That view of the history of maritime South East Asia which fixed a rigid dividing line in 1511 or 1600, and regarded the assertion of European dominance in the area as marking the frontier between traditional and modern history, has long ago been discredited and discarded. It led to the treatment of the earlier history of Malaya and Indonesia as a mere prelude to the coming of the Europeans, or at least as an era without relevance to later events, to which special criteria must be applied. The later history was treated predominantly as the story of European activities and rivalries, and purely western criteria were applied even to indigenous themes. All this is now regarded as unscientific, and labelled ‘Europe-centric’. Few, if any, contemporary historians would challenge this judgment so far as the internal history of Malaya and Indonesia and their component parts are concerned, and, though there is still ample room for discussion as to its application in practice, this paper does not seek to re-open the debate. It is concerned not so much with the development of maritime South East Asian society, or with the history of individual states within what are now Malaysia and Indonesia, as with the relations of these states with each other.

The advance to the South, or Nam-tien, is a major theme of Vietnamese history. Other themes, such as the influence of Chinese civilization or the development of an independent Vietnamese state after the tenth century, are in their ways just as important to the study of Vietnamese history as is the Nam-tien. The Nam-tien is unique, however, for it transcends the different periods in Vietnamese history — pre-Chinese, Chinese, independent, colonial, and contemporary — each with its own theme. It is also important because it provides the opportunity to study Vietnamese history on its own themes and not as part of, for example, French colonial history. Despite the importance which this writer believes it to be, though, the advance to the South has not been the subject of extensive investigation and publication. Only a few scholars, such as Pierre Gourou and Le Thanh Khoi, have looked beyond the usual framework of dates, dynasties, and wars to suggest the existence of social changes in Vietnamese history resulting from the expansion of settlements into new areas.

The relationship of England and France in the last two decades of the nineteenth century was an unhappy one, marked by acrimony, discord and mutual suspicion. Though the French and English states represented the chief bastions of western European parlia-mentarianism, ideological similarities are rarely sufficient to counteract a long tradition of ill-will. Bitterness had begun to poison the atmosphere of Anglo-French relations at the time of the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, and in the years that followed anglo-phobia appeared to have achieved endemic proportions in France. Great Britain's inclination toward the Triple Alliance was so marked in French eyes that she was generally regarded as the “fourth partner in the concern.” This viewpoint contributed greatly to the inflamed state of Anglo-French relations.

Was British expansion in Malaya the unitary expression of an implacable imperialism, in which gradually but inexorably British economic and political enterprise gained indirect hegemony and then unequivocal rule; in which, by friendship and guile, power and diplomacy, Malay chiefs and populace were controlled, Siamese authority negated, and European rivals bested? There was at Whitehall a steady interest in the late nineteenth century by Salisbury, Balfour, Chamberlain and others in furthering British control in Malaya. But the strategy of expansion, ardently pushed by Straits Settlements officials during the period of ‘High Imperialism’ in the late nineteenth century was checked by other imperatives of British imperialism in Asia. The British were reluctant to take any step in Malaya which, by offending and weakening the Siamese, would encourage French expansion in eastern Siam. Further, the Indian Government, the trustee of British military power in Asia, was unwilling to commit large resources to Southeast Asia which might have been required to combat Russia on India's northwest threshold. These factors limited a British forward movement in Malaya. At times, however, British expansionary fervour did burst stridently upon Malays and Siamese. In 1902 the British wrested concessions from Siam which allowed the placement of British ‘advisers’ in Kelantan and Trengganu, and by which Siam abandoned all prerogatives of interfering with these states' internal affairs. This study is directed to comprehension of the strategy of British expansion in Malaya, particularly of British efforts to sequester control of economic concessions and privileges in Kelantan and Trengganu, and the significance of these manoeuvres in preparing for the transfer of Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and Perlis from Siam to Britain in March, 1909.

When invasion forces occupy a land, elements of the local population may regroup and organize into a resistance movement. In so doing, the resisters are challenging the legitimacy of the conqueror-imposed regime. Through tactics ranging from non-cooperation to armed combat, the resisters hope to sap the strength of the conqueror, attract outside military intervention, and eventually expel the alien.

The British Military Administration in Malaya: A Political Analysis

On 15 August 1945 a British Military Administration (BMA) was established by Proclamation in Malaya, newly-liberated from wartime Japanese occupation. In its post-operational phase this BMA comprised the effective government, of Malaya and Singapore pending restoration of civilian regime. From today's perspective this military interregnum demarcated an historic break from Malaya's passive colonial past, as the critical 1945–46 period constituted a political watershed for the movement towards Malayan independence. It is not our purpose here to survey BMA policy and politics, for these have been well documented elsewhere, but rather to study functionally the governmental structures of Malaya's post-war British Military Administration.

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.

Though the Persatuan Melayu Selangor (PMS) was not the first association of its kind in the peninsular states, there are several arguments in favour of selecting it for particular attention. To begin with, it is the only Malay political (or quasi-political) organisation of the 1930s for which anything like detailed records exist — a determinant of considerable, if perhaps chance, importance. That these records do exist may well, indeed, be more than a mere accident of time, reflecting rather the relative sophistication of the PMS in organisation and administrative procedure, its fondness for getting everything down on paper, preferably in multiple copies, and its very active life.1 Apart from this, however, the PMS is particularly interesting in other ways, in terms of its leadership (somewhat more variegate than that of other associations), of its close connection with at least one Malay national newspaper, and of the leading role it played not only in bringing about the two national congresses of state Malay associations before the war, but in providing the chairman for these meetings and helping to determine their agenda. This paper will be concerned primarily with the first year of the PMS, from June 1938 to May 1939 (the period covered by the records), but some attempt will be made to set it in context and to outline its later history.

The Philippine political system is an amalgam of 52 provinces headed by elective Governors serving four-year terms of office, dozens of urban and semi-urban communities chartered into cities by the national legislature and governed by City Mayors some of whom were presidential appointees before the passage of an omnibus city law making all these offices elective, hundreds of municipalities run by popularly elected Municipal Mayors, and thousands of rural villages called barrios which are romanticized in Filipino political circles as the place of redemption for those who have lost their souls. On top of these layers of political units is an omnipotent central government headed by a President whose constitutional powers of general supervision over all these local entities are exercised in the form of appointing city department heads such as police chiefs and city attorneys and reviewing city and municipal budgets before they go into effect. Another form in which these powers are exercised are the naming of barrios and city streets and the changing of the names of these barrios and city streets the exercise of which is shared by a bicameral legislature of more than 100 Congressmen and 24 Senators. Thus the polity that is the Philippine national government today is virtually a prototype of its predecessors, the Spanish and American colonial bureaucracies in the island, which charted the course of Filipino political development in years gone by. The purpose of this article is to discuss the role social forces played in the improvement of central-local relationships and evaluate the significance of these improvements in the context of Filipino ideas of politics and in the framework of their government.