While some scholarship has found the roots of the modern Vietnamese idea of ‘nation’ in the distant past, this paper attempts to illuminate ways of thought which were in conflict with Western nationalist ideas. These ways of thought had to be transformed in the early twentieth century in order for the idea of a Vietnamese nation to take hold.

What were the indigenous agricultural and population patterns in peninsular Malaysia's southern lowlands? What factors produced these patterns? Based on our analysis of ethnographic and historical evidence, as well as aerial photographs taken in 1948 in the Tasek Bera and Sungai Bera watersheds, the Semelai, an Orang Asli group, had a robust and productive subsistence agricultural system emphasising rice but insured by cassava. These photographs, from the P.D.R. Williams-Hunt Collection, provide an unusual record of Semelai agriculture prior to settlement in 1954 and contribute to our knowledge of indigenous economic patterns in the southern lowlands, which have received little ethnographic attention.

The paper examines the metaphors and dynamics of Atsabe Kemak group identity construction, with a strong emphasis on local cultural ‘remembering’ of Atsabe history vis-à-vis relations of power. The analysis utilizes the analytical frameworks of Foucault's notion of discourse and Bourdieu's concept of habitus. The secondary burial of a former chieftain highlights the dynamics of Atsabe Kemak responses to new nation-building processes and to international influences that have appeared during the United Nations' transitional administration.

The Karen and Hmong in Thailand have been significantly impacted by global and national environmentalist discourses. The Karen, traditionally viewed as conservationists, have had to abandon much of their local knowledge. Conversely, the Hmong – long stigmatised for their allegedly destructive swidden practices – have made significant modifications in their use of resources.

The leader-follower relationship among the KMT Yunnanese Chinese in northern Thailand is analyzed through the application of patron-client theories. It is argued that the relationship has been embedded in a particular socio-cultural context, which incorporates both Han Chinese culture and the native ethos of long-distance caravan trade, and that it is characterised by both instrumental and emotional forms.

The main argument of this article is that the middlemen paradigm which since the Second World War has come to dominate academic writings and popular perceptions of Chinese business in late colonial Indonesia is generally flawed, and has hindered the development of a more nuanced picture of the nature of Chinese economic activity in pre-war Southeast Asia.

Studies about Philippine colonial class structure are singularly scant. With the exception of Scott's work on the sixteenth century, no effort has yet been made to shed light upon the problem of how Philippine society had been stratified during the long span of the Spanish and American regimes. This paper tries to describe and analyze the manner in which a segment of nineteenth-century Philippine society was structured, and offers a conceptualization of what constituted a provincial “social class” at the time by looking at the role of the inquilino (leaseholders of agricultural land) in Caviteño society. Specifically, it (a) rejects the idea that native Filipino society was composed of only two social strata: a tiny upper stratum and a mass of uniformly poor population; (b) and implies that the native class structure was far from having been static during the Spanish regime. Due to limitations in the sources, no attempt has been made to trace in an evolutionary manner the development of the inquilinos as a social class. The study deals mainly with the Dominican hacienda town of Naic, although less detailed information on other municipalities like Imus, Bacoor, Kawit, Santa Cruz de Malabon, and San Francisco de Malabon suggest the existence of similar conditions that could have fostered the development of an intermediate social class composed largely of inquilinos.

This article discusses the changing spirit world of maritime communities in Southeast Asia by differentiating ‘oceans’ from ‘seas’ and by linking historical evidence to modern anthropological studies. Since the lives of seagoing peoples are fraught with unpredictability, propitiation of local sea spirits was a traditional means of ensuring good fortune and protection. As long-distance voyages expanded in the early modern period, the global reach of the world religions, extending beyond familiar seas into the more extensive ocean environment, held out particular appeal. Not only were the gods, deities and saints attached to larger religious systems themselves ocean travellers; in contrast to the unpredictability of indigenous spirits, they were always amenable to requests for help, even when the suppliant was far from home waters. At the same time, as world religions were incorporated into indigenous cosmologies, maritime peoples gained greater agency in negotiating relationships with the local spirits that still wield power in Southeast Asian seas.

