In his short administration, President Kennedy was called upon to deal with several Southeast Asian developments but none that had reached such a high watermark of an international crisis as the question of Laos. As in Berlin, he inherited in Laos a situation aggravated by near-direct armed confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. Kennedy's response to that situation was a complex set of policy moves and measures that alternately raised a spectre of large-scale, direct American military intervention and prospects of East-West agreement on Laotian neutrality, only to end eventually on the same note of anti-communist crusade as in the preceding Eisenhower administration.

This article argues for understanding the reform of the Buddhist tradition in nineteenth-century Siam as a shift towards a secular conceptual grammar, and positions this shift within the dual imperial context of Siam. The binary conceptual structure that can be traced in the Nangsue Sadaeng Kitchanukit (Elaboration on major and minor matters, 1867) also included an opposition between Buddhism and Islam, documenting not only the epistemic marks of the Christian missionary encounter, but also the inner-political imperial context of Siam's hegemony over the Islamic sultanate of Patani.

This essay reflects on the plays of masks and selves in the dances and the life of Didik Nini Thowok, and the resonances between dance and life. An Indonesian of Chinese descent and a female impersonator whose comic dances combine different regional styles, Didik upsets notions of ethnic and gender stereotypes and identities, the notion of identity itself.

Despite popular representations of Tunku Abdul Rahman as an avuncular political personality, he was also an astute policy practitioner. This was evident in how he, in pursuit of Malayan interests, calibrated Malaya's foreign policy posture towards Jakarta in a manner that not only displayed little appreciation of Indonesian sensitivities, but also undermined its political interest and status as the major power in Southeast Asia, thus contributing to bilateral tension.

1819 represents a highly charged moment in the Singapore imagination. It marks the birth of our modern city-state, yet it also signals the beginning of our colonisation: the domination of Malay and other Asian cultures by Western powers. Artists have thus responded to the event with widely variant attitudes, ranging from E.W. Jesudason's laudatory Raffles Institution Anthem (c.1963–66) to Isa Kamari's stridently anti-colonial novel, Duka Tuan Bertakhta / 1819 (2011). The prevailing sentiment, however, has been one of playful ambivalence. While accepting the fact of colonisation, artists have rejected a founding myth that glorifies our primary colonist, Sir Stamford Raffles. Instead, we have lampooned him in works like Robert Yeo's play The Eye of History (1991) and Colin Goh's film Talking Cock: The Movie (2002); raised ourselves to the height of his statue in Lee Wen's art event Untitled (Raffles) (2001); highlighted narratives of overlooked figures in the drama of colonisation: William Farquhar, Sophia Raffles, Nonio Clement, Sultan Hussein Shah, Munsyi Abdullah, and Sang Nila Utama. As a cultural researcher and author of the biographical drama The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles (2008), I shall examine trends behind these divergent representations of our colonisation. I argue that artists have chosen to retell 1819 not as a year of conquest, but as a polymorphous moment of transformative contact between East and West; one in which we may view ourselves, not as the victims of change, but as its agents.

A new perspective has begun to challenge both the conventional portrayal of the Vietnamese revolution and the communist account of its success. This essay takes stock of new research that presents revolutionary Vietnam in a more complex and less triumphal way. It is argued that Vietnam's nationalist revolution (1945–46) should be conceptually distinguished from the subsequent socialist revolution (1948–88). The former had a distinctly urban and bourgeois character, was led by a coalition of the upper and middle classes, and lacked ideological intensity. The latter was imposed from above, based on socialist visions, and dependent on foreign assistance. The failure to disentangle the two revolutions in existing narratives assigns little agency to Vietnamese actors and leads to triumphs being exaggerated while tragedies are overlooked.

The shadowplay of Southeast Asia has often been understood as a reflection of local cultural patterns, and it has therefore been the object of much scholarly interest. That interest has been directed especially at the Javanese play, although much has also been written about Balinese and Malaysian shadowplay performances. The shadowplay performance is not usually associated with Thailand, and the shadowplay there has not been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny as in Indonesia and Malaysia. Nevertheless, such a tradition is thriving among Tai-speaking Buddhist peoples in peninsular (Southern) Thailand, particularly in the provinces of Songkhla, Thammarat, and Phatthalung on the long-settled rice plain stretching from Songkhla near the Malay border to Nakhon Si Thammarat, where most puppeteers are found.

