This article integrates the history of the experience of rickshaw coolies into the larger history of Singapore in the period from 1880 to 1940. These were decisive years. They witnessed the extraordinary economic development of the vast potential for tin, rubber, oil palm, and tobacco in the Malay peninsula and on the east coast of Sumatra under colonial rule, and the evolution of Singapore as a “coolie town”, with a colonial administrative heart and an entrepôt port, with the birth of the rickshaw and a stream of emigrants from China who poured in faster and faster to pull it. This floodtide ofsingkeh singkeh (newcomers from China) came to Singapore with the hope of forming a foundation for a new and prosperous life. Expanding Singapore, especially at this stage of its growth from the third quarter of the nineteenth century, was often considered by the migrants as a place of hope and betterment. There were in Singapore tens of thousands of Cantonese, Hengwah, Hockchia, and Foochow sojourners who hoped to find a pipeline to prosperity since the second half of the nineteenth century, when dire poverty and overpopulation plagued Southeast China.

Southeast Asia's coinage during the first millenium AD is remarkably conservative and uniform. A single prototype, a silver conch and śrīvatsa coin, is the model for each mainland coinage issued over a period of more than five hundred years, from about AD 450 to 1000. (Plate 1, coin 1) Silver is by far the preferred metal for minting. Gold and copper are rarely used, and then only in late or debased issues. Most of the cointypes are limited in circulation to their place of issue, providing insight into the geographical extent of effective political control in the early states of Candra Arakan, Pyu Śrīkṣetra and Mon Dvāravatī. Weight standards are extremely variable indicating that each state had a localized currency and not one immediately acceptable on an international basis. The main exception is the Rising Sun/Śrīvatsa coinage found in Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and southern Viet Nam. Unfortunately this Rising Sun coinage cannot be attributed to any mainland state with certainty.

The idea that Malay peasants have a close attachment to their land is a common place in both historical and contemporary writings about Malaya, and since the 1890s land legislation has been oriented toward bringing into being and preserving a landowning peasantry. The files of the colonial administration, however, contain numerous complaints about peasants disposing of their holdings. Officials and later commentators have tended to view such behaviour as contrary to the natural inclinations of peasants and symptomatic of underlying social or political problems, but when a pattern has been reported consistently for over one hundred years the question must be asked whether it really is, as conventional wisdom would have it, anomalous.

As the title implies, this paper deals with two questions which I believe may be related to one another in significant ways. The first is the rise to power of Sūryavarman I (1002–49), to which the present study is principally devoted; and the second is the dynamics of state and political development in Angkorean Cambodia, which will be illuminated by the discussion of Sūryavarman.

Mat Salleh was no nationalist rebel. No nation existed in the Sabah of the 1890s; as a somewhat jocular contemporary pointed out in the Pall Mall Gazette: the British North Borneo Company was attempting to establish a state. Opposition existed, but hardly rebellion. The opposition indicated the insufficiency of the Company's efforts rather than their efficiency. There was scope for political adventure. Such there had been in the days of the sultanates; such there was still before they were finally replaced. Mat Salleh's was an adventure. But, as he found, the scope was limited: the old world was passing. His challenge in fact forced the Company to become more efficient and bring the scope for adventure to an end.

One of the most frequently made remarks concerning British colonialism, both in print and in informal settings, has been the British role in bringing “law and order” to the colonies. Although serious scholarship has successfully questioned this assertion for some areas of the world, particularly India, for Burma, very little has been done. The reasons for proposing that Britain brought law, and especially order to Burma seem to stem from at least two factors. First, the study of Burmese law in the West is at best in its infancy, despite recent efforts by Burmese historians. Second, and more importantly, historians by and large have tended to ignore Burmese criteria for defining order, and have therefore misinterpreted as simple lawlessness what were on many important occasions traditional forms of expressing dissent and symptoms of social dysfunction, as well as cultural and psychological ambivalence of identity, especially amongst certain new classes created by colonialism itself. Thus what often appeared on the surface as order after so-called “pacification” and in general throughout the colonial period is an incomplete picture, for it was almost certainly as well, if not more so, the political, military, and psychological inability of the Burmese to present a united front against a technologically superior power. But because the entire colonial period cannot be dealt with here—although I suspect it would only further support the major thesis of this essay—and because the British concept of “pacification” (and as a result the literature on the subject) had established the intellectual framework and parameters for evaluating the subsequent colonial and post-independence periods, I feel it is adequate to have centered my arguments around the so-called period of “pacification” only. I intend to approach this topic by first describing briefly what we might call indigenous methods of pacification, contrast it to the general pacification policies and methods pursued by the British, observe the significance of the differences, and then conclude by showing how the coup of 1962 could be interpreted more as a resurrection than a true revolution.

Studies about Philippine colonial class structure are singularly scant. With the exception of Scott's work on the sixteenth century, no effort has yet been made to shed light upon the problem of how Philippine society had been stratified during the long span of the Spanish and American regimes. This paper tries to describe and analyze the manner in which a segment of nineteenth-century Philippine society was structured, and offers a conceptualization of what constituted a provincial “social class” at the time by looking at the role of the inquilino (leaseholders of agricultural land) in Caviteño society. Specifically, it (a) rejects the idea that native Filipino society was composed of only two social strata: a tiny upper stratum and a mass of uniformly poor population; (b) and implies that the native class structure was far from having been static during the Spanish regime. Due to limitations in the sources, no attempt has been made to trace in an evolutionary manner the development of the inquilinos as a social class. The study deals mainly with the Dominican hacienda town of Naic, although less detailed information on other municipalities like Imus, Bacoor, Kawit, Santa Cruz de Malabon, and San Francisco de Malabon suggest the existence of similar conditions that could have fostered the development of an intermediate social class composed largely of inquilinos.

