Maritime Southeast Asia is one of those parts of the world destined by geography to be an international marketplace. Not only is it the largest of the world's archipelagos, penetrated throughout by sea and river, it also lies athwart one of the major international trading routes, between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean on the one hand and China and Japan on the other. These factors have always given to maritime Southeast Asia a role akin to the Mediterranean world, in which sea-borne trade was the vital factor in urban growth and in political power. In addition, however, Southeast Asia was the principal source of the items in greatest demand in the world's markets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and camphor.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) maintained a vast network of shipping connections with Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The extent of these connections was determined by the quantity of goods which was to be transported from Asia to Holland, and through the demand for ships in the inter-Asian trade. The periods of time and the ways in which the Holland-to-Asia connections were maintained did not necessarily depend upon commercial considerations. Considerations of safety, prevention of smuggling and above all the wind and current systems played an equally important role. Only recently has a survey become available of all journeys made to and from Asia during the Company's existence. It takes into account 4,730 outward-bound voyages and 3,358 homeward-bound voyages in the years 1602 to 1795. For the greatest portion of voyages, Batavia was both the destination and the port of departure. Columns I and II in Tables 1 and 2 will give one an overview. The preponderance of journeys from Batavia tapered off in time, mostly because of direct voyages made to Holland from other parts of Asia, such as Ceylon, Bengal, and China. Yet Batavia remained the metropolis, and where, at its zenith from around 1720 to 1740, an average of 33 ships per year arrived and 23 to 24 departed for the mother country. In the years thereafter, only the frequency of the return journeys diminished appreciably.

This article will concentrate on one aspect of a major question in Southeast Asian maritime history: an attempt will be made to describe and determine the origins of the type of ship that was the main form of transport for the trade of the maritime kingdoms of the western half of Southeast Asia until the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Surprisingly enough — if the general importance of the commercial network of maritime Southeast Asia is considered — such a study has not yet been attempted. The very few authors dealing with the economic history of the region are usually content to dismiss the problem by saying that the ships are locally called “junks”, and that their tonnage is small. (The reader is thus left with the idea that Chinese ships were being used, since the word “junk” has long been applied almost exclusively to this very specific type of ship.) The general conclusion of this study is that Southeast Asian maritime powers built, owned, and operated ocean-going ships of respectable size as early as the first few centuries of the first millennium A.D. Needless to say, this has a considerable historical significance (which will not be examined here).

Sir Winston Churchill's doctor has recalled the “stupefying” effect which the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 had upon his patient. Britain's wartime leader, Lord Moran suggests, knew that the surrender was “something more than a reverse. I think he wondered if it were a portent”. The spectre of one of the worst defeats in British military history was to return to haunt Churchill in later years. His torment was, perhaps, not solely portentous but also recollective for in the years 1924–29 Churchill himself, while serving in Stanley Baldwin's second government, had played the major role in delaying the building and defence of the Singapore naval base and in disparaging its associated strategy.

Between 1874 and 1888, British colonial rule was imposed on the Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang later collectively called the Federated Malay States (FMS). Based on the various Anglo-Malay treaties, which maintained the fiction that the British Resident was an adviser to the Malay ruler, the British established a form of administration generally known as a system of indirect rule. In this new order, the Malay rulers retained their constitutional and ceremonial role, while the exercise of executive power was held firmly in British hands. In the rush for establishing a modern administration and accelerating economic development late in the nineteenth century, hardly any attention was paid to training Malays to share executive power with British officials at the higher level of government or to compete effectively with Indians, Eurasians, and Chinese for subordinate appointments. This sin of omission began to stir the British conscience at the turn of the century and, for the next four decades, the British pursued a policy of actively promoting Malay employment in the government. This paper discusses the central component of this policy, namely, the training, recruitment, and development of Malay administrators in the FMS.

Too often civilizational analyses remain sealed in a hermetically closed vacuum. Disembodied motifs, designs, and themes tumble over one another in symbolic space, while fragments of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other civilizational complexes vie for idealistic preeminence. Intercivilizational encounters come to resemble pure clashes of ideas, not of individuals or strategic social groups, whose relevance for collective behaviour is minimized. The power of ideas, to mobilize and transform people and be transformed themselves, is thus denied.

During the past two decades, developing countries, recognizing the need to control rapid population growth, have relied heavily upon family planning programmes established under both public and private auspices. By 1973, approximately 28 per cent of the developing countries in the world had official population reduction policies, and 26 per cent of these countries provided support to private family planning programmes.

Although the rate of land use for agriculture as a percentage of total area of the different islands varies tremendously, we have no operable definition of arable area, and therefore cannot determine how much of the arable area is being used agriculturally. We cannot begin to define when a “limit” to land use occurs. Even in certain parts of Jawa and Bali, increases in land use were found between the censuses, although 40 per cent to 50 per cent were already being used for agriculture.