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Articles 1 - 30 of 32
Full-Text Articles in Asian History
Fit For A Princess: Connecting Britain And The ‘Moluccas’ In 1621 And 2011, Emily Soon
Fit For A Princess: Connecting Britain And The ‘Moluccas’ In 1621 And 2011, Emily Soon
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Local Problems, Global Solutions? Making It Rain In Hong Kong C. 1890-1930, Fiona Williamson
Local Problems, Global Solutions? Making It Rain In Hong Kong C. 1890-1930, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
The late nineteenth to early twentieth century saw a small but dedicated rise in experimental rainmaking. The possibility that humanity might one day be able to control the weather – especially to alleviate drought – was very attractive to governments and private investors. The late nineteenth century was an era of scientific optimism and a number of rainmaking experiments across the world had brought the potential for weather control out of the realms of discourse and literature and further into tangible near-future science. There has been a small but thorough historiographical literature on this subject, focusing largely on American, British, …
Emulating Empire: Washington’S Preoccupation With British Counterinsurgency In Malaya And U.S. Commitment To Vietnam, Wen-Qing Ngoei
Emulating Empire: Washington’S Preoccupation With British Counterinsurgency In Malaya And U.S. Commitment To Vietnam, Wen-Qing Ngoei
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This essay examines how Washington’s deep preoccupation with the British-Malayan counterinsurgency tactics–tactics that routed the guerilla fighters of the Malayan Communist Party–shaped US commitment to Vietnam. This US preoccupation, stoked by Britain’s (and Malaya’s) promotion of their counterinsurgency knowledge to US leaders, also influenced the lessons that US analysts and thinkers absorbed from the United States’ defeat in Indochina. Most studies of British-Malayan counterinsurgency and its connection to the Vietnam War fixate upon debating the relevance of the former to the latter and how this bears on US failures in Indochina. However, this essay focuses on the understudied fervor with …
On/ In The Ground With Vietnamese Communists: The Cu Chi Tunnels In The Classroom, Wen-Qing Ngoei
On/ In The Ground With Vietnamese Communists: The Cu Chi Tunnels In The Classroom, Wen-Qing Ngoei
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Undergraduates often arrive in my classes convinced that great men, and a few exceptional women, are the ones who make history. Here, they think of power wielded by presidents, generals, and self-styled geniuses of strategy and diplomacy. (Henry Kissinger’s name invariably bubbles up in class discussions, like it or not.) Perhaps this happens elsewhere? In Singapore, this mindset likely takes root because the country’s record of benevolent authoritarianism underpins the legitimacy and influence of political elites. Equally, male citizens of Singapore perform compulsory military service before entering university and internalize, readily or grudgingly, that rank confers power—it is power—and that …
Catchwater Colonialism: Reshaping Hong Kong’S Hydrology, Infrastructure, Metabolism And Landscape, 1937–1968, Jack Greatrex, Florence Mok
Catchwater Colonialism: Reshaping Hong Kong’S Hydrology, Infrastructure, Metabolism And Landscape, 1937–1968, Jack Greatrex, Florence Mok
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article explores the development of hydrological infrastructure in colonial Hong Kong between the late 1930s and the late 1960s. Utilizing archival sources in Hong Kong and London, it shows how this infrastructure fundamentally reshaped Hong Kong’s geography. By way of concrete catchwaters and metal pipes, both ‘green’ and ‘urban’ Hong Kong became counter-intuitively interconnected. This interconnection created both unintended consequences and novel opportunities for colonial governance, driving forward natural conservation, state intervention into rural society and the development of new carceral institutions. Exploring these developments provides pivotal insight into the urban history of Hong Kong, with implications for global …
Book Review: The Malayan Emergency: Revolution And Counterinsurgency At The End Of Empire By Karl Hack, Wen-Qing Ngoei
Book Review: The Malayan Emergency: Revolution And Counterinsurgency At The End Of Empire By Karl Hack, Wen-Qing Ngoei
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This book review critiques the scholarly contributions of historian Karl Hack's new book on the Malayan Emergency.
