Indonesians of Chinese descent constitute only two to three per cent of the country's population but dominate the private business sector. Serious acts of violence against this ethnic minority occurred during Indonesia's colonial past, and after a period relatively free of such incidents became increasingly frequent during the final years of ......
Singapore had to build a military from scratch starting in 1965, with compulsory national service introduced in 1967. This is the story of the Singapore Armed Forces in the form of a collective portrait of its leaders. Tens of thousands of Singaporeans (overwhelmingly men) were commissioned as officers between 1965 and 2018, but only 170 ......
Gets to the heart of what is unique about Indonesian art. Exploring the work of established and emerging artists in Indonesia's vibrant art world, this book examines why so many artists in the world's largest archipelagic nation choose to work directly with people in their art practices. While the social dimension of Indonesian art makes it ......
Histories, Hopes and Citizenship in the Riau Archipelago
In 1999, the people of Indonesia's Riau Archipelago were angry. Resentful of decades of 'internal colonialism' by Mainland Sumatra, and concerned that they lacked the education and skills to flourish in a globalised world, they dreamed of inhabiting a province of their own. When the post-authoritarian state committed itself to democracy and local ......
The Khorat Plateau is a landscape of some 155,000 square kilometres of what is now northeast Thailand and central Laos. Despite the rich evidence for the region's dynamism and development in the metal age, knowledge of subsequent first millennium developments on the Khorat Plateau remains limited. The spread of Buddhism across the region has been ......
Locating History and Ethnography in Early Dutch Colonial Films of Indonesia
How should colonial film archives be read? How can historians and ethnographers use colonial film as a complement to conventional written sources? Sandeep Ray uses the case of Dutch colonial film in Indonesia to show how a critically-, historically- and cinematically-informed reading of colonial film in the archive can be a powerful and unexpected ......
This book provides an account of the vigorous survival of an Islamic community in the strife-torn borderlands of the lower Mekong Delta and its creative accommodation to the modernising reforms of the Vietnamese government. Officially regarded as one of Vietnam's national minority groups, the multilingual Cham are part of a cosmopolitan, ......
The countries that make up Southeast Asia are seeing an incredible resurgence in their economic power. Over the past fifty years, their combined wealth has reached the same level as the United Kingdom and, taken together, they are on track to become the fifth-largest world economy. But that stability and success has drawn the attention of the ......
Global Christianity and the Local Church in Penang and Singapore, 1819-2000
In postcolonial Singapore and Malaysia, Pentecostal megachurches dominate the Christian landscape, but the "big four" Protestant churches-Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Brethren-remain religions of heritage for many. Sixty Malaysian and nineteen Singaporean assemblies identify themselves as Christian Brethren, and most trace their roots to ......
