History & Culture & Politics (GR)

Sea nomads have been part of the economic and political landscape of Southeast Asia for millennia. They have played many roles over the longue-durEe: in certain periods proving central to the ability of land-based polities to generate wealth, by sourcing valuable maritime commodities, facilitating trade, forming a naval force to...

The Roots of Resilienceexamines governance from the ground up in the world's two most enduring electoral authoritarian or "hybrid" regimes―Singapore and Malaysia―where politically liberal and authoritarian features are blended to evade substantive democracy. Although skewed elections, curbed civil liberties, and a dose of coercion help sustain these regimes, selectively structured...

For the past century and a half, extensive looting and illicit trafficking of Southeast Asia's cultural heritage have scattered art objects from the region to museums and private collections around the world. Today, however, power relations are shifting, a new awareness is growing, and new questions are emerging about the...

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is one of the most successful agreements ever created to govern the global commons. If it is thought of as a constitution for the oceans, then Satya Nandan should be considered one of the founders, one of the key...

After independence in 1957, the Malay monarchy was compelled to embrace Westminster-style constitutional monarchy, under which the role of the monarch is symbolic and affairs of the nation are run by Parliament and the executive branch. Palace, Political Party and Power: A Story of the Socio-Political Development of Malay Kingship,...

Information on the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore is sparse, and Japanese-language materials are particularly difficult to find because the Japanese military systematically destroyed war-related documents when the war ended. The contributors to this volume participated in a Forum that spent four years locating surviving materials relating to the...

A native of Bruges (now part of Belgium), Jacques de Coutre was a gem trader who spent nearly a decade in Southeast Asia in the early 17th century. In addition to a substantial autobiography written in Spanish and preserved in the National Library of Spain in Madrid, he wrote a...

How did the Komodo dragon influence Hollywood? What do Wanted posters reveal about the Wild Wild East? Was the hapless explorer a martyr to science or a gaseous windbag? Why were colonial officials secret pill poppers? Did bicycles really promote Womens Lib? Who went looking for love in all the...

Jacob Gotfried Haafner (1754-1809) was a writer of great talent, and an early dissenting voice from within the colonial enterprise. Haafner was orphaned in the Dutch East Indies, and lived in South Africa, Sri Lanka, India and Mauritius for more than 20 years. On his return to Europe he transformed...

As someone who has studied history for much of my life, I have found the past fascinating. But it has always been some grand and even intimidating universe that I wanted to unpick and explain to myself. Wang Gungwu is one of Asia’s most important public intellectuals. He is best-known...

First published in 1977, C. M. Turnbull's one-volume history of Singapore has been an essential resource for more than forty years. Turnbull's History provides a solid foundation for understanding of the two-hundred-year trajectory of Singapore from colonial outpost to world city. While many modern studies focus on current affairs or...

In the early twentieth century, social banditry was endemic in the countryside near the border between the northern Malaysian state of Kedah and Siam, and some outlaws became local heroes. Cheah Boon Khengs account of peasant banditry and the society where it flourished draws on colonial records, literary sources and...

What happens when a country splits apart? Forty-five years ago, Singapore separated from Malaysia. Since then, the two countries have developed along their own paths. Malaysia has given preference to the Malay Muslim majority - the bumiputera, or sons of the soil. Singapore, meanwhile, has tried to build a meritocracy...

Guns of February shows the Fall of Singapore and Japans 1941 military campaign in Malaya through the eyes of Japanese soldiers who took part, based on interviews, memoirs, war diaries, and other Japanese-language sources. Although an enormous number of books have been published on Japans wartime advance into Southeast Asia,...

Art in public spaces is increasingly viewed from the perspective of placemaking, a holistic approach which engages the diverse functions of a space, and attends closely to spaces in everyday life. As a professional practice it integrates landscape architecture, urban planning and cultural management. This book documents a major public...

The golden age of Malay film in the 1950s and 1960s was the product of a musical and cultural cosmopolitanism in the service of a nation-making process based on ideas of Malay ethnonationalism, initially fluid, increasingly homogenised over time. The commercial films of the period, and in particular their film...

People who call themselves Malay - Melayu - are found in many countries, united by a notional shared identity but divided by political boundaries, divergent histories, variant dialects and peculiarities of local experience. While the term Malay is widely used and readily understood in Southeast Asia, it remains elusive and...

In postcolonial Singapore and Malaysia, Pentecostal megachurches dominate the Christian landscape, but the "big four" Protestant churches-Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Brethren-remain religions of heritage for many. Sixty Malaysian and nineteen Singaporean assemblies identify themselves as Christian Brethren, and most trace their roots to independent local churches formed in Penang and...

How should colonial film archives be read? How can historians and ethnographers use colonial film as a complement to conventional written sources? Sandeep Ray uses the case of Dutch colonial film in Indonesia to show how a critically-, historically- and cinematically-informed reading of colonial film in the archive can be...

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is a miracle. Why?In an era of growing cultural pessimism, many thoughtful individuals believe that different civilisations-especially Islam and the West-cannot live together in peace. The ten countries of ASEAN provide a thriving counter-example of civilizational co-existence. Here 625m people live together in peace....