Meteorology, Weather And War In South East Asia: Malaya C. 1940-1960, Fiona Williamson
Meteorology, Weather And War In South East Asia: Malaya C. 1940-1960, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article interrogates the positioning of British colonial meteorology in Malaysia and Singapore from the 1940s to 1960. This period spanned a global conflict and an internecine war, effecting profound sociopolitical changes from which neither Malaysia nor Singapore would emerge the same. The meteorological services were essential to Britain's armed conflicts, providing vital weather information to the army, navy and, especially, the air forces, as well as supporting the aviation and shipping industry often in difficult and dangerous circumstances. This article argues that British military policy in South East Asia and the specific concerns of the colonial government in Malaya …
Multiethnic Elites And The Management Of Tropical Heat In Colonial Malaya, Circa 1870s-1930s, Claire Lowrie, Nicole Tarulevicz, Fiona Williamson, Charmaine H. Lam
Multiethnic Elites And The Management Of Tropical Heat In Colonial Malaya, Circa 1870s-1930s, Claire Lowrie, Nicole Tarulevicz, Fiona Williamson, Charmaine H. Lam
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article considers the responses of multiethnic urban elites to living with tropical heat in colonial Malaya by analysing attitudes towards the meteorological study of temperature, commercial cold storage and hill stations. A transcolonial and transimperial approach is used to illustrate that interest in managing and monitoring temperature was slower to develop in Malaya compared with other tropical colonies. The article also considers how access to methods of ameliorating heat was shaped by colonial hierarchies based on ideas of race and class.
Princely Adventures In The Sulalat Al-Salatin (The Genealogy Of Kings), Emily Soon
Princely Adventures In The Sulalat Al-Salatin (The Genealogy Of Kings), Emily Soon
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
“Back To The Jungle”: Investigating Rats, Grass, Scrub Typhus, And Plantations In Malaya, 1924–1974, Jack Greatrex
“Back To The Jungle”: Investigating Rats, Grass, Scrub Typhus, And Plantations In Malaya, 1924–1974, Jack Greatrex
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
In this article, I examine epidemiological research into scrub typhus in British Malaya between 1924 and 1974. Interwar research, I show, explained the incidence of the disease through conjunctions of rats, mites, plantations, lalang grass, and “jungle.” In the process, interwar researchers bridged a novel scientific vocabulary centering on disease “reservoirs” with older suspicions of plantations enabling “pests,” as well as with a later, explicitly ecological understanding of infectious disease. In exploring this history I thereby help to re-historicize the emergence of ecological notions of disease reservoirs, whilst also pushing at the limit-points of influential notions of “tropicality.”
Swarming Infrastructures, Jack Greatrex
Swarming Infrastructures, Jack Greatrex
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
The first car on the roads of Malacca, a town in the British Straits Settlements colony on the Malay Peninsula, was reportedly nicknamed The Swallow. Images of the eponymous bird were painted onto the vehicle: an avian metaphor fitting for the new, emerging age of the automobile, with its associations with freedom, rapidity and the smoother flows of modern life (Hillier 1961: 99).1
Archives Of Societies And Historical Climatology In East And Southeast Asia, Fiona Williamson, Qing Pei
Archives Of Societies And Historical Climatology In East And Southeast Asia, Fiona Williamson, Qing Pei
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Major sources of social archives for paleoclimatology in East and Southeast Asia include ancient annals and chronicles, instrumental records from government, military or missionary bodies, and private records such as diaries. Records are rich but scattered and of inconsistent quality, often requiring different forms of cross-validation and homogenization from those in the Western world. This article discusses these source types.
Disasters And The Making Of Asian History, Chris Courtney, Fiona Williamson
Disasters And The Making Of Asian History, Chris Courtney, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Environmental historians have often been drawn to disasters. They have unearthed the often-forgotten stories of erupting volcanoes, raging rivers and rainless skies, and in so doing have reminded their colleagues from more anthropocentric disciplines that the societies, economies and cultures they study are part of broader physical systems. In addition to highlighting the agency of nature, however, disasters have also helped to remind us that environmental history remains at heart a humanistic discipline. It should never be simply a lament for lost natural habitats, but also a discipline which offers a unique prism through which to study people. It is …
The Heritage-Making Conundrum In Asian Cities: Real, Transformed And Imagined Legacies, David Ocon
The Heritage-Making Conundrum In Asian Cities: Real, Transformed And Imagined Legacies, David Ocon
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The process of heritage-making is farfrom straightforward. Defining the meaning of heritage in young nations and citieswhere land availability is limited is a challenging exercise. It often crossesthe paths of history, religion, memory-shaping, development, andidentity-building. It requires fluent communication channels between civilsociety, local organisations and governments. Willingness to cooperate from allthe parties involved is essential; dialogue a must.In land-scarce or densely populated Asiancities, expansion and growth is colliding with the preservation of legacies, thepast and memory. This paper examines regional case studies from Hong Kong,Manila and Singapore, where preservation of cultural patrimony, development anddaily life follow conflicting paths. It sheds …
The Role Of Historians In East Asia’S History Problem, Hiro Saito
The Role Of Historians In East Asia’S History Problem, Hiro Saito
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
At first glance, historians may not look like the best candidates for facilitating a resolution of the history problem. This is because historians have traditionally used the nation as a primary unit of analysis, helping to naturalize it as a primordial entity. They have also created professional associations and delimited their membership along national borders, consistent with the nationalist logic of self-determination; for example, when Japanese historians write about the history of Japan, they often talk among themselves without consulting with foreign historians who study Japan. This nationally bounded content focus and membership reinforces the logic of nationalism that divides …
Remembering 1965: Indonesian Cinema And The 'Battle For History', Espena Darlene Machell
Remembering 1965: Indonesian Cinema And The 'Battle For History', Espena Darlene Machell
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Using four films to probe the transformations in Indonesia’s historical memory, this paper examines how the Indonesian society remembers, interrogates, and comes to terms with one of their nation’s most traumatic episodes: the widespread communist purge that followed the failed coup on 30 September 1965. It also demonstrates how they reflect various perspectives on the 1965 killings that are—to an extent—part of the “Battle of History” (van Klinken 2001) in postSuharto Indonesia, wherein different historiographic traditions introduce new actors, reveal the nuances, and challenge longstanding dominant understandings of 1965.
