8 th Euroseas conference Vienna, 11–14 August 2015

— Viewing Education in High Colonial Southeast Asia through a Transnational Lens
Erin Hardacker (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
At the turn of the twentieth century the presence of Western colonizers in Southeast Asia was ubiquitous. Yet Western 
educational policies and practices were not pervasive in Southeast Asia. Indeed, education in high colonial Southeast 
Asia (c.1870–1939) often was the product of interactions between colonizer and colonized. By using a transnational 
lens, one sees that the story of education in high colonial Southeast Asia is a remarkably similar one across the dif-
ferent colonial contexts: colonizers, influenced by European liberalism, industrial and economic developments, and/
or administrative rationalization, entered a colonial context with a set of desired outcomes; the financial and infra-
structural realities of implementation, as well as interactions with locals, resulted in educational policies and practices 
different than originally intended; and these modified policies and practices produced both expected and unexpected 
outcomes. This essay will focus on two outcomes of education in high colonial Southeast Asia—the intended cre-
ation of bilingual indigenous clerks and intermediaries to assist with the daily running of the colonial state, and the 
unintended formation of an indigenous intelligentsia and anti-colonial sentiment. Both educational outcomes would 
contribute to the end of the high colonial era in Southeast Asia and the subsequent rise of independent nation-states.

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— The Modernisation of Female Education and the Emergence of Class-Conflict Between Literate Groups of 
Women in Siam 1870–1910
Natanaree Posrithong (Australian National University)
This paper studies the impact of the modernisation of education on women from 1870 to 1910, which will concen-
trate on both the publicly funded form of female schools and the private missionary schools. The reforms in the ad-
ministration of the fai nai (the inner court) under King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) equipped many royal elite women 
with skills and a level of education never previously enjoyed by Siamese women. As a consequence, Queen Saowapha 
took initiatives to advance the place of women in the wider society in the field of public education. Nevertheless, this 
royal elite female agency in the field of public education faced two sets of tensions, namely were, first, resistance from 
Chulalongkorn to female education, and second, competition from foreign missionaries. This paper aims to study the 
historical development of female education in the frame of class conflict between elite women of the early modern 
period of Siam as a parallel development to the rising literacy levels in Siamese society.
In order to study the development of female education in the period between 1870 and 1910, this paper will first ex-
plore early initiatives of Queen Saowapha, who sought to advance the place of women in the wider society through 
education by supporting the founding of Sunanthalai Girls’ School in 1892. Then, this paper will address the establish-
ment of the missionary-run girls’ school, Kunlasatri Wang Lang (1874), as the major rival school to Queen Saowapha’s 
sponsored Sunanthalai School. This missionary-run school also served a key factor in the rise of commoner elite 
women, which highlights the emergence of class-conflict between different groups of literate women of Siam.
— The Legend of the ‘Lost Book’ and the Value of Modern Education among the Karen People in Myanmar, Thai-
land and the United Kingdom
Pia Vogler (University of Oxford)
My presentation discusses the process of how the legend of the lost book has been used to explain social inequalities 
related to modern education in a context of colonization and missionary activity. The introduction of modern educa-
tion to the peoples of Burma, including the Karen, has historically been linked to Christian missionaries and British 
Empire building. However, the value of access to formal knowledge has been enshrined in Karen mythology, espe-
cially in the legend of the lost book. According to this legend, education is a gift that the Karen once received from the 
creator god. The gift was received but lost to the Karen´s younger ‘white’ brother. Until today, this is legend has been 
told and retold in various ways, but in essence it explains an original injustice that caused the Karen to remain mostly 
engaged in subsistence farming whilst other peoples advanced in technology and modern knowledge. The legend 
became prominent during the Karen´s encounters with 19th century American Baptist missionaries who encouraged 
the Karen to see in the Bible their ‘lost book’
— Van quoc ngu - Teaching Modernity through Classics: Women’s Education in Colonial Vietnam
Marta Zatloukalova (Charles University in Prague)
Since the second half of the 20th century Vietnam has gone through enormous social and cultural changes, encoun-
tering the western culture and its values. Modernity penetrated all social strata. Traditional Confucian elites were cut 
off from political power by changes in the administrative system and the latinized script was supposed to be one of the 
tools in creating a whole new elite.
Education reforms applied by the French become another tool of modernization. Although the curriculum in new 
franco-vietnamese schools brought a completely new dimension into the classical confucian education which was 
looked down upon as old-fashioned, lots of concepts of Confucianism such as filial piety, loyalty etc. had a strong 
position in the new curriculum created by the French administration.
I argue that although the French colonial administrative applied modern education system into Vietnamese environ-
ment, deeply rooted Confucian concepts that prevailed in the society and in most schooling texts were a benefit that 
helped France and made its management of the region easier, in a similar fashion to emperors and the empire in the 
past centuries.
A textbook Van quoc ngu (1929) for women will serve as an example of textbook for the teaching of reading and writ-
ing latinized script - a modern element with classical Confucian concepts of the four virtues which girls were taught 
to possess.

