There is no significant historical lesson to be learnt from the narrative which follows, except the lesson of human endurance. The Twentieth Century, even more than any age before, is the age of the refugee. In almost every instance, the refugee instinct is spontaneous — unpremeditated — disorganised; it is individual, or familial. Nobody directs the refugee to depart; no regular organisation assists him on his way; and when he arrives eventually at his destination, nobody really wants him to stay. The refugee who is assisted to settle in a new environment, or the refugee who is expedited back to his former home, are the exceptions to the normal rule that once people become refugees they never entirely lose that status. The refugee is the world's most unwanted man. But somehow he survives. The present narrative is a story of survival.

The “holy man's” (nak sel) rebellion against the Vietnamese that broke out in 1820 along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border is the best-documented one of its kind in pre-colonial Cambodia, and makes a useful addition to the literature of such revolts in Buddhist Southeast Asia. Its importance in Cambodian terms lies in its anti-Vietnamese character, the participation in its ranks of Buddhist monks, the collusion of Cambodian authorities, and the way in which these themes foreshadow Cambodian political thinking, before and after the arrival of the French.

Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia have received substantial attention in the past two decades. Some studies focus on the Chinese of a particular place or country; others seek to make a general survey of Chinese communities throughout all of Southeast Asia. Most studies, however, concentrate on the problematic aspects and political implications of these Chinese communities. Due to the generalized treatment, without regard to place and length of residence abroad, the Chinese in Southeast Asia are often viewed as an undifferentiated mass, homogeneous in outlook and behaviour.

In November of 1873 a force of a few hundred men — French marine troops,’ Chinese regulars from Yunnan, and the sweepings of the ports of East Asia — took? the citadel of Hanoi and gave France the opportunity to add Tonkin to her possessions in Indochina. It was a bold venture, but hardly unplanned. The two most prominent figures in the affair, Jean Dupuis and Francis Garnier, had long been interested in opening southwest China by a direct route through actual or potential French territory, and Dupuis had been taking steps in this direction; since 1868. The attempt had the discreet — if not actually surreptitious — support of the current governor of Cochinchina, admiral Dupré. Yet by the end of December Francis Garnier was dead, his conquests in the Red River delta had been given back to the Vietnamese, and France's chief negotiator for the liquidation of the affair had branded the acts of Dupuis and Garnier as “odious aggression”. Dazzling victory turned into stunning defeat almost overnight, and France was to wait eight years before taking up the initiative of Dupuis and Garnier in Tonkin.

Sufficient empirical research has accumulated in a number of regions of the less developed world to prepare state-of-the-art reviews of migration studies (Morse, 1965, 1971a, 1971b) as well as in-depth investigations of migration-related issues (Kuper, 1965). Despite its size and world importance, very little such research has been conducted in Southeast Asia. This is evident in both the articles and special bibliographic chapter published in a recent review of urbanization and national development in South and Southeast Asia (Jakobson and Prakash, 1971: also, Breese, 1973).

The 1959 election marked a turning point in the constitutional and political development of Singapore. It was the culmination of what had happened since the restoration of British government in Singapore after the Second World War. After the war, the British returned to Malaya to re-establish their rule. But Singapore had seen the humiliating defeat of the British in the march of Japanese militarism. The myth of the invincible supremacy of the white colonialists was shattered. The mood and tempo of the times were increasingly different from that of the pre-war period. The call of the day was decolonisation and independence from colonial domination.

Singapore is one of the most developed countries in Southeast Asia by most standards commonly used by social scientists. The factors which have directly or indirectly contributed to this degree of development include the following: an ecological location which makes Singapore the natural centre of the region; an excellent harbour; the political structure; a continuous supply of foreign capital; a development-oriented bureaucracy; planned industrial and urban development; the physical infra-structure and the attitudes and value orientations of its population. This list is by no means exhaustive and there remain many other factors though of lesser importance, which might be included.

In Volume V Number 2, September 1974, on page 281, line 18 should read “Their interior pages had the correct dates: 17 October 1932, 24 October 1932, 31 October 1932 respectively”.