Guerrero once more tours the readers to exciting vacation spots in the islands. With color photographs. “Amadis Ma. Guerrero has elevated travel writing to an art form.” — Rosalinda L. Orosa, Cultural Critic. “He is one of our best travel writers.” — Dr. Margie Holmes, Philippine Daily Inquirer

The aim of this book is to explore ethnic, cultural and material changes in the transformative history(s) of oceans and seas, commodities and populations, mariners and ships, and raiders and refugees in Southeast Asia, with particular reference to the Sulu-Mindanao region, or the "Sulu Zone". Examining the profound changes that were taking place in the Sulu-Mindanao region and elsewhere at the end of the eighteenth century, this book, the companion volume to The Sulu Zone published in 1981, establishes an ethnohistorical framework for understanding the emerging inter-connected patterns of global commerce, long distance maritime trading and the formation and maintenance of ethnic identity. It also provides a new conceptual framework for understanding the problem of ethnic self-definition and political processes and conflicts in the recent history of the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. Iranun and Balangingi seeks to probe these themes through an inter-disciplinary approach, using archival sources and literature, as well as period testimony, interviews, diaries, and fieldwork observations from sites primarily located in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

When the United States acquired the Philippines and Puerto Rico, it reconciled its status as an empire with its anticolonial roots by claiming that it would altruistically establish democratic institutions in its new colonies. Ever since, Filipino and Puerto Rican artists have challenged promises of benevolent assimilation and portray U.S. imperialism as both self-interested and unexceptional among empires. Faye Caronan's examination interprets the pivotal engagement of novels, films, performance poetry, and other cultural productions as both symptoms of and resistance against American military, social, economic, and political incursions. Though the Philippines became an independent nation and Puerto Rico a U.S. commonwealth, both remain subordinate to the United States. Caronan's juxtaposition reveals two different yet simultaneous models of U.S. neocolonial power and contradicts American exceptionalism as a reluctant empire that only accepts colonies for the benefit of the colonized and global welfare. Her analysis, meanwhile, demonstrates how popular culture allows for alternative narratives of U.S. imperialism, but also functions to contain those alternatives.

A study of relations between America and East Asia on the eve of the twenty-first century.

The basic hypothesis of this volume is that currency patterns may tell us something about the spread of wage payments in specific societies in history. The book discusses the relationship between wages and currency, with reference to different countries and regions in Europe, Asia and South America over more than 2000 years.

Historians of Southeast Asia have traditionally preferred to write about politics and culture rather than economics and ecology, and where they have looked at the history of agriculture they have most often concentrated on cash crops like sugar, coffee and rubber which figure prominently in colonial records. Smallholders and stockbreeders, by contrast, provides a rare survey of the history of foodcrop farming, and a unique look at the history of animal husbandry, in the Southeast Asian region. Thirteen contributions by an international selection of expert authors cover topics ranging from the agricultural economy of precolonial Java to the growth of rice production in the Mekong Delta since 1950, and from the breeding of horses on the northern borderlands of mainland Southeast Asia to the production and consumption of beef in the Philippines. New light is shed on old questions regarding the directions in which Southeast Asian agriculture has evolved over the centuries, and new questions raised regarding the cultural, demographic, economic and political determinants of farming practices. While the geographical and chronological scales of analysis vary, most chapters deal with relatively large areas and with developments over periods of 100 years or more. Besides production for subsistence, commercial aspects of livestock and foodcrop farming are also given due attention and prove to have been important in many parts of the region from very early periods. Smallholders and stockbreeders is essential reading for anyone interested in the agricultural history of Southeast Asia, whether for its own sake, or in connection with other aspects of regional history, or for purposes of comparison with other parts of the world.