bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The PKI and the Attempted Coup
Authors: Bass Jerome R.
Published: August 2009

Despite the amount of commentary generated by the September 30th Movement in Indonesia, agreement beyond simple details of chronology may never be possible. The grisly drama began with the murder of six top army officers and a similar fate soon befell key leaders of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The PKI's surviving remnant split into pro-Peking and pro-Moscow factions each apparently more interested in sectarian wrangling than an objective assessment of their common debacle. Nor can one expect the army to provide an impartial analysis. The legitimization of its new political role required placing the Gestapu albatross firmly around the PKI's neck. And perhaps the best stamp of army success in that endeavour is the almost reflexive resort by commentators to the label “abortive Communist coup”. But this does not imply that the prevailing perception of Gestapu as a failed Communist plot isprime faciediscredited because of its serviceability to Indonesia's present leadership. The army-cum-official version surely would not have gained such wide currency without something in its favour. It is the hope of the present article that additional light may be shed on this “something” through a comparative discussion of some representative views regarding Gestapu.
The Post-1945 Food Shortage in British Malaya
Authors: Kratoska Paul H.
Published: August 2009

British Malaya before the Japanese occupation was heavily dependent on imported rice, producing on average only 35 per cent of its requirements between 1920 and 1940. During the 1930s, efforts were made to expand rice cultivation, but progress was slow and did not even keep pace with population growth: imports increased at the same rate as domestic production.

As war approached, the government of Malaya built up a stockpile of rice and had about one year's supply in reserve when the occupation began. However, a considerable proportion of this grain was appropriated for military use and the civilian population soon faced food shortages.
China and Southeast Asia: The Revolutionary Perspective, 1951
Authors: Smith R. B.
Published: August 2009

Controversy still surrounds the question whether the communist-led uprisings which developed across Southeast Asia during the months from March to September 1948 were the outcome of a deliberate international communist strategy or merely the product of coincidental decisions by individual communist parties. Equally controversial, although less frequently discussed, is the suggestion that during the early months of 1950 the Chinese Communist Party took on direct responsibility for sustaining those revolutionary armed struggles which were still continuing in Southeast Asia — in Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines — and even provided material assistance to allow them to expand. The present paper will examine yet a third period at which it is necessary to consider the possibility of coordinated international decision-making on the communist side in Southeast Asia: the second half of 1951.
Malaysian–American Relations during Indonesia's Confrontation against Malaysia, 1963–66
Authors: Sodhy Pamela
Published: August 2009

The period from 1963 to 1966, which spans Indonesia's “confrontation” against Majaysia, marks an important benchmark in the history of Malaysian-American relations as it represents the first direct involvement of the United States into the political affairs of Malaysia. Before confrontation, the United States had maintained a low profile in the country and had confined the relationship to mainly economic issues. Politically, the United States had, for the most part, hovered in the background behind the British who had continued their close ties with Malaysia even after the granting of independence in 1957. America's deeper involvement with Malaysia because of confrontation, signified, therefore, a distinct departure from its earlier policy.
Peasant Labour and Capitalist Production in Late Colonial Indonesia: The ‘Campaign’ at a North Java Sugar Factory, 1840–70
Authors: Knight G. R.
Published: August 2009

The mid-nineteenth century saw the establishment in Java of one of the world's major sugar industries. Indeed, prior to the Great Depression of the 1930's, which reduced it to a shadow of its former opulance, the Java industry was second only to that of Cuba as a producer of cane sugar for the world's markets. It was essentially the creation of nineteenth-century Dutch colonialism. Sugar manufacture on a commercial scale had already been underway in Java a full two centuries earlier. However, the modern industry of large, centralized units of production and a massive ‘peasant’ workforce dated only from the inauguration of the state-sponsored Cultivation System by Governor-General Johannes van den Bosch in the 1830's. From then on, progress was rapid. Within less than a quarter century, some hundred or so sugar ‘factories’, solid stone places full of European machinery and Javanese ‘coolies’, had been established in the lowlands of Eastern and Central Java, and twenty-seven thousand hectares of peasant farmland requisitioned to provide them with cane. The whole enterprise dug deep into the innards of rural Java. As well as peasant land, the labour of the rural population was commandeered in unprecedented quantities. By the early 1860's, when sugar production under the auspices of the Cultivation System was reaching its peak, some 100,000 Javanese peasants were engaged in growing cane for the industry, and nearly that many again employed for between three and five months of the year, as cane-cutters, carters and factory hands during the manufacturing season or ‘Campaign’.
Kampungs and Conflict in Colonial Semarang
Authors: Cobban James L.
Published: August 2009

