Hawaii in Southeast Asia
In the first half of the 1960s, American singer Elvis Presley made three movies in Hawaii: Blue Hawaii, Girls! Girls! Girls! and Paradise, Hawaiian Style. In at least one of…
Ah Chong and Tomato on the Tam O’Shanter
Whenever there is something in the news (and admittedly it’s not very often) about a ship running into some kind of trouble, it always amazes me to hear how international…
The Divided Fight Against Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia
One of the main myths that nationalist historiography creates is that the people of the nation all unite together for a common cause. During the period of decolonization, the common…
Serving the Japanese in Southeast Asia during WW II
The National Archives of Australia has quite a few materials on the activities of Japanese in Southeast Asia during World War II as the Australians were involved in the effort…
“Disquieting Elements” in 1920 Java
I was looking around in the database of the “cabinet papers” digitized by the National Archives of the UK, when I came across a document from 18 June 1920 entitled…
Natives in US Consulates in Early-20th-Century Southeast Asia
I was looking at some dispatches from US consulates in Southeast Asia in the early twentieth century when I came across a couple of letters, one from Singapore and the…
Nazis in the Netherlands East Indies
For more than twenty years now scholars have recognizing that when we talk about colonialism, we have to realize that it was much more complex than a simple story of…
Sinkesin in Indonesia!!
I have posted a couple of entries about the medicine Sinkesin (here and here). I first came across it in a Thai newspaper from the 1930s, and then in a…