South East Asia (GR)

This book presents a clear and concise introduction to 100 common herbs of the region, highlighting their fascinating uses in traditional medicine, cooking, aromatherapy and fragrances. It also gives a brief history and background to these herbs, as well as notes on the development of modern drug technology, and a...

People within the Malay world hold strong but diverse opinions about the meaning of the word Melayu, which can be loosely translated as Malayness. Questions of whether the Filipinos are properly called ""Malay"", or the Mon-Khmer speaking Orang Asli in Malaysia, can generate heated debates. So too can the question...

In what is today Malaysia, the British established Georgetown on Penang Island in 1786, and encouraged Chinese merchants and labourers to migrate to this vibrant trading port. In the multicultural urban settlement that developed, the Chinese immigrants organized their social life through community temples like the Guanyin Temple (Kong Hok...

This compelling book explores the dilemma faced by Malaysian Tamils as they confront the moment when the plantation system where they have lived and worked for generations finally collapses. The old, long-term community-based model of rubber plantation production introduced by British and French companies in colonial Malaya has been replaced...

The Islamic kingdom of Aceh was ruled by queens for half of the 17th century. Was female rule an aberration? Unnatural? A violation of nature, comparable to hens instead of roosters crowing at dawn? Indigenous texts and European sources offer different evaluations. Drawing on both sets of sources, this book...

Histories, Cultures, Identities deals with two central questions relating to the Chinese community in Malaysia. First, how has being Chinese shaped the responses of this community to political, economic and social developments in the country? And second, how have their experiences in Malaysia affected the way in which immigrants from...

China and India have always been seperated not only by the Himalayas, but also by the impenetrable jungle and remote areas that once stretched across Burma. Now this last great frontier will likely vanish - forests cut down, dirt roads replaced by superhighways, insurgencies ended - leaving China and India...

The Genealogy of Kings (Malay: Sulalat al-Salatin or Sejarah Melayu), is a literary work that gives a romanticised history of the origin, evolution and demise of the great Malay maritime empire, the Malacca Sultanate. The work which was composed sometime between 15th and 16th centuries, is considered one of the...

A constant stream of impoverished women and girls have been, and are being, enslaved and abused in the Asia Pacific region. Slavery is not a historical issue - its happening today. History is repeating itself. Through Sylvia Yu Friedmans work in journalism, counter-trafficking and philanthropy, she has had rare and...

An engrossing history of ancient Chinese philosophy and culture from an eminent Cambridge expert. We are often told that the twenty-first century is bound to become Chinas century. Never before has Chinese culture been so physically, digitally, economically or aesthetically present in everyday Western life. But how much do we...

Born in the Year of the Fire Tiger, Ann Wee moved to Singapore in 1950 to marry into a Singaporean Chinese family, entering into a new world of cultural expectations and domestic rituals. She went on to become a pioneer in Singapore's fledging social welfare department and is often described...

In Unsettling Absences, Eric Thompson argues that urbanism is a cultural force unbound from the city and is a pervasive presence in the Malaysian countryside. Transported to rural communities, urbanism has motivated migration, transformed the social lives of rural inhabitants, and created a deep ambivalence about personal identity. This has...

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...

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...