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Aside from the major powers, there are other important security actors whose power, interests, and influence are more limited, but still are key players in the affairs of their own region and who also participate, to some degree, on the world stage. This chapter focuses on second-tier powers that inhabit relatively stable regions. It shows that the experience of the leading powers in stable regions since 1990 has been more consistent with many of the globalization school's hypotheses on security than that of the major powers. In particular, the analysis has confirmed a greater integration of regional security institutions into national security plans, greater priority given to non-traditional threats, and the complete abandonment of offensive doctrines. These states also share the major powers' newfound focus on combating terrorism and developing an internal policing dimension to their national security establishments.

This chapter examines Chinese migration to Southeast Asia from 1869 to 1939. During this period, complex movements of migrant workers to, from, and within Southeast Asia took place. These were centred around Singapore and they were supported by ethno-linguistic networks. While networks were exclusive against outsiders (e.g., Fukienese networks served only its people), the establishment of extensive networks suggests that by the early 20th century, migration no longer depended on personal contacts.

This chapter focuses on the recent development of clinical legal education in a number of Southeast Asian nations, including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia, along with a comparative analysis of this development with that of the longer-existing clinical movement in India. It explores the means and methods utilized—and challenges faced—in establishing such programs, many of which now contain a social justice mission. It also describes how clinical programs operate in sharp contrast to traditional law teaching methods in the region that focused historically on rote memorization without teaching lawyering skills. The chapter notes specific benchmark events in the development of clinics in the region and highlights a number of the key actors, organizations, and institutions involved. It also explores ways that these new clinical programs can serve as positive examples for the future expansion of clinical education throughout the region.

This introductory chapter presents the aims and architecture of the book. It introduces an emerging ethic of responsible sovereignty in Southeast Asia, which it calls the ‘responsibility to provide’ (or R2Provide), and seeks an ethical explanation for it. The chapter provides synopses of the eight chapters that follow, which collectively accomplish the book’s three objectives. Firstly, it identifies and assesses a number of regional developments in defence, security, diplomatic and economic cooperation in which Southeast Asian countries, individually as well as institutionally through ASEAN and its various functional manifestations and modalities, have sought to assist one another in collective response to challenging situations. Secondly, it discusses how the R2Provide has taken root in Southeast Asia, albeit more deeply so in some countries than others, as well as within ASEAN and its various functional subsidiaries and spinoffs, such as the ADMM, the ADMM-Plus, the AHA Centre and the like. Thirdly, contra communitarian and liberal perspectives on ethics, it introduces and critically applies the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, specifically his notion of responsibility for the other, to the R2Provide and more broadly to the quest for responsible interstate conduct in Southeast Asia.

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to shed light on the varieties and politics of Islamic education in modern Southeast Asia. The contributors aim to provide a sense of just where Islamic education is going by examining where, culturally and politically speaking, it has come from. The book focuses on schools in five countries: the region's two dominant Muslim-majority countries, Malaysia (60% Muslim) and Indonesia (87.8% Muslim), and three countries with especially restless Muslim minorities, the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia. The remainder of the chapter examines the varieties and genealogies of Islamic schooling in Southeast Asia; highlights the relationship between Islamic education in Southeast Asia and that in the Middle East; and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters.

Despite being minnows on the world stage, Thailand and the newly independent countries of Southeast Asia embraced sport during the Cold War as a means of nation and region building. This essay examines the political dimensions of the South East Asia Peninsular Games—the precursor of today’s Southeast Asian Games—founded in 1959 by US ally Thailand. This event reflected and reinforced the Cold War culture of Thailand and Southeast Asia. The games embodied motifs of regional friendship and antagonism between the “free” anti-Communist and neutralist nations of peninsular Southeast Asia; domestically, they embodied key themes in the domestic Cold War culture of Thailand, including nationalism, developmentalism, the revival of the monarchy, and militarization. This essay examines the Thai military junta’s objectives in founding the event, the effectiveness of the inaugural South East Asia Peninsular (SEAP) Games, and the cultural and semiotic features that reinforced the games’ major themes.

This chapter demonstrates how exposure to al Azhar led over time to the complete transformation of the methodology adopted by independent ulama and state religious platforms to issue fatwas in Southeast Asia. It examines the mainstreaming of Salafi methodology — inspired by the work of Muhammad Abduh — in place of the taqlīd of the traditional Shafi'i School in Southeast Asia for the issuing of fatwas. A number of factors, including the establishment of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, led to a shift to al Azhar as opposed to Mecca being the base for Southeast Asian Muslim scholars. By comparing Southeast Asia fatwas of the early twentieth century against those issued in the 1970s, the chapter shows how the transition from Mecca to Cairo led to the mainstreaming of Salafi methodology.

