This book discusses the epistemic foundation of the heuristic construct ‘vagabond’ and the convergence between the politics of itinerancy and that of dissent in the context of South Asia. It describes the fraught relationship between ‘native’ itinerant practices and techniques of governmentality which have furnished different categorizations and taxonomies of mobility. The book demonstrates the historical seismic breaks – from the Orientalist to the post-Orientalist, from the premodern to the modern, and from the colonial to the post-colonial – in the representation of the vagabond in the juridico-political imagination, in historiography and cultural articulation. For instance, the drunk European sailor, the quasi-religious mendicant, and the helpless famine refugee have all been referred to as ‘vagabonds’ in the colonial archive. This book examines the histories and conditions behind these conceptual overlaps, as well as the uncanny associations among categories that uneasily coexist and mirror each other as subsets of a vast range of phenomena, which may loosely be called ‘vagabond(age)’. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of literature, cultural studies, colonial and post-colonial studies, history, migration studies, sociology, and South Asia studies.

The author and his new German wife packed their backpacks and, with no money, on a beautiful summer day, set out on the road with no goal or purpose and with little knowledge of what lie ahead. Together they blazed a trail from Europe to India that a few years later would become known as The Hippie Trail. Hitch-hiking from Frankfurt, through Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Rangoon, Bangkok, Malaysia, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, they led a life filled with meeting incredible people, experiencing strange cultures, humorous incidents, dangerous adventures, and desperate circumstances, aimlessly wandering on the road and in the streets of Europe and Asia until it all led back to that search for meaning, leading to a desperate climax in the deserts of Rajasthan.

George Kennan (1845-1924) was a pioneering explorer, writer, and lecturer on Russia in the nineteenth century, the author of classic works such as Tent Life in Siberia and Siberia and the Exile System, and great-uncle of George Frost Kennan, the noted historian and diplomat of the Cold War. In 1870, Kennan became the first American to explore the highlands of Dagestan, a remote Muslim region of herders, silversmiths, carpet-weavers, and other craftsmen southeast of Chechnya, only a decade after Russia violently absorbed the region into its empire. He kept detailed journals of his adventures, which today form a small part of his voluminous archive in the Library of Congress. Frith Maier has combined the diaries with selected letters and Kennan’s published articles on the Caucasus to create a vivid narrative of his six-month odyssey. The journals have been organized into three parts. The first covers Kennan’s journey to the Caucasus, a significant feat in itself. The second chronicles his expedition across the main Caucasus Ridge with the Georgian nobleman Prince Jorjadze. In the final part, Kennan circles back through the lands of Chechnya to slip once again into the Dagestan highlands. Kennan’s remarkable curiosity and perception come through in this lively and accessible narrative, as does his humor at the challenges of his travels. In her introduction, Maier discusses Kennan’s illustrious career and his reliability as an observer, while providing background on the Caucasus to help clarify Kennan’s descriptions of daily life, religion, etiquette, customary law, and local government. In an Afterword, she retraces Kennan’s steps to find descendants of Prince Jorjadze and describes her work in coproducing, with filmmaker Christopher Allingham, a documentary inspired by Kennan’s Caucasus journey.

"Bibliographical notes": pages 206-[207] Foreword.--Introduction: The vagabond element in modern literature--I. William Hazlitt.--II. Thomas De Quincey.--III. George Borrow.--IV. Henry D. Thoreau.--V. Robert Louis Stevenson.--VI. Richard Jefferies.--VII. Walt Whitman.

To think that Australia is confronting Asia for the first time in the 21st century is to deny Australia's history and the self-awareness that comes from understanding that the country has been here before. Asia appears throughout modern Australian history as a source of anxiety or hope. It has been a presence both within and outside Australia, shaping who Australians are, as well as the country's engagement with the wider world. This book assembles an impressive group of scholars across a range of disciplines to present a broadly conceived cultural history that places Asia at or near the center of Australia's national story. *** "Australia's Asia: From Yellow Peril to Asian Century captures the essence of the pendulum swings that have characterized Australian approaches to Asia over the past century and a half. ... The editors have done a first-class job in assembling high-quality chapters that make an important contribution to the existing literature on Australia and Asia. ... Moreover, this book tells an important story about the role and impact of individuals -- not just elites, but in many cases ordinary citizens -- in building Australia's relations with Asia. It is a valuable remedy to the ahistorical approach of so many of the debates within Australia over regional engagement and is a useful text for those outside Australia interested in acquiring insights into what motivates the country's approach to its region." - Pacific Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 4, December 2014Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?

Christopher Goscha resituates the Vietnamese revolution and war against the French into its Asian context. Breaking with nationalist and colonial historiographies which have largely locked Vietnam into 'Indochinese' or 'Nation-state' straightjackets, Goscha takes Thailand as his point of departure for exploring how the Vietnamese revolution was intimately linked to Asia between the birth of the 'Save the King Movement' in 1885 and the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. But his study is more than just a political history. Goscha brings geography to bear on his subject with a passion. While he considers the little-known political movements of such well-known faces as Phan Boi Chau and Ho Chi Minh across Southeast Asia, the author takes us into the complex Asian networks stretching from northeastern Thailand and the port of Bangkok to southern China and Hong Kong - and beyond. There, we see how Ho and Chau drew upon an invisible army of Vietnamese and Chinese traders, criminals, prostitutes, sailors and above all the thousands of emigres living in Vietnamese communities in Thailand.