Asian History Book List ·

Communism, Religion, and Revolt in Banten in the Early Twentieth Century

Twice in this century popular revolts against colonial rule have occured in the Banten district of West Java. These revolts, conducted largely under an Islamic leadership, also proclaimed themselves Communist.…

Vietnam Since the Fall of Saigon

When North Vietnamese troops occupied Saigon at the end of April 1975, their leaders in Hanoi faced the future with pride and confidence. Almost fifteen years later, the euphoria has given way to sober realism.…

Military Ascendancy and Political Culture

A Study of Indonesia's Golkar

Most of the earlier studies on the Indonesian political party, Golkar, tend to view the organization solely as an electoral machine used by the military to legitimize its power. However, this study is different in that it considers Golkar less an electoral machine and more as a political organization which inherited the political traditions of the nominal Muslim parties and the Javanese governing elite pre-1965, before the inauguration of Indonesia’s New Order.…

From Kampung to City

A Social History of Kucing Malaysia, 1820-1970

One of the major processes in modern Southeast Asian history has been the development of ethnically heterogeneous towns and cities. Kucing, an intermediate-sized urban center in Sarawak, Malaysia, is today an institutionally complex, predominantly Chinese city of 100,000 led by modern political leaders.…

Report on Brunei in 1904

In 1904 the British Protectorate of Brunei had reached the nadir of its fortunes. Reduced to two small strips of territory, bankrupt, and threatened with takeover by the Rajah of Sarawak (Sir Charles Brooke), Brunei received M.…

The Lê Code

Law in Traditional Vietnam

The Lê Code: Law in Traditional Vietnam is the first English translation of the penal code produced by Vietnam’s Lê Dynasty (1428-1788). The code itself was the culmination of a long process of political, social and legal development that extended into the period of the succeeding Nguyen Dynasty and, in many respects, into the twentieth century.…

The Japanese Experience in Indonesia

Selected Memoirs of 1942-1945

Although the wartime Japanese military administration of Indonesia was critical to the making of modern Indonesia, it remains shrouded in mystery, in part because of the systematic destruction of records following the Japanese surrender.…

The Red Earth

A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation

Phu Rieng was one of many French rubber plantations in colonial Vietnam; Tran Tu Binh was one of 17,606 laborers brought to work there in 1927, and his memoir is a straightforward, emotionally searing account of how one Vietnamese youth became involved in revolutionary politics.…

History of the Malay Kingdom of Patani

This translation of Ibrahim Syukri’s Sejarah Kerajaan Melayu Patani (SKMP) makes available a little known but important manuscript published privately ca. 1950 and printed in jawi (Malay written in a modified Arabic script).…