Inter-household relations in lowland Lao villages are often characterized by cooperation and mutual support. This study describes norms governing agricultural labour exchange, assistance at household ceremonies, and village-wide projects. Successful cooperation expresses and reinforces values of village mutuality and solidarity which are important principles of Lao social organization and identification.

In most narratives, the beginning of the oil palm industry in Southeast Asia boils down to entrepreneurial spirit, scientific research, and good fortune. The colonial context in which the industry emerged barely figures in the story. This article argues that colonial power was critical, providing access to land and labour that proved more important than plant selection, capital, or technology. The plantation model pushed the region ahead of Africa as the leading exporter of palm oil by the late 1930s, but its future was in doubt as the Depression and Second World War shattered the colonial order.

‘Mas malupit ang mga Koreano kaysa mga Hapon’ is a rumour about Koreans in Second World War Philippines that has persisted to this day. A comparative, quantitative statement, it is roughly translated as ‘The Koreans committed more atrocities than the Japanese in Second World War Philippines’. This is a half-true memory: true, there were Koreans in the Philippines; false, they could not have committed more atrocities than the Japanese because there were very few of them, as archival evidence discussed in this article proves. If only the Koreans and their role in the war were properly discussed in Philippine textbooks, this rumour would not have persisted to this day.

The province of Maluku, otherwise known as the Moluccas, is divided into three main regions: the predominantly Muslim north, the mainly Christian central area, and the predominantly Christian southeast (see Map 1). The central region contains the “mother island” (nasa ina) of Seram which Maluku people believe to be the original source of Maluku culture. In some relatively isolated parts of this large island the original inhabitants such as the Nuaulu and the Huaulu ethnic groups (known in colonial times as the Alifuru people) still practise their ancestral rituals including music and dance.

For more than a century scholars of central and western mainland Southeast Asia have sought to characterise the status of dhammasattha — the predominant genre of written law from the region before colonialism — and define its authority vis-à-vis Pali Buddhism. For some, dhammasattha texts represent a predominantly ‘secular’ or ‘customary’ tradition, while for others they are seen as largely commensurate with, if not directly derived from, the religio-political ideas of a cosmopolitan and purportedly canonical ‘Theravāda’. However, scholarship has yet to investigate the way that regional authors during the late premodern period themselves understood the character and legitimacy of written law. The present article examines seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burmese narratives concerning the genealogy and status of dhammasattha to advance a pluralist conception of the relationship between law and religion in Southeast Asian history. This analysis addresses a historical context where ideas concerning Buddhist textual authority were in the process of development, and where there were multiple and competing discourses of legal ideology in play. For elite monastic critics closely connected with royalty, dhammasattha stood in problematic relation to authoritative taxonomies of scripture, and its jurisprudence was seen to contradict authorised accounts of the origin and nature of Buddhist law; the genre thus required reform to be brought into alignment with what were construed as orthodox legal imaginaries. The principal hermeneutic move these monastic commentators performed to achieve this involved redescribing dhammasattha in light of such accounts as a variety of Buddhist royal legislation and written law as the prerogative of the Buddhist state.

In recent discussions of trade and industrialization strategies in Asia, much attention has focused on the newly industrializing countries (NICs) of Northeast Asia and ASEAN's rapid industrial growth, but the experience of some other, more inward-looking countries has been largely ignored. The NICs and most of the ASEAN countries have completed a phase of import-substituting industrialization and have subsequently embarked on a vigorous export-oriented drive, especially in the field of labour-intensive manufactures. Their record, however, is in sharp contrast to that of some other countries in the region, where the manufacturing sector is still in a relatively early stage of development.

Since the 2008 rice crisis, Malaysia's rice policies have been caught between government efforts to raise production and its support of the country's monopoly rice importer (Bernas). This article argues that when the politics behind the country's policies are revealed, the paradox is more apparent than real. The three principal policy components — gratifying Barisan Nasional's coalition partners in East Malaysia by expanding the acreage devoted to rice; buttressing the rural Malay economy by providing subsidies through a yield-enhancing programme; and relying on big business for financial support (Bernas's new owner is one of Malaysia's richest businessmen) — aim to serve the same end: to perpetuate UMNO's political power amid increasing electoral competition.

