NUS Press catalog: July-Dec 2023

NUS PRESS NEW BOOKS

JULY–DECEMBER 2023

Academic Book Prizes

Best Book in the Humanities, International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Book Prize 2023, Finalist

Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, c.1600–c.1906

Heather Sutherland

A.L. Becker Southeast Asian Literature in Translation Prize 2022

A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land: A Novel of Sihanouk’s Cambodia

Suon Sorin, translated by Roger Nelson

Humanities Book Prize, European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) 2022, Finalist

Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, c.1600–c.1906

Heather Sutherland

Social Science Book Prize, EuroSEAS 2022, Finalist

Celluloid Colony: Locating History and Ethnography in Early Dutch Colonial Films of Indonesia

Sandeep Ray

Specialist Publication Accolade, ICAS Book Prize 2021

One or Two Words: Language and Politics in the Toraja Highlands of Indonesia

Aurora Donzelli

Hughes Prize, British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) 2021, Finalist

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819–1942

Timothy P. Barnard

Best Book in the Social Sciences, ICAS Book Prize 2021, Finalists

Love, Money and Obligation: Transnational Marriage in a Northeastern Thai Village

Patcharin Lapanun

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819–1942

Timothy P. Barnard

Humanities Book Prize, EuroSEAS 2021, Finalists

Wayang and Its Doubles: Javanese Puppet Theatre, Television and the Internet

Jan Mrázek

Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819–1942

Timothy P. Barnard

General Book Prizes

Colvin Prize 2023, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, Finalist

Everyday Modernism: Architecture and Society in Singapore

Jiat-Hwee Chang, Justin Zhuang, Darren Soh

Best Non-Fiction Title, Singapore Book Awards 2023, Finalist

The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory

Kevin Blackburn

Singapore Literature Prize (Creative non-fiction) 2022

Home is Where We Are

Wang Gungwu with Margaret Wang

The Story of Southeast Asia

The oldest figurative cave paintings in the world are found on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Hand stencils and animals painted some 45,000 years ago attest to a long history of human creativity. The Story of Southeast Asia tells how the peoples of the region have crafted their diverse societies and cultures over thousands of years. Southeast Asia has been a remarkable crossroads of global connections for millennia. Whereas other regions have been defined by centralizing forces, Southeast Asia’s story is one of complex networks of trade, ideas, and social relationships. Southeast Asians have created, localized, and remade their own cultural values by drawing on influences from around the world.

Marshalling the latest literature from anthropology, archaeology, history and other disciplines, Eric C. Thompson highlights broad themes that cut across history: including the making—and evasion—of states, adoption of diverse religious practices, tolerance and flexibility regarding gender, processes of forging modern identities, struggles over sovereignty, and the making of modern nations in a postcolonial world. This readable, single-volume history reckons with the narrative pull of familiar colonial and national perspectives, but maintains a regional and deep-historical focus. It will be a stimulating read for scholars as well as students and newcomers to Southeast Asian history.

February 2024

Paperback • S$28 / US$26

ISBN: 978-981-325-234-9

368pp / 229 x 152mm

21 b/w maps, 35 b/w figures

Eric C. Thompson is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore.

Public Subsidy, Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore’s Public Housing

The achievement of Singapore’s national public housing program is impressive by any standard. Within a year of its first election victory in 1959, the People’s Action Party began to deliver on its promises in dramatic fashion. By the 1980s, 85 percent of the population had been rehoused in modern flats, and today, decades later, the provision of public housing shapes Singapore’s environment. The standard accounts of this remarkable transformation leave many questions unanswered, from the historical to urgent matters of current policy: Why, of all the pressing demands of Singapore’s newly enfranchised citizens, was housing such a priority back in the 1960s? How did the provision of social welfare via public housing shape Singapore’s industrialization and development over the last 50 years? Looking ahead, can the Housing and Development Board continue to be a source of affordable housing for young families, while long-standing appreciation in flat prices provides for the retirement of their parents? How can this be managed as 99-year leases on flats run down? When young people from wealthy families purchase subsidized flats and then resell them for a profit as soon as they can, what does that do for the already pressing issues of inequality in Singapore?

This is a culmination of Chua Beng Huat’s study of Singapore’s public housing system, its dynamics, and the ways it functions in Singapore’s politics. Does every great success hold within it the seeds of failure? The book will be of interest to citizens, and scholars of the political economy of Asian development, of social welfare provision, and of Singapore.

Chua Beng Huat is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore.