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Semarang was a major port city and administrative centre on Java. Attainment of this position was due partly to the expansion of its hinterland during the nineteenth century. This expansion was closely related to developments in the means of transportation and the consequent ability of plantation owners to bring the products of their plantations to the port for shipment to foreign markets. By the end of the century virtually the whole economic life of central Java focused upon Semarang. The city also exercised administrative functions in the Dutch colonial administration and generally had been responsible for Dutch interests in the middle and eastern parts of the island. The importance of Semarang as an administrative centre increased after 1906. In that year the government incorporated the city as an urban municipality (stadsgemeente). In 1914 it had consular representation from the United States, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Germany, and Thailand. Subsequently, in 1926 it became the capital of the Province of Central Java under the terms of an administrative reform fostered by the colonial government at Batavia. Status as an urban municipality meant that local officials sitting on a city council would govern the domestic affairs of the city. The members of the city council at first were appointed from Batavia, subsequently some of them were elected by residents of the city. By the beginning of the twentieth century Semarang had enhanced its position as a major port on the north coast of the island of Java. It was one of the foremost cities of the Dutch East Indies, along with Batavia and Surabaya, a leading port and a centre of administration and trade. This article outlines the growth of the port of Semarang during the nineteenth century and discusses some of the conflict related to this growth over living conditions in parts of the city during the twentieth century, a conflict which smouldered for several decades among the government, members of the city council, and the non-European residents of the city, one which remained unresolved at the end of the colonial era.
Abangan, Santri, and Prijaji: A Critique
Authors: Cruikshank Robert B.
Published: August 2009

Thanks to Clifford Geertz, the terms and concepts of abangan, santri, and prijaji have become familiar and frequently used by students of Javanese history, politics, and society. While he did not invent them, Geertz is responsible for their earliest and most thorough development as explicit and interrelated concepts, as seen most notably in his The Religion of Java and The Social History of An Indonesian Town. These studies are based upon his academic work as an anthropologist and his intermittent field work in “Modjokuto”, Java, from May 1953 to September 1964.
The Sarawak Elections of 1970: An Analysis of the Vote
Authors: Milne R.S. , Ratnam K.J.
Published: August 2009

The purpose of the present article is to analyse the voting at the Sarawak elections of 1970, particularly at the state, as opposed to the parliamentary, election. The administration of the elections, election issues, and the methods of campaigning used by the parties are described elsewhere. Nevertheless, a few words of background explanation may be useful.
On Vietnamese and Other Peasants
Authors: Chovanes Andrew B.
Published: August 2009

This essay considers some theoretical perspectives which provide interpretations of two significant issues which cut across all the discipline lines in the social sciences and the humanities. The first issue concerns the nature of historical movement. While the world views of modern science and mechanistic Marxism claim that both knowledge and history develop in a continuous progressive manner, this notion has been challenged by historians, philosophers and social scientists who argue that historical movement in knowledge and institutional domains proceeds in a sharply discontinuous manner characterized by abrupt transformations and disjunctions. The second issue considers the compelling question of whether any researcher can proceed on the basis of a value-free research design, or whether all methodological and theoretical claims must be inevitably influenced and conditioned by the values and ideations of the theorist's culture. In terms of this controversy, the lines are clearly drawn between the notions of historical and cultural relativism predominant in Anglo-American historical and social science inquiry, and the claims of certain formalist-structuralist theorists who assert the existence of transhistorical and transcultural structural universals.
Singapore Corporations Go Transnational
Authors: Hui Lim Mah , Fong Teoh Kit
Published: August 2009

The title of this paper is influenced by that of Lee Soo Ann's book, Singapore Goes Transnational. However, the subject matter of this paper though related, is quite different. By Singapore “going transnational”, Lee was referring to how Singapore's economy became dominated by foreign transnational corporations (TNCs). During that process and period, local Singaporean companies declined in importance. This paper deals with the resurgence of Singaporean companies to the extent that some have spread their operations to other countries and have attained the status of TNCs.
The Paradox of Nineteenth-century Population Growth in Southeast Asia: Evidence from Java and the Philippines
Authors: Owen Norman G.
Published: August 2009

The paradox can be expressed simply: the population of nineteenth-century Southeast Asia apparently grew much more rapidly than precedent or demographic theory would have led us to expect. In the two areas for which we have the most and best data — Dutch Java and the Spanish Philippines — almost all the statistical evidence points to rates of natural increase reaching 1 per cent a year by the early nineteenth century and rising well above that level for most of the rest of the century. Though the evidence is much less clear for other countries in the region, it is generally compatible with a hypothesis of comparably rapid growth. In Siam, for example, the trend line passing through most nineteenth-century estimates reaches 1.3 per cent by the 1860s, 3 per cent by the 1890s.
The Disturbances in the Tutong and Belait Districts of Brunei (1899–1901)
Authors: Horton A.V.M.
Published: August 2009

