It is a well-known fact that the world significance of Indonesia, or the Dutch East Indies as it was formerly called, is based mainly on two factors: its geographical location and its natural resources. These factors are of vital importance today, but they have existed all along and have had a profound influence on the shaping of the Indonesian past. Naturally, their relative importance did not remain constant throughout the centuries, and it is the very interplay between these two controlling elements which helps to explain or clarify some of the actual events, crises, and changes in the history of the archipelago. In fact, a careful study of that interplay might lead to a new periodization of Indonesian history, which would serve to supplement the traditional division according to the dominant cultural influence.

On November 4, 1946, representatives of the United States and China signed a five-year “Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation” at Nanking. Negotiation of this pact within six months of the cessation of hostilities had been called for by the treaty of January 11, 1943, under which the United States relinquished extraterritorial rights in China. The new treaty should thus have occasioned no surprise since it was intended merely as a routine instrument for facilitating commercial relations between the two countries.

One of the most noteworthy incidents in the history of Japan's transition from a feudal regime to a modern state was the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. The province of Satsuma is situated in the southernmost portion of the island of Kyushu, and Kagoshima is the capital city. The Daimyo of Satsuma was one of the most powerful and aggressive of the feudal lords ruling the country at the time Japan was opened to foreign intercourse. He and his warlike samurai took a leading part in the events which saw the decline of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor.

When George Coedes writes a book on Southeast Asia, it is an event in the history of that region; for, in a lifetime spent in Indochina, he has come to be considered as one of the all-time authorities on that part of the world. His connection with l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient has covered more than 40 years, and in his capacity as epigraphist it has been his task to decipher and translate the inscriptions of Champa and Cambodia — Sanskrit, Cham, Khmer, and Pali — and to fix the place of each in history; which inscriptions he has published, generally in the Bulletin of that institution under the title of “Etudes Cambodgiennes,” but also in other journals and in collections. During the twelve years (1918–30) when he was loaned to Siam as Secretary of the National Institute, in charge of the National Library and Museum, he collected, translated, and published the inscriptions of Siam— in Siamese, Tai, Mon, Khmer, Sanskrit, and Pali — and translated and edited important chronicles and other historical documents. He organized and classified the National Museum and founded there the Dvāravatī and Srivijaya Schools of Art. Nor has all his attention been given to French Indochina and Siam. One of his earliest tasks was to collect and publish the references to the Far East in the texts of Greek and Latin authors. While at Bangkok, he translated the inscriptions in Old Malay found within the former kingdom of Srivijaya and wrote several articles on that kingdom.