Journal of Southeast Asian Studies articles from March 1997

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies archives from March 1997

Agricultural expansion as a tool of population redistribution in Southeast Asia.
March 1, 1997... Agricultural Expansion Agricultural expansion has been closely linked to the history of mankind or, more specifically, to the history of agriculture. In fact the latter's basic itinerary has been one of nearly constant spatial spread, the...

Constructing a China metaphor: Sukarno's perception of the PRC and Indonesia's political transformation.
March 1, 1997... Sukarno was arguably the single most important politician in determining the trajectory of postcolonial Indonesian history up to 1965. His multifaceted and far-reaching influence upon Indonesia's domestic and foreign politics has been...

Contested time and place: constructions of history in Todo, Manggarai (Western Flores, Indonesia).
March 1, 1997... Constructing history often becomes a contest over time and place. It is not always the facts that are contested, but their representations and interpretations. Recent disputes over how World War II is to be remembered; over whose Holocaust";(1)...

On the contemporary uses of colonial history and the legitimation of political status in archipelagic Southeast Seram.
March 1, 1997... When the independent government of Indonesia succeeded the Dutch East Indies as the sovereign administration of the Moluccas, the graded titles awarded local potentates by the colonial regime were officially abolished and replaced with a uniform...

The frustrations of development: British business and the late colonial state in Malaya, 1945-57.
March 1, 1997... Introduction No less than in tropical Africa, the colonial state in Malaya embarked upon new development paths after 1945. Malaya was in some senses a special case: pre-war she had achieved a level of prosperity, through large injections of...

Endangered identity: Kadazan or Dusun in Sabah (East Malaysia).
March 1, 1997... Language and Identity At the end of 1995 the Malaysian Government agreed that a fifth language could be taught in its schools, after Malay, Chinese and Tamil (long conceded to the three major communities in West Malaysia), and Iban (the...

Free France, the British government and the future of French Indo-China, 1940-45.
March 1, 1997... During the abortive US-Japanese negotiations of 1941, Japan's penetration of Indo-China was a decisive issue in the descent to Pearl Harbour. Yet once America entered the conflict, for the Allies, the federation of French Indo-China quickly...

Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce.
March 1, 1997... BARBARA WATSON ANDAYA University of Hawai'i The first volume of Anthony Reid's Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce appeared in 1988, and the second and concluding volume in 1993. The republication of both volumes by Silkworm Press (Chiang...

The Calendrical Systems of Mainland South-East Asia.
March 1, 1997... Two common errors, widely separated in time, underline the importance to the historian of J.C. Eade's chronological work. The first is the common dating of the inauguration of Siam's capital at Ayudhya in 1350, when it actually occurred on 4...

The Thai Historical Record: A Computer Analysis.
March 1, 1997... Two common errors, widely separated in time, underline the importance to the historian of J.C. Eade's chronological work. The first is the common dating of the inauguration of Siam's capital at Ayudhya in 1350, when it actually occurred on 4...

Democracy and Development in Southeast Asia: The Winds of Change.
March 1, 1997... The issue of the inter-relationship between democracy and development and vice-versa serves as the theoretical point of reference for a generally sound analytical survey of the political systems of all the states of Southeast Asia. To that end,...

The Making of an Islamic Political Discourse in Southeast Asia.
March 1, 1997... As a collection of reinterpretations, historical inquiries and search for further questions, this book contributes significantly to the research agenda for the future study of Islam in Southeast Asia. The overall emphasis on the established link...

Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Pacific War.
March 1, 1997... Drawing on years of research in the Public Record Office and a firm grasp of the large collection of primary sources therein, Tarling presents this analysis of "British diplomacy in Southeast Asia as well as about it" (p. 367), concentrating on...

Southeast Asia in the New World Order: The Political Economy of a Dynamic Region.
March 1, 1997... Few areas in the contemporary post-Cold War era have been as exciting to study as Southeast Asia. Consider recent dramatic milestones: the world's highest economic growth rates (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and now Vietnam);...

