This article is critical of the culturalist perspective as an explanation for the development of Chinese entrepreneurship. Drawing on Eu Tong Sen's business strategies and career between 1897 and 1920 as case study, it identifies the endogenous and exogenous conditions affecting Chinese business activities in colonial Malaya. Alfred Chandler's work on the rise of the modern business enterprise is argued to be particularly relevant for an economic history of Chinese business in Southeast Asia.

Iranun and Balangingi. Globalization, maritime raiding and the birth of ethnicity By JAMES FRANCIS WARREN Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2002. Pp. xxii, 585. Maps, Figures, Tables, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

James Warren's rewarding Iranun and Balangingi (2002) expands on his classic The Sulu Zone (1981) but retains the explanatory model: Southern Philippine slave-raiding (1768–1898) was caused by the capitalist world economy's demand for commodities. This essay suggests that Warren's depiction of servility is too undifferentiated, that he may have overestimated labour needs and elite control while underestimating free trade.

The development of anthropology in Indonesia is based on a vast accumulation of records on Indonesian peoples and cultures left by foreign visitors who had come to the islands from time immemorial. Compared to the records left by the Chinese, Indians, and Arab merchants who had visited the islands centuries ago, those left by the earliest Western Europeans (travellers, sailors, missionaries, translators of the Bible, explorers, and the Dutch colonial civil servants) are the most important.

Through a discussion of language use in Kalimantan Barat (Western Borneo) a better understanding of cultural and sociolinguistic phenomena that are relevant to any discussion of Malay identity can be achieved. In this complex setting, the colonial nomenclature of Malay and Dayak, though widely adopted by the people of Kalimantan, does not adequately represent the intricacy and the fluidity of social relationships and identities. Colonial knowledge matches neither the results of linguistic research nor what the Malays and Dayaks know about themselves, their languages and their identities.

In modern Indonesia the demographic study of the population has become a major field of academic interest. The reason is obvious: the endeavour to develop the nation's economy in order to give every citizen a proper standard of living and to guarantee this in the future, bears a strong relation to the size of the population and the desire to stem the tide of excessive population growth. Demographic studies are only recent and the same is true for the statistical material with which these studies work: censuses at a national level and regular registrations of births, marriages and deaths at the basic local level. In Indonesia the first, still imperfect, censuses date from the final decades of the nineteenth century, while regular registration of births, deaths and marriages for the indigenous population has only taken place from the 1930s onwards.

Throughout Sukarno's long and colourful political career, China constituted one of the central objects in his construction of the outside world. What did the PRC stand for in his intellectual and political imagination? How relevant was Sukarno's China perception to the evolution of his own socio-political thought? This paper suggests that Sukarno's favourable view of the PRC reflected more of his predispositions about Indonesia than it did Chinese realities. China as seen through Sukarno's eyes became the point of reference for both intellectual judgement and political thinking. Furthermore, Sukarno employed his perception of China as a cultural metaphor, social symbol, and political model in his drive to establish and consolidate the Guided Democracy regime.

The early postwar years witnessed serious and acrimonious controversies over the constitutional order the British intended to introduce in Malaya (including Singapore). The first set of proposals called the Malayan Union Scheme encountered strong Malay opposition. Partly because of this, the British advanced an alternative known as the Federation Proposals. This in turn was condemned by the non-Malays. Together with leftwing Malay leaders, non-Malay politicians organised an anti Federation movement, consisting of the Pan-Malayan Council of Joint Action (PMCJA) and the Pusat Tenaga Ra'ayat (PUTERA), to oppose the Federation Proposals. This paper examines the origin, leadership and organisation of the PMCJA-PUTERA as well as its agitation against the Federation scheme during the years, 1946–48.

Only in a handful of cases in world history has female rule been seen by contemporary observers as desirable and been sustained for long periods of time. Drawing on European, Malay and Chinese sources, this article investigates the reasons for the institutionalisation of female rule in the Malay sultanate of Patani (presently in southern Thailand) for most of the period between c. 1584 and 1711. It is concluded that the results of previous research, in which the Patani queens are characterised as powerless front figures and/or promiscuous, have insufficient support in the contemporary sources. Furthermore, the problems of female rule for dynastic stability are discussed comparatively. Finally, the decline of female rule in Patani after the mid-seventeenth century is explained with reference to the larger political, economic and military changes in maritime Southeast Asia at the time.

