Southeast Asian history

Everyone knows Singapore as the Lion City and the story behind of a Palembang prince, Sang Nila Utama, sighting a lion on this island that was first published 200 years ago in John Leyden's translation of the Malay classic Sejarah Melayu. But few people have actually read the Sejarah Melayu to realise the fairytale-like claims of Singapore's supposed medieval founder as a descendant of Alexander the Great, and the son of an Indian king who tried to conquer China and a princess from underwater; or that the creature he purportedly saw was not described as a lion, but a chimera with a red body, black head, white breast, and was a little larger than a he-goat. And barely anyone remembers the days when respectable residents of Singapore scoffed at suggestions that Singapore's name has anything to do with the Felis Leo.


Decoding Sejarah Melayu daringly challenges the assumption that the Sejarah Melayu records Singapore's pre-modern past, which has been held since Sir Stamford Raffles arrived in 1819 and declared himself at the "ancient Capital of the Malay kings". It seeks to grasp what is the Sejarah Melayu and how its accounts of Singapore as Temasek and Singapura were written, critically re-examines key historical text such as the Malay epic Hikayat Hang Tuah, Tomé Pires' Suma Oriental and 14th century Chinese travelogue Daoyi Zhilue, and makes an expansive study into other sources in Malay, Javanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Siamese, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and the English language to discover clues to ancient Singapore's long hidden past. This is a book that will profoundly change understandings of Singapore's history and identity.

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

This paper deals with the historiographic reflections on the civilizations of Southeast Asia, written by some Italian scholars who explored this area in the second half of the Nineteenth century. These texts were translations of summaries, unpublished notes intended for reworking, introduction to ethnographic studies. Their publication testifies to the trans-cultural circulation of historical and political information between Indochina and Italy, caused by political initiatives (the opening of diplomatic relations with Siam and Burma) and by expeditions financed by some scientific institutions, such as the Genoa Natural History Museum.

Datu Utto belonged to the old ruling family of Buayan, the most prestigious in Sa-Raya. According to Saleeby, at some unspecified time in the recent past there had been a split in the Buayan Sultanate after the death of Sultan Maytum. Bayaw, the younger son of Maytum, succeeded to Kudarangan and all the northern half of Buayan, and he was known as the Sultan of Kudarangan. Marajanum, Utto's father, succeeded to the capital itself and all the country lying on the left bank of the Pulangi and Sapakan (Dansalan) rivers, including the vital areas extending to lakes Liguasan and Buluan. 1 The split in the Sultanate accounts for the fact that Utto's power base is usually named Bakat, rather than Buayan, to distinguish it from the original Sultanate's northern half, Kudarangan. The territory directly controlled by Datu Utto was Bakat. This was his district, where his ancestors had resided. But his renown rests mainly on his success in subordinating to himself all the sultans and datus in the upper valley up to Matincauan in the northeast, which was the upper limit of Magindanao settlement, and down to Sarangani bay at the southern tip of Mindanao. Morever, Utto had ties with several Muslim principalities in the vicinity: there were the Illanuns to the northeast and the Sulus (Taosugs) farther beyond. Each of the areas in and out of Magindanao where Utto's influence was felt had a part to play in the waxing and waning of his power. The relationships between these areas will be examined in this chapter.

The mid-first millennium CE represents a crucial period in the emergence of early polities in Southeast Asia. However, disagreement remains between archaeologists and art historians as to the precise dating of this shift from prehistory to history. This article focuses on the Dvaravati period and re-evaluates evidence in Thai and Western language publications. A growing number of sites excavated over the past two decades in particular show occupation from c. the fourth to fifth century onwards while others provide a continual sequence stretching back well into the Iron Age. I argue that evidence from these sites makes a strong case for postulating a proto-Dvaravati period spanning c. the fourth to fifth centuries. In doing so this article proposes this period as the timeframe within which the nascent traits and characteristics of what becomes Dvaravati in the seventh to ninth centuries are present and gradually developing.

