Owing to the absence of dates in historical manuscripts and on monuments, Brunei chronology has been based upon traditional dates of uncertain origin. The object of this article is to take such events in Brunei as can be chronicled in external sources and to compare these foreign dates with those traditionally accepted.

The mid-first millennium CE represents a crucial period in the emergence of early polities in Southeast Asia. However, disagreement remains between archaeologists and art historians as to the precise dating of this shift from prehistory to history. This article focuses on the Dvāravatī period and re-evaluates evidence in Thai and Western language publications. A growing number of sites excavated over the past two decades in particular show occupation from c. the fourth to fifth century onwards while others provide a continual sequence stretching back well into the Iron Age. I argue that evidence from these sites makes a strong case for postulating a proto-Dvāravatī period spanning c. the fourth to fifth centuries. In doing so this article proposes this period as the timeframe within which the nascent traits and characteristics of what becomes Dvāravatī in the seventh to ninth centuries are present and gradually developing.

In southeastern China where most villages consisted of people with the same surname, lineage and clan became the foundation of the local community. As the village people moved to the cities of China or overseas, they organized clan associations to gather distant agnates and set up ancestral altars to strengthen kinship ties among clansmen. Clanship emerged in a new form to cope with changes encountered in different milieus and continued to serve its functions. The transformation, however, has never really changed the clan to a club as its membership has remained restricted even if the membership has remained restricted even if the. The clan associations retain enough kinship elements to function like a traditional clan.

The Preamble to the 1945 Constitution of independent Indonesia contains an ideological tenet called Pancasila As the name implies — panca (five) and sila (principles or pillars) — it is composed of five principles: Belief in One God, Humanity that is just and civilized, Unity of Indonesia, Democracy guided by the wisdom of representative deliberation, Social justice for all Indonesians. Since its installation as a state ideology, Pancasila has been the most commonly used rhetoric in political discourse and the governing principle of social life.

The 1930s was a unique, exciting, explosive and highly politicised decade for the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya due to the blossoming forth of Chinese nationalism aimed at China's national salvation in the wake of the Japanese invasion. This China-oriented nationalism took various forms. There was a boycott movement against Japanese goods; there were public and political rallies, cultural variety shows, and propaganda in the press and the schools, stirring up national feelings. There were campaigns for the return of skilled and professional Chinese in serving the Kuomintang (KMT) Government at Chungking, and for relief funds and funds for strengthening China's war footing. Undoubtedly, the Chinese nationalism that began in 1928 was a mass movement, and at its height in 1938 and 1939, the movement involved some 300,000 Chinese in Singapore for national salvation work, or 50 per cent of the total Chinese population on the island. It was during this politically volatile decade that various socio-enonomic forces within the Chinese community surfaced or re-surfaced in the bid for leadership. It also saw the rise, consolidation, collaboration and rivalry of various emergent elites and counter-elites in a rather restricted political arena, sensitively guarded and regulated by the British authorities. It is the concern of this paper to identify the nature and composition of various contending elites and counter-elites, to examine their roles in the national salvation movement and, finally, to analyse why a non-partisan elite headed by Tan Kah Kee ( 1874–1961) was able to capture and maintain the leadership during the period under examination.

Since the end of the Second World War most sections of Malaysia's multi-racial and polyglot society have been significantly affected by political and economic developments. It is doubtful if any of the young nation's many communities have been more dramatically and profoundly influenced during the last few decades than the Orang Asli of Wes: Malaysia. This paper briefly scans the changes which have taken place in the Orang Asli's relationships and contacts with “outsiders” since the British took a direct and active part in the affairs of the Malay States in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Converted by Salvation Army missionaries in the 1920s, Tobaku people in western Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, have made Protestantism indigenous by re-classifying deities and interpreting biblical texts and teachings to support local political, moral, and spiritual expectations. This article discusses twentieth-century changes in deity concepts and ritual practice among the Tobaku.

The first Japanese investments in Malaya were in rubber planting but their most important were in iron-mining. This article traces the development of Japánese interests in these two fields and shows how these ventures contributed to the expansionist impulse which, among other factors, eventually led to the military invasion of Malaya in December 1941.

Ayu Utami's Saman, published in May 1998, describes female sexuality openly, a factor which has caused some controversy in Indonesia. Several critics have applauded the explicit descriptions of sexuality in this novel, claiming they are a means of ‘talking back’ and/or challenging patriarchal authorities in Indonesia. In contrast, some senior and well-known Indonesian writers have alleged that the novel is an example of the increasing Westernisation of their culture. The contemporary debate regarding depictions of sexuality in Saman, however, has failed to appreciate the complex post-colonial situation of the novel.

