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This is a study of agricultural modernization and socio-cultural change in two Bidayuh villages of Serian District, Sarawak, East Malaysia. Traditionally the people of Engkaroh and Tian were shifting cultivators producing mainly to meet their subsistence needs. Shifting cultivation is a traditional farming system and in Sarawak it has been associated with backwardness and poverty, especially by the policy makers and planners. Thus the national agricultural policy's goal of promoting agricultural commercialization is also targeted at this group of farmers. This study sought to understand how communities which practise such a system respond to change. This study demonstrates that Bidayuh agriculture in Engkaroh and Tian had evolved into a semi-commercial system and that the Bidayuh farmers were not constrained by tradition in accepting change. However, they changed in accordance to their perception of the local economic, socio-cultural, and political realities. In the field of economics, change was significantly influenced by the local pattern of change - an adaptive strategy which minimized the risks to the farming households. In the socio-cultural and political aspects, change occurred in a manner which did not jeopardise the integrity of the community. A comparative study of the two villages also shows that there were significant differences between them in their resources and relevant socio-cultural and economic environments, although they were situated in the same district and belonged to the same ethnic group. This had contributed to the difference in the responses to change of the farmers in the two villages. This finding also has important implications for the validity of centrally planned change in Malaysian government development strategies.

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The aim of this thesis is to examine the Anglo-Thai relations during the period between 1945-1954, with special reference to the diplomatic, political and security aspects. This thesis begins with the discussion on the Anglo-Thai peace negotiations for the settlement of war between the two countries leading to the signing of the Anglo-Thai Formal Agreement on January 1, 1946. I end the thesis at 1954 because, by the end of the year, Thailand had succeeded in fashioning itself as the bastion of Western defence in Southeast Asia. Chapter Two and Three examine the Anglo-Thai relations before and after the November coup of 1947 and the subsequent return of Pibul Songgram to office in April 1948. As always the case in international politics, after an unusual change of government, the question of recognition will be discussed in details. The subsequent chapters deal with the Malayan-Thai border relations. Chapter Four and Five examine the development of the Malay unrest in South Thailand in the context of the Anglo-Thai relations. The outbreak of the Communist insurgency in Malaya in mid-1948 had further complicated the situation along the Malayan-Thai border. Chapter Six examines early border collaboration to suppress the Malayan Communists along their common border. Chapter Seven examines the practicalities of the Anglo-Thai Border collaboration with special reference to the Malayan-Thai Police Border Agreement of September 1949. Chapter Seven and Eight focus on Indochina crisis and the Anglo-Thai response to the Viet Minh invasion of Laos and the Thai's appeal to the Security Council. The last chapter deals with the formation of SEATO. In her search for security against Communist threat, Thailand joined SEATO in September 1954. This thesis concludes with a summing up on the Anglo-Thai relations during the 1945-1954 period. This work is based mainly on the British Colonial Office, Foreign Office and the US State Department Records and personal papers of Tengku Mahmood Hahyideen, Tengku Abdul Jalal and Miss Barbara Whittingham-Jones.

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In many ways this thesis is concerned with the meaning of the term 'Naga' especially when it is applied in the identification of historical material culture held in British museums. In the examination of the development and use of Naga collections in British museums, the connections with the ethnology and anthropology of the 19th century are explored. It is fitting, therefore, that we should begin with a reiteration of the early explanations of the word 'Naga', for whilst the theoretical basis and aims of this thesis are different, it could, ironically, be said to be following on from the work of early writers and their search for meaning. The many different early definitions of 'Naga' are of interest for two reasons. First, they give an impression of their writers' ideas, and secondly because they indicate the starting point for the collection of Naga material culture. The following examples are not given in any particular order: from nangta or nanga meaning 'naked' (Butler 1875, Dun 1886, Shakespear 1914); from the name Naga used in the Mahabharat meaning 'beautiful dragon', like the beings against whom the hero Arjuna fought (Dun 1886); from nok meaning 'folk' in some dialects (Chakravorty 1964 from Gait 1826); from the word naga meaning 'snake'; from the Kachari work Naga meaning a 'young man' or 'warrior' (Woodthorpe 1881-82, who also noted the 'naked' and 'snake' explanations); from Na-Ka meaning 'people or men or folk with pierced ears', a name given by the Burmese to Nagas and possibly passed on to the British (Hokishe Sema 1986). Essentially the word seems to have been a derogatory term applied by local outsiders, such as the people of the plains, to the people of the hills, and it was then taken up and used by the British. As early as 1841 Robinson recorded that 'whatever the origin of the word Naga, it appears that the appellation is entirely unknown to any of the hill tribes themselves'. The preoccupation with the derivation of the word continues, for in 1986 Hokishe Sema, as noted above, was suggesting that the name was known in Burma from Na-Ka, and the British got to know of Nagas from the Burmese wars 1795-1826. The practical looseness of definition was realised in the 19th century and comes across in the work of Butler (1875) where he stated that Naga is a 'comprehensive term ... including the whole group of cognate races ... hill and upland' and then gave limits around the compass by reference to geographical features and approximate lines of latitude and longitude; he also suggested that the Kachin and Chin were offshoots of the Nagas. In 1886 Dun firmly noted that: In cases where a large number of tribes have been classed together (Abors, Singphos, Nagas), the differences between tribes separated socially and geograpically from one another have, since the imposition of the name, been discovered to be so great as to suggest doubts as to the advisability of attempting any such wide generic classification. The imposition of the name is the crux of the matter, with connotations for modern identity. Whatever its origin, the term Naga is now used with pride by some hill peoples on the periphery of mainland South-East Asia, predominantly those around what is now the international border of India and Myanmar. Hokishe Sena, a Naga, gives a contemporary view in noting that 'it is a name given by outsiders' and was long resented by the people 'till political expediency caused it to be accepted as describing the separate identity of these people as distinct from other ethnic tribal people and also from the people of the country at large'. Thus, the term Naga already can be seen to offer layers of complex meanings, from its application by outsiders including the British in the 19th century to the centrality of its political use today. It is against this background that this study discusses the ethnography and anthropology of the Naga peoples, particularly in relation to their historical material culture which was collected in the 19th and 20th centuries by the British and deposited in museums in Britain.

