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Bookshelf Spotlight: Anna Leonowens, Siam, and “The King & I”

Posted on 31 January 2012 by Pahole Sookkasikon

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation

Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation


by Thongchai Winichakul
University Of Hawai’i Press, 1994

This unusual and intriguing study of nationhood explores the 19th-century confrontation of ideas that transformed the kingdom of Siam into the modern conception of a nation. Siam Mapped challenges much that has been written on Thai history because it demonstrates convincingly that the physical and political definition of Thailand on which other works are based is anachronistic.

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Featured Books

* The English Governess At The Siamese Court
* Anna and the King of Siam
* Romance of the Harem
* Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess
* Mongkut the King of Siam

The English Governess At The Siamese Court


by Anna Leonowens
Oxford University Press, USA; 1st edition (March 17, 1989), Originally published in 1870

The English Governess at the Siamese Court: Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok (1870) vividly recounts the experiences of one Anna Harriette Leonowens as governess for the sixty-plus children of King Mongkut of Siam, English teacher for his entire royal family, and translator and scribe for the King himself. Bright, young, and energetic, Leonowens was well-suited to these roles, and her writings convey a heartfelt interest in the lives, legends, and languages of Siam’s rich and poor. She also tells of how she and the King often disagreed on matters domestic. After all, this was the first time King Mongkut had met a woman who dared to contradict him, and the governess found the very idea of male domination intolerable. Overworked and underpaid, Leonowens would eventually resign, but her exchanges with His Majesty–heated and otherwise–on topics like grammar, charity, slavery, politics, and religion add much to her diary’s rich, cross-cultural spirit, its East-meets-West appeal.

Over the years, that appeal has only increased. Eighty years after it first appeared, this memoir inspired the popular book and film, Anna and the King of Siam, and a few years later the hit musical, The King and I. Now comes yet another version, Anna and the King, the new film starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat. Here, then, is the original tale, presented with many reproductions of the fine drawings that the King had offered as gifts to Leonowens. The English Governess at the Siamese Court remains engaging as a story of adventure, fascinating as a picture of nineteenth-century Bangkok, and intriguing as an account of life inside King Mongkut’s palace.

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Anna and the King of Siam


by Margaret Landon
Harper Paperbacks, 1999; Originally published in 1944

Anna Leonowens, a proper Englishwoman, was an unlikley candidate to change the course of Siamese (Thai) history. A young widow and mother, her services were engaged in the 1860′s by King Mongkut of Siam to help him communicate with foreign governments and be the tutor to his children and favored concubines. Stepping off the steamer from London, Anna found herself in an exotic land she could have only dreamed of lush landscape of mystic faiths and curious people, and king’s palace bustling with royal pageantry, ancient custom, and harems. One of her pupils, the young prince Chulalongkorn, was particularly influenced by Leonowens and her Western ideals. He learned about Abraham Lincoln and the tenets of democracy from her, and years later he would become Siam’s most progressive king. He guided the country’s transformation from a feudal state to a modern society, abolshing slavery and making many other radical reforms.

Weaving meticulously researched facts with beautifully imagined scenes, Margret Landon recreates an unforgettable portrait of life in a forgotten extotic land. Written more than fifty years ago, and translated into dozens of languages, ” Anna and the King of Siam “(the inspiration for the magical play and film “The King and I”)continues to delight and enchant readers around the world.

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Romance of the Harem


by Anna Leonowens
University of Virginia Press, 1991; Originally published in 1873

The author is Anna Leonowens, the lovely English governess to the children of the King of Siam whose story is immortalized, highly romanticized in the Rogers & Hammerstein musical “The King and I” (1951). “Truth is often stranger than fiction,” writes Leonowens. Fiction based on fact, embellished to fascinate the reader and get the point across, is perhaps a more precise description of all the gruesome torture and persecutions of the ladies of the harem by the King who was a Buddhist monk and abbot for 26 years before ascending to the throne.

King Mongkut’s harem was so immense it encompassed an enormous complex within the Grand Palace in Bangkok called the Nang Harm (“Veiled Women”), surrounded by a high wall, housing the royal princesses, wives, and concubines of the king. It was a world of its own, complete with Amazon-women guards, prisons, judges and executioners, but also schools and theaters. Here the women carried out their connubial duty to produce the king’s heirs. When King Mongkut died he left behind 66 royal children.

After five years, Anna Leonowens left, traveling to England and Ireland before settling in the United States and eventually Canada, where she once again supported herself by teaching.

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Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess


by Susan Morgan
University of California Press, 2008

If you thought you knew the story of Anna in The King and I, think again. As this riveting biography shows, the real life of Anna Leonowens was far more fascinating than the beloved story of the Victorian governess who went to work for the King of Siam. To write this definitive account, Susan Morgan traveled around the globe and discovered new information that has eluded researchers for years. Anna was born a poor, mixed-race army brat in India, and what followed is an extraordinary nineteenth-century story of savvy self-invention, wild adventure, and far-reaching influence. At a time when most women stayed at home, Anna Leonowens traveled all over the world, witnessed some of the most fascinating events of the Age of Empire, and became a well-known travel writer, journalist, teacher, and lecturer. She remains the one and only foreigner to have spent significant time inside the royal harem of Siam. She emigrated to the United States, crossed all of Russia on her own just before the revolution, and moved to Canada, where she publicly defended the rights of women and the working class. The book also gives an engrossing account of how and why Anna became an icon of American culture in The King and I and its many adaptations.

