By examining the references to the Ayudhyan polity contained in the Ming imperial annals, and comparing them with the local chronicular accounts of that polity, this article suggests a greater consonance between what is contained in the Ming texts and the van Vliet version of the chronicles (based on the Sangitiyavan). Other suggestions about the early history of Ayudhya are made on the basis of the Chinese texts. A precis of the Chinese references is included as an appendix to the article.

Amidst rapid socio-economic change, many Vietnamese are anxious to preserve some memories and traditions against the ravages of time. This essay examines Tap Chi Xua & Nay (Past and Present Journal), a popular publication of the Vietnam History Association, to demonstrate how history is being recreated and memory redefined even as the editors claim to uphold timeless patriotic verities.

Founded in 1979, the Thai popular monthly magazine Sinlapa watthanatham aimed to make history, art and culture into areas of contestation against long-established official interpretations, and thus encourage a broad-based readership to reassess their assumptions about Thai-ness. However, the question of magazine sales, the context of the economic boom, and the crisis that erupted in 1997 led the magazine to succumb to consumerism, as well as a conservative ideology.

An account based on fieldwork, "The Road to Bd Ra" portrays the settlement of a river valley in Vietnam's northern uplands, and also explores the relationship between settlers and other ethnic groups. A local history approach and emphasis on travel as research perspective are used to examine geographical and administrative processes common to many parts of Vietnam's upland frontier.

This article examines the history and functions of the Brunei State Council (1907—1959). Although a "rubber stamp" to the British Resident's decisions until 1950, thereafter the Council, dominated by the nominees of a new and strong Sultan, Omar Ali Saifuddin III, became an Achilles heel to the British officialdom that yielded maximum power to the traditional elements under the Constitution promulgated in 1959.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Republican Chinese thinkers viewed modern sports and traditional martial arts as important ways of invigorating the Chinese nation and race, and institutions in the ROC used both in attempting to extend the nationalist impulse to the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. These alternative physical culture models provide insights into both the diversity of thinking and the shared modernist assumptions that inspired projects directed toward the creation of “Greater Chinese” communities.

This article examines the establishment by the Thai court in the late nineteenth century of what was to become the "national library", an institution modelled on colonial scholarly societies being set up at the time. It examines its role in the construction of a corpus of a knowledge about the "Thai nation".

Around the turn of the 20th century, the colonial Dutch state grew increasingly concerned about what were perceived as threats to its authority. The article devotes particular attention to the so-called “Outer Islands”, and the forces that Batavia saw at work in this periphery that were considered dangerous enough to jeopardize imperial survival.

Growing inter-regional trade has created closer ties between a remote.Thai market town near the Burma-Thailand border and the central region of Thailand. With more outside traders — armed with new kinds of goods — coming to trade, the central region, Bangkok in particular, is no longer a strange, faraway land, and Central Thai, which is used in trade, has become a familiar language in the town. Such new economic activities are thus a crucial factor in national integration, and help strengthen the ideology of the modern Thai nation.

Through an examination of an essay written by a Balinese intellectual in the 1930s, this article explores how notions of modernity and nationalism can take root in particular localities. The essay makes a case for modernization and nationalism in Bali, and points to the existing caste system, which it identifies as largely a colonial creation, as an obstacle to progress that should be eliminated.

The military side of British-Dutch diplomatic relations in the Far East at the end of the 1930s has received little attention. The issue is examined here on the basis of original source materials, with particular attention to the way the Netherlands abandoned its policy of diplomatic “aloofness”.

Using Chiang Saen in northern Thailand as a case study, this paper describes the practice of archaeology as conducted by the Thai Fine Arts Department. In particular, it examines how the Chiang Saen archaeological site has been treated under the rubric of “cultural resource management”.