This paper deals with the historiographic reflections on the civilizations of Southeast Asia, written by some Italian scholars who explored this area in the second half of the Nineteenth century. These texts were translations of summaries, unpublished notes intended for reworking, introduction to ethnographic studies. Their publication testifies to the trans-cultural circulation of historical and political information between Indochina and Italy, caused by political initiatives (the opening of diplomatic relations with Siam and Burma) and by expeditions financed by some scientific institutions, such as the Genoa Natural History Museum.

Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS; Oriental University, 2019. — 244 pp., ill.
The book is a collection of essays dealing with various aspects of Southeast Asian and Cambodian epigraphy and state formation. The first essay shows the decisive step to the territorial state in Southeast Asia that took place in the seventh century CE. The second essay offers English and Russian translations of the Văt Luong Kău inscription K. 365 issued in honour of the King Devānīka and found near Vat Phou in Laos. Devānīka’s kingdom had no relation to the kingdom of Zhenla, except the possibility that Zhenla conquered the kingdom of Devānīka or his successors. The third essay gives English and Russian translations of the earliest dated Old Kkmer inscription K. 557/600 of 611 CE found in Angkor Borei. The essay includes a short overview of the personal names in the inscriptions of Cambodia. The fourth essay includes English and Russian translations of the Phnom Preah Vihear inscription K. 733 and a discussion of the root vidyā in Old Khmer inscriptions. The fifth essay outlines the history and archaeology of Funan and its transition to Zhenla. The essay is written in Russian. It shows a gradual Indianization of the Lower Mekong River Delta where the kingdom of Funan emerged in the beginning of the Common Era.
Предлагаемая монография «Становление государственности в Юго-Восточной Азии: Фунань и Ченла» состоит из двух частей. Первая написана на английском языке, вторая – на русском. В первой части предлагается концепция формирования территориального государства в регионе в VII в., даны комментированные переводы ключевых ранних надписей, найденных на территории Индокитая. Это санскритская надпись царя Деваники из Ват Пху K. 365, древнейшая датированная древнекхмерская надпись из Ангкор Борея 611 г. K. 557/600 и недатированная санскритская надпись из Преах Вихеар K. 733, в которой упоминаются такие школы индийской философии, как ньяя и вайшешика. Анализ надписей показывает как множественность политических центров в ранней Юго-Восточной Азии и значительные масштабы влияния на неё индийской культуры, так и сложный характер местной антропонимики, в которой одновременно существовали санскритские, древнекхмерские и другие австроазиатские имена. Вторая часть монографии посвящена изложению сведений о древнейших царствах Индокитая – Фунани и Ченле, известных из китайской исторической традиции. Данные письменных источников сопоставляются с результатами археологических исследований в Индокитае. Дана характеристика культуры Окео. В отдельном параграфе рассматриваются царские надписи эпохи Фунани, которые могли быть изданы её правителями или в их честь. Другой параграф показывает циклический характер завоевания Фунани древнекхмерским царством Ченлой: её правители Читрасена-Махендраварман и Ишанаварман оба именуются победителями Фунани в древнекитайских источниках. Особый параграф касается положения зависимых лиц в доангкорской Камбодже – кхнюмов, которых традиционно считают рабами, но чей статус остаётся не вполне ясным.

Who were the agents of cultural change in pre-colonial Southeast Asia? Scholars have identified such diverse characters as Brahmins journeying from South Asia, European sea captains looking down at indigenous Asians from the decks of their sailing ships, local chiefs or monarchs seeking new accoutrements of status, monks on royally-sponsored missions, traders of all descriptions—all historical characters of status or privilege. But what if we see the agent of cultural hybridity as a lowly family of war captives, captured and transported to a new kingdom against its will? What happens when we see them as having the agency to mold something new out of the vestiges of their natal cultures, those of their captors, and those of their neighbors? Bryce Beemer’s dissertation takes theoretical inspiration from creolization theory, usually associated with scholarship on slaves in the Americas, to paint a vibrant and unruly picture of cultural rupture, exchange, and production in what he calls the “creole cities” of premodern Burma, Siam, and Manipur. He focuses especially on two groups of creole communities settled around the royal capitals of Upper Burma. The “Yodaya” were peasants, artisans, and experts taken captive from Ayutthaya (Siam) in 1767, and the “Kathe” were taken in raids against Manipur from the 1750s to the 1830s.

