The presence of large, often dissident, minority populations has been one of the most serious problems facing many of the nations which have attained independence since the close of World War II. This paper will examine the minority situation in Burma, where the problem has been of serious proportions, posing a threat to national unity and in some cases resulting in armed insurrection. There are at present an estimated 11,000 insurgents in Burma, most of whom represent ethnic minorities.

The impact of the political unification of Burma and India on the lives of the people living in these two countries has been little studied. Despite the extensive and varied literature available on Burma and on India, for the most; part scholars who have written about either or both of these countries look upon the annexation of Burma to India as an unavoidable accident of history which had relatively little effect on India and only slightly more on Burma. For the Burma historians, the most important aspect of unification was the political changes which occurred under alien rule. Specifically, the political progress toward self-rule in Burma prior to separation is interpreted by them as a by-product of Indian advances. They call attention to the effects of unlimited Indian migration upon the local economy and the rising nationalist movement. The historians who are oriented towards economic and social organization give attention to the role of the immigrant Indians as labourers and money lenders and note their effect upon the changing characteristic of Burma's economy. They also make reference to the different religious and social ideas which were held by Burmese and Indians and the racial conflicts which erupted. While these are significant results of unification, it is not the whole story. There were many less obvious and dramatic effects upon Burmese life, which, when more fully explored and understood may recast the present interpretation of the whole period.

No international concern has been as important to Burma as her relations with China. Kuomintang China had encouraged the Burmese nationalists, had sponsored Burma's entry into the UN but had also exhibited (in various published maps and otherwise) traditional Chinese expansionist tendencies toward Burma and mainland Southeast Asia. Most of all, after 1950, Kuomintang China endangered Burma's relation with Communist China by her active, irresponsible support for her troops who had escaped via Yunnan into northeast Burma. However much the Burmese may have initially and quietly tolerated the presence of these KMT “escapees,” – a view which has been unofficially hinted in some Burmese and American quarters — expecting that they would either merge into the Burma population or quickly repatriate to Taiwan, at the end of the first year of experience with these troops the Burmese became justifiably alarmed, repeatedly sought but did not receive assistance from the United States for this repatriation and eventually, in 1953, officially took the issue to the United Nations. (It was this issue which brought U.S. prestige and relations with Burma to a postwar low.)

Our knowledge is still insufficient to allow us to assess the overall significance of the mestizo in Philippine history. But on the basis of what we now know we can make some generalizations and some hypotheses for future study. It is clear, in the first place, that the activities I have described are those of Chinese mestizos – not Spanish mestizos. While the Chinese mestizo population in the Philippines exceeded 200,000 by the late nineteenth century, the Spanish mestizo population was probably never more than 35,000. Furthermore, those who commented at all on the Spanish mestizo noted that he was interested in military matters or the “practical arts” – never in commerce. The aptitudes and attitudes of the Chinese mestizo were in sharp contrast to this.

Secondly, the Chinese mestizo rose to prominence between 1741 and 1898, primarily as a landholder and a middleman wholesaler of local produce and foreign imports, although there were also mestizos in the professions. The rise of the mestizos implies the existence of social change during the Spanish period, a condition that has been ignored or implicitly denied by many who have written about the Philippines. It needs to be emphasized that the mestizo impact was greatest in Central Luzon, Cebu, and Iloilo. We cannot as yet generalize about other areas.

Third, the renewal of Chinese immigration to the Philippines resulted in diversion of mestizo energies away from commerce, so that the mestizos lost their change to become a native middle class, a position then taken over by the Chinese.

Fourth, the Chinese mestizos in the Philippines possessed a unique combination of cultural characteristics. Lovers of ostentation, ardent devotees of Spanish Catholicism – they seemed almost more Spanish than the Spanish, more Catholic than the Catholics. Yet with those characteristics they combined a financial acumen that seemed out of place. Rejecters of their Chinese heritage, they were not completely at home with their indio heritage. The nearest approximation to them was the urbanized, heavily-hispanized indio. Only when hispanization had reached a high level in the nineteenth century urban areas could the mestizo find a basis of rapport with the indio. Thus, during the late nineteenth century, because of cultural, economic, and social changes, the mestizos increasingly identified themselves with the indios. in a new kind of “Filipino” cultural and national consensus.

