From at least the early sixteenth century, when Tomé Pires acclaimed the marvels of Malacca, Westerners have evinced an interest in the cities of Southeast Asia, though for different reasons and from varying perspectives. Travellers like Cesare Fredrici, Ralph Fitch, and Gasparo Balbi were generally impressed with what they saw and compared it favourably in many respects with Europe of the 1580s. In the course of the two hundred years, however, this appreciation altered markedly. Western authors after the late eighteenth century took a less sanguine view and tended to describe towns and cities rather disparagingly as little more than collections of villages. During the late 1920s, the panorama made possible by the advent of air travel in Southeast Asia distinguished clearly between rural and urban areas, but showed the latter as thoroughly Europeanized enclaves. In the popular aerial photographs of the day, these cities appeared slick in their new tropical-colonial architectural style and uncomplicated by large or even particularly visible non-European populations.

This essay considers the importance of looking at writings for children for historical analysis, particularly in times of war, focusing on magazines published for youth in South Vietnam in the early 1970s. Two magazines, Thiếu Nhi and Thằng Bờm, in particular, are studied in terms of their editorial aims and contents, as well as their young readers' submissions in response to contemporary sociocultural issues raised in these magazines. The lively discussions in these magazines were made possible by the relative freedom of expression in South Vietnam, compared to North Vietnam, which was an important reason for the civil war being fought. Yet this freedom also challenged the fabric of Vietnamese society. The strongest concern of these magazines' initiators, editors and writers was that its readers not lose their sense of being Vietnamese in the face of the great wartime flood of American popular culture that captivated many youth. Anxiety that the younger generation would be Americanised and lose their identity struck at the core of what the war was being fought about: i.e. different versions of being Vietnamese in the modern world. This threat of Americanisation to fundamental Vietnamese values was perceived by some intellectuals in the South as more serious than the threat of communism, because at least the communists were Vietnamese.

Sociocultural boundaries come in many forms, and crucially, are responsive to power and constantly in flux. This article focuses on the production of space and unmarked sociocultural boundaries linked to spirit mediums in a historically contested area of northeastern Thailand who are possessed by the spirits of Phaya Narin Songkhram — a key ‘Lao’ military leader of Chao Anou's famous Vientiane revolt against Siam between 1826–28 — and those of his subordinates. Spirit mediums linked to ethnic ‘Thai’ leaders are also found to the south of this area. Through channeling and performing these historical persons, spirit mediums keep alive and reproduce group memories with space-making implications. This article also shows how the mediums' positioning has shifted over time and varies in relation to contemporary power relations, altering the sociocultural boundaries between ethnic Lao and Thai.

In September 1944 the Japanese government promised to give “independence in the near future” to Indonesia. However, when Japan surrendered in 1945, the Allies ordered the Japanese authorities to suppress any move by the Indonesians toward independence. Caught between their old promise and their new role, the Japanese exhibited contrasting patterns of behaviour. This paper analyzes their reactions by using two categories, the “allegiance type” of person who adhered to Allied instructions, and the "renunciation type" who attempted to honour the promise given to the Indonesians.

Relations between Australia and Indonesia became strained within months of Indonesia's attainment of independence, deteriorating as conflict developed first on the question of West Irian and then as a result of Indonesia's hostility towards Malaysia. For many years, it seemed ironical that Australia should have played a major part in the emergence of a neighbour whose external policies and internal trends endangered rather than safeguarded Australian interests. But there is more involved here than historical irony in the context of Australian-Indonesian relations. Sufficient time has now elapsed for Australian policy on the Indonesian independence question to be seen in the wider context of the whole postwar phenomenon of decolonisation. For it is not merely of interest that Australia should have assisted neighbouring Asian rebels against a European colonial Power (remembering that Australia herself was, and is, a European colonial Power) and should then have been embarrassed by the activities of the rebels coming to office. It is of greater interest that, of the immense number of colonial issues anxiously engaging the attention of international society in the 1940s and 1950s, the years which saw the virtual demise of western colonialism, this was the one issue on which Australia took up the rebel cause. Throughout this period and irrespective of the complexion of the parties in power in Canberra, Australia persistently jeopardised her regional objective of friendly relations with anti-colonial Asia by opposing strongly and, at times, bitterly the anti-colonial cause in the United Nations. If nothing else, the United Nations has provided a forum in which each year Australia and other members have been forced to declare themselves on colonial questions. And, until the 1960s when Australia switched policy, Australia fought against all the anti-colonial Powers' largely successful attempts to have developed a system of international control over colonies under the authority of Chapter XI (“Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories”) of the United Nations charter, to tighten the trusteeship system of supervision erected under Chapters XII and XIII of the charter, and to involve the United Nations in particular disputes so as to meet alleged threats to peace — all of them being attempts, however indirectly, to hasten the attainment of independence by dependent territories. Thus, Australia supported South Africa on South-West Africa, the Netherlands on West New Guinea, the British on Southern Rhodesia and Oman, the Portuguese on their African territories, the French on Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. But Australia opposed the Netherlands on the Indonesian question.

American entry into the ranks of colonial powers as an aftermath of the Spanish American War was sudden, unexpected, and, chronologically speaking, late in the game of colonial empire building. Prior to the last decade of the 19th century, United States had shown no lack of territorial acquisitiveness, but national expansion was exclusively in terms of organic growth of the whole nation. There was no interest in, nor attempts at building a “colonial empire” along conventional lines in which territories and their inhabitants were placed “permanently” under control but not under a shared set of political institutions. Up to 1898, all “civilized” inhabitants of new territories were immediately given the status of United States citizens with all rights and privileges thereof.

