Considering that, except for the initial period of the Emergency, Malaysia as a country attracted far less attention internationally than most of the other countries in Southeast Asia, it is somewhat surprising to find that many foreign historians did not hesitate to make Malaysian history the subject of their scholarly works. L.A. Mills wrote in 1924, 1942, and again in 1958; Rupert Emerson in 1937. In 1935, a Ph.D. thesis was completed by M.I. Knowles in the University of Wisconsin. In 1943, Virginia Thomson wrote Postmortem on Malaya. The post-1950 situation was even more exciting. Numerous theses on Malaysia were written in various universities in the world — among them SOAS, ANU, Hong Kong, California, Columbia, and Duke. Of course, by far the greatest volume of work was done in the University of Malaya (Singapore) itself where, between 1951 and 1961, more than a hundred theses were completed at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Understandably, in the mid-sixties, there was a growing feeling that the field was being exhausted.

Malayan economic development in modern times can be split into three broad phases:

(1) establishment and vigorous growth of the staple industries (tin and rubber) — roughly from the middle of the nineteenth century to 1914;

(2) fluctuations of staple fortunes — the period between the two world wars;

(3) consolidation and rationalization of the staple industries together with diversification of the economy — post 1945.

There is little that is not known already in Prof. P.J. Drake's article. He himself admits this. He gets his materials from various published sources. Most surprisingly, he does not make any direct reference to such easily readable and indispensable sources of materials such as Frank Swettenham's British Malaya and Lewis Fermor's Report Upon the Mining Industry of Malaya. Given his subject matter and for the period of his study, to omit these two sources is like discussing Christianity without quoting from the Bible or Islam without reading from the Koran.

The origins of political consciousness and nationalism among the hua-ch'iao or overseas Chinese in Malaya occurred during the period 1895–1911, between the Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Revolution. The major defeat suffered by China at the hands of Japan and the subsequent Reform Movement which arose in China awakened the overseas Chinese to the political situation in their homeland. The presence of reformist leader K'ang Yu-wei and revolutionary advocate Sun Yatsen and their colleagues in Malaya served to enhance hua-ch'iao concern for China. By the Revolution of 1911, nationalism among the Malayan Chinese had emerged.

The promulgation of the Constitutional Amendment Act in the Malaysian Parliament in 1971 would seem to suggest an end to intercommunal squabbles over certain major issues which had threatened to bring about an irrevocable split in the tenuously held together multi-communal structure of the country. The Act proclaimed that “in the interest of security and public order” matters pertaining to citizenship (Pt. III of the Constitution), the National Language (Article 152), the special position of the Malays (Article 153), and the Sovereignty of the Rulers (Article 181.) were not to be questioned in public, in state legislatures, and in Parliament. Proscription on these issues had come about as a direct result of the cataclysmic events of 13 May 1969. The promulgation of the Act was the first item of business in the reconvened Malaysian Parliament following the dissolution of the National Operations Council (NOC) which had temporarily ruled the country.

The aim of this study is to examine indigenous Malay writings in an attempt to discover how Malays expressed their identity as a people. In what context was the term Melayu used; in what types of documents did it appear; and did the concept of “Malayness” vary with time and place?

The downfall of the Burmese Kingdom of Ava, late in 1885 (seen in the dramatic deportation of the last Konbaung monarch King Thebaw and the later dissolution of the Hluttaw by the British), was historically significant in several respects. First of all, the end of the Konbaung Dynasty and Burmese independence, which were heralded on 1 January 1886 in a British proclamation incorporating Upper Burma in Queen Victoria's dominions, signalled the start of a period of internal disorder and indigenous resistance to colonial rule. The deposition of the King meant the dissolution of traditional institutions and sanctions, including the demoralization of the Buddhist sangha of which the King had been patron. Thus was begun the Burmese struggle for independence and search for national identity — a struggle which culminated in Burma's attainment of independence outside the British Commonwealth on 4 January 1948, and a search which continued beyond that date.

In the final three decades of the nineteenth century, the world price of silver fell dramatically. On the London silver market, the price dropped almost without check, from an average of 60d. per ounce in 1870 to 28d. per ounce in 1900. For those countries on the silver standard (and at the beginning of the period this included all the states of Southeast Asia), the result was a substantial, continuous depreciation of their currencies against gold-based currencies, most notably sterling. In turn this threatened to disturb severely the foreign trade and capital inflows of those states at a time when they were becoming more closely integrated into the international economy. For example, frequent changes in the exchange rate introduced an element of speculation into trade with gold-standard countries, with the result that merchants' calculations of profit margins were frequently thrown into confusion by sudden fluctuations in the exchange. Moreover, with the exchange value of their currency falling, these states found themselves paying increasingly more in terms of the local currency to secure the same sterling value of imports. This was a particularly important consideration for those countries dependent upon imports of capital goods, for example, mining machinery or railway equipment, as these were obtained almost solely from the gold-standard states of western Europe.

Thailand is primarily a peasant society. In 1974, about 65 per cent of the labour force earned their livelihood from agriculture, although 87 per cent of the population lived in rural areas. Because land has been relatively abundant until recent years, most farmers are landowners, with noted exceptions of tenant farming in areas contiguous to Bangkok. Their simple occupational skills have been transmitted from one generation to another within the village and family, supplemented only by up to four years of compulsory elementary education, acquired intermittently and sporadically between the ages of seven and fourteen. The basic necessities of life historically have been easily satisfied in a hospitable, tropical climate.

Recent scholarship has speculated that there were two forms of “classical” Southeast Asian states in pre-modern Southeast Asia, one associated with the inland wet rice states of the Southeast Asian mainland and Java, and the other represented by the thalassocracy of Srivijaya. It is suggested that while the wet-rice states derived their income from the land, the Srivijaya state depended more upon income from its external contacts — income generated from Srivijaya's participation in the East-West international maritime route which passed through the Malacca Straits region. It is held, however, that the classical states, whether landed or maritime in their focus, had a good deal in common. One dominant characteristic of Southeast Asia's classical states was their “centre” orientation; each state's capital acted as the centre of the king's domain, the centre of his administration and royal cult, and the focus of the king's power and authority. The centre drew in the resources of the realm — tribute, talent, men, and goods — which were then used to support the ruler's power. Via various redistributive mechanisms, classical rulers tapped their centre's treasury to share these resources with their supporters: this redistribution sometimes took the form of direct payments, or more generally-this sharing of prosperity was indirect, as for example in the endowment of temples.

I am interested in ways in which some Vietnamese in the fourteenth century were thinking about their fellow-countrymen. The writings of only a few of them are extant, but their understanding of a well-ordered society survived. For this reason, the fourteenth century may be a watershed in Vietnamese history. Thoughtful men during that century were concerned with more than reaffirming their country's independence, which was never in doubt and had been triumphantly vindicated during the three Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century. Their preoccupation was Vietnam's cultural well-being.

China has long been the world's largest producer of rice, with an annual output regularly accounting for a third of the world's total rice production. In recent years, China has also risen to become the world's largest rice exporter, with a volume coming close to a third of the world's total exported rice. The bulk of the Chinese rice exports are destined for the rice-consuming Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. Among the five Southeast Asian countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, which today constitute the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), only Thailand produces a food surplus while the others have to import rice in amounts which, with the exception of the city-state Singapore, vary each year according to their domestic rice harvests.