January 2024

Paperback • S$32 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-251-6

192pp / 229 x 152mm

Tay Kheng Soon

edited by Justin Zhuang

A New World in the Making: Life and Architecture in Tropical Asia

Architect Tay Kheng Soon’s book brings together memoir, a selection of writings on identity, landscape and belonging, and on the architecture and urbanism most appropriate for a tropical city in Asia. Born in British-ruled Singapore, Tay was deeply engaged in the debates about building a new world that attended the end of colonialism. His focus, but far from his only concern, was Singapore’s built environment—and its spiritual one—since the early 1960s. Architecture, he says, is politics by other means. As Singapore moved further into what Tay describes as “ruthless pragmatism”, the cost of his critical posture became more clear. After he organised a protest against the Vietnam War in 1972, Tay’s co-founders in the pioneering architectural firm Design Partnership reformed their partnership as DP Architects without him, building a practice that grew into an empire.

Kheng Soon stayed his own course, first working in Malaysia designing low-cost housing, then returning to Singapore and building his own firm. He became sought after around the world for his thoughts on regionalism and tropical architecture. He taught at the NUS School of Architecture, headed the Singapore Institute of Architects, and was Founding Chair of independent arts centre The Substation. Ever ready with the trenchant oneliner, and a willingness to provoke, to challenge orthodoxy, Tay occupies a unique position in Asia’s intellectual and cultural landscape. Things must change, says Tay. Or, maybe, he admits, it’s just him. The book is a must-read for Tay’s reflections on tropical Asia and its architecture and urbanism as he continues looking ahead to the always urgent task of building a new world.

Tay Kheng Soon is one of Singapore’s most important public intellectuals and thinkers, and a pioneering architect of Singapore’s post-independence era. Justin Zhuang is co-founder of Singapore-based writing studio In Plain Words and co-author of NUS Press's Everyday Modernism: Architecture and Society in Singapore.

August 2023

Hardback • S$32

(for Asia market)

ISBN: 978-981-325-262-2

304 pp / 229 x 152mm

36 b/w images

Belitung: The Afterlives of a Shipwreck

In 1998, the Belitung, a 9th-century western Indian Ocean-style vessel, was discovered in Indonesian waters. Onboard was a full cargo of over 60,000 Chinese Tang-dynasty ceramics, gold, and other precious objects. It is one of the most significant shipwreck discoveries of recent times, revealing the scale of ancient commercial endeavors and the role of the ocean within the Silk Road story.

But this shipwreck also has a modern tale to tell, of how nation-states appropriate the remnants of the past for their own purposes, and of the international debates about who owns— and is responsible for—shared heritage. The commercial salvage of the Belitung objects, and their subsequent sale to Singapore, contravened the principles of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and prompted international criticism and debate. The controversy continues to reverberate in academic and curatorial circles.

In this moving and thought-provoking reflection, Natali Pearson reveals valuable new information about the Belitung salvage, obtained firsthand, and the intricacies in the many conflicts and relationships that developed. In tracing the Belitung’s lives and afterlives, this book shifts our thinking about shipwrecks beyond popular tropes of romance, pirates, and treasure, and towards an understanding of how the relationships between sites, objects, and people shape the stories we tell of the past in the present.

August 2023

Paperback • S$28 / US$22

ISBN: 978-981-325-267-7

230pp / 229 x 152mm

11 b/w illustrations

Natali Pearson teaches and researches at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia.

“Belitung is a welcome addition to the discourse.”

– Kennie Ting, Director, Asian Civilisations Museum & Peranakan Museum

Timothy P. Barnard editor

Singaporean Creatures: Histories of Humans and Other Animals in the Garden City

Modern Singapore is the Garden City, a biophilic urban space in which society is placed within a managed environment that includes a variety of animals from mosquitoes to humans to polar bears. This book brings together historians to contemplate this human-animal relationship and how it has shaped the society—socially, economically, politically and environmentally— particularly in the past half century. It is a work of historical and ecological analysis, in which various institutions, perspectives and events involving animals provide insight into how the larger society has been formed and developed in Southeast Asia in the last half century. The interaction of all Singaporean creatures thus provides a lens through which we can understand the creation of a modern, urban nation-state, reflecting the outcomes of the Anthropocene in local history.

November 2023

Paperback • S$36 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-238-7

296pp / 229 x 152mm

35 b/w images

Timothy P. Barnard is an associate professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore, where he specializes in the environmental and cultural history of island Southeast Asia.

