Amidst rapid socio-economic change, many Vietnamese are anxious to preserve some memories and traditions against the ravages of time. This essay examines Tap Chi Xua & Nay (Past and Present Journal), a popular publication of the Vietnam History Association, to demonstrate how history is being recreated and memory redefined even as the editors claim to uphold timeless patriotic verities.

Founded in 1979, the Thai popular monthly magazine Sinlapa watthanatham aimed to make history, art and culture into areas of contestation against long-established official interpretations, and thus encourage a broad-based readership to reassess their assumptions about Thai-ness. However, the question of magazine sales, the context of the economic boom, and the crisis that erupted in 1997 led the magazine to succumb to consumerism, as well as a conservative ideology.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Republican Chinese thinkers viewed modern sports and traditional martial arts as important ways of invigorating the Chinese nation and race, and institutions in the ROC used both in attempting to extend the nationalist impulse to the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. These alternative physical culture models provide insights into both the diversity of thinking and the shared modernist assumptions that inspired projects directed toward the creation of “Greater Chinese” communities.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the colonial Dutch state grew increasingly concerned about what were perceived as threats to its authority. The article devotes particular attention to the so-called “Outer Islands”, and the forces that Batavia saw at work in this periphery that were considered dangerous enough to jeopardize imperial survival.

Through an examination of an essay written by a Balinese intellectual in the 1930s, this article explores how notions of modernity and nationalism can take root in particular localities. The essay makes a case for modernization and nationalism in Bali, and points to the existing caste system, which it identifies as largely a colonial creation, as an obstacle to progress that should be eliminated.

The military side of British-Dutch diplomatic relations in the Far East at the end of the 1930s has received little attention. The issue is examined here on the basis of original source materials, with particular attention to the way the Netherlands abandoned its policy of diplomatic “aloofness”.

Using Chiang Saen in northern Thailand as a case study, this paper describes the practice of archaeology as conducted by the Thai Fine Arts Department. In particular, it examines how the Chiang Saen archaeological site has been treated under the rubric of “cultural resource management”.