This paper comprises an enquiry into the unrest in the Belait and Tutong districts of Brunei at the turn of the twentieth century. After outlining the course of the disturbances, I shall examine their causes, explain why the recrudescence of violence (after a period of calm) early in 1901 led to a departure in British policy towards the Sultanate, and finally, show how the factors which had given rise to the original disaffection were removed, and lasting peace restored, under a reformed administration introduced at the beginning of 1906. First, however, some background information is necessary.
Contemporary Indonesian Buddhism and Monotheism
Authors: Brown Iem
Published: August 2009

The philosophical basis of the Indonesian state, first framed in 1945, is the Panca Sila or Five Principles. Since 1985 all political and social organizations including religious ones have had to subscribe to the Panca Sila as their sole philosophical principle (Azas Tunggal). The first of the Five Principles is belief in Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, normally, though not entirely satisfactorily, translated as the One Supreme God. The founders of the state had accepted this principle rather than a more specific statement of belief in the God of Islam, the religion of the majority of the people. Its formulation was clearly a compromise, aimed at stressing the importance of religion in the state, but avoiding declaring Islam as the state religion. As it stood, the principle was generally acceptable to followers of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism, and all religions which did acknowledge the existence of God, in one form or another.
Trương Định and Vietnamese Anti-Colonialism, 1859–64: A Reappraisal
Authors: McLeod Mark W.
Published: August 2009

By any measure, Trương Định (1820–64) was one of the leading figures of nineteenth-century Vietnamese resistance to French colonialism. As such, he has received a good deal of scholarly attention in Vietnam, France, the United States, and elsewhere. This article analyses the anti-colonial movement led by Trương Định in southern Vietnam during the years 1859–64, focusing on the questions of Trương Định's relationship to the Vietnamese imperial government at Huế and his motivation for continuing the anti-French struggle after Huế had made peace with France in 1862. Its organization is as follows: first, the historical context is summarized; second, Trương Định's resistance movement and its relationship to the Huế court are analyzed; third, various explanations of Trươg Định's motivation are considered and my own hypothesis is offered.
On the Writing of Lao History: Continuities and Discontinuities
Authors: Stuart-Fox Martin
Published: August 2009

The writing of Lao history presents peculiar problems, not because of the quantity and quality of sources available (though these leave much to be desired for certain periods), but because of the difficulty in deciding what is meant by “Lao history”. There is a problem in identifying the object of study. Is Lao history the history of those territories inhabited by ethnic Lao, or of the state of Laos as it has existed at various times under various names? The Lao have spread far beyond the geographical boundaries of present-day Laos: many more ethnic Lao live in Thailand than in Laos. Moreover the Lao state ceased to exist as a unitary entity in the early eighteenth century. What was reconstructed by the French nearly two centuries later and exists today is but a fragment composed of territories belonging to former principalities inhabited by diverse peoples, many of whom are not ethnic Lao. They are divided into three broad groups: the Lao Loum, or Lao of the valleys, comprise not only ethnic Lao but also upland Tai and account for about 65 per cent of the population; the Lao Theung, or Lao of the mountain slopes, speaking Mon-Khmer languages, account for around 25 per cent; while the Lao Soung, or Lao of the mountain tops, speaking Tibeto-Burman languages, number perhaps 10 per cent. The terms Lao Loum, Lao Theung and Lao Soung will be used to refer to these groups in this paper.
Music in Nineteenth Century Java: A Precursor to the Twentieth Century
Authors: Kartomi Margaret J.
Published: August 2009

Only recently has it become possible to attempt to reconstruct a history of Javanese music in the nineteenth century. The relevant primary and secondary sources, including Javanese poems and treatises, colonial writings and scattered references in various historical tracts are only now beginning to emerge from cold storage to be published, translated, and made more widely available. This article is a preliminary attempt to draw together from them an overview of Javanese music in the nineteenth century, adopting a musicological, cultural and historical approach which is based partly on my own fieldwork over the past twenty years. An understanding of nineteenth century musical developments is clearly important not only in its own right but also as a means of facilitating our comprehension of the contemporary artistic scene.
Aftermath of Alliance: The Wartime Legacy in Thai-Japanese Relations
Authors: Reynolds E. Bruce
Published: August 2009

At the end of World War II, American Office of Strategic Service (OSS) officers in Bangkok were dismayed to discover that, contrary to their expectations, the Thai showed little animosity toward the Japanese. The OSS unit reported in August 1945 that ‘there has been very little in the way of hostile reaction’. Japanese accounts confirm this, with a Foreign Ministry study, for example, concluding: ‘The general attitude of Thai officials and citizens toward Japan just after the war's end was relatively sympathetic….’
The Politics of Disease and Disorder in Post-War Malaya
Authors: Harper T.N.
Published: August 2009

