History Of Southeast Asia Research Articles

Politics and Society in Viet-Nam during the Early Nguyen Period (1802–62)

Professor A. B. Woodside's recent study of Vietnamese government and society in the first half of the nineteenth century is likely to become immediately a standard work for the teaching of South-East Asian history, as well as a point of departure for further research. It is the first attempt by a Western scholar to analyse the institutional developments of a period in which Viêt-Nam attained its greatest measure of “Confucianization” and also its greatest territorial extent as a unified country. The “Đại-Nam” of the later years of Minh-Mang (1820–41) included not only the whole of present-day Viêt-Nam, united for the first time in 1802, but also (after 1836) a large part of Cambodia as well as a portion of eastern Laos. The institutional changes of his reign included the reinvigoration of the examination system, the creation of new organs of central government, and a thorough overhaul of the machinery of provincial administration. In terms of its own previous history, it was by no means a weak or declining Viêt-Nam which found itself face to face with European power in the 1850's and 1860's. By offering a study of government and society in this period, Professor Woodside has gone some of the way towards filling a major gap in Western-language literature on Vietnamese history.

The Integrity of Southeast Asian History

At the end of a Cornell seminar a few weeks ago, a student remarked that the great difficulty in studying Southeast Asian history lay in the immense size of the area, and in the fact that it contained so many different countries. I agreed, but commented that they all belonged to Southeast Asia, and I went on, “If you were. to take indigenes from the different countries and dress them all exactly alike, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to identify the country of origin of each and all.”

An Econometric Study of Indo-Ceylon Labor Migration, 1920-1938: A Critique

The economic history of Southeast Asia reveals an association between two parallel forces: (1) the development of the export crops, mainly the plantations, and (2) the large-scale migration of Chinese and Indian labor into the growing export economies, notably, Burma, Ceylon, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Students of regional economic development have inferred a mutual chain of causation between these two forces. On the one hand, the rapid growth of commercial crops has been attributed to the inflow of labor from India and China. On the other, the inducement offered by these export crops to population movements have also been a major thesis of migration studies. The present paper inquires into this second aspect through an econometric analysis of migration, limited to the specific case of Indo-Ceylon movements during the period 1920-38. The current literature on emigration from India during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries suggests the following: a) That parts of India, especially South India, were so povertystricken that there existed a perennial excess supply of labor willing to migrate wherever employment opportunities were available. b) That this labor was directed by the colonial government of the period to other British colonies with varying degrees of encouragement and restriction, depending on the political pressures from time to time. Variability on the supply side, if any, is thus attributable only to the political forces influencing government policy. c) That the pull of demand from the receiving regions was the main economic force determining migration. d) That such pull depended crucially on the fortunes of the export industries in the migrant-receiving regions. Migration flows were observed to rise and fall with world booms and depressions, presumably acting through the demand for exports of the countries of labor inflow. The following study of population movements between India and Ceylon sheds some serious doubts on the above generalizations. Apart

Concepts of Order in Southeast Asia and Micronesia

In this article a system of ordering space found among the people of the central and western Caroline Islands of Micronesia will be described, the fundamental concepts of which bear a striking resemblance to particular regulative principles found among various Southeast Asian peoples. If a genetic connection is accepted for these parallels the form taken by Southeast Asian cultures after contact with ‘Hindu/Buddhist’ peoples can be interpreted as a natural outgrowth of concepts already basic to these cultures before such contact. The ethnographic information presented here, therefore, is directed to the comparative analysis of the culture history of Southeast Asia and Oceania and should be viewed in conjunction with the recent work of linguists and archaeologists on this topic (e.g. Benedict, 1966, 1967; Grace, Solheim and Chang, 1964).

How to Teach the Southeast Asian History in the World History Teaching

How to Teach the Southeast Asian History in the World History Teaching

Major Problems of Southeast Asian History

Major Problems of Southeast Asian History

The Causes of an Involuted Society: A Theoretical Approach to Rural Southeast Asian History

As historians of Southeast Asia turn to the study of rural history, they will have to resort increasingly to theoretical aids as an answer to the paucity of written records. Such theory, drawn from the other social sciences, must be shaped and tested to fit the needs of the historical discipline. For example, the work of Ester Boserup and Clifford Geertz on the relationship among population density, land usage, and socioeconomic behavior has applicability to problems of the evolution of Southeast Asian rural society under colonial impact. A comparison of Geertz' study of agricultural involution in nineteenth century Java with my own work on Pampanga Province, Philippines, provides some first steps towards a theory of rural change. Specifically, a modern cash crop economy produces more sophisticated contractual relations between tenants and landowners regardless of changes in population density per agricultural hectare. And, in the face of a scarcity of resources (e.g., land, cash, machinery, etc.) needed for modern agriculture, a given society will evolve highly complex institutions in order to share as far as possible those commodities in short supply. Specific types of institutions may develop to meet given needs, and the greater the number of shortages, the more involuted the society will become.

