The South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) was established under the aegis of the Manila Pact which was formed in September 1954. As an international organization with its headquarters in Bangkok, SEATO had two functions; first, it was to provide limited economic assistance and counter-insurgency advice to its Southeast Asian members — Thailand and the Philippines. Second, its Military Planning Office comprised a group of senior officers drawn from member countries whose job it was to prepare plans for an alliance response in the event of a Communist invasion of Indochina. In this sense SEATO was created to ensure that the Vietnamese Communists would observe the Geneva agreements of July 1954.

One of the most interesting features of the growth of Britain's overseas commerce over the past two centuries has been the merchant firm, often the product of very small-scale beginnings but gradually developing into a worldwide network centring on London. The scope for such enterprises grew as effective naval control increased the security of the maritime trade routes and the importance of the great chartered companies declined. Much of the early growth came from the “country trade” between India and China in which private merchants were permitted to engage. In the late eighteenth century, commercial firms in the City of London began to open branches in India to deal in local products such as indigo, cotton and, later, opium. By the early nineteenth century, around two dozen of these “agency houses” were in existence though the majority were very small and short-lived. 1 In the same period, the more substantial firms were establishing further offshoots in Canton to participate in the tea and silk trade in Europe.

Plantations, which originated as agricultural enterprises within colonial economic systems and which came to be established particularly in tropical dependencies, have occupied an equivocal position in the economic development philosophies and plans of less developed countries. Their colonial origin and their traditionally export-oriented and often mono-cultural characteristics have subjected them to a wide range of adverse criticism, despite their undoubted earning capacity.

A major intent of Malaysia's New Economic Policy, given expression in the Second Malaysia Plan (1971–75) and Third Malaysia Plan (1976–80) is “to diminish the concentration of employment among the Malays … in traditional agriculture while increasing their presence in the relatively more affluent urban sector”.

Squatter, and other vernacular, housing is found in almost all cities of Peninsular Malaysia. In 1976 such dwellings accounted for the majority of all residences in most urban areas, with squatter housing constituting over twenty per cent of the total in several cities. Squatter settlements are the most clearly defineable residential form outside of the modern sector and consequently their dimensions and history are better documented than others. These aspects of squatting provide the basis for this paper, by inference giving some insights into the evolution of all types of unconventional housing.

The 10. 27 million Peninsular Malaysian community comprises approximately 53 per cent Malays, 35 per cent Chinese, 11 per cent Indians, and 1 per cent other races. This ethnic pluralism evolved during the increased British political and economic involvement from 1850 to 1930, when large numbers of Chinese and Indians were brought in as cheap labourers to work the tin mines and rubber estates. In the beginning the majority of these immigrants usually returned to their native countries after a few years, but later an increasingly significant number decided to stay permanently, so that by 1957 more than two-thirds of them were local born.

The intrinsic nature of the Chinese community in Malaysia and its responses to “outsiders” can best be interpreted by Max Weber's ideas about the nature of a community in relation to ethnicity. Weber contends that ethnic or racial stereotypes are developed as a result of competition for, and successful monopolization of, economic and social power by groups at various levels of the society's opportunity structure. Such stereotypes can be accumulated through what Weber calls “direct understanding” (aktuelles versteheri) of social action. Weber contends that meaningful social interactions must be based on a common system of linguistic and non-linguistic symbols. When such a common system of symbols is absent or inadequately developed (as, for instance, with the heterogeneity of a typical pioneering Overseas Chinese community in the early days and the plural nature of Malaysia's present-day multi-racial society), meaningful interaction is hindered, hence limiting interpersonal and intergroup understanding. Such a situation tends to strengthen in-group solidarity and heighten ethnic and racial stereotype conceptions of other groups, thus causing the sanction of actions taken by the dominant groups, depriving the weaker ones of access to economic and political opportunities.

The Japanese attack on Burma in 1942 was a result of strategic plans prepared in Tokyo the year before by the high commands of the Army and Navy. The war plans were aimed at the seizure of critical areas in Asia and the Pacific and the formation of an unbreachable defensive perimeter around Japan, stretching from the Kuriles in the north to the Burma-India border in the southwest.

No satisfactory account of the Cox mission to Burma has been available up till now. Such traditional texts as those by Bayfield, Yule, Phayre, and Harvey deal with it extremely briefly and with a deep anti-Burmese prejudice. In 1955, D. G. E. Hall provided an account of the mission in the introduction to his edition of Michael Symes's journal of his mission of 1802. 1 Even this, however, is inadequate; it is again rather brief, is often inaccurate, and while placing the main blame for Cox's difficulties on the envoy himself, also attributes some responsibility to the Burmese. This is seriously misleading: Cox's responsibility, the documents show, was total, while the Burmese displayed great restraint in the face of importunate and even pathological behaviour on the envoy's part.

While increasing sociological and anthropological attention has been directed towards the position of the Chinese in the Philippines, such research has often lacked a quantitative orientation. Perhaps owing to the intense concern centring on the political question of citizenship rights, there have as yet been a few empirical analyses of the attitudes and behaviour of persons of Chinese descent in the Philippines. Even studies designed to investigate Chinese “assimilation” to Philippine culture have been characterized more by a concern with political and legal questions than by an interest in social theory or research methodologies.

The history of thought, as of everything else, in or about Indonesia naturally falls into two parts: before and after independence. The first half of this paper, therefore, will deal with thought, mainly Dutch thought, in the colonial period, the second with thought, mainly Indonesian thought, since independence.

In recent years a sizeable literature has emerged concerning the Indian Ocean, owing in particular to the growth of perceived superpower rivalry and the resulting proposal by some littoral and regional states, notably Sri Lanka and India that the Indian Ocean should be declared a zone of peace. The strategic importance of the ocean has been dramatized by the build-up of the U. S. base in Diego Garcia. Every port and island has become of potential strategic importance as well. In the early 1970s, concern was expressed in the West over reports of Soviet bases at Berbera and Socotra in Somalia and the possible use of Gan in the Maldives after British withdrawal. As a highlight to this wider canvas, the Cocos-Keeling Islands emerged briefly in 1972 both as an internal Australian political issue which embarrassed the then ruling Liberal-Country party government and as a potentially embarrassing international issue at a time when Australia was preparing Papua-New Guinea for independence. However, the Cocos-Keeling Islands quickly slipped back into the obscurity from which they had briefly emerged, both during the period of Gough Whitlam's Labour government and later when the Liberal-Country party came back to power.