In a rapidly modernising Cambodia, dance parties that accompany large temple celebrations and weddings have become violent arenas where young men fight with fists and knives beyond police control. In 2010, this led to a ban on dance parties during the Pchuṃ Biṇḍ celebration. This paper concerns an ad hoc bribe to lift the ban that was collected in the manner of a meritorious temple offering. I suggest that the flexible parameters of Buddhist merit-making in this ritualised context both reconfigured the bribe and palpably brought expectations of moral conduct into the energetically charged dancing arena — but only momentarily.

Christian Filipino legislators in the bicameral US civil administration played a hitherto unacknowledged role in pushing for the colonisation of Mindanao, as part of the Philippines, by proposing a series of Assembly bills (between 1907 to 1913) aimed at establishing migrant farming colonies on Mindanao. This legislative process was fuelled by anger over the unequal power relations between the Filipino-dominated Assembly and the American-dominated Commission, as well as rivalry between resident Christian Filipino leaders versus the American military government, business interests and some Muslim datus in Mindanao itself for control over its land and resources. Focusing on the motives and intentions of the bills' drafters, this study concludes that despite it being a Spanish legacy, the Christian Filipino elite's territorial map — emphasising the integrity of a nation comprising Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao — provided the basis for their claim of Philippine sovereignty over Mindanao.

This article is the first comprehensive evaluation of the provenance and reliability of the two enigmatic Kronik Tionghua texts of Semarang and Cirebon (the ‘Malay Annals of Semarang and Cerbon’). Initially published by M.O. Parlindungan in 1964, historians have increasingly begun to use these documents when reconstructing Java's early Islamic history. This article is a long overdue attempt to positively identify the Dutch colonial official (Cornelis Poortman) whom Parlindungan claims to have received the texts from. Although the article establishes that Parlindungan almost certainly knew this individual, discrepancies between his version of Poortman's career and official Dutch records raise questions about whether Poortman could have found the two Kronik Tionghua, at least in the manner described. The article then ends with a close textual analysis of both Kronik Tionghua which demonstrates the possibility that both texts were written by a modern, Dutch-educated author. The article therefore concludes that both texts are probable fabrications, albeit ones based on authentic texts.

Singapore became a distinct crown colony in 1946. Two years later the British Government began to introduce constitutional reforms in the island in accordance with its pledge in 1943 to foster the growth of “(Malaya's) capacity for self-government within the British Empire”. This colonial tutelage assumed two forms. Firstly, the government started to prepare for a fully elected legislature through which to transfer power to the people in the future. Secondly, the people were trained to work a system of democratic elections based on universal suffrage for all British and (after 1948) British Protected Subjects. The process, however, was fairly slow with the result that the governmental system of a normal crown colony remained basically intact in Singapore until 1955. Assisted by an advisory executive council and a legislative council, the governor continued to rule the colony with almost unlimited powers, subject only to the control of the Secretary of State for the Colonies at Whitehall. The legislature did not even have an elected majority until the Rendel Constitution was introduced in April 1955. Under this new constitution, the Labour Front-Alliance coalition government became the first elected government to assume office with a considerable degree of power in its hands.

The transfer of the former Royal Navy dockyard to the Government of Singapore, at a ceremony on 8 December 1968, went almost unnoticed in the press of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Yet twenty-seven years earlier, to the very day, the Japanese landings at Kota Bahru, followed immediately by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, inspired alarming headlines. In Australia and New Zealand, where for twenty years the Singapore naval base had been given the central place in all defence planning, the Japanese attack gave rise to the first real fears of invasion. As they faced this possibility they regarded the ‘impregnable fortress’ of Singapore as their first line of defence.

The paradigm that the early Southeast Asian polities known as Dvāravatī and Zhenla were respectively, indeed almost exclusively, Buddhist and Hindu/Brahmanical during the second half of the first millennium CE has long remained uncontested. In this reappraisal, however, arguments are presented that challenge this general scholarly opinion. A thorough reassessment of the material culture and inscriptions from these two neighbouring regions of mainland Southeast Asia tempers such clear-cut compartmentalisation and instead emphasises the complex and evolving nature of the religion of that age through the lens of the ideology of merit. The religious affiliation of certain artefacts and inscriptions that are clearly related to this ideology are further examined and questioned.

