This book looks at the writings of American diplomats, adventurers, and scientists and chronicles how nineteenth-century Americans viewed and imagined Southeast Asia through their own cultural-political lenses.

In Hard Interests, Soft Illusions, Natasha Hamilton-Hart explores the belief held by foreign policy elites in much of Southeast Asia-Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam-that the United States is a relatively benign power. She argues that this belief is an important factor underpinning U.S. preeminence in the region, because beliefs inform specific foreign policy decisions and form the basis for broad orientations of alignment, opposition, or nonalignment. Such foundational beliefs, however, do not simply reflect objective facts and reasoning processes. Hamilton-Hart argues that they are driven by both interests-in this case the political and economic interests of ruling groups in Southeast Asia-and illusions. Hamilton-Hart shows how the information landscape and standards of professional expertise within the foreign policy communities of Southeast Asia shape beliefs about the United States. These opinions frequently rest on deeply biased understandings of national history that dominate perceptions of the past and underlie strategic assessments of the present and future. Members of the foreign policy community rarely engage in probabilistic reasoning or effortful knowledge-testing strategies. This does not mean, she emphasizes, that the beliefs are insincere or merely instrumental rationalizations. Rather, cognitive and affective biases in the ways humans access and use information mean that interests influence beliefs; how they do so depends on available information, the social organization and practices of a professional sphere, and prevailing standards for generating knowledge.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- One: The Buddhist World and the United States at the Onset of the Cold War, 1941-1954 -- Two: Washington Formulates a Buddhist Policy, 1954-1957 -- Three: Thailand and the International Buddhist Arena, 1956-1962 -- Four: Reforming the Monks: The Cold War and Clerical Education in Thailand and Laos, 1954-1961 -- Five: Thailand and the International Response to the 1963 Buddhist Crisis in South Vietnam -- Six: Enforcing the Code: South Vietnam's "Struggle Movement" and the Limits of Thai Buddhist Conservatism -- Seven: Thailand's Buddhist Hierarchy Confronts Its Challengers, 1967-1975 -- Eight: The Rage of Thai Buddhism, 1975-1980 -- Conclusion: From Byoto to Kittivudho -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z

"Contemporary Issues in Southeast Asian American Studies" is the first anthology to critically examine Southeast Asian Americans and their communities. It offers contemporary perspectives of renowned Southeast Asian American scholars to complement insightful primary-source documents. Together, these selections highlight Southeast Asian American experiences from interdisciplinary and cross-cultural comparative approaches, and explore such topics and themes as: history, cultural productions, political activism and apathy, and economic and social integration. The essays are written in clear, jargon-free language accessible to undergraduate students, and each is followed by pedagogically engaging and provocative discussion questions. Students are encouraged to not only identify challenges and struggles but also to devise solutions to the difficult topics discussed in each chapter. Jonathan H. X. Lee is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies specializing in Southeast Asian and Sino-Southeast Asian American studies. Lee received a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2009. He is the Program Co-chair of the Religions of Asia section for the American Academy of Religion, Western Region (AAR/WR) conference, and is academic adviser and grant writer for South East Asian Cultural Heritage & Musical Performing Arts (SEACHAMPA). Lee is also a member of the National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans (NAFEA) and is a member of the editorial review board of the "Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement." His recent publications include "Cambodian American Experiences: Histories, Communities, Cultures, and Identities" (2010) and "The Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife" (on-press).

Arc of Containment recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from World War II through the end of American intervention in Vietnam. Setting aside the classic story of anxiety about falling dominoes, Wen-Qing Ngoei articulates a new regional history premised on strong security and sure containment guaranteed by Anglo-American cooperation. Ngoei argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with preexisting local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from European-dominated colonialism to US hegemony. Central to this revisionary strategic assessment is the place of British power and the effects of direct neocolonial military might and less overt cultural influences based on decades of colonial rule, as well as the considerable influence of Southeast Asian actors upon Anglo-American imperial strategy throughout the post-war period. Arc of Containment demonstrates that American failure in Vietnam had less long-term consequences than widely believed because British pro-West nationalism had been firmly entrenched twenty-plus years earlier. In effect, Ngoei argues, the Cold War in Southeast Asia was but one violent chapter in the continuous history of western imperialism in the region in the twentieth century.

Exposes the horrifying criminality of United States policy in Indochina during the Vietnam war.

The Nixon or Guam Doctrine of 1969 stressed the importance of progress towards regional cooperation and Asian collective security, indicating that Asian countries themselves should take the initiative in creating programs in which the United States could participate. This book analyses the development of United States regional cooperation policy on Southeast Asia and its importance to long-term planning for the region that had been the general aim of successive American post-war administrations. The author demonstrates the link between economic regional cooperation and collective security in Southeast Asia, placing regionalism in an international context by examining the influence United States policy and various important events had on the development of Southeast Asian regionalism. Through the analysis of primary material, including previously classified material, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and engagement with historiography of war and peace in Southeast Asia, the book puts forward the argument that Southeast Asian regional cooperation was influenced by both American and Asian policy and its development reflected the economic and political transformation of the post-war Southeast Asian landscape. It also examines the developments in British and Australian policy and how developments in Southeast Asia influenced and, in turn, were affected by the policies of the Western powers. Adding to the current discourse concerning the origins of Southeast Asian regionalism, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of Southeast Asian studies, United States political history, international relations and regionalism.