Janet Steele

Malaysiakini and the Power of Independent Media in Malaysia

Malaysiakini was founded in 1999 by Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran, two young Malaysians who met as overseas students in Australia. One of the many online portals that sprung up in the wake of Reformasi, a movement sparked by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad’s 1998 firing of his deputy Anwar Ibrahim, there was no reason to think that Malaysiakini would be different from the other blogs and portals that covered the trial of the charismatic former deputy PM. Yet this would be a mistake, as Malaysiakini wanted to do something much more important than report on Reformasi: its founders intended to bring independent journalism to Malaysia in hopes of changing the country.

Based on more than 15 years of observation of newsroom practices, this book is an intimate portrait of the people and issues behind Malaysia’s only truly independent media outlet. The author illustrates Malaysiakini’s particular mix of idealism in action, with attention to how “sensitive” issues such as race, religion, politics, and citizenship get worked out in practice in the newsroom. This attention to the inner workings of one of the most important media institutions in the region yields not only a deep newsroom ethnography, but a nuanced, rich history of modern Malaysia.

September 2023

Paperback • S$32 / US$32 / MYR 88

ISBN: 978-981-325-240-0

208pp / 229 x 152mm

10 b/w images

Janet Steele is Professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs at George Washington University.

“Everyone who cares about independent journalism can and should learn from Malaysiakini’s example. There is no better place to start than reading Janet Steele’s book.…”

– Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Michel Picard

Kebalian: The Dialogic Construction of Balinese Identity

What is it to be Balinese? Over the past 100 years, the Balinese have been challenged by colonial occupation, political turbulence, and most recently tourism. In response, they have come to rely on the idea of Kebalian, or Balinese-ness. Kebalian is likened to a tree whose roots are religion (agama), the trunk tradition (adat), and the fruits, Balinese culture (budaya). How did the Balinese come to see their identity in these terms?

To understand how their sense of Balinese-ness came to be, Michel Picard makes a close reading of the dialogues the Balinese have engaged in both among themselves and with outsiders—Dutch orientalists and colonial administrators, Javanese nationalists, Muslim schoolteachers, Christian missionaries, Hindu gurus, artists and anthropologists, Indonesian government officials, tourists and tourism operators. He conducted over a hundred interviews with Balinese opinion leaders, officials and religious reformers.

A key through line in the construction of Kebalian is what Picard identifies as a twofold process of “religionization” and “Hinduization” that began with the first years of the incorporation of Bali into the Dutch East Indies, and became more urgent with Indonesia’s independence. Kebalian today encompasses the tension between those Balinese eager to defend their own customary ritual practices and advocates of Hinduism as a world religion, who deny that such local traditions qualify as agama. The book presents a fascinating picture of religious change, identities in motion, and culture as it takes form. Scholars of religion, cultural change and Southeast Asian area studies will find this a fascinating and important volume.

SERIES: IRASEC STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY SOUTHEAST ASIA

January 2024

Paperback • S$42 / US$38

ISBN: 978-981-325-242-4

472pp / 229 x 152mm

Michel Picard is a retired researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a founding member of the Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CNRS-EHESS).

Chen Tienshi Lara

translated by Louis Carlet

Stateless

“In the springtime of the year that I was twenty-one, I found myself stuck at the border between two familiar countries, unable to enter either. I had never felt my statelessness so keenly.”

Japan’s 1972 termination of diplomatic ties with the Republic of China left 9,200 Chinese residents stateless. Chen Tienshi Lara was one of them, born to Chinese parents in Yokohama’s Chinatown. What does it mean to be stateless? What does it feel like?

In a lively blend of life writing, auto-ethnography, and study of stateless communities around Asia, this book unpacks the idea of citizenship by showing the hidden everyday narratives and lived experiences of stateless persons who have no legal ties to any nation state. Originally published in Japanese, this adapted and updated English edition critically engages with questions of borders, mobility, belonging and identity.

We follow Chen’s engaging autobiographical account of her bi-cultural upbringing and Japanese education, and how her experience of statelessness eventually led her into a career spanning academia and activism. Across different levels of analysis, the author points out the contradictions inherent in the concepts of nationality, nation-state and citizenship, in a world where individual nationality, identity and experience are increasingly complex. She concludes that the current system of regulating individuals with citizenship is unworkable in the long run. Stateless is a fascinating read on borders, states and identities.

Louis Carlet is a translator and interpreter.

October 2023

Paperback • S$36 / US$34

ISBN: 978-981-325-232-5

256pp / 229 x 152mm

19 b/w images

Chen Tienshi Lara is a professor at the School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University.

