King Thibaw’s Ascension to Rule Among the Gods
There is one episode in the history of modern Southeast Asia that I find endlessly fascinating, and that is the fall of the Burmese monarchy. Perhaps this is because Amitav…
Reframing and Remixing the Southeast Asian Past
I have started making “soundscapes” to accompany blog posts that I write about historical events or phenomena in Southeast Asian history. I am not sure why I started to do…
Remixing the Past: Eating a Frenchman in 1900 Southeast Asia
I just came across an amazing story from the early twentieth century in a newspaper from Hawaii, The Pacific Commercial Advertiser. The article is entitled “The Awful Fate of a…
Remixing the Past: Shoveling Lunatics in Colonial Malaya
I was looking through a book called An Illustrated Guide to the Federated Malay States. This book was published at least three times (in 1910, 1911 and 1920), and is…
Remixing the Past: An Indian Guard, High on Ganja, at a Bus Station in Colonial Burma
In the 1890s, the British government commissioned a report on the use of cannabis (i.e., marijuana) in British India, which at that time included Burma. The report that this “Indian…
The “Ancient Việt Script” and the Tai
Periodically there are articles that appear in the Vietnamese press about the “ancient Việt script” (chữ Việt cổ). There are people in Vietnam who are determined to show that there…
Celebrating Le Thanh Khoi’s Histoire du Vietnam in 2014
I’ve seen several articles and events recently about the publication of a new book in Vietnam - a Vietnamese translation of Le Thanh Khoi’s Histoire du Vietnam: Des origines à…
Eden in the East, or Southeast Asian Prehistory Viewed through a Judeo-Christian Lens
For several years now I’ve come across articles on the Internet that mention a book called Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia by Stephen Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer…