This is a book about the experience of a Lanna whose identity is a Siamese. He has lived in Thailand, New Zealand, England, Japan and Hungary.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Buddhism in Asia was transformed by the impact of colonial modernity and new technologies and began to spread in earnest to the West. Transnational networking among Asian Buddhists and early western converts engendered pioneering attempts to develop new kinds of Buddhism for a globalized world, in ways not controlled by any single sect or region. Drawing on new research by scholars worldwide, this book brings together some of the most extraordinary episodes and personalities of a period of almost a century from 1860-1960. Examples include Indian intellectuals who saw Buddhism as a homegrown path for a modern post-colonial future, poor whites ‘going native’ as Asian monks, a Brooklyn-born monk who sought to convert Mussolini, and the failed 1950s attempt to train British monks to establish a Thai sangha in Britain. Some of these stories represent creative failures, paths not taken, which may show us alternative possibilities for a more diverse Buddhism in a world dominated by religious nationalisms. Other pioneers paved the way for the mainstreaming of new forms of Buddhism in later decades, in time for the post-1960s takeoff of ‘global Buddhism’. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Buddhism.

This publication brings together current scholarship that focuses on the significance of performing arts heritage of royal courts in Southeast Asia. Royal courts have long been sites for the creation, exchange, maintenance, and development of myriad forms of performing arts and other distinctive cultural expressions. The first volume, Pusaka as Documented Heritage, consists of historical case studies, contexts and developments of royal court traditions, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

While the media tends to pay the most attention to violent secessionist movements or peaceful independence movements, it is just as important to understand why there are regions where political movements for autonomy fail to develop. In neglecting regions without political movements or full-blown independence demands, theories may be partial at best and incorrect at worst. State Institutions, Civic Associations, and Identity Demands examines over a dozen regions, comparing and contrasting successful cases to abandoned, unsuccessful, or dormant cases. The cases range from successful secession (East Timor, Singapore) and ongoing secessionist movements (Southern Philippines), to internally divided regional movements (Kachin State), low-level regionalist stirrings (Lanna, Taiwan), and local but not regional mobilization of identity (Bali, Minahasan), all the way to failed movements (Bataks, South Maluku) and regions that remain politically inert (East and North Malaysia, Northeast Thailand). While each chapter is written by a country expert, the contributions rely on a range of methods, from comparative historical analysis, to ethnography, field interviews, and data from public opinion surveys. Together, they contribute important new knowledge on little-known cases that nevertheless illuminate the history of regions and ethnic groups in Southeast Asia. Although focused on Southeast Asia, the book identifies the factors that can explain why movements emerge and successfully develop and concludes with a chapter by Henry Hale that illustrates how this can be applied globally.

This unusual and intriguing study of nationhood explores the 19th-century confrontation of ideas that transformed the kingdom of Siam into the modern conception of a nation. Siam Mapped challenges much that has been written on Thai history because it demonstrates convincingly that the physical and political definition of Thailand on which other works are based is anachronistic.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, most of the Theravada world of Southeast Asia came under the colonial domination of European powers. While this has long been seen as a central event in the development of modern forms of Theravada Buddhism, most discussions have focused on specific Buddhist communities or nations, and particularly their resistance to colonialism. The chapters in this book examine the many different colonial contexts and regimes that Theravada Buddhists experienced, not just those of European powers such as the British, French, but also the internal colonialism of China and Thailand. They show that while many Buddhists resisted colonialism, other Buddhists shared agendas with colonial powers, such as for the reform of the monastic community. They also show that in some places, such as Singapore and Malaysia, colonialism enabled the creation of Theravada Buddhist communities. The book demonstrates the importance of thinking about colonialism both locally and regionally. Providing a new understanding of the breadth of experiences of Theravada and colonialism across Asia., this book will be of interest to scholars in the field of Buddhist Studies, Asian History, Comparative World History, Southeast Asian Studies and Religious Studies.

This book addresses the numerous national movements of ethnic groups around the world seeking independence, more self-rule, or autonomy—movements that have proliferated exponentially in the 21st century. In the last 15 years, globalization, religious radicalization, economic changes, endangered cultures and languages, cultural suppression, racial tensions, and many other factors have stimulated the emergence of autonomy and independence movements in every corner of the world—even in areas formerly considered immune to self-government demands such as South America. Researching the numerous ethnic groups seeking autonomy or independence worldwide previously required referencing many specialized publications. This book makes this difficult-to-find information available in a single volume, presented in a simple format accessible to everyone, from high school readers to scholars in advanced studies programs. The book provides an extensive update to Greenwood's Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups around the World that was published more than a decade earlier. Each ethnic group receives an alphabetically organized entry containing information such as alternate names, population figures, flag or flags, geography, history, culture, and languages. All the information readers need to understand the motivating factors behind each movement and the current situation of each ethnic group is presented in a compact summary. Fact boxes at the beginning of each entry enable students to quickly access key information, and consistent entry structure makes for easy cross-cultural comparisons.