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This chapter examines in detail the British army's reactions to the South African War (1899–1902) and the Russo‐Japanese War (1904–5) and how they influenced training and the development of doctrine. It argues that the British army debated the meanings of these conflicts intensively but ultimately failed to develop a cohesive response. It explores the reasons behind this failure, including its concentration on imperial policing duties, small size, and limited vision, and inability to communicate ideas clearly across all ranks, particularly at a regimental level. It argues that although the top ranks of the army achieved a high degree of professionalism, the extent to which this permeated the whole army is much less certain.

Although international administrators wield enormous power, they are not directly accountable to the populations over which they rule. Strictly speaking, a transitional administrator is accountable to the international body that appoints him or her. The lack of transparency is one way in which the issue of accountability manifests itself: key decisions may be taken by international authorities without sufficient public explanation offered for the reasoning behind them, creating the impression of arbitrary rule. Limited accountability does not, however, mean the total absence of mechanisms for local scrutiny. Discusses what mechanisms exist to help ensure that international authority is exercised on behalf of, and for the benefit of, the local population. Are these mechanisms adequate and, if not, how can accountability be strengthened?

This chapter is about events in the history of Soviet theater and arts from 1926 to 1927. During the period, a real attempt was made to bring the theater completely under Party control by appointing Communists as producers and administrators; establishing “artistic councils” within the theater; and emphasizing the role of “activist” groups such as Party, Komsomol, and trade unions to wage “civil war in the theater” and end the “spiritual New Economic Policy (NÉP).” Meyerhold's Inspector General was the dominant production of this transitional period, marking the apogee of his power and influence. The stripped-down and minimalist mechanism of his earlier productions was replaced by opulence and maximalism.

This chapter discusses the “Gogolian province,” as epitomized in Dead Souls' Town of N, a place defined almost wholly by absence and lack. Gogol's provinces are not just philistine, not just behind the times, but seem instead to represent an unfillable cultural and psychic void. This chapter examines the historically shaped (but aesthetically transformed) meanings of “the provinces” that inform Gogol's thought, particularly in Dead Souls, The Inspector General, and Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends—texts that span much of his career but share almost identical concerns when it comes to provintsiia and its meanings. Provintsiia here takes on a function it is not consistently called upon to fulfill in the works of other authors considered thus far. In Gogol's works, the concept very clearly serves as a way of raising questions about Russian identity more broadly.

This chapter takes the financial story up to the Nationalists' formation of a new government in 1928. It considers how Francis Aglen, Hart's successor at the Customs Service, accumulated financial power and became a protector of Chinese bondholders, including against foreign interests. It also explores how Gu Weijun, a leading Young China figure, made tariff autonomy, extraterritoriality, and control over the Customs Service into key demands of Chinese nationalism by his bravura performances at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the 1921–1922 Washington Conference. In the same way that the Customs Service was a key factor during the 1911 Revolution, it shaped the 1926–1928 Northern Expedition, which led to the ascendancy of the Nationalists. Aglen's refusal to raise promised additional Customs revenue for the northern government and the assistance provided to the Nationalists by Shanghai commissioner Frederick Maze tipped the financial scales in favor of the Nationalists and secured for Maze his succession of Aglen as Inspector General.

This chapter focuses on the Customs Service under the Nationalists. It begins with a close analysis of Inspector General Frederick Maze, whose attitude towards the Nationalists was one of upholding their claims to be the legitimate government of all of China, but at the same time he was willing to make pragmatic deals with their opponents. It then turns to the rise of smuggling, a subject about which the Service's archives provide rich material. It details how smuggling was organized and how regional governments supported and profited from it, and evaluates the preventive activities of the Service. It also analyzes the role of the Customs Service in a series of wars and conflicts between the Nationalists and local governments as well as the Japanese.

This chapter examines how Robert Hart built up the Service in the decade after he became Inspector General. Hart made the Customs Service into a disciplined frontier regime, exploiting the spaces between the Qing Empire and the expanding European empires, the chaotic conditions that resulted from China's mid-nineteenth-century rebellions, and opportunities created by the introduction of new trade systems and navigational technologies. Hart turned the Service into a widely respected organization, involved in taxation as well as diplomacy, finance, scholarship, meteorology, and the management of China's maritime sphere. A good example of the Service's ability to take hold of new functions was its construction of lighthouses along the Chinese coast. Lighthouses were important to the transport revolution of the second half of the nineteenth century, but they were also symbols of modern engineering and management with complex political and cultural meanings.

This chapter traces the history of the Customs Service from 1854 until 1864, when the Inspector General was instructed to reside permanently in Beijing. The Customs Service would never have come about were it not for the chaotic conditions of the Taiping Rebellion, the political instability resulting from the death of the Xianfeng Emperor, and the reorientation of domestic and foreign policy initiated by Prince Gong with the support of Empress Dowager Cixi. The chapter discusses the transition from Horatio Lay, who did much to pioneer the Service and became its first Inspector General, to Robert Hart, who built it up into a major bureaucracy in the decades after the Taiping Rebellion. It concludes with a discussion of China's previous methods of governing maritime trade, demonstrating that the Customs Service incorporated some of its key features.

This introductory chapter begins with a background on the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. The Customs Service was an agency of the Chinese state, headed by the Inspector General. It was one of the most, if not the most, powerful bureaucracies operating in China between the Taiping Rebellion from 1850 to 1864 and the Communist Revolution of 1949; it was the only one that did so uninterruptedly and across most of China. It facilitated trade and helped give rise to modern cities like Shanghai, where people and commodities from diverse origins were brought together into a new configuration. The chapter then sets out the book's purpose, which is to analyze and narrate the long history of Chinese Maritime Customs Service. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter deals with independent bodies in the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff as the General Inspectorate, the Legal Division Directorate, the Military Accounts Directorate, the Recruitment and Statistics Directorate, the Political Guidance and Morale Division/Directorate, the Military office of the Party and the Research and Development Authority. It describes the background of each of the bodies and its functions and their important role in managing the armed forces, especially during the Iran-Iraq war.