The homesteading system instituted in the Philippines in 1903 was intended to stimulate economic development through increased agricultural output from previously unoccupied lands and also to relieve agrarian problems in densely settled parts of the country. A case study shows that while early homesteaders did significantly improve their conditions, the intense demand for land rapidly led to the development of squatting and tenancy. Average farm sizes are declining but there are simultaneously indications of a trend towards concentration of land ownership, which accords with experience in other peasant economies.

During the intense concern for economic development over the past 25 or so years, many governments have expressed their faith in the development of new agricultural land as at least a partial answer to a wide range of economic and social problems. These problems include regionally dense populations with inadequate farm sizes, inequitable systems of holding and renting land, inefficient methods of production and marketing, lack of capital and difficulties of capital formation, and low yields from land that is losing fertility through constant cropping. Frequently, ignorance, poverty or the agrarian structure inhibits the adoption of measures for improvement.

Those countries with significant areas of little used land resources have tended to rely on developing these resources as an answer to agrarian problems rather than attempting to tackle defects in the whole structure. Since the structure is not changed, it is not surprising that in due course the firmly institutionalised problems of the older areas gradually established themselves in areas of new settlement too. This is essentially what Boeke referred to as “static expansion”. More recently, Mellor has pointed out, “Expanding the land area at constant productivity and incomes is not economic development in the usual sense — it is only a holding action in the face of a growing population”. Even with rising productivity such as associated with the Green Revolution, there is considerable evidence to suggest the continuation, if not exacerbation, of agrarian problems.

By examining in detail a case study of colonisation in the Philippines, this paper will show that even if productivity and incomes in a new area are initially high, the operation of customary economic and social processes is likely to ensure the recreation of traditional problems. Such a conclusion is nothing new. It has been repeated depressingly often not only in recent decades but also of course throughout history.

The controversy that has surrounded the question of British intervention in Malaya has turned upon a number of issues. What was the importance of economic factors? What was the significance of imperialism? What was the role of local initiative? Was the British Government bringing order to troubled native states? Was it responding to commercial pressures? Was it protecting its established interests in the Straits? In a well-known book, C.D. Cowan added to a careful analysis of such issues the suggestion that fear of foreign intervention was decisive. It affected Kimberley, the Colonial Secretary, and he impressed it on Gladstone himself.

The first Japanese investments in Malaya were in rubber planting but their most important were in iron-mining. This article traces the development of Japánese interests in these two fields and shows how these ventures contributed to the expansionist impulse which, among other factors, eventually led to the military invasion of Malaya in December 1941.

Within the last two decades, and particularly after the Federation of Malaya achieved its independence (1957), most historical writings on Malaya (now called Peninsular Malaysia) have been inspired or influenced by a marked revisionist tendency. Such revisionism, abetted by nationalism, has led to (a) a critical reappraisal of British personalities and policies in Malaya, and (b) a relative reduction of historical interest, both professional and popular, in the ‘imperial theme’ as compared with indigenous topics. While some of these revisionist writings may be self-conscious and tendentious, they do provide a corrective to earlier colonial historiography and have encouraged a more balanced estimate of the British element in Malaysian history.

In describing the changing status system of Indonesia, Wertheim sees its development in four stages: the system in the old native society; the rise of a new status system based on race; the decay of the colonial status system in the twentieth century; the reversal and continuity brought by war and revolution.

It is, to say the least, highly unsatisfactory to begin a discussion of developments in Malay society within the last century by using 1874 as the take-off point. But, in Malaysian historiography, it has been so common to accept 1874 as the all important watershed between what is generally believed to be a period of negligible advancement and a period of rapid development that any discussion which makes a sudden departure from conventional practice, without appropriate comments, may confuse more than enlighten.

Despite the dominant role the timber industry now plays in the economy of Sabah, little is known of the development of the industry prior to the Pacific War. The small amount that has been published on the pre-war situation appears in the Malayan Forester, but the destruction of records in Sabah during the Japanese Occupation has greatly impeded detailed research. For the present study the papers of the British North Borneo (Chartered) Company now held in London have served as a source of far more comprehensive information than occurs in the oft-quoted secondary sources. The aim of this paper is to provide the first detailed account of forest policy and administration, and a systematic analysis of the development of the timber industry in pre-war North Borneo.

Several years ago Wong Lin Ken noted that, as yet, no general economic history of Malaysia had been written. Since then a considerable number of studies in both article and bookform have appeared; too many for a comprehensive listing here. These range from specialised works on particular industries, or aspects such as immigration, to more wide-ranging analyses of the political, social and administrative structure. The periods surveyed also vary considerably, but the tendency is towards relatively short time-spans of some twenty to forty years in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only one recent book, Economic Development of Modern Malaya by an economist, Lim Chong Yah, seeks to cover the economy as a whole over a longer period, roughly 1874–1963. But from the historian's viewpoint, much primary research still remains to be done before the pattern of changes in this period can be explained in full detail. However, the work done to date makes it possible to re-examine certain broad aspects such as the effects which can be directly attributed to the introduction of British administration. This is facilitated if some account is also taken of the very extensive literature on economic development, and colonialism, as well as on the situation in other countries with a similar historical experience. It must be emphasised that the following survey is necessarily selective in terms of the topics included and the published materials referred to.

