From about the second century onwards, principalities (“empires” is probably the wrong word in all the earlier cases) began to appear in Southeast Asia, first along the isthmus of the Malay Peninsula, round the coast of the Gulf of Siam and of the southern part of Vietnam, later in the archipelago and eventually spreading throughout the area now known as Southeast Asia except for the north of Vietnam and parts of the archipelago in the east. These principalities are assigned to the historical record by inscriptions using Indian languages and scripts, stone remains attesting Hindu and Buddhist cults, and foreign accounts, mostly Chinese, indicating various features of Indian culture. Two of the questions which underlie historical studies of this evidence are: how did Indian influence spread through Southeast Asia? and, how far did Indian influence dominate Southeast Asia? In principle, these questions may be answered independently of each other, the first being chiefly concerned with the “Indianization I” discussed in an earlier article, the second with “Indianization II”. Attention will be directed here chiefly to the first, and to the second primarily only to the extent that is entailed by examination of the first. Various conflicting views have been advanced by historians; the purpose here is to suggest that, in the absence of convincing evidence for any one of them, an eclectic interpretation is not only legitimate but cogent.

How did Indian influence spread in Southeast Asia during the opening centuries of our era? The following quotations give some idea of the extent to which authorities are agreed:

It seems almost to be a universal law, that when an inferior civilization comes into contact with a superior one, it gradually tends to be merged into the latter, the rate and extent of this process being determined solely by the capacity of the one to assimilate, and of the other to absorb. When the Hindus first settled in Suvarnabhumi and came into close association with her peoples, this process immediately set in, and produced the inevitable result.

In 1968 David E. Bell, vice-president of the Ford Foundation, said: “Fifteen years ago, many thought it was a relatively simple matter to raise farm output in less-developed countries. All that was needed was to make U.S. technology available to the farmers in those countries by establishing extension services or their equivalent. This notion rapidly proved to be a monumental misconception.” The monumental misconception was that peasants in less-developed countries would be eager to maximize food production in order to overcome perennial food shortages, if they had the opportunity to learn the techniques of Western agriculture. This did not happen. Indonesian peasants, after learning of the techniques of the Green Revolution, rejected full participation in it. Why? Many observers in Indonesia and elsewhere have partially explained this rejection but in my opinion they missed the main reason because they failed to recognize that peasant cultures have social values and institutions that act as strong restraints on food production.

The impact of the West's commercial intrusion in China towards the end of the eighteenth century had significant bearing on the growth of the slave trade in Southeast Asia. It led to the crystallization of a permanent slave traffic around organized markets and depots in the Sulu Archipelago. Jolo Island, as the centre of a redistributive network encompassing the Sulu zone, became the most important slave centre by 1800. This had not always been the case. Most accounts of the Sulu Sultanate written before 1780 indicate that the internal demand for slaves at Jolo was on a much smaller scale than it was destined to become in the nineteenth century. These early writers reported that it was often more profitable for the Taosug, the dominant ethnic group in the Sulu Archipelago, to deliver slaves to the Magindanao and Bugis merchants of Cotabato (Mindanao) and Pasir (Borneo) for trans-shipment to Makassar and Batavia, than employ them in their own settlements.

When, on 5 March 1824, British India formally declared war on the Burmese Empire, the Governor-General, Lord Amherst, strongly believed that this was to be a short defensive war with strictly limited ends. If all went well, the territorial results of such a war would be almost invisible, with little, if any, land passing under direct British control. In theory, the Burmese Empire, apart from the loss of some very recent conquests, would emerge almost unmarked, physically, from the contest. Not for Amherst were the grand plans for conquest or hegemony that moved a Wellesley or a Hastings. The end of the war, nearly two years later, not surprisingly, saw the Burmese lose most of their outlying possessions, and the British Empire correspondingly expanded. In view of the nature of the conflict in that two years, and the pressures built up during it, what is surprising is that the Burmese did not lose Pegu, that part of the Burmese Empire with which the British had had most contact, and had assessed as the richest province.

While it can be accepted that the politics of the hua-ch”iao or overseas Chinese in Malaya during the pre-war period generally reflected the politics of China (overseas Chinese responses to such events as the Chinese Revolution of 1911, the Twenty-One Demands of 1915, the May Fourth Incident of 1919, the Tsinan Affair of 1928 and the Mukden Incident of 1931 strongly substantiate this), this quality of hua-ch”iao politics can give rise to misleading assumptions regarding other events. The Kuomintang (Nationalist)–Communist united front during the Sino-Japanese War is a case in point.

Following Japan's announcement of unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers on 14 August 1945, almost three crucial weeks elapsed in Malaya before the landing of the British Royal Marines at Penang on 3 September. A day before the Marines landed, Vice-Admiral Walker had arrived off Penang aboard H.M.S. Nelson, and received the surrender of the local Japanese commanders. What happened in Malaya during the Interregnum still awaits a comprehensive study. The Interregnum is an important period in Malaya's social and political history which saw, on the one hand, the dramatic and cataclysmic collapse of the Japanese order and, on the other, the eruption of local political and social forces which were involved in a relentless and deadly struggle for power. True, there was no social revolution, as in Indonesia. What took place were conflicts along mainly communal rather than class lines. No class conflicts took place among the Malays, as in Sumatra between the traditional and religious groups, or among the Chinese and Indians. The social structures of the various communities in Malaya emerged relatively intact throughout the Interregnum and in the period thereafter. But there were bloody racial clashes, between Malays and Chinese. There were also bloody political feuds amongst the Chinese themselves. But, on the whole, the Malay-Chinese conflicts had far more serious repercussions on Malaya's post-war society and political development.