Hugh de Ferranti, Masaya Shishikura and Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes editors

Unsilent Strangers: Music, Minorities, Coexistence, Japan

This collection of essays on the music of migrant minorities in and from Japan examines the central role music plays in the ongoing adjustment, conciliation and transformation of newcomers and “hosts” alike. It is the first academic text to address music activities across a range of migrant groups in Japan––particularly those of Tokyo and its neighbouring areas. It is also the first to juxtapose such communities with those of Japanese emigrants as ethnic minorities elsewhere. It presents both archival and fieldwork-based case studies that highlight music in the dynamics of encounter and attempted identity making, under a unifying framework of migration.

A radical change in policy with the introduction of a new “Specified Skilled Worker” visa category marked the beginning of Japan’s “new immigration era” in 2019 (imin gannen). The authors in this volume interrogate and shed light on the bureaucratically disseminated slogan of tabunka kyōsei, rendered in English as “multicultural coexistence”. The concept itself and the many problems of realizing this ideal are examined through ethnography-based accounts of current minorities, including South Indians, Brazilians, Nepalis, Filipinos, Iranians and Ainu domestic migrants, and in light of comparative historical accounts of California and Australia. This volume will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, students of the cultures of migrant communities, and those engaged with cultural change and diversity in Japan and East Asia.

Hugh de Ferranti is a researcher of Japanese music culture and history based at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Masaya Shishikura is an associate professor at Huizhou University and a research fellow at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes is a professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Shizuoka.

August 2023

Paperback • S$42 / US$38

ISBN: 978-981-325-236-3

320pp / 229 x 152mm

16 figures, 11 tables, 37 b/w images

“Unsilent Strangers is a scholarly work that allows us to listen for ways by which music expresses minority identities in and through Japan.”

– Christine Yano, University of Hawai`i, Manoa

Vietnam Documented: The British Library’s Vietnamese Collection

Vietnam has a strong literary and book culture, that dates back to Confucian influence, but which has remained important through the 20th century and up until today. Vietnamese books, documents and manuscripts in the collection of the British Library give a window on that rich heritage, and represent key incidents in Vietnamese social, cultural and political history. They also highlight the visual sophistication of Vietnamese design, drawing on Chinese models, French art deco stylings that shaped the growth of modern design education in Vietnam, and the influence of socialist styles in art and design. This engaging, fullyillustrated book introduces us to Vietnam's design, literary and book history, with an informative text by the long-time Keeper of the British Library's Vietnamese collection, Sud Chonchirdsin. Among the earliest documents in the Library's collection are a 17th-century royal letter to the English East India Company, and two royal edicts of Emperor Cảnh Thịnh (r. 1792–1802) to Britain's Lord McCartney. Other highlights include a travel diary of a member of one of the last of Vietnam's tribute missions to the Imperial court in China (1880), and a beautifully illustrated manuscript of the classic Tale of Kiều. French colonial efforts to codify knowledge of their protectorate are well represented. But the strength of the collection lies in materials collected during the Vietnam's 20th century struggle for independence, with newspapers, books and magazines—including rare periodicals from North Vietnam—showing how artists were mobilized in wartime, by all sides of the conflict, to form the visual narratives of struggle. This highly accessible, full-colour introduction to an under-appreciated design heritage is welcome view into a rich culture.

Sud Chonchirdsin has taught Vietnamese history and language at Chulalongkorn University and Thai language at SOAS. He also served as Curator for Vietnamese at the British Library from 2005 until retiring in 2019.

x VIETNAM

RIDGE BOOKS, PUBLISHED WITH THE BRITISH LIBRARY

October 2023

Paperback • S$36 / US$28

ISBN: 978-981-325-188-5

136pp / 255 x 190mm

80 full colour images

Discovering Vietnam’s Ancient Capital: The Archaeology and History of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long-Hanoi

As Vietnam entered the 21st century it began to prepare for the 1000th anniversary of the founding of its capital Thăng Long, now Hanoi. In the heart of the city, a rescue excavation was launched on land earmarked for the construction of a new National Assembly building. Archaeologists unearthed thirteen centuries of vestiges of the ancient city of Thăng Long, yielding a richer record than anyone had dared to hope for. Construction plans were shelved, excavations widened, and at the city’s millennial celebrations in 2010, UNESCO announced its inscription of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long on its World Heritage List. This archaeological discovery has two histories. The first, told here by the archaeologists involved, is the story of the dig, as their trowels brought to light the bricks, tiles, pillars, sculptures and ceramics of countless ancient temples and palaces. The second is the history of the citadel itself, in its early years as an outpost of the Chinese empire, in its heyday as the Forbidden City of Vietnam’s emperors, and in its downgrading and eventual destruction at the hands of the Nguyen dynasty and French colonial rulers. The book presents a historical narrative of the continuous development of a regional political centre on this site. Bringing together history, archaeology and a fascinating interplay of influences from China and Southeast Asia, this is also the story of an Asian capital city coming to understand its history, and deciding how to preserve its archaeological remains.

