The South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) was established under the aegis of the Manila Pact which was formed in September 1954. As an international organization with its headquarters in Bangkok, SEATO had two functions; first, it was to provide limited economic assistance and counter-insurgency advice to its Southeast Asian members — Thailand and the Philippines. Second, its Military Planning Office comprised a group of senior officers drawn from member countries whose job it was to prepare plans for an alliance response in the event of a Communist invasion of Indochina. In this sense SEATO was created to ensure that the Vietnamese Communists would observe the Geneva agreements of July 1954.

The number of scholarly books and articles on the Chinese in Southeast Asia has increased so rapidly during this century that it would be useful to examine some of the trends in writing and put the results into some historical perspective. For example, there have been the early writings by Chinese in China and by various colonial officials of the region; then came writings by Southeast Asian Chinese themselves, whether in Chinese or in some local or colonial language; and more recently, the work of specialist scholars trained in social science disciplines, including the work of local scholars whether of Chinese descent or not. There is scope for a full-scale study of the whole range of historical works and it is hoped that the study will be attempted soon. This essay is a preliminary outline and focuses on writings in Chinese, especially those which help to mark some important turning-points both in the history of the Chinese communities and in the writing of history itself.

It is of some interest for the scholar of Southeast Asian subjects to note the way in which the different interests and cultural biases of the former colonial powers in the region have eventuated in the production of quite distinct historical and sociological literatures relating to their respective territorial possessions. Nowhere better than in the literature on the overseas Chinese is this point illustrated. The literature in English on the Chinese in Southeast Asia (and especially that on what is now Malaysia) is extensive, and a significant number of well-known English-speaking scholars have made their reputations in this field — one thinks of V. Purcell and M. Freedman on Malaysia and Singapore, W.E. Willmott on Cambodia (Kampuchea), William G. Skinner on Thailand and Indonesia, D.E. Willmott on Indonesia, Edgar Wickberg on the Philippines, Jacques Amyot on the Philippines and Thailand, C.P. Fitzgerald, Wang Gungwu, and Lea E. Williams on the region as a whole, and a growing number of other and often younger scholars who have turned their attention to this perennially rich and stimulating field of study. But when one turns to the field of French scholarship, it is intriguing to find that the situation is considerably different — one searches in vain for a major Francophone scholar who has devoted his attention to the Chinese in the former French colonial possessions in Indochina — Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

One of the most interesting features of the growth of Britain's overseas commerce over the past two centuries has been the merchant firm, often the product of very small-scale beginnings but gradually developing into a worldwide network centring on London. The scope for such enterprises grew as effective naval control increased the security of the maritime trade routes and the importance of the great chartered companies declined. Much of the early growth came from the “country trade” between India and China in which private merchants were permitted to engage. In the late eighteenth century, commercial firms in the City of London began to open branches in India to deal in local products such as indigo, cotton and, later, opium. By the early nineteenth century, around two dozen of these “agency houses” were in existence though the majority were very small and short-lived. 1 In the same period, the more substantial firms were establishing further offshoots in Canton to participate in the tea and silk trade in Europe.

Plantations, which originated as agricultural enterprises within colonial economic systems and which came to be established particularly in tropical dependencies, have occupied an equivocal position in the economic development philosophies and plans of less developed countries. Their colonial origin and their traditionally export-oriented and often mono-cultural characteristics have subjected them to a wide range of adverse criticism, despite their undoubted earning capacity.

Of all the non-indigenous groups resident in Indonesia, the Chinese have attracted the greatest attention in every respect. Their economic success has aroused both admiration and jealousy. Their clannishness has led to questions about their social organizations and, especially in the post–1945 period, their integration into the national matrix. Problems of assimilation have spawned numerous scholarly studies in the English language, while there have been no lack of studies on Chinese political movements in Indonesia and their relations with indigenous ones. In short, there is an exciting ongoing research on the Chinese in Indonesia that bodes well for the future and beckons greater participation from newcomers in the field.

Throughout the Nanyang and beyond, Chinese communities have been under attack of one sort or another at various times. The anti-Chinese riots in Batavia in 1740 and in Kuala Lumpur in 1969 are but the first and last major examples of violent attacks by indigenes on Chinese communities. More routinely, most countries in the region have resorted to legal restrictions that “nationalize” various occupations and professions. Some of these countries have also required their resident Chinese to clarify their citizenship, choosing between Chinese and local citizenship, some even forcing them to adopt the citizenship of their country of residence, as occurred in Vietnam in 1978.

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”.

Western accounts from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries abound with descriptions which portray the king of Siam and the Siamese nobility as the foremost merchants in their land. According to these accounts, rulers monopolized the foreign trade to and from their kingdom, much to the detriment of Western mèrchants attempting to gain an economic foothold. Captain Henry Burney, while negotiating a commercial treaty between Great Britain and Siam in the 1820s, noted that “the Siamese Government have no idea of what is called ‘a free and unrestricted trade’….” British commercial interests sought, moreover, the removal of all these restrictions, but found “the jealousy and mistrust which the Siamese entertain towards Europeans” a major stumbling block.

Squatter, and other vernacular, housing is found in almost all cities of Peninsular Malaysia. In 1976 such dwellings accounted for the majority of all residences in most urban areas, with squatter housing constituting over twenty per cent of the total in several cities. Squatter settlements are the most clearly defineable residential form outside of the modern sector and consequently their dimensions and history are better documented than others. These aspects of squatting provide the basis for this paper, by inference giving some insights into the evolution of all types of unconventional housing.