The 1930s was a unique, exciting, explosive and highly politicised decade for the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya due to the blossoming forth of Chinese nationalism aimed at China's national salvation in the wake of the Japanese invasion. This China-oriented nationalism took various forms. There was a boycott movement against Japanese goods; there were public and political rallies, cultural variety shows, and propaganda in the press and the schools, stirring up national feelings. There were campaigns for the return of skilled and professional Chinese in serving the Kuomintang (KMT) Government at Chungking, and for relief funds and funds for strengthening China's war footing. Undoubtedly, the Chinese nationalism that began in 1928 was a mass movement, and at its height in 1938 and 1939, the movement involved some 300,000 Chinese in Singapore for national salvation work, or 50 per cent of the total Chinese population on the island. It was during this politically volatile decade that various socio-enonomic forces within the Chinese community surfaced or re-surfaced in the bid for leadership. It also saw the rise, consolidation, collaboration and rivalry of various emergent elites and counter-elites in a rather restricted political arena, sensitively guarded and regulated by the British authorities. It is the concern of this paper to identify the nature and composition of various contending elites and counter-elites, to examine their roles in the national salvation movement and, finally, to analyse why a non-partisan elite headed by Tan Kah Kee ( 1874–1961) was able to capture and maintain the leadership during the period under examination.

There is considerable concern amongst development planners at the large and apparently growing areal disparities in the level of development in many underdeveloped countries. A number of theoretical studies support the view that economic growth inevitably results in widening disparities in the initial stages of economic development which may or may not be reversed with later growth. Empirical studies, although frequently lacking in comparability and deficient in data, confirm the existence of widening disparities in a large number of countries. Some planners have questioned the policy of maximising growth of gross product as the panacea for under-development and attempted to ensure more even patterns of development. Where economic and political unrest, including “insurgent activity”, have occurred, and have been equated by government officials with regional concentrations of poverty, further weight is given to policies directed towards reduction of regional disparities. However, where the results of schemes aimed at reducing regional imbalance have been assessed the success rate is slight. This paper examines the experience of Northeast Thailand, the Korat plateau, as an example of a backward region that has had considerable planning effort directed at it over the last twenty years.

The cultural and ethno-linguistic diversity, of Southeast Asia as a whole is reflected in the heterogeneous character of the populations of the individual states of the region, and everywhere problems associated with multi-lingualism and multiculturism challenge the authority of centralised governments. Modern education has increasingly come to be used as a means to confront and overcome these problems. Governments have sought to inculcate an acceptance of and a compliance with prevailing political systems, to detach disparate communities from their distinctive cultural affinities, and to promote a sense of national identity through formal public instruction. The purpose of this paper is to place modern education in Southeast Asia within its historical context, and to consider the ways in which several governments have used public instruction to achieve political ends.

After the riots and bloody clashes between the Malays and the Thai Police in 1948, there were no movements of a similar scale. Nevertheless, Muslim irredentist sentiments persisted in certain quarters. An event which contributed to the increasing dissatisfaction of Thai Muslims was the mysterious disappearance of Haji Sulong in 1954. After his disappearance, Sulong's relatives and followers did not remain inactive. Tension continued and separatist movements have spread quietly up to the present time. Complaints about governmental discrimination against Thai Muslims have been heard from time to time.

Many writers have shown that Peninsular Malaysia is undergoing rapid urbanization. The proportion of the total population living in urban areas, for instance, increased from 15·9 per cent in 1947 to 28·7 per cent in 1970. This growth is more readily appreciated if it is noted that the per annum urban population increase after independence (that is, between 1957 and 1970) is nearly twice the per annum increase in the previous inter-censal period (1947–1957). This rapid urbanization ushers in many political, social and economic problems among which is the unbalanced ethnic constituents of the urban population.

When Khon Kaen town was designated the development centre for Northeast Thailand in 1962 it was a small provincial capital, undistinguished save for being the most centrally located on-rail town in the region. (See Figure 1.) Khon Kaen has since been transformed. Several tens of government agencies concerned with development in the Northeast now have regional or sub-regional offices in or near Khon Kaen. A regional technical school and the University of the Northeast have been established. A network of paved roads, a spacious, modern bus terminal and a newly constructed airfield, in addition to a renovated railway, have made Khon Kaen a major transportation hub, readily accessible to northeasterners and indeed to all of Thailand. Khon Kaen was the first provincial centre to have a town plan. Although this plan, designed to make Khon Kaen a showpiece of modern urban development, has not been carried out in toto, urban facilities have been greatly improved and expanded, and commercial activity has diversified and burgeoned. The population of Khon Kaen town increased more than fifty percent in the period 1960–1970.