Since the fall of Suharto's New Order government the number and variety of media available have grown at a remarkable rate in Indonesia. In the process these new media, particularly radio, have created new forums for expressing local identity. This article examines how various radio stations, and specific programmes, in Pekanbaru, Riau have provided a new conduit for marginalised ethnic, linguistic and social groups – particularly Riau Malays – to address issues of their identity in an increasingly globalised, and decentralised, Indonesia.

Forty-odd years ago, when I became involved in the study of Southeast Asia, it appeared to be a new region, struggling to assert itself in the political world from the lingering ties of colonialism and in the academic world from those who would absorb it in the empires of Further India or the Far East. The centre of this new field of study was indisputably the United States, where in the 1950s and early 1960s Southeast Asia programmes were set up as part of the great expansion of regional studies funded by the US government and foundations. Their guiding assumption was that the interests of America and what would become known as the Third World were compatible and that sympathetic knowledge would aid in bringing about progress towards modernity as envisioned in the American dream.

On 31 December 1985, Singapore left the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), turning against the ‘New International Information Order’ demanded by UNESCO at that time. In October 2007, after 22 years of absence, Singapore rejoined UNESCO, looking for an intensification of cultural and scientific exchange. Taking this example of reviving co-operation between Singapore and UNESCO, this paper assesses the concept of ‘creative industries’ as a boundary concept that allows for increased co-operation between players with generally opposing knowledge concepts — as manifested in their respective knowledge and cultural politics. The paper starts with a conceptual discussion on the crossing of boundaries. This is followed by an assessment of first, UNESCO's and second, Singapore's gradual repositioning towards culture. While UNESCO turned from distinctly separating ‘culture’ and ‘market’ in the 1970s and 1980s to an increased openness for profit-oriented conceptualisations of culture today, Singapore identified the economic potential of culture, creativity and the arts, and therefore the need to foster these as part of its development into a knowledge-based economy. The underlying differences in interests and the orientation of content, expressed by the traditionally opposing conceptualisations of knowledge and culture, are still valid today, yet the concept of ‘creative industries’, adopted by both sides, seems to offer a common meeting ground. It acts clearly as a bridge, and hence a boundary concept, allowing for an intensification of mutual co-operation. This is discussed in the final part of the paper.

The K5 Plan for the defence of the Cambodian–Thai border was the response of the People's Republic of Kampuchea and its Vietnamese mentors to the threat posed by the resistance forces, particularly the Khmer Rouge, to its efforts to rebuild the nation and consolidate its administration. The very real defence gains, however, were made at the cost of bitter popular resentment over the way those gains were made.

On 27 February, 1623, Gabriel Towerson, the chief factor or merchant of the English East India Company in Amboyna, was beheaded by command of the local Dutch governor, Herman van Speult. Nine other Englishmen, ten Japanese and one Portuguese shared Towerson's fate. The charges brought against these unfortunate men were that they planned to kill Speult and overwhelm the Dutch garrison of Fort Victoria as soon as an English ship appeared in the roadstead to support them. It is not the purpose of the present article to re-open the more controversial aspects of the Amboyna tragedy. Suffice it to say that the plausibility of the Dutch accusation has never commanded much respect in the estimate of British historians and it is unlikely that this attitude will change. On the other hand, there is every evidence to suggest that Speult, despite English suspicions to the contrary, was genuinely convinced that an English plot was afoot to overthrow his government. Normally the governor was a humane and reasonable man, who had received Towerson at his table on many occasions, and his bitterness at the strange turn of events in February, 1623, is very understandable. Dr. Stapel has recorded the reputed reply of Towerson to Speult when the latter upbraided him for thus abusing his hospitality and friendship: “Alas! If it were to beginne againe, it should never be done”. Is this the response of a man who knew he was innocent? asks Dr. Stapel. On the face of it, Towerson would appear to be condemned by his own words, but it must be remembered that his physical condition at that time was pitiful. He had firmly protested his innocence under prolonged and severe torture until his powers of endurance were broken, after which he sought relief, presumably, by telling the Dutch what they wanted to hear. In these circumstances, it is difficult to attach to Towerson's rather cryptic expression of repentance the importance it would otherwise deserve.

