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…
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…
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…
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…
Humanity, Scholarship and Beer
Just by chance I came across this picture of the Thai historian, Charnvit Kasetsiri, on facebook today. The text at the top says (and I translate it loosely here in…
The Art in Southeast Asian History Archives
There is a web page I liked called “The Art of Google Books.” Basically what the person who produces this page does is to look through books that have been…
Southeast Asian History Through Ngrams
In 2010, Google released its “Ngram Viewer” which allows people to search through many of the millions of books that it has scanned and to chart word usage over time.…
The Place of “Ta” in “Khoa Học”
I still don’t understand what the term “khoa học” means to Vietnamese scholars. It is how the term “science” was originally translated into Vietnamese, but today I don’t know anyone…
On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Vietnam
Yesterday I re-read John Smail’s 1961 article, “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia,” Journal of Southeast Asian History 2.2 (1961): 72-102. This article was published…
O. W. Wolters, Life Experience, and Thinking Big in Academia
Sometimes I think there must be something wrong with me because I study about Southeast Asian history and I deeply dislike the writings of the late O. W. Wolters. O.…