Category: History

Talking Hawaii’s Story

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Published for the Center for Oral History and the Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai‘i, Talking Hawai‘i’s Story: Oral Histories of an Island People is the first major book in over a generation to present a rich sampling of the landmark work of Hawai‘i’s Center for Oral History. Twenty-nine extensive oral histories introduce readers to the sights and sounds of territorial Waikiki, to the feeling of community in Palama, in Kona, or on the island of Lana‘i, and even to the experience of a German national interned by the military government after Pearl Harbor. The result is a collection that preserves Hawaii’s social and cultural history through the narratives of the people who lived it—co-workers, neighbors, family members, and friends.

May 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3390-9 / $19.00 (PAPER)

Japan to 1600

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Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History, by William Wayne Farris, surveys Japanese historical development from the first evidence of human habitation in the archipelago to the consolidation of political power under the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is unique among introductory texts for its focus on developments that impacted all social classes rather than the privileged and powerful few. In accessible language punctuated with lively and interesting examples, Farris weaves together major economic and social themes. The book focuses on continuity and change in social and economic structures and experiences, but it by no means ignores the political and cultural. Most chapters begin with an outline of political developments, and cultural phenomena—particularly religious beliefs—are also taken into account. In addition, Japan to 1600 addresses the growing connectedness between residents of the archipelago and the rest of the world.

May 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3379-4 / $22.00 (PAPER)

Cambodge Wins Major SEA Studies Book Award

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Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945, by Penny Edwards, was awarded the Harry J. Benda Prize at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in March 2009.

“In Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, Penny Edwards examines brilliantly the metamorphosis of the kingdom of Cambodia into the French-Khmer colonial entity of Cambodge—the chrysalis from which today’s Cambodia has emerged. Demonstrating a masterful command of scholarship and of archival, literary, and popular sources, Edwards reveals not a simple dance of colonial domination and resistance but an array of complex collaborations through which Khmer subjects adapted, and embraced as their own, processes set in train by the French: to iconize and secularize Angkor Vat; to promote a Khmer Buddhism separate from Thai influence and free of hoary superstitions; and to root ‘Khmerness’ both in a romanticized antiquity and France-led modernity.

In a narrative that is elegantly crafted and ultimately gripping, Edwards links the colonial world of schools, research institutes, and print culture and of museums, monuments, and tourism to the post-colonial nation-building projects of Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot. In doing so, she brings legibility to highly theorized subjects such as hybridity, authenticity, and nationalism and both complicates and enriches our understanding of the colonial era and its legacies in modern Southeast Asia—demonstrating, as Harry J. Benda did, how rigorous historical scholarship can expose surprising ways in which the past is complicit in the present.”

Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines

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Scholars have long assumed that Spanish colonial rule had only a limited demographic impact on the Philippines. Filipinos, they believed, had acquired immunity to Old World diseases prior to Spanish arrival; conquest was thought to have been more benign than what took place in the Americas because of more enlightened colonial policies introduced by Philip II. Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines, by Linda A. Newson, illuminates the demographic history of the Spanish Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, in the process, challenges these assumptions.

“The book is truly remarkable in breadth and depth and has the power of a prosecuting attorney’s relentless presentation of a damning circumstantial case: the reader’s resistance gives way under the sheer weight of the evidence. We hear many different voices (some ecclesiastical, some civil or military) reiterating the same sad tale of depopulation and slow recovery. Others have, on less evidence, surmised some of this story of loss, but no one before has effectively estimated its depth or duration. The tale deserves to be told.” —Norman G. Owen, editor, The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia

April 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3272-8 / $56.00 (CLOTH)

Colonial Legacies Longlisted for 2009 ICAS Book Prize

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The International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Book Prize is a global competition that provides an international focus for publications on Asia while at the same time increasing their visibility worldwide. The coveted book prizes are awarded for best studies in the humanities and the social sciences.

Colonial Legacies: Economic and Social Development in East and Southeast Asia, by Anne E. Booth, has been longlisted in the social sciences category. Winners will be announced at ICAS 6, which will be held in August 2009 in Daejeon, Korea.

Being Dutch in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500-1920, by Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, distributed by UH Press for NUS Press (Singapore) has been longlisted in the humanities category.

UH Press Author Wins Outstanding Book Award

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This month the Conference on College Composition and Communication will present it’s 2009 Outstanding Book Award to John M. Duffy for his book, Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community. As the book award committee noted in its discussion of the book, “it richly conceptualizes the study of literacy by considering its historical, personal, institutional, cultural, and transnational dimensions.”

The CCCC Outstanding Book Award is presented annually to authors or editors of a book published two years previously that makes an outstanding contribution to composition and communication studies. Books are evaluated for scholarship or research and for applicability to the study and teaching of composition and communication.

A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society

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During the nineteenth century, the colonial Straits Settlements of Singapore, Penang, and Melaka were established as free ports of British trade in Southeast Asia and proved attractive to large numbers of regional migrants. Following the abolishment of slavery in 1833, the Straits government transported convicts from the East India Company’s Indian presidencies to the settlements as a source of inexpensive labor. The prison became the primary experimental site for the colonial plural society and convicts were graduated by race and the labor needed for urban construction. Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society, by Anoma Pieris, investigates how a political system aimed at managing ethnic communities in the larger material context of the colonial urban project was first imagined and tested through the physical segregation of the colonial prison. It relates the story of a city, Singapore, and a contemporary city-state whose plural society has its origins in these historical divisions.

