Swimming with Crocodiles in 1934 Malaya
I came across an amazing movie from 1934 called “Beyond Bengal.” It is the record of an expedition into the Malayan jungle by American “explorer” Harry Schenck. The film was…
Italians and Americans in Thailand in the 1970s
In writing a post recently on hapa actresses from Southeast Asia I came across the name of an Indonesian-Dutch hapa actress whom I had never heard of, Laura Gemser. In…
An Overseas Chinese Who Died for Vietnamese Independence in 1945
I was reading the newspaper, The Truth (Sự Thật, 7/12/46), and found an article about “An Overseas Chinese Intellectual Who Died for the Independence of Vietnam.” The masthead of this…
A Social & Cultural History of Roads in British Southeast Asia
It dawned on me recently that it would be interesting to research and write a social and cultural history of roads in Southeast Asia. What is more, if one focused…
British Pathé Newsreels on the End of World War II in Southeast Asia
British Pathé, a company that used to produce newsreels of events around the world, has placed over 80,000 videos on YouTube. There are many from Southeast Asia. Some have sound,…
The Khmer Rouge Top Secret Santebal (S-21) Archives
The digitization of historical materials is making research ever more easy, however I still find that I make my greatest “discoveries” by looking around in actual libraries. Today, for instance,…
Chinese Rushed in Where Tamil Rubber Tappers Feared to Tread in Early-20th-Century Malaya and Sarawak
I recently read an article in The Sarawak Gazette from September 2, 1929 entitled “The Tamil Cooly” which contained the following passage: “Though the Tamil is an orthodox Hindu by…
Bengawan Solo Forever
“Bengawan Solo,” a song about the Solo River in eastern Java, was first composed by Gesang Martohartono in 1940. Recorded as a Kroncong song, it became popular on Java during…
Pen Ran’s Rusted Bachelor in 1970s Cambodia
Pen Ran (also written Pan Ron) was a famous singer in Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s, during the golden age of Khmer popular music. One of her most famous…
White Men and Brown Women in Semi-Colonial Siam
If you visit an English-language bookstore like Asiabooks in Bangkok you will probably find a shelf or two of novels that are all devoted to the same general topic –…
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