The period AD 1200-1600 was a time of great change in South Sulawesi, which saw the rise and development of the major kingdoms that came to dominate the political landscape in later centuries. The advent of regular external trade with other parts of the Indonesian archipelago from about 1300, and its increase in subsequent centuries, provided the major stimulus for the rise and development of the Bugis and Makasar kingdoms. Rice appears to have been the major product that the lowland kingdoms of South Sulawesi exchanged with foreign traders, and the demand for this appears to have stimulated a major expansion and intensification of wet-rice agriculture. In this thesis I focus on five South Sulawesi kingdoms, collectively known as Ajattappareng. Through a combination of oral, textual, archaeological, linguistic and geographical sources, I explore their rise and development from about 1200 to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the Makasar kingdom of Goa defeated and Islamised the neighbouring Bugis kingdoms. I also present an inquiry into oral traditions of a historical nature in South Sulawesi, encompassing their functions, processes of transmission and transformation, their uses in writing history and their relationship with the written register. I argue that any distinction between oral and written traditions of a historical nature is largely irrelevant, and that oral and written information collectively make up a large corpus of knowledge that can be recalled, or referenced, whenever the need may arise. I also argue that the South Sulawesi chronicles, which can be found for a few kingdoms only, are an anomaly in the corpus of indigenous South Sulawesi historical sources.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the development of a modern form of Arabic prose literature, the autobiography of childhood, and explore its generic characteristics. The basis of this investigation is a representative corpus of Arabic autobiographies rich in childhood material published between 1929 and 1988 by twenty writers from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Morocco. The study adopts a formal approach to autobiography. The literary genre is understood as a "pact" between writer and reader concluded by way of specific "generic markers" in the text, which the study sets out to describe. Starting from a wider sample of autobiographical texts it contrasts autobiography with its contemporary adjacent genres and historical cognates in Arabic literature. Special interest is accorded to the divergence of autobiography from the novel. The study goes on to discuss in what sense the autobiography of childhood is independent of the type which narrates the author's adulthood as well. To this end it investigates the variation of time-span in a number of life-stories, the existence of a characteristic "plot" in them and typical beginnings and endings. Further, it analyses the literary spectrum in terms of narrative technique and style. The last chapters of the thesis present interpretative readings of the works of the corpus against a historical background. Here, the literary trends and tendencies of the texts are outlined in greater detail. The study reaches the conclusion that childhood autobiography is a distinct genre in modern Arabic literature with a tradition of its own, but that there also exist many mixed forms of autobiography that relativize this independence. It also identifies three typical themes of the genre developed by the Arab authors to express their personal identity: the eternal imprint of their birthplace, escape from poverty and rebellion against the family.

The thesis provides the first description and analysis of long-term economic change and development in the Peninsular Malaysian State of Perak from about 1800 to 2000. Although a considerable number of studies have been undertaken on the colonial economy of Perak focusing on tin and rubber production, given the vital importance of these commodities and of Perak's position in the British imperial enterprise, very little research has been done in relating the state's pre-colonial status and its colonial development to post-independence transformations. The thesis coordinates and re-evaluates the material on colonial period concentrating particularly on the available statistical data and the relations between tin, rubber and rice. It then links colonial developments with contemporary change by examining the three key economic elements of land, labour and capital, and utilises a considerable amount of government economic data on the recent period. It also considers the relations between the policies and practices of the colonial and post-colonial state and processes of economic development. It argues that the role of the state, though different and changing, has been vitally important in promoting and underpinning economic transformations from British intervention in 1874 until the present. The major change can be characterised as the transition from a primarily 'natural' economy to a 'state capitalist' one.