When Burma was separated from India in 1937, the production and distribution of opium in the trans-Salween area became an important issue for the British since the Government of Burma would be expected to adhere to the various international agreements to control the opium trade. Initiatives by British officials in London to tighten restrictions were necessary since this region produced over and above the licit requirements of opium for the Shan States, but they were never fully implemented owing to resistance from local authorities and traders and the lack of any alternative cash crop to substitute for opium.

Until the fifteenth century, Vietnam was essentially a Buddhist country. The piety of the dynasties constituted their source of legitimacy, and Buddhism provided a means for royal authority to penetrate and incorporate the local political structure. In the face of the development of social unrest, however, Confucian literati started to voice their concern for the maintenance of order and eventually emerged in the fifteenth century as spokesmen for royal authority, definers of public morality and guardians of the court. As a result, institutional Buddhism lost the court patronage it had previously enjoyed, and henceforth its political influence declined steadily.

The focus of the article is on the policy perspectives of the colonial state in Malaya vis-à-vis business, Western and Chinese. It touches on the policy outlook of the periods preceding the inter-war years before exploring various related topics (the question of industrial development, tariff policy, private sector initiatives) with a view to ascertaining the relationship between state and business.

During the turbulent years between the 1930s and the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945, Chinese businessmen in Yogyakarta confronted three major issues: competition against the emerging Indonesian entrepreneurs and Japanese business expatriates; patriotism towards their ancestral land China in fighting against Japanese aggression; and collaboration with the new regime run by their former enemy, the Japanese. During this period newly arrived ‘totok’ Chinese achieved pre-eminence over the well-established ‘peranakan’ community.

The main argument of this article is that the middlemen paradigm which since the Second World War has come to dominate academic writings and popular perceptions of Chinese business in late colonial Indonesia is generally flawed, and has hindered the development of a more nuanced picture of the nature of Chinese economic activity in pre-war Southeast Asia.

The article suggests that the development of Chinese capitalism in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia was intimately connected to the participation of Chinese merchants in the financing and operation of opium revenue farming concessions. It examines the development and structure of the opium farming system as it operated in the region.

In 1958, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce had to decide whether to remain active in politics, representing not only the commercial interests of the rich but also the views of Chinese society at large, or to function solely as a commercial organisation. The eventual success of the pro-politics faction illustrates the buoyant aspirations of the Chinese merchant elite. The public battle for control over the Chamber shows that Chinese businessmen assessed their options by pragmatically balancing political, economic as well as cultural constraints and opportunities.