This article explores the causes of nationalist civil war, a subtype of ethnic civil war in which anti-state actors fight for greater communal autonomy. It presents a theoretical framework claiming that grievances over lost communal autonomy commonly motivate nationalist civil war, but that other conditions are needed to put this motive into action: Nationalist frames and expectations must make communities sensitive to lost autonomy, and mobilizational resources must be available so actors can organize nationalist movements. Nation-state building, in turn, commonly promotes reductions in communal autonomy, and British colonial pluralism frequently strengthened nationalist frames, expectations, and mobilizational resources, suggesting that nationalist civil war should be common in former British colonies after transitions from empire to nation-state. To test the framework, this article provides a comparative historical analysis of Zomia, a region that has the highest concentration of nationalist civil wars in the world and in which half of the countries are former British colonies. The analysis provides strong evidence supporting the theoretical framework.

Fusing the aesthetics of futurity with the lush beauty of the natural world, planned eco-city developments like Forest City and Penang South Islands, both in Malaysia, promise luxury enclaves against climate change and the environmental stressors of existing cities. This article analyzes CGI architectural renderings used to promote and sell eco-city projects in Southeast Asia. Eco-city renderings, we argue, produce semio-capitalistic value by translating the familiar concepts of “green,” “eco-friendly,” and “sustainable” into something far more inchoate: feelings. They do so through their supersaturation with signs of greenness in a design strategy we label “semiotic overdetermination.” Selling “green” as a feeling, eco-city renderings capitalize on present-day anxieties over urban decay and commodify “the ecological” as a rich resource of pleasurable qualitative experiences. The result, we contend, is to reinforce a neoliberal mode of subjectivity that equates consumption with somatics and reduces climate responsibility to individual consumer decisions.

Malaria still poses significant risks, especially in India. In addition to averting behaviors, forests may help reduce mosquitoes in rural areas and, thus, the malaria incidence and mortality. However, the evidence is still scarce about the magnitude and value of this ecosystem service. To address this gap, we use a panel dataset for 2013–2015 and evaluate the impact of forest loss on malaria morbidity in India's rural areas. We find that, on average, the loss of 1 km2 of forest resulted in 0.16 additional deaths per 100,000 people. This translates into marginal values of forests for reducing malaria mortality of, at least, $1.26–85.9/ha/year in 2015 US$. Our results suggest that combining forest conservation and traditional anti-malaria policies like indoor spraying and insecticide-treated nets may be an effectual way to mitigate the malarial burden in India and elsewhere and offer insights about the value of potential payments for ecosystem services.

Drawing from the author's The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China (Stanford University Press, 2022), this essay explores China's history as an opium-exporting nation in the early twentieth century. For several decades, southeast coastal China served markets from San Francisco to Manila to Rangoon with illicit opium, morphine, heroin, and cocaine. The essay explains the multiple causes of these developments and argues that this history has been so poorly understood because of its uneasy place within broadly accepted metanarratives about opium, empire, and national victimization.

After a decade of effort, China has established its geopolitical influence in Southeast Asia through its rail projects, which will grow further as more lines are completed. Chinese rail projects, especially those involving high-speed rail (HSR) systems, are and will be of considerable benefit to Beijing's geopolitical ambitions, but their impact may be limited by lack of progress, lack of connection, and unstable situations in some host states. Further, although China is actively shaping the landscape of Southeast Asian rail, there are opportunities for Japan, China's competitor with regards to infrastructure investment in rail systems, to explore.

Seiji Shirane's Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945 (forthcoming with Cornell University Press in December 2022) explores the political, social, and economic significance of colonial Taiwan in the southern expansion of Japan's empire from 1895 to the end of World War II. Here's the unabridged introduction to the volume.