Andrew Hardy is a historian of Vietnam, with research interests in migration and ethnic relations. He heads the Hanoi centre of the École française d’ExtrêmeOrient (EFEO).

Nguyễ

was an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.

– Tana Li, Australian National University

November 2023

Paperback • S$36 / US$32

ISBN: 978-981-325-229-5

352pp / 229 x 152mm

49 b/w images, 21 maps

n Tiến Đông

Andrew

Hardy and Nguyễn Tiến Đông

editors

“Even those who are familiar with Hanoi will find this book encaptivating, refreshing, personal, and filled with juicy details.”

Dale Fisher chief editor

Infectious Disease Emergencies: Preparedness and Response

For too long, the theory and practice of infectious disease outbreak response has been the domain of a small number of experienced responders. The COVID-19 pandemic brought global attention to the requirements of effective outbreak response, and the need for preparation across the key pillars. Decisionmakers, early career practitioners and those in the field now have access to a comprehensive text that brings together evidence based and practical insights from the best in the business.

Dale Fisher, Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, was chair of WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network prior to and throughout most of the pandemic. In this massive collaborative effort, he marshals nearly 100 top public health leaders and experts from the front lines to present 37 chapters on pandemic preparedness and response, drawing heavily on experiences from COVID-19, as well as from Ebola, MERS, SARS-1, influenza and other outbreaks of modern times. The contributors include experts from health ministries and Centres for Disease Control and national public health institutions around the world, from international organizations like the WHO, MSF, IFRC and UNICEF and from research institutions and various NGOs from dozens of countries, adding to the diversity and richness of the descriptions.

The book can be used as a reference or as a textbook, where each chapter describes the features of outbreak preparedness, including field epidemiology, risk communications, managing health services in a pandemic, vaccine management, leadership, contact tracing and laboratory management and testing amongst others.

Dale Fisher is Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, head of Medical Services at the National University Hospital System, and senior advisor to the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.

February 2024

Hardback • S$72 / US$67

ISBN: 978-981-325-247-9

480pp / 254 x 178mm

150 charts and figures

Nilufer Oral and Tara Davenport editors

UNCLOS at 40: Essays in Honour of Ambassador Tommy Koh

To commemorate 40 years since the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and in honour of one of the main architects of UNCLOS, Singapore’s Ambassador Tommy Koh, this edited volume of essays brings together law of the sea judges, scholars and practitioners to explore a wide range of issues. It explores the reasons for the continuing endurance of UNCLOS as the foundation for the governance of the oceans, and looks ahead to new challenges.

Nilufer Oral is an internationally recognized expert in law of the sea, marine environment and climate change, and is currently a member of the International Law Commission (ILC) and director of the Centre for International Law (CIL), National University of Singapore.

Tara Davenport is co-head of the Oceans Law and Policy Team at CIL and has taught, researched and published extensively on a range of law of the sea issues.

January 2024

Paperback • S$36 / US$32

ISBN: 978-981-187-667-7

248pp / 229 x 152mm

“Is the UNCLOS capable of withstanding the test of time, given the many challenges that have emerged…? The resounding consensus is that UNCLOS continues to be relevant.”

– S. Jayakumar, former Foreign Minister of Singapore

Sally Frances Low

Colonial Law Making: Cambodia under the French

For the French in Cambodia (1863–1953/54), the temples of Angkor encouraged notions of a colonial mission to protect and revive traditions. Multi-valent narratives of protection characterised the administration of law and justice under French rule. Within the fluid boundaries of the 1863 Treaty of Protection, French administrators, judges and lawyers, along with seemingly compliant Cambodian elites, competed to influence justice administration. In turn, non-elite Cambodians resisted, bypassed, or [mis]interpreted efforts to regulate their lives, their courts, and their land. These contests, often conducted in the language of protection, created a colonial legacy that blurred the distinction between state law, tradition, royal prerogative, and religion.

