For many years now, the Malaysian government's population policy has included both a growth component and a distribution component. The growth component, adopted in the Second Malaysia Plan (1971–75) and still in force, was the goal of reducing the rate of population growth from 3 per cent to 2 per cent by 1985. The distribution component, first enunciated in a coherent way in the Mid-Term Review of the Second Malaysia Plan, is a strategy for regional development with direct population redistribution consequences. The Third Malaysia Plan (1976–80) elaborated the population situation and goals in greater detail but their broad thrust remained essentially unchanged. The Fourth Plan (1981–85), while maintaining the target of lowered growth rates, emphasized the quality of human resources and was sanguine about the prospects for economic development far outstripping the rate of population growth. Indeed, earlier concern with unemployment had been replaced by worries about the emergence of labour shortages.

External affairs have exercised the minds and loyalties of a sizeable section of Singapore's politically articulate population ever since the first preparations towards self-government were taken in 1955. Even though questions of defence and foreign policy were until September 1963 the responsibility of Whitehall exclusively and thereupon transferred to the Malaysian central government, Singapore developed its own informal relationships with several foreign or Commonwealth states during those years and hotly debated international problems which seemed to impinge on the island's political future.

Colonial discourse analysis has proven one of the most fruitful and significant areas of research in recent years. This paper considers the orientalist discourse and its context in the case of pre-colonial Malaya. It discusses the concept of “feudalism” as employed by historians of western Europe, by those of precolonial Malaya and, thirdly, by selected post-colonial writers. In discussing the works of Clifford, Maxwell and other nineteenth-century British officials on Malay feudalism, the author argues that the truth value of their analyses should not be dismissed out of hand, for they have much of value to say, that would repay careful study.

This does not claim to be an adequate account of the 1915 Kelantan Rising. On the contrary, it is designed to show how little we yet know about it. It is not even mentioned in most English-language histories of Malaya. There is a certain amount about it in the Colonial Office files, but it will be an important part of my argument that these do not reveal what we most want to learn. My main intention is to suggest that a fuller study of it would make as good a starting-point as any for a more general review of the role played by armed Malay resistance in the history of the British period in Malaya. I shall further suggest certain lines which thinking on this subject might follow, but only very tentatively. If this article stimulates such new thinking along any lines at all, it will have achieved its purpose.

Rarely has a national historiographic tradition depended so heavily on a single author as the Burmese tradition has on U Kala. A native of Ava in Upper Burma, U Kala completed the so-called “Great Chronicle”, the Maha-ya-zawin-gyi, in the early eighteenth century. Beginning, logically enough, with the start of the current world cycle and the Buddhist version of ancient Indian history, this chronicle proceeded with ever increasing detail to narrate the political story of the Irrawaddy basin from quasi-legendary dynasties to events witnessed by the author himself in 1711. Before U Kala, the only Burmese histories of which we have record were biographies and comparatively brief local chronicles. Some twenty years after U Kala finished his work, many of the original sources on which he relied were destroyed by a fire at Ava. This loss combined with U Kala's admirable prose style to establish his encyclopaedic work as a model in the eyes of all subsequent historians. The pre-1712 portions of later national Burmese chronicles — including the Ya-zawin-thit (New Chronicle), the Maha-ya-zawin-gyaw (Great Celebrated Chronicle), and the famous Hman-nan maha-ya-zawin-daw-gyi (Glass Palace Chronicle) — are more or less verbatim reproductions of U Kala's history, with some interpolations of quasi-legendary material and with limited digressions on points of scholarly dispute. In essence, therefore, we have but one chronicle prior to 1712. Not surprisingly, U Kala's Maha-ya-zawin-gyi has provided the basis for virtually every survey of pre-colonial Burmese political history.

This article focuses on the eastern region of the Red River Delta, Vietnam, between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. This area was an important centre of economic and population growth in Đại Việt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and nurtured Đại Việt's sophisticated and renowned ceramics industry, hosted leading schools of Vietnamese Buddhism and bred a rising class of scholars and bureaucrats. The region's rapid rise as an economic and political centre was, however, also the key to its undoing. The sudden spike in population density, and the intensive logging carried out for ceramic production, and temple and ship building, overtaxed the area's natural resources. The burden on the local ecology was exacerbated by the Trần dynasty's dyke building project, which shifted the river's course. The ensuing environmental deterioration might have been one major reason for the Vietnamese forsaking the large-scale ceramic production in Chu Đậu, deserting their main port, Vân Đồn, and for the Chinese abandoning a historical maritime invasion route.

Within the last two decades, and particularly after the Federation of Malaya achieved its independence (1957), most historical writings on Malaya (now called Peninsular Malaysia) have been inspired or influenced by a marked revisionist tendency. Such revisionism, abetted by nationalism, has led to (a) a critical reappraisal of British personalities and policies in Malaya, and (b) a relative reduction of historical interest, both professional and popular, in the ‘imperial theme’ as compared with indigenous topics. While some of these revisionist writings may be self-conscious and tendentious, they do provide a corrective to earlier colonial historiography and have encouraged a more balanced estimate of the British element in Malaysian history.

To what extent can it still be argued that Australia enjoys a ‘special relationship’ with Malaysia and Singapore, and, if such a relationship exists, is its maintenance conditional upon purely strategic advantage? ‘Special relationship’ are elusive concepts in the vocabulary of international diplomacy. Presumably they require both objective and subjective proof of their existence. In other words, it would take more than an affirmation by the Malaysian and Australian governments to show that a special relationship existed between them. Demonstrations of unusual solidarity or harmony of interest would presumably be sought to test the affirmations.