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Mongkut the King of Siam


by Abbot Low Moffat
Cornell University Press; 1st Cornell Printing edition (1968)

In this fascinating biography, Moffat considers Mongkut to be one of the great men of Siam, and seeks to recover him from the well-loved fictions. Includes a number of black-and-white illustrations. He is skeptical of the reliability of Anna Leonowns accounts and analyzes some of them.

Must reading for the fans of Margaret Landon and the stage play / movies and people with an interest in Asian history.

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Song of the Week: Ros Sereysothea រស់ សេរីសុទ្ធា (Cambodia)

Posted on 28 January 2012 by Ronald Gilliam

Ros Sereysothea (Khmer: រស់ សេរីសុទ្ធា) (1948 – 1977) was a famous Cambodian singer during the nation’s thriving cultural renaissance. She sang from a variety of genres but romantic ballads emerged as her most popular works. Despite a rather short career she is credited with producing hundreds of songs and even starring in a few movies. Details of her life and fate during the Khmer Rouge is relatively unknown but it is generally accepted she did not survive.

With the cultural upheaval by the Khmer Rouge, scant evidence of Ros Serey Sothea’s life remains. Her master recordings were either destroyed by the regime or deteriorated rapidly to the tropical environment due to lack of preservation. However, many vinyl recordings have survived and have gained reissues initially on tape cassettes and later on compact discs. Unfortunately many of these reissues are also remixed with extra beats usually overriding the original score. The vinyls from the master sources are thereby highly sought out by preservationist and collectors.

Nonetheless Sothea remained extremely popular even after her death in Cambodian communities scattered throughout the United States, France, Australia and Canada. Western interest in Sothea would not dawn until songs by Sothea, Sinn Sisamouth and other Cambodian singers of the era such as Meas Samoun, Choun Malai and Pan Ron, were featured on the soundtrack to Matt Dillon’s film City of Ghosts. Tracks by Sothea are “Have You Seen My Love”, “I’m Sixteen” and “Wait Ten Months”. The Los Angeles band Dengue Fever, which features Cambodian lead singer Chhom Nimol, covers a number of songs by Sothea and other singers from the short-lived but rich Cambodian rock and roll scene. The advent of the internet, undoubtly saved what was left of her discography while spreading and garnering interest in her music even after almost half a century later.

Biography BlogLast.fm | Ros Serevsothea Film | Khmer Music Page

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Thailand, Lèse-Majesté, and Her Monarchy

Posted on 25 January 2012 by Pahole Sookkasikon

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand

Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand


ed. Soren Ivarsson, & Lotte Isager
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2010

The Thai monarchy today is usually presented as both guardian of tradition and the institution to bring modernity and progress to the Thai people. It is moreover seen as protector of the nation. Scrutinizing that image, this volume reviews the fascinating history of the modern monarchy. It also analyses important cultural, historical, political, religious, and legal forces shaping the popular image of the monarchy and, in particular, of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. In this manner, the book offers valuable insights into the relationships between monarchy, religion and democracy in Thailand – topics that, after the September 2006 coup d’état, gained renewed national and international interest.

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Featured Books

* Lords of Things: The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image
* Monarchy in South East Asia: The Faces of Tradition in Transition
* Nai Luang Beloved King of Thailand: A History of the Chakri Dynasty
* The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej
* Truth on Trial in Thailand: Defamation, Treason, and Lèse-Majesté

Lords of Things: The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image


by Maurizio Peleggi
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2002

Lords of Things offers an intriguing interpretation of modernity in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Siam by focusing on the novel material possessions and social practices adopted by the royal elite to refashion its self and public image in the early stages of globalization. It examines the westernized modes of consumption and self-presentation, the residential and representational architecture, and the public spectacles appropriated by the Bangkok court not as byproducts of institutional reformation initiated by modernizing sovereigns, but as practices and objects constitutive of the very identity of the royalty as a civilized and civilizing class.

Bringing a wealth of new source material into a theoretically informed discussion, Lords of Things will be required reading for historians of Thailand and Southeast Asia scholars generally. It represents a welcome change from previous studies of Siamese modernization that are almost exclusively concerned with the institutional and economic dimensions of the process or with foreign relations, and will appeal greatly to those interested in transnational cultural flows, the culture of colonialism, the invention of tradition, and the relationship between consumption and identity formation in the modern era.

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Monarchy in South East Asia: The Faces of Tradition in Transition


by Roger Kershaw
Routledge, 2000

This title is the first study to relate the history and contemporary role of the South East Asian monarchy to the politics of the region today. Comprehensive & up-to-date, Monarchy in South East Asia features an historical and political overview of Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, as well as the region in general. The excellent coverage of this fascinating subject should be of interest to general reader as well as to specialists focusing on region.

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Nai Luang Beloved King of Thailand: A History of the Chakri Dynasty


by Tenzin Dawa
ThaiSunset Publications, 2011

His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej is divinely revered by Thais. Still, during His Majesty’s long reign of 65 years [as of 2011], the King has seen over 15 military coups, 16 constitutions, and 28 changes of prime ministers. The King has also used his influence to stop military coups, among others, including attempts in 1981 and 1985.

