The presence of large, often dissident, minority populations has been one of the most serious problems facing many of the nations which have attained independence since the close of World War II. This paper will examine the minority situation in Burma, where the problem has been of serious proportions, posing a threat to national unity and in some cases resulting in armed insurrection. There are at present an estimated 11,000 insurgents in Burma, most of whom represent ethnic minorities.

The ancient history of the countries of South-East Asia prior to the arrival of Europeans and the capture of Malacca in 1511, began to attract the interest of historians at a much later date than did that of India and China. It was still possible in 1861 for a French historian, a Professor at the Collège de France, to write in the Journal des Savants that, with perhaps the exception of Burma, “the Indian countries situated beyond the Ganges hardly deserve the attention of History”.

The impact of the political unification of Burma and India on the lives of the people living in these two countries has been little studied. Despite the extensive and varied literature available on Burma and on India, for the most; part scholars who have written about either or both of these countries look upon the annexation of Burma to India as an unavoidable accident of history which had relatively little effect on India and only slightly more on Burma. For the Burma historians, the most important aspect of unification was the political changes which occurred under alien rule. Specifically, the political progress toward self-rule in Burma prior to separation is interpreted by them as a by-product of Indian advances. They call attention to the effects of unlimited Indian migration upon the local economy and the rising nationalist movement. The historians who are oriented towards economic and social organization give attention to the role of the immigrant Indians as labourers and money lenders and note their effect upon the changing characteristic of Burma's economy. They also make reference to the different religious and social ideas which were held by Burmese and Indians and the racial conflicts which erupted. While these are significant results of unification, it is not the whole story. There were many less obvious and dramatic effects upon Burmese life, which, when more fully explored and understood may recast the present interpretation of the whole period.

In both versions of the Malay Annals the founder of Singapore is a prince of Indian descent who had been given the throne of Palembang by a chief with the corrupt name of Demang Lebar Daun, and both versions make this chief a descendant of a Raja Shulan. Shulan is generally taken to be a corruption of Chola, but if Demang Lebar Daun were a Chola, it would mean that the Indian dynasty which ruled Palembang (or Śri Vijaya)was installed after 1025, the date of the first Chola raid on that country. In fact Palembang bore the Indian name of Sri Vijaya and had rulers with Sanskrit titles as early as the time of the Buddhist monk I-tsing, who stayed there for six months in 671 A.D. to study Sanskrit. Demang Lebar Daun, whatever his correct name, must have been an aboriginal chief who welcomed Indian rule and Indian trade.

No international concern has been as important to Burma as her relations with China. Kuomintang China had encouraged the Burmese nationalists, had sponsored Burma's entry into the UN but had also exhibited (in various published maps and otherwise) traditional Chinese expansionist tendencies toward Burma and mainland Southeast Asia. Most of all, after 1950, Kuomintang China endangered Burma's relation with Communist China by her active, irresponsible support for her troops who had escaped via Yunnan into northeast Burma. However much the Burmese may have initially and quietly tolerated the presence of these KMT “escapees,” – a view which has been unofficially hinted in some Burmese and American quarters — expecting that they would either merge into the Burma population or quickly repatriate to Taiwan, at the end of the first year of experience with these troops the Burmese became justifiably alarmed, repeatedly sought but did not receive assistance from the United States for this repatriation and eventually, in 1953, officially took the issue to the United Nations. (It was this issue which brought U.S. prestige and relations with Burma to a postwar low.)

In the spring of 1957 a large stone tablet was found in a dilapidated temple in Canton. It was half buried in earth. The stone is still in good condition and the inscription on it is well preserved. On the head of the tablet there are 6 big characters reading “Chung Siu Tien. Ching Kuan Chi (Record of reconstruction of the Tien Ching Temple).

In 1368 a native Chinese dynasty, the Ming, received the Mandate of Heaven, and after a century and a half of alien rule a true son of Han ascended the Dragon Throne. A burst of diplomatic activity followed. It took the form of a grandiose series of naval expeditions designed to announce to the more-or-less petty rulers of South Asia the advent of a new native house, and to receive their tribute. Over the next hundred years the Chinese established themselves as the dominant naval power in the Indian Ocean.

Our knowledge is still insufficient to allow us to assess the overall significance of the mestizo in Philippine history. But on the basis of what we now know we can make some generalizations and some hypotheses for future study. It is clear, in the first place, that the activities I have described are those of Chinese mestizos – not Spanish mestizos. While the Chinese mestizo population in the Philippines exceeded 200,000 by the late nineteenth century, the Spanish mestizo population was probably never more than 35,000. Furthermore, those who commented at all on the Spanish mestizo noted that he was interested in military matters or the “practical arts” – never in commerce. The aptitudes and attitudes of the Chinese mestizo were in sharp contrast to this.

Secondly, the Chinese mestizo rose to prominence between 1741 and 1898, primarily as a landholder and a middleman wholesaler of local produce and foreign imports, although there were also mestizos in the professions. The rise of the mestizos implies the existence of social change during the Spanish period, a condition that has been ignored or implicitly denied by many who have written about the Philippines. It needs to be emphasized that the mestizo impact was greatest in Central Luzon, Cebu, and Iloilo. We cannot as yet generalize about other areas.

Third, the renewal of Chinese immigration to the Philippines resulted in diversion of mestizo energies away from commerce, so that the mestizos lost their change to become a native middle class, a position then taken over by the Chinese.

Fourth, the Chinese mestizos in the Philippines possessed a unique combination of cultural characteristics. Lovers of ostentation, ardent devotees of Spanish Catholicism – they seemed almost more Spanish than the Spanish, more Catholic than the Catholics. Yet with those characteristics they combined a financial acumen that seemed out of place. Rejecters of their Chinese heritage, they were not completely at home with their indio heritage. The nearest approximation to them was the urbanized, heavily-hispanized indio. Only when hispanization had reached a high level in the nineteenth century urban areas could the mestizo find a basis of rapport with the indio. Thus, during the late nineteenth century, because of cultural, economic, and social changes, the mestizos increasingly identified themselves with the indios. in a new kind of “Filipino” cultural and national consensus.

Those are my conclusions. Here are some hypotheses, which I hope will stimulate further study:

1. That today's Filipino elite is made up mostly of the descendants of indios and mestizos who rose to prominence on the basis of commercial agriculture in the lattetf part of the Spanish period. That in some respects the latter part of the Spanish period was a time of greater social change, in terms of the formation of contemporary Philippine society, than the period since 1898 has been.

2. That in the process of social change late in the Spanish period it was the mestizo, as a marginal element, not closely tied to a village or town, who acted as a kind of catalytic agent. In this would be included the penetration of money economy into parts of the Philippines. There were areas where the only persons with money were the provincial governors and the mestizos.

3. That the Chinese mestizo was an active agent of hispanization and the leading force in creating a Filipino culture characteristic now of Manila and the larger towns.

4. That much of the background explanation of the Philippine Revolution may be found by investigating the relationships between landowning religious orders, mestizo inquilinos, and indio kasamahan laborers.

It is my hope that these hypotheses may stimulate investigation into this important topic which can tell us so much about economic, social, and cultural change during- the Spanish period of Philippine history.

The most recent history of the Philippines makes no reference to guerrilla activities or the resistance movement in Negros, although brief comments are included about the rest of the Bisayas. Yet Negrenses, both indigenous and “adopted,” have been unusually active in recording the history of their island during the war years. Recently two additional books were added to the expanding literature on wartime Negros. Since 1946 seven books have been published (one is a mimeographed monograph) on this broad topic for Negros. Unfortunately, many of these sources have not been utilized in more general accounts of occupied Philippines. Probably there is more material on this historic period for Negros than the rest of the Bisayas, with the exception of Leyte.

If there is one figure in world history who has certainly not been neglected it is surely Marco Polo. His narrative has appealed to readers since it was first dictated to Rustichello, Polo's fellow prisoner in the dungeons of Genoa, and its many versions have attracted the enthusiastic attentions of some of the finest textual scholars in Europe. It is, however, in respect of the identification of the places which Polo visited in the Far East and Central Asia that a formidable body of published material has now accumulated, embracing the fields of history, linguistics and geography, and of varying quality, perception and relevance. In South-East Asia itself Polo refers to only twelve geographical locations, yet despite this, or perhaps in part because of it, even the most summary investigation of the question of their identity will quickly reveal that the material which has been published on this very limited aspect of Polo's narrative has now reached almost unmanageable proportions, save for the dévoué who is prepared to direct his attentions to little else. In this may be seen the real importance of Polo's narrative within the early history of South-East Asia, for the identification of his geographical nomenclature demands a detailed study of so many aspects of the history of the area prior to and immediately following the period of his narrative. Indeed, with his first cursory examination of Polo's narrative the reader finds himself face to face with some of the more fundamental problems of the study of the early history of South-East Asia.

Much of pre-war Japanese propaganda was devoted to convincing fellow Asians that their cause of freedom from colonial rule was that of Japan too. And yet, when the Japanese landed in the Philippines in December 1941, they had to fight not only American troops, but a Philippine army as well. Japanese propagandists thus faced a challenging task in Manila. In the case of the Philippines, the pretense of liberating colonial areas from the clutches of Western imperialism was difficult to uphold: the country was by then largely self-governing and due to obtain its full independence by 1946. To make matters worse for Japan, while the Americans had settled on a definite course, the Tokyo government had still to make up its mind on the fate of the “South Seas” territories which it was about to conquer. The daily humiliations and brutalities, and the economic hardship endured by the Filipino people under the heel of an occupation army, cast doubt on the generosity of Japanese aims.

The sources for the early history of Malacca are so meagre, and often so contradictory, that not only is the detail in some doubt but the whole framework of events rests on an uncertain foundation. Dates ranging from the middle of the fifteenth century back to the eighth have at various times been proposed for the foundation of Malacca, and considerable uncertainty has surrounded both the identity and sequence of the early kings and the time and manner of their conversion to Islam. As a result of evidence which has come to light within the last thirty years, notably the Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires and a partially deciphered inscription, from Sumatra, the current view of the early history of Malacca differs materially from that which was generally held before the second world war. Whereas it was then believed that there were four kings before Sultan Muzaftar Shah and that two or three of them were severally converted to Islam, it is now held that there were only three kings and only one conversion, and that this took place in the reign of the first king, about the year 1414. In view of the nature of the evidence upon which this latest interpretation rests it will be useful to review the king-list and the question of the conversion in some detail.

A Preliminary Survey of the Causes, Characteristics and Consequences of the Resettlement of Rural Dwellers during the Emergency between 1948 and 1960.

A brief but interesting glimpse of Samuel White, the Shāhbandar of Mergui, and of his secretary Francis Davenport, is afforded in the account of a Spanish friar who saw them twice in 1687, travelled with them to Madras after their flight from Mergui, and claimed to have converted Davenport to Catholicism.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, Siam suffered a series of devastating Burmese raids which resulted in the overthrow of the Ayuthia Dynasty and set off a struggle for power among the kingdom's more powerful “barons”. The unity of the kingdom was eventually preserved and a new, “Bangkok”, dynasty established fairly securely upon the throne, but it was not until the end of the century that the Siamese were strong enough to turn their attention to the Malay States they claimed as their vassals.

“The Portuguese, who, as a nation, have been long really exanimated and dead in this part of the world, although their ghost still appears at Macao, hold that place upon such terms as render it equally useles and disgraceful to them. It is now chiefly supported by the English, and on the present footing of things there the Chinese can starve both it, and those who support it, whenever they please. If the Portuguese made a difficulty of parting with it to us on fair terms, it might easily be taken from them by a small force from Madras, and the compensation and irregularity be settled afterwards”.

Today if Americans are asked about centers of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States, their reply should begin with the names of Cornell University, Yale University and the University of California (Berkeley). If on the other hand, the question concerns American scholars of Southeast Asian affairs, the answer would have to include names of individuals from Boston to Hawaii and from Minnesota to New Orleans. The centers of Southeast Asian studies offer a coordinated program of studies which prepares the recipient for special work in one or more disciplines and in one or more parts of Southeast Asian studies. The individual scholars, who are for the most part also college and university teachers, may offer a course or even a sequence of courses related to Southeast Asia, and on some occasions may be integrated into a specialized program which includes Southeast Asia in its purview, but the results of their teaching endeavors do not bear the imprint of specialization which is to be found in the centers. In this article I shall describe the chief Southeast Asia centers, say something about programs in which Southeast Asia plays only a part, and finally close with a word on the individual scholar interested in all or part of Southeast Asia.

In the years between 1949 and 1963 the clarification of the international status of West New Guinea, now officially included within the borders of the Republic of Indonesia as Irian Barat, constituted a perennially active and confusingly complex item on the agenda of world territorial disputes. While the protagonists involved were new, the general situation was a familiar one for the territory in question. For it has been the island's curious destiny to be a passive but disputed pawn of history from the time of its first mention in Javanese court chronicles until the presumably “permanent” settlement of its international status in the seventh decade of the twentieth century.

“The illustrious king, the excellent Kundungga…” so runs one of the yupas, the sacrificial posts of stones found at Kutei in Muara Kanam on the Mahakam in East Borneo.