Music and Power in Mainland Southeast Asia
Recently I’ve been reading and listening to a new book with accompanying CDs called Longing for the Past: The 78 rpm Era in Southeast Asia. In the early 20th century,…
Whistling La Marseillaise in Vichy-Controlled Phnom Penh
There is a very famous scene in the movie Casablanca where some German officers in a nightclub in Vichy-controlled Casablanca start to sing “Die Wacht am Rhein” and then the…
Thai Stick, Sharing Resources and Killing Westerners in S-21
Several years ago I remember going to a talk by Peter Maguire about his book, Facing Death in Cambodia. That book is about the Khmer Rouge, why they killed, and…
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…
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…
Sappy Love Songs and the Meaning of Mainland Southeast Asian History During the Cold War
In 1966 John Denver wrote the song “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” When I was growing up, I didn't like that song. The version I heard the most when I…
Mapping Military Posts in French Indochina
Following on the post below, here is an attempt at making a map of military posts in French Indochina in World War II. On the map page you can switch…
Forgotten Diplomats
Wars create refugees. In every war there are people who flee from the fighting, and people who flee from the victors. In the 1970s, the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia…
A 1944 Secret Report on Caodaism
I came across a “secret” report that the Indochina Section of the Far Eastern Bureau of the British Ministry of Information in New Delhi filed in 1944. It is an…