This paper argues that concerns for the government appointment of qazis, officers for the administration of Muslim law, and the greater application of shari'at critically shaped Muslim community formation in later nineteenth century Punjab. Between 1865 and 1885, Punjabi Muslim elites attested the necessity of qazis being appointed by government and Muslim law being administered in the colonial judicial system. With the support of Gottlieb Leitner, registrar of the Punjab University College, Muslim parties used the emergent associations of Punjab civil society, including the Anjuman-i-Punjab (Lahore) and Anjuman-i-Islam (Lahore), to assert the indispensability of religious law. In doing so, they challenged the Anglo-Indian decision to prioritize customary law in the Punjab and advanced the religious group as the basic social unit of Punjab society. In Punjab public spaces, the relevance of Islam was proclaimed, challenging the professed Anglo-Indian distinction between private and public, religious and secular spheres. However, demands for qazi appointment and the administration of shari'at problematize well-rehearsed arguments about the relationships between family, community, state and religion in colonial Punjab. Only through an enquiry into the two decades after 1865 may later political campaigns for the application of shari'at be understood.

Women's involvement in the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) since its establishment in 1930 until they laid down their arms in 1989 contributed much to the strength of the party. Women in the MCP have been presented largely as nurses, cooks, seamstresses, couriers, and wireless/radio operators, but they went through hardship and danger and fought the same battles as the male guerrillas. A few even climbed to the top party posts through hard work, intelligence and personal sacrifice. This paper recovers the role of women in the Malayan communist movement during the Second World War, the Emergency and after by tracing the careers and lives of party heroines / female role models as well as some ordinary cadres. Major questions include the motivations of women who joined the MCP and the challenges they faced in their roles as propagandists, comrades, guerrilla fighters and in the communist villages. This investigation provides more insight into how the revolutionary struggle transformed these Malayan women.

During the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960), the colonial authorities resettled an estimated half a million rural dwellers, mainly Chinese, from the fringe of the jungle, to cut them off from contact with armed members of the Malayan Communist Party. The re-location led to political alienation among many resettled in the nearly 500 New Villages. Winning their support against the insurgency therefore was urgent. At this juncture, foreign missionaries were forced to leave China following the communist takeover in October 1949. Many of these missionaries were Chinese-speaking with medical or teaching experience. The High Commissioner of Malaya, Sir Henry Gurney, and his successor, Sir Gerald Templer, invited these and other missionaries to serve in the New Villages. This paper looks at colonial initiatives and mission response amidst the dynamics of domestic politics and a changing international balance of power in the region.

Christian Filipino legislators in the bicameral US civil administration played a hitherto unacknowledged role in pushing for the colonisation of Mindanao, as part of the Philippines, by proposing a series of Assembly bills (between 1907 to 1913) aimed at establishing migrant farming colonies on Mindanao. This legislative process was fuelled by anger over the unequal power relations between the Filipino-dominated Assembly and the American-dominated Commission, as well as rivalry between resident Christian Filipino leaders versus the American military government, business interests and some Muslim datus in Mindanao itself for control over its land and resources. Focusing on the motives and intentions of the bills' drafters, this study concludes that despite it being a Spanish legacy, the Christian Filipino elite's territorial map — emphasising the integrity of a nation comprising Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao — provided the basis for their claim of Philippine sovereignty over Mindanao.

When the Burmese military junta implemented a repressive economy that nationalised trade and industry during the socialist period (1962–88), a black market economy sprang up and predominated. Despite regime change in 1988 and the subsequent adoption of a market-oriented economy, the underground trade has nevertheless continued and thrived. The Yunnanese Chinese merchants of Burma have played a significant role in the contraband economy over the span of regimes. Based on a non-state-centred perspective, this paper aims to look into the everyday politics of the underground trade conducted by the Yunnanese Chinese moving between Burma, Thailand and Yunnan and analyses the country's politico-economic landscape since 1962.

This article offers an examination of the gendering of the Philippines' Muslim South under American military rule (1899–1913) through discourses of violence against women. It explores the exposition and discussion of cases involving abuse, murder, enslavement, and violence in both official and unofficial reports, which revealed a critical discourse of gender construction for both coloniser and colonised in Moro Province.

The world might have become, for the first time in human history, a majority urban place, but there are clearly important seams of research to mine in the Southeast Asian countryside. These six books amply show why there is a continuing interest in rural areas and agrarian living in the region.

In May 1949 the Chinese Communist Party seized Shanghai. Rather than being elated at the prospect of harnessing the economic power of China's largest city to complete the revolution, the Communists approached it cautiously. How would the Chinese Communist Party set about transforming this free-wheeling port city with a ‘semi-colonial’ past into an orderly and socialist city? How would it balance ideology and pragmatism in reshaping Shanghai? This paper uses the takeover of two British companies as case studies to explore these issues at the ground level. It is argued that the means by which these companies were transformed tell us much about the Party and its state-building policies. When cadres entered foreign companies, their priority was not radical change and anti-imperialism, but rather fostering a sense of stability and unity to avoid disrupting production. Their gradual approach was due in large part to the Party's awareness of its own limited skills, resources and manpower, but also to its leaders and cadres recognizing that before they could remake Shanghai anew they had first to deal with the material and human legacies of the past.