In Colonial Law Making, Sally Low draws on colonial archives to reveal the contests and transactions that shaped justice in the French protectorate of Cambodia. She compares Cambodia with other indirectly colonised countries in Southeast Asia, demonstrating the significance of different methods of colonial domination. Her work crosses the boundaries of comparative legal history, area studies, and sociology to show the structural as well as the contingent factors that made colonial law.

Sally Frances Low holds a doctorate in legal history from the University of Melbourne and has worked extensively in Cambodia and Southeast Asia.

SERIES: ASAA

SOUTHEAST ASIA

PUBLICATIONS SERIES

October 2023

Paperback • S$38 / US$36

ISBN: 978-981-325-244-8

272pp / 229 x 152mm

2 maps, 9 b/w images, 1 diagram, 2 tables

“Sally Low’s innovative study of legal reform in French colonial Cambodia is a vital addition to the conversation on the legacies of colonialism on nation-building, governance, and the law in post-colonial nations.”

– Sokhieng Au, Northwestern University

Ya-Chen Ma

translated by Elizabeth Smithrosser

Images

of War: The Cultural Construction of Qing Martial Prowess

The mechanisms by which the Manchu rulers of Qing dynasty China maintained their hegemony over a vast empire have long fascinated scholars, with New Qing History models challenging older Sinicization models in recent years. This book adds a new dimension to these debates, from an unlikely source: art history. Two seemingly disparate fields of enquiry are brought together in this innovative work, its English translation long-awaited. Ming and Qing painting and visual culture and Ming and Qing history, especially military history are brought into dialogue here. This book interprets Manchu rule over China proper through the lens of how the Qing emperors modified Han scholarofficials’ culture to construct imperial power. Manchu military culture, in particular, is re-examined by investigating the history of the visual commemoration of military accomplishments. While images of war have long been a marginal topic in the history of Chinese art and politics, government officials’ military achievement pictures featured in numerous literati writings of the Ming dynasty. Their popularity was not confined to circles of Han elites but also took on commercial potential, and went beyond Chinese borders including influencing Manchu leaders, later to become Qing rulers. This trajectory of development took such images from celebrations of individual deeds and personal accomplishments to manifestations of the military might of the Qing empire and revealed that martial ethos and its expression was not a static part of the Manchu formula. Rather, much of the military culture of the Qing empire was appropriated from Han elite culture. This is an innovative work of disciplinary boundary-crossing.

Elizabeth Smith Rosser is a lecturer at the Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University.

January 2024

Paperback • S$88 / US$72

ISBN: 978-981-325-212-7

256pp / 235 x 187mm

100 images in full colour

Ya-chen Ma is a professor at Institute of History, National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

Stephen A. Murphy

Buddhist Landscapes of the Khorat Plateau: Art and Archaeology of the 7th–11th Centuries

The Khorat Plateau is a landscape of some 155,000 square kilometres of what is now northeast Thailand and central Laos. Despite the rich evidence for the region’s dynamism and development in the metal age, knowledge of subsequent first millennium developments on the Khorat Plateau remains limited. This important new work, built on extensive fieldwork and archaeological surveys, reveals the Khorat Plateau as having a distinctive Buddhist culture, including new forms of art and architecture, and a characteristic aesthetic. Moreover, through a combination of archaeological and art historical analysis with an historical ecology approach, Murphy traces the outlines of Buddhism’s spread into the region, along its major river systems. He is able to read this history into and against the Khorat landscape, attending to the emergence of monumental architecture such as stūpas and Buddha images carved into the rock faces of hills and mountainsides, and the importance on the Khorat Plateau of the use of boundary markers, or sīmā. This book provides a new picture of the region in the first and early second millennia, adding to our understanding of the development of Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and offering a new basis for other regionally-focused scholarship to thrive—from textual Buddhology to history to anthropology. It opens up new possibilities for understanding the early spread of Buddhism within different landscapes across Asia.

SERIES: ART & ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA: HINDU BUDDHISTTRADITIONS

January 2024

Hardback • S$78 / US$56

ISBN: 978-981-325-213-4

288pp / 235 x 187mm

15 maps and 95 images in full colour

Stephen A. Murphy is the Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS, University of London.

