Moving beyond the familiar story of Siam fending off European colonialism, this book reveals a new historical subject: Siam as coloniser. As European powers expanded their presence in Southeast Asia at the end of the nineteenth century, Siam launched its own colonial project to assert control over tributary states that lay outside the Siamese ......
What did nineteenth-century travellers actually see when they journeyed through the Malay Archipelago-and what did they miss? The travelogues penned by British and Dutch explorers reached a wide readership; they have shaped how we imagine this region with their accounts of island kingdoms, volcanic landscapes, and maritime crossroads. Other ......
Accounts of the Great War tend to focus on Europe, the epicentre of this conflict, and find in its battlefields the later death of empires, spreading revolution and eventual decolonisation. However, the war was also global, drawing in people from all over the world while rapidly circulating ideas and innovations far beyond Europe. Almost two ......
What new framings emerge when we revisit the vibrant world of Malay-Indonesian manuscripts, looking beyond the boundaries imposed by colonial and nationalist scholarship? This volume revitalises manuscript studies by using texts in entirely fresh ways, situating them as dynamic instruments of knowledge and meaning-making and cultural ......
Why have some Southeast Asian cities become laboratories of reform while others remain mired in old patterns of patronage politics and substandard services? This has become an important question now that over half of Southeast Asia's population lives in urban areas, transforming the politics of the region. Quintessentially urban problems-traffic ......
Over the past thirty years, contemporary art in Vietnam has emerged as a dynamic field shaped by memory, history, and experiment. Many Vietnamese artists now command international recognition, even as a growing domestic market for contemporary art fosters alternative infrastructures of collection and exhibition. Signs and Signals from Vietnam: ......
Singapore's transformation from a trading port to a global city offers a compelling case study in long-term economic change. The Economic History of Singapore presents a detailed account of the city-state's evolving economic roles, from regional entrepot in the fourteenth century, to colonial port city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ......
How do Asian states navigate the complex terrain between international legal obligations and strategic national interests in matters of war and peace? What justifications are invoked to wage war, and what are the legal frameworks used to restore peace? Do bilateral settlements comply with and support the development of international law, or do ......
Print Passages researches the history of the coming of the printed book in Indonesia and the consequences this new technology brought with it. Never before has the book culture in Indonesia been studied this thoroughly. Although printed material has become intertwined with everyday life in the 21st century, book culture has not always been as ......
