Society and Politics in Late Colonial South East Asia
- Course Code:
- 15PHIC037
- Status:
- Course Not Running 2012/2013
- Unit value:
- 1
- Year of study:
- Year 1 or Year 2
- Taught in:
- Full Year
The course explores the social and economic, but also religious and intellectual, changes experienced by the populations of South East Asia in the late colonial period, the years roughly 1900 to 1950, and the political movements those changes engendered.
The first part of the course focuses on the rural world, and examines large-scale commitment to production for international markets, material circumstances and socio-economic inequalities, the rise of sectarian movements, and rural rebellion.
The course then turns to the urban world of late colonial South East Asia, and after a consideration first of the expansion of Western education and ideologies and, second, of religious reform and revitalization, explores the course of anti-colonial agitation in Burma, French Indo-China, the Philippines, the Netherlands East Indies, and British Malaya in the period 1900 through to the late 1930s. This is followed by an examination of society and politics in Siam, the only state in the region to retain its formal independence, in those same decades.
The course then explores the world of the immigrant, principally the Chinese and Indian migrants to South East Asia. And it concludes with an exploration of the social, economic, and political turmoil of the years of Japanese occupation, 1942-45, and, for many countries of the region, of the immediate post-war years.
Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
At the completion of the course, the student should:
- Have a clear understanding of the social, economic, and political history of South East Asia in the period, roughly, 1900 to 1950, and a clear grasp of the principal scholarly debates over that history.
- Be able to design and carry through appropriate coursework projects, that is to identify and refine appropriate questions and to identify and use critically the relevant secondary sources.
- Be able to present ideas and material effectively in both oral and written form.
Suggested reading
Introductory Bibliography:
- Michael Adas, The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852-1941, Madison, 1974;
- Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest movements against the European Colonial Order, Chapel Hill, 1979;
- Benjamin Batson, The End of the Absolute Monarchy in Siam, Singapore, 1984;
- Harry J Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam under the Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945, The Hague, 1958;
- Ian Brown, Economic Change in South-East Asia, c.1830-1980, Kuala Lumpur, 1997;
- Ian Brown, The Elite and the Economy in Siam, c.1890-1920,
Singapore, 1988; - Mary P Callahan, Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma, Ithaca, 2003;
- William J Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, Boulder, 1996;
- R E Elson, The End of the Peasantry in Southeast Asia: A Social and Economic History of Peasant Livelihood, 1800-1990s, New York, 1997;
- Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946, New Haven, 1965;
- Theodore Friend, The Blue-Eyed Enemy: Japan against the West in Java and Luzon, 1942-45, Princeton, 1988;
- J S Furnivall, The Fashioning of Leviathan: The Beginnings of British Rule in Burma, Canberra, 1991;
- T N Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, Cambridge, 1999;
- Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese
Revolution, Cambridge, Mass., 1992.
