Human nature is inevitably concerned with the past which, for nations no less than for individuals, forms a framework for present attitudes and sometimes a justification for present actions. In the developed countries of the West this framework is easily and frequently obscured, although its presence can be readily demonstrated. For those nations which have, until recently, been controlled by one or other of the European powers, however, the past provides a framework to which national appeal is often made in a particularly explicit way.

It is evident from the brief historical survey presented in this paper that the French found in Cambodia well-established Chinese communities with a long tradition of indirect rule. My argument may be summarised in four propositions:

1. Contact between Cambodia and China has continued more or less uninterrupted since the first century of this era — and perhaps longer. Unlike early Indian contact, which produced distinctly Indian forms in the indigenous cultures of Southeast Asia, contact with China appears to have left them relatively unmarked. Khmer culture is definitely not sinic in language, social structure, religion, or the arts.

2. The long history of Chinese contact was not associated with extensive Chinese settlement in Cambodia until the fifteenth century, when there occurred a marked change in the nature of the Cambodian economy. Throughout the Chen-la and the Angkorean periods, the relative homogeneity of the country did not encourage internal trade, and the small amount of foreign trade evident in the capital was limited almost entirely to luxury goods for the court. After 1400, the Cambodian economy came to depend more and more upon trade, a phenomenon that was associated with the establishment of a growing Chinese population in Cambodia, primarily in Phnom-Penh.

3. The evidence of trade relations and large migrations suggests that by the middle of the nineteenth century the Chinese population of Phnom-Penh was mainly Cantonese, possibly with a smaller number of Hokkien. In Kampot, on the other hand, along the coast of the Gulf of Siam, a large number of Hainanese settled following the establishment, in the eighteenth century, of a trading centre at Hatien. We do not know the size of this population, but we do know that by 1860 it was primarily engaged in growing pepper. It is clear that by the time of the French Protectorate was established in 1864, the Chinese community in Phnom-Penh, whatever its make-up, numbered in the thousands and controlled practically all the trade of the country, foreign and domestic.

4. The concept of indirect rule over the Chinese in Cambodia dates from at least the beginning of the eighteenth century. This system was not very formal, however, and the legally denned system of congregations in neighbouring Annam, dating from 1814, became the model for the French colonial administrators when they eventually came to consider the “Chinese problem” in Cambodia.

This study will focus its attention on the entrepreneurial role of the overseas Chinese in Thailand and their changing status within the context of the Thai political dynamics. The 1960 census of Thailand reports a population of 26,257,860, of which 409,508 are Chinese citizens either because of birth in China or registration with Chinese diplomatic officials at the age of sixteen. However, observers generally place the number of persons who habitually speak a Chinese dialect and conform to Chinese behaviour patterns in most social situations at about three million to three and a half million. This would make the Chinese community in Thailand, after that in Malaysia, the largest single group of the fifteen odd million Chinese resident abroad.

Late in the seventeenth century the Phaulkon fiasco encouraged Thailand to rid herself of the possibility of European domination — an endeavour whose success no doubt owed much to unsettled conditions in Europe. It is not until the mid-nineteenth century, following the ascension of the enlightened King Mongkut, that the renewed activity of Western diplomats, traders and missionaries provide the memoirs from which may be reconstructed a relatively coherent description of the distributional pattern of the Thai centres.

In 1856 a Muslim Sultanate was founded in Yunnan, the southwestern Chinese province that borders Burma. In 1873, seventeen years later, this Sultanate was annihilated. The Muslim inhabitants of Yunnan are known as the Panthays.

There are several versions concerning Muslim origins in Yunnan. A tradition held by the Panthays themselves tells that the Emperor of China requested the Prophet Mohammed to send some Muslims to help him to get rid of evil spirits. The Prophet sent him 360 men, with whose aid the evil spirits were routed. The Arabs were welcomed with great honour and were allowed to settle near the capital. In course of time their numbers increased to such an extent that the Imperial Government was disturbed. The Muslims were therefore dispersed to the border areas of the Empire and resettled there. This account was related to the British mission which visited the Panthay Sultanate, by the Governor of the town of Momien. A very similar Chinese version tells of a Muslim army, several thousand strong, which came to the rescue of the Emperor of China at his request. After quelling the rebellion, the Muslims feared to return home, because during their long sojourn abroad they had been polluted by pork and other prohibited things, and decided to remain in China. Eventually they were sent to Yunnan and other places and became loyal subjects of the Emperor.

Until comparatively recent times South-East Asia hardly entered into Western historical teaching and was of marginal concern for orthodox European research. While the world's societies stood in virtual isolation from each other, records were generally unknown and unstudied beyond their domestic orbit. Where Western historians ranged outside the Graeco-Roman and Middle Eastern spheres in any depth, their interest was individual and antiquarian rather than the reflection of their civilisation's historical bias. Because the techniques and preoccupations of modern scholarship had not emerged, moreover, such enquiries were mainly devoid of near-contemporary inference or consideration of those problems to which the social sciences later directed attention. World history, whether of narrow or wide conspectus, still remained to be elicited. In the passage of human affairs, the great civilisations had travelled in separate compartments.

With the end of the East India Company's monopoly of trade to China in 1834, relations with the Celestial Empire came under the direction of the Foreign Secretary in London, who appointed a Superintendent of Trade, subsequently British Plenipotentiary and also, under the Colonial Office, Governor of Hong Kong. In Southeast Asia, no similar arrangements were made. The three Straits Settlements remained under the Company's administration, with a Governor controlled by the Supreme Government in India, between 1834 and 1851 via the subordinate Bengal Government. The “foreign relations” of the Settlements in regard to indigenous states tended to be handled by the Company's or by naval officers. Relations with the Dutch were handled in London and The Hague by the Foreign Office and its envoys. At various times the appointment was urged of a Superintendent or Plenipotentiary or Commissioner to conduct British diplomacy in South-east Asia, but none ever eventuated. This may seem an unimportant point. But it calls attention to certain basic traditions in British policy in Southeast Asia, as distinct from China, and the fact that the appointment was not made despite pressure for it calls attention to a challenge to these traditions in the little studied mid-century period, a challenge, however, never pressed hard and ultimately only partly successful.

A naval battle which decided the future of the Philippines for centuries to come was fought in 1617 outside Manila Bay. Very few historians, however, have written about this important event. I consider it worthwhile, therefore, to give an account of the battle, based on information gathered from available sources.

In recent years quite a number of States in Africa and Asia have gained independence. These States have three characteristics in common from an archival point of view: they are of smaller size, they are situated in tropical areas and the bulk of their archives and records dates from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.