In the on-going debate over the consequences of national policies of political and economic integration in pluralistic nations such as the Philippines, two facts have become increasingly obvious. We need to know more about the effects of the patterns of political incorporation and more about the type of economic strategies pursued by individuals to judge the effects of integration on peripheral populations. Our former views of the monolithic nature of external influences have been modified; new research has made it apparent that local populations have certain resources at their disposal which can influence the direction of political and economic change. One such resource is the manipulation of the discrepancy between state law and customary law, a strategy which often includes the use and/or invention of custom. This paper uses diachronic data from one upland community in the northern Philippines to illustrate how individuals have manoeuvred within and utilized the conflicts between the provisions of customary law and national legal codes in order to pursue certain economic strategies. The creative process of inventing custom is demonstrated, since the patterns of communal ownership which have been set against Philippine state property law in this region, and which have been used to support claims for regional autonomy, are shown to be a relatively new jural construct. The paper suggests that there are no clear winners in these strategies, elite prerogatives have been eroded in favour of poorer families and the community as a whole has suffered from increased factionalism. This in turn suggests that should regional autonomy be granted in this region, conflict will not necessarily be reduced by a return to customary practice.

Thailand is primarily a peasant society. In 1974, about 65 per cent of the labour force earned their livelihood from agriculture, although 87 per cent of the population lived in rural areas. Because land has been relatively abundant until recent years, most farmers are landowners, with noted exceptions of tenant farming in areas contiguous to Bangkok. Their simple occupational skills have been transmitted from one generation to another within the village and family, supplemented only by up to four years of compulsory elementary education, acquired intermittently and sporadically between the ages of seven and fourteen. The basic necessities of life historically have been easily satisfied in a hospitable, tropical climate.

Tun Abdul Razak, the prime minister of Malaysia, has recently announced that his Government cannot consider the claim to the Limbang River made by the Sultan of Brunei. This dispute has its origins in the 1880's when North Borneo and Sarawak were intriguing against each other to gain possession of the remains of the once powerful Sultanate. Since that time the problem of the Limbang has smouldered continually, every now and then breaking into a fitful glow. The problem is a complex one and has not hitherto received detailed scholarly analysis.

The framing of British policy towards India in the twentieth century sought to reconcile its prime importance in the dependent empire with its political aspirations through some kind of evolution towards the status afforded the settler dominions. Though British policy towards other dependencies was rarely co-ordinated — even so far as concerned a region like “Further India” — it was influenced by their relationship with India. India in a sense defined the limits of those policies: they must not go so far as to undermine the British position in India by untoward example; nor, on the other hand, must they make so little advance as to alienate the Indians and inhibit the availability of Indian forces. For Burma the inter-relationship was particularly close. Burma had been acquired from India, partly in order to protect British commerce based in India, but mainly to provide for the security of British India. It had been administered from India. Indian commerce, Indian labour, Indian moneylending had as a result established new ties. But India also influenced the reshaping of the constitutional as well as the administrative structure. Working both within and outside those structures, Burman nationalism was itself influenced by developments in India, though directing its criticism at Indian, even more, perhaps, than at British economic exploitation. The Burman nationalists insisted that the constitutional advance of Burma must at least keep pace with that of India.

Will peace in Vietnam and neutralised Indochina bring stability to Southeast Asia? Or will most of the area fall under a China-North Vietnam condominium? Can the Nixon doctrine, with the U.S. nuclear deterrent in the background, assure the security of a regional association? Or will the Japanese — the flag following trade — gather Southeast Asia into a new co-prosperity sphere?

This is the first part of a study made in my seminar on the relations between the German ports Hamburg and Bremen and the trading centres in the area of the Indian Ocean. The study covers the whole period from the end of the eighteenth century until the beginning of the First World War. For reasons of time and space this paper is limited to the first part of the study which deals with the period up to 1870.

During the reign of Sultan Ala'uddin (r. 1593–1639), the Makassarese of Gowa and Talloq initiated a new form of historical writing known as lontaraq bilang. This article argues that this genre represents an Islamic form of historical writing that simultaneously integrated distant places and events within the structure of Makassarese history and Makassarese people and practices within the umma and the structure of Islamic history. Examining this islamisation of history writing yields new insight into premodern Makassarese notions of empire, social change, and religious identity. Lontaraq bilang are an important source of insight into how Makassarese grappled with what it meant to be Muslim and how processes of islamisation were transforming (or should ideally transform) their society.

Our chief sources of information about Vietnam until the middle of the tenth century are the dynastic histories and related writings of China. This is because, from the beginning of recorded history in Vietnam until then, Vietnam was, for the most part, under the authority of Chinese governors or people who posed as Chinese-style governors. By the end of the tenth century, an independent Vietnamese monarchy was established, and historical information was being independently preserved by the Vietnamese; this information was eventually incorporated into the Vietnamese historiographical tradition as it developed in later centuries. Consequently, the historian of tenth-century Vietnam finds two streams of information, one coming from a wellestablished viewpoint from which Vietnam was a remote frontier district at the edge of the horizon, the other coming from the Vietnamese themselves as they worked toward a standpoint from which to remember their past.

S.M. Kartosuwiryo, famed leader of the long and bloody Darul Islam rebellion which began in West Java in 1948, was a strong supporter of the Indonesian independence struggle and a champion of the Indonesian Republic proclaimed in 1945. This article seeks to understand how it was that Kartosuwiryo came to oppose that very Republic with such violence in 1948–49. Many scholars have sought to explain the origins of the Darul Islam movement in terms of Kartosuwiryo's fanatic Islamist ambition. However, a detailed examination of the circumstances of the revolt's gestation and outbreak indicates that it was a consequence of a complex interplay of historically contingent circumstances rather than any ideological fixity.

