Probably the biggest single effect that the Emergency in Malaya has visibly accomplished has been the resettlement or regrouping of nearly 650,000 “squatters” into more than 550 “new villages.” It is the purpose of this paper to examine the conditions that necessitate the resettlement and regrouping of these “squatters”, the positive law measures utilized, and the direct and indirect results that were accomplished.

The article examines the intent of the Japanese for their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It relies on documents that the Japanese government prepared in September 1942 which set forth prospective policy towards Thailand as a member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The proposals in these documents specified the political and diplomatic relations Japan expected to have with Thailand, and they were very specific regarding Japan's control over Thailand's economy as a part of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The documents indicate that the Japanese were aiming at establishing a well-organized, well-regulated sphere as a unity under the direction of Japan. The organic nature that the Japanese envisioned for the Co-Prosperity Sphere was patterned on the same organic unity that they had applied to building and controlling their empire between 1895 and 1940.

The year 1819 is almost universally taken as a seminal date in Singapore historiography. Yet Stamford Raffles’ founding of a British trading post there was controversial from the start. The Dutch and the British haggled as to whether or not Raffles had overstepped his authority, and whether the trading post was legal. From the start, the Dutch demanded that the British quit their occupation of Singapore. During a three-year hiatus in the Anglo–Dutch negotiations (1820–23), Anton Reinhard Falck, the lead Dutch negotiator, decided to drop claims to Singapore in favour of a rearrangement of possessions in the archipelago. Crucially, he concluded that dropping claims over Singapore would not amount to a real loss. Instead, Falck hoped to use Singapore as a bargaining chip to squeeze additional concessions from the British. The Dutch formally relinquished their claim over Singapore in article 12 of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which gave full recognition and legitimacy to the British post, and sanctioned a breakup of the Johor-Riau Empire with the Singapore Straits acting as a notional dividing line. Earlier studies were substantially based on English-language materials and present the British as dominating the negotiations. The present article, based on Dutch archival materials as well as studies and sources in French, Dutch and English, reveals a fuller story of diplomatic disputes, territorial concessions, errors of judgement, and the triggering of the Dutch empire in the archipelago, in a paper war for the contested space of Singapore.

In the conventional historiography of Indonesia, the Second World War is equated with the Japanese occupation, and 1942 is a year of sudden change. This article argues that there was a prelude to these conditions. Changes in the global economic structure due to the Second World War, and countermeasures by the state authorities, began well before the Japanese invasion. The fundamental problem was the gradually deepening economic isolation that necessitated state intervention.

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.

Several scholars portray Thai provincial strongmen as having character traits associated with nakleng – ‘tough guys’ – who are violent and ruthless toward enemies, but generous and compassionate toward supporters. Banharn Silpa-archa, the strongman of Suphanburi province, does not fit the description however. His personality is reflected in the way he meticulously – fussily – monitors all local development projects. This surveillance pushes otherwise lazy and inefficient local civil servants to be more diligent in their work. Banharn's domination rests on Suphanburians' appreciation of his non-nakleng-type leadership.

Founded in 1979, the Thai popular monthly magazine Sinlapa watthanatham aimed to make history, art and culture into areas of contestation against long-established official interpretations, and thus encourage a broad-based readership to reassess their assumptions about Thai-ness. However, the question of magazine sales, the context of the economic boom, and the crisis that erupted in 1997 led the magazine to succumb to consumerism, as well as a conservative ideology.

Considering the importance of the early dates for bronze working technology in Southeast Asia that several of us have been presenting in preliminary reports over the last fifteen years, it is somewhat surprising that there have not been more critical articles published concerning our evidence and interpretation thereof. The primary reason for this is no doubt because final reports of the pertinent sites presenting the relevant data in context have not yet appeared. The great majority of the interested archaeologists are simply awaiting the final site reports before they decide whether our interpretation is reasonable. We are sorry for the great delay in completing the final reports. Speaking of Non Nok Tha, the first site from which excavated data produced early dates for bronze working, the descriptive portion of the research has been completed, the analysis of the data has almost been completed (primarily by Donn Bayard), and it is hoped that the first volume of a two volume final report can be submitted to the press by the end of 1982. The second volume will be totally a data volume, probably published in microfiche.

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.

Southeast Asia's strategic position in the major pre-modern international maritime route connecting East and West brought inevitable interaction between Southeast Asian peoples and foreign merchants. Initially, foreign merchants were concerned only with passing through Southeast Asia on their way to China or India. Southeast Asian coastal centres (entrepôts) facilitated this trade by providing suitable stopping places for sailors and traders; available to them were food, water, and shelter as well as storage facilities and market places for exchange. Soon, however, Southeast Asian merchants began to supplement demand for Eastern and Western products by substituting the products of the jungles of the Indonesian archipelago for those from other sources, and then built upon this initial incursion to market other indigenous forest products. Foreign demand for Southeast Asian products reached a peak when spices from Indonesia's eastern archipelago began to flow out of the Java Sea region to the international ports in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.