Historical Dictionary of Myanmar.
March 1, 1997... This handy volume is a welcome addition to the reference literature on Burma. It is composed of two parts, one the dictionary properly speaking, a kind of short encyclopaedia, and the other, a bibliography. Both are intended primarily for the...

Lords of the Sunset.
March 1, 1997... Maurice Collis is probably best known for his book Siamese White, which concerns the activities of an English adventurer in the Bay of Bengal during the seventeenth century, but he also wrote several volumes of history and autobiography, and a...

Brother Number One. A Political Biography of Pol Pot.
March 1, 1997... The subject dealt with in this book by David P. Chandler is both highly relevant and interesting in view of the political importance of Pol Pot, or Saloth Sat, which is his real name, in Cambodian society during the last 25 years or so. Chandler...

A History of Cambodia, 2nd ed., Updated.
March 1, 1997... Writing a book on the history of a country with a long history is always a challenging task. The present study attempts to cover the history of Cambodia up to the early 1990s and overall the author has succeeded in his ambition to give a...

Ecrivains et expressions litteraires du Cambodge au XXeme siecle.
March 1, 1997... The literature of Cambodia, which has a long history covering a period of thirteen centuries, has been the object of serious research by scholars, notably the French, for a hundred years. Studies both in western and Khmer languages, however,...

Dari Negara Indonesia Timur ke Republik Indonesia Serikat.
March 1, 1997... If we look at the historiography of the Indonesian revolution (1945-50), the writings on the Dutch-created states like the Negara Indonesia Timur (NIT) received the least attention from historians. Attention was predominantly focused upon the...

Indonesia's Experiences under the New Order.
March 1, 1997... The last fifteen years have been characterized by a deep differentiation of the so-called Third World. Global political and economic changes have led to the fact that the term "Third World", as doubtful as it was anyway, has become absolutely...

Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting.
March 1, 1997... Headhunters go on journeys, and this book takes us on a cunningly-woven journey through the many troubling ambiguities of a former headhunting community's imprecisely-remembered past, and their still-celebrated rituals of the present. At the same...

Old Javanese Gold (4th-15th Century): An Archaeometrical Approach.
March 1, 1997... In recent years we have seen an increased interest in Southeast Asian jewellery. This was first evidenced with Susan Rogers' publication Power and Gold (Geneva, 1985), which presented the Barbier-Muller Collection and set it into a cultural...

Dissociated Identities. Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in an Indonesian Society.
March 1, 1997... Having read so much about the Toba Batak in recent years, it is gratifying to find a well-written, thoroughly researched study of the Karo of North Sumatra. Dissociated Identities; Ethnicity, Religion and Class in an Indonesian Society by Rita...

Easy Indonesian Vocabulary: 1001 Essential Words.
March 1, 1997... This is the author's fourth book in Times' "Learn Indonesian" series. The objective of this book is "to help the learners to master an essential Indonesian vocabulary quickly and easily" (p. v). The book contains about 1001 Indonesian phrases...

Sumatraans Sultanat en Koloniale Staat. De Relatie Djambi-Batavia (1830-1907).
March 1, 1997... This work deals with the relationship between the Sumatran sultanate Jambi and the Netherlands Indies' colonial government between 1830 and 1907. The author discusses her topic against the background of theories of imperialism, summarizing her...

The Legacy of Majapahit.
March 1, 1997... This well-illustrated volume is the catalog of an exhibition on the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries CE), jointly organized by Singapore and Indonesia and held at the National Museum of Singapore in 1994-95. The...

Rural Credit Between Subsidy and Market.
March 1, 1997... Schmit's study is a full-scale Ph.D. thesis. Research carried out between 1986 and 1988 analyses changes in Indonesian financial policy from heavy state interference in the economy until 1983/84 to deregulation, during 1983/84 and 1988/89. The...

Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java.
March 1, 1997... The editors of the Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology Series are to be congratulated for having brought out two important books dealing with Javanese gamelan music in 1995: the one presently under review, authored by the Javanese gamelan musician...