It has often been said that the independence and integrity of Thailand is assured by three unifying factors: its people’s carefree disposition, the tolerant Buddhist Religion, and the Thai Throne. For seven centuries Thailand has successfully survived as an independent country while countries all around in Southeast Asia disintegrated or fell victim of colonialist powers. For that reason, no Thai would now deny that as these unique and sacred institutions survive and flourish, so the Thai nation will also survive and flourish. Without either one of them, no one could foresee what Thailand would be like

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Queen Sirikit, and the Heir-apparent are legally considered “inviolable” and criticism can result in three to fifteen years imprisonment; although the King said in his 2005 birthday speech that he would not be offended by lèse majesté, since “the King is human.”

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The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej


by Paul M. Handley
Yale University Press, 2006

Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej, the only king ever born in the United States, came to the throne of his country in 1946 and is now the world’s longest-serving monarch. The King Never Smiles, the first independent biography of Thailand’s monarch, tells the unexpected story of Bhumibol’s life and sixty-year rule—how a Western-raised boy came to be seen by his people as a living Buddha, and how a king widely seen as beneficent and apolitical could in fact be so deeply political and autocratic.

Paul Handley provides an extensively researched, factual account of the king’s youth and personal development, ascent to the throne, skillful political maneuverings, and attempt to shape Thailand as a Buddhist kingdom. Handley takes full note of Bhumibol’s achievements in art, in sports and jazz, and he credits the king’s lifelong dedication to rural development and the livelihoods of his poorest subjects. But, looking beyond the widely accepted image of the king as egalitarian and virtuous, Handley portrays an anti-democratic monarch who, together with allies in big business and the corrupt Thai military, has protected a centuries-old, barely modified feudal dynasty.

When at nineteen Bhumibol assumed the throne, the Thai monarchy had been stripped of power and prestige. Over the ensuing decades, Bhumibol became the paramount political actor in the kingdom, silencing critics while winning the hearts and minds of his people. The book details this process and depicts Thailand’s unique constitutional monarch—his life, his thinking, and his ruling philosophy.

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Truth on Trial in Thailand: Defamation, Treason, and Lèse-Majesté


by David Streckfuss
Routledge, 2011

Since 2005, Thailand has been in crisis, with unprecedented political instability and the worst political violence seen in the country in decades. In the aftermath of a military coup in 2006, Thailand’s press freedom ranking plunged, while arrests for lèse-majesté have skyrocketed to levels unknown in the modern world. Truth on Trial in Thailand traces the 110-year trajectory of defamation-based laws in Thailand. The most prominent of these is lèse-majesté, but defamation aspects also appear in laws on sedition and treason, the press and cinema, anti-communism, contempt of court, insulting of religion, as well as libel. This book makes the case that despite the appearance of growing democratization, authoritarian structures and urges still drive politics in Thailand; the long-term effects of defamation law adjudication has skewed the way that Thai society approaches and perceives “truth.”

Employing the work of Habermas, Foucault, Agamben, and Schmitt to construct an alternative framework to understand Thai history, Streckfuss contends that Thai history has become “suspended” since 1958, and repeatedly declining to face the truth of history has set the stage for an endless state of crisis.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of South East Asian politics, Asian history, and media and communication.

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Islam, Muslims, & Southeast Asia

Posted on 19 January 2012 by Pahole Sookkasikon

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity

Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity


by Robert Pringle
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2010

There are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country, but most people outside the region know little about the nation, much less about the practice of Islam among its diverse peoples or the religion’s influence on the politics of the republic. In this illuminating publication, Robert Pringle explains the advent of Islam in Indonesia, its development, and especially its contemporary circumstances. The author’s incisive writing provides the necessary background and demystifies the spectrum of politically active Muslim groups in Indonesia today.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Submitting to God: Women and Islam in Urban Malaysia
* Muslims in Singapore: Piety, politics and policies
* The Price Of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War Of Bangladesh And Myanmar
* Understanding Islam and Muslims in the Philippines
* Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand

Submitting to God: Women and Islam in Urban Malaysia


by Sylva Frisk
University of Washington Press, 2009

In recent decades, Malaysia has been profoundly changed both by forces of globalization, modernization, and industrialization and by a strong Islamization process. Some would argue that the situation of Malay women has worsened, but such a conclusion is challenged by this study of the everyday religious practice of pious women within Kuala Lumpur’s affluent Malay middle class. Here, women play an active part in the Islamization process, not only by heightened personal religiosity but also by organizing and participating in public programs of religious education.

By organizing new forms of collective ritual and assuming new public roles as religious teachers, these religiously educated women are transforming the traditionally male-dominated gendered space of the mosque and breaking men’s monopoly over positions of religious authority. Exploring this situation, Submitting to God challenges preconceptions of the nature of Islamization as well as current theories of female agency and power.

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Muslims in Singapore: Piety, politics and policies


by Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir, Alexius Pereira, & Bryan S. Turner
Routledge, 2009

This book examines Muslims in Singapore, analysing their habits, practices and dispositions towards everyday life, and also their role within the broader framework of the secularist Singapore state and the cultural dominance of its Chinese elite, who are predominantly Buddhist and Christian. Singapore has a highly unusual approach to issues of religious diversity and multiculturalism, adopting a policy of deliberately ‘managing religions’ – including Islam – in an attempt to achieve orderly and harmonious relations between different racial and religious groups. This has encompassed implicit and explicit policies of containment and ‘enclavement’ of Muslims, and also the more positive policy of ‘upgrading’ Muslims through paternalist strategies of education, training and improvement, including the modernisation of madrassah education in both content and orientation. This book examines how this system has operated in practice, and evaluates its successes and failures. In particular, it explores the attitudes and reactions of Muslims themselves across all spheres of everyday life, including dining and maintaining halal-vigilance; education and dress code; and practices of courtship, sex and marriage. It also considers the impact of wider international developments, including 9/11, fear of terrorism and the associated stigmatization of Muslims; and developments within Southeast Asia such as the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist attacks and the Islamization of Malaysia and Indonesia. This study has more general implications for political strategies and public policies in multicultural societies that are deeply divided along ethno-religious lines.

