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.

Existing accounts of the Madiun incident or revolt of September 1948 suggest that it was a mainly domestic incident, with little direct link to international communism, whether through instructions or the international communist line. This paper argues that there were in fact strong links to both. The revolt was closely linked to the return of veteran communist Muso, who arrived from Europe after discussions with communists there, and with a mandate to help the PKI to reform its policies.

This article examines the Asian channels through which foreign military knowledge flowed into Vietnam during the first half of the twentieth century. Using the Vietnamese opposition to the creation of the French colonial state of Indochina between 1905 and 1954, it is argued that there is an Asian context that needs to be taken into consideration when studying twentieth-century military and technical transfers and adaptations in Vietnam.

This article examines the life and death of Phra Pho Pan, a charismatic hermit of northern Thailand whose Buddhist beliefs and utopian philosophy reflect the dissident holy man (ton bun) tradition of Lanna Buddhism and, in particular, that of the renowned forest monks Khruba Siwichai and Khruba Khao Pi. Phra Pho Pan's death in 2016 has led to a radical shift in the religious affiliation of his hermitage. I argue that a major agent of this transformation has been a female hermit and spirit medium whose own religious quest reflects the more independent and assertive role of women in the Thai religious domain, but one which is conservative and aligned with Thai nationalism. I also consider the dissension that has arisen between key supporters and opponents of this realignment and dramatically made visible in ceremonies commemorating Phra Pho Pan's death.

The rise of the three great rice-producing and -exporting deltas of mainland Southeast Asia numbers among the most familiar chapters in the modern history of the region. On a macro level, it exemplifies the integration of the region into the North Atlantic-centered world economy during the age of high imperialism and the consequent shock of the depression of the 1930s. On a micro level, that rise has offered historians an opportunity to examine the responses of Southeast Asian cultivators to market signals; the variation in the allocation of factors of production across the Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya and Mekong deltas; and the implications of those responses and that allocation for reactions to the shock of the inter-war crisis. The principal features of the history of the mainland rice economies between 1850 and the 1930s have indeed grown so familiar as to make that history seem like yesterday's topic. Occasional attempts to propose significant revision to the story have had little impact. And the need for a major monograph on the economic history of the Mekong delta during the French colonial period remains unmet.

This article situates historical struggles for supremacy in early modern Makassar within a framework of intrafamily rivalry in which cooperation and competition coexisted. Through a reading of two texts, it examines the connections between resistance and emulation in a society that viewed social and political relationships within the structuring context of kinship. These contradictory impulses produced tensions fostering cycles of alliance and rivalry characteristic of centre–periphery dynamics in South Sulawesi.

There have been some changes to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, a popular ethnographic theme park built nearly five decades ago during President Suharto's New Order era to present a utopian version of ‘Unity in Diversity’ (Bhinneka Tunggal Ika), Indonesia's state motto. This article discusses the changes and continuities manifested in the present-day slightly expanded Taman Mini. Unlike earlier scholarship focusing on sociopolitical and symbolic aspects of the theme park, this article argues that Taman Mini's mainly domestic visitors understand and interact with its walk-in models of traditional architecture and ‘highlights’ of Indonesian culture and history in ways that often differ from the official script which presents cultural diversity through sanitised ethnographic displays. Moving beyond its official, touristic and commercial intentions and design, Taman Mini has become a lively place for everyday cultural production, engagement and negotiation for its many Indonesian visitors.

This study of river names seeks to deepen our understanding of the pre-modern environmental history of northern Vietnam. A performative practice, naming places often reveals the transformation of a physical environment into a cultural one. By analysing the names given to antecedents of the Red River in northern Vietnam, this article argues that each historical name reflected its users’ perception of their relationship with a respective river. Toponyms like Lô, Phú Lương, Nhị, and ‘Great River’, therefore, did not simply represent the present-day Red River — a geographical unit that dates to the French colonial period.

Edward Van Roy's Siamese melting pot: Ethnic minorities in the making of Bangkok is a tour de force and one of the most important books on the history of Bangkok and late-modern Thai history ever to be published. It is clearly written and presented, it provides excellent maps, and brings to light little-known sources and surprising facts about the history of the most iconic neighbourhoods in the city. It exposes the histories of various Muslim, Mon, Lao, Vietnamese, Chinese, European, Indian, and other communities in late Ayutthaya and Bangkok, as well as highlights various ways of seeing Bangkok as a feudal city, a vibrant port-city, or a galactic polity. Van Roy also reveals the complexities of defining ethnicity and class in Bangkok's changing neighbourhoods. In this review article I will look closely at two issues Van Roy exposes that need some theoretical and critical interrogation: the ‘galactic polity/mandala’, and ‘ethnicity’. Then I will provide a short vignette about the Chettiar community in Bangkok and the idea of Hinduism in Bangkok history that both supports and supplements Van Roy's excellent research. I write this not to discount or criticise Van Roy's monumental achievement, but because I believe a book this important to the field deserves serious attention and engagement.

Ahmad Tohari's trilogy of novels conjures up national demons of Indonesia's darkest historical moment. In reading across the grain of anti-communism and pro-moral reform, this article analyses a wealth of gender imagery. Javanese complementarity, although unequal, recognises a kind of dramatic feminine power that need not be threatening as long as men exercise self-restraint. Although modernisation tends to dichotomise persons into ‘castes’ of the sinful and virtuous, alternative modernities drawn from Javanese cultural sensibilities are also conceivable.

This paper illustrates the Japanese cultural policy towards the Philippines through the example of the New Philippine Cultural Institute, an educational institution created by the Japanese military to inculcate the Filipino youth with patriotism and to nurture the future leaders of the “New Philippines”. This organization developed later into a volunteer army which showed determination to fight against the returning U.S. forces.

This article attempts to illuminate Duncan McCargo's influential yet ambiguous concept of ‘network monarchy’ — the source of political power wielded by Thailand's royalist establishment. Drawing on Thai-language primary sources, especially cremation volumes, I argue, first, that many individuals who have made up various institutional components of the network monarchy come from a constellation of traditional royalist families that have intermarried with each other. Contrary to what McCargo suggests, these people are not just bound by their devotion to the monarchy alone, but also by their families’ pervasive intermarriage ties forged over many decades. These ties have given the network monarchy additional resilience, even though not all its members toe the ideological line all the time. My second argument concerns the temporal context in which the network monarchy has come into being. Although McCargo makes it seem that the late King Bhumibol developed the network monarchy — his personal patronage network — as a political tool from scratch in the post-1973 period, it has actually grown, in part, out of the pre-existing elite family networks. I develop these twin arguments by using the case of one royalist prime minister — Anand Panyarachun — as a focal point of analysis.