Music of Indonesia.
March 1, 1997... The musicology of Indonesia has been the subject of increasing study during the past few years. Given the size and diversity of Indonesia and the richness of Indonesia's musical tradition, however, the surface of Indonesian music has only been...

Le nouvelle frontiere lao-vietnamienne. Les accords de 1977-1990.
March 1, 1997... This study is devoted to the delimitation of the border between Laos and Vietnam and the agreements reached between the two countries during the period 1977-90. It is a timely contribution to the research on borders in Southeast Asia. In view of...

Being Kammu: My Village, My Life.
March 1, 1997... One afternoon about four or five o'clock, Waa?? M?? and I took our rifles and went down to that valley in order to hunt the squirrels or the bears that came to eat the pumpkins. We... walked carefully up towards the valley near Mrs Riam's...

Farewell to Democracy in Sarawak: The Making of a Neo-Colony.
March 1, 1997... This is an unusual book - unusual because the reader is perplexed about the author's intent. On the one hand, the subject is basically about schooling and education; on the other hand, the author deals extensively with Sarawak politics. This...

Pentadbiran Tentera Jepun dan Thai di Terengganu, 1942-1945.
March 1, 1997... The title of this volume must be taken in a narrow sense, for the book deals strictly with administrative details - the organization and utterances of the administrations concerned to the extent that these matters can be known - and has little to...

Datu Bandar: Abang Hj. Mustapha of Sarawak: Some Reflections of His Life and Times.
March 1, 1997... Bob Reece's study of Abang Haji Mustapha furnishes an important contribution to understanding of the modern political history of Sarawak, a constituent state of the Federation of Malaysia since 1963. It also highlights the problem of sources for...

Agents of Apocalypse: Epidemic Disease in the Colonial Philippines.
March 1, 1997... Agents of Apocalypse is a historical study of epidemic disease in the nineteenth-century Philippines. The first part of the book presents a discussion of the factors leading to the rapid growth of epidemics at this time, while the second part...

Nippi baisho gaiko kosho no kenkyu 1949-1956.
March 1, 1997... This is a book about the diplomatic negotiations between Japan and the Philippines from 1949-56 on the issue of reparation arising from the Second World War. In this book, the author describes how the negotiations eventually resulted in an...

Plants and People of the Golden Triangle: Ethnobotany of the Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand.
March 1, 1997... In this book, research botanist Edward Anderson of the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, Arizona, inter alia, identifies and lists the uses of some nine hundred plant species, the most extensive record yet published of plant use by northern...

The Dvaravati Wheels of the Law and the Indianization of South East Asia.
March 1, 1997... This ambitious work admirably achieves two objectives; clearer understanding of historical topics such as Indianization and state formation; and refinement of theoretical questions regarding art's relationship to political development and...

Thailand: Into the Spirit World.
March 1, 1997... It is surely felicitous that a second richly illustrated book on Mainland Southeast Asian popular religion has appeared within the relatively short time span of three years. Marlane Guelden's superbly-produced (and, I think, superior) Thailand:...

Phongswadan Tai-Ahom: Ahom Buranji [Tai-Ahom Chronicles], 2 vols.
March 1, 1997... The Tai-Ahom term buran is cognate with the Standard Thai word boran "ancient". Buranji, then, are "ancient writings". There are Tai-Ahom Buranji chronicles written primarily in a Tai language called Ahom, not spoken for some 200 years, and...

Following Ho Chi Minh. Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel.
March 1, 1997... In his memoirs Bui Tin does not elaborate much on his private life. Instead, the major focus is on his professional life and his perception of Vietnamese politics from 1945 to 1991. The general relevance and importance of the book stems from the...

Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism.
March 1, 1997... This volume results from a workshop which was jointly organized by the Vietnamese Commission on Social Sciences and the Social Sciences Research Council and held in Hanoi in June of 1990. As William Turley and Mark Selden make clear in their...

The Vietnamese War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives.
March 1, 1997... In the fall of 1990 Jayne Werner organized a conference on the Vietnam War at Columbia University. In an attempt to establish a new dialogue among Vietnamese and Americans and among specialists from different fields, she invited two scholars from...