The establishment of the Royal Philippine Company by the Royal Charter of March 10th. 1785 promised the beginning of a new era in the history of the India-Manila trade. The concessions made by the Crown to the Company were many, and they were extended in the next two decades. The Company was intrinsically valuable as an organised agency with which trade could be conducted on a structurally modified line. Initially the Company provided a new axis of Spanish commercial operations in Asia between Manila and metropolitan Spain. This was in addition to the traditional Manila-Acapulco trade. From 1793 the Philippine Company also obtained the right of direct trade between Manila and Callao on the Peruvian coast, thus adding yet another axis to the trade of Manila. These concessions underlined and enhanced Manila's importance as an entrepot for all three lines of Spanish trade authorised in Asia. The opening of Manila in three stages by the decrees of 1785, 1787 and 1789 at the Company's insistence, further increased the entrepot stature of Manila. Thus from the viewpoint of the markets, the methods of trade and the volume of commerce, the potential of the trade from India was vastly increased, and improved.

The last decade of the 19th century and the turn of the present century saw a flux of Chʼing official titles among overseas Chinese leaders in Singapore and Malaya. They had formerly been excluded from imperial bureaucracy and title holding in China; now it became possible to purchase honours without much effort. This represented a substantial change of the Chʼing's attitude towards its overseas subjects. This paper asks why the titles were made available, and why the overseas Chinese leaders were so eager to acquire them.

An insuperable difficulty presents itself in tracing with any degree of correctness the origins of a barbarous race of people who possess no written character, and whose history is clothed in the obscurity of legendary traditions handed down to successive generations by oral Agency alone, in which much of the fabulous becomes mixed with certain transactions of a nature to state indefinitely the ‘era’ of their occurrence, but affording no positive source from whence to derive anything approaching a correct ‘data’. It is then thus with the race of the ‘Kaya’, so called by themselves in their own language, that of ‘Karen Nee’ or ‘Red Karens’ being given to them by the Burmese and surrounding people, from the predominating color of their costume — the short drawers and turban being generally of that color, which distinguishes them from other tribes of ‘Karens’ whose attire consists of a white tunic and are on that account termed ‘Karen Pyee’ or ‘White Karens’.

The establishment of diplomatic ties by the Soviet Union with all the countries of Southeast Asia except the Philippines and South Vietnam, and the growing influence sought by it in the area, indicates that the publication of more work on Russian relations with Southeast Asia would be of interest, and it is the purpose of this article to survey the course of these relations to date, to see what general picture emerges and what possibilities of further research exist. This survey is, of necessity, extremely superficial.

On February 15, 1942, it was all over for the British in Malaya; the British troops surrendered to the Japanese. The victorious Japanese troops entered Singapore on the sixty-ninth day after they landed on Songkhla in Thailand and on Koto Bharu in Malaya. Stunned but cheerful Malays and Indians greeted General Yamashita's conquering army as it entered the city. For a great majority of the Chinese, however, an air of uncertainty hung heavily upon them because they had been active, voluntarily or involuntarily, in the anti-Japanese movement for many years and a good number of them even fought with the British in the last ditch battle that ended in their defeat. In the midst of the chaos and rumours about what the Japanese might do with the Chinese, the latter remained uneasy.

When the French assumed effective political control of Vietnam in the late nineteenth century they were confronted with the dual problem of raising revenues and securing administrative control of the countryside. In seeking a solution they were forced to consider Vietnamese land tenures and the distribution of agricultural output prevailing at that time. Their early moves reflected a sharp bias in favour of French law and almost total ignorance of the wide divergence between their system of property and taxation and Vietnamese custom and procedure. On a broad scale what was involved was an attempt to reinterpret indigenous practices to achieve compatibility with the French conception of private and public property categories and the legitimate rights and claims inherent in each. Le Code Annamite was translated by P.L.F. Philastre and gradually Vietnamese property laws were drawn towards conformity with French practices.

I was passionately involved in the activities of some of the years under review. No-one today can really recapture the intensity and fervour of total involvement by some of us during those years. I am no historian. To prepare this talk I have forced myself to read what others have written of this period — I find some major omissions in their accounts and assessments.

The Javanese Weltanschauung (Javanism) is based on the conviction of the essential unity of all Existence. This worldview is more encompassing than religion: it views human existence within a cosmological context, making life itself a religious experience. In this view of life it is not possible to separate the religious from the non-religious elements; human existence is inescapably related to supernature and it is senseless to sharply distinguish between the here and now and the beyond and timeless.

The structure and organization of the Kedah political system, like those of the other patriachal Malay states in the Peninsula, was based essentially on that of the Malacca Sultanate. Under this system, the apex and centre of the organisation was the Sultan, whose political authority was strengthened by the belief that he was endowed with the magical attributes of a “divine king”. This is evident in his title, Yang di-Pertuan (He who is made Lord); and is also manifested in the elaborate court ceremonials and rituals; the clothing, weapons, domestic adornments and a special vocabulary reserved exclusively for royalty. The political functions of the Sultan were very comprehensive covering the fields of internal administration, the defence of the country, and matters relating to external affairs.