Fifteen years ago, or halfway to this year's thirtieth anniversary, in his presidential address to this association, Earl Pritchard began by saying: “In accordance with tradition, it now becomes my duty to perform a time-honored rite—to inflict on you the Presidential Address. I will try to do this as painlessly and as quickly as my own inadequacies will permit.… It is … customary, according to the unwritten rules governing the rituals of the present occasion, for the president to review in some way or other the state of the profession or of the discipline to which he belongs, or to present some general theory which interests him, or to discuss the direction that studies in the profession are taking or should take.…” Like Pritchard I have no inclination to depart sharply from this pattern, and I hope here merely to review briefly the past and present state of Malay and Indonesian lexicography. I have chosen this topic because it has been of great and abiding interest to me and because I have, in a modest way, tried to contribute to its furtherance.

In the 1960s a group of Japanese historians responded to the contemporary bureaucratic superstate by embarking on a search for a popular past. They began to reexamine Japan's modern experience from the point of view of the people, not the elite, and with special emphasis not on political events but on social forces and attitudes. They rejected Marxism and modernization theory as alien and limiting and sought instead an indigenous methodology that might better fit the Japanese case because it was derived from it. By choosing topics that suggested the importance of popular energies in the development of modern Japan, they endeavored to enlarge the canvas of social history by bringing the people into it as significant subjects of historical change. Their scholarly efforts have drawn the attention of Japanese within and without academic circles and, as this introductory critical essay suggests, may usefully draw that of Western readers as well.

This paper describes mortality patterns across forty localities in the nineteenth century Philippines and suggests an interpretation of these patterns. Burial records from the Catholic church archives of the localities (parishes) are combined with local population estimates to obtain local mortality levels and trends over time, seasonal variations in mortality, and, especially, episodes of abnormal or “crisis” mortality. It is observed that the level of mortality increased as the nineteenth century progressed, that this was due in large part to an increase in the intensity and frequency of crisis mortality, and that these episodes occurred over time and across the localities in a patterned fashion. Among the underlying causes explored are possible declines in the level of living among the peasantry resulting from the nineteenth century commercialization of Philippine agriculture.

Why has communism flourished in some parts of Asia and not in others? Examining the case of Kerala, this paper argues that, in India at least, social dislocation is the crucial ingredient when added to poverty, landlessness, and literacy. In Kerala, the matrilineal family system of caste-Hindus and the attendant system of extreme disabilities enforced against the low castes collapsed in the early twentieth century. The social upheaval was greater than anywhere else in India. A déraciné generation of caste-Hindus was forced to seek remedies for-the disruption and misery that daily confronted it, while increasing numbers of low castes refused to submit to the restrictions that traditional society sought to impose. This situation of social turmoil, similar in some ways to that prevailing in China and Vietnam, contributed crucially to the establishment of Kerala's vigorous, broad-based Communist party in the late 1930s.

This paper, a study of the career of Yii Chi (1272–1348), explores the nature of Chinese literati support of Mongol rulers during the Yiian period. Yii Chi served as the leading apologist for the usurper Tugh Temiir (Wen-tsung, r. 1328 and 1329–1332). The most prominent court scholar of his time, Yii Chi devoted himself to the enhancement of Tugh Temiir's prestige, authority, and legitimacy. The paper explores Yii's activities in detail and speculates on his motivations in serving his Mongol emperor. In particular, it suggests that Yii Chi's ultimate aim in bolstering the usurper's claims to the throne, as well as in encouraging imperial support of Chinese cultural symbols and values, was to make Mongol rule more predictable and stable and thus to benefit the Mongols' Chinese subjects.

With rare exceptions, Asian historians in the United States are practicing teachers. Through grim necessity, many of us teach courses in fields other than Asia. Most of us teach survey courses in Asian history, usually to large enrollments. Some of us teach advanced undergraduate courses, usually to smaller enrollments.

As researchers, we are a highly trained and professionally self-conscious group; but as teachers? When did we last examine carefully our own aims and methods? When did we last examine carefully a colleague's syllabus? When did we last alter drastically our own syllabuses? The following essay is an attempt to stimulate discussion of the role of advanced courses in Asian history at the undergraduate level.