Books in the Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series series

How does the language of poetry conspire with the language of power? This title deals with Indonesia and the Philippines in the early modern and post-1945 periods. It examines the literature and politics of Indonesia and Philippines from the point of view of contemporary thinking.

Phu Rieng was one of many French rubber plantations in colonial Vietnam; Tran Tu Binh was one of 17,606 laborers brought to work there in 1927, and his memoir is a straightforward, emotionally searing account of how one Vietnamese youth became involved in revolutionary politics.

The memoirs of Marguerite Schenkhuizen provide an overview of practically the whole of the twentieth century as experienced by persons of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ancestry who lived in the former Dutch East Indies.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Thai poets produced epics depicting elaborate myths and legends which intermingled the human, natural, and supernatural worlds.

From Jail to Jail is the political autobiography of Sutan Ibrahim gelar Tan Malaka, an enigmatic and colorful political thinker of twentieth-century Asia, who was one of the most influential figures of the Indonesian Revolution. Variously labeled a communist, Trotskyite, and nationalist, Tan Malaka managed to run afoul of nearly every political group and faction involved in the Indonesian struggle for independence. During his decades of political activity, he spent periods of exile and hiding in nearly every country in Southeast Asia. As a Marxist who was expelled from and became a bitter enemy of his country's Communist Party and as a nationalist who was imprisoned and murdered by his own government's forces as a danger to its anticolonial struggle, Tan Malaka was and continues to be soaked in contradiction and controversy.

One of the most controversial aspects of Javanese gamelan music is its musical mode, pathet. From her experience as a performer of sindhenan, or female singing, Walton analyses the melodies and defines the basic laws of mode for sindhenan.

Social scientists have long recognized many apparent contradictions in the Minangkabau. The world's largest matrilineal people, they are also strongly Islamic and, as a society, remarkably modern and outward looking.

This translation of Ibrahim Syukri's Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani (SKMP) makes available a little known but important manuscript published privately ca. 1950 and printed in jawi (Malay written in a modified Arabic script). Shortly after its publication, the book was banned in both Thailand and Malaysia.

Errington explores linguistic evidence of social change among the traditional priyayi elite of Surakarta in south-central Java.

Women's status in rural Java can appear contradictory to those both inside and outside the culture. In some ways, women have high status and broad access to resources, but other situations suggest that Javanese women lack real power and autonomy.

At a watershed moment in the scholarly approach to the history of this important region, New Terrains in Southeast Asian History captures the richness and diversity of historical discourse among Southeast Asian scholars.

In late 1930, on a secluded mountain overlooking the rural paddy fields of British Burma, a peasant leader named Saya San crowned himself King and inaugurated a series of uprisings that would later erupt into one of the largest anti-colonial rebellions in Southeast Asian history.

Beginning with the closing decade of European colonial rule in Southeast Asia and covering the wartime Japanese empire and its postwar disintegration, "Tensions of Empire" focuses on the Japanese in Southeast Asia, Indonesians in Japan, and the legacy of the war in Southeast Asia.

This diary, begun after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and covering the invasion of Burma up to June 1942, is a moving account of the dilemmas faced by the well-loved and prolific Burmese author Theippan Maung Wa (a pseudonym of U Sein Tin) and his family.

The oil-rich sultanate of Brunei Darussalam is located on the northern coast of Borneo between the two Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah.

According to Tuan, however, South Vietnam in the last decade of its life developed considerable governmental cohesion and internal social strength. This title addresses a common perception of Vietnam: that South Vietnam was a fragmented society which did not deserve to succeed because of its internal weaknesses.

"e;Children see and hear what is there; adults see and hear what they are expected to and mainly remember what they think they ought to remember,"e; David Lowenthal wrote in The Past Is a Foreign Country. It is on this fraught foundation that Fred Lanzing builds this memoir of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp for Dutch colonialists in the East Indies during the World War II.When published in the Netherlands in 2007, the book triggered controversy, if not vitriol, for Lanzing's assertion that his time in the camp was not the compendium of horrors commonly associated with the Dutch internment experience. Despite the angry reception, Lanzing's account corresponds more closely with the scant historical record than do most camp memoirs. In this way, Lanzing's work is a substantial addition to ongoing discussions of the politics of memory and the powerful-if contentious-contributions that subjective accounts make to historiography and to the legacies of the past.Lanzing relates an aspect of the war in the Pacific seldom discussed outside the Netherlands and, by focusing on the experiences of ordinary people, expands our understanding of World War II in general. His compact, beautifully detailed account will be accessible to undergraduate students and a general readership and, together with the introduction by William H. Frederick, is a significant contribution to literature on World War II, the Dutch colonial experience, the history of childhood, and Southeast Asian history.

During his twenty-year tenure as a columnist for Viet Nam News, Ha Noi's English-language newspaper, Huu Ngoc charmed and invigorated an international readership hungry for straightforward but elegant entrees into understanding Vietnamese culture. The essays were originally collected in the massive Wandering through Vietnamese Culture. With Viet Nam: Tradition and Change, Ohio University Press presents a selection from these many treasures, which are perfectly suited to students of Vietnamese culture and travelers seeking an introduction to the country's rich history, culture, and daily life.With extraordinary linguistic ability and a prodigious memory, Ha u Nga c is among Via t Nam's keenest observers of and writers about traditional Vietnamese culture and recent history. The author's central theme-that all tradition is change through acculturation-twines through each of the book's ten sections, which contain Ha u Nga c's ideas on Vietnamese religion, literature, history, exemplary figures, and more. Taken on its own, each brief essay is an engaging discussion of key elements of Vietnamese culture and the history of an issue confronting Via t Nam today.

After an analysis of original Old Burmese and other primary sources, the author discovered that four out of the five events considered to be the most important in the history of early Burma, and believed to have been historically accurate, are actually late-nineteenth and twentieth-century inventions of colonial historians.

Although the Japanese interregnum was brief, its dramatic commencement and equally dramatic conclusion represented a watershed in the history of the young state of Sarawak. This book deals with this topic.

Chairil Anway (1922-1949) was the primary architect of the Indonesian literary revolution in both poetry and prose. In a few intense years he forged almost ingle-handedly a vital, mature literary language in Bahasa Indonesia, a language which formally came to exist in 1928.

Twice in this century popular revolts against colonial rule have occured in the Banten district of West Java. This title details the complicated history of the Bantenese revolts in the twentieth century and probes the ideological riddle of Islamic Communism.

Consists of seventeen articles by scholars including Robert Blust, Paul Hopper, A L Becker, Sarah Bell, J C Catford, Talmy Givon, J W M Verharr and John U Wolff. This book includes essays that explore the issues of ergativity in Western Austronesian languages, historical morphology, phonology, phonetics and morphophonemics.

In 1904 the British Protectorate of Brunei had reached the nadir of its fortunes. Reduced to two small strips of territory, bankrupt, and threatened with takeover by the Rajah of Sarawak (Sir Charles Brooke), Brunei received M. S. H. McArthur who was dispatched to make recommendations for Brunei's future administration.

Eldest daughter of eight children, the author grew up in Surakarta, Java, in what is now Indonesia. In the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, Dutch nationals were rounded up by Japanese soldiers and put in internment camps.

Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power describes a transformation in Buddhist practice in contemporary Burma. This revitalization movement has had real consequences for how the oppressive military junta, in power since the early 1960s, governs the country.

In 1500 Malay Malacca was the queen city of the Malay Archipelago, one of the great trade centers of the world. Its rulers, said to be descendents of the ancient line of Srivijaya, dominated the lands east and west of the straits. The Portuguese, unable to compete in the marketplace, captured the town.