During the last ten years an increasing number of scholars have turned their attention to examining the history of American relations with Eastern Asia. Almost without exception these studies have focused on American relations with China, Japan and Korea and have tended to ignore the areas of Southeast Asia which are at present the focus of so much attention and concern on the part of the American public and government. This is all the more surprising when one considers that American interests and activities in this area are at least as old as those in China. American Marines first landed in Vietnam in 1846 not 1965. There are records of American pirates and traders (sometimes it was hard to distinguish between them) in the East Indies as early as the 17th century, and before the beginning of the 19th century Americans had already opened a thriving trade with Java, Sumatra and the Philippine Islands.

Important decisions relating to the British defence commitment in Malaysia-Singapore were made during the term of office of the Wilson Government. The Labour Party came to power in Britain at the height of the Malaysia-Indonesia confrontation. At the end of confrontation in 1966 there were over 90, 000 people working for the British Services in the Malaysia-Singapore area. By April 1970 this number was down to 43, 500, with a virtually complete withdrawal expected by the end of 1971. This article outlines certain factors relevant to the formulation of British foreign policy and describes how these factors influenced the rundown of the British defence commitment in Malaysia-Singapore.

Although there are many problems in development research that can be adequately analysed along the lines of traditional single disciplinary research, these studies frequently reach the boundaries of each discipline and require some way of combining with the knowledge of neighbouring sciences to further the analysis. This combination of knowledge may be encyclopaedic only in the sense that the various inquiries into the same or related problems by various disciplines are simultaneously attempted and their conclusions are arranged in parallel or cumulative fashion so as to facilitate a synthetical understanding of the different aspects of the development process. Such a type of research may be called multidisciplinary.

Between 1786 and the 1860s, Penang Island was transformed from a lush tropical island into a British colony covered in ordered plantations. As a consequence of Britain's temporary possession of the fabled Spice Islands, nutmeg emerged as the most important crop, but after decades of experimentation and uncertainty, its cultivation ultimately failed. Although the struggle for nutmeg to become commercially viable was heavily dependent on global price fluctuations and official support, this article focuses on local factors such as shortages of labour, the specific skills of the island's various ethnic groups and reliance on indigenous agricultural techniques. The story of nutmeg cultivation in Penang can then be situated within a wider historiography concerned with the transmission of botanical knowledge and plant transfer, as well as the ecological impact of colonial agriculture.

Sufficient empirical research has accumulated in a number of regions of the less developed world to prepare state-of-the-art reviews of migration studies (Morse, 1965, 1971a, 1971b) as well as in-depth investigations of migration-related issues (Kuper, 1965). Despite its size and world importance, very little such research has been conducted in Southeast Asia. This is evident in both the articles and special bibliographic chapter published in a recent review of urbanization and national development in South and Southeast Asia (Jakobson and Prakash, 1971: also, Breese, 1973).

There is little that is not known already in Prof. P.J. Drake's article. He himself admits this. He gets his materials from various published sources. Most surprisingly, he does not make any direct reference to such easily readable and indispensable sources of materials such as Frank Swettenham's British Malaya and Lewis Fermor's Report Upon the Mining Industry of Malaya. Given his subject matter and for the period of his study, to omit these two sources is like discussing Christianity without quoting from the Bible or Islam without reading from the Koran.

In this article an attempt is made to trace back as far as possible a history of Bang Chan, a rice-growing village in the central plains of Thailand. Documents existed which might have offered some clues, but help could not be expected from court records, land registration deeds or the census. All that existed lay in bundles in the District Office store rooms, a bit mouldy and perhaps chewed by silverfish. It would take a year at least to dig out the relevant papers, and then since family names do not appear until about 1915 and place names changed frequently, one would never know whether the case of Chan vs. Chya referred to incidents in Bang Chan or some other part of the district.

Each period has special characteristics, amongst which the pattern of employment is not the least interesting. In all except the first and last, the industry was completely Chinese in capital, management and labour; this is a major fact of Malayan history.

Before the American Revolution, the economic life of Rhode Island was largely dependent on the Caribbean and African trade. But the acquisition of political independence meant also the closing of these highly profitable channels of trade. Just as the need to find means by which to purchase British manufactures had led Rhode Island to join in the famous triangular trade (between New England, the West Indies and Africa); so now the closing of this trade necessitated the search for an alternative commercial avenue. This alternative was found in the establishment of trade with the Mediterranean, the Baltic and most important of all, with the Far East and the East Indies.

If there is one figure in world history who has certainly not been neglected it is surely Marco Polo. His narrative has appealed to readers since it was first dictated to Rustichello, Polo's fellow prisoner in the dungeons of Genoa, and its many versions have attracted the enthusiastic attentions of some of the finest textual scholars in Europe. It is, however, in respect of the identification of the places which Polo visited in the Far East and Central Asia that a formidable body of published material has now accumulated, embracing the fields of history, linguistics and geography, and of varying quality, perception and relevance. In South-East Asia itself Polo refers to only twelve geographical locations, yet despite this, or perhaps in part because of it, even the most summary investigation of the question of their identity will quickly reveal that the material which has been published on this very limited aspect of Polo's narrative has now reached almost unmanageable proportions, save for the dévoué who is prepared to direct his attentions to little else. In this may be seen the real importance of Polo's narrative within the early history of South-East Asia, for the identification of his geographical nomenclature demands a detailed study of so many aspects of the history of the area prior to and immediately following the period of his narrative. Indeed, with his first cursory examination of Polo's narrative the reader finds himself face to face with some of the more fundamental problems of the study of the early history of South-East Asia.

In a previous study published in 1934 I have given an account of the first Portuguese mission to Peking. Certain sources which were not available to me have since been examined, and consequently it has become possible to amplify my narrative and to revise some of my views tentatively given before.