This study grapples with two key puzzles: first, what happens when companies established as ethnic-based enterprises, including by migrants, are passed on to the next generation? Second, do these migrant businesses remain as ethnic enterprises after generational transitions? The empirical focus of this study is Malaysia, a country with one of the largest ethnic Indian populations outside India. To provide insights into these questions, this article pays particular attention to how an ethnic enterprise functions, in terms of types of goods and services produced and its targeted market, after the emergence of a new generation of owners with more class resources. The evidence from this study will provide insights into the validity of the concept of ethnic enterprise following a generational transition.

In the spring of 1957 a large stone tablet was found in a dilapidated temple in Canton. It was half buried in earth. The stone is still in good condition and the inscription on it is well preserved. On the head of the tablet there are 6 big characters reading “Chung Siu Tien. Ching Kuan Chi (Record of reconstruction of the Tien Ching Temple).

Between 1874 and 1888, British colonial rule was imposed on the Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang later collectively called the Federated Malay States (FMS). Based on the various Anglo-Malay treaties, which maintained the fiction that the British Resident was an adviser to the Malay ruler, the British established a form of administration generally known as a system of indirect rule. In this new order, the Malay rulers retained their constitutional and ceremonial role, while the exercise of executive power was held firmly in British hands. In the rush for establishing a modern administration and accelerating economic development late in the nineteenth century, hardly any attention was paid to training Malays to share executive power with British officials at the higher level of government or to compete effectively with Indians, Eurasians, and Chinese for subordinate appointments. This sin of omission began to stir the British conscience at the turn of the century and, for the next four decades, the British pursued a policy of actively promoting Malay employment in the government. This paper discusses the central component of this policy, namely, the training, recruitment, and development of Malay administrators in the FMS.

J. de V. Allen's recently published monograph on the Malayan Union will have served its purpose if it redirects the attention of historians to ‘an event whose importance was only possibly exceeded by the things which seem to crowd it out of the historical books — the Japanese occupation of 1943–1945, the emergency which began in 1948, and the declaration of independence from Britain in 1957’.1 In his often fascinating elaboration of what is essentially the accepted, almost traditional, account of the Malayan Union's demise, Allen argues that the scheme (which provided for the amalgamation of the pre-war Federated and Unfederated Malay States and the crown colonies of Periang and Malacca into a unitary colony which would provide the basis for eventual independence by granting citizenship to the great majority of the existing population) represented a recognition by British planners of the advantages of administrative centralisation, of the permanence of settlement of many Chinese and Indian inhabitants and of the loyal support of the Chinese during the Japanese occupation. The scheme failed because it was deliberately foisted upon the Malay Sultans (who were required to cede their sovereignty) in great haste, because it took inadequate consideration of Malay attitudes and political forms, thus arousing united Malay and ex-Malayan Civil Servant opposition, and because it aroused no interest among the Chinese and Indians. Therefore the Malayan Union was replaced by the Federation of Malaya, which safeguarded the traditional leadership role of the Sultans, which allayed Malay fears of ‘alien’ domination and which yet offered ‘generous’ citizenship rights to the non-Malays. In this manner, so the account goes, a gross error of judgement was rectified and the groundwork laid for progress towards independence.

This article uses recently declassified archival documents from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) concerning the Calcutta Youth Conference of February 1948. This evidence contradicts speculation that ‘orders from Moscow’ were passed to Southeast Asian communists at this time, helping to spark the rebellions in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma and the Philippines later that year. Secret working papers now available to researchers show no signs that the Soviet leadership planned to call upon Asian communists to rise up against their national bourgeois governments at this point in time. This article outlines the real story behind Soviet involvement in events leading up to the Calcutta Youth Conference, showing both a desire to increase information and links, and yet also a degree of caution over the prospects of local parties.

