When we think of Vietnamese history, we tend to think of plucky peasant guerillas fighting for their independence against French colonial rule or American imperialism - or even mighty China. In her new book, A Maritime Vietnam: From the Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2024), Li Tana challenges this powerful stereotype by recasting Vietnam as a maritime state with a long history of dynamic commercial relations with the outside world, from China, to Southeast Asia, to India, and the Middle East. The book aims to escape from the rigid nationalist historiography that has long characterized history writing on Vietnam and develop a new way of thinking about Vietnam’s history that emphasizes its outward, commercial relations. It also revisits the old question of whether we should view Vietnam as an East Asian country, oriented towards China, or a Southeast Asian country, characterized by a cosmopolitanism and historical openness to maritime trade and the outside world. This is a provocative and important book which challenges powerful ideas about the way we understand Vietnam’s history and place in the world.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Syaifudin Zuhri’s book Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition (Leiden, 2022) is a detailed examination of the recent emergence of the Wali Pitu (“Seven Saints”) tradition in Bali, Indonesia. The study is a multi-sited ethnography of pilgrimage traditions to the grave sites of the Wali Pitu, which is a part of a larger context of rising interest in saint veneration in Indonesia generally, and Muslim religious tourism on the Hindu-majority island of Bali in particular.Themes of the book include saint veneration in historical and contemporary Indonesia, the relationship between religious invention and religious authenticity in Islamic traditions, religious cultures and the economic imperative of the tourism industry, relationships between Hindus and Muslims sharing religious space, and the diversity of approaches to religion and Islamic experience in Southeast Asia. Zuhri’s work offers important new perspectives on Indonesian Islam by examining the creation, experience, economy, and contestations of popular Muslim practices that are only growing in their significance.Dr. Syaifudin Zuhri is a lecturer at the State Islamic University of Sayyid Ali Rahmatullah Tulungagung (UIN SATU) and a former research fellow at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies.Dr. Jaclyn Michael is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (USA). She is the author of several articles on Muslim cultural representation, performance, and religious belonging in India and in the United States.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

The workplace is forever facing new challenges. These challenges are also unique in the context of Southeast Asia. Effective team work and leadership are at the core of organisational success. Yet much remains under investigated in how we can best help organisations and their teams and leaders in navigating shifts in the business environment.To think about these issues in a Southeast Asian context, joining the podcast today is Dr Nate Zettna, a Lecturer in Leadership and Organisational Behaviour in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney. He completed his PhD specialising in organisational behaviour and management at the University of Sydney Business School. His research examines various aspects of team effectiveness, including team leadership, frontline service teams, and team well-being and performance. Nate has conducted research and worked with international organisations in Thailand and Australia across many sectors including banking, financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing, and education.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup conflict. In the summer of 1968, during the high tide of the Cultural Revolution, it became notorious as the site of the most severe and extensive violence observed anywhere in China during that period of upheaval. Several cities saw urban combat resembling civil war, while waves of mass killings in rural communities generated enormous death tolls. More than one hundred thousand died in a few short months.These events have been chronicled in sensational accounts that include horrific descriptions of gruesome murders, sexual violence, and even cannibalism. Only recently have scholars tried to explain why Guangxi was so much more violent than other regions. With evidence from a vast collection of classified materials compiled during an investigation by the Chinese government in the 1980s, Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery (Stanford UP, 2023) reconsiders explanations that draw parallels with ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Bosnia, and other settings. It reveals mass killings as the byproduct of an intense top-down mobilization of rural militia against a stubborn factional insurgency, resembling brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in a variety of settings. Moving methodically through the evidence, Andrew Walder provides a groundbreaking new analysis of one the most shocking chapters of the Cultural Revolution.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Before the creation of the European colonial states in the nineteenth century, Southeast Asia had hundreds of royal families, large and small. Today, only a small number survive. In his book, Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia (U Wisconsin Press, 2024), Ian Baird uncovers the history of one of these royal lineages, the House of Champassak, located formerly in southern Laos. Dating back to the late seventeenth century, this royal lineage has survived enormous political changes in Laos and the surrounding region: including becoming a vassal of the Thai kingdom; French colonial rule; national independence; and the communist takeover of Laos in 1975. But despite not being a ‘national monarchy’, as Baird shows, for a long time the House of Champassak has exerted a special kind of sovereignty.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Kishore Mahbubani, longtime Singaporean diplomat and academic, opens his new memoir with a provocative line: “Blame it on the damn British.” Kishore, who later served as Singapore’s ambassador to the UN and founding dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, was born to poor migrants in Singapore, studied philosophy on a government scholarship—and from there, somehow got roped into the foreign service.Kishore was one of the first guests on the show when he joined to speak on Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (PublicAffiars: 2020) all the way back in October 2020—and he joins us again to talk about his latest book, Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir (PublicAffairs: 2024)Kishore Mahbubani is a veteran diplomat, student of philosophy, and celebrated author, he is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. His careers in diplomacy and academia have taken him from Singapore’s Chargé d’Affaires to wartime Cambodia and President of the UN Security Council (Jan 2001, May 2002) to the Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (2004-2017).You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Living in the Asian Century. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

In Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965 (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. David R. Saunders demonstrates that the withdrawal of the British imperial state from Sabah did not result in the decolonization of the territory. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, international anti-colonialism interacted with regional competition over Sabah to result in a paradoxical increase of British power and influence on the ground. Meanwhile, ethnic, social, and political heterogeneity in Sabah contributed to fragmentation and disunity, undermining the development of a local anti-colonial movement. Instead, a class of influential local elites seized power as competing attempts by the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaya to incorporate the territory into their respective archipelagic spheres grew in strength.Due to these local and international rivalries, Dr. Saunders argues, Sabah's eventual merger with the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 prompted an extension of colonial-style rule, resource extraction, the suppression of local autonomy, and the imposition of an externally-configured national identity.Chasing Archipelagic Dreams underscores the significance of regional rivalries in the South China Sea and highlights the fate of subaltern communities bisected by (post)colonial borders.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

The relationship between fear people experience in their lives and the government often informs key questions about the rule of law and justice. In nations where the rule of law is unevenly applied, interpreting the people involved in its enforcement allows for contextualized understanding about why that unevenness occurs and is perpetuated.Joshua Barker’s State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City published by Duke University Press (2024) examines policing in Bandung, the capital city of the province of West Java in Indonesia, to show how fear and violence are produced and reproduced. He makes analysis of the emergence of informal and formal forms of political order in Bandung based on ethnographic and historical evidence about neighborhood watch groups, street-level toughs, vigilantes, and people in the police, from clerks to officers. This book provides a compelling interpretive framework for understanding episodes of violence and different forms of authority in Indonesian state-society relations as it does for many other parts of the world where unresolved colonial legacies shape the production of policing.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Agriculture remains a key sector of the economies of most Southeast Asian countries. It is supposed to provide nutritious, affordable, accessible and safe food to the people of SE Asia, and livelihood to more than 400 million farmers across the region. How is agriculture affected by climate change, and how can farmers cope with it? What is the relationship between farming and renewable energy installations, which require large land areas to be developed and thus encroach on agriculture? How to best manage water resources needed for farming, but threatened by climate change, and by pollution that often comes from farming?To discuss the challenges posed by climate change, the role of adaptation, food safety issues, and the importance of effective institutions and policies in supporting and guiding agriculture in Southeast Asia, Tiho Ancev, Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the School of Economics, USYD, joins the podcast. He is SSEAC’s Vietnam Country Convenor, a member of SSEAC’s executive, and member of the executive of Sydney Vietnam Academic Network (SVAN). His research interests are in the economics of climate change, the economics of agricultural policy, and the economics of water, energy, and the environmentSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Four years ago, on Feb. 1 2021, the Burmese military overthrew the fledgling democratic government in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, officially known as Myanmar. That sparked a civil war that continues today–with neither the military junta nor the various rebel groups coming closer to victory.How did the country get here? Veteran Asia journalist Bertil Lintner tackles the country’s history since independence, including the military’s long involvement in the country’s politics, in his book The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar (Hurst: 2024). He joins today to talk about Burma’s history, the role of the military, China’s involvement in the country, and prospects for the civil war going forward.Bertil Lintner is an acclaimed journalist and expert on contemporary Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar. Formerly the Far Eastern Economic Review’s Burma correspondent, he is now a full-time correspondent with the Asia Pacific Media Services and writes regularly for Asia Times, The Irrawaddy and other regional and international websites and publications. Lintner has written 25 books on Asian politics and history, including Outrage: Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Review Publishing: 1989); Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier (Yale University Press: 2015); and The Costliest Pearl: China’s Struggle for India’s Ocean (Hurst: 2019).You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Golden Land Ablaze. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies