This paper attempts to appraise just one facet of the Chinese community in Singapore — its demographic character and the degree to which this is distinctive within the broader setting of Singapore society at large. The information available as the basis for such an analysis is limited and more definitive statements on trends and differences will be possible as the statistics compiled from the 1980 census become available.

Important changes are occurring within the Chinese community which have considerable significance for the republic but for which there is no direct basis of comparison with other ethnic communities. These considerations have not been examined here but include the changing behaviour in matters of kinship, associations and societies, marriage, religion, and similar elements central to the Chinese community. Perhaps the most significant of these currently is the issue of language and the active promotion by government of Mandarin not only as the official Chinese language but as a substitute for dialects in circumstances where, until now, they have been dominant. Although surveys of language use have been carried out recently, these have been too small and too specialized to provide a basis for general conclusions, and again it is to be hoped that the 1980 census data will provide an updated benchmark for this parameter comparable to that of earlier censuses.

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.

A century ago, research on the Malay world was experiencing major breakthroughs on several fronts, but the greatest achievement at the time was without doubt George Coedès’ ‘rediscovery’, based on Asian sources, of a forgotten kingdom named Srivijaya. His book, published in 1918, saw a wave of publications follow in its wake. Sources were trawled in the hope of finding answers to unresolved issues and unidentified place names. Attention invariably also fell on Melaka. In a long article published by the French academic and diplomat Gabriel Ferrand in the same year, the question of Melaka's founding date came under the spotlight. What do the different surviving sources tell us? What about Gaspar Correia's claim that Melaka was a thriving port city for centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese? Was the city — just as in the case of Temasek (Singapore) — known by a different name in earlier times? Ferrand's publication provoked a response from the Dutch academic Gerret Pieter Rouffaer, director of the KITLV. What he planned to be a 20-odd page response to Ferrand swelled into a multifaceted argument running into hundreds of pages. The debate between Ferrand and Rouffaer that touched on Melaka and Temasek-Singapura's early history probably eluded most of their academic contemporaries who were not proficient in both Dutch and French, especially in the English-speaking world. The present article reconstructs the main points of this debate together with their echo in historiography. It makes a contribution to the ongoing discourses, especially in Malaysia, concerning the founding date of Melaka.

Although much has been written on China's relations with her neighbours to the north, west and east, relatively little has been done on those to the south. Such studies could provide many valuable contrasts and comparisons and should be of considerable assistance in assessing China's historic role as well as her present intentions in Southeast Asia.

A number of recent studies concerned with Malay history and culture reflect heightened scholarly awareness of cultural unity and structural similarities in the area we know as the “Malay world”. There remains, however, much to be learnt about the boundaries of this world and, in particular, what happens to Malay political and cultural forms at meeting points between Malay and other cultures. In some instances such interaction has led to an absorption of Malay cultural identity by those living on the fringes of Malay kingdoms. A feature often associated with the Malay world is the ease with which it seems to have been possible for those of non-Malay background to adopt Malay language and customs and thus to “become Malay”. This paper, however, will describe a frontier situation where Malay culture itself appears to have been adapted to accommodate local circumstances. It is a situation which assists us to answer the question: to what extent is the concept of a “Malay World” helpful to our understanding of Malay societies?

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.

Only a couple of decades ago, the prospects for socio-economic development in the Third World seemed much brighter than at present. The economic theories of the 1950s and early 1960s, at least those of the North American variety, prescribed more capital investment (from domestic and foreign sources) which then would lead to a “take-off” into sustained economic growth. Political theorists advocated Western political development as an irreversible step which would lead to modern democratic societies. Other social scientists suggested that the spread of modern values — “modernity” — to the developing world would solve the basic problems of underdevelopment. Those days of simpleminded theories were buoyed by the short-term euphoria of the decolonization process. If the political leaders of the newly-independent states were determined to achieve development, as indeed they were, it seemed possible that these strategies would lead to progressive social and economic changes.

China has long been the world's largest producer of rice, with an annual output regularly accounting for a third of the world's total rice production. In recent years, China has also risen to become the world's largest rice exporter, with a volume coming close to a third of the world's total exported rice. The bulk of the Chinese rice exports are destined for the rice-consuming Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. Among the five Southeast Asian countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, which today constitute the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), only Thailand produces a food surplus while the others have to import rice in amounts which, with the exception of the city-state Singapore, vary each year according to their domestic rice harvests.

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.

This paper examines the role of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) in the evolution of organisation modes developed by the Chinese community in Malaya to regulate its social, economic, and political affairs. It advances two assertions: firstly, that the MCA was the vehicle that bridged the divide between traditional and modern modes of community regulation, and secondly, that the MCA linked the political concerns of the Chinese community, which hitherto had been largely China-orientated, with the mainstream development of Malayan nationalism and the emerging Malayan nation state during the years 1949–57.

The structure and organization of the Kedah political system, like those of the other patriachal Malay states in the Peninsula, was based essentially on that of the Malacca Sultanate. Under this system, the apex and centre of the organisation was the Sultan, whose political authority was strengthened by the belief that he was endowed with the magical attributes of a “divine king”. This is evident in his title, Yang di-Pertuan (He who is made Lord); and is also manifested in the elaborate court ceremonials and rituals; the clothing, weapons, domestic adornments and a special vocabulary reserved exclusively for royalty. The political functions of the Sultan were very comprehensive covering the fields of internal administration, the defence of the country, and matters relating to external affairs.

Previous research has shown that the New Woman was a global phenomenon and that fiction was crucial to the emergence of this New Woman. One work that was of particular importance was Henrik Ibsen's A doll's house. This article examines the rise of the New Woman in early twentieth century Thailand. It traces the campaigns for gender equality that Thai women waged in local newspapers and magazines. It also examines the reactions towards these campaigns by three major authors, all of whom turned to Ibsen's play in their engagement with the New Woman phenomenon.

American entry into the ranks of colonial powers as an aftermath of the Spanish American War was sudden, unexpected, and, chronologically speaking, late in the game of colonial empire building. Prior to the last decade of the 19th century, United States had shown no lack of territorial acquisitiveness, but national expansion was exclusively in terms of organic growth of the whole nation. There was no interest in, nor attempts at building a “colonial empire” along conventional lines in which territories and their inhabitants were placed “permanently” under control but not under a shared set of political institutions. Up to 1898, all “civilized” inhabitants of new territories were immediately given the status of United States citizens with all rights and privileges thereof.

The mother of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Princess Mother Sangwan, was the royal patron of the Thai Border Patrol Police (BPP) and an ardent supporter of its Cold War era civic action programmes. This article surveys the special relationship between the Princess Mother and the BPP and their development of royal projects among the highland minorities in northern Thailand to illuminate the implications of this collaboration for the spread of royalist nationalism and the evolving role of the monarchy from the 1960s to the present.

Identifying the role of colonial-sponsored institutions and written texts produced by local scholars, this article argues that, although Cambodian scholars’ intellectual orientation was not necessarily restricted to French scholarship, French colonial rule had played the key role in introducing modern historiography and creating the platforms for the epistemological transition in Cambodia which underwent different categories of knowledge adoption and various projects of translation of local individuals. Capturing the dynamic of the epistemological transition allows us to highlight a broader picture of the interplay between a long-existing body of knowledge and more contemporary scholarship under Western colonisation.