The early States of Southeast Asia were equipped by modern historiography with more or less all Weberian criteria of a modern State. Accordingly, these early States were governed by the kings through a central administrative staff which was able to uphold successfully the legitimate claim of the monopoly of physical force within a given area.[1] Successful pillages of neighbouring areas were therefore often understood as annexations and rather vague tributary relations were interpreted as an indicator of the existence of an hierarchicallystructured system of provinces and districts etc.

Let me illustrate this interpretation of early Southeast Asian history by two examples selected from two certainly “unsuspicious” authors whose works are still regarded as standard works. About early Funan L.P. Briggs wrote in the year 1951: “From a little river-settlement governed by a naked girl, to an empire more than a thousand miles in extent, with boundaries perhaps as wide as those of which the proudest Khmer Emperor could later boast, in less than two centuries, is no small achievement for any people in any period.”[2]Recent research however, particularly by C. Jacques, has shown that nearly none of these statements can be accepted any longer as established facts.[3] Funan's history neither began as a river settlement under the legendary naked Naga princess, nor do we have any proof that the alleged conquests of the Funanese King Fan Shi-Man led to a permanent annexation of areas far beyond the Mekong and even Menam delta.

The other example refers to the famous quotation from the New History of the Tang about the kingdom of Holing which most probably was located in Java. The relevant passage in the Hsin T'ang shu is as follows: “on the borders [of Ho-ling] there are 28 small countries, all of which owe allegiance to Ho-ling. There are 32 great ministers and the Ta-tso-kan-hsiung is the chief of them.”[4] Heine-Geldern, in his even more famous article on “Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia”, quoted this passage to illustrate the cosmic role of kings, courts and governments in Southeast Asia.

Shortly before he passed away in 1982, the master singer Boon Kim Yew recalled the Dondang Sayang of twenty years earlier. He said, “In those days we used to be like tigers around a piece of meat, but today I think of quitting. There are no young people coming to Gunong Sayang to learn how to sing. There is no longer any challenge. Always the same people come forward.” To what extent this pessimism is justified is difficult to say, but what is clear is that for many Malaysians, and increasingly more Singaporeans, the ability to understand Dondang Sayang has been lost. In this study, I outline the known history of the form and give an account of the Baba and, to a lesser extent, Malay aesthetic systems which generate and interpret this style of sung, poetic debate found in Malacca, Singapore, Penang, and Kuching.

Because my emphasis here is on the Baba style of Dondang Sayang, the account of Malay practice is necessarily limited. Malay aesthetics requires a separate study; yet an understanding of Baba work is impossible without at least an elementary appreciation of its Malay roots. Babas view Malay Dondang Sayang as the model they aspire to, attributing to it a greater difficulty, a more refined use of language, different values of poetic creation, and above all, a more fluent poetic technique. In the following remarks, I have tried to suggest that Malay aesthetics has quite different values. These will be set out later in an appropriate work.

The essay presents a reading of part of a Vietnamese historical text, and the reading is based on a few procedures derived from what is commonly known as structuralist criticism.[1] I am not interested in this form of criticism for theory's sake but only for its application in the context of historical study. The test of such an enterprise should always be whether anything arises worthy of the historian's consideration.

A simple definition of a text's structure is its presentation and language usage which give it a recognisable shape, and my reading approach will be to pay attention to the text's properties in order to describe them. The reading will be along and not between the lines, and the focus will be limited: the conventions that announce a genre, ways in which materials are organised, narrational devices, underlying systems of linguistic signification, and the effects these features have in contributing meaning to what is being read. The object of study is to throw some light on how a text is rendered intelligible and capable of making sense to its reader as a specimen of writing.

An exhaustive reading, which mine cannot claim to be, could account for every feature. From a structuralist perspective, all features may be fitting together, and to the extent to which they do, and how, may tell the reader something. I wish to insist, however, that optional readings are possible within this framework of enquiry, and I would welcome them.

The text in question is part of the chronological narrative known today as the Đai Viêt su ký toàn thu, the Vietnamese annals which purport to span Vietnamese history from earliest times to 1675. The text is written in Chinese, and its first printing was in 1697-1698.[2] I shall concentrate on only a fraction of the narrative: the years from 1293, not along after the last Mongol invasion, to 1357, when the Trân dynasty (1226-1400) was on the eve of its decline and eventual fall. These sixty-four years comprise five reign-periods, and the rulers' posthumous names by which they are known can be conveniently introduced here. The period begins immediately after Trân Ann-ton was appointed heir by his father, Trân Nhân-tôn. Nhân-tôn died in 1308, and in 1314 Anh-tôn appointed his son, Minn-tôn, as heir.

