Not long after the French obtained control over the area around Saigon, Louis Gabriel Galderic Aubaret published a French “translation” of an early-nineteenth-century gazetteer of the region, Trịnh Hoài Đức’s…
These are some images from the early 1960s from the North Vietnamese magazine Viet Nam. The above pictures seem to represent the happy and idyllic traditional lifestyle of minority peoples.…
Today I came across some documents from the office of José Laurel when he was “commissioner” of the Philippines in 1942. In 1942 the Philippines had just come under Japanese…
In the 20th century, the governments of many countries produced glossy magazines in foreign languages which were used to promote the nation’s image overseas. Recently I was looking at two…
Scientists have long noted that there is no biological basis for race. Races of human beings do not actually exist. They are social constructs. People create different categories of human…
I came across these advertisements for The Chartered Bank in a magazine called Malaysia from the early 1970s. I find the logic that these advertisements use to communicate with the…
Chen Jinghe/Trần Kinh Hòa was an historian who was born in 1917 in the Japanese colony of Taiwan. However, he went to school, from elementary to university, in Japan. As…
Kuching, Sarawak is a lovely place. Clean and with a relaxing atmosphere, it is difficult to imagine it as a place of suffering. However, for many of its early years…
On 14 July there was apparently a seminar in Hanoi to honor the work of philosopher Lương Kim Định on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of his death. Born…
Like any field, the field of Southeast Asian history maintains certain “truths” which the people in the field learn and teach others about. One such “truth” is the idea that…