevented us from visiting other parts of the province, I shall endeavour in some measure to supply the deficiency, by the insertion of the journal of a voyage to Martaban, which, I performed about ten months before the time of which I am now writing. It is as follows...

Account of Rangoon in the Summer of 1826

During his stay at Rangoon in the summer of 1826, Crawfurd drew up his account of this town, although it was not published until he included it in his account of his embassy made to the Burmese court in 1827, which was published in 1829. As Crawfurd explains: “The following account of Rangoon was collected by me while I resided there in civil, charge of Pegu, a period of more than six months.

Essays on the economics of education in developing countries

This thesis is comprised of three essays on the economics of education in developing countries, focused on the analysis of public financing of schools operated by non-state actors. Chapter One focuses on publicly subsidised private secondary schools in Uganda. Student value-added is higher in these schools than in government schools. The chapter explores the role of the quality of school management as a mediating factor in the performance differential, finding that private schools are on average no better managed than government schools, with the exception of those managed by an international charity. Chapter Two evaluates a five-year private school voucher lottery programme in Delhi. This lottery was designed as a test of India’s national Right to Education Act Section 12(1)(c), which reserves 25 percent of places at private schools nationwide for students from “economically weaker sections”, with funding coming from government. Students who won the lottery and attended low-cost private schools performed slightly worse in Hindi and no different in Maths and English, or on various non-cognitive skills. Chapter Three evaluates a large-scale contracting out of public schools to private management in Punjab, Pakistan. Using a difference-in-difference framework, I estimate that failing government schools that are contracted out to private operators dramatically increase their enrolment, but that the effect on student learning is ambiguous. Overall these three studies highlight the variability in forms of public financing for independently operated schools, and the variability in quality. In all three policies, financing for non-state schools costs significantly less than equivalent spending in government schools

History of the Indian Archipelago : containing an account of the manners, arts, languages, religions, institutions, and commerce of its inhabitants ; with maps and engravings

LoC Class: DS601, LoC Subject Headings: Austronesian languages, Ethnology -- Malay Archipelago, Malay Archipelago, Malay Archipelago -- Commerce, Philippine