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The Price Of Silence: Muslim-Buddhist War Of Bangladesh And Myanmar


by Shwe Lu Maung
DewDrop Arts & Technology, 2005

Shwe Lu Maung, the author of the well-known book Burma Nationalism and Ideology (1989), describes a silent religious war of the Muslims and Buddhists in Bangladesh and Myanmar. He asserts that the religious war is a key factor which undermines advancement of democracy in these countries. More importantly, he gives a vivid illustration how the global warming would reinforce poverty and population explosion, leading to a full fledged Muslim-Buddhist war and destabilizing the entire region. He suggests that Rohingya-Rakhaing tension in the Rakhine State of Myanmar would ignite the war. He supports his reasoning with 31 tables, 21 figures, 15 maps, 8 charts, 112 illustrations, and 280 references.

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Understanding Islam and Muslims in the Philippines


by Peter Gowring
Cellar Book Shop, 1989

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Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand


by Duncan McCargo
Cornell University Press, 2008

Since January 2004, a violent separatist insurgency has raged in southern Thailand, resulting in more than three thousand deaths. Though largely unnoticed outside Southeast Asia, the rebellion in Pattani and neighboring provinces and the Thai government’s harsh crackdown have resulted in a full-scale crisis. Tearing Apart the Land by Duncan McCargo, one of the world’s leading scholars of contemporary Thai politics, is the first fieldwork-based book about this conflict. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the region, hundreds of interviews conducted during a year’s research in the troubled area, and unpublished Thai-language sources that range from anonymous leaflets to confessions extracted by Thai security forces, McCargo locates the roots of the conflict in the context of the troubled power relations between Bangkok and the Muslim-majority “deep South.”

McCargo describes how Bangkok tried to establish legitimacy by co-opting local religious and political elites. This successful strategy was upset when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister in 2001 and set out to reorganize power in the region. Before Thaksin was overthrown in a 2006 military coup, his repressive policies had exposed the precariousness of the Bangkok government’s influence. A rejuvenated militant movement had emerged, invoking Islamic rhetoric to challenge the authority of local leaders obedient to Bangkok.

For readers interested in contemporary Southeast Asia, insurgency and counterinsurgency, Islam, politics, and questions of political violence, Tearing Apart the Land is a powerful account of the changing nature of Islam on the Malay peninsula, the legitimacy of the central Thai government and the failures of its security policy, the composition of the militant movement, and the conflict’s disastrous impact on daily life in the deep South. Carefully distinguishing the uprising in southern Thailand from other Muslim rebellions, McCargo suggests that the conflict can be ended only if a more participatory mode of governance is adopted in the region.

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Song of the Week: Lê Hồng Nhung (Viet Nam)

Posted on 13 January 2012 by Ronald Gilliam

Lê Hồng Nhung, born March 15, 1970, is a Vietnamese singer. She is one of the four divas in Vietnamese music, along with Thanh Lam, My Linh, and Tran Thu Ha. She is also known for her performance of composer Trinh Cong Son songs. Hong Nhung was born in Hanoi, deserted by her mother before she was a year old and brought up by her grandmother. Her father was a bohemian figure who drifted in and out of her life, never contributing much money for the food and clothes she was so short of. Nhung had a good voice, though, and when she was 11 she sang her first song on Vietnam Radio. At 17 she made her first album, and by 21 she was starting to make a name for herself. At the age of 10, she was admitted to the vocal class of the Hanoi Youth Culture House. In 1981, she started recording with Radio the Voice of Vietnam. She became known as a promising young singer with songs Nhớ Về Hà Nội and Papa, a Vietnamese cover of the Myo song. In 1991, Nhung moved to Ho Chi Minh City. She met composer Trịnh Công Sơn in 1992 and began to perform his songs with a new style, creating a wave in Vietnamese music. Hồng Nhung is living in Ho Chi Minh City. -wikipedia


Facebook | Wikipedia (Vietnamese) | Last.fm | PBS Documentary

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Southeast Asia & Political/Social Violence

Posted on 11 January 2012 by Pahole Sookkasikon

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* The Singapore and Melaka Straits: Violence, Security and Diplomacy in the 17th Century

The Singapore and Melaka Straits: Violence, Security and Diplomacy in the 17th Century


by Peter Borschberg
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2010

The first half of the 17th century brought heightened political, commercial, and diplomatic activity to the Straits of Singapore and Melaka. Key elements included rivalry between Johor and Aceh, the rapid expansion of the Acehnese Empire, the arrival of the Dutch East India Company, and the waning of Portuguese power and prestige across the region. Archives in Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands contain detailed information on these developments in the forms of maps, rare printed works, and unpublished manuscripts, many of them unfamiliar to modern researchers.