By examining the references to the Ayudhyan polity contained in the Ming imperial annals, and comparing them with the local chronicular accounts of that polity, this article suggests a greater consonance between what is contained in the Ming texts and the van Vliet version of the chronicles (based on the Sangitiyavan). Other suggestions about the early history of Ayudhya are made on the basis of the Chinese texts. A precis of the Chinese references is included as an appendix to the article.

When American imperialists seized the Philippines at the dawning of the twentieth century, their guiding philosophy was predicated upon broadly conceived notions of cultural and political historicism. The unwavering self-assurance required to rule over millions of unfamiliar imperial subjects derived its potency from an unquestioned panoptic view of history. This epistemological tool of imperialism found an especially unique and fascinating expression in the United States' politico-military rule over Filipino Muslims. This article explores the creation and processes of imperial taxonomy among Moro populations while accounting for a number of disturbing disruptions and anomalies in the Americans' historical narrative (such as slavery and Islamic civilisation) that threatened to unravel the tightly circumscribed concept of a uniform and interpretable progressive transitional past. It also examines the ways in which American imperialists accounted for these anomalies, and manipulated their own interpretations of the past and the present to maintain the integrity of their philosophical imperial foundations.

New Indonesian decentralisation policies have generated strong localisation movements which recall regional history. During the Soeharto years history was invoked as part of an homogenising nationalism. With recent changes in the city of Makassar that process is being reversed to strengthen local participation in redefined national structures.

This paper provides a critical historical analysis of the Muhammadiyah movement in Singapore. I argue that four processes have been crucial in the emergence and sustenance of the Muhammadiyah within a predominantly non-Muslim society: the symbiotic relationship between the leaders and their followers, the formulation and subsequent reformulation of the ideology of the movement, political opportunities which were judiciously exploited and the availability of a wide array of infrastructures. The Muhammadiyah, as will be shown, provides an informative example of an Islamic movement in Southeast Asia that has transcended the challenges faced by the minority Muslim population by making effective use of the limited resources at its disposal.

In any attempt to clarify ths problems generated by the writing of history, one is always beset by the difficulty of selecting a point of departure. This is particularly the case with the study of Malaysian history, by which term I mean Malaya, Indonesia, Borneo, and the Philippines. Close as we now are to a political Malaysia, this term is used here purely in the geographical sense.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Britain converted her paramountcy into effective control in the central and southern states of the Malay Peninsula (except Johore) through the device of British Residents whose advice the several Malay rulers were obliged to accept in “all matters of administration”. But strong local pressure for the extension of this system northwards into the Siamese part of the Peninsula was neutralized by the Foreign Office which sought alternative means of safeguarding British interests there. This paper examines the various arrangements considered when the intrusion of another European power appeared likely, culminating in a secret convention between Britain and Stem signed in April 1897.

Among the Chinese associations in Thailand which who have shown the highest rate of expansion the last decades have a philanthropic aim. This paper places such associations in their social, historical, and religious context, and describes their multifarious activities, showing that they play an important role in the persistence of Chinese identity in Thailand.

Shrimp farming in Southeast Asia is often touted as a globalisation success story. The region emerged as a key area for farmed shrimp production in the 1990s, and it remains a leading producer of shrimp for export to international markets to this day. This achievement has not, however, been without cost. Small-scale shrimp farmers in Southeast Asia have suffered persistent social, economic and environmental dislocations stemming from price pressures imposed by globalisation and neoliberal economic policies in the seafood sector. Community supported fisheries (CSF) represent an alternative marketing model which could potentially support small-scale producers in Southeast Asia whose viability is threatened by the intensification of shrimp production by large corporate interests. This article investigates opportunities for CSF in the region, encourages research that builds social capital in aquaculture communities, and identifies opportunities to link small-scale shrimp farming operations with local markets that seek high quality seafood produced in an environmentally sustainable and socially responsible manner.

Southeast Asia is the world centre of mangrove development. Not only is there a greater diversity of species, but the areas covered by mangrove forests are more extensive. This paper is concerned with the utilization of the mangrove forests in Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia (along the west coast), which is bounded by that part of the Indian Ocean called the Andaman Sea. The Burmese mangrove forests are probably very similar to these, but they will not be treated in this paper.

Responding to the new forces unleashed by the Second World War, Whitehall planners devised a new scheme that envisaged the creation of Malayan Union Citizenship. In a fundamental break from past practice, the new scheme sought to confer citizenship privileges on Malaya's non-Malay population. In the aftermath of the War the implementation of the new policy embroiled the Colonial Office in a major constitutional controversy that threatened not only Britain's traditional relationship with the indigenous Malay community but also the bases of British rule in Malaya.

The geo-political and cultural-historical context, more than any other single factor, has shaped the notion of Mranma Pran in pre-colonial times. It is derived from a longstanding reality embodied in the term anya (‘upstream’), representing Upper Burma (hence, the term anyatha, ‘offspring of Upper Burma’). Although Lower Burma also has an equivalent in the term akriy (‘downstream’), it was Upper Burma more than any other region in the country that initially exemplified the term Mranma Pran, the ‘heartland’ of the country's culture and society for over a millennium. The meaning of the term Mranma Pran (or its colonial term, ‘Burma’), therefore, depends on the context in which and by whom it is viewed.