Persons of mixed European and Asian parentage appeared in the Indonesian archipelago shortly after the arrival of the first “Westerners” in the sixteenth century. Although most of them were absorbed by the indigenous population, some were not and came to constitute a separate, identifiable group. The main reason, apart from paternal pride, seems to have been religious. Christianity, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, encouraged a strong feeling of responsibility toward the biracial offspring of non-European women. A moral obligation was felt to baptize the child and give it the name of the father. Legal rules and regulations facilitated the process: the European father, for example, could “recognize” his natural child by a non-European woman, adopt it, or request a “Letter of legitimation”. Possession of “the status of European” in the nineteenth century permitted persons of mixed descent to benefit educationally from the rapid expansion of “European” (i.e. Dutch) schools. Finally, the Dutch nationality law of 1892 — based squarely on the jus sanguinis principle — contained the crucial provision that all those who were considered Europeans when the act came into force (July 1, 1893) — including those who were legally assimilated and socially a part of the European group — became Dutch citizens.

One of the most arresting periods in modern Thai history is the latter half of the nineteenth century, when a process of social and political development begun in the previous century reached its fruition when a single bureaucratic family obtained a virtual monopoly on high state office in the reign of King Mongkut (1851–68) and the first half of the reign of King Chulalongkorn (1868–1910). This situation had profound effects on the course of modern Thai history; and its study enlightens our understanding of Thailand's foreign relations and of the course of reform and modernization in a period when the successful conduct of these was crucially vital to the survival of the kingdom.

During the 1930's the pace of contact between the Philippines and Japan quickened noticeably. This was, of course, the result of the concurrence of the promise of the United States to grant independence to the Philippines, embodied firmly in the Tydings- McDuffie Act of 1934, and of the intensified interest in Southeast Asia at all levels in Japan. One manifestation of this phenomenon was the development of mutual Philippine-Japanese undertakings in what might broadly be called the cultural realm. I have already described elsewhere the establishment and operation of such organizations at the Philippine Society of Japan1 and of Philippine-Japanese student exchanges. However, in the paragraphs which follow I will turn my attention to the inception and subsequent scope of the exchange of university professors between Japan and the Philippines. In so doing, I hope to suggest that these exchanges, though limited in nature, were meaningful cultural interchanges for both countries and that their termination was precipitated not by any lack of enthusiasm on the part of either Japan or the Philippines but rather by the impasse in American-Japanese relations which immediately preceded the outbreak of World War II.

This does not claim to be an adequate account of the 1915 Kelantan Rising. On the contrary, it is designed to show how little we yet know about it. It is not even mentioned in most English-language histories of Malaya. There is a certain amount about it in the Colonial Office files, but it will be an important part of my argument that these do not reveal what we most want to learn. My main intention is to suggest that a fuller study of it would make as good a starting-point as any for a more general review of the role played by armed Malay resistance in the history of the British period in Malaya. I shall further suggest certain lines which thinking on this subject might follow, but only very tentatively. If this article stimulates such new thinking along any lines at all, it will have achieved its purpose.

Under the direct rule of the British Colonial Government in nineteenth-century Singapore, the Chinese leaders held little political power. They were essentially community leaders, charitable and enterprising. They worked for peace and harmony in a multiracial society and were closely attached to the British Colonial administration. Though the Chinese leadership played various roles in economic, political, diplomatic and social fields, it was in the social arena that it contributed most. These nineteenth-century leaders were essentially social workers who had established no radical traditions nor shaped any unique patterns of leadership.

Since the end of the Second World War most sections of Malaysia's multi-racial and polyglot society have been significantly affected by political and economic developments. It is doubtful if any of the young nation's many communities have been more dramatically and profoundly influenced during the last few decades than the Orang Asli of Wes: Malaysia. This paper briefly scans the changes which have taken place in the Orang Asli's relationships and contacts with “outsiders” since the British took a direct and active part in the affairs of the Malay States in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Party politics started among the commercial Chinese in Sabah as indeed among the indigenous peoples by way of a reaction to the Malaysia proposal of May 1961. Though Chinese businessmen or towkays at first strongly opposed it they were cautious about how they should organize themselves and their protest. The big businessmen of Sandakan, apparently mindful of the relatively small population of the Chinese advised against a Chinese communal party and proposed a communally open one. Jesselton towkays thought in terms of a North Borneo Chinese Association, along the lines of the Malayan Chinese Association but made no move. Chinese leaders seemed to prefer to wait and see what the indigenous people did. The lead was enthusiastically taken by the United National Kadazan Organization, closely followed by the United Sabah National Party and a third party, Pasok Momogun (Son of the Soil) Organization, consisting of Muruts and those akin to the Kadazans but rejected that regional tribal name. In the event the cautious towkays were overtaken by differentiation among themselves. The lowkays' political organization was not only the last to open shop but did so in two different places under two different auspices. For a variety of reasons, the United Party started in February 1962 in Sandakan and the North Borneo Democratic Party began, after an initial reshuffle, in the same period in Jesselton.

The year 1338 was the occasion of a great event in the life of a certain John of Florence, for in December of that year he set out from Avignon on a journey that was to take him, in his capacity of Papal Legate, to the court of the Great Khan of Cathay in Peking. This Franciscan Friar of aristocratic Florentine lineage is best known to us under the name John Marignolli, sometimes Giovanni de' Marignola, and his importance for the history of South-East Asia lies in the fact that, like Marco Polo, he made his return voyage from China not by the Central Asian overland route again but by sea through the Indies and, what is more, though passing through many perils, survived to tell the tale.