Myanmar- A New Law For A New Era, Mahdev Mohan
Myanmar- A New Law For A New Era, Mahdev Mohan
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
On 5 January, Myanmar’s parliament enacted the Arbitration Law 2016 – Union Parliament Act No. 5 of 2016 – which repeals and replaces the Myanmar Arbitration Act 1944 and represents an important step forward in creating a legal environment that is attractive for investment and commerce.
The Indonesia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington
The Indonesia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington
Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection
A maritime analogue to the silk road running through Central Asia, the Indonesian archipelago was a key ancient trade route linking Chinese goods to markets in India and farther west into the Mediterranean. Its cosmopolitan ports attracted significant numbers of Arab, Indian and Chinese merchants and holy men and fostered the exchange of goods as well as cultural and religious ideas. Cultural appropriation had a clear Indian bias. Starting in the early eighth century, the various islands saw the rise and fall of several Indianised Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms, including Mataram, Singhasari and Majapahit in east Java and Srivijaya in …
The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington
The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington
Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection
Although Western colonisers have, to varying degrees, shaped the political structures and economies of nearly all modern Southeast Asian nations, they achieved an unmatched level of cultural and institutional penetration in the Philippines. Far from the Indic influences that inspired Angkor Wat, Borobudur and Bagan, the island group was only marginally sanskritised during the pre-colonial period. With some notable exceptions in the south, Muslim communities were also never able to establish firm roots. Mindanao, Sulu and even southern Luzon were home to maritime sultanates beginning in the late 14th century, but a Spanish victory over the Muslim Rajah of Maynila …
The Vietnam Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington
The Vietnam Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington
Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection
Although most of Southeast Asia is home to religions and cultures carrying significant Indic influence, Vietnam alone is the mainland’s only Sinicised culture. Chinese emperors directly ruled northern Vietnam for most of the period spanning 111 BCE to 938 CE. The next eight hundred years saw a series of independent Vietnamese kingdoms administered by Chinese-style mandarins gradually extend control over and supplant the Indic Champa civilisation to the south—even as French incursions began chipping away at Vietnamese territory as early as 1858.
Recruiting The All-Female Rani Of Jhansi Regiment: Subhas Chandra Bose And Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan, Tobias Frederik Rettig
Recruiting The All-Female Rani Of Jhansi Regiment: Subhas Chandra Bose And Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan, Tobias Frederik Rettig
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The recruitment of the all-female Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army in Japanese-controlled Singapore and Malaya, with a particular focus on the period between the first female guard of honour on 12 July 1943 through to the opening of the regiment's main camp in Singapore on 22 October 1943, has to date been insufficiently studied. Starting with the conception of the Regiment in an Axis submarine by the Indian nationalist leader Subhas CHANdra Bose (1897–1945), this paper examines the ideas and figures that inspired the regiment and the role of Bose and Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan (1914–2012) in …
The Deng Xiaoping Legacy: Leading Changes And Transforming China, Singapore Management University
The Deng Xiaoping Legacy: Leading Changes And Transforming China, Singapore Management University
Perspectives@SMU
No leader of the 20th century had made greater impact than Deng Xiaoping. Under the late Chinese leader's tenure, which lasted from 1978 to 1992, hundreds of millions of Chinese were lifted from poverty. The chaos that was the Cultural Revolution gave way to steadfast economic development that turned China into a key player in the world economy.