This article examines the creation of Gunung Leuser Wildlife Reserve in the highlands of Aceh, Indonesia within
the context of the Dutch-Aceh War in the early twentieth century, arguing that conservation was used as a form
of counter-insurgency. While the agendas of the colonial military and conservationists diverged at times, they
overlapped in their goals to secure Leuser from resident communities, whom they viewed as a threat to colonial
order and the ecologies of the region. This article draws together the discourses of militarized conservation with
their material implications. It does so by examining the nexus of military and conservation discourses, the historical context of park creation, and the processes by which colonial actors stole rights to land and created new laws and regulations dictating the people’s relationships with and access to land. Scholars have shown that conservation discourses continue to normalize human rights abuses, Indigenous dispossession and displacement, and deadly violence against local peoples. These discursive tactics frame expertise and responsibility as residing in the hands of white elites who are tasked with saving imperiled environments from the people who depend on them for subsistence. I suggest that the military and conservation agendas were both operating within overlapping, constructed frameworks of crisis and emergency that constituted the resident communities as anti-environmental subjects. Discourses of environmental crisis in Leuser held a power that justified militarization while concealing the violence from international constituencies at a historical moment when an ideology of Western responsibility for threatened species around the world was growing. Moreover, the history of Leuser as viewed through the analytical framework of militarized conservation helps us rethink the history of Aceh. Through this framework, it becomes evident that the Dutch-Aceh War did not end in 1913, as many historians suggest, but instead continued throughout the colonial period.

This volume cross-examines the stability of heritage as a concept. It interrogates the past which materialises through multi-layered narratives on monuments and other objects that sustain cultural diversity. It seeks to understand how interpretations of " monuments " as " texts " are affected at the local level of experience, even as institutions such as UNESCO work to globalise and fi x constructs of stable and universal heritage. Shifting away from a largely Eurocentric concept associated with architecture and monumental archaeology, this book reassesses how local and regional heritage needs to be balanced with the global and transnational. It argues that material objects and monuments are not static embodiments of culture but are, rather, a medium through which identity, power and society are produced and reproduced. This is especially relevant in South and Southeast Asian contexts, where debates over heritage often have local, regional and national political implications and consequences. Reevaluating traditional valuation of monuments and cultural landscapes could help aid sustainability and long-term preservation of the heritage, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of history, South and Southeast Asian history, heritage studies, archaeology, cultural studies, tourism studies and political history as well.

Religious experience  is a dimension of human experience which deals with the interpretation of concrete events according to evaluative categories. This is rooted in the essence of religion itself whose task is to provide an explanation of nature comprehensible to an individual or a collectivity in terms of the meaning it provides. Thus, religious experience is distinguishable from scientific experience in that, while both depart from and interpret concrete events, their purposes vary. The former aims to reach a higher mystic state the attainment of which symbolically unites  the individual or the collectivity with the environment whereas the latter bifurcates the two by regarding mind and matter separate.
          The task of the following discussion is to elaborate on this religious perception. Accordingly, an effort shall be made to define the categories of knowledge and method in Islam, those in Philippine Islam in particular. In this regard, the nature of religious experience shall be explored and defined in the context of contemporary efforts by Filipino Muslims (or Moros) to search for a "national" identity and, in addition, the experience of the Ummah in Philippine history shall be traced.
          This discussion should particularly be surprising and  insightful to those who tend to regard Islam as rigid or unyielding particularly with regard to the commonly misused and misunderstood concept of jihad, which means also intellectual exertion, not simply physical. If one were to engage in a play in words and reversed the title of this piece to read "Secular Experience in the Formation of the United States Empire", and examine the role of force and violence -- including torture -- in this process from the beginning to this day, one might have a more somber view towards Islam.

