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"Der Beitrag untersucht den Zusammenhang von Vorstellungen über Natur/ Umwelt und Visionen asiatischer Entwicklung. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei das Verhältnis von Krankheit, Gesundheitspolitik und Entwicklung. Rekonstruiert wird ein Prozess früher optimistischer Erwartungen in menschliche Fähigkeit, mit Hilfe von Technologie Natur zu meistern, hin zu einer pessimistischen Einsicht, dass dies nur begrenzt möglich ist. Asiatische Nationalisten und Sozialreformer rekurrierten auf koloniale Diskurse über das tropische Asien, waren jedoch davon überzeugt, dass Technik die Umwelt beherrschbar machen konnte. Ausdruck dieser Überzeugung war die globale Kampagne zur Ausrottung der Malaria, deren Schwerpunkt in Asien lag. Krankheitserreger machten jedoch nicht vor Grenzen halt, innerhalb derer Entwicklung zunehmend definiert wurde. Ebenso blieben Krankheiten ein Charakteristikum urbaner Räume. Zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre griffen Beobachter daher wieder auf vom Kolonialismus eingeführte Vorstellungen über die Unbeherrschbarkeit tropischer Natur zurück: nicht staatliche Institutionen oder nationale Entwicklungspolitik erschienen verantwortlich für die Persistenz von Armut, sondern Natur und Umwelt." (Autorenreferat)

Intro -- Contents -- Prologue: The Bay of Bengal in History -- 1 - The Life of the Bay of Bengal -- 2 - That Vast Sea's Emporium -- 3 - Turbulent Journeys, Sacred Geographies -- 4 - Human Traffic -- 5 - Oceans' Crossroads -- 6 - Crossings Interrupted -- 7 - The Pursuit of Citizenship -- 8 - When the Waters Rise -- Epilogue: Crossing the Bay of Bengal -- Glossary -- List of Abbreviations -- Notes -- Archives and Special Collections -- Acknowledgements -- Index.

The Indian Ocean was global long before the Atlantic, and today the countries bordering the Bay of Bengal--India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia--are home to one in four people on Earth. Crossing the Bay of Bengal places this region at the heart of world history for the first time. Integrating human and environmental history, and mining a wealth of sources, Sunil Amrith gives a revelatory and stirring new account of the Bay and those who have inhabited it. For centuries the Bay of Bengal served as a maritime highway between India and China, and then as a battleground for European empires, all while being shaped by the monsoons and by human migration. Imperial powers in the nineteenth century, abetted by the force of capital and the power of steam, reconfigured the Bay in their quest for coffee, rice, and rubber. Millions of Indian migrants crossed the sea, bound by debt or spurred by drought, and filled with ambition. Booming port cities like Singapore and Penang became the most culturally diverse societies of their time. By the 1930s, however, economic, political, and environmental pressures began to erode the Bay's centuries-old patterns of interconnection. Today, rising waters leave the Bay of Bengal's shores especially vulnerable to climate change, at the same time that its location makes it central to struggles over Asia's future. Amrith's evocative and compelling narrative of the region's pasts offers insights critical to understanding and confronting the many challenges facing Asia in the decades ahead.

In 2001, the People's Union for Civil Liberties submitted a writ petition to the Supreme Court of India on the "right to food." The petitioner was a voluntary human rights organization; the initial respondents were the Government of India, the Food Corporation of India, and six state governments. The petition opens with three pointed questions posed to the court:A.Does the right to life mean that people who are starving and who are too poor to buy food grains ought to be given food grains free of cost by the State from the surplus stock lying with the State, particularly when it is reported that a large part of it is lying unused and rotting?B.Does not the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution of India include the right to food?C.Does not the right to food, which has been upheld by the Honourable Court, imply that the state has a duty to provide food especially in situations of drought, to people who are drought affected and are not in a position to purchase food?

ABSTRACTFocusing on health, migration and inequality, this contribution examines the role of citizenship in shaping migrants' experiences of health. The idea of national citizenship has frequently dominated the framing of debates about whether states or markets should play the dominant role in health. Yet, health inequalities are embedded in transnational flows of people, capital and ideas, which are themselves a product of history. Migration is thus essential to understanding the transnational production and reinforcement, or mitigation, of health inequalities. Adopting a focus on migration in Asia, past and present, this article argues that the health risks and vulnerabilities that migrants face are a result of both state and market failures. Migrants' exclusion from various forms of care and protection, and their political disenfranchisement, expose a fraught relationship between health and citizenship for those who move within and across borders. At the same time, both historical and contemporary experience demonstrates how migrants might contest these inequalities and allow us to reimagine alternative forms of citizenship. Efforts to ensure the health and well‐being of migrants demonstrate diverse alliances at work, even if such alliances remain limited when confronted with the logic of the nation, borders and security.

The United Nations has become the object of new and exciting historical research because of historians' renewed interest in themes that have preoccupied the UN from the outset, including questions of race and racism, the global implications of anticolonial nationalism, the problem of development in relations between North and South, and the gendered nature of the postwar international order. In this article we survey the state of histories of the UN and reflect on some of the ways in which the history of the UN has a place in international as well as world history as a site of cultural contestation, influence, continuity, and change.

Health patterns in Southeast Asia have changed profoundly over the past century. In that period, epidemic and chronic diseases, environmental transformations, and international health institutions have created new connections within the region and the increased interdependence of Southeast Asia with China and India. In this volume leading scholars provide a new approach to the history of health in Southeast Asia. Framed by a series of synoptic pieces on the "Landscapes of Health" in Southeast Asia in 1914, 1950, and 2014 the essays interweave local, national, and regional perspectives. They range from studies of long-term processes such as changing epidemics, mortality and aging, and environmental history to detailed accounts of particular episodes: the global cholera epidemic and the hajj, the influenza epidemic of 1918, WWII, and natural disasters. The writers also examine state policy on healthcare and the influence of organizations, from NGOs such as the China Medical Board and the Rockefeller Foundation to grassroots organizations in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines

Recent work in history, anthropology, and related disciplines has opened up new ways of thinking about inter-Asian connections. The contributors to this issue aim to ground these themes in a concerted focus on particular spaces or sites. We suggest that sites can, in themselves, be constitutive of particular modes of Asian interactions. Much recent literature on Asian transnationalism has focused on Asian elites and on textual modes of interaction, notably focusing on the writings of pre-eminent Asian intellectuals and literary figures. In thinking about spaces of interaction, we aim to broaden the focus of discussion to include non-elite Asians and their interactions with each other. By focusing on spaces—real and virtual—these papers begin to conceive of new ways of capturing changing geographical imaginations and the fluidity of borders and boundaries across Asia.