It has become a commonplace of Malayan historiography that the period following the end of the Pacific War witnessed the establishment of a pattern of political life which has persisted in its main features into the present decade. Existing accounts have focused around the restructuring of the British presence in Malaya under a military administration and the introduction of, and opposition to, the Malayan Union scheme in 1946 and the Federal structure which succeeded it in April 1948. These years saw the emergence of an ethnically based nationalist movement and the defeat of a radical challenge to its predominance. The communal and insurrectionary violence which was a feature of the period has been represented as a constraint to subsequent political action — as a limit to what the structure of Malaya's pluralism could tolerate — and the constitutional struggles as a lost opportunity to effect its transformation. Whilst it is hard to exaggerate the importance of these events in shaping the landscape of Malaysian politics, there is a sense in which the sophistication of these political and constitutional preoccupations suggests uneven development within the historical writing as a whole. The social context which stimulated change, and the breadth of the local response which dignified it, has been marginalized in many accounts. There has been a tendency to conceive the state system and the colonial presence in Malaya within the bounds of a paradigm governed by the constitutional settlement, and the various phases of insurrection and political change as primarily the products of the subversive or nationalist imagination.
Civil War and Rebellion in Burma
Authors: Silverstein Josef
Published: August 2009

1988 was unlike any other year in Burma's short history as an independent nation. It began quietly, but erupted into a revolution for democracy and change which failed when the army violently restored its dictatorship; it ended quietly, but with the people living in fear under a military determined not to be challenged openly again. During this same period, while the world focused on Rangoon, the minorities continued to pursue a civil war which some have been fighting for the past forty years, hopeful that the changing situation in Burma's heartland would effect their struggles because both they, and the Burmans who rose in revolt, have the same enemy and seek the same ends — a peaceful and democratic Burma. Both looked to and sought help from the free nations of the world who spoke out vigorously when the rebellion began but whose voices either have been lowered or even stilled since the military made clear that it would decide the time and degree of change; only the U.S. continued to hold the high moral ground in support of the rebellion but its actions hardly matched its rhetoric.
Southeast Asian Intercalation: Variations and Complexities
Authors: Eade J.C.
Published: August 2009

One of the constant problems for historians of Southeast Asia is to assimilate its system of adding extra days and extra years to the lunar calendar to make it keep pace with the solar calendar. It is well known that the addition of an extra month should take place 7 times in every 19 years (adhikames), and that the addition of an extra day should occur 11 times in every 57 years (adhikawan). It is also known that the extra month is called second Ashadha and that in Thailand and Cambodia the extra day is given to the previous month, Jyestha.
Conditions on Sugar Estates in Colonial Java: Comparisons with Deli
Authors: Wertheim Wim F.
Published: August 2009

In September 1990 the Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam (CASA) organized an International Workshop on “Plantation Labour in Colonial Asia”. Most of the presented papers dealt with plantations where the workforce had to be imported from distant regions, sometimes even from abroad. The type of human community originating from such recruitment policies often resulted in a typical frontier society, characterized by extreme harshness on the part of the white planters, and by a sense of utter alienation and isolation among the Asian labourers.
The Development of the Rubber Market in Pre-World War II Singapore
Authors: Huff W.G.
Published: August 2009

The growth of the pre-World War II rubber industry in British Malaya is, in contrast to the staple industries of many less-developed countries, exceptionally well-researched. P.T. Bauer and J.H. Drabble have written seminally on the rubber industry, while a number of others, including C. Barlow, have made important contributions. Yet an outstanding feature of the British Malayan industry remains relatively overlooked: the development of the Singapore rubber market.
Prostitution and the Politics of Venereal Disease: Singapore, 1870–98
Authors: Warren James Francis
Published: August 2009

Prostitution in Singapore was linked to economic factors in rural China and Japan. Congenital poverty, weak family economies, and rising economic expectations were all part of a set of prevailing conditions that created a vast source of supply of Chinese and Japanese women and young girls for international traffic. Life in both countries was exceptionally difficult in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although China had considerable wealth, most lived a hand to mouth existence in the over-populated rural areas. Poverty in the villages and outlying districts of southeastern China, where many agrarian families lived on the edge of starvation, not only drove women and girls out of the countryside into the ports but acted as a lever on parents already bowed under financial strain. Privation was a handicap which struck hardest at the daughters of peasants and rural labourers. Unable to feed the many mouths they were responsible for, and suffering from chronic economic insecurity, parents sold their daughters to would be benefactors, totally unaware of the future fate in store for so many of them who were taken to Singapore. Poverty and desperate hungry Chinese families were root causes of brothel prostitution in Singapore at the end of the nineteenth century.
The “Chinese Confucian” and the “Chinese Buddhist” in British Burma, 1881–1947
Authors: Hooker M.B.
Published: August 2009