"Oh foglia appassita del Fiume Mekong ed altre poesie"
Antologia poetica di Htilar Sitthu (U Soe Nyunt)
Libera traduzione di Htilar Sitthu, 1988 "O withered leaf from the River Mekong and other poems"  Innwa Pub. House, VII edizione.
Recensioni ed introduzione

16/03/2017

Beginning in the early 1950s there were tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese who chose to ‘return’ to the People’s Republic of China (prc). Until fairly recently, little attention has been given to the approximately 600,000 ethnic Chinese who chose to immigrate to China from locations throughout Southeast Asia, as well as further afield in the first few decades after the founding of the PRC. There were many factors influencing their migration to a country that many had never stepped foot on. However, it is clear that the Chinese state made a concerted attempt to rally the support (capital and immigration) of overseas Chinese communities. Many of the returnees were resettled on one of dozens of ‘Overseas Chinese Farms’ (huaqiao nongchang) scattered throughout the provinces of southern China. Outside of China they were considered ‘Chinese’ and foreign, juxtaposed against the local or ‘indigenous’ identities that had taken shape in
tandem with the independence of former colonies in Southeast Asia and the rise of modern nationalism. Upon their ‘return’ to what was, for many, an imagined ancestral homeland — a country many of them had never seen — they were confronted with a
different type of discrimination and suspicion than they faced ‘abroad’. This was despite, and in some cases because of, certain favorable policies enacted by the party state to assist in their relocation and assimilation into society. Ironically, some of the same policies that sought to gradually assimilate them into Chinese society actually reinforced their position as ‘permanent outsiders’: the creation of an official ‘huaqiao’ legal status;
institutionalized segregation in the form of huaqiao nongchang, huaqiao villages, and huaqiao schools; and a resultant pariah status that did not begin to recede until after the reforms of the late 1970s. While the concept of ‘huaqiao’ (overseas Chinese sojourners) was falling out of use among Chinese communities abroad, the word was taking on a new meaning in the prc, both for the Chinese party state, and for those who would come to self-identify as huaqiao/guiqiao.

Assessments of Singapore’s history invariably revolve around Sir Stamford Raffles’ arrival in 1819. Before this date – we’ve been earlier told – “nothing very much appears to have happened in Singapore”. Pre-1819 Singapore was a sleepy, historically insignificant fishing village, little more than the “occasional resort of pirates”.
This ambitious book, co-written by four of Singapore’s foremost historians, offers an assertive re-evaluation of that view, firmly situating Singapore’s starting point seven hundred years ago. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary range of archival, textual and cartographical records, as well as the latest archaeological discoveries, the authors cast a singular historical trajectory for Singapore over the past seven centuries, animating its history like never before.
Written in a compelling and accessible manner, and richly illustrated with more than 200 artefacts, photographs, maps, art works and ephemera, this volume builds upon the foundations of an earlier book, Singapore: A 700-Year History. Extensively rewritten to incorporate ground-breaking research findings, Seven Hundred Years: A History of Singapore widens the historical lens and offers a vital new perspective on the story of Singapore.

Recent research by the author (Charney 2017 and 2020, forthcoming) on the precolonial Myanmar army has emphasized the importance of villagers and village ways of combat in larger campaigns that that are normally understood through depictions in the chronicles that are heavily formulaic and court-scopic. Beneath the veneer of ordered and obedient soldiery, however, was a chronic tension between the court, its generals, and ministers, on the one hand, who sought to regulate the limits of warfare in line with a royal imaginary predicated on beneficent rulership, Buddhist values, and the establishment of universal harmony with the behaviour of local commanders and village warriors, on the other, who dealt with the weak administrative structures that required obedience through spectacular displays of violence and pre-existing ways of waging local wars in rural Myanmar. The present paper examines the ways in which the Myanmar court attempted to set the limits of war and the impact of the removal of the king at the end of the Third Anglo-Myanmar War in November 1885 as a crucial moderating influence, and the introduction of a more unlimited colonial approach to war and violence. It is argued that there is an existing model for limiting violence in warfare that is not an imposition of the West but has emerged entirely within the Myanmar-Buddhist historical experience.

2nd research paper for HIS334- Peasants, Rebels and Leviathan: Modern Southeast Asian History (Murdoch University)

In what ways did Western imperialism change Southeast Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries?

This paper examines the impact of the introduction of Western imperialism (and the introduction of Western influences in education, politics and economic exploitation) in Southeast Asia during the 19th and early 20th century

Urbanization is driving Southeast Asia’s economies, moving vast numbers of people to urban centers at a pace unheard of in the West. As impressive as these cities are, they bring with them massive problems in terms of sanitation, pollution, income disparity and infrastructure challenges. If the region is to enjoy the benefits of urbanization it will have to balance the old and new, taking advantage of both traditional knowledge and modern technology, writes Bharat Dahiya.

The Great Influenza Pandemic of the 20th century seems to have reemerged after 102 years through COVID-19. The deadliest plague of the last century has claimed approximately 50 million lives worldwide or one-third of the global population. Roughly 70,000 – 90,000 individuals have lost their lives in the Philippines which nearly put an end to the public health system of the nation. Its catastrophic second wave, which ran from October 1918 to the rest of the year, tormented the archipelago from Aparri to Sulu.

However, the history of the country during the 1918 pandemic is still being sorely researched to this day. According to the demographic and social historian Francis A. Gealogo in 2009, there is “a dearth of serious in-depth study” of the 1918 Influenza impact in the Philippines. As COVID-19 continuously strain the nation in 2020, the research heavily focused on the alarming similarities of the 1918 Influenza pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of the initial responses of the authorities, ineffective quarantines, and the treatments on the welfare of the health workers.

The study has used the comparative methodology to assess the two pandemics which relatively display the importance and relevance of understanding the history of the 1918 Influenza pandemic as a negative example in handling the COVID-19 public health crisis.

This book analyses the processes of social and economic change in Brunei Darussalam. Drawing on recent studies undertaken by both locally based scholars and senior researchers from outside the state, the book explores the underlying strengths, characteristics, and uniqueness of Malay Islamic Monarchy in Brunei Darussalam in a historical context and examines these in an increasingly challenging regional and global environment. It considers events in Brunei's recent history and current socio-cultural transformations, which give expression to the traumatic years of decolonisation in Southeast Asia. A wide range of issues focus on foreign, non-Bruneian narratives of Brunei as against insider or domestic accounts of the sultanate, the status of minority ethnic groups in Brunei and the concept of 'Brunei society', as well as changes in the character and composition of the famous 'water village', Kampong Ayer, as the cultural heartland of Brunei Malay culture and the socio-cultural and economic effects of the resettlement of substantial segments of the population from a 'life on water' to a 'life on land'. A timely and very important study on Brunei Darussalam, the book will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, historians, geographers, and area studies specialists in Southeast Asian Studies and Asian Studies.

An excerpt from Charlie Samuya Veric’s forthcoming book titled, Children of the Postcolony, the sampler provides a glimpse of the main arguments concerning the need to reconstruct the intellectual origins of Philippine Studies as a discipline. In particular, the sampler describes the historical forgetting that defines the study of the Filipino nation following its independence from the US in 1946, a phenomenon that Veric calls the "Ileto effect."

