Although courtly literature provides insight into the high tradition of Old Javanese Hinduism, the nature of popular Javanese religion in former times remains a topic of considerable obscurity. In his voluminous masterpiece on pre-Islamic Java, the Dutch historian Th. G. Th. Pigeaud identifies some 218 clerical estates that existed in rural east Java in the fourteenth century, speculating as to the nature of their social and religious organization. But none of these Hindu and Buddhist clerical communities survived into the modern era, and as a result we know little of their relation to popular Javanese religion. For years scholars have lamented the dearth of primary materials on popular Javanese Hinduism both during and after the fall of the last of Java's major Hindu-Buddhist courts, Majapahit. At the height of its power during the second half of the fourteenth century, Majapahit was conquered by an alliance of Islamic principalities in the early sixteenth century.

The earliest known evidence for the existence of the opium poppy has been traced to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages in west central Europe. Arab traders introduced opium into Asia, and in the eighth century A.D., it had been used in China. By the nineteenth century, China provided the most lucrative market for traders, primarily British and American, who brought opium to China from India and the Ottoman Empire. Opium use also proved to be popular among the overseas Chinese communities in Siam, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. The Chinese demand for opium, the lucrative profits to be gained from the manufacture, transfer, and sale of opium, and official connivance at edicts to prohibit its import into China, served to create a flourishing trade.

I joined the Maritime Silk Route Expedition organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a member of the International Team of Scholars. We sailed on the Fulk-al-Salamah, the expedition ship, from Oman to China, stopping in the following countries: Oman, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. International seminars were held in each one of these countries during the expedition.

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).

The Chinese community in the Philippines before the outbreak of the Pacific War was relatively small and homogeneous in comparison with those in other Southeast Asian countries. When the Japanese occupied the Philippine islands, they found a Chinese community of less than one per cent of the total population. This small alien group did not appear to be a serious threat to the Japanese authorities. However, during the three and a half years of Japanese occupation, the Chinese maintained several guerrilla groups, which formed part of the resistance movement in the Philippines.

Lingering recollections of Pattani's proud tradition as an independent state were crystallized into a popular desire for the separation of the predominantly Malay Southern Provinces from Thailand, largely as a result of the aggressively nationalistic policies of Phibul Songkhram's wartime administration; when the war ended, widely circulated rumours encouraged Malays in the area to believe that the United Kingdom intended to annex the region to British Malaya as part of a peace settlement. Although this hope was dashed by the Agreement between the two countries of January 1, 1946, the idea of separation from Thailand continued to provide a goal towards which a variety of groups struggled by means ranging from polemics to sporadic acts of violence.

Japanese forces attacked Malaya late in 1941 and, by 15 February 1942, had occupied the entire peninsula as well as Singapore. Among other changes, the Japanese regime introduced a new currency. Pre-war British currency remained legal tender but rapidly vanished from the open market, and by 1943 the economy operated on Japanese currency, commonly referred to as “banana” money because the ten-dollar note featured a banana plant. By the end of the occupation, the buying power of this currency had deteriorated dramatically, and the country experienced massive inflation as large quantities of money were printed and put into circulation.

In the aftermath of World War Two, Malaya saw the emergence of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and its attempt to mobilize labour support against the returning British colonial government. The Pan Malayan General Labour Union (PMGLU), later renamed the Pan Malayan Federation of Trade Union (PMFTU), was established as a front organization to harness multiracial labour support and to work in close liaison with other left-wing political groups. Trade unions that mushroomed after the War were invariably dominated by the PMGLU and used as tools for the realization of communist political objectives in Malaya.

To historians of Southeast Asia, the Bandung conference of 1955 presents itself as one of the most striking international initiatives undertaken by newly-independent Indonesia. For historians of Indonesia, it marks the emphasis on foreign as against domestic policy that was associated with Sukarno's growing dominance. To biographers of Sukarno it appears to be both a strategic device in domestic politics and a farsighted perception of a shift in international relations. Internationally it was both to demonstrate the influence of India and to show its limits. Even more it was to mark some kind of success for the People's Republic of China and for Chou En-lai in developing the foreign policy line associated already with Geneva and the five principles of co-existence.

On the Foundation Day of the University of Malaya on 8 October 1949, Malcolm MacDonald, the Chancellor of the new university and British Commissioner-General in Southeast Asia, proudly declared that the university was founded “at a timely and auspicious moment” when “we are witnessing in Malaya the birth of a nation”. MacDonald rested his inspiring theme on the British postwar policy of preparing Malaya for eventual self-government within the British Commonwealth. Under this policy Singapore was constituted a distinct crown colony with a legislature in which only six of the twenty-two members were popularly elected, whereas the other Settlements and the Malay States were merged into the Malayan Union which had fully nominated federal and state legislatures. It seems clear from the postwar political reorganization that the British policy-makers had intended to take Malaya slowly, stage by stage, to self-government and eventual independence.

This paper attempts to survey the development of a Malaysian Sino-Malay spirit cult, known as Nadugong in Chinese, or Datuk Keramat in Malay. The development of this cult shows that Malaysian Chinese are increasingly aware of their ethnic identity vis-à-vis the Malay identity, whereby local-born Chinese seek to adapt themselves to the patterns of multi-ethnic cultures while at the same time trying very hard to maintain their ethnic boundaries through the organization of their own socio-cultural institutions.

The outcome of this adaptive response may be seen in what is known as localization — a multilateral acculturative rather than a unilateral assimilative process. This process renders the existing syncretized elements more complex and has served as an internal defence-mechanism against, rather than as an unconditional submission to, the on-going proselytizing ideologies of “Malay nationalism” and “Malay national-culturism” based on the parameters of Malay culture, Malay language, Islam, and Malay esthetic values.

Recent trends in fertility in Malaysia1 have created uncertainty about the course of the demographic transition. While Chinese and Indian fertility continued to decline into the 1980s, since 1978, Malay fertility has levelled off and even risen slightly. Evidence up to the early 1980s suggests that the phenomenon may be temporary, attributed mainly to the bunching of births caused by the postponement of marriage among the Malays. More recent evidence, however, point to sustained levels of high Malay marital fertility through the late 1980s — TFRs (total fertility rate) among Malays averaged 4.5 and above between 1982 and 1987 while Chinese and Indian TFRs continued to fall from 2.7 to 2.3 and 3.8 to 3.5, respectively.