The sudden collapse of France in June 1940 presented Japan with a golden opportunity to exploit French discomfiture and remove several obstacles to its New Order in East Asia. Indeed, the military extremists, who had been temporarily held in check since the humiliation caused by the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, could no longer be restrained. By seizing Indochina, Japan would be in a strong position to force an end to its interminable struggle with China on its own terms. The large quantity of supplies that had flowed through Indochina to Chinese forces — a situation that had greatly embittered the Japanese and had slowly poisoned Franco–Japanese relations during the past three years — could be brought to a halt. Chiang Kai-shek, further isolated and confronted with the loss of one of his few remaining channels of supply, might be finally forced to give up the fight. Moreover, Indochina could provide Japan with significant supplies of rubber, tin, coal, and rice and thus go a long way toward ending its dependence upon foreign sources for these strategic raw materials. Finally, the strategic location of Indochina meant that it could serve admirably as an advanced base from which the Japanese could strike out against the Far Eastern possessions of the other Western colonial powers — the East Indies, Malaya, Burma, and the Philippines.

No international concern has been as important to Burma as her relations with China. Kuomintang China had encouraged the Burmese nationalists, had sponsored Burma's entry into the UN but had also exhibited (in various published maps and otherwise) traditional Chinese expansionist tendencies toward Burma and mainland Southeast Asia. Most of all, after 1950, Kuomintang China endangered Burma's relation with Communist China by her active, irresponsible support for her troops who had escaped via Yunnan into northeast Burma. However much the Burmese may have initially and quietly tolerated the presence of these KMT “escapees,” – a view which has been unofficially hinted in some Burmese and American quarters — expecting that they would either merge into the Burma population or quickly repatriate to Taiwan, at the end of the first year of experience with these troops the Burmese became justifiably alarmed, repeatedly sought but did not receive assistance from the United States for this repatriation and eventually, in 1953, officially took the issue to the United Nations. (It was this issue which brought U.S. prestige and relations with Burma to a postwar low.)

It is now almost sixteen years since R.G, Menzies, then leader of a resurgent parliamentary opposition, informed his colleagues that it would be “the very ecstasy of suicide” for Australians to assist in the elimination of European colonialism from Asia. For better or worse, the right honourable gentleman was unable to stem the tide of Asian nationalism, and with the political facts of life so patently irreversible, most imperial-minded Australians seem to have conditioned themselves, however reluctantly, to some kind of co-existence with Asia. Again and again Australians are informed by their historians, political scientists and poets alike that theirs is the task of reconciling the legacy of a Europocentric history with the immutable and oft-times unpleasant facts of geography.

The relationship of England and France in the last two decades of the nineteenth century was an unhappy one, marked by acrimony, discord and mutual suspicion. Though the French and English states represented the chief bastions of western European parlia-mentarianism, ideological similarities are rarely sufficient to counteract a long tradition of ill-will. Bitterness had begun to poison the atmosphere of Anglo-French relations at the time of the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, and in the years that followed anglo-phobia appeared to have achieved endemic proportions in France. Great Britain's inclination toward the Triple Alliance was so marked in French eyes that she was generally regarded as the “fourth partner in the concern.” This viewpoint contributed greatly to the inflamed state of Anglo-French relations.

It seems fitting that, on the occasion of the commemoration of the founding of modern Singapore 150 years ago, we should look further back than the year 1819 and see whether another examination of ancient documents can bring to light new data on the early history of Singapore. Accordingly it is here submitted that a previously unrecognised reference to Singapore, under another name of course, is to be found in a well-known Indian document written nearly 950 years ago. Such a discovery gives immediate rise to further speculation regarding the possibility that this island was also known to Chinese and Arab geographers and merchants as an important trading centre and possibly known as such as early as the second century of the Christian era.

One of the most remarkable features of the past twenty years of scholarship on the Southeast Asian performing arts has been the sparking off of ideas between Southeast Asian-born scholars, whether trained in Southeast Asian universities or overseas, and Western scholars of the Southeast arts who live in North America, Australia, Europe, Japan and elsewhere. In colonial Indonesia (until 1945) and Malaysia (until 1957), research agendas of Dutch and British scholars respectively had complied with the social, economic and political priorities of the colonial powers and associated local court-centred artistic interests, though not always consciously. In Thailand, which was the only country in the region not to be colonized by a European power, Thai scholars had been actively researching their own court performing arts in the late colonial era but were nevertheless influenced by the colonial ethos of the region. In the past twenty years or so, the developing dialogue and contradictions between Southeast Asian and foreign scholars, each with their own partly distinctive assumptions and methodologies based on the priorities of their respective traditions and governments, have resulted in a healthy divergence, convergence, and cross-fertilization of ideas.

After the restoration of the Lê dynasty, the Red River delta region was flooded with military men who set up and controlled irregular departments from the end of the sixteenth to the first half of the seventeenth century. The imperial administration became a shell during the Lê-Trịnh period, with the Trịnh Lords as de facto rulers who constructed their own parallel government on the basis of these local departments. This analysis of contemporary inscriptions indicates that the Trịnh Lords subsequently expanded their administration and secured their rule by absorbing large numbers of Red River delta literati, while retaining many eunuchs in influential financial and military roles. Overall, the Trịnh bureaucracy, comprising of the Lục Phiên and Lục Cung, was a kind of financial organisation combined with a military district system because it harnessed the existing military organisation.

Colonial race relations are regularly portrayed in light of the attempts to divide and rule colonialised Asian communities. While this article does not challenge this view, it attempts to uncover a hitherto hidden level of interaction and even intermarriage at the grassroots level in colonial Malaya and Singapore. With the exception of the various Peranakan communities that predated British rule, little to no evidence exists to show that interaction and especially intermarriage existed within early first- and second-generation migrant communities during the British colonial period. The findings show how colonial attempts to encourage a heightened sense of race and its frailties may have fallen short among some sections of the Asian community.