This article explores the common bases of knowledge on race among Malay intellectuals and British scholar-officials in British Malaya. It focuses on genealogies of knowledge that not only lead back to Europe, but to contexts in the Malay Archipelago, encompassing both coloniser and colonised as agents of production of colonial knowledge on race. Race was a strategy adopted by Malay intellectuals in a colonial milieu, in line with histories and conditions before and during the period of British control over Malaya. The notion of complicities is explored in studying the interaction between British and Malay intellectuals which produced colonial knowledge on race.

New data from an archaeological survey of Sriksetra suggests that this important site is set for a major reinterpretation. The city functioned over a much longer period than was previously believed. There are many more buildings than had been previously recorded. Some of the city walls and moats, once considered to have been military fortifications, prove to be part of a multifunctional and evolving system of hydraulic management.

Previous scholarship on the Hikayat Patani by Andries Teeuw and David Wyatt, and more recently by Davisakd Puaksom, has focused upon the political context of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that surrounded its authors. In this article, I adopt a different approach by arguing that court intellectuals wrote the Hikayat Patani as a way to re-establish a moral order through writing during a era of political and social collapse. Set within the context of region wide economic decline after 1650, the present study of the Hikayat Patani portrays a society in anguish with comparative possibilities across all of Southeast Asia.

This study discusses paid domestic service employment in Thailand. Disparities in income distribution in the country and elsewhere in Southeast Asia provide a supply of domestic workers. Despite being commonly known as an exporter of domestic workers, Thailand is in fact a primary importing country as well. Domestic service is an arena in which gender, class and ethnicity collide.

The state-administered monopoly on the production of distilled rice alcohol instituted in Vietnam after 1897 evolved into one of the colony's most pervasive and unpopular institutions. This article examines the origins and operations of the monopoly, focusing on how much revenue it generated and for whom. It reveals that the monopoly generated little net revenue for the state, and instead functioned to promote the creation of a centralised and ostensibly civilian administration, capable of intervening in the economy to promote the accumulation of capital by local French entrepreneurs, but ultimately dependent on vast, invasive and frequently brutal systems of surveillance and control.

The United States gained authority over the Philippine Islands as a result of the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Treaty of Paris (1899), which recognized American wartime territorial gains. Prior to that time the Spanish had general authority over the northern region of the Islands down to the Visayas, which they had ruled from their capital at Manila on Luzon for nearly three hundred years. The population in that Spanish zone was Christianized as a product of deliberate Spanish policy during that time frame. The area to the south, encompassing much of the island of Mindanao and all of the Sulu Archipelago, was under Spanish military control at the time of the Spanish American War (1898), having been taken over in the previous fifteen years by a protracted military campaign. This southern territory was held by the presence of Spanish military units in a series of strong forts located throughout the settled areas, but clear control over the society was quite weak and, in fact, collapsed after the American naval victory at Manila Bay. The United States did not establish its own presence in much of the southern region until 1902. It based its claim over the region on the treaty with the Spanish, and other colonial powers recognized that claim as legitimate.

… the chief social basis of radicalism has been the peasant and the smaller artisan J i n the towns. From the facts, one may conclude that the wellsprings of human freedom lie not only where Marx saw them, in the aspirations of classes about to take power, but perhaps even more in the dying wail of a class over whom the wave of progress is about to roll.

The Southeast Asian peasantry has historically sought, as best it could, to secure its economic and physical well-being against the claims and threats of either the state or local elites. In this context, the defense of peasant subsistence and security needs i s morally underwritten by a “little tradition” that asserts both the priority of local custom over outside law and the priority of local subsistence needs over outside claims on the local product. This aspect of the little tradition amounts to a normative justification for resistence whenever agrarian elites or the state violate important local practices or threaten what villagers consider their minimal ceremonial and subsistence fund.