Southeast Asian Studies
Featured Title(s)
Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement
Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power
By Ingrid Jordt
Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power describes a transformation in Buddhist practice in contemporary Burma. This revitalization movement has had real consequences for how the oppressive military junta, in power since the early 1960s, governs the country.…
Being “Dutch” in the Indies
A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500–1920
By Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben
Being “Dutch” in the Indies portrays Dutch colonial territories in Asia not as mere societies under foreign occupation but rather as a “Creole empire.” In telling the story of the Creole empire, the authors draw on government archives, newspapers, and literary works as well as genealogical studies that follow the fortunes of individual families over several generations.…
Beyond the Archipelago
Selected Poems
A collections of 70 poems from one of Malaya’s leading poets, that depict longing, loneliness, modernization, and insights in Malaysian culture.
BitterSweet
The Memoir of a Chinese-Indonesian Family in the Twentieth Century
Millions of Chinese have left the mainland over the last two centuries in search of new beginnings. The majority went to Southeast Asia, and the single largest destination was the colony of the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia.…
Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement
Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power
By Ingrid Jordt
Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power describes a transformation in Buddhist practice in contemporary Burma. This revitalization movement has had real consequences for how the oppressive military junta, in power since the early 1960s, governs the country.…
Change and Continuity in Minangkabau
Local, Regional, and Historical Perspectives on West Sumatra
By Franz Von Benda-Beckmann and Lynn L. Thomas
Social scientists have long recognized many apparent contradictions in the Minangkabau. The world’s largest matrilineal people, they are also strongly Islamic and, as a society, remarkably modern and outward looking.…
Communism, Religion, and Revolt in Banten in the Early Twentieth Century – On Sale
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.…
Dictionary of Indonesian Islam
Drawing from an extensive list of writings about Indonesian Islam that have appeared over the past fifteen years, Federspiel defines approximately 1,800 terms, phrases, historical figures, religious books, and place names that relate to Islam and gives their Arabic sources.…
Eight Prison Camps
A Dutch Family in Japanese Java
Eldest daughter of eight children, the author grew up in Surakarta, Java, in what is now Indonesia. In the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, Dutch nationals were rounded up by Japanese soldiers and put in internment camps.…
Financing Local Government in Indonesia
By Nick Devas
By Brian Binder, Anne Booth, Kenneth Davey and Roy Kelly
Considering the size and importance of Indonesia, remarkably little has been published in the West about the society and government of that country. With over 160 million people, it is the fifth most populous country in the world.…
From Jail to Jail
By Tan Malaka
From Jail to Jail is the political autobiography of a central though enigmatic figure of the Indonesian Revolution. Variously labeled a communist, Trotskyite, and nationalist, Tan Malaka managed, during the several decades of his political activity, to run afoul of nearly every political group and faction involved in the Indonesian struggle for independence.…
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.…
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).…
The Indigenization of Pali Meters in Thai Poetry
By Thomas Hudak
During the Ayutthaya period in Thailand (1350-1767), a group of meters based upon specific types and arrangements of syllables became a significant part of the Thai literary corpus. Known as chan in Thai literature, these meters, and the stanzas created from them, were adapted and transformed so that they corresponded in structure to other Thai verse forms.…
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.…
Javanese
A Cultural Approach
By Ward Keeler
Foreign language lessons often provide translations into a foreign language of phrases students would normally use in their native language and cultural setting. Particularly when studying a non-Western language, such direct translation is very misleading.…
Language and Social Change in Java
Linguistic Reflexes of Modernization in a Traditional Royal Polity
Errington explores linguistic evidence of social change among the traditional priyayi elite of Surakarta in south-central Java. Employing data from texts, interviews, observed speech, and questionnaires, he shows a progressive leveling in the language used to denote traditional status differences, and he demonstrates how perceptions of speech styles reflect etiquette and the views of the users.…
Language Use and Language Change in Brunei Darussalam
Edited by Peter W. Martin, Conrad Ozóg and Gloria Poedjosoedarmo
The oil-rich sultanate of Brunei Darussalam is located on the northern coast of Borneo between the two Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah. Though the country is small in size and in population, the variety of language use there provides a veritable laboratory for linguists in the fields of Austronesian linguistics, bilingual studies, and sociolinguistic studies, particularly those dealing with language shift.…
Language, Power, and Ideology in Brunei Darussalam – On Sale
Contrary to modern theories of developing nations, Brunei Darussalam, which has a very high rate of literacy, is also one of the few countries where the traditional elite retains absolute political power.…
