The decade of the 1950s constituted a turning-point in the history of Malayan rubber. This was marked by a changed world rubber market, along with incipient changes in Malayan economic aspirations and policies. Internationally, the creation of a large synthetic rubber industry in the main consuming country, the United States, posed a challenge to the competitive position and long-run prospects of Malayan plantation rubber. While coping with this challenge, the rubber industry, as the mainstay of the Malayan economy, had to simultaneously satisfy emergent claims for domestic development. Indeed, Malayan rubber was itself confronted with two coterminous developmental issues: its own internal development towards more efficient forms of production; and the provision of a resource base for the development of other economic and social sectors. By way of response to these cumulative challenges, a transformation occurred with respect to the government's role in Malaya's rubber economy, with rubber emerging as the lynchpin of an evolving development strategy. In the process, the Malayan rubber plantation industry was to undergo a fundamental and wide-ranging structural transfiguration.

In a recent article I looked at the Gunongan (Plate 1) in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in the context of both the stories surrounding this structure and its symbolism. Space did not permit an analysis of a second structure, the kandang (enclosure) that stands slightly to the north of the Gunongan. In this paper therefore I will take a closer look at the kandang and some of the stories surrounding it.

Adopting an approach that situates texts in their historical, political and cultural contexts, this discussion suggests that a strictly literary estimate of Singapore novels in English is an unrewarding, debunking exercise which prevents a more appropriately serious consideration of the insights that can yield about class, contemporary values, issues and society in Singapore.

The main characteristic of the Thai economy in the early Rattanakosin period, especially the extent of the development of overseas trade and its effect on the domestic economy and the peasantry in particular, has become one of the points of interest among scholars of Thai history in the past decade. This paper attempts to reconsider this question by examining the existing documents on suai (head tax in kind) sent from northeast Siam to Bangkok between the 1830s and the 1860s. The region canvassed here includes areas on both sides of the Mekong valley, i.e. the Eastern Lao provinces (huamuang lao fai tawan-k) and the Forest Khmer provinces (huamuiang khamen padong).

In recent years, North-South patterns of domination and neo-colonialism have occupied the field of social studies. One can argue that theories of modernization such as Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society bear a certain similarity with dependency theories. Although these later writers formed their theories as a critique of modernizing theories, both perspectives are similar in that they analyze “traditional” or underdeveloped societies from a North-South point of view. Thus, if modernizing theories were criticized by neo-Marxists and Marxists alike as “ethnocentric” because they ignored non-Western types of development and praised Western history as an ideal type and a global model, in the discourse of dependency theories, the North was more than ever present in shaping and influencing the underdevelopment of the South. The impoverishment of the South was analyzed as a direct result of the enrichment of the industrialized North. Although diametrically opposite in ideological aims, these two theoretical perspectives share a common denominator in that they accept the predominance of Western culture and analyze the reaction of the Third World in relation to it. In other words, they both implied that all dynamics originate, and move mainly from the North. This paper will attempt to take a different perspective by looking into the different patterns of exchange on the South-South axis. In analyzing a particular set of networks and cultural exchange which was established through religious scholarship, this paper attempts to follow up Roffs study on “Indonesian and Malay Students in Cairo in the 1920s”. It will shed some light on the significance of al-Azhar in particular, and Cairo in general, as a centre of religious learning which attracts until today students from all over the Muslim world.

After the abortive coup of 1965, the army-based government of General Suharto became firmly established in Indonesia. From that year till 1971, a marked feature of the “New Order” government of Suharto was the rapid growth of the Golkar, an army-controlled confederation of anti-communist organizations which was founded in 1964. The name “Golkar” is actually an acronym for Golongan Karya which can be translated as “functional groups”. In the 1971 general election, Golkar won 236 out of 360 seats in Parliament and 64-5 per cent of the popular vote. The huge gains made by Golkar gave the impression then that functional groups had come to stay as a major factor in Indonesian politics. Supported and sponsored by the army, with financial means, transportation and communications facilities at its disposal, the power of the functional groups seemed to overshadow the influence of the other political parties (e.g. Nahdatul Ulama, Partai Nasional Indonesia) that had until recently been the major organizations that dominated Indonesian politics.

