The French Annales historians have made the study of popular mentalites into a fascinating and important field of historical research. This approach has yet to gain ground in Southeast Asian historical studies, especially in Malaysian history, with respect to the thinking of subject classes. If we take the Malay traditional ruling class and the Malay peasantry in Melaka and other states from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, we know very little about the ideological hegemony which the former exercised over the latter, or what the thinking of the dominated class was like. One problem, of course, has been the lack of sources, but such a problem has not deterred the Annales historians from making their attempt.

British Malaya before the Japanese occupation was heavily dependent on imported rice, producing on average only 35 per cent of its requirements between 1920 and 1940. During the 1930s, efforts were made to expand rice cultivation, but progress was slow and did not even keep pace with population growth: imports increased at the same rate as domestic production.

As war approached, the government of Malaya built up a stockpile of rice and had about one year's supply in reserve when the occupation began. However, a considerable proportion of this grain was appropriated for military use and the civilian population soon faced food shortages.

These memorable words were spoken by Tan Cheng Lock, a man who did not speak any Chinese himself, when addressing a meeting of representatives of Chinese School Committees and Chinese School Teachers' Associations on 9 November 1952. Speaking as president of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), Tan went on in his speech to promise that

At this critical juncture in the history of the growth and development of Chinese education and culture in Malaya … its cause has the full support of the Malayan Chinese Association.

Tan's speech, and the presence of three other MCA leaders at the meeting, were the first clear indications that the MCA was prepared to take a consolidated stand with other Chinese organizations, in particular the United Chinese School Teachers' Association (UCSTA), and the United Chinese Schools' Committees' Association (UCSCA), on the issue of Chinese education. The MCA's decision was greeted by a chorus of approval from the Chinese press which described the 9 November meeting as an unprecedented manifestation of Chinese unity and from leading shetuan, or Chinese social organizations, which expressed their full support for the meeting's stand on Chinese education.

The great commercial emporium of Melaka in the Malay peninsula, which was in Portuguese hands for over a century and a quarter (1511–1641), has received a good deal of attention from historians in the past. Of the available studies on Melaka in the 16th and 17th centuries, those of M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz. and Luís Filipe F.R. Thomaz are particularly outstanding, being rich both in detail and in implications. Though less well-known than Meilink-Roelofsz.'s monumental work, Thomaz's essays on the early 16th century are particularly important for being based on a mass of fresh documentation, belying earlier beliefs that “a lack of relevant data” from the archives would force historians to rely heavily on a limited set of sources — notably Tomé Pires's Suma Oriental.

Thailand is a non-Western country where a firm state ideology based on national political traditions has been developed to counter the influx of Western liberalism. The official state ideology is clearly set forth in Article 45 of the present constitution, which states that “No person shall exercise his constitutional rights and liberties in a manner adversely affecting the Nation, Religion, King and Constitution.” That is to say, every Thai must be loyal to these four institutions. Moreover, the government maintains a steady output of pamphlets and other publications to imbue this ideology into the minds of the Thai people. “Nation” in this ideology is closely associated with “Religion” and “King”, both of which are fundamental elements in the traditional Thai Buddhist theory of kingship. According to this theory, the king, regarded as elected by a gathering of all the people, should reign justly as a protector on whom the people can rely, and should be guided by the restraints of the moral law of Buddhism. Accordingly, the concept of “nation” in this ideology is different from that in Western liberal nationalism.

Controversy still surrounds the question whether the communist-led uprisings which developed across Southeast Asia during the months from March to September 1948 were the outcome of a deliberate international communist strategy or merely the product of coincidental decisions by individual communist parties. Equally controversial, although less frequently discussed, is the suggestion that during the early months of 1950 the Chinese Communist Party took on direct responsibility for sustaining those revolutionary armed struggles which were still continuing in Southeast Asia — in Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines — and even provided material assistance to allow them to expand. The present paper will examine yet a third period at which it is necessary to consider the possibility of coordinated international decision-making on the communist side in Southeast Asia: the second half of 1951.

The period from 1963 to 1966, which spans Indonesia's “confrontation” against Majaysia, marks an important benchmark in the history of Malaysian-American relations as it represents the first direct involvement of the United States into the political affairs of Malaysia. Before confrontation, the United States had maintained a low profile in the country and had confined the relationship to mainly economic issues. Politically, the United States had, for the most part, hovered in the background behind the British who had continued their close ties with Malaysia even after the granting of independence in 1957. America's deeper involvement with Malaysia because of confrontation, signified, therefore, a distinct departure from its earlier policy.

Levels of urbanization in Southeast Asia are low by world standards, even by developing country standards. Figures taken from recent U.N. estimates are presented in Table 1. They take advantage of the 1980 round of censuses and differ substantially from estimates made five years earlier. Even so, inter-country comparability remains problematic, as indicated by the inclusion of an alternative set of estimates for Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia which the writer believes provides data somewhat more comparable with the other countries than the data employed by the U.N.