History & Culture & Politics (GR)

Heidi Munan – the honorary curator of beads at the Sarawak Museum – displays the beauty, variety and mystique of the beads and bead culture found in the worlds third-largest island. Coverage of this culturally significant subject transcends the island’s political boundaries to include the Malaysian states of Sabah and...

Jim Thompson was already a legend for the James H.W. Thompson Silk Company that he founded, when he disappeared in the Cameron highlands in Malaysia in 1967. Explores the double legend of Thompson’s silk company and the unsolved case.” -- The New Yorker

Malaysia’s longest-serving and most outspoken prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad has been politically active for more than 60 years. As a young doctor he agitated for independence from the British and promoted the rights of the Malays, and his long political career culminated in his 22-year term as prime minister...

Marina Mahathir continues to make her mark as a community leader, writer and outspoken commentator on social and political affairs. She is also the eldest child of Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister. Marina has for more than 20 years written an insightful and provocative column which is published fortnightly in The...

As Singapore crossed into the 21st century, the education system had to evolve, moving in tandem with the changing needs of society, shifting attitudes, new mindsets and focus. With technological advancements, school infrastructure has been enhanced and redeveloped. Although many of our pre-independence schools are no more, the lived experiences...

Gedung Kuning or the Yellow Mansion was home to the family of Haji Yusoff 'Tali Pinggang' from 1912 to 1999. It was acquired by the Singapore government in August 1999 under the Land Acquisition Act. What used to house six families is now preserved as a historic building under the...

What if our civilization were to collapse? Not many centuries into the future, but in our own lifetimes? Most people recognize that we face huge challenges today, from climate change and its potentially catastrophic consequences to a plethora of socio-political problems, but we find it hard to face up to...

Why is it so difficult to control, or fix, pollution? How can we justify harvesting the world's natural resources at unsustainable rates, even though these activities cause known harm to both people and ecosystems? Scientific knowledge and technological advances alone cannot tackle these environmental challenges; they also involve difficult political...

A revelatory account of early Islam's great diversity by the world's leading scholar of early Qur'anic manuscripts "There is no one better placed than Francois Deroche to write the history-and tell the story-of how the Quran went from words uttered by Muhammad to inviolable canonical scripture. This is a meticulous,...

This book deconstructs a popular legend concerning a 1915 uprising against the British rule led by To' Janggut, or ""Old Longbeard"", in the Malay state of Kelantan. The story of To' Janggut's rebellion is recounted in folk tales, newspaper reports and scholarly publications, and the author uses previously classified official...

The Towns of Malaya examines the history, development, planning and architecture of the major towns of Peninsular Malaysia. The book is divided into chapters each focusing on different types of Malayan towns, including royal towns, ports, mining towns and agricultural towns. In total more than 25 towns are covered in...

An account of the inter-racial conflicts between Malays and Chinese during the final stages and the aftermath of the Japanese occupation. Based on extensive archival research in Malaysia, Great Britain, Japan and the United States, Red Star Over Malaya provides a riveting account of the way the Japanese occupation reshaped...

This work traces the early rise and subsequent decline of politically effective student activism in Malaysia. During the 1970s, the state embarked on a project of "intellectual containment" that both suppressed ongoing mobilization of university students

Despite the existence of about a thousand ethnolinguistic groups in Southeast Asia, very few historians of the region have engaged the complex issue of ethnicity. Leaves of the Same Tree illustrates how historians can use it both as an analytical tool and as a subject of analysis to add further...

A special edition of the international bestseller that is "sumptuously illustrated. . . . Perfect for reading to alert and curious children, but it's even better as a secret pleasure, read alone, with no children in sight." (Philip Kennicott, Washington Post) E. H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World,...

Winner of the 2021 Lionel Gelber Prize: A provocative look at how today's trade conflicts are caused by governments promoting the interests of elites at the expense of workers "The authors weave a complex tapestry of monetary, fiscal and social policies through history and offer opinions about what went right...

This is the story of the money used from pre-colonial times to the present day on the island we know as Singapore. This signature book describes the multiplicity of currencies that have been used in and around the island over the centuries, and how these culminate in the Singapore dollar...

This book is about the territorial dispute between Malaysia and Singapore over Pedra Branca, a small but strategically located island near the entrance to the Straits of Malacca. It describes how the two countries managed the dispute over three decades until final resolution by the International Court of Justice in...

“Tak kenal maka tak cinta.” You cannot love what you do not know. Many of us have tasted Malay kuih and know how they look like, but do we know the stories behind the names and origins of the kuih we love to eat? Why is a certain kuih of...

A lively and easy-to-read guide to Southeast Asian history written by one of the world's pre-eminent historians of the area. The first edition of Southeast Asia: An introductory history was published in 1979 and immediately filled a need for travellers and students interested in a tantalisingly different part of the...