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Contrasted Revolutions

Saskia Schäfer on John Sidel, Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia. The different paths and outcomes of anti-colonial revolution in Southeast Asia.

Ben Anderson 1936–2015

Affecting tribute to the author of Imagined Communities, tracking a friend’s life from birth in pre-war Yunnan to exclusion from Suharto’s Indonesia, area studies at Cornell to delvings into popular Siam, recovery of the international context of Filipino revolt against Spain, and final return to Java.

Arakan Divided

Carlos Sardiña Galache on Azeem Ibrahim, The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide and Khin Maung Saw, Behind the Mask: The Truth Behind the Name ‘Rohingya’. Two opposite versions of the identity and condition of the Muslim population of the province of Arakan.

The Unrewarded

Capricious patterns of distribution for the Nobel prize in literature as a reflection of changing geo-political currents, from belle époque to Cold War to globalized present.

Myanmar’s Perpetual Junta

What explains the exceptional durability of the Tatmadaw? Mary Callahan looks to the regime’s origins in struggles against British colonial rule, and to the impact of Whitehall’s dual mapping of the country upon its complex ethnic patterns and social structures.

The New Himalayan Republic

The overthrow of the monarchy in Nepal, brought about by a prolonged people’s war and massive popular mobilizations. Achin Vanaik sets out the complex socio-historical backdrop to the Second Democratic Revolution of 2006, the ensuing struggle for a new republic, and the tactical challenges facing the CPN-M.

The New East Asia

The emergence of a new regional order from the ashes of the Asian Financial Crisis. As the PRC’s economic expansion takes it further afield in search of markets and raw materials, how have China’s neighbours responded to the Middle Kingdom’s return to the global stage?

A Hollow Crown

Duncan McCargo on Paul Handley, The King Never Smiles. Taboo-breaking biography of the world’s longest-serving monarch, Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej. Is the throne’s mystique, carefully reconsolidated in the 20th century, now threatened by the lottery of primogeniture?

Pacific Panopticon

The Filipino analyst and organizer of Focus on the Global South, veteran of the years of Allende and Marcos, discusses the prospects for the World Social Forum after September 11, arguing for the need to link protests against the IMF and WTO to campaigns against US military expansion.

America in East Asia

On one side of the Pacific the Cold War is not yet quite over. So long as decolonization of minds remains deferred, strange dreams persist—foreign longing as post-national belonging. America in the looking-glass of Taiwan’s ‘Club 51’.

The Asian Crisis: The High Debt Model Versus the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF Complex

“How could the widely acknowledged real estate problems of Thailand’s banks in 1996 and 1997 have triggered such a far-reaching debt-and-development crisis? The devaluation of the Thai baht in July 1997 was followed by currency crises or financial instability in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, . . .” read more

Hong Kong: Britain’s Chinese Colony

“There are 300,000 hard drug addicts; 80,000 triad gang members; several hundred thousand squatters; sickness and squalor all around. The post boxes are red. It is hot. The policemen wear short trousers. No doubt about it: this must be a British colony. Of the past one would think. . . .” read more

'The Southeast Asian World'; 'The New Face of Buddha'

“Keith Buchanan: The Southeast Asian World, Bell, 27s. 6d.” read more

'The Southeast Asian City'

“T. G. McGee: The Southeast Asian City. G. Bell and Sons. 30s.” read more