History & Culture & Politics (GR)

The People's Action Party (or PAP) of Singapore is among the longest-ruling democratically-elected political parties in the world, in power continuously since Singapore gained self-rule in 1959. Such longevity is the hallmark of an institution that is itself dynamic and responsive. But remarkably, the story of the party as an...

A collection of essays engaging with Buddhism in Thailand and the virtues of distraction and variety within the materialist turn in studies of religion. In Thailand, Buddhism is deeply integrated into national institutions and ideologies, making it tempting to think of Buddhism in Thailand as a textual, institutional, cultural, and...

https://cf.shopee.com.my/file/befe890a02ace0ba8f92e3fa1604724a At the heart of the ongoing armed conflict in southern Thailand is a fundamental agreement about the history of relations between the Patani Malays and the Thai kingdom. While the Thai royalist-nationalist version of history regards Patani as part of that kingdom ""since time immemorial,"" Patani Malay nationalists look...

Books on Southeast Asian nationalist movements make very little - if any - mention of women in their ranks. Biographical studies of politically active women in Southeast Asia are also rare. Women in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements makes a strong case for the significance of womens involvement in nationalist movements...

This stimulating new reading of constructions of ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore is an important contribution to understanding the powerful linkages between ethnicity, identity and nationalism in multi-ethnic Southeast Asia. The narrative of Malay identity devised by Malay nationalists, writers and filmmakers in the late colonial period associated Malayness with...

The British military failure against the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1942 is a well-documented and closely examined episode. But far less attention has been paid to the role of the colonial governor and his staff during this period, an oversight Ronald McCrum corrects with this insightful history. As McCrum...

Japan’s invasion of Burma in 1942 set off the longest retreat in British military history. Along with the fall of Singapore, it marked the beginning of the end of British rule, not only in Burma but also in south and south-east Asia. Britain’s defeat in Burma has been studied in...

This book examines how Chinese family and business networks, focused around activities such as revenue farming, including opium, the rice trade, and pawnbroking, and related legal and labour organization activities, were highly influential in the process of state formation in Malaya. It shows how Chinese family and business networks were...

The "Hikayat Banjar", a seventeenth-century native court chronicle from Southeast Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate." Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo...

In 1931 a book appeared in London with the title A Yellow Sleuth: Being the Autobiography of "Nor Nalla" (Detective-Sergeant Federated Malay States Police). It was met with puzzled enthusiasm, TheStraits Times commenting that the book "presents an interesting problem of distinguishing fact from fiction". The author claimed to be...

Postcolonial literature in Chinese from the Nanyang, literally the South Seas, examines the history of Chinese migration, localization, and interethnic exchange in Southeast Asia, and offers a rich variety of approaches to identity. In Writing the South Seas, Brian Bernards explores why Nanyang encounters, which have been neglected by most...

Writing Singapore is the first comprehensive historical anthology of English-language literary works from Singapore. The volume provides readers in Singapore an easy point of access to compelling narratives and poems that have been forgotten or are now difficult to obtain. For readers outside Singapore, it introduces a neglected but important...

The Nemesis was the first of a generation of iron-clad, steam-powered naval vessels that established British dominance in Asian waters in the 19th century. The worlds first iron warship, the first vessel with truly watertight compartments, and the first iron vessel to round the Cape of Good Hope, Nemesis represented...

Indonesian art entered the global contemporary art world of independent curators, art fairs, and biennales in the 1990s. By the mid-2000s, Indonesian works were well-established on the Asian secondary art market, achieving record-breaking prices at auction houses in Singapore and Hong Kong. This comprehensive overview introduces Indonesian contemporary art in...

An architectural and historical study of Singapore's oldest Teochew Temple. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Teochew-speaking gambier and pepper farmers settled in Singapore. Surrounded by the skyscrapers of Singapore's central business district, Wak Hai Cheng Bio temple traces its history back to the earliest days of the colony....

Behind the statistics of migration are the life stories of millions of migrants and their descendants. The movement of people out of China is one of the largest movements of humanity in modern times, and large numbers of Chinese emigrated to the colony of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia....

The interactions and mutual perceptions of China and Indonesia were a significant element in Asias postcolonial transformation, but as a result of prevailing emphasis on diplomatic and political relations within a Cold War and nation-state framework, their multi-dimensional interrelationship and its complex domestic ramifications have escaped scholarly scrutiny. China and...

The name of Thomas Stamford Raffles continues to be a mark of prestige in Singapore, more than 200 years after he first established a British factory on the island. Not one but two statues of Raffles stand tall in prominent sites in Singapore’s civic and heritage district. Streets and squares...

The portion of the Malay Peninsula where the Thai Buddhist civilization of Thailand gives way to the Malay Muslim civilization of Malaysia is characterized by multiple forms of pluralism. An appreciation of the long history and varied forms of that pluralism opens up fresh and important perspectives on the violent...

The eastern archipelagos of Southeast Asia stretch from Mindanao and Sulu in the north to Bali in the southwest and New Guinea in the southeast. Many of the inhabitants of this area are often described as "people without history," in part because colonial borders long ago cut across shared underlying...