Our understanding of the transition from the last centuries of prehistory to the Pre-Angkorian period in northeast Thailand has been limited by a lack of projects bridging both periods. This article examines settlement patterns of the first to the ninth centuries CE in the Upper Mun River Valley based on recent (2012–14) surveys. The findings highlight the gradual settlement trends in the region, with a focus on local modification rather than the sudden adoption of external ideas. Results reinforce the fourth to sixth centuries CE as a pivotal period, when large centres consolidated and cautiously expanded upriver, into previously uninhabited regions. A relatively modest, flexible, and resilient settlement strategy developed, attuned to wider supra-regional trends, but allowing for the demands of the local cultural and physical landscape.

The influence of Christianity in Karen communities of Northern Thailand is increasing. Thai Buddhism is still marginal but growing, reducing the power of traditional beliefs, particularly ancestor worship. Despite conflicts between Christians and non-Christians, differing attitudes among the various Christian denominations towards Karen tradition and intra-ethnic dissociation based on religion, a distinctive Karen ethnic identity persists irrespective of religion, though the association between religious and ethnic identity varies.

This article concerns divergent visualisations about the Ifugao Rice Terraces, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Philippines, which remain central to the economy and lives of the indigenous Ifugao. It focuses on the contrast between the Ifugao internal notion of ‘good’ and the visual emphasis on ‘beautiful’ associated with heritage bodies’ management and conservation of the terraced landscapes. These divergent visualisations frame various actors’ expectations of the terraces. In particular, this article features the community involvement in forums on mapping of core and buffer zones of the World Heritage clusters, and their responses to and criticisms of conservation initiatives in relation to their perceived impact on their livelihoods.

The main characteristics of the Philippine political party system since the achievement of Philippine independence in 1946 have been the following:

1. It is a two party system. Two major parties, the Nacionalistas and the Liberals, dominate the scene. Their nation-wide combined vote at the six post-war presidential elections held since 1946 averaged 94 per cent of the votes cast. At both the eleven senatorial elections and the six elections for members of the House of Representatives held during the same period, the combined two-party vote was also 94 per cent. At the five gubernatorial elections held since 1947, the corresponding figure was 97 per cent.* In none of these election years did the combined two-party vote for any of these offices fall below 70 per cent.1 While minor parties have appeared from time to time, few have remained active for an extended period of years, and none has seriously threatened to replace either of the two existing major parties as the governing party or as the principal party of the opposition.

As recently as 1875 Thailand had an extremely decentralized political system in which regional and local authorities enjoyed considerable autonomy from the central government. By the end of King Chulalongkon‘s reign in 1910, however, a very centralized political system had emerged in Thailand. This rather remarkable transformation from decentralization to centralization has usually been explained in terms of Western diplomatic and economic pressure upon the Thai government in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the reforms which the government undertook to meet this pressure. Earlier studies by scholars such as Walter Vella, D. G. E. Hall, and John F. Cady have strongly emphasized the importance of Western pressure and advisers for the transformation of the Thai political system. More recent studies, in particular those of David Wyatt, have emphasized the importance of domestic factors in this process of change and stressed the creativity of the Thai response to the West. All of these studies have in common, however, an emphasis upon the importance of national level politics in the process of centralization. It will be the argument of this paper that it is also necessary to examine provincial-level politics in the period from 1875 to 1910 to understand why centralization in Thailand was so thoroughgoing and why it proceeded so rapidly. For this purpose the paper will focus on northern Thailand in the area which is now covered by the provinces of Chiang Mai, Lamphun, Lampang, Phrae, and Nan.

When the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was founded in 1967 one of its stated objectives was “to promote South-East Asian studies.” The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand as members of ASEAN in their call for “a strong and resilient Southeast Asia” realize the validity of the regional concept and the consequent need to advance studies on the area. In fact they are emphasizing the indigenous component of the concept.

Japan's economic expansion into Southeast Asia which began during World War I laid the foundations for the contemporary regional order. Based mainly upon Dutch sources, this article reviews the interwar expansion of Japanese trade, shipping and investment in Indonesia, examines its corporate structure, and considers how the phenomenon should be interpreted.

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.

This article explores the social and moral implications of Duterte's war on drugs in a poor, urban neighbourhood in Manila, the Philippines. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, surveys, and human rights interventions, the article sheds light on policing practices, social relations, and moral discourses by examining central perspectives of the state police implementing the drug war, of local policing actors engaging with informal policing structures, and of residents dealing with everyday insecurities. It argues that the drug war has produced a climate of ambiguous fear on the ground, which has reconfigured and destabilised social relations between residents and the state as well as among residents. Furthermore, this has led to a number of subordinate moral discourses — centred on social justice, family, and religion — with divergent perceptions on the drug war and the extent to which violence is deemed legitimate.

The full story of the Indians in Malaya has yet to be told. Here an attempt is made to assemble the information relating to some aspects of their settlement in Singapore over the last one hundred and fifty years.