In the years between 1949 and 1963 the clarification of the international status of West New Guinea, now officially included within the borders of the Republic of Indonesia as Irian Barat, constituted a perennially active and confusingly complex item on the agenda of world territorial disputes. While the protagonists involved were new, the general situation was a familiar one for the territory in question. For it has been the island's curious destiny to be a passive but disputed pawn of history from the time of its first mention in Javanese court chronicles until the presumably “permanent” settlement of its international status in the seventh decade of the twentieth century.

The seventh session of the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea has just ended after three months (28 March to 19 May, and 22 August to 15 September 1978). There seems to be general agreement that territorial waters should be extended from the traditional 3-mile limit out to 12 miles (19 kilometres) offshore, and that every coastal state is entitled to an economic zone reaching 200 miles. More than 40 countries have established, or are in the process of establishing, 200 miles (320 kilometres) offshore as a fishery zone, economic zone, or territorial sea. To many states, the 200-mile economic zone is already a fact of international law. But there is still some disagreement over how much control coastal states should exercise over the adjacent 200 miles of water.

Many historians have accepted the view that the two prominent Filipino leaders — Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena — were not really in favour of immediate Philippine independence despite their constant open advocacy of such an aspiration. For instance, Roy W. Curry wrote that “… the eloquent Quezon was playing independence as a necessary political expedience while privately fearing that it might be granted”, whereas Bonifacio S. Salamanca suggested “… at least the two foremost leaders of the Filipino elite — Quezon and Osmena — did not really desire immediate independence, or even want to have a date fixed for the future recognition of Philippine independence”.

Butterworth in the state of Penang is becoming an important urban centre in Peninsular Malaysia. The rapid industrialization taking place within and just outside the city limits, the opening of its military airport to civilian traffic, and the extension of its harbour facilities for ocean-going vessels have all served to encourage further urban development. The considerably increased frequency of the car ferry service to Penang island (since 1975) is further evidence of the growing economic importance of the region and has led to a certain suburbanization of Butterworth in relation to Georgetown, where possibilities of areal extension are limited by lack of space on the mountainous island of Penang.

Late in the seventeenth century the Phaulkon fiasco encouraged Thailand to rid herself of the possibility of European domination — an endeavour whose success no doubt owed much to unsettled conditions in Europe. It is not until the mid-nineteenth century, following the ascension of the enlightened King Mongkut, that the renewed activity of Western diplomats, traders and missionaries provide the memoirs from which may be reconstructed a relatively coherent description of the distributional pattern of the Thai centres.

Today if Americans are asked about centers of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States, their reply should begin with the names of Cornell University, Yale University and the University of California (Berkeley). If on the other hand, the question concerns American scholars of Southeast Asian affairs, the answer would have to include names of individuals from Boston to Hawaii and from Minnesota to New Orleans. The centers of Southeast Asian studies offer a coordinated program of studies which prepares the recipient for special work in one or more disciplines and in one or more parts of Southeast Asian studies. The individual scholars, who are for the most part also college and university teachers, may offer a course or even a sequence of courses related to Southeast Asia, and on some occasions may be integrated into a specialized program which includes Southeast Asia in its purview, but the results of their teaching endeavors do not bear the imprint of specialization which is to be found in the centers. In this article I shall describe the chief Southeast Asia centers, say something about programs in which Southeast Asia plays only a part, and finally close with a word on the individual scholar interested in all or part of Southeast Asia.

Finds of imported ceramics, especially early Chinese stonewares, are relatively rare in the mountainous interior of Sumatra. In 1977, however, Indonesian archaeologists discovered a series of five megalithic sites in Kecamatan Sumberjaya, Kabupaten Lampung Utara, about 85 kilometres northwest of Kotabumi the district administrative centre and some distance south of the road to Liwa and Krui. These sites were completely unknown in the Dutch colonial period and only came to light when Javanese immigrants moved in to the area in the nineteen fifties. Consequently, the present names by which these locations are known tend to reflect recent Javanese usage rather than indigenous nomenclature. Excavations at the complex known as Telagamukmin in Desa Purwawiwitan, Kecamatan Sumberjaya in 1980 revealed considerable quantities of locally made earthenware sherds and fragments of imported south Chinese stonewares dating from the ninth to tenth centuries, the Five Dynasties and northern Song periods in China. A bronze bracelet, two bronze blades and other metal fragments were also recovered. Quantities of ceramic sherds have also been recovered as surface finds at other locations including Batuberak and Batutameng Desa Purajaya, Ciptaarga, Bungin and Cabangdua.

Twenty-five years ago, in 1970, when the first volume of the Journal of South-East Asian Studies made its appearance, I was living in a rather remote mountain village in Phrao district, northern Thailand, about to complete a four-year field project with the Lahu Nyi. I was one of close to a dozen social and cultural anthropologists, at various stages in their professional careers from Ph.D. candidates (such as myself) to seasoned professionals (like the late Bill Geddes), at work among Thailand's so-called “northern hill tribes”. The small expatriate community in the charming Chiang Mai of those days readily joked about “the anthropologist behind every bush in the northern hills”. In fact there were good reasons for this heavy concentration of anthropological research at that time. The 1960s were perhaps the halcyon days for social and cultural anthropology in the Western academy; naturally this happy situation was reflected in the numbers of doctoral candidates proceeding to the field. Moreover, within the mainland Southeast Asia of that time, only Thailand provided academic researchers with relatively easy and more-or-less safe access to its mountain peoples.

On 12 March 1945, three days after Japanese forces had swept the French from power in Indo-China, Cambodia's young king, Norodom Sihanouk, declared his country's independence, noting as he did so that it would now be known in French as “Kampuchea” rather than as “Cambodge”. The proclamation, made on Japanese advice, ushered in a seven–month interregnum between periods of French control.