By utilising a large number of historical and literary sources in Chinese and European languages, this article discusses the spread of Burmese bells (penis inserts) to China between the late sixteenth and early twenty-first centuries, a topic that has hitherto been understudied. It details the social factors behind each phase of transmission, the Chinese adaptation of a Southeast Asian practice, and physical description of Burmese bells. The research provides a new perspective to Southeast Asian–Chinese interactions and stresses the Southeast Asian cultural influence on Chinese society and sexual behaviour. It also argues that aphrodisiacs, like other commodities, have a legitimate place in Asian history.

This article responds to recent calls to consider how religion is defined and deployed in and about Myanmar. Discussing local Pentecostal efforts to evangelise to Buddhists in contemporary Yangon, it presents the encounter with the religious other as one ground from which definitions of religion might emerge. I show that, by taking up new opportunities to share the gospel, believers entered into a long conversation between Christianity and Buddhism dating back to the colonial period. Tracing the different definitions of religion that this conversation generates, and attuning to the dissonances between them, might offer alternate ways for approaching what gets termed the religious and the secular in the study of Myanmar.

Was British expansion in Malaya the unitary expression of an implacable imperialism, in which gradually but inexorably British economic and political enterprise gained indirect hegemony and then unequivocal rule; in which, by friendship and guile, power and diplomacy, Malay chiefs and populace were controlled, Siamese authority negated, and European rivals bested? There was at Whitehall a steady interest in the late nineteenth century by Salisbury, Balfour, Chamberlain and others in furthering British control in Malaya. But the strategy of expansion, ardently pushed by Straits Settlements officials during the period of ‘High Imperialism’ in the late nineteenth century was checked by other imperatives of British imperialism in Asia. The British were reluctant to take any step in Malaya which, by offending and weakening the Siamese, would encourage French expansion in eastern Siam. Further, the Indian Government, the trustee of British military power in Asia, was unwilling to commit large resources to Southeast Asia which might have been required to combat Russia on India's northwest threshold. These factors limited a British forward movement in Malaya. At times, however, British expansionary fervour did burst stridently upon Malays and Siamese. In 1902 the British wrested concessions from Siam which allowed the placement of British ‘advisers’ in Kelantan and Trengganu, and by which Siam abandoned all prerogatives of interfering with these states' internal affairs. This study is directed to comprehension of the strategy of British expansion in Malaya, particularly of British efforts to sequester control of economic concessions and privileges in Kelantan and Trengganu, and the significance of these manoeuvres in preparing for the transfer of Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and Perlis from Siam to Britain in March, 1909.

Vietnamese resistance to French rule dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, but the first decade of the twentieth century heralded a new chapter in the long history of anti-colonialism in Vietnam. It began with the fervent reformist efforts of a group of nationalist scholars trained and brought up in traditional ways, whose Movement for Modernisation (Phong Trao Duy Tan) was greatly influenced by the rise of Japan in the eastern hemisphere, especially following Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war (1904–1905). Japan became a source of inspiration and began to be perceived as a model, a stimulant and even as a possible saviour of Vietnam.

While Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles led the expedition that founded colonial Singapore in 1819 and conceptualised many of the early institutions that developed the trade port, it was the depiction and commemoration of his time in the region that made him an icon of imperial mythology. This was part of a process in which admiration of his name and exploits were exalted, ultimately representing a core element in the Victorian mentality, the need to create heroes to glorify the British Empire. This article will survey and analyse how the commemoration of Raffles in the first 75 years of colonial rule, through the commissioning of statues and the attachment of his name to establishments and institutions, solidified and justified a British presence in the region and larger imperial history, which continues to echo in the modern nation-state of Singapore and its history.

In the 1940s and 1950s, several organs of the newly independent Indonesian state oversaw the standardisation of the Indonesian national language. In this process, Western-oriented bureaucrats pushed the language towards European normativity, significantly decreasing the influence of Arabic. While this reform carried symbolic meaning, the practical ramifications on Indonesian orthography, spelling, and word selection also carried real, non-symbolic effects on the accessibility of this language to Indonesian Islamic leaders. Standardising orthography to use the Roman alphabet rendered many Muslims illiterate in a language they had been using for decades. Choices in word selection and spelling limited the Islamic meanings that the new language could carry, thus impacting how Muslims could use the national language for religious and other purposes. Indonesian linguistic reform carried serious social and political consequences in addition to the symbolic meanings often studied.