Marnie Feneley

Reconstructing God: Style, Hydraulics, Political Power and Angkor’s West Mebon Viṣṇ

In December 1936, a villager was led by a dream to the ruins of the West Mebon shrine in Angkor where he found the remains of a bronze sculpture. This was the West Mebon Viṣṇu, the largest bronze remaining from pre-modern Southeast Asia, and a work of great artistic, historical and political significance. Prominently placed in an island-temple in the middle of the vast artificial reservoir, the West Mebon Viṣṇu sculpture was a key focus point of the Angkorian hydraulic network. Interpretations of the statue, its setting, date and role, have remained largely unchanged since the 1960s, until now. Integrating the latest archaeological and historical work on Angkor, extensive art historical analysis of the figure of Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin in Hindu-Buddhist art across the region, and a detailed digital reconstruction of the sculpture and its setting, Marnie Feneley brings new light to this important piece.

Framed with a useful update on the latest archaeological and historical insights into the history of the Angkor World Heritage Site, this new understanding of the West Mebon Viṣṇu sculpture reorients our understanding of religious and political change in Angkor in the 12th century. Fully illustrated in colour throughout, the book will be of interest to art historians and curators, historians of Southeast Asia, and anyone with an interest in the art and history of Angkor.

Marnie Feneley is an accomplished scholar, with 20 years of experience in academia, museums and galleries in Australia and Southeast Asia. She specialises in the nexus between Southeast Asian art history, archaeology and religion.

August 2023

Hardback • S$72 / US$85

ISBN: 978-981-325-053-6

368pp / 235 x 185mm

163 colour illustrations, 47 b/w illustrations

“Dr. Feneley’s book makes an important contribution to the study of Classical Southeast Asia. In it she tackles one of the most enigmatic and unique sites in all Cambodia…. This publication constitutes a significant step forward in our understanding of the integrated nature of Angkor’s art, water management, and society.”

– John Miksic, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore

Ang Cheng Guan

Singapore’s Grand Strategy

Even small states can have grand strategies. Singapore, despite its poor natural resource endowment, small population, and size, has often been described as punching above its weight in international affairs. Part of this stems from the way Singapore integrates the different diplomatic, political and defenceoriented tools at its disposal in a strategic manner. This is a fresh and useful diplomatic, defence, and security history of Singapore, from independence in 1965 through the 2020s period of strategic realignment.

Most previous studies of grand strategy have focused on super- or at least middle powers, but Ang’s book builds an important contribution to international relations and strategic studies in showing how the concept can help explain the strategic posture and achievements of small states as well. Moreover, he brings a historian’s perspective to a subject usually tackled by political scientists. The result will be useful and important for scholars in these fields. The author’s well-crafted retelling of the Singapore story from an external perspective will be compelling for more general audiences as well.

Ang Cheng Guan is Professor of the International History of Southeast Asia at the Nanyang Technological University.

July 2023

Paperback • S$32 / US$32

ISBN: 978-981-325-223-3

208pp / 229 x 152mm

“This book offers a powerful account of the evolution of Singapore’s grand strategy, stretching from the 1960s to the 2000s. It shows that size does not limit the ability of states to develop a successful objectives-resources alignment. It will generate further inquiry into the conditions that drive small states’ strategic competence.”

– Thierry Balzacq, Sciences Po, Center for International Studies, Paris

Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia

Established by a collective of scholars and curators with the aim of looking and listening closely to the discursive spaces of art in, from, and around the region we refer to as Southeast Asia, from an historical perspective. The journal presents a necessarily diverse range of perspectives not only on the contemporary and modern art of Southeast Asia, but indeed of the region itself: its borders, its identity, its efficacy, and its limitations as a geographical marker and a conceptual category. As such, the journal is defined by a commitment to the need for and importance of rigorous discussion, of the contemporary and modern art of the domain that lies south of China, east of India, and north of Australia. The journal publishes twice a year (March and October).

This journal can be accessed at https://muse.jhu.edu/ journal/716. Southeast of Now is indexed in Scopus and the Directory of Open Access Journals.

For editorial enquiries, contact the editors at southeastofnow@gmail.com For individual or institution subscription enquiries, email us at orders.nuspress@nus.edu.sg https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/collections/southeastofnow

China: An International Journal (CIJ)

An internationally refereed journal published for the East Asian Institute, NUS in February, May, August and November by NUS Press. Based outside China, America and Europe, CIJ aims to present diverse international perceptions and frames of reference on contemporary China, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The journal invites the submission of cuttingedge research articles, review articles and policy comments and research notes in the fields of politics, economics, society, geography, law, culture and international relations. The unique final section of this journal offers a chronology and listing of key documents pertaining to developments in relations between China and the 10 ASEAN member-states.

CIJ is indexed and abstracted in Social Sciences Citation Index®, Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition, Current Contents®/Social and Behavioral Sciences, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Bibliography of Asian Studies and Econlit.

