During the 1970 decade the Indonesian economy grew at unprecedented high rates after a long period of relative stagnation. It is commonly assumed that this significant improvement in growth performance is largely explained by the rapid growth of oil exports from 1971 to 1978, during which period petroleum's share in total export earnings rose from 39 per cent to 64 per cent. During this period, petroleum exports (in dollar value) rose at an average annual rate of 43 per cent, compared to 30 per cent for non-petroleum exports. Thus, even during the period of rapid petroleum export earnings growth, other exports also grew at a rate far above their long-term trend.

British planning for post-war Burma had been set back by the Cabinet's decision in April 1943 not to adopt the proposals put forward by Leopold Amery, the Secretary of State. Designed also to meet the need for wartime propaganda, the proposals had envisaged a programme of reconstruction aided by the British, carried forward during a period of direct rule, to be followed by advance towards self-government. There were doubts about the amount of aid Britain could promise. There were also doubts as to the wisdom of the concept of direct rule, though in fact the Cabinet accepted the principle without setting a limit to the period. Above all, the Prime Minister opposed further policy declarations on Burma. The war, Churchill believed, was not the time for them. Amery and Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, the Governor, thought that he really believed that no time would be right for them. They were not without hope that he would “come round”. Meanwhile, it was decided that the Burma Government, in exile in Simla, would remain in existence. “I can not help thinking that it would be a bad thing politically actually to do away with the office of Governor of Burma, if only because it would [be] a welcome propaganda point for the Japanese who would doubtless use it to demonstrate either that we have given up all hopes of retaking Burma or that we visualise setting up a Military Government in Burma.…”

Sir Winston Churchill's doctor has recalled the “stupefying” effect which the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 had upon his patient. Britain's wartime leader, Lord Moran suggests, knew that the surrender was “something more than a reverse. I think he wondered if it were a portent”. The spectre of one of the worst defeats in British military history was to return to haunt Churchill in later years. His torment was, perhaps, not solely portentous but also recollective for in the years 1924–29 Churchill himself, while serving in Stanley Baldwin's second government, had played the major role in delaying the building and defence of the Singapore naval base and in disparaging its associated strategy.

This article attempts to illuminate Duncan McCargo's influential yet ambiguous concept of ‘network monarchy’ — the source of political power wielded by Thailand's royalist establishment. Drawing on Thai-language primary sources, especially cremation volumes, I argue, first, that many individuals who have made up various institutional components of the network monarchy come from a constellation of traditional royalist families that have intermarried with each other. Contrary to what McCargo suggests, these people are not just bound by their devotion to the monarchy alone, but also by their families’ pervasive intermarriage ties forged over many decades. These ties have given the network monarchy additional resilience, even though not all its members toe the ideological line all the time. My second argument concerns the temporal context in which the network monarchy has come into being. Although McCargo makes it seem that the late King Bhumibol developed the network monarchy — his personal patronage network — as a political tool from scratch in the post-1973 period, it has actually grown, in part, out of the pre-existing elite family networks. I develop these twin arguments by using the case of one royalist prime minister — Anand Panyarachun — as a focal point of analysis.

This article discusses the views and attitudes of the Malay-speaking Muslims of Thailand's Far South (henceforth, simply the Malays) about their collective position in Thai politics. Since 2004, the Far South, comprising the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, and Yala, has been engulfed in political violence that has claimed several thousand lives. Consequently, the conflict is often the subject of conversations among the Malays. More importantly, the Malays sometimes evoke their collective memory of episodes of past violence involving members of the Far South Malay society and the Thai state in their discussions about contemporary incidents. Why do the Malays hark back to the past when they discuss contemporary political violence? What connections do the Malays make between past and contemporary events? In this article, I discuss Malay collective memory about the Pattani Demonstration of 1975 and the Tomb of Martyrs at the Tok Ayoh Cemetery in Pattani province. I argue that, among the Malays, historic graves in Thailand's Far South are commemorative objects that aid the circulation of stories about collective victimhood pertaining to events such as the Pattani Demonstration. Such stories are central to the maintenance of a shared sense of community among the Malays vis-à-vis the rest of Thai society.