«Путешествие» Ибн Баттуты занимает особое место среди средневековых арабских источников по истории малайского мира. Это одно из немногих арабских свидетельств о регионе, основанных на рассказах очевидца. В 1345-1347 гг. Ибн Баттута совершил плавание из Индии в Китай и обратно через Малаккский пролив, посетив по дороге султанат Самудра-Пасай на Северной Суматре и портовый город Какула, предположительно находившийся на побережье Малаккского полуострова. Описание этих портов занимает несколько страниц в «Путешествии» и содержит не только историко-географические, но и этнографические сведения. Несмотря на небольшой объем и сложности в восстановлении хронологии и маршрута, сообщения Ибн Баттуты служат ценным источником по истории малайско-индонезийского региона. Тем не менее, на русском языке они до сих пор не изданы. Русского перевода полного текста «Путешествия» не существует. В разное время в нашей стране публиковались отдельные извлечения из сочинения, однако главы, посвященные Юго-Восточной Азии, остаются за рамками этих изданий. Публикация содержит перевод отрывков из «Путешествия» Ибн Баттуты, посвященных Самудре и Какуле, и комментарии к нему. Перевод выполнен с арабского текста, изданного в 1858 гг. французскими востоковедами Ш. Дефремери и Б. Р. Сангинетти.

North and South Vietnamese youth had very different experiences of growing up during the Vietnamese War. This book gives a unique perspective on the conflict through the prism of adult–youth relations. By studying these relations, including educational systems, social organizations, and texts created by and for children during the war, Olga Dror analyzes how the two societies dealt with their wartime experience and strove to shape their futures. She examines the socialization and politicization of Vietnamese children and teenagers, contrasting the North's highly centralized agenda of indoctrination with the South, which had no such policy, and explores the results of these varied approaches. By considering the influence of Western culture on the youth of the South and of socialist culture on the youth of the North, we learn how the youth cultures of both Vietnams diverged from their prewar paths and from each other.
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/south-east-asian-history/making-two-vietnams-war-and-youth-identities-19651975?format=HB

Western historians have focused on a series of supposed “lost moments” when America could have changed the character of Ho Chi Minh and the post-colonial Vietnamese state. Foremost among these is the “Wilsonian Moment” during the Versailles peace conference in late 1919 and early 1920. Some western historians argue that Ho preferred the American president’s concept of self-determination above all other political philosophies. Only later, after suffering Wilson’s indifference, did French socialists radicalize Ho and he begin his migration to the communist world.

This narrative, however, is contradicted by newly digitized archival and library resources on Ho Chi Minh’s actions in 1919-1920. In fact, Ho never referenced the American president. Instead, he was advocating for Lenin’s concept of political development at this time. This new picture of Ho Chi Minh’s activities not only demonstrates that Woodrow Wilson did not factor into his political vision and challenges notions that the metropole and Europeans were a unidirectional force of radicalization. Indeed, Ho Chi Minh was himself an agent of radicalization, pushing French socialists to join Vladimir Lenin’s Third International as the Versailles conference closed.

An 8 page essay which looks over and analyses the close relationship that the Korean Koryŏ Dynasty had with Medieval China, especially the Song Dynasty. Examples of war alliances, religions, artworks, politics, and education are analyzed to prove the thesis.

FOR THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS, THAI GOVERNMENTS have consistently stressed the homogeneity of the peoples of Thailand. Unlike its Southeast Asian neighbors, modern Thailand has never had an official discourse on multiculturalism. The predominant government policy towards cultural diversity has been one of assimilation. The result has been that both domestically and internationally, Thailand is perceived as Southeast Asia's most ethnically homogeneous nation. Yet Thailand has always been an ethnically diverse place, and in recent years has experienced a resurgence in expressions of ethnic culture and identity. What form is this resurgence taking, and why is it occurring?

... Collapse and Regeneration from Funan to Angkor The history of the Khmer civilization is characterized by cycles of fragmen-tation, collapse, and reorganization. ... When the Thai army sacked the capital of Angkor in ad 1432, they conquered a distinctly Khmer kingdom. ...