Despite the dominant role the timber industry now plays in the economy of Sabah, little is known of the development of the industry prior to the Pacific War. The small amount that has been published on the pre-war situation appears in the Malayan Forester, but the destruction of records in Sabah during the Japanese Occupation has greatly impeded detailed research. For the present study the papers of the British North Borneo (Chartered) Company now held in London have served as a source of far more comprehensive information than occurs in the oft-quoted secondary sources. The aim of this paper is to provide the first detailed account of forest policy and administration, and a systematic analysis of the development of the timber industry in pre-war North Borneo.

Vietnamese rulers of the Nguyên Dynesty showed considerable interest in foreign military technology. Their adoption and adaptation of this technology constitute an important chapter in the history Vietnam's relations with the West.

The expansion of public education is often seen as an effective tool for the promotion of national identity and the mitigation of ethno-religious tensions in diverse post-colonial states. This essay questions such assumptions via an examination of successive Philippine governments' efforts to deploy educational policy as a response to chronic tensions between the nation's Christianised mainstream and a restive Muslim minority on the southern island of Mindanao. It suggests that the expansion of education to foster a cohesive national identity without careful reconsideration of the religious, cultural and political biases inherent in its content is likely to fail in achieving peaceful, cohesive relations between different ethno-religious communities in religiously diverse multicultural states.

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.

This article aims to recover the background to the post-Second World War growth of local art activities, art education and the rise of the professional artist on the island of Singapore and peninsular Malaya. It examines how the transitional period spanning the dissolution of British colonialism and the establishment of two independent nations stimulated unique conditions for the development of local art education and created an amateur–professional artist divide. The promotion and support of fine arts and related activities were in tandem with nation-building strategies that sought to construct a common ‘Malayan’ culture and identity.

Clifford Geertz, in his discussion of the social history of an East Central Javanese town, described how rural migrants attempted to make sense of modern elections and political factions by applying old systems of meanings. As people adjusted to the evolving social conditions of new urban contexts, new knowledge supposedly emerged to order social relations. Yet he observed that in the 1950s this rarely was the case; usually a sense of vagueness and incoherence persisted. Similarly, Geertz's analysis of a Javanese funeral concluded that the ritual “failed” and consequently tensions persisted and intensified as a result of societal and cultural discontinuity; the social and the cultural were moving in opposite directions. Old cultural notions did not tend to give way to new notions more adept at effecting social solidarity. The contest over whose voice, whose sense of self and image of post-colonial Indonesia would prevail eventually culminated in the bloodbath of 1965–66, which marked the abrupt end of the Old Order and the birth of the Suhartoled New Order regime.

The Federation of Malaysia was formed in 1963, comprising the Malay Peninsula and the states of Sabah and Sarawak. In Peninsular Malaysia, archaeological activities including the protection of archaeological sites is under the jurisdiction of the Museums Department while the East Malaysian states have their own enactments and programmes covering this aspect of research. For this reason I restrict this paper to the archaeology of Peninsular Malaysia.

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.

In 1856 a Muslim Sultanate was founded in Yunnan, the southwestern Chinese province that borders Burma. In 1873, seventeen years later, this Sultanate was annihilated. The Muslim inhabitants of Yunnan are known as the Panthays.

There are several versions concerning Muslim origins in Yunnan. A tradition held by the Panthays themselves tells that the Emperor of China requested the Prophet Mohammed to send some Muslims to help him to get rid of evil spirits. The Prophet sent him 360 men, with whose aid the evil spirits were routed. The Arabs were welcomed with great honour and were allowed to settle near the capital. In course of time their numbers increased to such an extent that the Imperial Government was disturbed. The Muslims were therefore dispersed to the border areas of the Empire and resettled there. This account was related to the British mission which visited the Panthay Sultanate, by the Governor of the town of Momien. A very similar Chinese version tells of a Muslim army, several thousand strong, which came to the rescue of the Emperor of China at his request. After quelling the rebellion, the Muslims feared to return home, because during their long sojourn abroad they had been polluted by pork and other prohibited things, and decided to remain in China. Eventually they were sent to Yunnan and other places and became loyal subjects of the Emperor.

Through an examination of an essay written by a Balinese intellectual in the 1930s, this article explores how notions of modernity and nationalism can take root in particular localities. The essay makes a case for modernization and nationalism in Bali, and points to the existing caste system, which it identifies as largely a colonial creation, as an obstacle to progress that should be eliminated.