The Singapore and Melaka Straits draws on these materials to examine early modern European cartography as a projection of Western power, treaty and alliance making, trade relations, and the struggle for naval hegemony in the Singapore and Melaka Straits. The book provides an unprecedented look at the diplomatic activities of Asian powers in the region, and also shows how the Spanish and the Portuguese attempted to restore their political fortunes by containing the rapid rise of Dutch power. The appendices provide copies of key documents, transcribed and translated into English for the first time.

The book will be invaluable for historians and others interested in the European presence in Asia. It provides a fascinating look at the Malay world, trade, and international relations during a pivotal period about which relatively little is known.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Political Violence in South and Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives
* International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy
* Dancing With the Devil: A Personal Account of Policing the East Timor Vote for Independence
* Conflict, Violence, and Displacement in Indonesia
* Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia

Political Violence in South and Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives


Edited by Itty Abraham, Edward Newman and Meredith L. Weiss
United Nations University Press, 2010

This volume explores the sources and manifestations of political violence in South and Southeast Asia and the myriad roles that it plays in everyday life and as part of historical narrative. It considers and critiques the manner in which political violence is understood and constructed, and the common assumptions that prevail regarding the causes, victims and perpetrators of this violence. By focusing on the social and political context of these regions the volume presents a critical understanding of the nature of political violence and provides an alternative narrative to that found in mainstream analysis of ‘terrorism’.

Political Violence in South and Southeast Asia brings together political scientists and anthropologists with intimate knowledge of the politics and society of these regions, from different academic backgrounds, who present unique perspectives on topics including assassinations, riots, state violence, the significance of geographic borders, external influences and intervention, and patterns of recruitment and rebellion.

Itty Abraham is an Associate Professor and Director of the South Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin. Edward Newman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. Meredith L. Weiss is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University at Albany, State University of New York.

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International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy


by David Shambaugh & Michael Yahuda
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008

This text offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to the international relations of contemporary Southeast Asia. Organized thematically around the central foreign policy questions facing regional decision makers, the book explores the struggle to overcome their subordination to global political, economic, and social forces. The international agenda continually tests Southeast Asia’s policy elites as they are buffeted by the security demands of the war on terrorism; the economic demands of globalism; and social and political demands centered around such contentious issues as democracy, human rights, environment, and gender. One reaction is to give new urgency to regionalist initiatives, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Yet, the author argues, regionalism continues to be frustrated by national interests and ASEAN states’ insistence on sovereignty and noninterference. Overarching the inter-regional relationships is the shifting power structure between the United States and China. Throughout the book run the key questions defining Southeast Asia’s future: Will waning American influence be balanced by the growth of Chinese power in the region? And if so, does Southeast Asia face a new subordination rather than genuine autonomy? An invaluable guide to the region, this balanced and lucid work will be an essential text for courses on Southeast Asia and on the international relations of the Asia-Pacific.

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Dancing With the Devil: A Personal Account of Policing the East Timor Vote for Independence


by David Savage
Monash Asia Institute, 2002

Dancing with the devil is a UN police officer’s memoir of the independence ballot in East Timor. With compassion and humour, David Savage tells the simple truth about the horrific events he witnessed, and the triumph of a quiet, resilient people.

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Conflict, Violence, and Displacement in Indonesia


ed. by Eva-Lotta E. Hedman
Cornell University Press, 2008

This volume foregrounds the dynamics of displacement and the experiences of internal refugees uprooted by conflict and violence in Indonesia. Contributors examine internal displacement in the context of militarized conflict and violence in East Timor, Aceh, and Papua, and in other parts of Outer Island Indonesia during the transition from authoritarian rule. The volume also explores official and humanitarian discourses on displacement and their significance for the politics of representation.

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Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia


by Syed Muhd Khair Aljunied
Taylor & Francis Inc, 2009

This book deals with the genesis, outbreak and far-reaching effects of a legal controversy and the resulting outbreak of mass violence, which determined the course of British colonial rule after post World War Two in Singapore and Malaya. Based on extensive archival sources, it examines the custody hearing of Maria Hertogh, a case which exposed tensions between Malay and Singaporean Muslims and British colonial society. Investigating the wide-ranging effects and crises faced in the aftermath of the riots, the analysis focuses in particular on the restoration of peace and rebuilding of society.

The author provides a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of British management of riots and mass violence in Southeast Asia. By exploring the responses by non-British communities in Singapore, Malaya and the wider Muslim world to the Maria Hertogh controversy, he shows that British strategies and policies can be better understood through the themes of resistance and collaboration. Furthermore, the book argues that British enactment of laws pertaining to the management of religions in the post-war period had dispossessed religious minorities of their perceived religious rights. As a result, outbreaks of mass violence and continual grievances ensued in the final years of British colonial rule in Southeast Asia – and these tensions still pertain in the present.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of law and society, history, Imperial History and Asian Studies, and to anyone studying minorities, and violence and recovery.

