I joined the Maritime Silk Route Expedition organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a member of the International Team of Scholars. We sailed on the Fulk-al-Salamah, the expedition ship, from Oman to China, stopping in the following countries: Oman, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. International seminars were held in each one of these countries during the expedition.

In the eighteenth century the descendants of a variety of groups, including Minangkabaus, formed a new Malay state known as Siak. Through an examination of a traditional text, Hikayat Siak, a better understanding of how Malay identity expanded beyond the polity of Johor–Melaka, and was understood, is provided. A key factor in this transformation is how a prince, Raja Ismail, developed a Malay identity through raiding and violence.

Unity within the Malay-Indonesian region evolved as an economic force from within and was not artificially superimposed by any political authority. The region was inextricably linked as a ‘geo-economic’ unit which was of paramount importance to international trade. Although it was trade which laid the area open to external intrusions which ultimately forced the region into a single matrix, colonial authority was imposed largely upon a pre-existing inter-regional economic infrastructure.

The study presents a relational database of words referring to material items and institutional processes in over 700 Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian inscriptions, from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries CE. The lexical items within the database have been spatially and temporally referenced, and a geographic information system (GIS) is used to show trends and anomalies over time and space in the distributions of temple sites; key items and materials; and the roles of the rulers, the founders, the donors and temple workers. The current study identifies changes in the socio-economic institutions and relationships within Khmer society through the Pre-Angkorian and into the Angkorian period in Cambodia.

Theravada Buddhism as the traditional religion of the dominant ethnic Lao majority in Laos historically has played a key role in structuring Lao society and in assuring the continuity of Lao culture. Though the dhamma (the Buddha's teaching) may be only superficially understood and practised by most of the lay population, Buddhism has provided a set of moral values and a view of life which have strongly influenced modes of thought and action over the centuries. As a result, the sangha (the order of Buddhist monks) has come to command high respect and its activities pervade every aspect of the social and cultural milieu.

Soon after Raffles founded Singapore in 1819, the Chinese began to arrive in slowly increasing numbers and to form an important section of its population. Most of the immigrants came from the two southernmost maritime provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien. In the Straits there were five major groups: the Macaos, natives of Canton and neighbouring towns and villages; the Khehs from the interior of the province of Kwangtung; the Teychews, from Swatow and its vicinity; the Hailams, natives from the Island of Hainan; and the Hokiens, from Amoy and the other places in the province of Fukien.

The coexistence of Islam and matriliny has been viewed as a ‘paradox’ because of strict patriliny that Islam prescribes. This article attempts to disentangle this enigma by comparing the Minangkabau, Kerala and coastal northern Mozambique that represent the most well-known cases of simultaneous practice of Islam and matrilineal kinship, which initially was a result of peaceful Islamisation through Indian Ocean networks. In the nineteenth century, the Dutch and British colonial regimes helped matriliny to survive, despite all the efforts of the Islamists to the contrary, by codifying local juridical rules. The Portuguese integration of the local matrilineal nobility into their colonial administrative system preserved matriliny within the local Muslim order. Nowadays these communities are influenced by modernisation, nation-state policies, and Islamic reformist movements, but matrilineal principles still regulate the use of the ancestral land.

The surge in Song foreign trade affected Ða[under dot]i Viê[under dot]t greatly, helping to integrate the upper and lower valley of the Red River first economically in the twelfth century, then politically with the rise of the Trâ[grave accent above]n dynasty in the thirteenth, and finally culturally in the fourteenth. Coastal wealth, power and classical Chinese scholarship entered the inland capital of Thăng Long (Hanoi) and strongly influenced it, leading to major changes across the land.

On 10 October, 1945, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies announced in the House of Commons an outline of a new policy to be adopted in Malaya.

“His Majesty's Government have given careful consideration to the future of Malaya and the need to promote a sense of unity and common citizenship which will develop the country's strength and capacity in due course for self-government within the British Commonwealth. Our policy will call for a constitutional union of Malaya and for the institution of Malayan citizenship which will give equal citizenship rights to those who claim Malaya to be their homeland.”

The Malayan Union was to be made up of the nine Malay States and the two Straits Settlements of Malacca and Penang including the Province Wellesley; Singapore was exclude.

Ships sailing from Fujian to Southeast Asia could choose between two different sea routes. The first route followed the China coast to central Guangdong; it then led to Hainan, the Champa coast and Pulau Condore, an island near the southern tip of Vietnam. From there it continued in three directions: to Siam, to northwestern Borneo and to the Malayan east coast. Going south to the Malayan east coast was the most direct way to Trengganu, Pahang, Pulau Tioman, Johore and modern Singapore whence it was possible to sail into the Indian Ocean or to cross over to Sumatra, Bangka Island and Java.