Although much has been written on China's relations with her neighbours to the north, west and east, relatively little has been done on those to the south. Such studies could provide many valuable contrasts and comparisons and should be of considerable assistance in assessing China's historic role as well as her present intentions in Southeast Asia.

China has long been the world's largest producer of rice, with an annual output regularly accounting for a third of the world's total rice production. In recent years, China has also risen to become the world's largest rice exporter, with a volume coming close to a third of the world's total exported rice. The bulk of the Chinese rice exports are destined for the rice-consuming Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. Among the five Southeast Asian countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, which today constitute the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), only Thailand produces a food surplus while the others have to import rice in amounts which, with the exception of the city-state Singapore, vary each year according to their domestic rice harvests.

A number of recent studies concerned with Malay history and culture reflect heightened scholarly awareness of cultural unity and structural similarities in the area we know as the “Malay world”. There remains, however, much to be learnt about the boundaries of this world and, in particular, what happens to Malay political and cultural forms at meeting points between Malay and other cultures. In some instances such interaction has led to an absorption of Malay cultural identity by those living on the fringes of Malay kingdoms. A feature often associated with the Malay world is the ease with which it seems to have been possible for those of non-Malay background to adopt Malay language and customs and thus to “become Malay”. This paper, however, will describe a frontier situation where Malay culture itself appears to have been adapted to accommodate local circumstances. It is a situation which assists us to answer the question: to what extent is the concept of a “Malay World” helpful to our understanding of Malay societies?

A century ago, research on the Malay world was experiencing major breakthroughs on several fronts, but the greatest achievement at the time was without doubt George Coedès’ ‘rediscovery’, based on Asian sources, of a forgotten kingdom named Srivijaya. His book, published in 1918, saw a wave of publications follow in its wake. Sources were trawled in the hope of finding answers to unresolved issues and unidentified place names. Attention invariably also fell on Melaka. In a long article published by the French academic and diplomat Gabriel Ferrand in the same year, the question of Melaka's founding date came under the spotlight. What do the different surviving sources tell us? What about Gaspar Correia's claim that Melaka was a thriving port city for centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese? Was the city — just as in the case of Temasek (Singapore) — known by a different name in earlier times? Ferrand's publication provoked a response from the Dutch academic Gerret Pieter Rouffaer, director of the KITLV. What he planned to be a 20-odd page response to Ferrand swelled into a multifaceted argument running into hundreds of pages. The debate between Ferrand and Rouffaer that touched on Melaka and Temasek-Singapura's early history probably eluded most of their academic contemporaries who were not proficient in both Dutch and French, especially in the English-speaking world. The present article reconstructs the main points of this debate together with their echo in historiography. It makes a contribution to the ongoing discourses, especially in Malaysia, concerning the founding date of Melaka.

The structure and organization of the Kedah political system, like those of the other patriachal Malay states in the Peninsula, was based essentially on that of the Malacca Sultanate. Under this system, the apex and centre of the organisation was the Sultan, whose political authority was strengthened by the belief that he was endowed with the magical attributes of a “divine king”. This is evident in his title, Yang di-Pertuan (He who is made Lord); and is also manifested in the elaborate court ceremonials and rituals; the clothing, weapons, domestic adornments and a special vocabulary reserved exclusively for royalty. The political functions of the Sultan were very comprehensive covering the fields of internal administration, the defence of the country, and matters relating to external affairs.

Chinese migrants fleeing from the incoming Qing regime assumed a range of political and economic positions as the Nguyễn court sought to extend its control to the south. A nuanced exploration of the historical experience of two powerful Chinese migrant families to Vietnam through their clan genealogies reveals two rather different paradigms — the Minh Hương paradigm and the Frontier paradigm. These paradigms reflect not only the Chinese migrants' varied, resourceful manoeuvres in their quest for a firm foothold in the evolving and expanding south, but equally, they demonstrate the Nguyễn court's flexibility in accommodating and capitalising on the strengths of different migrant groups it sought to incorporate into its realm.

Previous research has shown that the New Woman was a global phenomenon and that fiction was crucial to the emergence of this New Woman. One work that was of particular importance was Henrik Ibsen's A doll's house. This article examines the rise of the New Woman in early twentieth century Thailand. It traces the campaigns for gender equality that Thai women waged in local newspapers and magazines. It also examines the reactions towards these campaigns by three major authors, all of whom turned to Ibsen's play in their engagement with the New Woman phenomenon.

In a prominently placed article in the March 1970 issue of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Dr. Martin Rudner discusses certain aspects of Malayan rubber policy in 1945-48. The article calls for comment for the sake of historical accuracy and thus of scholarship. Dr. Rudner has written repeatedly on Southeast Asian affairs, and the biographical note in the same issue of the Journal refers to a forthcoming book by him on the subject of this article. Moreover, examination of Dr. Rudner's paper is of more than academic interest in the conventional sense of the term because the writings of academic economists and economic historians are even more likely to influence opinion and thus policy than those of most other academics. Thus even delayed comment on his discussion is in order.

Only a couple of decades ago, the prospects for socio-economic development in the Third World seemed much brighter than at present. The economic theories of the 1950s and early 1960s, at least those of the North American variety, prescribed more capital investment (from domestic and foreign sources) which then would lead to a “take-off” into sustained economic growth. Political theorists advocated Western political development as an irreversible step which would lead to modern democratic societies. Other social scientists suggested that the spread of modern values — “modernity” — to the developing world would solve the basic problems of underdevelopment. Those days of simpleminded theories were buoyed by the short-term euphoria of the decolonization process. If the political leaders of the newly-independent states were determined to achieve development, as indeed they were, it seemed possible that these strategies would lead to progressive social and economic changes.