Police manuals produced in the Siak and Riau-Lingga sultanates during the 1890s reveal something of the concerns of each society in an early stage of colonial state formation, and how they dealt with changing understandings of crime and punishment. Despite their many similarities, the manuals show that each Malay state had a distinctive character, and differed in its approach to issues of modernisation.

The artworks 1001st Island — The Most Sustainable Island in Archipelago (2015–16) by Tita Salina and Dewa Murka (2016) by Teja Astawa are compared as a means to provide insight into ways artists have been interrogating recent urban discourse in Indonesian contemporary art. This article engages with the critical vocabulary proposed by urban historian Abidin Kusno, which analyses green discourse in the changing Indonesian urban landscapes of the post-Suharto era, and explores how these two artworks reflect Kusno's analysis. Salina's multi-media installation and Astawa's painting address two land reclamation projects in areas that have faced rapid urbanisation: Jakarta and Bali. The artworks evoke questions about tradition, spirituality, environmental sustainability and socioeconomic inequality. The artworks are formally and contextually analysed before being compared and evaluated in relation to Indonesian urban history and discourse. Both artists reflect Kusno's critical analysis of green discourse in Indonesia. Salina's work shares parallels with the tools applied by the government in Jakarta, as her artistic practice similarly requires communities to participate in its creation. Meanwhile, Astawa's work mostly reflects the narrative of green discourse. This conclusion invites further investigation into the Java-centrism of urban discourse and the varying ways in which green discourse may be taking place across the Indonesian archipelago.

The report upon the shortcomings of the Malacca jurisdiction which Extraordinary Councillor Willem de Roo sent to Johan van Hoorn, Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies, in November 1705 offered reasons for the initiative which he and his colleagues had taken in relations with the Johor Court: ‘… business in Malacca is wholly fallen into decay, with, it seems to me, little appearance of a big improvement, let alone a full recovery of the formerly flourishing trade, because people have indulgently too long allowed contracts concluded with surrounding rulers and allies to be broken without making much complaint thereupon, or themselves maintaining (the force of the contracts), principally concerning the Johorese …’

From prehistoric times rice (oryza sativa linn) has been cultivated in Burma but it was only about a century ago that Burma began to develop into the chief rice-exporting country of the world. Up to about the middle of the nineteenth century rice was cultivated mainly for home consumption and for a small, irregular internal trade mainly from Lower to Upper Burma. The earliest account we have of Burma's external rice trade is probably the one by Duarte Barbosa who mentioned that much rice was shipped from Pegu to Malacca and Sumatra in the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time Pegu was an independent kingdom peopled by Mons (known also as Talaings or Peguans). Their kings appeared to have viewed trade in a more favourable light than did the Burmans for during their time trade was much less hampered than after Pegu became subject to the Burmans.

The shipping conference system in Singapore was under severe and sustained criticism three times in the last 60 odd years. In 1910 the colonial Straits Settlements legislative council in Singapore passed the Freight and Steamship Bill whose lengthy preamble contained the indictment that the conference system was ‘injurious to the trade of the colony and inconsistent with the public welfare’. In 1930, during the annual general meeting of the Singapore Branch of the Straits Settlements Association, a leading lawyer, Roland Braddell, launched a bitter attack on the conference. Subsequently a public meeting was held which called on the colonial government to see ‘if we cannot rid ourselves of this octopus which is strangling this Colony’.

“A national front without the active participation of the peasants is like a bale of jute without contents, empty and light, and hence easily blown away toy the wind”. These words of Dipa Nusantara Aidit, Central Committee Chairman of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia – PKI), on the occasion of the party's “National Peasants' Conference” in April, 1959, may serve as an index to the theoretical and tactical importance assigned to the Indonesian peasant's role by the Indonesian Communist movement. Increasingly in the past few years the peasant and the “agrarian question”, i.e. “feudalism”, “landlordism”, debtor bondage and the problem of increasing agricultural productivity, have begun to figure prominently in the PKI program and the “essence of the Indonesian Revolution” is now described by the party as the “agrarian revolution”.

The military side of British-Dutch diplomatic relations in the Far East at the end of the 1930s has received little attention. The issue is examined here on the basis of original source materials, with particular attention to the way the Netherlands abandoned its policy of diplomatic “aloofness”.