The Chinese have always been known to have elaborate family and clan systems. In traditional Chinese society, the family was a close-knit group with four or five generations under the same roof. It was a biological and economic unit, and was the nucleus of all important social activities. The clan, which comprised various kinship-bound families, also formed an important part of the social fabric of the traditional Chinese society.

The 10. 27 million Peninsular Malaysian community comprises approximately 53 per cent Malays, 35 per cent Chinese, 11 per cent Indians, and 1 per cent other races. This ethnic pluralism evolved during the increased British political and economic involvement from 1850 to 1930, when large numbers of Chinese and Indians were brought in as cheap labourers to work the tin mines and rubber estates. In the beginning the majority of these immigrants usually returned to their native countries after a few years, but later an increasingly significant number decided to stay permanently, so that by 1957 more than two-thirds of them were local born.

The intrinsic nature of the Chinese community in Malaysia and its responses to “outsiders” can best be interpreted by Max Weber's ideas about the nature of a community in relation to ethnicity. Weber contends that ethnic or racial stereotypes are developed as a result of competition for, and successful monopolization of, economic and social power by groups at various levels of the society's opportunity structure. Such stereotypes can be accumulated through what Weber calls “direct understanding” (aktuelles versteheri) of social action. Weber contends that meaningful social interactions must be based on a common system of linguistic and non-linguistic symbols. When such a common system of symbols is absent or inadequately developed (as, for instance, with the heterogeneity of a typical pioneering Overseas Chinese community in the early days and the plural nature of Malaysia's present-day multi-racial society), meaningful interaction is hindered, hence limiting interpersonal and intergroup understanding. Such a situation tends to strengthen in-group solidarity and heighten ethnic and racial stereotype conceptions of other groups, thus causing the sanction of actions taken by the dominant groups, depriving the weaker ones of access to economic and political opportunities.

The Japanese occupation (1941–45) in Malaya enabled the predominantly Chinese Malayan Communist Party (MCP) to increase its political influence during and after the war. As it was the only effective political organization actively engaged in anti-Japanese insurgency, it attracted widespread support among the Chinese who suffered greatly from the hostility of the Japanese. The MCP succeeded, therefore, in establishing a strong politico-military resistance movement led by the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MFAJA), in the midst of the Chinese community. There was, however, considerably less support for the MCP from the Malay and Indian communities because their cooperation with the Japanese was clearly better and greater than that of the Chinese. None the less, because of its sizeable guerrilla forces operating during the Japanese occupation, the MCP thus became a major political force in post-war Malaya.

The Japanese attack on Burma in 1942 was a result of strategic plans prepared in Tokyo the year before by the high commands of the Army and Navy. The war plans were aimed at the seizure of critical areas in Asia and the Pacific and the formation of an unbreachable defensive perimeter around Japan, stretching from the Kuriles in the north to the Burma-India border in the southwest.

The history of the Kuomintang (KMT) movement in both Malaya and Singapore during the pre-war years has remained largely under-explored since the appearance of Png Poh-seng's article on that topic twenty years ago. Its history deserves a deeper study as it would throw light not only on the China-oriented politics among the Chinese in these two territories but also on the causes and the rationale of the British authorities to contain and ban it. As the Colonial Office and Foreign Office records have now been made accessible to researchers, it is feasible and urgent that such a study be undertaken in a more systematic and analytical manner.

No satisfactory account of the Cox mission to Burma has been available up till now. Such traditional texts as those by Bayfield, Yule, Phayre, and Harvey deal with it extremely briefly and with a deep anti-Burmese prejudice. In 1955, D. G. E. Hall provided an account of the mission in the introduction to his edition of Michael Symes's journal of his mission of 1802. 1 Even this, however, is inadequate; it is again rather brief, is often inaccurate, and while placing the main blame for Cox's difficulties on the envoy himself, also attributes some responsibility to the Burmese. This is seriously misleading: Cox's responsibility, the documents show, was total, while the Burmese displayed great restraint in the face of importunate and even pathological behaviour on the envoy's part.

While increasing sociological and anthropological attention has been directed towards the position of the Chinese in the Philippines, such research has often lacked a quantitative orientation. Perhaps owing to the intense concern centring on the political question of citizenship rights, there have as yet been a few empirical analyses of the attitudes and behaviour of persons of Chinese descent in the Philippines. Even studies designed to investigate Chinese “assimilation” to Philippine culture have been characterized more by a concern with political and legal questions than by an interest in social theory or research methodologies.

This paper is a summary of my recent studies on the Taoist creed and common Chinese religious beliefs, in particular the religious customs of poeh (the practice of seeking divination) and the worship of the local god of the soil. While a number of papers have been published by scholars from the Singapore-Malaysia region, their findings have been somewhat limited in scope because they were confined to the Southeast Asian context. My study will be broader in scope. It will cover the relationship between the Chinese culture of China itself and that of Southeast Asia. In other words, this paper will give (1) a comparison between the cultural styles of North China, South, and Central China, (2) a study of Chinese culture in Southeast Asia viewed as an extension of the culture of South China, especially the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung, and (3) a summary of my research on the conflict between Chinese culture in China on the one hand and that of the Singapore-Malaysia region on the other.