By any measure, Trương Định (1820–64) was one of the leading figures of nineteenth-century Vietnamese resistance to French colonialism. As such, he has received a good deal of scholarly attention in Vietnam, France, the United States, and elsewhere. This article analyses the anti-colonial movement led by Trương Định in southern Vietnam during the years 1859–64, focusing on the questions of Trương Định's relationship to the Vietnamese imperial government at Huế and his motivation for continuing the anti-French struggle after Huế had made peace with France in 1862. Its organization is as follows: first, the historical context is summarized; second, Trương Định's resistance movement and its relationship to the Huế court are analyzed; third, various explanations of Trươg Định's motivation are considered and my own hypothesis is offered.

The appointment of a Russian General-Consul, V. Vyvodtsev to Singapore in 1890 was reflective of the “Asiatic Mission” of the last Tsar of Imperial Russia, Nicholas II, and the direction of Russian imperialism in the Far East and its link to Russia's diplomatic presence in Southeast Asia. This article utilizes consulate materials from the Archive of Foreign Policy, Moscow as well as published primary materials, to discuss the specific nature of Russia's interests in Southeast Asia during this period.

Most writings on Sabah's socio-economic development tend to focus on the roles by the British and other Europeans but neglect contributions by the Japanese, who were at least equally important to Sabah's economic growth. This article provides a study of Japanese economic activity in Sabah, focusing on immigrant workers and highlighting the policies of successive Japanese governments toward emigration to Sabah.

To compare the twentieth-century Thai writer Angkarn Kalayanaphong and the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche may seem absurd. Yet both reveal a particular concern with time, responding to the unprecedented acceleration of their respective cultures. Their numerous points of similarity and divergence raise broader questions concerning global capitalism's domination of time, and efforts to resist that domination.

The actor-dancers of the Kelantanese Thai Nuuraa theatre are often seen by Kelantanese as practitioners of love magic. Theoretically, the Nuuraa can be viewed as an ongoing process of mediation between cultural symbols. A Nuuraa performer inhabits an ambiguous and power-filled socio-ritualistic universe associated with unbridled magical know-how.

The United States had a hand in shaping Singapore's labour developments between the period 1955 and 1960. Utilising materials from archives in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, this study details the impetus for, the nature of, and the outcome of the US attempt to strengthen non-communist labour institutions in Singapore.

The Denounce the Communists Campaign (1955–c.1960) was a key moment in the conflict between the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, South Vietnam) and the Vietnamese communist movement and would eventually escalate to become the Vietnam War. The RVN launched the campaign to turn public opinion against communism and destroy the underground communist network. Building on previous scholarship, this article examines the propaganda associated with the initiative. During the campaign, state propagandists and allied intellectuals developed a historical narrative about the Anti-French Resistance (1945–54) that vilified the communists. Although highly partisan, the narrative illuminates the longer history of violence between communists and anti-communists in Vietnam.

This article proposes that Singapore should be considered as a settler colony during its first years of settlement. The first Residents, William Farquhar, Thomas Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd all attempted to build Singapore as a settler colony, similar to those in Australia and North America. The difference was, however, that they looked to attract Chinese, Malay and Indian settlers as well as Europeans. By viewing Singapore as a settler colony, this article reinterprets our understanding of who constitutes a settler within settler colonial frameworks. It concludes that settler colonialism was not directly about moving indigenous people off the land, but rather establishing a new system of sovereignty in which individuals (regardless of race) were allowed to own land and become settlers. Nevertheless, the actions of the settlers and the British authorities created violent tensions with the original Malay inhabitants that were only resolved by the transfer of sovereignty from Sultan Hussein to the East India Company.