It is well known that British political control in the Malay States began with the Pangkor agreement of January 1874, which was soon followed by the appointment of the first Resident in Perak. The Earl of Kimberley's famous instructions' of 20 September 1873 have generally been accepted as providing the basis for this new phase in the history of Malaya and of the British empire. Sir Andrew Clarke was told that the conduct of Britain's relations with the Malay States which were not subject to Siamese influence, would be an important part of his duties as governor. Since growing anarchy was injuring trade and British interests generally, the government had to consider whether it could do anything to improve matters in the States. Although the British government had no desire to interfere in the affairs of the Peninsula, said Kimberley, Clarke should inquire into the condition of each state and report any steps which the Straits government could take to restore peace and to protect trade. Kimberley also added the often-quoted words:

“I would wish you especially to consider whether it would be advisable to appoint a British Officer to reside in any of the Malay States. Such an appointment would only be made with the full consent of the native government.…”

When Khon Kaen town was designated the development centre for Northeast Thailand in 1962 it was a small provincial capital, undistinguished save for being the most centrally located on-rail town in the region. (See Figure 1.) Khon Kaen has since been transformed. Several tens of government agencies concerned with development in the Northeast now have regional or sub-regional offices in or near Khon Kaen. A regional technical school and the University of the Northeast have been established. A network of paved roads, a spacious, modern bus terminal and a newly constructed airfield, in addition to a renovated railway, have made Khon Kaen a major transportation hub, readily accessible to northeasterners and indeed to all of Thailand. Khon Kaen was the first provincial centre to have a town plan. Although this plan, designed to make Khon Kaen a showpiece of modern urban development, has not been carried out in toto, urban facilities have been greatly improved and expanded, and commercial activity has diversified and burgeoned. The population of Khon Kaen town increased more than fifty percent in the period 1960–1970.

It is of some interest for the scholar of Southeast Asian subjects to note the way in which the different interests and cultural biases of the former colonial powers in the region have eventuated in the production of quite distinct historical and sociological literatures relating to their respective territorial possessions. Nowhere better than in the literature on the overseas Chinese is this point illustrated. The literature in English on the Chinese in Southeast Asia (and especially that on what is now Malaysia) is extensive, and a significant number of well-known English-speaking scholars have made their reputations in this field — one thinks of V. Purcell and M. Freedman on Malaysia and Singapore, W.E. Willmott on Cambodia (Kampuchea), William G. Skinner on Thailand and Indonesia, D.E. Willmott on Indonesia, Edgar Wickberg on the Philippines, Jacques Amyot on the Philippines and Thailand, C.P. Fitzgerald, Wang Gungwu, and Lea E. Williams on the region as a whole, and a growing number of other and often younger scholars who have turned their attention to this perennially rich and stimulating field of study. But when one turns to the field of French scholarship, it is intriguing to find that the situation is considerably different — one searches in vain for a major Francophone scholar who has devoted his attention to the Chinese in the former French colonial possessions in Indochina — Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

The professionalization of management is a function of the stage of economic development, both of the enterprise and the economy in which it operates, for these stages influence the size, number, nature, and complexity of problems to which the enterprise is exposed. The nature of personnel problems, for example, are influenced by the relative maturation of the labour force in motivation, commitment and skill development, and management's responses to these problems evolve with the inducement of professionalism from the growing size, complexity, and diversity of industrial institutions. Compared to 1950, the labour force of Thailand in 1986 is more urban, better educated, more materially motivated, more ethnically uniform, and better disciplined to factory work. Hence, it should be more receptive to modern management practices. Yet, by American or Japanese standards, the Thai labour force is still comparatively primitive, and personnel are administered in a diverse milieu of work environments that condition the style and progress of management. As a consequence, the practice of management varies as widely in Thailand as it does in other developing countries between metropolitan and provincially located establishments, between large and small firms, among Thai, Thai-Chinese, Japanese, or Western firms.

“Malaysia needs this kind of spirit.” With these words, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman, responded to a student demonstration supporting the nation against the 1968 territorial claims to Sabah put forth by the Philippines. Although he toned down his enthusiasm somewhat when later he learned that the same students had forced their way into the Philippine Embassy compound and had torn down its flag prior to their demonstration in front of his residence, there is no denying that this was another example of political change in Malaysia which is causing its leaders to come to grips with a comparatively new phenomena, students as participants in the political process.

Archaeological research at the Yarang complex of moated sites in Pattani demonstrates that this was an early historic Buddhist ceremonial centre and a later Islamic fortification, but probably not the early trade centre called Langkasuka. At Kerisik archaeological evidence supports the identification of this complex as the location of the fifteenth-eighteenth century trading port city of Patani.