Six of the seven articles in this issue feature research that are concerned with mainland Southeast Asia while three studies are situated within the borderlands between Southeast Asia and China. Readers interested in cross-border exchanges, mobilities, and multi-layered identities will find in these case studies a vision of Southeast Asia that is as much a product of transregional interaction as it is of local genius and agency.
Collectively, the case studies draw attention to large-scale transformations over capital accumulation, political integration, economic systemisation, cultural production, and multi-generational migration. In doing so, the articles provide empirically grounded, cross-border analyses that suggest that connections between China and Southeast Asia are remarkably similar in Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia and Vietnam. At the same time, the articles complicate conventional scalar units—cities, nation, and region—by pointing to different socio-spatial relations, networks and geographical references that inform how communities understand the spaces in which they live. While at first glance the nation-state may appear to be foregrounded in many of these articles, a closer read reveals that the places under examination in this issue are relationally constituted.
Julia Cassaniti's study explores the changing nature of human relationships to the environment through her analysis of burning practices in Northern Thailand. Her analysis examines the ritual and spiritual implications of changes to local agricultural practices as local communities shift from clearing forestry and burning agricultural lands to the use of chemical fertilisers. The article demonstrates that the transition to chemical fertilisers and the production of more in-demand crops affects the rituals, beliefs and relationships among local cultivators normally associated with older agricultural practices. The article demonstrates that the replacing of these spirit rituals with a different form of spirituality—associated with royalty, religion, money, and government—reflects a broader change in the cosmological vocabulary, space and worldview through which these relationships with nature are understood. Cassaniti suggests that paying greater attention to ‘the cultural dimensions of agriculture … may help make farming practices and the fires that accompany them more sustainable’.
Keeping our attention on the borderlands between China and Southeast Asia, Lihong Lei's article focuses on centre–periphery interactions in two autonomous counties along the Yunnan–Myanmar border in 1949–66. The study examines how local authorities managed both an exodus of migrant populations to Myanmar (as a result of push factors stemming following the Communist takeover in 1949 and ongoing conflict between PLA and KMT forces) and subsequent state pressure from Beijing. Lei's research takes a deep dive into how administrators in Lancang Lahu County and Menglian County negotiated Chinese central state attempts to regulate migration and state-building policies that marginalised local customs and practices. Drawing upon recently accessible county archival records and ethnographic fieldwork, the analysis assesses how local authorities asserted their agency and identity as borderland actors, promoting their own notions of affiliation and space alongside policies aligned with border control and state-building. Drawing attention to the phenomenon of ‘return migration’ from Myanmar back to Yunnan, the analysis challenges conventional understandings of these movements as purely political expressions, in favour of a socio-spatial framework that takes seriously the everyday conditions and worldviews of borderland communities.
The theme of China–Southeast Asian mainland interaction is evident in Cui Feng's article on Chinese soldiers’ role in Indochina during the Cold War. The article re-examines the extent of the People's Republic of China's presence and engagement in Laos and mainland Southeast Asia during the Second Indochina War, drawing on recently declassified documentations and interviews of Chinese ex-servicemen deployed to Laos. Between 1961 and 1978, China's military supported the Lao People's Liberation Army (Pathet Lao), under the cover of ‘aid programmes’, to counter America's influence in Southeast Asia, as denoted by the term Yuanlao Kangmei (Aid Laos and Resist US). While existing scholarship has focused mainly on China's diplomatic activities during this period, Cui's article reveals a more comprehensive picture via the experiences of translators, soldiers, medics, engineers and logistical personnel who were deployed to Laos from the early 1960s. Read in dialogue with Lihong Lei's article, this study reveals how the histories, mobilities and experiences of different ‘Chinese’ communities in Laos and Myanmar present a complex and nuanced picture of the China–Southeast Asia borderlands in general and ‘Indochina’ in particular.
Quanzhi Shu's contribution continues this re-evaluation of ‘Indochina’ in his study of Vietnamese communist revolutionary policies towards Laos since 1945. The article examines how leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party/Vietnamese Workers’ Party (ICP/VWP) actively referenced and reinterpreted existing Indochinese ideology to formulate Vietnam's strategies towards Laos (and Cambodia) following the Second World War. Based on recently declassified archival documents and memoirs, Shu argues that the Cold War context and the resulting geopolitical threat of America led ICP/VWP to engage, produce, and customise Indochinese ideology to reinforce ties with Laos (and Cambodia). At the same time, Vietnam implemented nuanced strategies to differentiate components of Indochina based on local circumstances and priorities. This article reveals a more nuanced historical dynamics of mainland Southeast Asia in the post-Second World War era, highlighting the enduring impact of ‘Indochina’ as part of the colonial legacy to the local societies.
Eileen N. Vo's article chronicles French attempts to institutionalise translation practices as part of the colonial administration's broader integrative strategy in multilingual Vietnam. Focusing on the understudied role of local translators and their uneven relationship with the French authorities, Vo examines the colonial state's efforts to extend control over language use as well as over local interpreters who were viewed as a potential risk due to their ability to alter information, control dissemination, and shape meaning. Through her analysis of the establishment and promotion of quốc ngữ, Vo demonstrates how translation and its operationalisation became a contested issue for different stakeholders in colonial Vietnam. The article argues that despite state attempts to regulate translation via educational training enhancements and the expansion of legal protocols, linguistic shortcomings remained an ongoing reality for the colonial administration.
Shifting to contemporary times, Anne Raffin's study examines the motivations behind French and (returning) Laotian retiree migration to mainland Southeast Asia in general and to ‘Indochina’ in particular. Focusing primarily on French retirees’ accounts of migration, the study considers the role of colonial history in influencing their decision to retire in Indochina. Focusing on Sihanoukville in Cambodia and Vientiane in Laos, Raffin asks why would French pensioners choose to retire in these former colonial spaces. Responding to theoretical limitations in the study of international retirement migration, Raffin's research points to the way historical, imagined, or symbolic connections to French Indochina create hybrid identities, relationships and circumstances that inspire the decisions to migrate.
Our final article takes us away from the Southeast Asian mainland to British Malaya and the figure of P. Ramlee, the noted film actor and director whose work promoting local Malay stories and themes has been deemed foundational to Malaysian national cinema and associated with cultural nationalism campaigns. Yeo Min Hui presents an understudied episode of Ramlee's career that featured the artist's attempt to export the production of Malay films to Hong Kong. Yeo argues that Ramlee's ‘Hong Kong endeavour’ reflects transnational ‘occurrences’ that emerged during what is regarded as a significant period in the heyday of Malay film. Through a close study of Ramlee's time in Hong Kong, Yeo posits that Ramlee himself envisioned a more transnational vision of Malay cinema, despite domestic stakeholders (unions/labour activists) feeling otherwise. Bringing together the histories of Hong Kong, Malay, and Malaysian cinema, the article suggests that the development and expansion of Malay film was constituted by connections to other Asian-based film industries in China (and Japan) as much as it was a product of local Malay initiative.
Our research articles are followed by our book review section, featuring a review article on musical creativity and the state of Southeast Asian music studies by Adil Johan. As always, we wish to thank all of our contributing authors and anonymous reviewers who have made this issue possible.