By the mid-1920s, the spread and popularity of a Hollywood dominated cinema in Malaya, and elsewhere in the Empire, was causing the British considerable concern. The motion picture or cinematograph (as it was then called) was a rapidly growing entertainment and educative phenomenon that transcended barriers of literacy and language in its appeal and was freely accessible to all sections of colonial society. In the words of a contemporary, “it taught the mass of uneducated Asiatics about the white race.” In Malaya, the Government had acted to place controls on the cinema soon after its introduction but by the opening years of the 1920s there was a growing number of travellers and expatriate critics who felt that the authorities had not yet realized the seriousness of the ‘threat’ posed by the cinema and had not acted with enough purpose in imposing safeguards. To emerge as the leading campaigner on the subject was Sir Hesketh Bell, (late Governor of Mauritius) who visited Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies in 1926, on a private tour of the Far East.

The Viet-Nam War was without qualification the most unpopular war in United States history. By May 1971, 61 per cent of the 1,502 persons interviewed by the Gallup Poll thought it had been a mistake for the United States to become involved in Viet-Nam. (The question asked was, “In view of the developments since we entered the fighting in Viet-Nam, do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in Viet-Nam?” 28 per cent answered, “No”, and 11 per cent had no opinion.) The significance of the May poll lay in the fact that it marked a complete reversal of public opinion since Gallup first started asking the question in August 1965.

An educational system reflects the norms and needs of the society it serves. In the Federated Malay States, a plural society, there were four separate school systems, each with its own distinctive characteristics. This paper discusses the British role in their development. The period studied extends from around 1900 to the outbreak of World War Two.

British rule in the Malay peninsula and the island at its southern tip—Singapore—took a new form after the defeat of the Japanese in 1945. Previously Singapore had been only part of the Straits Settlements which also included Penang and Malacca. In 1946 Britain chose to run Singapore separately as a Crown Colony and grouped the mainland Malay states and British settlements into what was first a Malayan Union and later, from 1948, the Federation of Malaya. In so doing, the seeds were laid for what was to be the independent nation of Malaya in 1957. At that time the White Paper explained:

A stage has now been reached when the system of government should be simplified and reformed. International relations as well as security and other interests of the British Commonwealth require that Malaya should be able to exercise an influence as a united and enlightened country appropriate to her economic and strategic importance.

Much has been written about the labor system introduced by the Spaniards in Latin America where institutions such as the repartimiento (forced labor) were used to obtain laborers for the public works and the private haciendas and mines. Many of these features existed in the early Philippine colonial period, but were modified to accomodate the local situation and the differing patterns of conquest and colonization. As in Latin America, the Spaniards distributed encomiendas and land grants (mercedes) to the conquistadores, and a system of corvee labor was imposed on the Filipinos for public works (the so-called polos and servicios personales), but for the private haciendas in the Philippines a different method was used than had been the rule in the New World.

There is perhaps no more startling example in the history of the British Empire of a casual, almost imperceptible shift of attitude in the Colonial Office having such dramatic repercussions as in Malaya in 1874. Authorised to “enquire and report” into conditions in the western Malay states, the new Governor, Sir Andrew Clarke, found himself carried away by forces on the spot, which had been building up for twenty years while the British government maintained a strict policy of non-involvement. Within weeks of arriving in Malaya, Clarke made agreements with three Malay rulers for British Residents to be attached to their states, and laid the foundations for the relentless spread of British protection over the whole peninsula. These repercussions mystified Colonial Office officials at the time and left future generations of historians to unravel the mystery of what had happened and why.

Teaching Political Science in Southeast Asia can be an easy academic exercise. Structure the courses after those of a department in an established university in Europe or America, use the textbooks produced by the major publishing companies, list the references carefully worked out by their counterparts in some western universities, organize the facts and points in the texts, present them in class, give one or two examinations to find out how much the students know, mark them strictly or leniently, hand in the grades to the Registrar's office and the academic year is over. With few exceptions, everything seems to be ready-made for the teacher and the student.

Nationalism developed in a peaceful constitutional and political manner in Malaya during the 1950s. Beginning with the reactions to the Malayan Union scheme and the contrasting political attitudes towards the 1948 Federation proposals, political bargaining led to the emergence of various political parties advocating different platforms and adopting contrasting policies on the major issues facing Malaya until the first federal elections in 1955. However, it is significant that political parties were formed and party politics grew principally as the result of constitutional changes which were introduced during that period. Constitutionalism and the rise of party politics thus combined to help Malaya achieve its ultimate goal of independence and nationhood.