The Causes of an Involuted Society: A Theoretical Approach to Rural Southeast Asian History

As historians of Southeast Asia turn to the study of rural history, they will have to resort increasingly to theoretical aids as an answer to the paucity of written records. Such theory, drawn from the other social sciences, must be shaped and tested to fit the needs of the historical discipline. For example, the work of Ester Boserup and Clifford Geertz on the relationship among population density, land usage, and socioeconomic behavior has applicability to problems of the evolution of Southeast Asian rural society under colonial impact. A comparison of Geertz' study of agricultural involution in nineteenth century Java with my own work on Pampanga Province, Philippines, provides some first steps towards a theory of rural change. Specifically, a modern cash crop economy produces more sophisticated contractual relations between tenants and landowners regardless of changes in population density per agricultural hectare. And, in the face of a scarcity of resources (e.g., land, cash, machinery, etc.) needed for modern agriculture, a given society will evolve highly complex institutions in order to share as far as possible those commodities in short supply. Specific types of institutions may develop to meet given needs, and the greater the number of shortages, the more involuted the society will become.

A Guide to Books on Southeast Asian History (1961-1966)

A Guide to Books on Southeast Asian History (1961-1966)

A History of South-East Asia

A History of South-East Asia

New Directions in Southeast Asian Prehistory

New Directions in Southeast Asian Prehistory

Giovanni de' Marignolli: An Italian Prelate at the Court of the South-East Asian Queen of Sheba

The year 1338 was the occasion of a great event in the life of a certain John of Florence, for in December of that year he set out from Avignon on a journey that was to take him, in his capacity of Papal Legate, to the court of the Great Khan of Cathay in Peking. This Franciscan Friar of aristocratic Florentine lineage is best known to us under the name John Marignolli, sometimes Giovanni de' Marignola, and his importance for the history of South-East Asia lies in the fact that, like Marco Polo, he made his return voyage from China not by the Central Asian overland route again but by sea through the Indies and, what is more, though passing through many perils, survived to tell the tale.

Early Bronze in Northeastern Thailand

Early Bronze in Northeastern Thailand

A Concise History of South-East Asia

A Concise History of South-East Asia

Southeast Asia and the West

Traditional reconstructions of the prehistory and early history of Southeast Asia contain two periods of contact between Southeast Asia and the West, these being the beginnings of the so-called Dongson Culture and the first historic state of Funan. There has been controversy as to whether the Western contacts which gave rise to the "Dongson Culture" came directly to north Vietnam around 800 B.C. or whether they were filtered through Chou China and reached north Vietnam about 300 B.C. In either case, primarily decorative patterns, ultimately from the European Bronze and Early Iron Age, and bronze-working came in together. The "Dongson" patterns spread over much of Southeast Asia and are still being used today in some areas. Research by historians and geographers indicated that the Kingdom of Funan existed somewhere in coastal Mainland Southeast Asia. From this work it was apparent that Funan was in some way connected with the trade between China and the West during the first millennium A.D. up until the end of Funan around 600 A.D. In both of these models of contact Southeast Asians were the passive recipients of whatever came from the West.

Book Review: South-East Asia: A Concise History of Southeast Asia

Book Review: South-East Asia: A Concise History of Southeast Asia

A Concise History of Southeast Asia

A Concise History of Southeast Asia

The Teaching of Southeast Asian History

Until comparatively recent times South-East Asia hardly entered into Western historical teaching and was of marginal concern for orthodox European research. While the world's societies stood in virtual isolation from each other, records were generally unknown and unstudied beyond their domestic orbit. Where Western historians ranged outside the Graeco-Roman and Middle Eastern spheres in any depth, their interest was individual and antiquarian rather than the reflection of their civilisation's historical bias. Because the techniques and preoccupations of modern scholarship had not emerged, moreover, such enquiries were mainly devoid of near-contemporary inference or consideration of those problems to which the social sciences later directed attention. World history, whether of narrow or wide conspectus, still remained to be elicited. In the passage of human affairs, the great civilisations had travelled in separate compartments.

A Concise History of Southeast Asia.

A Concise History of Southeast Asia.

A History of South-East Asia.

A History of South-East Asia.