This chapter examines the theme of the Rāmāyaṇa in the visual arts of South and Southeast Asia. The theme has captivated the minds and imagination of people across a vast geographical area extending from West Asia to Southeast Asia and East Asia. Above all, there is the phenomenon of the amazing tenacity of the oral traditions which has facilitated the survival and continuance of the traditions of the Rāmāyaṇa in contemporary Asia. Even when the theme seems to run dry, it never dies, for the oral tradition sustains it. The oral tradition has also supported, supplemented, and complemented the traditions of the written word and of art.

The arrival of Islam in Indonesia is bound up with developments in the wider geographical area of Southeast Asia. This chapter presents a broader angle than the current political boundaries of the Republic of Indonesia. The chapter addresses the question of the relatively late local acceptance of Islam, even though Southeast Asia’s contacts with the Middle East and South Asia go back to pre-Islamic times. Based on a critical assessment of the historiography of Southeast Asian Islam, the chapter will identify four key issues that are relevant for a balanced account of the Islamization process: Time frame (13^th century); Provenance (theories propose various origins: South Asia, Middle East, and China; Agency (Merchants, religious professionals (missionaries, Sufis), local involvement); Motivations (political, commercial, colonial, religious factors). The emerging picture consists of a variety of starting points, numerous modalities for the diffusion of Islam, positioning the Indian Ocean basin as a vital contact zone. The associated ‘single ocean concept’ turned it into a ‘neutral water’ links the history of the Islamization of Southeast Asia to the newly emerging scholarly field of Indian Ocean studies

This chapter examines Southeast Asia’s imperial transition from Anglo-American predominance to U.S. hegemony between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, a product of British decolonization strategies in Singapore and the growing stability of the arc of containment. As Britain’s military withdrew from Singapore, London established the Five Power Defense Arrangement (FPDA), a security framework for Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, that thwarted the Soviet Union’s hopes of expanding its regional influence beyond Vietnam. At the same time, Southeast Asia’s anticommunist statesmen founded ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in 1967 and forged increasingly intimate political, economic and military ties with America, stabilizing their regimes and effectively containing Vietnam and China. Moscow and Beijing were cognizant of U.S. dominance in Southeast Asia and keen to thaw relations with Washington, the de facto hegemon despite U.S. policy failures in Indochina.

While the Thai baht had lost about 55% of its value in terms of the US dollar by the end of January 1998 because it sold the majority of its international reserves in 1997, other currencies across Southeast Asia also experienced such declines since non-resident portfolios retreated from investment in economies that exuded similar characteristics with that of Thailand. The crisis experienced by both the Thai baht and the Indonesian rupiah are the most recent in the series of crises that have occurred recently throughout the developing region that are allegedly caused by a faulty domestic banking system and swelling capital inflows. This chapter emphasizes how the understanding of such crises should be given much attention because of the social costs involved. The chapter examines the various economic implications of these crises in developing countries particularly of those in Southeast Asia.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the Rāmāyana's adaptability to multiple genres, art forms, and social contexts as well as the reliance that countless South and Southeast Asians place on it as a guide to everyday conduct. It then describes variants of the Rāmāyana and its spread across regions beyond the borders of South Asia over the span of more than a millennium. An overview of the chapters included in this book is presented.

This chapter offers a civilizational framing of the region, stressing prehistoric indigeneity, as well as broad macro-regional commonality, going back to a shared Iron Age. It also calls attention to early arriving Indian, Muslim, and Sinic influences. The fast-moving field of archaeological research, especially on mainland Southeast Asia, has thrown new light upon the complex evolution of early states out of Neolithic hunter and gatherer societies (Higham 1989: 2002a). As this chapter argues, the elusive unity of East-Southeast Asia may be attested by the Bronze and Iron Age societies that emerged in a prehistoric period, wedding the macro region with China, via river valleys and high passes through which filtered an array of ideas, material goods, and technologies, just as Han China (206 BCE–220 CE) imposed its control over northern Vietnam.

One of the more exotic of the Asian diasporic communities of seventeenth-century Southeast Asia was that of the Japanese who formed Nihon-machi, or Japantowns, in a number of court cities, Asian trading ports, and European fortified cities. In large part, these communities developed as a consequence of Japanese participation in the Shuinsen, or “red seal” trade, under which official passports were issued to select merchant groups. The formation of Nihon-machi in Southeast Asian ports was an episode lasting but one or two generations, but there had been a broader engagement of Japan with East-Southeast Asia over a longer time frame. This chapter seeks to examine the political and commercial impacts that the Japanese traders and adventurers had on local Southeast Asian societies. It also discusses Japan's trading legacy in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the impacts that the overseas connection had on Japan's own internal economy and politics.