This article surveys the reign of Cambodian King Reameathipadei I (1642–58) on the basis of Khmer and Dutch sources, with a particular focus on the monarch's conversion to Islam in the early 1640s. This episode provides an illustration of the pluralism of Southeast Asian societies during the Age of Commerce.

A seventeenth-century painting, ‘Pieter Cnoll and His Family’ by J. J. Coeman, reveals a number of entry points from which Indonesian histories can be explored. Through a discussion of the painting and its subjects, a variety of issues ranging from VOC (United East India Company) policies and mestizo relationships to gender, labour and legal rights in VOC-controlled ports are discussed.

Late colonial sugar cane production in Java was characterised by the heavy use of (chemical) fertiliser in tandem with labour-intensive techniques and industrial work processes in the field. This article provides a useful corrective to an overemphasis on the extractive nature of the colonial economy of sugar and shows the truly industrial nature of plantation production. For students of colonial science and agriculture, the situation has additional ramifications, relating both to the role and ‘diffusion’ of scientific knowledge and to the historical dimensions of agricultural development in ‘the tropics’.

The Hmong are not passive actors who wait for help from development workers and other authorities. Instead, they actively engage themselves within a process of social negotiation between unequal socio-economic and political groups, a ‘dynamic knowledge system’. Three case studies from a Hmong Thantam community are used to better understand the process of social negotiation with multiple actors within complex power relations. More importantly, their dynamic local knowledge is used as a strategy to struggle against, and reconcile with, more powerful forces; the result of this process is the ‘complexity’ which happens as a response to power

It's possible to find knowledge from any place in the world when we humans learn from one another. Throughout the generations we Hmong have learned from many diverse sources. In order to fulfil our lives, we young Hmong still learn from the whole world. Laoyeng Saehang, A headman of Thantam village, Northern Thailand, 1998.

This article challenges the perceived image of ‘traditional’ Vietnam by viewing the polity's early history from the sea. A trading zone existed in the Gulf of Tonkin area, stretching to Hainan Island and northern Champa by sea, and overland to Yunnan and Laos. Commerce and interactions of peoples in this area played a crucial part in state formation for Vietnam.

The surge in Song foreign trade affected Ða[under dot]i Viê[under dot]t greatly, helping to integrate the upper and lower valley of the Red River first economically in the twelfth century, then politically with the rise of the Trâ[grave accent above]n dynasty in the thirteenth, and finally culturally in the fourteenth. Coastal wealth, power and classical Chinese scholarship entered the inland capital of Thăng Long (Hanoi) and strongly influenced it, leading to major changes across the land.

This article challenges conventional notions of geography in Vietnamese historiography that overlook the role of the sea as an integrative social space capable of uniting ostensibly segregated regions economically, socially and politically. Viewing history from the seashore instead of the rice field, it highlights the littoral inhabitants who connected interior agricultural and forest foragers to coasting and ocean carrier trade, and underscores the importance of the littoral as the ‘great river’ that encouraged Vietnamese political expansion and state formation along a southern trajectory.