In September 1944 the Japanese government promised to give “independence in the near future” to Indonesia. However, when Japan surrendered in 1945, the Allies ordered the Japanese authorities to suppress any move by the Indonesians toward independence. Caught between their old promise and their new role, the Japanese exhibited contrasting patterns of behaviour. This paper analyzes their reactions by using two categories, the “allegiance type” of person who adhered to Allied instructions, and the "renunciation type" who attempted to honour the promise given to the Indonesians.

New winds are blowing in the writing of the economic history of Southeast Asia. The traditional Eurocentric perspective of the colonial economy is gradually giving way to a more Asian perspective stressing similarities and mutual links within the region itself. The issue of Western expansion now appears less vital than long-run economic developments in the Asian economies. Political power struggles in colonial relationships are squeezed aside and replaced by a more quantification and an increasing appreciation of dynamic change that does not readily fit into the model of Westernstyle modernization. The aim of this article is to discuss some positions and directions that have come to the fore in the economic history of Southeast Asia in recent years. Without claiming to offer a full coverage of the field, it is believed that trends thus identified may suggest, at least in part, the future course of Southeast Asian economic history.

This paper deals with the consequences of the increasing commercialisation of the rice industry in west Indramayu from the mid-1880s to the late 1930s. Instead of prosperity as a result of growing rice for sale in a free market, local peasants found their survival being threatened by traders who had them bound to a vicious cycle of debts and who acquired much of the rice they produced. The rice growers in west Indramayu were impoverished far more than the peasants growing cash crops such as sugar elsewhere in Java.

The United States did not give Marshall aid to Western Europe for purely humanitarian reasons. Aid was also, perhaps even mainly, provided to serve the economic and political purposes of the United States. In studies dealing with the Marshall aid programme, the suspension of aid to the Dutch colony of Indonesia, and the seeming threat to halt the stream of dollars to the Netherlands, has been used as an example to prove that the programme was an American instrument of political power. In studies dealing with the decolonization of Indonesia, it is also alleged that the menace of adjournment of Marshall aid forced the Dutch to retreat from their colony in December 1949. However, primary sources show that neither the offer of Marshall aid in June 1947, nor the seeming threat to halt aid to the Netherlands in December 1948, prevented the Dutch government from pursuing its own way in the process leading to the independence of Indonesia. The Dutch cabinet was not sufficiently impressed by both the offer and the threat to keep it from engaging in military “police actions” in July 1947 and December 1948 against the nationalist Republic of Indonesia.

Though non-indigenous strains of rubber-yielding trees were first introduced into South and South-East Asia in 1876–77, it was not until after 1900 that this crop was widely planted for commercial purposes. Thereafter development proceeded at a pace outstanding in tropical agriculture. During the span of some two decades a major raw material industry was established, totalling 4,250,000 acres by 1922 and situated principally in Malaya (2,260,000 acres), the Netherlands East Indies (1,229,000 acres) and Ceylon (443,000 acres). The main features of this process, such as the company flotation boom of 1909–10, have long been known but much of the work to date has been of a descriptive, very general, nature. The object of this paper is to examine the course of investment in a more detailed and analytical manner. To do the subject full justice, equal attention should be devoted to the activities of European and Asian rubber growers, but the sources of comparable quantitative evidence for the period under review are much more detailed for the former group.

The Viet-Nam War was without qualification the most unpopular war in United States history. By May 1971, 61 per cent of the 1,502 persons interviewed by the Gallup Poll thought it had been a mistake for the United States to become involved in Viet-Nam. (The question asked was, “In view of the developments since we entered the fighting in Viet-Nam, do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in Viet-Nam?” 28 per cent answered, “No”, and 11 per cent had no opinion.) The significance of the May poll lay in the fact that it marked a complete reversal of public opinion since Gallup first started asking the question in August 1965.

In American diplomatic history it is common to refer to the start of American imperialism with the acquisition of the Philippines in 1898. This paper seeks to prove, however, the existence of United States imperialism in Southeast Asia before that event.

In a prominently placed article in the March 1970 issue of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Dr. Martin Rudner discusses certain aspects of Malayan rubber policy in 1945-48. The article calls for comment for the sake of historical accuracy and thus of scholarship. Dr. Rudner has written repeatedly on Southeast Asian affairs, and the biographical note in the same issue of the Journal refers to a forthcoming book by him on the subject of this article. Moreover, examination of Dr. Rudner's paper is of more than academic interest in the conventional sense of the term because the writings of academic economists and economic historians are even more likely to influence opinion and thus policy than those of most other academics. Thus even delayed comment on his discussion is in order.

Chinese migrants fleeing from the incoming Qing regime assumed a range of political and economic positions as the Nguyễn court sought to extend its control to the south. A nuanced exploration of the historical experience of two powerful Chinese migrant families to Vietnam through their clan genealogies reveals two rather different paradigms — the Minh Hương paradigm and the Frontier paradigm. These paradigms reflect not only the Chinese migrants' varied, resourceful manoeuvres in their quest for a firm foothold in the evolving and expanding south, but equally, they demonstrate the Nguyễn court's flexibility in accommodating and capitalising on the strengths of different migrant groups it sought to incorporate into its realm.