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.

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.

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).

This article shows that the descriptions of Southeast Asian geography contained in Ming and Qing Chinese sources that used observations collected from contemporary mariners reflect the structure of the maritime trading networks in the region. It examines several Chinese textual studies of Southeast Asia, navigational rutters, and maps, and uses geographic information system mapping to visualise and compare the extent of the authors’ and cartographers’ knowledge of the region. The article then takes the findings and situates them in the context of early modern Southeast Asian economic history to explain how the Chinese networks were transformed.

I was passionately involved in the activities of some of the years under review. No-one today can really recapture the intensity and fervour of total involvement by some of us during those years. I am no historian. To prepare this talk I have forced myself to read what others have written of this period — I find some major omissions in their accounts and assessments.

Late colonial sugar cane production in Java was characterised by the heavy use of (chemical) fertiliser in tandem with labour-intensive techniques and industrial work processes in the field. This article provides a useful corrective to an overemphasis on the extractive nature of the colonial economy of sugar and shows the truly industrial nature of plantation production. For students of colonial science and agriculture, the situation has additional ramifications, relating both to the role and ‘diffusion’ of scientific knowledge and to the historical dimensions of agricultural development in ‘the tropics’.

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.

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.

Linking the early historic cultures of Southeast Asia to their prehistoric antecedents has, despite some decades of research, proved difficult for a number of reasons. Until the 1960s, this did not seem to be an issue for scholars of the region. For George Coedès, the region was simply occupied by diverse and backward ethnic and linguistic communities, cultivators using stone tools, or at best, people using bronze with poorly developed social organisations until impacted by the expanding Han peoples during the third century CE: ‘There is very little direct information about the societies of South East Asia before they entered into contact with India and China.’

This study focuses on state–state relations for business, a phenomenon shaped by how local power elites (LPEs), in this case, in Malaysia, collaborate with transnational corporate elites (TCEs), in this case, from China, to implement infrastructure projects linked to the latter's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These LPE-TCE links, which have led to the creation of novel forms of state–business relations (SBRs), offer interesting theoretical insights for SBR-related studies. This article builds on the conventional wisdom of homogenised SBRs as usually driven by bureaucrats by indicating that, in practice, state–business ties are extremely heterogeneous, with the capture of key institutions by influential LPEs. A conceptual framework explains theoretically how state–state relations, forged by two countries, both led by dominant parties that control their respective enterprises, have contributed to unique SBRs created to undertake BRI projects, driven by LPE-TCE links. Case studies of three BRI projects in Malaysia provide insights into how disparate forms of SBR-based institutional architecture function, not only at the federal level, but also in different states, involving enterprises from China. Diverse types of power relationships have emerged in these joint ventures, encompassing different LPEs, contributing to the creation of dissimilar SBRs. These LPEs have turned effective SBRs, fashioned to implement BRI projects, into economic endeavours that feature rent-seeking behaviour.

An exercise in nomenclature can throw interesting light on the settlement history of an area. The location, site and situation of each of the place-names could in fact be incorporated into each place-name, which can thus authenticate, or can be authenticated by, a feature or features on the landscape. Place-names, when taken in the context of the geography of the area, can also commemorate events or personages, real or mythical, a locality being thus imbued with associations at once romantic. Coloured by romance, however, historical verisimilitude then is but an incidental consideration. Frequently, place-names just serve the mundane purpose of designation, the convenient presence of such features as trees, rocks, bays and others providing the root terms for the names. Even here though, it is possible to be adventurous and the rocks and stones and trees can be conceived fancifully, or even in the full force of belief, in terms of their semblances of animals shapes or of their magical properties. They can also be interpreted as petrifications of human forms (usually heroes or heroines, or ill-fated lovers) or as having historical pertinence in being touched by, or sat upon, or having sheltered some legendary or supernatural personalities.