A Lost Opportunity or Opportunism in 1945 Vietnam?
One idea that has been expressed a lot is the idea that the US lost an opportunity in 1945 when Truman did not respond to any of Hồ Chí Minh’s…
One idea that has been expressed a lot is the idea that the US lost an opportunity in 1945 when Truman did not respond to any of Hồ Chí Minh’s…
I was reading a book from 1914 called the Directory for Bangkok and Siam. Intended as a guidebook for foreign businessmen, this book contains a lot of practical information about…
Last summer while in Bangkok I bought a book at Asia Books that was published a few years ago by the Fine Art Publishing House in Vietnam. It is called…
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…
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…
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…
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, 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 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,…
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…