A pioneering study of historical developments that have shaped Asia concludes with this volume tracing the impact of ideas and cultures of people on the move across the continent, whether willingly or not.In the final volume of Asia Inside Out, a stellar interdisciplinary team of scholars considers the migration of people—and the ideas, practices, and things they brought with them—to show the ways in which itinerant groups have transformed their culture an...

This collection seeks to contribute to the many long-standing discussions on modernity, but also and more specifically to the more recent debates over trends to pluralize modernity. These debates are current in many different academic disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, literature and postcolonial studies. Hitherto, most engagements with modernity in the plural have remained conspicuously confined to one or other intra-disciplinary notion of modernities, such as that of Shmuel Eis...

Prince Prisdang Chumsai (1852–1935) served as Siam's first diplomat to Europe during the most dramatic moment of Siam's political history, when its independence was threatened by European imperialism. Despite serving with patriotic zeal, he suffered irreparable social and political ruin based on rumors about fiscal corruption, sexual immorality, and political treason. In Bones around My Neck, Tamara Loos pursues the truth behind these rumors, which chased Prisdang...

Sultans, Spices, and Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of the World's Largest ArchipelagoIndonesia is by far the largest nation in Southeast Asia and has the fourth largest population in the world after the United States. Indonesian history and culture are especially relevant today as the Island nation is an emerging power in the region with a dynamic new leader. It is a land of incredible diversity and unending paradoxes that has a long and rich history stretching ba...

Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej, the only king ever born in the United States, came to the throne of his country in 1946 and is now the world’s longest-serving monarch. The King Never Smiles, the first independent biography of Thailand's monarch, tells the unexpected story of Bhumibol's life and sixty-year rule-how a Western-raised boy came to be seen by his people as a living Buddha, and how a king widely seen as beneficent and apolitical could in fact be so deeply political and au...

A compelling new portrait of the lost realm of Lemuria, the original motherland of humanity• Contains the most extensive and up-to-date archaeological research on Lemuria• Reveals a lost, ancient technology in some respects more advanced than modern science• Provides evidence that the perennial philosophies have their origin in Lemurian cultureBefore the Indonesian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans, there was the destruction of Lemuri...

To commemorate the life and spiritual teachings of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu.It has been 23 years since he departed this world.Buddhadasa Bhikku (1906-1993) is one of the most important Buddhist teachers of the twentieth century.As the meditation master of Suan Mokkh Meditation Center in Chaiya, southern Thailand, he propagatedBuddhist philosophy and meditation practice among tens of thousands of western visitors from NorthAmerica, Europe and Australia.Th...

A History of Thailand offers a lively and accessible account of Thailand's political, economic, social and cultural history. This book explores how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree peasants was transformed and examines how the monarchy managed the foundation of a new nation-state at the turn of the twentieth century. The authors capture the clashes between various groups in their attempts to take control of the nation-state in the twentieth century. They track Thailand's economic chan...

A Short History of Bali covers the entire history of this intriguing and mysterious island from before the Bronze Age to the presidency of Megawati Sukarnoputri and the tragedy of the Kuta bombings on 12 October 2002. It looks at the arrival of Indian culture early European contact the role of anthropologists and taste-makers of the 1930s in romanticising the island and the complex legacies of Dutch control. It tells of the Japanese Occupation the Indonesian Revolution the massacres of 196...

'Perhaps the best introduction yet to the roots of Thailand's present political impasse. A brilliant book.'Simon Long, The EconomistStruggling to emerge from a despotic past, and convulsed by an intractable conflict that will determine its future, Thailand stands at a defining moment in its history. Scores have been killed on the streets of Bangkok. Freedom of speech is routinely denied. Democracy appears increasingly distant. And many Thais fear that the death of K...

2016 PROSE Award Honorable Mention for Textbook in the HumanitiesA History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads presents a comprehensive history of Southeast Asia from our earliest knowledge of its civilizations and religious patterns up to the present day.Incorporates environmental, social, economic, and gender issues to tell a multi-dimensional story of Southeast Asian history from earliest times to the presentArgues that while ...

The eleven countries of Southeast Asia are diverse in every way, from the ethnicities and religions of their residents to their political systems and levels of prosperity. These nations--Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, and East Timor--are each undeniably unique, yet the vestiges of their shared traditions mean that each country is also characteristically Southeast Asian. In Southeast Asia: A Very Short Introduction