The influence of Christianity in Karen communities of Northern Thailand is increasing. Thai Buddhism is still marginal but growing, reducing the power of traditional beliefs, particularly ancestor worship. Despite conflicts between Christians and non-Christians, differing attitudes among the various Christian denominations towards Karen tradition and intra-ethnic dissociation based on religion, a distinctive Karen ethnic identity persists irrespective of religion, though the association between religious and ethnic identity varies.

During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, Chinese gunpowder technology spread to the whole of Southeast Asia via both the overland and maritime routes, long before the arrival of European firearms. The impact of Chinese firearms on northern mainland Southeast Asia in terms of warfare and territorial expansion was profound.

This article examines the Asian channels through which foreign military knowledge flowed into Vietnam during the first half of the twentieth century. Using the Vietnamese opposition to the creation of the French colonial state of Indochina between 1905 and 1954, it is argued that there is an Asian context that needs to be taken into consideration when studying twentieth-century military and technical transfers and adaptations in Vietnam.

Vietnamese rulers of the Nguyên Dynesty showed considerable interest in foreign military technology. Their adoption and adaptation of this technology constitute an important chapter in the history Vietnam's relations with the West.

As in Europe, the transfer, adaptation and utilisation of foreign military knowledge and techniques have contributed greatly to the development of Southeast Asian states. However, it has not always been easy to write about such military transfers when it comes to Southeast Asia.

While it is conventionally argued that global culture homogenises local cultures, very little attention is paid to the strategies that local cultures deploy to survive. This article looks at Chinese opera in Singapore and explores strategies such as apprenticeship schemes, coopting consumerist culture and amateur opera. It argues that the relationship between global and local cultures is one of continuous contestation and refutes the notion that national culture protects or elevates local cultures.

This article re-examines the history and historiography of the Saya San Rebellion (1930–32), Burma's most famous peasant uprising and one of Southeast Asia's most frequently examined anti-colonial movements. By retracing the documents most intimately connected to the rebellion's official narrative, this study reconstructs the legal and administrative context within which this particular history was made.

Modernisation theory and political development theory played a key role in the formalisation of the study of Southeast Asia, while the dramatic transitions from colonies to nation-states in the region and the deepening war in Vietnam were also pivotal to the rise and transformation of modernisation theory. This article provides a critical historical overview of the rise and elaboration of theories of political development and nation-building between 1945 and 1975.

Among the array of pressing development requirements facing East Timor is the need to create a new strategic national management approach for forest resources. This article explores the historical and environmental factors that have contributed to the contemporary pattern of forest lands and discusses policy options to support the development of a sustainable forestry future.