The French Annales historians have made the study of popular mentalites into a fascinating and important field of historical research. This approach has yet to gain ground in Southeast Asian historical studies, especially in Malaysian history, with respect to the thinking of subject classes. If we take the Malay traditional ruling class and the Malay peasantry in Melaka and other states from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, we know very little about the ideological hegemony which the former exercised over the latter, or what the thinking of the dominated class was like. One problem, of course, has been the lack of sources, but such a problem has not deterred the Annales historians from making their attempt.

The exploration of differing historical interpretations has become an area of growing interest to anthropologists and historians alike, who have come to recognize that diverse interpretations of the same events can create as powerful a force for future actions as the events themselves. Following this approach, history becomes not so much a narrative progression of events, as shifts in meaning structures over time. The impact of such a perspective on scholars of Southeast Asian societies has led to both an increasingly critical use of colonial sources as well as to renewed interest in native or indigenous documents. We have also come to expect major divisions not only between colonialist and indigenous views, but among indigenous views themselves. This is particularly true in societies divided by class and ethnicity such as Malaysia where competing political and cultural interests can be expected to produce markedly different versions of past events. Similarly, we can predict that ongoing shifts in political and cultural relations will create continued transformations in interpretations over time.

This passage was written on 27 March 1945 by Major Andrew Gilchrist, a Foreign Office official serving with the Special Operations Executive in Thailand. It neatly demonstrates the manner in which the wartime debate within and between the various Allied bureaucracies responsible for Thailand's post war status appeared to be dominated by the circumstances of Thailand's rapid capitulation to Japan in December 1941. Subsequently, diametrically opposed interpretations of these unhappy events were employed both by Britain to legitimize her wartime plans to re-establish a degree of control over Thailand, and also by the United States to justify her attempts to thwart perceived British aggrandizement in Southeast Asia. Yet despite the clear importance of the events of 1941 for Thailand's relations with the Allies, her place in the outbreak of the Pacific War is not yet fully understood.

British Malaya before the Japanese occupation was heavily dependent on imported rice, producing on average only 35 per cent of its requirements between 1920 and 1940. During the 1930s, efforts were made to expand rice cultivation, but progress was slow and did not even keep pace with population growth: imports increased at the same rate as domestic production.

As war approached, the government of Malaya built up a stockpile of rice and had about one year's supply in reserve when the occupation began. However, a considerable proportion of this grain was appropriated for military use and the civilian population soon faced food shortages.

These memorable words were spoken by Tan Cheng Lock, a man who did not speak any Chinese himself, when addressing a meeting of representatives of Chinese School Committees and Chinese School Teachers' Associations on 9 November 1952. Speaking as president of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), Tan went on in his speech to promise that

At this critical juncture in the history of the growth and development of Chinese education and culture in Malaya … its cause has the full support of the Malayan Chinese Association.

Tan's speech, and the presence of three other MCA leaders at the meeting, were the first clear indications that the MCA was prepared to take a consolidated stand with other Chinese organizations, in particular the United Chinese School Teachers' Association (UCSTA), and the United Chinese Schools' Committees' Association (UCSCA), on the issue of Chinese education. The MCA's decision was greeted by a chorus of approval from the Chinese press which described the 9 November meeting as an unprecedented manifestation of Chinese unity and from leading shetuan, or Chinese social organizations, which expressed their full support for the meeting's stand on Chinese education.

The mid-nineteenth century saw the establishment in Java of one of the world's major sugar industries. Indeed, prior to the Great Depression of the 1930's, which reduced it to a shadow of its former opulance, the Java industry was second only to that of Cuba as a producer of cane sugar for the world's markets. It was essentially the creation of nineteenth-century Dutch colonialism. Sugar manufacture on a commercial scale had already been underway in Java a full two centuries earlier. However, the modern industry of large, centralized units of production and a massive ‘peasant’ workforce dated only from the inauguration of the state-sponsored Cultivation System by Governor-General Johannes van den Bosch in the 1830's. From then on, progress was rapid. Within less than a quarter century, some hundred or so sugar ‘factories’, solid stone places full of European machinery and Javanese ‘coolies’, had been established in the lowlands of Eastern and Central Java, and twenty-seven thousand hectares of peasant farmland requisitioned to provide them with cane. The whole enterprise dug deep into the innards of rural Java. As well as peasant land, the labour of the rural population was commandeered in unprecedented quantities. By the early 1860's, when sugar production under the auspices of the Cultivation System was reaching its peak, some 100,000 Javanese peasants were engaged in growing cane for the industry, and nearly that many again employed for between three and five months of the year, as cane-cutters, carters and factory hands during the manufacturing season or ‘Campaign’.