As the evidence in Chapter VI demonstrated, the ASEAN news professionals tend not to be very satisfied with the way their region is being covered in the rest of the world, partly because they feel the world does not pay enough attention to the region and partly because they feel that the coverage tends to over-emphasize the negative aspects of their countries. However, by being less critical of the coverage of the rest of the world that reaches ASEAN, they seem to demonstrate that their news judgement is not entirely different from the western judgement, which dominates the world's news flow. This chapter examines how the ASEAN news professionals view the coverage of the region within the region. It also presents their judgements of the adequacy of the coverage provided by the various news sources. And, finally, it explores whether the similarities and differences in news values between the news professionals in the region and those in the rest of the world have any bearing on the ASEAN perceptions of the adequacy of their own news coverage.

The ASEAN press tend to cover their fellow ASEAN countries through six basic types of sources. First and foremost, the four international news agencies are available in all five countries of the region. Second, all ASEAN countries receive news from the ASEAN news agencies' news exchange. Third, a number of papers have bilateral “lifting rights” arrangements with other papers both inside and outside the region. Under these arrangements, a paper may reprint stories which first appeared in another paper. Such arrangements exist, for instance, between the New Straits Times and the Straits Times as well as between the Bangkok Post and the Straits Times. Fourth, at least one national news agency (Bernama) arid it least one newspaper (Straits Times) have their own correspondents in other ASEAN countries. Fifth, various editors in the region have their own informal arrangements with fellow editors and other sources, using their professional and personal contacts to obtain either full stories or information that can form part of a story.

Prior to the 1930s, paid domestic service was almost exclusively dominated by Hainanese men. In fact, paid domestic service was virtually synonymous with the Hainanese “cookboy” or “houseboy” who served European and local wealthy Chinese households. The other form of domestic service was unpaid domestic servitude by mui tsai. The massive entry of women into paid domestic service began in the 1930s with the large-scale immigration of single women from China into Malaya and coincided with the abolition of the mui tsai system. By 1947, an overwhelming 85 per cent of the total female labour force in the “personal services” sector were engaged in paid domestic service alone. Women quickly displaced men at paid domestic service, making up as much as 68 per cent of the total workforce in this form of employment in the same year, and domestic service become strongly identified as women's work.

The women largely responsible for the identification of paid domestic service as women's work were the Cantonese immigrants, many of whom were formerly anti-marriage resistance movement women in China. In Malaya, many of these women found work as domestic servants in wealthy Chinese and European colonial hosueholds, and became commonly known as the Cantonese amah. They made up a sizeable proportion if not the majority of women domestic servants and, for many, domestic service was their only form of employment throughout their working lives. A study of women in the clan associations and vegetarian halls of Singapore in the mid-1950s (Topley 1958) confirmed that a large number of single women who entered paid domestic service were from the anti-marriage resistance area in China. (While there is little documented evidence, it is known that Cantonese women from the same background and employed in paid domestic service were also found in the major towns of Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Penang where they worked for wealthy Chinese and European colonial households. Their organizations were similar to those studied by Topley.

It is necessary to recognize the basic environmental conditions of the press in the region in order to understand each country's and the ASEAN region's outlook on the news coverage provided by others. A key element in this environment is the involvement of each of the ASEAN governments in bringing the press under what national leaders consider to be appropriate supervision in the national interest. The second element is the role of national news agencies in each country's news establishment. The third element that is examined in this chapter is the attitude of each country to the circulation of foreign, including ASEAN, news, and to the work of foreign correspondents in each country.

Over the course of the brief history of the ASEAN organization, each and every one of the five countries has witnessed some form of confrontation between the government and the press. In each case, some newspapers were closed down, new rules established and the principle reiterated that the press must be in harmony with the government's aims and methods of developing the country. Even though in statements each government has encouraged constructive criticism, the experience of newspapers has been that it is much safer to retrain from criticizing if one is to be allowed to continue publishing. The basic role of the press in the region is to act as an educational medium, amplifying the views of the government and helping the public understand how the country is being developed and the role they can play in that development. In every country of the region, the press operates under licence from the government and every government has from time to time exercised its power to revoke that licence.

In Indonesia, virtually all of the papers are printed in Bahasa Indonesia, with the exception of three small papers – the Indonesia Times, the Indonesian Observer and the recently started Jakarta Post – which are in English.

From the turn of the century onwards, the traffic in women and girls between southern China and Malaya included the importation of young girls for the purpose of domestic servitude as mui tsai.

The mui tsai system reflected the position of poor women within the Chinese social structure. In times of economic hardship, young girls were sold or transferred as mui tsai for domestic servicing in return for food and shelter. When a mui tsai grew up, she was either married off to a man usually of her employer's choice or remained in domestic servitude in the household. She could also be a san po chai (little daughter-in- law) betrothed to a son of the household as his future wife or concubine. Until she reached a suitable age for marriage, her labour power could, in the meantime, be utilized in domestic servicing and other work.

