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When we attempt to understand the past, there are two things that historians have to do that are very important, and they are interrelated. 1. First, we have to try…
The Stranger Kings of the Lý and Trần Dynasties
There is a theory that has developed over the past few decades among anthropologists and historians that is known as “the stranger king theory.” What this theory tries to explain…
Bombs, Scientists and the Call of the Front in 1969 North Vietnam
I was looking through the Imperial War Museum again and came across this picture of a “BLU-3 anti-personnel (‘Pineapple’) Bomblet.” I was immediately reminded of a scene in a movie…
A Torchlight Serenade by Chin Chin Chinamen in 1903 Lahad Datu
On 20 November 1903, T. C. H. Arensma, the general manager of a major tobacco plantation on the east coast of British North Borneo, Darvel Bay Estates, arrived back with…
Carlyle Seppings, Decolonization and the Skeletons in U Saw’s Backyard
As is very well known, on July 19, 1947, Burmese nationalist leader, Aung San, and six other members of his transitional government were assassinated. A rival politician, U Saw, was…
Maps of the Pacified South
A few days ago a reader suggested that we take a look at another map, this one being of the Mekong Delta and Cambodia. That map is also included in…
Ros Sereysothea’s “Today I Drank Wine”
Ros Sereysothea was the most famous female singer in Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s. Known as the “Golden Voice of the Royal Capital,” she recorded an enormous number…
Southeast Asia in the Selden Map
The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford has restored and digitized a seventeenth-century Chinese map known as “the Selden Map.” The map can be viewed here. A few weeks…
The Map of the Great Savage Kingdom
A kind reader has encouraged me to look at an old Vietnamese map of the Mekong region known as the Đại Man quốc đồ 大蠻國圖 (Map of the Great Savage…
French Foreign Legionnaires and their Indochinese Sexual Partners
I’ve become hopelessly addicted to the British Imperial War Museum’s web page, and have spent hours listening to the recorded interviews that they have there. This one, by a British…
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