J. S. Furnivall, in his influential account of the impact of British rule in Burma 1824–1948, argues that British officials laid down a Liberal administration that exposed the colony to market forces, monetized the economy and devastated communities. However, there is little evidence that British administrators actually thought in Liberal terms: they relied heavily on institutions inherited from the Burmese monarchy, and when they introduced new administrative methods these were drawn from other parts of British India and only indirectly influenced by Liberalism. Furnivall's view of the ideological origins of British administration, in turn, distorts his reading of the impact of British rule, as illustrated by recent work on the pre-colonial economy showing that it was in fact more monetized and commercialized than he claims. If his account of the pre-modern economy is not viable, Furnivall's claims about the impact of British colonialism in Burma demand re-evaluation.

In the 1850s photography was a nascent technology. Linnaeus Tripe's photographs and the Burmese Konbaung polity were perceived to be new and/or novel. They were defined and interpreted in relation to things that were established and better-known, as Tripe sought to understand photography and culturally locate ‘Burma’. Tripe was not simply a ‘colonial’ functionary, but an exploratory photographer attempting to classify the subjects of visual representation—mainly Buddhist architecture—and explore photography itself. He strove to be systematic and methodical in his ‘mapping’ of locales: he photogenically captured specimens of architecture, which could then be compared with specimens from elsewhere and located in a ‘Linnaean system’. The lack of clearly defined expectations gave him room for experimentation in his delineations of unphotographed locales, which meant that he could ultimately decide for himself what was worthy of being represented. It takes a concerted effort today to see his photographs as they might have been seen in the 1850s. They can be interpreted in myriad ways and a limitless number of meanings can be ascribed to them, reflecting the ambiguous nature of the medium. Interpretations are shaped by archival contexts and microhistories of circulation and presentation; when viewing the prints today it is important not to posthumously infer Tripe's intentions and motivations without adequately considering the circumstances in which he operated.

Malaysia's indigenous peoples continue to suffer numerous grievous injustices, including appropriation of their ancestral lands and socio-economic deprivation. In large part because their voices of resistance to development policies have gone unheard by the authorities, a growing number of individuals and communities have taken their grievances to the nation's courts. In particular, they have pleaded for judicial intervention to address alleged breaches of statutory land and other rights by governments and their contractors, and for recognition of native title at common law. In the landmark 1996 Adong case, the High Court ruled that Malaysian jurisprudence recognizes native title, thus bringing Malaysia into line with a number of other countries that share an English-derived legal system. The concept has been upheld in subsequent High Court, Court of Appeal, and Federal Court judgments. In spite of the rulings in favour of indigenous parties, the federal government, along with certain of the state governments, has continued to adopt an adversarial approach to indigenous land issues. An encouraging development is the reported willingness of governments in Perak and Selangor to tackle indigenous land rights issues through mediation rather than litigation. This paper summarizes seven court cases concerning alleged breaches of statutory rights and four cases dealing with native title at common law; it also looks at certain issues arising from the cases, as well as the responses of communities and governments to the various court judgments.

According to Prasenjit Duara, the sacredness of the nation hinges on its ‘regimes of authenticity’ where timelessness and the politics of embodiment are key to an authentic national identity. This paper looks at three different cultural impulses that have attempted to manufacture authenticity in Singapore. They are: the Malay literary movement Angkatan Sasterawan 50 prior to independence; the state-sponsored Confucian ethics discourse during the 1980s; and the romanticization of the working-class ‘heartlander’ through contemporary popular culture in confrontation with the politics of global capitalism and globalization. In doing so, this paper articulates the difference between the regimes of authenticity of state elites and non-state cultural producers, as well as their ‘national imaginaries’. It concludes that the regime of authenticity, that operationalizes the representations of the working class as a diametric opposite to the logic and force of globalization, offers the most popular symbols of national identity in Singapore.

This paper examines the growth of the British commercial communities in the Straits Settlements in the first half of the nineteenth century. It describes how they emerged as a coherent commercial and political interest group, separate from the Indian empire, with their own network of allies and commercial partners in Britain. As such, the Straits merchants emerged as a significant political lobby in their own right. It contends that in the process, they revived earlier notions of Southeast Asia as a discrete geographical region, in which political and ethnic diversity was bridged by the flourishing of maritime commercial networks.

Japan's early postwar leadership and American occupiers alike asserted that democratization was a new lesson that the Japanese public would have to learn. In fact, the ideas of democratic reformers had been broadcast to a large audience as feasible programmes decades before 1945. Miyatake Gaikotsu, the editor of Democracy in 1919, outlined the benefits that democratic reforms might provide in a post-World War I world. Decades later, Japanese people faced a new postwar struggle, not as victors but as the vanquished. Gaikotsu, writing in 1945, reflected on democracy in these new circumstances in his study, Amerika-sama. Although the situation was vastly different, victory and defeat in world wars had opened paths to new possibilities. This paper examines Gaikotsu's prewar writings as prescient prescriptions that he revisits in his essay Amerika-sama, or ‘Honourable America,’ at the point they begin to be played out, in some instances only partially and at times for ill as well as good, in occupied Japan. These reflections strikingly demonstrate the continuity of ideas during the prewar past and postwar present. Amerika-sama is a representative expression of many programmes Gaikotsu and likeminded humanistic activists attempted to put into practice from the late nineteenth century until they were suppressed during the wartime years. Mainstream political parties, prewar and postwar, often found it difficult to embrace Gaikotsu's ideas and political programmes. Nevertheless, the general public embraced them and they now find legal support in the Constitution of Japan.

During the 1920s, liberal intellectuals in Japan took up their pens to express concerns about the proliferation of violence in political life. Political violence, they feared, was eroding Japanese civilization and culture, degrading constitutional government, and fomenting disorder and instability. Such anxieties encouraged ‘statism’ in their thinking, as a number of liberals called upon the state to provide order and security, without considering who was to police the state. This paper argues that Liberalism was undermined by this trust and authority endowed to the state and was undone, not just by state oppression, but by liberals themselves at the level of democratic practice.