In Malaya, the mui tsai system is to be seen in the context of the shortage of adult women for reproductive servicing, particularly in wealthly Chinese households, and the conditions of poverty in China and Malaya. Some households hired male domestic servants based on a regular wage system but this was a relatively new and unfamiliar system. Hired male domestic labour was more expensive because fixed wages had to be paid and conditions of work negotiated with the male servants who were organized in secret societies or groups and thus were in a position to bargain with the employers. It also lacked some of the advantages gained from traditional forms of female domestic servitude, particularly those services required by female members of the household as well as the possibility of the mui tsai becoming a wife or concubine of a male member of the household. In contrast, the conditions for control by employers were greater under the traditional mui tsai system and the demand for domestic labour thus largely fell upon this system.

Introduction: models and trends in the study of early states

The study of the pre-colonial history of Southeast Asia, once the undisputed preserve of Sanskritists and Indian cultural historians, has since the Second World War been taken up by a broader range of scholars, and has, as a consequence, been influenced by the series of debates and intellectual fashions which have enlivened the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. Heine-Geldern's (1942) study of the religious basis of state and kingship in Southeast Asia was succeeded in the 1950's by the influence of the Weberian notion of the patrimonial state. The late fifties and sixties saw an accumulation of economically-oriented studies inspired in turn by Polanyist substantivism, Wittfogel's Hydraulic Society, and Marxian Asiatic Mode of Production. With the seventies came a partial retreat into structuralist and symbolic studies of myth, ritual and hierarchy. Then, as the momentum of structuralism began to dissipate, the influence of the schools political and the more Marxian critical anthropology asserted itself, reviving some of the debates of the sixties. By no means all scholars interested in early Southeast Asia have participated in recent debates. Many, including the majority of those dealing with primary data, have unfortunately held aloof from them.

Groupings which have emerged amongst the participants in recent debates and their followers have their roots in cleavages that began to appear during the 1960's. These debates, however, address only a portion of the assumptions underlying recent work. As a result, apparently opposing models tend to overlap in certain key areas. The influences of Weber and Heine-Geldern have endured, as have some entrenched images of Further India inherited from Coedes and his predecessors. Few of these ideas have been questioned and almost none finally discarded by general agreement. There has been overall a marked preference shown by those of all shades of opinion for static rather than dynamic models. As a result there has been a general tendency to perceive change in the early states of the region as exogenous both in cause and in agent, and a related inclination to focus upon - and perhaps overstress - structural continuities in the societies studied. Endogenous change, particularly in areas of culture and social structure, has often been neither expected nor perceived.

To a person who works with news, sources are like blood vessels. They carry news not only to the ultimate consumer of the news – the public – but also to other veins and arteries of the system. In fact, it may be argued that there is no ultimate consumer of news in the world, because every consumer is also a potential source. All sources are linked to each other. Of course, there are different kinds of sources, some more important than others, some more frequently used than others. There are virtually no limits to the potential sources that knowledgeable people may use to keep abreast of developments in their community, their country, their region or the world. Obviously, no one has the time, the resources or the ability to keep up with thousands of different sources.

But professionals who work in or have close contacts with the news media do have their favourite sources. To find out what those professionals in ASEAN considered to be their most useful sources in their work, the research for this study included a survey. Even though more than 70 persons were interviewed for the whole study, only 37 of them agreed to reply to the questionnaire; the others did not want to do so. Although this is a relatively small sample, it represents a relatively small universe of perhaps two hundred modest sized organizations in the region. This chapter contains an analysis of the results of the survey, in two parts. The first explores the respondents' perceptions of the most useful (see Table 6.1) and least useful sources of both ASEAN and non-ASEAN news both on a regional and on a country-by-country basis. The second part examines their perceptions about how well those sources are portraying the ASEAN region to the rest of the world and the rest of the world to the ASEAN region.

The integration of the Malayan colonial economy into the world capitalist system was such that it served as a producer of raw materials, specifically tin and rubber, for the metropolitan capitalist centres of Europe and especially the industries of Britain. The exchange between these centres and the Malayan economy took the classic form in which manufactured goods were imported into Malaya in return for its primary exports. As such, the Malayan economy had little industrial basis of its own and little manufacturing production within a factory system. Any activities resembling such a production system were limited to the processing of raw materials and to commodity production which included food processing, clothing and footwear and light industries such as brick making, saw milling, cement production, foundries and engineering works. The Blythe Report (1938) revealed that industries such as saw milling, rubber processing and production of watches were already in existence in the 1930s.

A key feature in the factories manufacturing goods such as matches, rubber items, cigars and aerated water in the 1930s was the employment of many Chinese women (Blythe 1938). Massive female immigration in the 1920s and 1930s accounted for this feature, and included anti-marriage women displaced from silk filatures in China. Women from the Tung Kun county of China, fo example, usually ended up in factory work which they were already familiar with when they were in China.

During World War II, the local substitution of simple consumer items such as paper, shoes, food and cloth, and the manufacture of products in small industrial and commercial enterprises were set up to replace goods which had become scarce (Purcell 1967, p. 256). For the first time, a majority of consumption goods were produced locally to substitute for imported items and, although of a makeshift nature, some of these manufacturing activities became the basis for permanent industries in the post-war period (Purcell 1967).