The great commercial emporium of Melaka in the Malay peninsula, which was in Portuguese hands for over a century and a quarter (1511–1641), has received a good deal of attention from historians in the past. Of the available studies on Melaka in the 16th and 17th centuries, those of M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz. and Luís Filipe F.R. Thomaz are particularly outstanding, being rich both in detail and in implications. Though less well-known than Meilink-Roelofsz.'s monumental work, Thomaz's essays on the early 16th century are particularly important for being based on a mass of fresh documentation, belying earlier beliefs that “a lack of relevant data” from the archives would force historians to rely heavily on a limited set of sources — notably Tomé Pires's Suma Oriental.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Semarang was a major port city and administrative centre on Java. Attainment of this position was due partly to the expansion of its hinterland during the nineteenth century. This expansion was closely related to developments in the means of transportation and the consequent ability of plantation owners to bring the products of their plantations to the port for shipment to foreign markets. By the end of the century virtually the whole economic life of central Java focused upon Semarang. The city also exercised administrative functions in the Dutch colonial administration and generally had been responsible for Dutch interests in the middle and eastern parts of the island. The importance of Semarang as an administrative centre increased after 1906. In that year the government incorporated the city as an urban municipality (stadsgemeente). In 1914 it had consular representation from the United States, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Germany, and Thailand. Subsequently, in 1926 it became the capital of the Province of Central Java under the terms of an administrative reform fostered by the colonial government at Batavia. Status as an urban municipality meant that local officials sitting on a city council would govern the domestic affairs of the city. The members of the city council at first were appointed from Batavia, subsequently some of them were elected by residents of the city. By the beginning of the twentieth century Semarang had enhanced its position as a major port on the north coast of the island of Java. It was one of the foremost cities of the Dutch East Indies, along with Batavia and Surabaya, a leading port and a centre of administration and trade. This article outlines the growth of the port of Semarang during the nineteenth century and discusses some of the conflict related to this growth over living conditions in parts of the city during the twentieth century, a conflict which smouldered for several decades among the government, members of the city council, and the non-European residents of the city, one which remained unresolved at the end of the colonial era.

Thailand is a non-Western country where a firm state ideology based on national political traditions has been developed to counter the influx of Western liberalism. The official state ideology is clearly set forth in Article 45 of the present constitution, which states that “No person shall exercise his constitutional rights and liberties in a manner adversely affecting the Nation, Religion, King and Constitution.” That is to say, every Thai must be loyal to these four institutions. Moreover, the government maintains a steady output of pamphlets and other publications to imbue this ideology into the minds of the Thai people. “Nation” in this ideology is closely associated with “Religion” and “King”, both of which are fundamental elements in the traditional Thai Buddhist theory of kingship. According to this theory, the king, regarded as elected by a gathering of all the people, should reign justly as a protector on whom the people can rely, and should be guided by the restraints of the moral law of Buddhism. Accordingly, the concept of “nation” in this ideology is different from that in Western liberal nationalism.

The depression devastated export crop earnings from the Netherlands Indies, with consequent severe effects on a colonial economy dependent on them. For many Indonesians in the towns and cities of Java the depression was a time of difficulty but not a disaster — wage cuts, worsened conditions, slower promotions and reduced opportunities for their children may have been partially compensated by a decline in the cost-of-living. Many others, though, lost their jobs and were forced to take lower paid work or eke out a living as best they could with casual or day-wage work wherever they could get it. Some gave up on the cities for the time being and returned to their villages of origin where they were supported by family and relatives.

Controversy still surrounds the question whether the communist-led uprisings which developed across Southeast Asia during the months from March to September 1948 were the outcome of a deliberate international communist strategy or merely the product of coincidental decisions by individual communist parties. Equally controversial, although less frequently discussed, is the suggestion that during the early months of 1950 the Chinese Communist Party took on direct responsibility for sustaining those revolutionary armed struggles which were still continuing in Southeast Asia — in Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines — and even provided material assistance to allow them to expand. The present paper will examine yet a third period at which it is necessary to consider the possibility of coordinated international decision-making on the communist side in Southeast Asia: the second half of 1951.

One of the most widely held views about Indonesia, and especially Java, in the nineteenth century was that such economic growth as occurred did not benefit the mass of the indigenous population, whose living standards almost certainly declined. Many scholars have drawn attention to the evidence that per capita rice production fell after 1880 as proof that living standards were definitely falling in the last two decades of the century, while others have not hesitated to draw the bolder conclusion that living standards declined almost continually after 1800:

One theme stands out most prominently in Javanese society during this time: the theme of involution and reaction…. Despite the promises of the changing colonial policies to further the individual welfare of the Javanese, conspicuously little was done in this regard. Instead the Javanese farmer became gradually more impoverished throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, with a particularly severe drop in living standards in the second half of the liberal period (1885–1900).

The United States did not give Marshall aid to Western Europe for purely humanitarian reasons. Aid was also, perhaps even mainly, provided to serve the economic and political purposes of the United States. In studies dealing with the Marshall aid programme, the suspension of aid to the Dutch colony of Indonesia, and the seeming threat to halt the stream of dollars to the Netherlands, has been used as an example to prove that the programme was an American instrument of political power. In studies dealing with the decolonization of Indonesia, it is also alleged that the menace of adjournment of Marshall aid forced the Dutch to retreat from their colony in December 1949. However, primary sources show that neither the offer of Marshall aid in June 1947, nor the seeming threat to halt aid to the Netherlands in December 1948, prevented the Dutch government from pursuing its own way in the process leading to the independence of Indonesia. The Dutch cabinet was not sufficiently impressed by both the offer and the threat to keep it from engaging in military “police actions” in July 1947 and December 1948 against the nationalist Republic of Indonesia.

The period from 1963 to 1966, which spans Indonesia's “confrontation” against Majaysia, marks an important benchmark in the history of Malaysian-American relations as it represents the first direct involvement of the United States into the political affairs of Malaysia. Before confrontation, the United States had maintained a low profile in the country and had confined the relationship to mainly economic issues. Politically, the United States had, for the most part, hovered in the background behind the British who had continued their close ties with Malaysia even after the granting of independence in 1957. America's deeper involvement with Malaysia because of confrontation, signified, therefore, a distinct departure from its earlier policy.

Levels of urbanization in Southeast Asia are low by world standards, even by developing country standards. Figures taken from recent U.N. estimates are presented in Table 1. They take advantage of the 1980 round of censuses and differ substantially from estimates made five years earlier. Even so, inter-country comparability remains problematic, as indicated by the inclusion of an alternative set of estimates for Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia which the writer believes provides data somewhat more comparable with the other countries than the data employed by the U.N.