Since regaining its independence in 2002, nation-building has been the focus of much scholarly research on Timor-Leste. National identity construction is a crucial aspect of this process, yet the ways in which this identity is officially represented has been largely overlooked. This article takes the national flag of Timor-Leste as a case study to explore the ways in which a historic East Timorese national identity has been symbolically constructed and visually embodied. By considering the potency of flags in an East Timorese cultural context, and by analysing the origins of Timor-Leste's flag alongside that of the political party Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária do Timor-Leste Independente), it becomes clear that post-independence re-imaginings of its symbolism have rendered it a powerful national symbol in the contemporary nation-state.

In colonial sources the designation and condemnation of certain indigenous acts of maritime violence as piracy are presented as self-evident. This confronts modern historiography with many problems of conceptualisation, interpretation and assessment. Discourse analysis may be an effective tool. Comparing divergent representations of piracy by Dutch administrators in colonial Indonesia shows how piracy was constructed in the confrontation of colonial and indigenous states.

Cold War historians have neglected the significance of the year 1948 for Indochina. Based on new sources, this paper shows critical shifts in politics within the Vietnamese nationalist movement in 1948. These were the result of converging developments during late 1947 and early 1948, including changes in international politics, in French–Vietnamese relations, and in the relationship between non-communist and communist leaders within the Việt Minh state. By late 1948, Party ideologues were already looking beyond national independence towards building a new socialist regime. The nationalist coalition that had led the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was seriously damaged in 1948, even though civil war would only break out several years later. As elsewhere in Southeast Asia, 1948 thus marked a new period: the beginning of the end of the ‘united front’ period and cooperation with bourgeois nationalists.

Much research has sought to understand why mixed communities in Indonesia have been torn apart by violent conflict. By contrast, little is known about how people live together successfully in the mixed, low-conflict communities that exist in abundance throughout the Indonesian archipelago. This paper explores the inter-communal relations in the multiethnic, Christian-Muslim coastal village of Oelua in Roti, Nusa Tenggara Timur province. Mechanisms of agreement across ethnic, religious and livelihood differences have shaped and reproduced a low-conflict community — including transfers of land, labour, technology and surplus; use of customary law and conflict management; and social mixing and interpersonal relations. The findings suggest that there are lessons to be learned from communities like Oelua about how to foster social and economic inclusion, which could inform national and regional political agendas concerned with governing difference in a post-New Order Indonesia.

The article examines the intent of the Japanese for their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It relies on documents that the Japanese government prepared in September 1942 which set forth prospective policy towards Thailand as a member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The proposals in these documents specified the political and diplomatic relations Japan expected to have with Thailand, and they were very specific regarding Japan's control over Thailand's economy as a part of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The documents indicate that the Japanese were aiming at establishing a well-organized, well-regulated sphere as a unity under the direction of Japan. The organic nature that the Japanese envisioned for the Co-Prosperity Sphere was patterned on the same organic unity that they had applied to building and controlling their empire between 1895 and 1940.

When historians refer to the “classical” period in Southeast Asia, they usually mean the era roughly between the ninth and fourteenth centuries A.d. When they speak of the “classical” states, they are referring most often to the region's first great kingdoms — Pagan, Sukhothai, Angkor, Dai Viet, Srivijaya, and Majapahit — the civilizations that gave birth to many of the nations in Southeast Asia today. Yet, the very idea of a “classical” Southeast Asia has not been debated sufficiently in the literature.

The greater part of the historical literature concerning Southeast Asia says little about women because, following the western tradition, writers have concentrated on those individuals associated with decision making and power, areas where men have featured predominantly. Although women have contributed significantly to social and political movements, they have been neglected in historical accounts and often, their contribution has been excluded altogether. Even studies dealing specifically with legislation involving women's rights in Singapore such as the Women's Charter, have given insufficient attention to the part played by women in laying much of the preliminary groundwork.

The depression devastated export crop earnings from the Netherlands Indies, with consequent severe effects on a colonial economy dependent on them. For many Indonesians in the towns and cities of Java the depression was a time of difficulty but not a disaster — wage cuts, worsened conditions, slower promotions and reduced opportunities for their children may have been partially compensated by a decline in the cost-of-living. Many others, though, lost their jobs and were forced to take lower paid work or eke out a living as best they could with casual or day-wage work wherever they could get it. Some gave up on the cities for the time being and returned to their villages of origin where they were supported by family and relatives.

This article is concerned with social and moral cohesion in the wake of war and violence. In the Cambodian village of O'Thmaa, villagers are making tentative and at times ambiguous efforts to connect to their pre-Khmer Rouge past to recreate a sense of community and moral order. This article examines this process through a detailed ethnographic description and analysis of the production of O'Thmaa's harvest ritual and festival, Bon Dalien.