As far back as 1913, Hoesein Djajadiningrat made a critical study of one of the sources for Indonesian history. He was the first Indonesian to do so. But his work, though important, cannot be properly considered as the beginning of modern Indonesian historiography. This came later.

Among the more noteworthy features of the Indonesian government's current efforts to recover and accentuate what is believed to be the nation's “cultural identity” is the encouragement being given to the shift in emphasis in the writing of Indonesian history so as to bring out more fully the uniqueness and greatness of the Indonesian cultural achievement. This new “Indonesia-centric” approach is said to provide a much needed correction of the earlier, colonially oriented and “Western centric” type of historical writing about Indonesia, in which the Indonesian “identity” allegedly was obscured because of Western and Dutch ethnocentric prejudices, arid in which historical events in Indonesia were treated as mere appendages to Dutch or European history generally. As early as December, 1957, a seminar of historians in Djokjakarta, Central Java, was convened “in order to eliminate the colonial historian's presentation and restore the proper emphasis on the indigenous culture, tradition and history” in “the history books of the country”. More than five years later the problem still appeared not to have been resolved as yet, for at another historical seminar held in Medan, North Sumatra, in March, 1963, Indonesia's Deputy First Minister for Information, Ruslan Abdulgani, was reportedly still calling “on Indonesian writers to begin to ‘rewrite’ Indonesian history to cleanse it of what he called ‘West-centrism’”. Indonesian historians, Abdulgani urged, “must dare to rewrite our history so that it will no longer be West-centric but Indonesiacentric”.

The development of pre-war Indonesian nationalism may be divided into four periods. The first period witnessed the shy initial attempts to achieve improvements in the cultural, economic, political and religious fields, stimulated more or less by the then prevalent Ethical Policy of the Dutch administration. During the late tens and the early twenties the political scene was dominated by the Sarekat Islam and the Partai Komunis Indonesia, at first collaborating, later competing with each other, but, whatever their mutual relations, both responsible for an amount of vociferous agitation and political vivacity which highly upset Dutch official and private circles. The abortive communist revolts of 1926–7 led to a harsh repression of everything communist, while the Sarekat Islam was losing its hold over the masses with which it had lost contact already after it had thrown out the leftists. At this stage real nationalism began to fill the vacuum caused by the disappearance of the P.K.I, and the powerlessness of the S.I. There is no doubt that the previous agitation had been motivated by genuine nationalist feelings, but these had either been subordinated to or run parallel with more internationally inclined movements such as Islamic reformism and Marxist socialism. After 1926, however, nationalism – and professedly Indonesian nationalism for that matter – was made the basic principle of political action. This became clear when the oldest party, the very cautious, in its origins very aristocratic and hardly more than Central Javanese Boedi Oetomo decided to include Indonesian nationalism into its programme. The new trend received its most clear expression, of course, in Soekarno's Partai Nasional Indonesia, which advocated a Free Indonesia, to be achieved by non-cooperation with the Dutch administration and the broadest possible co-operation with other political parties.

Before outlining these Burmese sources, I would like to make a very brief survey of Burmese history. Burmese history proper begins with Aniruddha, A.D. 1044. From then to 1287 was the heyday of Pagan until it fell at the hands of the Mongols. From then till the time of Bayinnaung 1551–81 Burma was divided into a number of small kingdoms with the Mons in the south. The principal Burmese kingdom had its seat at Ava. Then under Tabinshwehti and his successor Bayinnaung, Burma excluding Arakan but including the Shan States and Chiengmai was unified. This kingdom lasted till 1740 when the Mons of the south broke away to form a kingdom of their own. When they gained in strength they attacked the northern kingdom in annual raids which culminated in the capture of Ava 1751. This brought an end to the Toungoo dynasty and the Mons became practically the masters of the whole of Burma proper. But not for long. U Aungzeya (later known as Alaungpaya, 1752–60), gathered round him a certain following in Shwebo which was also known as Konbaung (subsequently the name of the period): and offered resistance to the Mons. From there his power spread until he was able to crush the shortlived Mon kingdom, unify the whole of Burma proper and make successful raids on Manipur and even Assam. He led an invasion of Siam but he died before he could achieve anything. He had however begun a dynasty, the Konbaung dynasty.

From prehistoric times rice (oryza sativa linn) has been cultivated in Burma but it was only about a century ago that Burma began to develop into the chief rice-exporting country of the world. Up to about the middle of the nineteenth century rice was cultivated mainly for home consumption and for a small, irregular internal trade mainly from Lower to Upper Burma. The earliest account we have of Burma's external rice trade is probably the one by Duarte Barbosa who mentioned that much rice was shipped from Pegu to Malacca and Sumatra in the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time Pegu was an independent kingdom peopled by Mons (known also as Talaings or Peguans). Their kings appeared to have viewed trade in a more favourable light than did the Burmans for during their time trade was much less hampered than after Pegu became subject to the Burmans.

The publication of Dr. C. D. Cowan's Nineteenth Century Malaya in 1961 was a significant landmark in the historiography of British intervention in Malaya. His view of the reasons for intervention has shown signs of becoming the newly orthodox view of a well-known crux in Malayan historical interpretation, being given prominence in a number of recent Malayan history books. After studying the London records, he came to the conclusion that “the decision to take some action in Malaya, and if necessary to intervene in the affairs of the states, was provoked not by conditions in the Peninsula, nor by any consideration of British economic interests there, but by fear of foreign intervention.” This conclusion has since been supported by another student of the Colonial Office side of things, Dr. W. D. MacIntyre, and seems to relegate previous interpretations to the limbo of historiographical curiosities.

Before the American Revolution, the economic life of Rhode Island was largely dependent on the Caribbean and African trade. But the acquisition of political independence meant also the closing of these highly profitable channels of trade. Just as the need to find means by which to purchase British manufactures had led Rhode Island to join in the famous triangular trade (between New England, the West Indies and Africa); so now the closing of this trade necessitated the search for an alternative commercial avenue. This alternative was found in the establishment of trade with the Mediterranean, the Baltic and most important of all, with the Far East and the East Indies.