By the late nineteenth century British control over Burma had been firmly established and by 1893 a comprehensive legal system for its population put in place. The guiding principle of the judicial and legislative system was that each racial or religious group had the right to its own law in matters of religion and custom. Thus, Burmese “Buddhist law” for the Burmese, “Mohammadan law” for Muslims and Hindu law for the Hindus. In addition, the customary laws of other ethnic groups were also recognized.
The Control of “Sacred” Space: Conflicts Over the Chinese Burial Grounds in Colonial Singapore, 1880–1930
Authors: Yeoh Brenda S.A.
Published: August 2009

In traditional societies, a sense of the “sacred” is often inherent in the form of the urban built-environment, which, in turn, cannot be understood apart from the “mythical-magical concern with place”. According to Mircea Eliade, the act of settlement itself is perceived as a re-enactment of the mythical creation of the world. Ancient Indian cities were designed according to a mandala replicating a cosmic image of the laws governing the universe and, similarly, Chinese cities were conceived as “cosmo-magical symbols” of the universe. These cities were laid out as terrestrial images of the macrocosmos, distinct spaces sacralized for habitation within a continuum of profane space.
The Dialectics of Village and State in Modern Thailand
Authors: Kemp Jeremy
Published: August 2009

In selecting the “village community” as focus for an analysis of the social organization of relations between agents of the state and its subjects I bridge two distinct and sometimes contradictory themes. The first is the manner in which social connections within the countryside and with the state are handled in practice. The second is the way the concepts of “community” and, more specifically, “village community” are used to represent and sometimes misrepresent both how these relations are formally structured and what actually happens. Evaluation of these concepts is thus an important and necessary part of any interpretation of rural society and culture. Perceptions of community underlie and affect not only academic analyses but the actions and attitudes of officialdom and those experts who are involved with the administration and development of the countryside. They are intrinsically connected with matters of policy and administration, and the village — as we now observe it — is a consequent outcome.
The Structure of Cities in Southeast Asia, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
Authors: Reid Anthony
Published: August 2009

Maritime Southeast Asia is one of those parts of the world destined by geography to be an international marketplace. Not only is it the largest of the world's archipelagos, penetrated throughout by sea and river, it also lies athwart one of the major international trading routes, between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean on the one hand and China and Japan on the other. These factors have always given to maritime Southeast Asia a role akin to the Mediterranean world, in which sea-borne trade was the vital factor in urban growth and in political power. In addition, however, Southeast Asia was the principal source of the items in greatest demand in the world's markets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and camphor.
The Southeast Asian Ship: An Historical Approach
Authors: Manguin Pierre-Yves
Published: August 2009

This article will concentrate on one aspect of a major question in Southeast Asian maritime history: an attempt will be made to describe and determine the origins of the type of ship that was the main form of transport for the trade of the maritime kingdoms of the western half of Southeast Asia until the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Surprisingly enough — if the general importance of the commercial network of maritime Southeast Asia is considered — such a study has not yet been attempted. The very few authors dealing with the economic history of the region are usually content to dismiss the problem by saying that the ships are locally called “junks”, and that their tonnage is small. (The reader is thus left with the idea that Chinese ships were being used, since the word “junk” has long been applied almost exclusively to this very specific type of ship.) The general conclusion of this study is that Southeast Asian maritime powers built, owned, and operated ocean-going ships of respectable size as early as the first few centuries of the first millennium A.D. Needless to say, this has a considerable historical significance (which will not be examined here).
The Grooming of an Elite: Malay Administrators in the Federated Malay States, 1903–1941
Authors: Wah Yeo Kim
Published: August 2009

Between 1874 and 1888, British colonial rule was imposed on the Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang later collectively called the Federated Malay States (FMS). Based on the various Anglo-Malay treaties, which maintained the fiction that the British Resident was an adviser to the Malay ruler, the British established a form of administration generally known as a system of indirect rule. In this new order, the Malay rulers retained their constitutional and ceremonial role, while the exercise of executive power was held firmly in British hands. In the rush for establishing a modern administration and accelerating economic development late in the nineteenth century, hardly any attention was paid to training Malays to share executive power with British officials at the higher level of government or to compete effectively with Indians, Eurasians, and Chinese for subordinate appointments. This sin of omission began to stir the British conscience at the turn of the century and, for the next four decades, the British pursued a policy of actively promoting Malay employment in the government. This paper discusses the central component of this policy, namely, the training, recruitment, and development of Malay administrators in the FMS.
French Studies on the Chinese in Indochina: A Bibliographical Survey
Authors: Clammer John R.
Published: August 2009