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Cambodia, The Khmer Rouge, & Genocide

Posted on 07 December 2011 by Pahole Sookkasikon

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* Love and Dread in Cambodia: Weddings, Births, and Ritual Harm under the Khmer Rouge

Love and Dread in Cambodia: Weddings, Births, and Ritual Harm under the Khmer Rouge


by Peg LeVine
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2010

For a decade, the author followed Cambodian men and women to former wedding and birth sites from the Khmer Rouge period (1975–79), filming their return to these locations. In the process she uncovered evidence of the way severe dislocation, induced starvation and other murderous activities paved the way for reconstructed communes. Group marriages, along with prescriptions for sex, pregnancies, and births, were a central feature of the remaking of Cambodian society and contributed to the dissolution of the country’s ritual practices. This “ritualcide” caused a mass loss of spirit-protective places, objects, and arbitrators, and had a traumatic impact on Khmer society. Group marriages did, however, give spouses a reprieve from further dislocation.

Approaching the process as an ethno-psychologist, LeVine argues that suffering was intensified by ritual tampering on the part of the Khmer Rouge. Such disruptions did not end in 1979, however, since Euro-American perspectives on trauma and reconciliation have also failed to accept spirit respect as a normative feature.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare
* Survival in the Killing Fields
* Voices from S-21 – Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison
* When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge
* Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land

Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare


by Philip Short
Owl Books, 2006

Observing Pol Pot at close quarters during the one and only official visit he ever made abroad, to China in 1975, Philip Short was struck by the Cambodian leader’s charm and charisma. Yet Pol Pot’s utopian experiments in social engineering would result in the death of one in every five Cambodians–more than a million people.

How did an idealistic dream of justice and prosperity mutate into one of humanity’s worst nightmares? To answer these questions, Short traveled through Cambodia, interviewing former Khmer Rouge leaders and sifting through previously closed archives around the world. Key figures, including Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary, Pol’s brother-in-law and foreign minister, speak here for the first time.

Short’s masterly narrative serves as the definitive portrait of the man who headed one of the most enigmatic and terrifying regimes of modern times.

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Survival in the Killing Fields


by Haing Ngor & Roger Warner
Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1987

Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. That’s who I am,” says Haing Ngor. And in his memoir, Survival in the Killing Fields, he tells the gripping and frequently terrifying story of his term in the hell created by the communist Khmer Rouge. Like Dith Pran, the Cambodian doctor and interpreter whom Ngor played in an Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields, Ngor lived through the atrocities that the 1984 film portrayed. Like Pran, too, Ngor was a doctor by profession, and he experienced firsthand his country’s wretched descent, under the Khmer Rouge, into senseless brutality, slavery, squalor, starvation, and disease—all of which are recounted in sometimes unimaginable horror in Ngor’s poignant memoir. Since the original publication of this searing personal chronicle, Haing Ngor’s life has ended with his murder, which has never been satisfactorily solved. In an epilogue written especially for this new edition, Ngor’s coauthor, Roger Warner, offers a glimpse into this complex, enigmatic man’s last years—years that he lived “like his country: scarred, and incapable of fully healing.”

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Voices from S-21 – Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison


by David P. Chandler
Silkworm Books, 2000

The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century’s major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name “S-21.” The facility was an interrogation center where more than 14,000 “enemies” were questioned, tortured, and made to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes. Fewer than a dozen prisoners left S-21 alive.
During the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era, the existence of S-21 was known only to those inside it and a few high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials. When invading Vietnamese troops discovered the prison in 1979, murdered bodies lay strewn about and instruments of torture were still in place. An extensive archive containing photographs of victims, cadre notebooks, and DK publications was also found. Chandler utilizes evidence from the S-21 archive as well as materials that have surfaced elsewhere in Phnom Penh. He also interviews survivors of S-21 and former workers from the prison.

Documenting the violence and terror that took place within S-21 is only part of Chandler’s story. Equally important is his attempt to understand what happened there in terms that might be useful to survivors, historians, and the rest of us. Chandler discusses the “culture of obedience” and its attendant dehumanization, citing parallels between the Khmer Rouge executions and the Moscow Show Trails of the 1930s, Nazi genocide, Indonesian massacres in 1965-66, the Argentine military’s use of torture in the 1970s, and the recent mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. In each of these instances, Chandler shows how turning victims into “others” in a manner that was systematically devaluing and racialist made it easier to mistreat and kill them. More than a chronicle of Khmer Rouge barbarism, Voices from S-21 is also a judicious examination of the psychological dimensions of state-sponsored terrorism that conditions human beings to commit acts of unspeakable brutality.

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When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge


by Chanrithy Him
W. W. Norton & Company, 2000

Chanrithy Him vividly recounts her trek through the hell of the “killing fields.” She gives us a child’s-eye view of a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps for both adults and children are the norm and modern technology no longer exists. Death becomes a companion in the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, the members of Chanrithy’s family remain loyal to one another, and she and her siblings who survive will find redeemed lives in America.

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Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land


by Joel Brinkley
PublicAffairs, 2011

A generation after the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia shows every sign of having overcome its history—the streets of Phnom Penh are paved; skyscrapers dot the skyline. But under this façade lies a country still haunted by its years of terror.

Joel Brinkley won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Cambodia on the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed one quarter of the nation’s population during its years in power. In 1992, the world came together to help pull the small nation out of the mire. Cambodia became a United Nations protectorate—the first and only time the UN tried something so ambitious. What did the new, democratically-elected government do with this unprecedented gift?

In 2008 and 2009, Brinkley returned to Cambodia to find out. He discovered a population in the grip of a venal government. He learned that one-third to one-half of Cambodians who lived through the Khmer Rouge era have P.T.S.D.—and its afflictions are being passed to the next generation. His extensive close-up reporting in Cambodia’s Curse illuminates the country, its people, and the deep historical roots of its modern-day behavior.