CIJ is also available online in Project Muse (an electronic database for journals in the humanities and social sciences). For more details, visit https://muse.jhu.edu or email muse@muse. jhu.edu.

Individual copies may be purchased through https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg For institution subscription enquiries, email us at orders.nuspress@nus.edu.sg For editorial enquiries, contact the editors at cij@nus.edu.sg https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/collections/cij

Goh Geok Yian & John N. Miksic editors

Southeast Asian Site Reports

epress.nus.edu.sg/sitereports

The Southeast Asian Site Reports series is intended to make archaeological data available for comparative study to all scholars who work on Southeast Asian archaeology, as well as the active community of students of archaeology and volunteers in the region. Aside from descriptions of the archaeological project, these reports generally include:

• research questions addressed by the project, and analysis of results

• site maps and stratigraphic drawings

• tables providing quantitative data and statistics on specific types of artifacts

• illustrations of the main types of artifacts discovered (photographs and drawings)

• laboratory analyses of mineral composition, identification of organic materials, the ancient environment, dating methods and results

This information is typically difficult to obtain for Southeast Asian sites, especially for the historical period. It is hoped that these efforts to develop an online publication template, and tools for the management of images and other data, will encourage more sharing of data across national boundaries. The latest updates in Southeast Asian Site Reports are reports on:

• Pulau Saigon

• St. Andrew’s Cathedral

• The Istana Kampung Gelam

• The Empress Place

Goh Geok Yian is associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University. John N. Miksic is emeritus professor at the National University of Singapore.

Information for Authors

NUS Press (formerly Singapore University Press) originated as the publishing arm of the University of Malaya in Singapore, and between 1954 and 1971 published books under the University of Malaya Press imprint. The Singapore University Press imprint first appeared in 1971.

In 2006 Singapore University Press was succeeded by a new NUS Press to reflect the name of its parent institution and to align the Press closer to the university’s overall branding.

The Press publishes academic, scholarly and trade books of importance and relevance to Singapore and the region. While the Press has an extensive catalog that includes titles in the fields of medicine, mathematics, science and engineering, the Press is particularly interested in manuscripts that address these subjects:

• Japan and Asia

• The Chinese overseas and the Chinese diaspora

• The Malay World

• Media, cinema and the visual arts

• Science, technology and society in Asia

• Transnational labour and population issues in Asia

• Popular culture in transnational perspectives

• Religion in Southeast Asia

• Ethnic relations

• The city, urbanism and the built form in Southeast Asia

• Violence, trauma and memory in Asia

• Cultural resources and heritage in Asia

• Public health, health policy and history of medicine

• The English language in Asia

All books are subject to peer review, and must be approved by the University Publishing Committee, drawn from the NUS faculty. Download our detailed author’s guidelines at https:// nuspress.nus.edu.sg/pages/prospective-authors

Our home territory is Southeast Asia, and NUS Press works very closely with APD Singapore and APD Malaysia to distribute to libraries, institutions and to the bookstores in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the other countries of Southeast Asia. We service the NUS campus bookshops directly, and conduct sales to students and staff from our office on the NUS campus.

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Abbreviations and Icons

Singapore dollars

S$

US$ US dollars

Available in Southeast Asia

Available Worldwide

Available Worldwide except Vietnam

x VIETNAM

NUS Press Pte Ltd (formerly Singapore University Press)

AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link

National University of Singapore

Singapore 117569

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Twitter @NUS_Press

Notes

1 S$ prices are applicable for purchases in Singapore only.

2 All prices and information in this catalogue are current at the time of printing (July 2023) and may be subject to change.

3 Potential authors are invited to download our author guidelines at https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/pages/prospective-authors

Cover illustration: Man carrying crocodile, late 1980s. Singapore Tourism Board Collection (Courtesy of National Archives Singapore).

NUS Press

National University of Singapore

NUS Press publishes books and journals with a regional focus on Asia and a disciplinary focus on the humanities and social sciences.

As the university press of the National University of Singapore, NUS Press supports the university’s mission by publishing for Singaporean, Southeast Asian and global academic communities, for communities of practice and publics reading in English. Our books are available in more than 500 great bookshops around the world, and are held by top research and public libraries, in print and digital form. We love selling books in a competitive marketplace, but we are also active in developing Open Access models of scholarly communication.

NUS Press dates itself back 68 years, to the activities of the Publishing Committee of the University of Malaya, beginning in 1954.

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