Those are my conclusions. Here are some hypotheses, which I hope will stimulate further study:

1. That today's Filipino elite is made up mostly of the descendants of indios and mestizos who rose to prominence on the basis of commercial agriculture in the lattetf part of the Spanish period. That in some respects the latter part of the Spanish period was a time of greater social change, in terms of the formation of contemporary Philippine society, than the period since 1898 has been.

2. That in the process of social change late in the Spanish period it was the mestizo, as a marginal element, not closely tied to a village or town, who acted as a kind of catalytic agent. In this would be included the penetration of money economy into parts of the Philippines. There were areas where the only persons with money were the provincial governors and the mestizos.

3. That the Chinese mestizo was an active agent of hispanization and the leading force in creating a Filipino culture characteristic now of Manila and the larger towns.

4. That much of the background explanation of the Philippine Revolution may be found by investigating the relationships between landowning religious orders, mestizo inquilinos, and indio kasamahan laborers.

It is my hope that these hypotheses may stimulate investigation into this important topic which can tell us so much about economic, social, and cultural change during- the Spanish period of Philippine history.

The most recent history of the Philippines makes no reference to guerrilla activities or the resistance movement in Negros, although brief comments are included about the rest of the Bisayas. Yet Negrenses, both indigenous and “adopted,” have been unusually active in recording the history of their island during the war years. Recently two additional books were added to the expanding literature on wartime Negros. Since 1946 seven books have been published (one is a mimeographed monograph) on this broad topic for Negros. Unfortunately, many of these sources have not been utilized in more general accounts of occupied Philippines. Probably there is more material on this historic period for Negros than the rest of the Bisayas, with the exception of Leyte.

Much of pre-war Japanese propaganda was devoted to convincing fellow Asians that their cause of freedom from colonial rule was that of Japan too. And yet, when the Japanese landed in the Philippines in December 1941, they had to fight not only American troops, but a Philippine army as well. Japanese propagandists thus faced a challenging task in Manila. In the case of the Philippines, the pretense of liberating colonial areas from the clutches of Western imperialism was difficult to uphold: the country was by then largely self-governing and due to obtain its full independence by 1946. To make matters worse for Japan, while the Americans had settled on a definite course, the Tokyo government had still to make up its mind on the fate of the “South Seas” territories which it was about to conquer. The daily humiliations and brutalities, and the economic hardship endured by the Filipino people under the heel of an occupation army, cast doubt on the generosity of Japanese aims.

A Preliminary Survey of the Causes, Characteristics and Consequences of the Resettlement of Rural Dwellers during the Emergency between 1948 and 1960.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, Siam suffered a series of devastating Burmese raids which resulted in the overthrow of the Ayuthia Dynasty and set off a struggle for power among the kingdom's more powerful “barons”. The unity of the kingdom was eventually preserved and a new, “Bangkok”, dynasty established fairly securely upon the throne, but it was not until the end of the century that the Siamese were strong enough to turn their attention to the Malay States they claimed as their vassals.

Today if Americans are asked about centers of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States, their reply should begin with the names of Cornell University, Yale University and the University of California (Berkeley). If on the other hand, the question concerns American scholars of Southeast Asian affairs, the answer would have to include names of individuals from Boston to Hawaii and from Minnesota to New Orleans. The centers of Southeast Asian studies offer a coordinated program of studies which prepares the recipient for special work in one or more disciplines and in one or more parts of Southeast Asian studies. The individual scholars, who are for the most part also college and university teachers, may offer a course or even a sequence of courses related to Southeast Asia, and on some occasions may be integrated into a specialized program which includes Southeast Asia in its purview, but the results of their teaching endeavors do not bear the imprint of specialization which is to be found in the centers. In this article I shall describe the chief Southeast Asia centers, say something about programs in which Southeast Asia plays only a part, and finally close with a word on the individual scholar interested in all or part of Southeast Asia.