It is of some interest for the scholar of Southeast Asian subjects to note the way in which the different interests and cultural biases of the former colonial powers in the region have eventuated in the production of quite distinct historical and sociological literatures relating to their respective territorial possessions. Nowhere better than in the literature on the overseas Chinese is this point illustrated. The literature in English on the Chinese in Southeast Asia (and especially that on what is now Malaysia) is extensive, and a significant number of well-known English-speaking scholars have made their reputations in this field — one thinks of V. Purcell and M. Freedman on Malaysia and Singapore, W.E. Willmott on Cambodia (Kampuchea), William G. Skinner on Thailand and Indonesia, D.E. Willmott on Indonesia, Edgar Wickberg on the Philippines, Jacques Amyot on the Philippines and Thailand, C.P. Fitzgerald, Wang Gungwu, and Lea E. Williams on the region as a whole, and a growing number of other and often younger scholars who have turned their attention to this perennially rich and stimulating field of study. But when one turns to the field of French scholarship, it is intriguing to find that the situation is considerably different — one searches in vain for a major Francophone scholar who has devoted his attention to the Chinese in the former French colonial possessions in Indochina — Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Siamese State Trade and the Chinese Go-between, 1767–1855
Authors: Cushman J. W.
Published: August 2009

Western accounts from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries abound with descriptions which portray the king of Siam and the Siamese nobility as the foremost merchants in their land. According to these accounts, rulers monopolized the foreign trade to and from their kingdom, much to the detriment of Western mèrchants attempting to gain an economic foothold. Captain Henry Burney, while negotiating a commercial treaty between Great Britain and Siam in the 1820s, noted that “the Siamese Government have no idea of what is called ‘a free and unrestricted trade’….” British commercial interests sought, moreover, the removal of all these restrictions, but found “the jealousy and mistrust which the Siamese entertain towards Europeans” a major stumbling block.
Some Aspects of Chinese Religious Practices and Customs in Singapore and Malaysia
Authors: Sakai Tadao
Published: August 2009

This paper is a summary of my recent studies on the Taoist creed and common Chinese religious beliefs, in particular the religious customs of poeh (the practice of seeking divination) and the worship of the local god of the soil. While a number of papers have been published by scholars from the Singapore-Malaysia region, their findings have been somewhat limited in scope because they were confined to the Southeast Asian context. My study will be broader in scope. It will cover the relationship between the Chinese culture of China itself and that of Southeast Asia. In other words, this paper will give (1) a comparison between the cultural styles of North China, South, and Central China, (2) a study of Chinese culture in Southeast Asia viewed as an extension of the culture of South China, especially the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung, and (3) a summary of my research on the conflict between Chinese culture in China on the one hand and that of the Singapore-Malaysia region on the other.
A Demographic Profile of the Chinese in Singapore
Authors: Neville Warwick
Published: August 2009

This paper attempts to appraise just one facet of the Chinese community in Singapore — its demographic character and the degree to which this is distinctive within the broader setting of Singapore society at large. The information available as the basis for such an analysis is limited and more definitive statements on trends and differences will be possible as the statistics compiled from the 1980 census become available.

Important changes are occurring within the Chinese community which have considerable significance for the republic but for which there is no direct basis of comparison with other ethnic communities. These considerations have not been examined here but include the changing behaviour in matters of kinship, associations and societies, marriage, religion, and similar elements central to the Chinese community. Perhaps the most significant of these currently is the issue of language and the active promotion by government of Mandarin not only as the official Chinese language but as a substitute for dialects in circumstances where, until now, they have been dominant. Although surveys of language use have been carried out recently, these have been too small and too specialized to provide a basis for general conclusions, and again it is to be hoped that the 1980 census data will provide an updated benchmark for this parameter comparable to that of earlier censuses.
The Origins of Confucianism as an Organized Religion in Java, 1900–1923
Authors: Coppel Charles A.
Published: August 2009

Singularly little scholarly work has been devoted to the religious life of the Chinese of Southeast Asia. This is particularly true of the Indonesian Chinese. The only major work on Chinese religion in Indonesia to appear in decades is Les Chinois de Jakarta: Temples et Vie Collective. The unique and astonishing transformation of Confucianism into an organized religion as practised today under the auspices of MATAKIN (Majelis Tinggi Agama Khonghucu Indonesia — the Supreme Council for the Confucian Religion in Indonesia) has so far only been discussed in two short essays.
The Khaw Group: Chinese Business in Early Twentieth-century Penang
Authors: Cushman J. W.
Published: August 2009

Khaw Sim Bee's premature death in 1913 at the hands of an assasin, allegedly torn by jealousy over Sim Bee's advances towards his wife, marked the end of an era in the family politics of peninsular Siam. Sim Bee was the youngest son of Khaw Soo Cheang (1797–1882), a Hokkien immigrant who rose to the governorship of Ranong and founded the Khaw dynasty in Siam. Through his position as High Commissioner of Monthon Phuket, Sim Bee came to dominate the political and commercial life of the region. The man who King Vajiravudh ranked “as a personal friend who will be sincerely mourned by me as a personal loss” headed a family that was equalled by few others in the kingdom.
The Kingdom of Kampuchea, March–October 1945: Japanese–sponsored Independence in Cambodia in World War II
Authors: Chandler David P.
Published: August 2009