Ever since the interregnum from 1811 to 1816 of Lieutenant Governor General Stamford Raffles, British trading interests had been firmly established in colonial Indonesia. The implementation of the Cultivation System in 1830 on Java by the Dutch colonial government was an attempt to bring this potentially rich colony under Dutch economic control, but it is usually considered a departure from the principles of economic liberalism and a phase during which private entrepreneurs were barred from the emerging plantation economy. However, on the basis of census data and immigration records, and with reference to recent literature on the development of the nineteenth-century sugar industry, this article argues that British trading houses present on Java in the early nineteenth century continued to play an important role in the development of the production there of tropical goods, and that the emerging plantation economy attracted a modest influx of technicians and employees from various European nations. This article proposes to consider the Cultivation System and private enterprise not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary in making the cane sugar industry of Java the second largest in the world after that of Cuba.

Karen believe they are like orphans without a king and leader; royalty often appear in their myths, legends and prophecies. Buddhist Karen await the next Buddha, Ariya Metteya — preceded by a righteous Karen leader — who shall cleanse the world. This paper explores the Karen imaginary and notions of royalty as preconditions for a new era governed by Buddhist ethics that will bring peace and prosperity. This imaginary combines religion and politics in a millenarian model of the world as seen from the margins of traditional kingdoms and modern nation-states — what James Scott has termed ‘non-state spaces’. The Karen oscillate between defensive and offensive strategies, as shown in several examples. Is this imaginary a premodern phenomenon typical of marginalised minorities or perhaps also part of a modern, global imaginary of a better future? The concept of morally enchanted leadership is discussed in relation to states, nations and globalisation.

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.

By embodying the paradoxes found in three webs of signification – panaad (devotional promise), sacred camp and carnivalesque during the Ati-atihan festival – Augusto Diangson, an individual of the ‘third sex’, was able to claim membership in the Roman Catholic community of Kalibo, Aklan in the Central Philippines while also negotiating the Church's institution of heterosexuality. The narratives of mischief and the gender ambiguity of the Santo Niño or the Holy Child Jesus, the centre of Ati-atihan's religious veneration, further enabled Diangson to interact with Kalibo's Roman Catholicism. Through an analysis of Diangson and his participation in the festival, this article exposes how ordinary individuals in extraordinary events localise their faith through cross-dressing and dance performance. Seen throughout the Philippines, these processes of mimicry and gender transformation transport individuals into zones of ambivalence and contradictions in which they are able to navigate through the homogenising discourse of their culture and the Church's homogenising myth of Roman Catholicism.

This essay focuses on the political dimensions of the Festival Huế, which is claimed to be significant as a celebration of the nation. Although socialist state rituals have lost their relevance in the Đổi Mới era, the revival and re-invention of ritualised tradition create fertile ground for new ritualised events that legitimate and lend significance to the current regime. I argue that despite the unfamiliarity of many spectators with the symbolic contents of these new forms, they are effective because of their aesthetic resemblance to, and association with, familiar rituals.

The paradox can be expressed simply: the population of nineteenth-century Southeast Asia apparently grew much more rapidly than precedent or demographic theory would have led us to expect. In the two areas for which we have the most and best data — Dutch Java and the Spanish Philippines — almost all the statistical evidence points to rates of natural increase reaching 1 per cent a year by the early nineteenth century and rising well above that level for most of the rest of the century. Though the evidence is much less clear for other countries in the region, it is generally compatible with a hypothesis of comparably rapid growth. In Siam, for example, the trend line passing through most nineteenth-century estimates reaches 1.3 per cent by the 1860s, 3 per cent by the 1890s.

Through the analysis of a Bentian Dayak ritual – the nalin taun – this article discusses how this ritual went through a change that reflected a transformation of the social organisation of the Bentian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thus revealing the complex and important interaction between Malays and Dayaks in eastern Borneo. The conclusions overturn stereotypes of Dayak isolation and critique ahistorical analyses of cultural traditions in Southeast Asia.

Does Thailand still have peasants? Does it still have a peasant society? How dynamic are Thailand's chaona? To answer these questions we begin with an interview of a septuagenarian farmer who discusses rural change over his lifetime and provocatively claims he is ‘the last peasant’ of his village. We use this rural anecdote as a catalyst to highlight agrarian change in Thailand and to expose the hazards of employing static concepts to describe contemporary rural political economy. By analysing the use and meanings of the term ‘peasant’ and its Thai equivalents, we demonstrate how static concepts obscure Thailand's rural evolution and contribute to misleading assumptions, harmful agrarian myths, and extant political cleavage.

Under the direct rule of the British Colonial Government in nineteenth-century Singapore, the Chinese leaders held little political power. They were essentially community leaders, charitable and enterprising. They worked for peace and harmony in a multiracial society and were closely attached to the British Colonial administration. Though the Chinese leadership played various roles in economic, political, diplomatic and social fields, it was in the social arena that it contributed most. These nineteenth-century leaders were essentially social workers who had established no radical traditions nor shaped any unique patterns of leadership.

On hillside slash and burn fields, Lisu of Northern Thailand produce rice, opium poppies, and corn. In this paper I shall develop models to show the relationships among various factors that determine how much rice each household produces, and the relative importance of opium and rice.