Drawing upon data from the Seram Laut and Gorom archipelagoes, this paper examines how contemporary rulers legitimate their rights by asserting links with sources of traditional authority. In particular, it is argued that archaic titles remain important because the colonial period stabilized the relationship between domains, and because such titles thus provide a means of validating claims to resources, combating state incursions and competing for influence. The possession of old documents supports such claims by confirming them in writing, but also by being old “things” linked to the person of the ruler.

The figure of King Prajadhipok (r. 1925–35), Siam's last absolute monarch, remains of great significance to Thailand's contemporary political discourse. King Prajadhipok's historical role as the ‘founding father’ of Thai democracy, in particular, lies at the heart of the Chakri dynasty's claim to democratic legitimacy — a claim that is now widely questioned, both at home and abroad. This article re-examines King Prajadhipok's conduct in the early days of constitutional government in Siam. While the King's status as the father of Thai democracy is exposed as a myth, his actual historical legacy is shown to have been no less profound.

The relationship between Marxism-Leninism and the national liberation movements of the Third World has always been an uneasy one. The essential issues have been: firstly, the nature of the relationship between movements for national liberation in the Third World and the proletarian movements of the industrially advanced countries; secondly, the question of whether, given the relative backwardness of the Third World countries, leadership of the national liberation movements should be provided by the “bourgeois-nationalist” parties or by Marxist-Leninist parties. The first issue was at least partially resolved by the Comintern in Lenin's time with agreement on the general principle that nationalliberation movements were a vital part of the worldwide struggle against capitalism; but the question of the relative importance of the national liberation movements as against the proletarian movements in the industrialized world was left in abeyance. The second problem of the leadership of the national liberation movements was not satisfactorily resolved in the era of Lenin; however, Stalin's relative neglect of the national liberation issue (particularly after the 1927 fiasco in China and the emergence of the fascist threat in Europe in the inter-war years) did give the Asian Marxists the opportunity to evolve their own policies. It was in the historical context of Comintern weakness and neglect of the Third World that an indigenously developed Marxist national liberation strategy was to emerge.

This article examines wayang potehi, a cloth glove puppet theatre of southern Fujian origin performed on Java. It outlines the genre's emergence in Fujian, its arrival in the archipelago, and historical and contemporary practice. This article seeks to respect potehi's Hokkien roots, Indonesian practice, and the place of its genre in a dynamic regional history as it traces the development, practice and uses of the genre. Contemporary potehi patronage often exhibits the strategies of the mixed-culture non-Chinese-speaking communities of East and Central Java to perform a streamlined, integrationist, and loyal Sino-Indonesian identity.

This article analyses the changing significance of racial theories in the writings of Spanish emigrants in the late nineteenth century Philippines. Works by Antonio Cañamaque, Pablo Feced (Quioquiap), and Antonio Barrantes show how racialised understandings of colonial society in the Philippines evolved, from an initial dismissal of hybridism and rejection of mestizos to assertions of the innate superiority of the ‘white race’ and advocation of a rigid separation between local communities. These developments are considered in the context of the rising popularity of biological determinism alongside an influx of Spanish emigrants into the Philippines. The Spanish settlers used biological determinism to proclaim their role as the sole purveyors of both ‘progress’ and of a kind of egalitarianism. This article describes these debates and arguments, analyses their inconsistencies, and addresses the Filipino elite's responses to the settlers’ racial theories. These responses are read not simply as part of the development of Filipino nationalism, but as reflective of rivalries within the Spanish colonial community in the Philippines, where the locally born found additional reasons to support anticolonialism.

This article presents an ethnographic investigation of displaced Karen in a border area of northern Thailand, and in particular, the reasons for their enthusiasm for the wrist-tying ceremony. It examines the way in which Karen ethno-nationalists have both influenced this cultural practice and appropriated it. This study argues that Karen nationalist intellectuals invented and reinvented the tradition of wrist-tying by borrowing structure and content from the use of soul-calling for healing and other purposes. The invented tradition is persuasive and efficacious because of its continuities and ties with existing cultural practices. Ordinary Karen participants utilise vernacular elements of the wrist-tying rite — such as sensory experiences through the handling of ritual objects — to assure a well-balanced life and spiritual security.

Rangoon circa 1900 was known as ‘one of the best show towns in the East’. As the capital city of Burma, then ruled from Calcutta as a province of India, it was home to more Indian nationals than Burmese. In this cosmopolitan context, two vernacular arts complexes — the Parsi theatre of India and the popular zat-pwe of Burma — flourished, competed, and converged. This article documents the 55-year long engagement of Parsi theatre in Burma within the larger history of global theatrical flows in the Indian Ocean. It highlights the story of Dosabhai Hathiram, a theatre man who rooted himself in Rangoon his entire life. And it asks, why was Parsi theatre celebrated elsewhere in Southeast Asia as a vector of modernity, and yet in Burma it left scarcely a trace behind?

The questions of how and when the Cold War manifested itself in Southeast Asia are here examined through the perceptions of Britain and Australia to regional and global events from 1945 to 1950. Both had major stakes in the eventual results of the local contentions in Southeast Asia, as well as in the global effects of great power rivalry. Yet even for these powers, determining when they believed the Cold War came to Southeast Asia is dependent on the definition adopted. By 1946, there was already recognition of entrenched ideological conflict in Southeast Asia, and that this threatened Western interests. In 1947, there was recognition of connections between the local communist parties and the ‘global designs’ of the Soviet Union. In 1948, there was the outbreak of armed violence in Burma, Malaya and Indonesia, though there was no evidence of direct Soviet involvement in these. Ultimately, however, it was the establishment of the PRC in 1949 (as a major regional communist power), in tandem with plans by non-communist states to coordinate policy against communism, which was seen as marking the arrival of fully-fledged Cold War in Southeast Asia.