For many years now, the Malaysian government's population policy has included both a growth component and a distribution component. The growth component, adopted in the Second Malaysia Plan (1971–75) and still in force, was the goal of reducing the rate of population growth from 3 per cent to 2 per cent by 1985. The distribution component, first enunciated in a coherent way in the Mid-Term Review of the Second Malaysia Plan, is a strategy for regional development with direct population redistribution consequences. The Third Malaysia Plan (1976–80) elaborated the population situation and goals in greater detail but their broad thrust remained essentially unchanged. The Fourth Plan (1981–85), while maintaining the target of lowered growth rates, emphasized the quality of human resources and was sanguine about the prospects for economic development far outstripping the rate of population growth. Indeed, earlier concern with unemployment had been replaced by worries about the emergence of labour shortages.

Until 1900 Dutch rule in eastern Kalimantan was little more than nominal. In January of that year, as if to indicate the rapid changes which the new century would bring to this as to other areas of the Outer Islands till then ignored, the Dutch Cabinet gave approval for the Netherlands East Indies government to intervene decisively in the affairs of the states constituting the region. During the year new contracts were signed with the rulers of these states which transferred to Dutch control the external trade upon which the states depended for much of their income. Henceforth Dutch officials would supervise the harbours and levy customs and excise; control of the salt and opium monopolies also passed to the Dutch, and, in some cases, of pawnbroking and gambling. Annual pensions were arranged for the former holders of these rights.

The declaration of martial law in the Philippines by President Ferdinand Marcos on 21 September 1972 marked the overthrow of the open and competitive Filipino political system that had operated on the principle of institutional checks and balances adapted from the American model of liberal democracy. The Marcos power seizure represented a breakthrough by a coalition of the central Executive and new social forces that had emerged from the Philippines' transition to modernity against the constitutional restraints on presidential power. The new coalition, in which the military, the technocracy, and foreign economic interests were important components, succeeded in destroying the old balance of power, which had rested on the adversary relationship between the Chief Executive and Congress. The disbanding of Congress by emergency fiat reflected the decisive flew of power towards the Executive; for twenty-six years since independence, the legislature had acted as the main institutional check on the presidency.

On the last day of May 1872, “three respectably, but not ostentatiously dressed Chinamen” arrived at the Charing Cross Hotel, London. They brought with them three letters and four heavy boxes for presentation to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. While they waited for a reply to their letters and for an opportunity to present the boxes, they toured London, visiting the Mint, Woolwich Arsenal, Newgate Prison, the Enfield Ordnance Factory, the Powder Mills at Waltham Abbey, the Post Office and the Bank of England. At the end of July they were informed that Her Majesty's Government could not accept the proposals outlined in their letters and that Her Majesty could not receive the boxes. On 21 September 1872, the three Chinese departed, leaving behind the four sealed boxes. Thus appeared to end one of the more bizarre episodes in nineteenth-century Anglo-Chinese relations.

It is a biological fact that the health of mother and child are interdependent. The care, attention and affection given by the mother to her young offspring are of major significance in the psychobiological development of the infant and indeed, in subsequent personality development. Suggestions have been made that special attention to a pregnant woman brings double health benefits: to her as an adult member of society, and to the outcome of her pregnancy. Although childbearing is a natural process, women all over the world do not possess full faith in the ability and self-sufficiency of the human body to deliver safely a healthy baby. Pregnancy has been described as a unique and ambiguous state for women: it is not a usual condition nor a medically pathological state, so it is especially problematic. Several influences are known to affect women's pregnancy outcome. Factors relating to the mother—such as age, parity (or the number of births she has had), her age at marriage, socio-economic status such as education, occupation and income, and past obstetric history, are likely to be interdependent in their influence on pregnancy outcome. However, complications of pregnancy and delivery brought about by the interdependence of these factors can be prevented by careful antenatal care. Presumably, this type of care is closely related with modern medical science, thus only available in clinics. Consequently, the prevention of the many complications of pregnancy rests more with seeking careful antenatal care from the clinic than with any other factors.

“If you want to write a real Burmese story”, U Nu once told an audience of Burmese writers, you “must know the real Burmese background”. It is advice that applies to foreign as well as indigenous writers and, in most cases, non-Burmese writers have followed it. The recommendation is important because fiction provides a popular entryway for the “average” reader to reach beyond his normal range of knowledge and imagination; it is more likely that he will have read a novel or short story rather than a history or a scholarly work and it is from this source that he will have formed his ideas and adopted his stereotypes. Thus, it is necessary that the available literature is good, that it is accurate in its descriptions of the locale and the behaviour of the people, that it catches the nuance of local speech and expression, that it reflects the psychology of the subjects when it discusses them rather than imputing alien speech, values, and attitudes.