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Song of the Week: Endorphine (Thailand)

Posted on 03 December 2011 by Ronald Gilliam

Endorphine is one of the most popular Thai rock bands in Thailand today. The band consists of Da(lead vocals), Kia(guitar), Bird(bass), and Bomb(drum). Current members are (nickname in parenthesis): Thanida Thamwimon (Da): lead vocals, Anucha Boethongkhamkul (Kia): guitar, Thanat Amornmanus (Bird): bass guitar, Thapaphol Amornmanus (Bomb): percussion.

The band started in junior high school. Friends Bomb (drums) and Kia (guitar) decided to form a band and asked Bomb’s brother Bird (bass) to join in. They decided they needed a lead vocalist, and that’s when Da came in. Impressed with Da’s unique and powerful voice, the band asked her to join. “Since we played rock music, we never thought our lead singer would be a girl,” Bomb said. “But when we heard Da sing, we knew she was the missing piece.” They were almost set, but there was still one other thing they needed — the right name. Stuck in traffic one day, Bomb spotted a bumper sticker that had the word “endorphine” written on it. Curious, Bomb looked the word up and found the perfect name for his band. “Endorphins are a chemical substance produced by the brain when we’re happy or in pain,” Bomb said. “And we want people to be happy listening to our songs. Hence the name Endorphine.” -Wikipedia


Official Website (English) | Official Website (Thai) | Last.fm | eThai Music

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Southeast Asia & U.S. Relations/Investments

Posted on 30 November 2011 by Pahole Sookkasikon

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* The Philippines and Japan in America’s Shadow

The Philippines and Japan in America’s Shadow


edited by Kiichi Fujiwara & Yoshiko Nagano
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2011

The authors in this volume examine the U.S. occupation of the Philippines and Japan from a wide range of perspectives (political science, history, anthropology, sociology, and literature). They suggest that American colonialism shows distinct characteristics of latecomer-colonialism, starting with the strong role of the state and the primacy of geopolitics. In contrast with other imperial powers, such as Britain, France, and Japan, the Americans relied more on informal empire than on direct control of territory, an approach that suited an era when colonialism as such was increasingly difficult to defend.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903
* India-Burma (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II)
* Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind
* No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War
* Trade and Development in a Globalized World: The Unfair Trade Problem in U.S.D Thai Trade Relations

Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903


by Stuart Creighton Miller
Yale University Press, 1984

American acquisition of the Philippines and Filipino resistance to it became a focal point for debate on American imperialism. In a lively narrative, Miller tells the story of the war and how it challenged America’s sense of innocence. He examines the roles of key actors—the generals and presidents, the soldiers and senators—in America’s colonial adventure.

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India-Burma (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II)


by David W. Hogan
Army Center of Military History, 1992

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Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind


by Loung Ung
Harper Perennial, 2006

After enduring years of hunger, deprivation, and devastating loss at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, ten-year-old Loung Ung became the “lucky child,” the sibling chosen to accompany her eldest brother to America while her one surviving sister and two brothers remained behind. In this poignant and elegiac memoir, Loung recalls her assimilation into an unfamiliar new culture while struggling to overcome dogged memories of violence and the deep scars of war. In alternating chapters, she gives voice to Chou, the beloved older sister whose life in war-torn Cambodia so easily could have been hers. Highlighting the harsh realities of chance and circumstance in times of war as well as in times of peace, Lucky Child is ultimately a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and to the salvaging strength of family bonds.

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No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War


by Gregory A. Daddis
Oxford University Press, 2011

It is commonly thought that the U.S. Army in Vietnam, thrust into a war in which territory occupied was meaningless, depended on body counts as its sole measure of military progress. In No Sure Victory, Army officer and historian Gregory A. Daddis uncovers the truth behind this gross simplification of the historical record. Daddis shows that, confronted by an unfamiliar enemy and an even more unfamiliar form of warfare, the U.S. Army adopted a massive, and eventually unmanageable, system of measurements and formulas to track the progress of military operations that ranged from pacification efforts to search-and-destroy missions. Concentrating more on data collection and less on data analysis, these indiscriminate attempts to gauge success may actually have hindered the army’s ability to evaluate the true outcome of the fight at hand–a roadblock that Daddis believes significantly contributed to the multitude of failures that American forces in Vietnam faced. Filled with incisive analysis and rich historical detail, No Sure Victory is a valuable case study in unconventional warfare, a cautionary tale that offers important perspectives on how to measure performance in current and future armed conflict.

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Trade and Development in a Globalized World: The Unfair Trade Problem in U.S.D Thai Trade Relations


by John M. Rothgeb Jr. and Benjamas Chinapandhu
Lexington Books, 2008

Trade and Development in a Globalized World examines how the unfair trade regulations of advanced countries affect developing societies. The most prominent of these regulations are those pertaining to dumping and subsidies. As antidumping and antisubsidy laws have proliferated, they have increasingly undermined the trade-related development strategies of poor countries. To determine how developing states attempt to cope with the problems created by unfair trade rules, Rothgeb and Chinapandhu conducted a case study of the Thai–U.S. trade relationship. The results, revealed here, show that unfair trade regulations have evolved substantially from their origins as devices for ensuring that international markets can not be manipulated to confer advantages upon selected exporters and that these regulations now serve as the primary protective mechanisms for guaranteeing that advanced country producers will not face competition from developing country industries.

