Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Oxford Survey of the British Empire, Vol. 2: Asia, Including the Indian Empire and Dependencies, Ceylon, British, Malaya and Far Eastern Possessions The object of this series is to furnish a survey of the British Empire and its constituent parts in their geographical and allied aspects, together with their economic, administrative, and social conditions, at the present time. History; has not been included as an integral part of the scheme, except for the inclusion of a general historical summary in the General Volume; for the rest, historical references have been included only in so far as they were found desirable for the explana tion of existing conditions. The history of the Empire has been brought under review elsewhere, notably in the Oxford Historical Geography, edited by Sir Charles Lucas. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.