Formosan Savages and Southeast Asia
I’ve long felt that the indigenous peoples of Taiwan should be included as members of Southeast Asia. There are clear commonalities between their lifestyles and those of people in places…
Ammunition by Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century Labuan
Having recently read Alfred McCoy’s Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State, I’m interested in pursuing further his claim that the “information…
A Vision of the Coming iHell
Ok, this isn’t really Southeast Asian history, but I came across something today as I was doing some research that I want to relate to Southeast Asian history. That research…
Defoliants in the Malayan Emergency
I was looking at materials that are now available online through the National Archives of the UK. Records from the Colonial Office have not been digitized, but “cabinet papers” have,…
Watermelons, Birds, Buddhists and a Vietnamese Legend
“The Tale of the Watermelon” (Tây qua truyện 西瓜傳, now referred to in Vietnamese as “Truyện Dưa Hấu”) is well known to Vietnamese today.
The story is about an official by the name of Mai An Tiêm who was purportedly employed by one of the Hùng kings. Mai An Tiêm, the story goes, was from a foreign country, and had been purchased by the Hùng king when he was a young boy. When Mai An Tiêm grew to become a man he was entrusted with various duties by the king. In due time he became wealthy and arrogant, and stated that “Everything here is because of my previous life. It is not because of the beneficence of my master.” For this lack of gratitude, the Hùng king exiled Mai An Tiêm to a remote island.
Plague in Penang in 1899
In a post below I talked about how the simplicity of telegrams could hide the complexity of the issues that they were referring to. Today I found a telegram that…
The Sound of the Past. . .
So writing about telegrams got me thinking about what it must have sounded like to have a telegram arrive. I found this site called Morse Resource where I was able…
Murder, Rebels, Refugees and Telegrams in Late-19th-Century Southeast Asia
A few days ago I wrote about the technology of “wireless telegraphy” and its use in areas of Southeast Asia under colonial rule in the early twentieth century. Today I…
The “Buddhist” Cats & Dogs of Burma
I am a visionary! Last night before going to bed I saw an email that made reference to an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune (here) about supposed Vietnamese eating…
Connecting Southeast Asia through Wireless Telegraphy
Today I read a letter that Lester Maynard, the US consul-general in Sandakan, British North Borneo, wrote to the Secretary of the Philippine Commission (an American colonial official) in Manila…
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