Writing Past Colonialism
February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3354-1 / $28.00 (PAPER)

The State in Myanmar

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The State in Myanmar, by Robert H. Taylor, attempts to draw the complex history of state-making and state perpetuation in Myanmar in one volume. The social and economic forces, as well as international and domestic issues, which have made Myanmar one of the poorest and least understood Asian countries, are discussed. The efforts of Myanmar’s kings, British colonial officials, nationalist politicians, socialist ideologues, and army generals to preserve the state in Myanmar is a history worth attempting to understand on its own terms.

“A substantive addition to [Taylor’s] 1987 version of The State of Burma, [this work] continues the story of the evolution and development of the modern Burmese state to 2008. It is clearly one of the best books (if not the best) published in the English language on the modern state in Myanmar, particularly in terms of evidence, conceptualization, methodology, analysis, and perspective. As such, it has few, if any, equals. In large part, it is because the author is an unassuming and sensitive scholar of the country’s modern institutions for nearly half a century, grounded by frequent and long-term stays in the country that have provided first-hand and unique access to data, individuals, and events. In the latter sense too, the author has few equals. Thus, both his professional and personal experiences have given him the special wherewithal for producing such a work. For scholars and other educated readers genuinely interested in, and concerned about, the affairs and people of Myanmar, this book is required reading.” —Michael Aung-Thwin, University of Hawai‘i

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3362-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Roth Receives National Award for Social Justice Work

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UH law professor and UH Press author Randall Roth was awarded the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award from Morehouse College for his pursuit of social justice though nonviolent means. Roth received the award last month on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day at the tenth anniversary of “Victory Over Violence,” an activity of the International Committee of Artists for Peace.

The GKI Award was created by Morehouse College to celebrate the lives and work of three individuals from different cultures and countries whose common path of profound dedication to peace is recognized internationally. The award presentation emphasized Roth’s writings that call for transparency and accountability in government and charities.

One of 2008’s Most Memorable Books

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Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai‘i, Jon Van Dyke’s history of ceded lands following the 1846–1848 Mahele, is one of the “Most Memorable Books of 2008,” according to the Honolulu Advertiser’s Christine Thomas:

“In support of his assertion that ‘Crown Lands should once again be managed by and for the Native Hawaiian People,’ Van Dyke details their intricate history and legal status, laying a remarkably clear and completely captivating path of understanding. He effortlessly navigates such complex intersections as Hawaiian concepts of land tenure and smartly steers past such disputes as the role of ali’i in a new Hawaiian Nation to elucidate and persuasively affirm the Crown Lands’ unique status so they can be more effectively restored to their intended purpose and beneficiaries.”

A Japanese Robinson Crusoe

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First published in 1898 and long out of print, A Japanese Robinson Crusoe, by Jenichiro Oyabe, (1867–1941) is a pioneering work of Asian American literature. It recounts Oyabe’s early life in Japan, his journey west, and his education at two historically Black colleges, detailing in the process his gradual transformation from Meiji gentleman to self-proclaimed “Japanese Yankee.” Like a Victorian novelist, Oyabe spins a tale that mixes faith and exoticism, social analysis and humor. His story fuses classic American narratives of self-creation and the self-made man (and, in some cases, the tall tale) with themes of immigrant belonging and “whiteness.” Although he compares himself with the castaway Robinson Crusoe, Oyabe might best be described as a combination of Crusoe and his faithful servant Friday, the Christianized man of color who hungers to be enlightened by Western ways.

“This is a fascinating memoir by a young Japanese who spent thirteen years (1885–1898) traveling to all parts of the world: the Kurile islands, China, Okinawa, Hawaii, the United States, Britain, Portugal, etc., before returning to his native country as a teacher and a Christian minister. Few in the world, least of all Japanese, would have seen so much of the world on their own. What he saw—and, even more revealing, how he described what he saw—adds to our understanding not only of late nineteenth-century Japan’s encounter with distant lands, in particular the United States, but also of the history of international travels, a history that constitutes an essential part of the phenomenon of globalization.” —Akira Iriye, Harvard University

Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies
January 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3247-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)

From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities

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The idea of eliminating undesirable traits from human temperament to create a “new man” has been part of moral and political thinking worldwide for millennia. During the Enlightenment, European philosophers sought to construct an ideological framework for reshaping human nature. But it was only among the communist regimes of the twentieth century that such ideas were actually put into practice on a nationwide scale. In Creating the “New Man”: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities, Yinghong Cheng examines three culturally diverse sociopolitical experiments—the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, China under Mao, and Cuba under Castro—in an attempt to better understand the origins and development of the “new man.”

“There is no comparative study of the critically important and remarkably similar ‘new man’ creation programs of China and Cuba that is comparable in insights to this one. But this book speaks to still wider audiences, from students of the Marxist and other dogmatic, utopian ideologies that have so often consumed the resources and lives of people worldwide throughout the history of mankind, to analysts of development and anti-development experiences in general.” —William Ratliff, Stanford University

Perspectives on the Global Past
January 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3074-8 / $60.00 (CLOTH)

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