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Bookshelf Spotlight: Southeast Asia & Revolution

Posted on 22 November 2011 by Pahole Sookkasikon

Featured University Of Hawai’i Press Publishing

* To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century

To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century


by Anthony Reid
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2011

The twelve chapters of this book all derive from the reflections of a prominent historian on the nature of modern Indonesian history over a forty-year time span. A central thread running through the book is the importance of the fact that Indonesia entered the modern community of nation-states through political revolution.

University Of Hawai’i Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Featured Books

* Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia
* Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia
* Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand
* Vietnam 1946: How the War Began
* Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong

Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia


by Christopher Bayly & Tim Harper
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007

In September 1945, after the fall of the atomic bomb—and with it, the Japanese empire—Asia was dominated by the British. Governing a vast crescent of land that stretched from India through Burma and down to Singapore, and with troops occupying the French and Dutch colonies in southern Vietnam and Indonesia, Britain’s imperial might had never seemed stronger.

Yet within a few violent years, British power in the region would crumble, and myriad independent nations would struggle into existence. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper show how World War II never really ended in these ravaged Asian lands but instead continued in bloody civil wars, anti-colonial insurrections, and inter-communal massacres. These years became the most formative in modern Asian history, as Western imperialism vied with nascent nationalist and communist revolutionaries for political control.

Forgotten Wars, a sequel to the authors’ acclaimed Forgotten Armies, is a panoramic account of the bitter wars of the end of empire, seen not only through the eyes of the fighters, but also through the personal stories of ordinary people: the poor and bewildered caught up in India’s Hindu-Muslim massacres; the peasant farmers ravaged by warfare between British forces and revolutionaries in Malaya; the Burmese minorities devastated by separatist revolt. Throughout, we are given a stunning portrait of societies poised between the hope of independence and the fear of strife. Forgotten Wars vividly brings to life the inescapable conflicts and manifold dramas that shaped today’s Asia.

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press | Amazon | Google Books

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Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia


by Dan Slater
Cambridge University Press, 2010

This is the first collection of short stories by Filipino author Gilda Cordero-Fernando. Dowdy and glamor-starved housewives, the money-mad circle that barely senses the need for social justice, children anxious for love and security–these prvide the material for the fable and vision which fiction demands of its makers.

Cambridge University Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

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Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand


by Tyrell Haberkorn & Thongchai Winichakul
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

In October 1973 a mass movement forced Thailand’s prime minister to step down and leave the country, ending nearly forty years of dictatorship. Three years later, in a brutal reassertion of authoritarian rule, Thai state and para-state forces quashed a demonstration at Thammasat University in Bangkok. In Revolution Interrupted, Tyrell Haberkorn focuses on this period when political activism briefly opened up the possibility for meaningful social change. Tenant farmers and their student allies fomented revolution, she shows, not by picking up guns but by invoking laws— laws that the Thai state ultimately proved unwilling to enforce.

In choosing the law as their tool to fight unjust tenancy practices, farmers and students departed from the tactics of their ancestors and from the insurgent methods of the Communist Party of Thailand. To first imagine and then create a more just future, they drew on their own lived experience and the writings of Thai Marxian radicals of an earlier generation, as well as New Left, socialist, and other progressive thinkers from around the world. Yet their efforts were quickly met with harassment, intimidation, and assassinations of farmer leaders. More than thirty years later, the assassins remain unnamed.

Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles, cremation volumes, activist and state documents, and oral histories, Haberkorn reveals the ways in which the established order was undone and then reconsolidated. Examining this turbulent period through a new optic—interrupted revolution—she shows how the still unnameable violence continues to constrict political opportunity and to silence dissent in present-day Thailand.

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Vietnam 1946: How the War Began


by Stein Tonnesson
University Of California Press, 2011

Based on multiarchival research conducted over almost three decades, this landmark account tells how a few men set off a war that would lead to tragedy for millions. Stein Tønnesson was one of the first historians to delve into scores of secret French, British, and American political, military, and intelligence documents. In this fascinating account of an unfolding tragedy, he brings this research to bear to disentangle the complex web of events, actions, and mentalities that led to thirty years of war in Indochina. As the story unfolds, Tønnesson challenges some widespread misconceptions, arguing that French general Leclerc fell into a Chinese trap in March 1946, and Vietnamese general Giap into a French trap in December. Taking us from the antechambers of policymakers in Paris to the docksides of Haiphong and the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam 1946 provides the most vivid account to date of the series of events that would make Vietnam the most embattled area in the world during the Cold War period.

University Of California Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

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Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong


by Hue-Tam Ho Tai
University of California Press, 2010

This is the incredible story of Bao Luong, Vietnam’s first female political prisoner. In 1927, when she was just 18, Bao Luong left her village home to join Ho Chi Minh’s Revolutionary Youth League and fight both for national independence and for women’s equality. A year later, she became embroiled in the Barbier Street murder, a crime in which unruly passion was mixed with revolutionary ardor. Weaving together Bao Luong’s own memoir with excerpts from newspaper articles, family gossip, and official documents, this book by Bao Luong’s niece takes us from rural life in the Mekong Delta to the bustle of colonial Saigon. It provides a rare snapshot of Vietnam in the first decades of the twentieth century and a compelling account of one woman’s struggle to make a place for herself in a world fraught with intense political intrigue.

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