Within the last two decades, and particularly after the Federation of Malaya achieved its independence (1957), most historical writings on Malaya (now called Peninsular Malaysia) have been inspired or influenced by a marked revisionist tendency. Such revisionism, abetted by nationalism, has led to (a) a critical reappraisal of British personalities and policies in Malaya, and (b) a relative reduction of historical interest, both professional and popular, in the ‘imperial theme’ as compared with indigenous topics. While some of these revisionist writings may be self-conscious and tendentious, they do provide a corrective to earlier colonial historiography and have encouraged a more balanced estimate of the British element in Malaysian history.

Thanks to Clifford Geertz, the terms and concepts of abangan, santri, and prijaji have become familiar and frequently used by students of Javanese history, politics, and society. While he did not invent them, Geertz is responsible for their earliest and most thorough development as explicit and interrelated concepts, as seen most notably in his The Religion of Java and The Social History of An Indonesian Town. These studies are based upon his academic work as an anthropologist and his intermittent field work in “Modjokuto”, Java, from May 1953 to September 1964.

During World War II, Britain and the United States differed over the postwar status of Indochina. Although the United States made several strong statements about restoring the prewar possessions of the French Empire, the Americans, especially President Franklin D. Roosevelt, increasingly came to favour an international trusteeship guiding postwar Indochina to eventual independence. The British were not at first prepared to guarantee the complete restoration of the French Empire. With surprising slowness, the British did gradually sponsor the prompt return of French colonial authority in Indochina. British postwar planning had shown how dangerous a hostile or unfriendly France and French Empire could be to the security of the British Isles and British Empire. The British determination to reestablish the French connection coincided with a refusal by Roosevelt to enter any discussions about the postwar status of Indochina. The presidential silence only served to promote Anglo-French colonial interests. After Roosevelt's death, President Harry S. Truman did not challenge the return of French control in Indochina. Ironically, despite the earnest — but seldom expressed — American intentions to underwrite indigenous dreams of independence, the people of Indochina subsequently associated the United States with Western suppression of those dreams.

Casual observers of Thai Buddhism may see the monkhood or sangha as a rather homogeneous group. Slightly varying shades of saffron-coloured robes walk the streets and village lanes on morning alms-rounds, and then retreat to their respective temples. The news only rarely mentions debates between religious figures or doctrinal differences; instead, high-ranking monks often appear opening shops or banks, or christening new navy ships or jet airliners for Thai international. If only viewed from this level, everything appears as if it is “business as usual”. If, however, we peel back the ochre veneer covering sangha affairs, many people might be surprised by what lies beneath. If the casual observer becomes more curious and persistent in his inquiries, a number of ongoing issues and a certain amount of disagreement come to light.

There are many elements in analyses of why multinational cooperative organization efforts such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) succeed or fail. The outward manifestations of success include increased economic interdependence, larger numbers of economic, political, and security agreements, more frequent consultations among leaders, and more numerous instances of joint action in the international political and security domains. Observers and students of Southeast Asian politics may follow such events in the news media or in scholarly publications by other students.

This article traces the development of Gaullist and British policies with respect to Indo-China from the fall of France in 1940 to the end of the Far Eastern war five years later. Directed toward restoring imperial influence in Southeast Asia, these policies were sophisticated and complex, but they bore little fruit owing to the relative strategic insignificance of Indo-China during this period, and the imperatives of Anglo-American relations.

This article examines the connected histories of racial science and colonial geography in Island Southeast Asia. By focusing on the island of Timor, it explores colonial boundaries as modes of arranging racial classifications, and racial typologies as forms of articulating political geography. Portuguese physical anthropologist António Mendes Correia's work on the ethnology of East Timor is examined as expressive of these productive connections. Correia's classificatory work ingeniously blended political geography and racial taxonomy. Between 1916 and 1945, mainly based on data from the Portuguese enclave of Oecussi and Ambeno, he claimed a distinct Malayan racial type for the whole colony of ‘Portuguese Timor’. Over the years he developed an anthropogeographical theory that simultaneously aimed to reclassify East Timor and to revise the racial cartography of the Malay Archipelago, including Wallace's famous ethnological line.

The difficulties when making an investigation into the origin of Jaranese mosques are numerous. Owing to the limited durability of the material from which they are made – in the majority of cases of wood – the remains of old mosques are rare. There are no pictures from the 16th century; from the 17th century we have only a couple; from the 18th century hardly any. In the 19th century we find more of them.

After making a comparative study of the Chinese Batavia Kong Koan archives between its earlier and later periods, this article discusses what was an apparently inevitable localisation of immigrants' identities, in the context of immigration, settlement and, in particular, intermarriage.

The Federation of Malaya, formed on 1 February 1948, may be considered a major achievement in state-building in the Third World. Despite great stresses and strains, it was to survive intact until 1963 when it became the dominant part of a larger political entity. Its integrity as a politically unified system was threatened in those fifteen years by numerous secession attempts emanating from Johore (in the period 1955–1956), from Kelantan (in 1955) and from Penang (in the period 1948–1951 and 1953–1957). This article will deal with the most important of these, the Penang secession movement of 1948 to 1951.

With the transformation from the Malay kerajaan rule based on economic extraction and the capability to take life to British colonial rule, Malays aspiring to govern others were now subject to a set of mundane disciplinary techniques seeking to promote a bureaucratic ethos that precipitated around academic merits, team spirit and above all the strange distinction between public and private spheres of action.