Violence and Piratical/Surreptitious Activities Associated with the Chinese Communities in the Melaka–Singapore Region (1780–1840)
The chapter hopes to examine the Chinese as an exogenous and endogenous group who had either settled or intermittently infiltrated the Melaka–Singapore region in the Malay Archipelago. The Chinese in the archipelago had often been associated in Western sources with “rather positive” traits such as hardworkingness, astute business acumen, etc., characteristics which could help European colonizers sustain newly founded settlements. The chapter probes the shady world in which disparate subgroups of this ethnicity or creole ethnicity, whether these were related to one another, were engaged in surreptitious activities, or in banditry acts on the seas, which contributed indirectly and sometimes directly to general violence in the region. Overall, whether the Chinese were a more “peaceful” group interested in pecuniary relative to other interests and whether they contributed indirectly to militarization and tensions in the Malay Archipelago are re-examined.
Sociology of Secret Societies
WHILE THE AIMS, spread, and directions of the contemporary secret societies are always the same-to promote revolutionary changes by controlling or changing the power constellation of the State-the basic pattern is more clearly drawn today. Gone are the individual exploits, the spontaneity of action, the romantic hero, the intimacy of local deeds, so well known to the readers of romantic stories. It is true that periodically historical events still take place because of some violence or political assassinations carried out for personal motives, without any concrete political aim in the action (such as when the anarchist Luccheni killed the politically harmless Empress Elizabeth of Austria, or the disappointed office-seeker Ginteau assassinated President Garfield); but today's underground activities reflect a different atmosphere and attitude altogethermirroring our revolutionary age which has no special place for the theorizer or the peripheral plotter.l Three basic features characterize such movements: (1) They are totalitarian, extending into all spheres of life (politics, economics, education, religion, family). There is hardly any privacy left, of fundamental rights, of individuality, and nothing is left to chance. Discipline is the password of such movements. Lenin proclaimed (1900): "We must train men and women who will devote to the revolution not only their spare evenings, but the whole of their life." His search for professional revolutionaries was coupled with his definition of the party as the revolutionary vanguard of the future State, and thus anticipated what revolutionary movements learned later: that they had to make a choice between thoroughly revolutionary policies and mass following, and, in their hesitating efforts "to steer between sectarianism and opportunism," lost many
Prophets praying for, or preying on people’s faith: A reflection on prophetic ministry in the South African context
In mainline churches, the ministry of prophecy or the prophetic ministry involves the proclamation of the gospel. This, in turn, is related to the every-believer ministry. However, there is now a resurgence of the prophetic ministry as a special office as evidenced by the establishment of neo-prophetic churches. This article argues that neo-prophetic churches are tapping into people’s longing for the fresh divine word to speak directly into their personal situations. The article also probes whether neo-prophets in the prophetic activities are not also preying on people’s faith.