Special Issue: Revisiting And Reconstructing The Nghê Tinh Soviets, 1930-2011, Tobias Frederik Rettig
Special Issue: Revisiting And Reconstructing The Nghê Tinh Soviets, 1930-2011, Tobias Frederik Rettig
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The seven papers presented here constitute the first collective effort in a Western language to revisit the Nghe Tinh Soviets of 1930–31. The Nghe Tinh movement, its name a compound of two neighbouring provinces in the north-central part of the French protectorate of Annam, not only occupies a special place in the history of the early Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) but also became a site for animated debate on the causes of agrarian unrest that produced two of the most influential books in South East Asian Studies: James Scott’s Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976); and Samuel Popkin’s The Rational …
Cracks In The Empire: Reflections Of French Journalists And Authors On The Crisis In 1930s Indochina, Henri Copin, Tobias Rettig
Cracks In The Empire: Reflections Of French Journalists And Authors On The Crisis In 1930s Indochina, Henri Copin, Tobias Rettig
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The events of the early 1930s in Vietnam left an important legacy to France's literature of enquiry and protest. Writers, essayists and journalists enquired on behalf of their audiences, and in the process developed France's littérature coloniale. By showing an interest in the colonial 'other' and identifying discrepancies between imperial ideology and colonial reality, they formed a new body of thought. This new colonial humanism arguably changed metropolitan sensibilities towards the French civilizing mission. Nevertheless, while they are critical of colonial abuses and in favour of reforms, the authors discussed in this paper do not really question the French colonial …
A New, Post-Lee Kuan Yew Era, Tan K. B. Eugene
A New, Post-Lee Kuan Yew Era, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Eugene Tan, asst prof of law at SMU writes a commentary on Minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew's departure and how it reinforces the belief that the Singapore systems is based on institutions, not personalities.
Sun Yat Sen, A S’Pore Icon? Hardly, Tan K. B. Eugene
Sun Yat Sen, A S’Pore Icon? Hardly, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Assistant Professor of Law Eugene Tan discusses if we are unwittingly overemphasising the role of the ethnic Chinese in Singapore's path to nationhood.
The Talent Of Shu: Qiao Ami And The Intellectual World Of Early Medieval Sichuan, Alan Kam Leung Chan
The Talent Of Shu: Qiao Ami And The Intellectual World Of Early Medieval Sichuan, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Portrayals of the intellectual scene of the early medieval Chinese “Sanguo” or “Three States” period (220–280) generally privilege major figures associated with the state of Wei, such as He Yan and Wang Bi, over those who made their mark in Shu (modern Sichuan) and Wu, the other two states contending for the right to rule “all under Heaven” after the demise of the Han dynasty. Michael Farmer sets out to redress this imbalance through a study of the Shu statesman and historian Qiao Zhou (c. 200–270). The book thus harbors a dual purpose, reflected in its title, for in presenting …
Women Warriors In Asia, Tobias Frederik Rettig, Vina Lanzona
Women Warriors In Asia, Tobias Frederik Rettig, Vina Lanzona
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Impact Of War And Military Service On Income Inequality In Northern Vietnam, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan
Impact Of War And Military Service On Income Inequality In Northern Vietnam, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
During the 1940s-1970s Vietnam experienced nearly continuous wars. Military service was almost a rite of passage for young men growing up during these decades. Evidence indicates that families during wartime viewed military service as a locus for upward mobility, as the socialist regime promised veterans various incentives, including educational benefits, employment preference, and Communist Party membership. While this series of wars over the span of three decades has left a profound imprint on the early life course trajectories of men in Vietnam, there is surprisingly little research detailing the long-term consequences of military service. Based on the Vietnam Longitudinal Survey, …
French Military Policies In The Aftermath Of The Yên Bay Mutiny, 1930: Old Security Dilemmas Return To The Surface, Tobias Frederik Rettig
French Military Policies In The Aftermath Of The Yên Bay Mutiny, 1930: Old Security Dilemmas Return To The Surface, Tobias Frederik Rettig
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper provides a brief summary of the Yên Bay mutiny of 10 February 1930, before examining its links to a wider insurrectionary attempt by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party in parts of Tonkin and the reasons why the attempted insurrection was to begin at Yên Bay but not in other garrison towns. It then places the mutiny in a context in which the use of Vietnamese soldiers in French service was necessary in order to maintain French supremacy as a colonial and protectorate power in French Indo-China. But instead of focusing on the mutiny itself and its causes, the main …