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.
The Sickle and the Cross: Christians and Communists in Bali, Flores, Sumba and Timor, 1965–67
Authors: Webb R. A. F. Paul
Published: August 2009

Over the years much has been written about the so-called attempted Communist coup in Indonesia in 1965. Many of the horrors depicted have concerned Balinese or abangan, nominal Muslims in Central and East Java, but little if anything has been written about the Catholic and Protestant inhabitants of those regions outside Java during the period 1965 and following, and how they coped with Communist activity in their districts. Hitherto there has been little said concerning the Christians' attitude towards the Partai Kommunis Indonesia (PKI) — the Indonesian Communist Party — and few reasons given for some Christians becoming members of this political party. This paper is written to shed a little light on these questions and to analyse the reasons why in more than a few districts of the eastern islands the Communist Party was by no means seen by some Christians as the archetypal enemy of Christianity. This article does not, on the other hand seek to discuss the attempted coup in detail, nor specially reasons for its occurrence or its ultimate failure. Rather it intends to describe how Communism also reacted in the face of Christianity in the islands of Bali, Flores, Sumba and Timor, and how in a few cases, each flavoured, coloured and influenced the other.
An Enclosure in the Garden of Love
Authors: Wessing Robert
Published: August 2009

In a recent article I looked at the Gunongan (Plate 1) in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in the context of both the stories surrounding this structure and its symbolism. Space did not permit an analysis of a second structure, the kandang (enclosure) that stands slightly to the north of the Gunongan. In this paper therefore I will take a closer look at the kandang and some of the stories surrounding it.
The Chinese Resistance Movement in the Philippines During the Japanese Occupation
Authors: Yuk-Wai Li
Published: August 2009

The Chinese community in the Philippines before the outbreak of the Pacific War was relatively small and homogeneous in comparison with those in other Southeast Asian countries. When the Japanese occupied the Philippine islands, they found a Chinese community of less than one per cent of the total population. This small alien group did not appear to be a serious threat to the Japanese authorities. However, during the three and a half years of Japanese occupation, the Chinese maintained several guerrilla groups, which formed part of the resistance movement in the Philippines.
Student Politics in University of Malaya, 1949–51
Authors: Wah Yeo Kim
Published: August 2009

On the Foundation Day of the University of Malaya on 8 October 1949, Malcolm MacDonald, the Chancellor of the new university and British Commissioner-General in Southeast Asia, proudly declared that the university was founded “at a timely and auspicious moment” when “we are witnessing in Malaya the birth of a nation”. MacDonald rested his inspiring theme on the British postwar policy of preparing Malaya for eventual self-government within the British Commonwealth. Under this policy Singapore was constituted a distinct crown colony with a legislature in which only six of the twenty-two members were popularly elected, whereas the other Settlements and the Malay States were merged into the Malayan Union which had fully nominated federal and state legislatures. It seems clear from the postwar political reorganization that the British policy-makers had intended to take Malaya slowly, stage by stage, to self-government and eventual independence.
The Datuk Kong Spirit Cult Movement in Penang: Being and Belonging in Multi-Ethnic Malaysia
Authors: Tong Cheu Hock
Published: August 2009

This paper attempts to survey the development of a Malaysian Sino-Malay spirit cult, known as Nadugong in Chinese, or Datuk Keramat in Malay. The development of this cult shows that Malaysian Chinese are increasingly aware of their ethnic identity vis-à-vis the Malay identity, whereby local-born Chinese seek to adapt themselves to the patterns of multi-ethnic cultures while at the same time trying very hard to maintain their ethnic boundaries through the organization of their own socio-cultural institutions.

The outcome of this adaptive response may be seen in what is known as localization — a multilateral acculturative rather than a unilateral assimilative process. This process renders the existing syncretized elements more complex and has served as an internal defence-mechanism against, rather than as an unconditional submission to, the on-going proselytizing ideologies of “Malay nationalism” and “Malay national-culturism” based on the parameters of Malay culture, Malay language, Islam, and Malay esthetic values.
Archaeology and Early Chinese Glass Trade in Southeast Asia
Authors: Miksic John N. , Yap C.T. , Younan Hua
Published: August 2009

When trade between China and Southeast Asia blossomed between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, Chinese traders began to form overseas Chinese communities. Their presence had significant effects on the region, including the formation of new urban settlements and the introduction of new lifestyles in which imported items played an important part, not only among the elite, but among many hinterland groups who probably never saw a Chinese trader but rapidly integrated Chinese products into their displays of status.
Beyond Inevitability: The Opening of Philippine Provincial Ports in 1855
Authors: Aguilar Filomeno V.
Published: August 2009