The so-called “Prakhon Chai Hoard” is one of Southeast Asia’s most infamous cases of looting. The story begins in 1964 when a cache of Buddhist bronzes from Northeast Thailand appeared on the international art market via the auction house Spink & Son, London. They quickly ended up in museums and private collections throughout the US and Europe. The exact findspot was unclear but soon became associated with an unidentified temple in Prakhon Chai district in Buriram province. The moniker “Prakhon Chai Hoard/bronzes” subsequently took hold, becoming commonplace in museum displays, dealer/auction house catalogs, and art historical discourse. However, in 2002, it was revealed the temple in question was Plai Bat II in Lahan Sai district.

This article untangles the many myths and misunderstandings surrounding this act of looting. It does so by reviewing the extant literature in light of information revealed by criminal investigations into the late Douglas Latchford from 2012 onwards, and presenting conclusions drawn from our decade-long documentation of villager testimonies at Plai Bat II (2014–2024).

Two decades into the ‘war on terror’, attention is rapidly shifting away from terrorism. Increasing geopolitical competition between the US and China and Russia’s war in Ukraine prompted talk about a watershed moment in global politics marked by a return of great power competition. To what extent has this paradigm shift – from terrorism to ‘traditional’ considerations of military security from external invasion – taken place in Southeast Asia? Building on securitisation theory, this article argues that the war on terror did not mark a universal historical-political period as it is often presented. In Southeast Asia, so-called non-traditional threats such as terrorism have concerned states since their independence. Therefore, Southeast Asia continued to prioritise ‘traditional’ security threats alongside ‘non-traditional’ ones in what is commonly described as its comprehensive approach to security. Consequently, when the ‘return to geopolitics’ began influencing military doctrine and preparation amongst NATO countries, a similar shift was absent in Southeast Asia. We argue that the region has seen varied emphases on non-traditional versus traditional security threats but did not experience the paradigm shift suggested by the US-dominated security narrative. Southeast Asia’s comprehensive security constellation underscores the need for a more pluralistic and eclectic approach to the study of international relations.

The international solidarity movement for the East Timorese was developed in Southeast Asian nations during the 1990s as ‘the issue of East Timor’ became a primary concern for the ASEAN countries’ civil society. Proponents of liberal democracy have assumed that international solidarity movements for human rights and democracy during the 1990s resulted from the powerful momentum of liberal democracy that universally linked foreign people. However, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and their marxist followers have explained these transnational movements as a transnational network that overcomes national borders against the capitalist Empire. Nevertheless, the political history of transnational solidarity movements from East Timor to Southeast Asia in the post-Cold War 1990s makes clear that nationalism has continued to be an ideological driver to link people from different nations.

Focusing on the international solidarity for the East Timorese independence struggle, this paper demonstrates a transnational function of nationalism through which international solidarity movements are created, resonate and function. The East Timor international solidarity struggle successfully created a transnational platform through the APCET conferences held in the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand in the 1990s. Socio-historical analysis of APCET reveals that nationalists in Southeast Asia shared collective memories of national struggles beyond their spaces and times to create a transnational force to support self-determination for the East Timorese. Through its analysis, this article extends the theoretical framework of nationalism that has explained nationalist movements to serve as a more powerful tool to explain international solidarity in the age of globalisation. (247 words)

This article describes the evolution of the commercial connections between China and the southern Sulawesian port of Makassar from the beginning of the seventeenth century until 1669, when the Dutch Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie conquered Makassar. It attempts to show that these connections went through several transformations. Initially direct Chinese shipping supplied Makassar with Chinese goods, but this direct trade lasted only about a decade. However, commerce carried by Macanese ships and trade in Indochinese ports that were frequented by both Sulawesian and Chinese vessels maintained the commercial connection. This connection in its different forms allowed Makassar to act as an entrepôt that supplied Chinese goods and Japanese copper to more distant parts of Southeast Asia, especially those in the eastern Indonesian archipelago. The article concludes by arguing that after the conquest of Makassar, Banjarmasin in southern Borneo developed as a new regional entrepôt connecting China to the eastern archipelago.