More than a decade ago, when Singapore was still part of Malaysia, the author wrote, at the invitation of the Journal of Economic History, a bibliographic essay on the economic history of that country. It turned out to be an exploration into the possibility of writing a general economic history of Malaysia. It concluded that the nineteenth century was better studied than the twentieth, and that certain states, periods, and sectors of the economy received greater attention than others. The conclusion then was that a general economic history of Malaysia was not feasible.

Tan Cheng Lock was born in Malacca in 1883. His father Tan Keong Ann, his illustrious grandfather Tan Choon Bock, and his great grandfather were also born there, while his great great grandfather Tan Hay Kwan, who had migrated from Fukien as a youth to Malacca in the latter part of the eighteenth century (circa 1765), had died there in 1801. The Tans by now have been part of Malacca for over two hundred years.

In the decade following the Second World War, two aspects of Malaya's political life were predominant. First, there was an increased political awareness among Malayans which led to the formation of political organizations, the political mobilization of a significant proportion of the population, and eventually, in 1955, to the holding of Malaya's first federal elections. Second, there was the “Emergency”, the name commonly given to the guerrilla war waged by the Malayan Communist Party (M.C.P.) and its supporters from June 1948 to August 1960. Both of these aspects have been chronicled and examined in some detail by students of Malayan history. And yet, interestingly enough, rarely have the effects of one upon the other been fully considered. Indeed, the usual pattern of analysis in the, often otherwise excellent, general studies that examine this period is for each aspect to be treated in a separate section or chapter. Moreover, accounts which focus solely on the Emergency are even less encouraging in this respect. Mr. Anthony Short's impressive history of the Colonial Government's activities in countering the Communist guerrillas is typical in the scant attention which is given to the political parties' role in undermining the Communists' cause. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to explore some of the links between the development of the political parties, especially the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the Malayan Chinese Association (M.C.A.), prior to 1955, and the course of the Emergency.

No Harvest but a Thorn opens with a sentence whose emphatic brevity outlines the macrocosm governing the interlocking spiritual, emotional, and physical environment inhabited by Lahuma and his family. That

Life and death, dearth and plenty, are in the hands of God. In the hands of Allah the Almighty. (p. 1)

is simultaneously religious doctrine and empirical attitude, declaration of faith and supplication. Moreover, the quartet of primeval forces, announced with stark simplicity of tone, creates a powerful, complementing sense of time as a cycle felt through significant events. Thus marshalled, the four key words emphasize further both their antithetical and complementing relationships (life-plenty, death-dearth) and the degree to which events, and the processes they embody, control the rhythms of life in Banggul Derdap. Allah presides over cause and effect. As the pair of sentences occurs four times in the first eight, relatively short paragraphs of Chapter 1, the realities of these basic equations are installed as constants in the readers' awareness. A vital point regarding what constitutes an essential part of Lahuma's existence is being urged vigorously for their benefit. Their world view, limited though it proves, derives from and remains utterly dependent on these dominant elements in the macrocosm. Village life, which takes hard, unremitting labour for granted, is prone to sudden, tragic turns — a fact that alters the scale we are inclined to adopt when assessing the tenor and the general quality of life.

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.

The Canning mission of 1809/10 lacks a clearly defined central theme. John Canning was sent to Burma by the British Indian Government to secure Burmese acquiescence in the British blockade of the French Isles of Mauritius and Bourbon, the centres of French privateer activity in the Indian Ocean. While in Burma, however, Canning entered, without authority from his government, into an understanding with the Ein-gyi Paya, or Heir Apparent to the throne of Burma, by which the latter could appeal to the British upon the death of the King for military help against rivals who were expected to contend for the throne themselves. Two further issues arose: King Bodawpaya, Canning discovered, claimed the eastern portion of Bengal on the ground that in the past the area had been subject to Arakan, which still had a right over it that the Burmese had inherited after their conquest of that state in 1785. He also wanted direct relations with the King of England, on the ground that the Governor-General, having only delegated and not sovereign authority, was his inferior in rank. The King was also by this time very capricious and impulsive at times; he was capable of issuing rash, imperious orders, which would have serious consequences if as sometimes happened they were actually carried out. Traces of rashness and imperiousness seem to be present in his behaviour in 1810 even though his viewpoint on eastern Bengal and on sovereignty had nothing to do with peculiarities of temperament.

On hillside slash and burn fields, Lisu of Northern Thailand produce rice, opium poppies, and corn. In this paper I shall develop models to show the relationships among various factors that determine how much rice each household produces, and the relative importance of opium and rice.

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.

The question of a national identity for Vietnam has long plagued historians, both Vietnamese and foreign. Some see Vietnam throughout its pre-modern history as a minor appendage of the Chinese Empire, one whose culture and institutions are so thoroughly influenced by the Chinese tradition that they evade meaningful individual scrutiny. A few apply the tools of Sinology in such a way as to reach conclusions which, while cogent in themselves, cannot escape the confines of their methodology. Others, including a majority of scholars from Vietnam itself, reject the former view and are continuously searching for evidence to demonstrate the uniqueness of the Vietnamese experience. There is little merit in the a priori assumptions of either school, but this does not invalidate the question. It would be of particular interest to know not simply whether some significant differences existed between Vietnamese and Chinese institutions at various points throughout history but whether these institutional differences had a significant bearing on a sense of nationalism and whether such differences resulted at least partially from a selfconception on the part of Vietnamese thinkers, one consciously held and pursued. The Binh Ngo Dai Cao provides us with some intriguing clues. It is, as well, a narrative document of great literary worth and the subject of constant allusion, the background of which could bear illumination for purely historical interest.

The seventh session of the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea has just ended after three months (28 March to 19 May, and 22 August to 15 September 1978). There seems to be general agreement that territorial waters should be extended from the traditional 3-mile limit out to 12 miles (19 kilometres) offshore, and that every coastal state is entitled to an economic zone reaching 200 miles. More than 40 countries have established, or are in the process of establishing, 200 miles (320 kilometres) offshore as a fishery zone, economic zone, or territorial sea. To many states, the 200-mile economic zone is already a fact of international law. But there is still some disagreement over how much control coastal states should exercise over the adjacent 200 miles of water.