The opening of Philippine provincial ports to the world market in 1855 served to solidify the direct incorporation of regions outside Manila into the international capitalist system. This article reconstructs the events surrounding this important episode by situating it in the context of global capitalist dynamics and Spanish imperial decay, and the conjuncture in which local interest groups manoeuvred to intervene in the colonial state processes of the Spanish Philippines. In line with Philip Abrams' vision of history as the nexus of structure and action, the 1855 ports policy is reinterpreted as issuing from the articulation of macro and micro spheres, a perspective which allows for contingency in so far as the possibilities of human actors confronting structured totalities are multiple yet theoretically bounded. By eschewing the overdetermined view of socioeconomic change and by accounting for human agency in history, this article serves as a case study to overcome the notion of inexorability that, as David Booth rightly points out, has been frequently imputed to the epoch of global capitalist change.
The Demography of Ambon in the Seventeenth Century: Evidence from Colonial Proto-Censuses
Authors: Knaap Gerrit
Published: August 2009

In modern Indonesia the demographic study of the population has become a major field of academic interest. The reason is obvious: the endeavour to develop the nation's economy in order to give every citizen a proper standard of living and to guarantee this in the future, bears a strong relation to the size of the population and the desire to stem the tide of excessive population growth. Demographic studies are only recent and the same is true for the statistical material with which these studies work: censuses at a national level and regular registrations of births, marriages and deaths at the basic local level. In Indonesia the first, still imperfect, censuses date from the final decades of the nineteenth century, while regular registration of births, deaths and marriages for the indigenous population has only taken place from the 1930s onwards.
The Trumpet Shall Sound for Rich Peasants: Kasan Mukmin's Uprising in Gedangan, East Java, 1904
Authors: Fernando M.R.
Published: August 2009

In late May 1904 a small band of people led by a certain Kasan Mukmin, akyaior rural religious teacher, mounted an uprising in the village of Kebonpasar in Gedangan district of Sidoarjo regency, East Java. It was a single incident in a series of protests involving small groups of affluent peasants in Java between 1880 and 1920 which are difficult to explain in terms of the “moral economy” perspective. J.C. Scott has suggested that increasing intrusion of market economic forces into the indigenous economic life in the process of capitalist economic transformation eroded the subsistence margin of peasants instigating them to mount uprisings. This view may well explain some major peasant uprisings in Southeast Asia, but as Mukmin's uprising illustrates, numerous small rural protests in Java after 1880 occurred in relatively prosperous areas and involved affluent peasants. They were not caused by violation of peasants' perception of moral economy.
Religious Change and Historical Reflection in Anakalang, West Sumba, Indonesia
Authors: Keane Webb
Published: August 2009

Religious conversion juxtaposes new beliefs and practices with previous ones, the relationship between the old and new often put in terms of substitution, superimposition, renaming, or rejection. Conversion in Anakalang, a district of West Sumba in the Indonesian Province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, differs from many of the situations of recent religious change in Southeast Asia in that it is not motivated primarily by the demands of creating a distinctive ethnic identity, differentiating status groups within a single society, or compelling personal visions. This paper focuses on some of the ramifications that religious change has for Anakalangese understandings of history and tradition. In contrast to many students of ethnicity and religion elsewhere in Southeast Asia, I would argue that in Sumba, at the present historical moment, identity formation and boundary maintenance do not serve as major motives and are not sufficient explanations for local historical responses to religious change. The need for an explicit “identity” may not be given requiring no further explanation, for it arises under specific historical and political circumstances.
“Traditional Music Weeps” and Other Themes in the Discourse on Music, Dance and Theatre of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand
Authors: Kartomi Margaret J.
Published: August 2009

One of the most remarkable features of the past twenty years of scholarship on the Southeast Asian performing arts has been the sparking off of ideas between Southeast Asian-born scholars, whether trained in Southeast Asian universities or overseas, and Western scholars of the Southeast arts who live in North America, Australia, Europe, Japan and elsewhere. In colonial Indonesia (until 1945) and Malaysia (until 1957), research agendas of Dutch and British scholars respectively had complied with the social, economic and political priorities of the colonial powers and associated local court-centred artistic interests, though not always consciously. In Thailand, which was the only country in the region not to be colonized by a European power, Thai scholars had been actively researching their own court performing arts in the late colonial era but were nevertheless influenced by the colonial ethos of the region. In the past twenty years or so, the developing dialogue and contradictions between Southeast Asian and foreign scholars, each with their own partly distinctive assumptions and methodologies based on the priorities of their respective traditions and governments, have resulted in a healthy divergence, convergence, and cross-fertilization of ideas.