Tan Kim Ching was a Straits Hokkien merchant in Singapore who was called “my faithful agent” by Siamese King Mongkut in the middle of 19th century. This article examines Tan Kim Ching's political and economic activities in relation to Siam during the reigns of Kings Mongkut and Chulalongkorn, which have not been verified by Nathawut's work in Thailand focussing on Tan Kim Ching as the Siamese consul general in Singapore. Such research in Singapore as Song Ong Siang's work also shed light on Tan Kim Ching's political, social and economic activities in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, but there is little reference to Tan's relationship to Thailand.
Two points are discussed here. First, Tan Kim Ching's political roles related to Siamese Kings and their governments can be grasped not only in the official sense of a consul general and a governor of a southern Siamese province, but also in a private of King Chulalongkorn calling himself “Your sincere friend” of Tan Kim Ching in his correspondence. Secondly, Tan Kim Ching's exporting enterprise and rice mill in Bangkok played vital roles in the development of the Bangkok rice business. The former was a well-known exporter of the best quality rice in Bangkok, Siam No. 1 white rice, to the Singapore market, as well as a forerunner to milling white rice. His rice mill was well managed, producing high quality rice under the guidance of a Chinese rice milling expert and a trained European engineer.
Certainly Tan's success in the Bangkok rice business was partly due to his connection to Siamese Kings, but a more crucial factor was his strategy for exporting and milling high quality Thai rice, which was very suitable to the tastes of Chinese and European resident of Singapore, enabling him to sell at much higher prices than either Saigon or Rangoon rice.
Tan Kim Ching, as a Straits merchant, has often been ignored as a Chinese capitalist in the context of Thai capitalist development, although he played an important role in the development of the Bangkok rice business. In order to further the research on the development of the Thai economy and intra-Asian trade during the late 19th century, it is necessary to study vital political and business activities like those of Tan Kim Ching transcending present national borders.

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This article discusses the ideological background to the emergence of Bajau identity among the Muslim inhabitants of British North Borneo (currently the state of Sabah, Malaysia) in 1960, focusing on the two important foreign ideologies introduced into the region during the mid-1950s.
Efforts to uplift the social position of Muslims in North Borneo had long been made by the Brunei Malays, who claimed to be more civilised than their fellow Muslims in the region, intending to civilise the latter by promoting both the Malay language and Islam among them so that they could “become Malays”. Under such circumstances, ethnic identities of Muslims other than the Malays, such as the Bajaus, were given only negative significance, since if a person was not Malay he was not considered civilised, thus indicating one limit to the Brunei Malays mobilising their fellow Muslims. However, this situation changed when two new types of thinking were introduced into North Borneo during the mid-1950s.
K. Bali, a Siamese-Chinese born in Kelantan in 1927, devoted to the ideals of Indonesian nationalism pursuing a nation regardless of the ethnic differences, arrived in North Borneo in 1956 and decided to devote his life to the promotion of Sabah nationhood among the indegenous peoples. K. Bali advocated Sabah nationhood through the articles he wrote in the Malay corners of the North Borneo News and Sabah Times, which clearly denied the superiority of Malaya over North Borneo, though his ideas were not fully accepted by the Muslim community, since the idea of Sabah nationhood did not aim at securing the practice of Islam.
Qalam was a monthly Malay journal published in Singapore by Ahmad Lutfi, an Arab Muslim born in Kalimantan. It mainly introduced the ideas of Islamic reformists in Cairo, including the Muslim Brotherhood established in Egypt in 1928, to readers not only in Malaya and Singapore, but also in North Borneo. One of the topics repeatedly appearing in Qalam was Muslims assuming the reins of government to secure the practice of Islam, despite the fact that Muslims did not form a majority in the region.
By combining these two sets of ideas, Muslims in North Borneo developed an ideology by which to uplift their social position by first joining Malaya so that they could secure such a position in North Borneo through the influence of Malaya, a Muslim Malay dominant state and secondly by demarcating North Borneo as an autonomous unit and excercising majority rule internally to oppose the dominance of the Brunei Malays. This led to the emorgence of a Bajau identity as the majority ethnic group among the Muslims in North Borneo.

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Lingnan (Guangdong and Guangxi in China) and northern Vietnam have a long history of relation dating back to ancient times. However, after Vietnam's independence from China, the history of both areas came to have completely different meanings for both Chinese and Vietnamese historians. This article is an attempt to discuss the history of both areas as an unity, based mainly on recent archaeological studies.
The topics discussed here are:
(1) The conquest of the Lingnan area by the Qin dynasty began within one year after the unification of the Warring States and that northern Vietnam was outside of the Qin's conquest area.
(2) The Nanyue kingdom established by Zhaotuo at the end of the third century B. C. in the Lingnan area had different control systems over different areas of the kingdom. Northern Vietnam was one of them.
(3) Except that several artifacts belong to early Shang dynasty, all of the early dated findings related to Chinese cultural tradition, such as a bronze pot, coins and mirrors unearthened in northern Vietnam, are dated the Nanyue period, the second century B. C.
(4) The significance of the Nanyue period as the starting point of political and cultural relation between Lingnan and northern Vietnam should be highly valued.
(5) Official seals for special titles and other archaeological facts showing as continuation of local tradition indicate that political control over native leaders and the cultural tradition since the Nanyue period basically continued in these areas, even after the conquest of Nanyue by emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty in 111 B. C. until the middle of the first century A. D.
Several historical issues during the first millennium A. D. and problems about the construction of self-image and historical identities by both Vietnamese and Cantonese historians after independence of Vietnam from China are also discussed.

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Kamishibai originated in Japan's early Showa era for children's amusement perfomed by street performers. Later, Kamishibai was introduced into school education. During the wartime era, Kamishibai was used as a military propaganda media by the Japanese government.
After Japanese Forces occupied Indonesia, Kamishibai began to be used as a tool for pacifying the local peoples and to force them to cooperate with the Japanese military administration.
This parer analyzes why Kamishibai were produced and also clarifies what kinds of Kamishibai were produced in Indonesia under the Japanese Occupation.
Some of the author's results are:
(1) Kamishibai on the subject of “destroying the USA and UK” were produced for the purpose of propagandizing the significance of the war.
(2) Kamishibai on the subject of “saving money” and “increasing production” were produced for the purpose for the propagandizing the wartime economic policy.
(3) Kamishibai on the subject of “labor” and “social services” were produced for the purpose of maximizing contributions from Indonesians.
(4) Kamishibai on the subject of “tonarigumi” and “fujinkai” were produced for the purpose of organizing Indonesians.
(5) Kamishibai on the subject of “heiho” and “kaiin yoseijo (seamen's training center)” were produced for the purpose of recruiting Indonesian young men.
(6) There were many Kamishibai produced based on actual stories.
These topics were also used in movies, plays and radio broadcasts. The Japanese propaganda bureau used a number of media for the same campaign topic to get improve their results. Kamishibai had economical, mobile and popular characteristics. For example, Kamishibai could be produced at low cost, delivered to small remote villages by bicycle, and used of indoctrinating even illiterate people.

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