This article presents two modes of export-oriented sugar hacienda production in the late-nineteenth-century Spanish Philippines. The Hacienda de Calamba epitomised a large-scale estate under a religious corporation; it was an enclave economy reliant on local capital and technology. In contrast, Negros showcased a range of haciendas of varying sizes in a frontier setting involving different ethnicities and supported by capital and technology mediated directly by foreign merchant houses. In both locations sugar planters opposed the colonial state, but whereas leaseholders in Calamba, led by Rizal's family, became intentionally political in their resistance, in Negros planters engaged in a persistent and calibrated evasion of the state.

New Indonesian decentralisation policies have generated strong localisation movements which recall regional history. During the Soeharto years history was invoked as part of an homogenising nationalism. With recent changes in the city of Makassar that process is being reversed to strengthen local participation in redefined national structures.

The 1930s Depression caused an enormous growth in urban poverty in colonial Java. Informal neighbourhood networks could no longer cope with the unemployed, the homeless and the destitute. Politically conscious Indonesians were convinced that the colonial state was concerned only with poverty among Europeans. They responded by creating new charities focused on the Indonesian lower classes. Many provided middle-class women with opportunities for leadership denied them in the political and labour movements. However, those who managed the charities had no concept of empowering the poor. In dispensing support they made a clear distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Nevertheless their charitable work enabled thousands of Indonesians to survive the Depression years.

By examining the references to the Ayudhyan polity contained in the Ming imperial annals, and comparing them with the local chronicular accounts of that polity, this article suggests a greater consonance between what is contained in the Ming texts and the van Vliet version of the chronicles (based on the Sangitiyavan). Other suggestions about the early history of Ayudhya are made on the basis of the Chinese texts. A precis of the Chinese references is included as an appendix to the article.

To what extent can it still be argued that Australia enjoys a ‘special relationship’ with Malaysia and Singapore, and, if such a relationship exists, is its maintenance conditional upon purely strategic advantage? ‘Special relationship’ are elusive concepts in the vocabulary of international diplomacy. Presumably they require both objective and subjective proof of their existence. In other words, it would take more than an affirmation by the Malaysian and Australian governments to show that a special relationship existed between them. Demonstrations of unusual solidarity or harmony of interest would presumably be sought to test the affirmations.

Colonial Malaya is one of the classic examples of a plural society. In Furnivall's memorable words, it was a society in which “each group holds its own religion, its own culture and language, its own ideas and ways”, a society made up of different groups “living side by side, but separately, within the same political unit”. It is perhaps because of this all-important characteristic that social historians have tended to focus on one or another of the groups in Malayan society. There have been excellent studies of the Malays, the Chinese, and the Indians, and more recently historians have begun to look at smaller groups such as the Europeans. These studies have tended to emphasize the political history of the various groups, the effects of British policies, the history of immigration, and (for the Chinese) the workings of secret societies, but some attention has also been paid to important social changes such as the emergence of new organizations and elites. A very rewarding field has been the history of Malay education, which has revealed the ways in which the different forms of education were responsible both for reinforcing traditional Malay social structure and for introducing change. Clearly, the study of particular ethnic groups has been extremely fruitful. And a great deal more remains to be done.

Colonial discourse analysis has proven one of the most fruitful and significant areas of research in recent years. This paper considers the orientalist discourse and its context in the case of pre-colonial Malaya. It discusses the concept of “feudalism” as employed by historians of western Europe, by those of precolonial Malaya and, thirdly, by selected post-colonial writers. In discussing the works of Clifford, Maxwell and other nineteenth-century British officials on Malay feudalism, the author argues that the truth value of their analyses should not be dismissed out of hand, for they have much of value to say, that would repay careful study.

This does not claim to be an adequate account of the 1915 Kelantan Rising. On the contrary, it is designed to show how little we yet know about it. It is not even mentioned in most English-language histories of Malaya. There is a certain amount about it in the Colonial Office files, but it will be an important part of my argument that these do not reveal what we most want to learn. My main intention is to suggest that a fuller study of it would make as good a starting-point as any for a more general review of the role played by armed Malay resistance in the history of the British period in Malaya. I shall further suggest certain lines which thinking on this subject might follow, but only very tentatively. If this article stimulates such new thinking along any lines at all, it will have achieved its purpose.

For many years now, the Malaysian government's population policy has included both a growth component and a distribution component. The growth component, adopted in the Second Malaysia Plan (1971–75) and still in force, was the goal of reducing the rate of population growth from 3 per cent to 2 per cent by 1985. The distribution component, first enunciated in a coherent way in the Mid-Term Review of the Second Malaysia Plan, is a strategy for regional development with direct population redistribution consequences. The Third Malaysia Plan (1976–80) elaborated the population situation and goals in greater detail but their broad thrust remained essentially unchanged. The Fourth Plan (1981–85), while maintaining the target of lowered growth rates, emphasized the quality of human resources and was sanguine about the prospects for economic development far outstripping the rate of population growth. Indeed, earlier concern with unemployment had been replaced by worries about the emergence of labour shortages.

External affairs have exercised the minds and loyalties of a sizeable section of Singapore's politically articulate population ever since the first preparations towards self-government were taken in 1955. Even though questions of defence and foreign policy were until September 1963 the responsibility of Whitehall exclusively and thereupon transferred to the Malaysian central government, Singapore developed its own informal relationships with several foreign or Commonwealth states during those years and hotly debated international problems which seemed to impinge on the island's political future.