Europäische Seeleute als koloniales Ordnungs- und Identitätsproblem im Kalkutta der 1860er Jahre

European Seamen as a Problem of Colonial Identity and Order in Calcutta of the 1860s The relationship between the wealthier part of British India’s white society and the infamous seaman ‘Jack Tar’ was ambiguous. In the eyes of the colonial administration the seamen’s alleged lack of discipline and ‘reckless and irrational ways’ brought them close to the ‘uncivilised natives’. This was a fact regarded as highly disturbing in a colonial setting based on the ideology of racial difference and — at least partly — informed by notions of a civilising mission supposedly entrusted to the British by providence. The problems arising from their presence in Indian seaport towns could not be easily solved by the ‘politics of making invisible’, as their labour was vital to the empire. Their position was therefore a highly ambivalent one, vacillating between inclusion and exclusion into the fold of ‘respectable’ white colonial society. In certain contexts and situations they were certainly seen as being part of the imperial establishment — though on the lowest ranks of the order of precedence — whereas in other constellations they were perceived as outright threat to this very establishment and hence subjected to processes of discursive ‘othering’ and practical disciplining

„The Cult of Asianism“:: Asiendiskurse in Indien zwischen Nationalismus und Internationalismus (ca. 1885–1955)

The article explores Asianist discourses that emerged in India from the late9th century through the first decade after independence. The first section gives a general overview of the various historical stages of the Indian involvement with Asia during the period under survey as expressed in the writings and speeches of leading intellectuals and politicians. The second section analyses in greater detail three of the most important discursive constructions of a pan-Asian identity from the interwar period: Rabindranath Tagore’s influential anti-modernist conception of ‘Asia as spiritual counter-Europe’; the powerful trope of Asia as ‘Greater India’, that gained particular popularity among Hindu nationalist outfits; and the pragmatic and modernist concept of Young Asia’, that posited a pan-Asian solidarity as a strategic device in the fight against Western imperialism. With the possible exception of the ‘Young Asia’ model, it is argued by way of conclusion, the Indian ‘cult of Asianism’ was clearly built on Western Orientalist stereotypes and had only limited potential to contribute to the intellectual decolonisation of India

Imagining Asia in India: Nationalism and Internationalism (ca. 1905-1940)

Asianisms, that is, discourses and ideologies claiming that Asia can be defined and understood as a homogenous space with shared and clearly defined characteristics, have become the subject of increased scholarly attention over the last two decades. The focal points of interest, however, are generally East Asian varieties of regionalism. That "the cult of Asianism” has played an important role on the Indian subcontinent, too—as is evident from the quote above—is less understood. Aside from two descriptive monographs dating back to the 1970s, there has been relatively little scholarly engagement with this phenomenon. In this article, we would like to offer an overview of several distinct concepts of Asia and pan-Asian designs, which featured prominently in both political and civil society debates in India during the struggle for Independence. Considering the abundance of initiatives for Asian unification, and, in a more abstract sense, discourses on Asian identity, what follows here is necessarily a selection of discourses, three of which will be subjected to critical analysis, with the following questions in mind: •What were the concrete motives of regional—in this case Indian—actors to appropriate the concept of Asianism? Is the popularity of supranational frames of reference solely to be explained as an affirmation of a distinctive identity vis-à-vis the imagined powerful West, or are there other motives to be found?•What were the results of these processes of appropriation, and how were these manifested politically and culturally?•What tensions resulted from the simultaneous existence of various nationalisms in Asia on the one hand and macro-nationalistic pan-Asianism on the other

Evidence for electronically-driven ferroelectricity in the family of strongly correlated dimerized BEDT-TTF molecular conductors

By applying measurements of the dielectric constants and relative length changes to the dimerized molecular conductor $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Hg(SCN)$_2$Cl, we provide evidence for order-disorder type electronic ferroelectricity which is driven by charge order within the (BEDT-TTF)$_2$ dimers and stabilized by a coupling to the anions. According to our density functional theory calculations, this material is characterized by a moderate strength of dimerization. This system thus bridges the gap between strongly dimerized materials, often approximated as dimer-Mott systems at 1/2 filling, and non- or weakly dimerized systems at 1/4 filling exhibiting charge order. Our results indicate that intra-dimer charge degrees of freedom are of particular importance in correlated $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$X salts and can create novel states, such as electronically-driven multiferroicity or charge-order-induced quasi-1D spin liquids.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures + Supplementary Information (8 pages, 8 figures