Between 1949 and 1951, the Communities Liaison Committee (CLC), an unofficial body comprising leaders from the main Malayan ethnic communities, served as a prototype for elite intercommunal conflict resolution during a very challenging period amid an ongoing communist insurgency. Drawing upon previously inaccessible primary sources, this article reassesses the CLC's work towards resolving divisive issues such as Malay economic backwardness, federal citizenship, national identity, education and language in Malaya. This article argues that the CLC played a significantly bigger role than previously recognised and influenced government policy considerably. Equally importantly, it entrenched the concept of consociationalism, which was to shape the Malayan political landscape long thereafter.

The spilling of blood in modern political protest is an exceptional event. This article discusses the deployment of blood as a means of struggle by the members of an extra-parliamentary movement, known as the ‘red shirts’, in March 2010, in the course of their prolonged attempt to topple the government of the Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. Two contesting discourses of blood are discussed: the symbolic discourse of blood as a self-sacrificial act deployed by the protesters to curse their enemies, and the medical counter-discourse deployed by the authorities, in an effort to neutralise the protesters' act. Several issues raised by the blood-spilling act are examined: its perceived appropriateness, its ritual roots and its disputed effectiveness as a curse. In conclusion, it is suggested that the blood ritual constitutes a reflective move to counter the prevailing ‘regime of images’ in Thai society.

Karen believe they are like orphans without a king and leader; royalty often appear in their myths, legends and prophecies. Buddhist Karen await the next Buddha, Ariya Metteya — preceded by a righteous Karen leader — who shall cleanse the world. This paper explores the Karen imaginary and notions of royalty as preconditions for a new era governed by Buddhist ethics that will bring peace and prosperity. This imaginary combines religion and politics in a millenarian model of the world as seen from the margins of traditional kingdoms and modern nation-states — what James Scott has termed ‘non-state spaces’. The Karen oscillate between defensive and offensive strategies, as shown in several examples. Is this imaginary a premodern phenomenon typical of marginalised minorities or perhaps also part of a modern, global imaginary of a better future? The concept of morally enchanted leadership is discussed in relation to states, nations and globalisation.

‘Mas malupit ang mga Koreano kaysa mga Hapon’ is a rumour about Koreans in Second World War Philippines that has persisted to this day. A comparative, quantitative statement, it is roughly translated as ‘The Koreans committed more atrocities than the Japanese in Second World War Philippines’. This is a half-true memory: true, there were Koreans in the Philippines; false, they could not have committed more atrocities than the Japanese because there were very few of them, as archival evidence discussed in this article proves. If only the Koreans and their role in the war were properly discussed in Philippine textbooks, this rumour would not have persisted to this day.

Anti-Chinese riots broke out in Rangoon on 26 June 1967. The riots, which resulted from Chinese students' defiance of the Burmese government's ban on wearing Mao badges in school, led to the deterioration of Sino–Burmese relations, symbolised by the cessation of ‘Pauk Phaw’ ties and the subsequent shift in China's foreign policy which included open intervention in Burma's civil war. The riots contributed to estranged relations between Beijing and Rangoon throughout the 1970s and 1980s despite the normalisation of bilateral ties in 1970. While the roots of the Rangoon riots lay in Burma's political economy and tensions within the local Chinese community in the context of Cold War international relations, Beijing bore primary responsibility, however, due to its export of the Cultural Revolution.