When launching the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) in 1969, the then Deputy Prime Minister (the late Tun Abdul Razak) stressed that diversification was Malaysia's greatest need in agriculture, and a few weeks later, in an opening address to a conference on crop diversification organized by the Incorporated Society of Planters, he stated that agricultural diversification had been a national objective for some years. The steady progress towards that objective, he claimed, was “evidenced by the rapid increase in palm oil production, the expansion of acreage planted to high yielding padi varieties, recent increases in tapioca production, and current interest in sugar cane, cocoa, maize, soya beans, groundnuts”.

In the classical Burmese state, land and labour were categorized as either crown or private. State or crown land (mye-taw) was composed largely of the best irrigated tracts in the dry zone, usually worked by crown labour called kyun taw or ahmudan—depending upon the period of study—subject to service tenure, whose produce went to kyi-taw or royal granaries. These crown lands and labour were administered by temporary and permanent clients of the king in return for certain rights and privileges. Exempt communal or ancestral land (bòbábaing mye) was owned collectively, usually by villages of non-indentured people (athi) who, in lieu of corvée, submitted per capita taxes to the crown, determined by a complicated system based on their occupations. Sańghika or religious lands (wáthúkan mye) were either owned outright by the church or held in perpetuity as endowments. The tax exempt produce from glebe lands paid for the maintenance of religious buildings and monasteries, the monks, and for the care of their students and their servants (hpayà-kyun) who were exempt from both corvée as well as per capita tax.

My essay in celebration of the Journal's anniversary sketches what may be the concluding chapter in a study of Vietnam in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the Tran dynasty reigned (1226–1400). In 1225 the Tran family overthrew the last emperor of the previous dynasty, the Ly (1009–1225) and hitherto the only long lived one. The Ly imperial line, in fact, lasted nearly fifty years longer than its successor. Nevertheless, the Tran is unquestionably the most renowned of all Vietnamese dynasties on account of its victories when Kubilai Khan's armies attacked three times in the thirteenth century. Yet one has to ask what kind of dynasty it was and how the country it ruled should be defined. Should one look to China, the source of the dynastic institution, for guidance or should one look elsewhere? An event in 1237 suggests ambiguity. That year officials were required to offer betel and tea to the emperor when he was departing from the Eastern Pier near the capital. “Betel and tea” bring Southeast Asia as well as China into the picture.

The article reassesses the economic role of the late colonial state in Malaya. It seeks to dispel the view that the colonial government served British business interests, and that broad-based development policies only followed independence in 1957. Rather the developmentalist orientation of the state began earlier in the 1940s, and was not fully in accordance with existing economic interests.

An important problem in comparing bureaucratic organizations in different societies involves separating “cultural” from “structural” explanations of behaviour. Theories involvingstructural characteristics such as size and span of control permit uniform, parsimonious statements to be made. Yet such explanations fail to account for observed differences in output, goal choice, adjustment, etc., between structurally similar organizations in different settings. A requirement exists to develop theory which integrates cultural factors into organizational theories without resulting in mere reductionist arguments.

Plantations, which originated as agricultural enterprises within colonial economic systems and which came to be established particularly in tropical dependencies, have occupied an equivocal position in the economic development philosophies and plans of less developed countries. Their colonial origin and their traditionally export-oriented and often mono-cultural characteristics have subjected them to a wide range of adverse criticism, despite their undoubted earning capacity.

Khaw Sim Bee's premature death in 1913 at the hands of an assasin, allegedly torn by jealousy over Sim Bee's advances towards his wife, marked the end of an era in the family politics of peninsular Siam. Sim Bee was the youngest son of Khaw Soo Cheang (1797–1882), a Hokkien immigrant who rose to the governorship of Ranong and founded the Khaw dynasty in Siam. Through his position as High Commissioner of Monthon Phuket, Sim Bee came to dominate the political and commercial life of the region. The man who King Vajiravudh ranked “as a personal friend who will be sincerely mourned by me as a personal loss” headed a family that was equalled by few others in the kingdom.

Western secular historiography has conventionally viewed the history of Catholicism in Vietnam through a political optic, a perspective which has distorted the early nineteenth-century religious situation in both Vietnam and France. This article discusses how Vietnamese understood Catholicism at the popular level and what attracted people to the religion, as well as introducing an important European Catholic fund-raising society whose interventions into Vietnam long predated any serious French political designs on the country.