New Terrains in Southeast Asian History

Ahmad, Abu Talib, and Tan Liok Ee, (eds.) New Terrains in Southeast Asian History. Southeast Asia Series No. 107. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003. 393 pp.

This book is rather mistitled; except for two chapters on general topics the book is overwhelmingly focused on the Malay archipelago with six chapters devoted to Malaysia, three to Singapore, and one to Malaysia and Indonesia. (There is one each for Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam.) Of the 17 contributors, 13 are affiliated with institutions in Malaysia or Singapore, and the two editors are with the School of Humanities at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. It is especially regretful that no chapter deals specifically with the Philippines; as the editors themselves note in their Introduction, "moments of historiographical excitement and change in Thai and Filipino historiography" recently occurred in contrast to "Myanmar, Brunei, and even Malaysia where there have been few or no major revisionist movements in historical writing" (p. xvi).

In one of the two general chapters Thongchai Winichakul, who is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin at Madison, writes, "A historian normally cares less about theories than a social scientist does" (p. 3). Historians are, however, surrounded by and embedded in social science theory with most of the concepts coming from Western perspectives. Winichakul does attempt to utilize social science theory and makes a plea for writing at the "interstices of transnational and transcultural processes" (p. 23). He suggests that what he calls "home scholars" have a "comparative advantage in ethnographic and language sensitivity" (p. 24) and that therefore they should "be confident and ambitious enough to make theoretical contributions" (p. 24).

In the only other general chapter Paul H. Kratoska, of the Universiti Sains Malaysia and the National University of Singapore, explores the literature on country histories, including school textbooks and, recognizing the propagandistic character of these texts, he concludes, "The dominance of the country approach has contributed to a distortion of important aspects of Southeast Asian history, notably colonialism and anticolonial activity, nonnational political entities, minorities, and economic and social history" (p. 117), and he suggests that "geographic units such as the Java Sea or the Melaka Straits or the Mekong River could provide a natural focus for historical studies" (p. 117).

Brenda S. A. Yeoh, who is in the geography department at the National University of Singapore, focuses on the interstices between disciplines and discusses the uses of different perspectives on space in the history of Singapore. She suggests that "a sense of space . . . is an important touchstone for the writing of history" (p. 50).

In a chapter titled "Quantifying the Economic and Social History of Southeast Asia," M. R. Fernando, who is with the Nanyang Technological Institute in Singapore, states, "Most of us working on Southeast Asia are reluctant to make use of the kind of quantitative information that lends itself admirably well to the study of mass phenomenon" (p. 58). Using Indonesia and Malaysia as case histories, Fernando concludes, "The quantitative approach will hopefully provide much needed impetus and a point of departure for exploring economic and social history" (p. 76).

Other chapters are too specialized to engage the interests of anyone but specialists cover such topics as Chinese women in Malaysia, the migrations of the Vietnamese under the exigencies of war, the Chinese in Johore (Malaysia), a history of 17th-century Phuket (Thailand), local histories in Malaysia from ecclesiastic records, Singapore's national heroes, traditional histories of Thailand and Malaysia, and Myanmar historiography. The book should be of interest to historians of Southeast Asia but will have little appeal beyond that small circle of scholars.

Robert Lawless Wichita State University

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