International History
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.…
The Golden Dream
Seekers of El Dorado
One of the most persistent legends in the annals of New World exploration is that of the Land of God. Its mythical site was located over vast areas of South American (and later, North America); it drove some men mad with greed and, often as not, to their deaths.…
Good-Bye to Old Peking
The Wartime Letters of U.S. Marine Captain John Seymour Letcher, 1937–1939
Edited by Katie Letcher Lyle and Roger B. Jeans
For two and a half years (1937-1939), Captain John Seymour Letcher commanded a company of the U.S. Embassy Marine Guard in Peking. During that time, he wrote a series of letters to his parents in Virginia describing the life of a Westerner in the former imperial city.…
The Green Archipelago
Forestry in Preindustrial Japan
This inaugural volume in the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History is the paperback edition of Conrad Totman’s widely acclaimed study of Japan’s environmental policies over the centuries.…
History of the Malay Kingdom of Patani – On Sale
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).…
How Green Were the Nazis?
Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich
Edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller
The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich is the first book to examine the Third Reich's environmental policies and to offer an in-depth exploration of the intersections between brown ideologies and green practices.…
In Pursuit of German Memory
History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz
The collective memories of Nazism that developed in postwar Germany have helped define a new paradigm of memory politics. From Europe to South Africa and from Latin America to Iraq, scholars have studied the German case to learn how to overcome internal division and regain international recognition.…
Inventing Global Ecology – On Sale
Tracking the Biodiversity Ideal in India, 1947–1997
Blue jeans, MTV, Coca-Cola, and… ecology? We don't often think of conservation sciences as a U.S. export, but in the second half of the twentieth century an astounding array of scientists and ideas flowed out from the United States into the world, preaching the gospel of conservation-oriented ecology.…
Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca, 1641–1795
By Dianne Lewis
In 1500 Malay Malacca was the queen city of the Malay Archipelago, one of the great trade centers of the world. Its rulers, said to be descendents of the ancient line of Srivijaya, dominated the lands east and west of the straits.…
Japanese Empire in the Tropics – On Sale
Selected Documents and Reports of the Japanese Period in Sarawak, Northwest Borneo, 1941–1945
By Ooi Keat Gin
Although the Japanese interregnum was brief, its dramatic commencement and equally dramatic conclusion represented a watershed in the history of the young state of Sarawak. In recent years, there has been a groundswell of interest in the war years, culminating in an attempt at reassessment of the Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia by Western and Japanese scholars as well as by those from Southeast Asia.…
The Japanese Experience in Indonesia
Selected Memoirs of 1942-1945
By Richard Reid
Edited by Oki Akira
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 Komedie Stamboel
Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891–1903
Originating in 1891 in the port city of Surabaya, the Komedie Stamboel, or Istanbul-style theater, toured colonial Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia by rail and steamship. The company performed musical versions of the Arabian Nights and European fairy tales and operas such as Sleeping Beauty and Aida, as well as Indian and Persian romances, Southeast Asian chronicles, true crime stories, and political allegories.…
The Lê Code
Law in Traditional Vietnam
By Ngọc Huy Nguyễn, Tài Văn Ta and Binh Tu Tran
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.…
Locating Southeast Asia
Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space
Edited by Paul H. Kratoska, Remco Raben and Henk Schulte Nordholt
Southeast Asia summons images of tropical forests and mountains, islands and seas, and a multitude of languages, cultures, and religions. Yet the area has never formed a unified political vision nor has it developed cultural unity.…
The Longest Voyage
Circumnavigators in the Age of Discovery
Robert Silverberg's The Longest Voyage captures the drama and danger and personalities in the colorful story of the first voyages around the world. In only a century, circumnavigators in small ships charted the coast of the New World and explored the Pacific.…
Managing the Counterrevolution
The United States and Guatemala, 1954–1961
The Eisenhower administration's intervention in Guatemala is one of the most closely studied covert operations in the history of the Cold War. Yet we know far more about the 1954 coup itself than its aftermath.…
Midwives of the Revolution
Female Bolsheviks and Women Workers in 1917
By Jane McDermid and Anna Hillyar
The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 and the ensuing communist regime have often been portrayed as a man’s revolution, with women as bystanders or even victims. Midwives of the Revolution examines the powerful contribution made by women to the overthrow of tsarism in 1917 and their importance in the formative years of communism in Russia.…
Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma – On Sale
Paradigms, Primary Sources, and Prejudices
After careful re-reading and analysis of original Old Burmese and other primary sources, the author discovered that four out of the five events considered to be the most important in the history of early Burma, and believed to have been historically accurate, are actually late-nineteenth and twentieth-century inventions of colonial historians caught in their own intellectual and political world.…
New Terrains in Southeast Asian History
Edited by Abu Talib Ahmad and Tan Liok Ee
At a watershed moment in the scholarly approach to the history of this important region, New Terrains in Southeast Asian History captures the richness and diversity of historical discourse among Southeast Asian scholars.…
Panamanian Militarism – On Sale
A Historical Interpretation
Carlos Guevara Mann argues that Panamanian militarism, a consequence of the breakdown of legitimacy that occurred in the early nineteenth century, is more a manifestation of a deeply-rooted political tradition than an isolated phenomenon of the late twentieth century.…
