A major intent of Malaysia's New Economic Policy, given expression in the Second Malaysia Plan (1971–75) and Third Malaysia Plan (1976–80) is “to diminish the concentration of employment among the Malays … in traditional agriculture while increasing their presence in the relatively more affluent urban sector”.

The so-called Afdeeling B or Section B of the Sarekat Islam, discovered in the Sundanese ethnic area of the Preanger Regencies, West Java, in 1919, presents a valuable case study in the uses of local history because of its relationship to the Sarekat Islam, the first mass based nationalist type movement in Indonesia, which began in 1912. The discovery of the Afdeeling B also acted as a catalyst for opinions which had been maturing in all strata of the colonial society, both Indonesian and Dutch, and an examination of the reaction to it gives a clear picture of the diversity of that society.

The difficulties inherent in the systematic and comprehensive acquisition of materials published in the Philippines are matched by their variety and value. The current volume of Philippine titles probably remains unduplicated elsewhere in Southeast Asia. In 1951, for example, “Manila was producing more serial publications than any other center in Southeast Asia.” English remains the predominant language of most scholarly publications. The usefulness of these materials, therefore, is increased for institutions who lack research needs for Philippine language resources but desire a solid student and teaching collection.

Following the initialing of the Treaty of Hue in 1884 ceding Tonkin and Annam to France as “protectorates”, the Vietnamese Emperor Ham Nghi led a nationalist imperial party against consummation of the colonialists gains. This Nguyen imperial party, a regional guerrilla and terrorist faction based only in the north central section of the nation and operating from highland fiefs, relied upon violence, the personality of its leader, the mystic of his cause and the mystic of nationalism. This combative “party,” while hardly a party in the strictest sense of the term and perhaps not even a movement in the strictest sense of that term, was defeated with the capture of its leader in 1888. Yet this party has continued to serve in miniature as the model for subsequent political party activities in Vietnam. Nearly all of the numerous Vietnamese parties have more or less emulated the patterns of behavior of the first anti-colonial party and few in South Vietnam have gone much beyond modifying the tactics of that vanguard group.

This paper examines three aspects of the Opium trade in Szechwan from 1881, when for the first time there is evidence that China consumed as much native as foreign opium and that Szechwan was both the largest producer and consumer, until 1911, when the cultivation of the poppy was completely suppressed in the province as a result of the vigorous imperial campaign against the trade. It will consider first, the demand for opium who smoked it and why; second, the production of opium, how it fitted into and contributed toward the economy of the province; finally, the character of the suppression campaign of 1906–1911 as it affected Szechwan will be considered. The conclusions of the paper may be summarised as follows. (1) While the expansion of the opium habit in Szechwan, as in the rest of China, had no one cause, in Szechwan it has for its background a prospering society whose values and accepted goals had not kept pace with its economic expansion, a society which provided increasing wealth and leisure on the one hand, but only limited opportunities for socially approved spending on the other. (2) The rapid expansion of opium production in late nineteenth century Szechwan was part of the development of a market economy both within the province and in its relations with the rest of China. (3) The opium suppression campaign, because it undermined a developing economy, was much less popular in Western China than it was in the east, and contributed to the widespread unrest in those parts, which in turn led to the revolution of 1911.

It is a biological fact that the health of mother and child are interdependent. The care, attention and affection given by the mother to her young offspring are of major significance in the psychobiological development of the infant and indeed, in subsequent personality development. Suggestions have been made that special attention to a pregnant woman brings double health benefits: to her as an adult member of society, and to the outcome of her pregnancy. Although childbearing is a natural process, women all over the world do not possess full faith in the ability and self-sufficiency of the human body to deliver safely a healthy baby. Pregnancy has been described as a unique and ambiguous state for women: it is not a usual condition nor a medically pathological state, so it is especially problematic. Several influences are known to affect women's pregnancy outcome. Factors relating to the mother—such as age, parity (or the number of births she has had), her age at marriage, socio-economic status such as education, occupation and income, and past obstetric history, are likely to be interdependent in their influence on pregnancy outcome. However, complications of pregnancy and delivery brought about by the interdependence of these factors can be prevented by careful antenatal care. Presumably, this type of care is closely related with modern medical science, thus only available in clinics. Consequently, the prevention of the many complications of pregnancy rests more with seeking careful antenatal care from the clinic than with any other factors.

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.

On July 23, 1962, the International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian Question in Geneva came to a close with the formal signature of a Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos and a Protocol to the Declaration. The Conference had been in session for over a year; fourteen governments participated, and all of them became parties to the agreements reached.

In November of 1873 a force of a few hundred men — French marine troops,’ Chinese regulars from Yunnan, and the sweepings of the ports of East Asia — took? the citadel of Hanoi and gave France the opportunity to add Tonkin to her possessions in Indochina. It was a bold venture, but hardly unplanned. The two most prominent figures in the affair, Jean Dupuis and Francis Garnier, had long been interested in opening southwest China by a direct route through actual or potential French territory, and Dupuis had been taking steps in this direction; since 1868. The attempt had the discreet — if not actually surreptitious — support of the current governor of Cochinchina, admiral Dupré. Yet by the end of December Francis Garnier was dead, his conquests in the Red River delta had been given back to the Vietnamese, and France's chief negotiator for the liquidation of the affair had branded the acts of Dupuis and Garnier as “odious aggression”. Dazzling victory turned into stunning defeat almost overnight, and France was to wait eight years before taking up the initiative of Dupuis and Garnier in Tonkin.

Much of the history of the people of the Straits of Malacca in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is still unknown and perhaps unknowable, given the lack of source material. However, some aspects of political history are becoming clearer. It has become apparent that this period witnessed a fundamental change in the political structure of the area; able in the past to support empires and cultures of no small renown, the Malay world by the nineteenth century had disintegrated into a mass of petty states, leaderless and disorientated, a power vacuum that the British Empire was eventually forced to fill. Symptoms of this change first became discernable in the early eighteenth century, during the reign of the last Malay Raja Muda of the Johor Empire (1708–18). Johor was then still a powerful force in the Malay world, ruling a widespread area from Siak in Sumatra, through the coastal areas of the Malay peninsula (roughly, in modern terms, from Selangor south, then north again as far as Trengganu), plus the islands of the Riau–Lingga archipelago and Siantan. The sea was still a connecting, rather than a dividing force in Malay politics. In 1708 the administration of this empire fell to Tun Mahmud, who was to be the last Malay to hold the office of Raja Muda in Johor. He was by all accounts a remarkable ruler, under whose guidance Johor attained, for a while, great power and prestige.

At the end of World War II, American Office of Strategic Service (OSS) officers in Bangkok were dismayed to discover that, contrary to their expectations, the Thai showed little animosity toward the Japanese. The OSS unit reported in August 1945 that ‘there has been very little in the way of hostile reaction’. Japanese accounts confirm this, with a Foreign Ministry study, for example, concluding: ‘The general attitude of Thai officials and citizens toward Japan just after the war's end was relatively sympathetic….’

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.