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Panel: Psychiatric Institutions in Colonial Southeast Asia: New Research  
and Comparisons 
convener: Hans Pols (University of Sydney)
discussants: Hans Pols (University of Sydney), Harry Yi-Jui Wu (Nanyang Technolgical University)
panel abstract
Over the past 20 to 30 years, various researchers have explored the role of mental hospitals in colonial societies by 
focusing on their role in maintaining social control, formulating an ideology of benign colonialism, and as an insti-
tution to take care of individuals suffering from a wide range of chronic conditions. Various assumptions about the 
significance of race, ethnicity, and social class on the nature and expression of mental illness as well as the organisation 
of mental hospitals have been explored. Most of this research has focused on mental hospitals in Africa and India. In 
this panel, we aim to bring together a number of scholars on the history of mental hospitals in Southeast Asia.
Several researchers have already concluded that mental hospitals in Southeast Asia faced very similar challenges, 
such as dealing with overcrowding, difficulties related to discharging patients to the community, the often cumber-
some procedures involved with commitment, and the great expense in building, running, and maintaining mental 
hospitals. In this panel we focus how these challenges were met in different colonial spaces in Southeast Asia. In ad-
dition, we focus on the many interactions between psychiatrists within Southeast Asia at conferences of Far Eastern 
Association of Tropical Medicine and other occasions. Physician relied on these interactions to a greater extent than 
on their ties with the colleagues in Europe. In this panel we explore the formation of a psychiatric discourse specific 
to Southeast Asia.
— A Mental Health System in the Colonies? The Case of the Dutch East Indies
Sebastiaan Broere (Utrecht University)
Between roughly 1860 and 1925, the colonial administration of the Dutch East Indies set up an extensive and, in 
comparison to the region, very impressive network of asylums, acute care facilities, and agricultural colonies that 
eventually accommodated over ten thousand patients. Thus far, most research on the history of psychiatry in the for-
mer Dutch colony has focused on the publications of psychiatrists in medical journals. Yet these publications are not 
the best of all sources to illuminate the everyday practices of the colonial asylum and its position and function within 
the Dutch East Indies’ health care system. In this paper, I will provide a preliminary analysis of everyday patient life in 
these asylums. On the basis of patient records from the mental hospital near Magelang in Central-Java, which opened 
its doors in 1923, I will discuss the nature of the patient population and present demographical information, admis-
sion rates, and discharge rates.
— Suicide in the Dutch East Indies Newspapers around the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Liesbeth Hesselink (KITLV)
In this paper, I will analyse the way in which suicide was covered in the Dutch-language newspapers in the Dutch East 
Indies around the turn of the twentieth century. Physicians and psychiatrists usually associate suicide with the pres-
ence of mental illness and recommended institutionalisation. In the Dutch East Indies, cases of suicide were reported 
openly; it does not appear that it was strongly associated with stigma. Yet medical and psychiatric themes are almost 
absent. Newspapers reported on suicides committed by European, Chinese, and Indonesian individuals. Reports of 
women committing suicide appeared much less frequently. Common explanations were poverty, sickness, financial 
problems, and disappointment in love. Occasionally, the fear of having to fight in the Aceh-war, bad labour conditions, 
and the tropical climate are mentioned. As methods to commit suicide poisoning and hanging are mentioned most 
frequently. At times, it was assumed that the individuals involved suffered from a mental disorder.
— Documenting les Dingues: Geographies of Madness in British Burma and French Indochina
Trude Jacobsen (Northern Illinois University)
By the mid-19th century, British and French physicians had begun to dismantle the notion of mental illness as some-

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thing permanent and shameful, beginning with the work of Seguin in France and the Lunacy Commission in England. 
A more humane treatment of psychiatric disorders evolved in the metropole, culminating in institutions such as the 
Holloway Sanatorium at Virginia Water, where patients took tea and played billiards in between sessions with their 
doctors. Yet was this treatment replicated in the colonies, where class and race dictated many interactions with the 
state? This paper explores the bureaucracy surrounding admission to, and release from, institutions designated for 
the treatment of psychiatric illness – and the spaces in which this treatment took place in British Burma and French 
Indochina.
— Colonial Psychiatry beyond the Asylum in Burma
Jonathan Saha (University of Bristol)
Histories of colonial psychiatry have often focused on lunatic asylums and mental hospitals. This focus reflects the 
wider symbolic and historiographic significance of these institutions. However, recently historians have moved be-
yond the walls of these supposedly ‘complete and austere institutions’. They have traced the diverse routes that led to 
incarceration, uncovered the role played by families in diagnosis and treatment, and followed the transfer of patients 
between different imperial sites. The asylum walls now appear to have been far more porous than was once thought. In 
this paper, I will attempt to push this further by examining different spaces in which psychiatric thought was deployed. 
In particular, the paper will examine frontier areas and the police force in early-twentieth-century British Burma. 
These were important sites in the history of state-backed mental sciences in the colony. Lunacy legislation was used by 
the colonial government as a means to expand the state’s influence in the Chin Hills, alongside attempts to suppress 
slavery and human sacrifice. In the interwar years the government was also concerned by what it saw as a rise in ‘men-
tal derangement’ among young recruits in the police. Through these particular cases, the paper will re-interrogate the 
relationship between state practices and psychiatric knowledge in a colonial context.
— The Trading Zone of Psychiatric Epidemiological Studies between Taiwan and the WHO in Early Postwar 
Period
Harry Yi-Jui Wu (Nanyang Technolgical University)
This paper illustrates the trading zone (Galison 1997) in which the exchange of knowledge, sharing of methods and 
the formation of collaborative research were enabled between Taiwan and the World Health Organization by discuss-
ing a series of large scale epidemiological studies on mental disorders conducted by the research team of National 
Taiwan University Hospital in early postwar years, concerning their purpose, significance, and legacy within Taiwan 
itself and in the international social psychiatry projects led by the WHO. It analyzes the active and passive roles these 
studies played in the context of post-war decolonization and the milieu of internationalism in the new world order 
created by the United Nations and its specialized agencies. It is assumed that influenced by the survey-based Japanese 
ethnological studies developed in the first half of the 20th Century and designed for the purpose of disciplinary build-
ing after WWII, the psychiatric epidemiological research conducted in Taiwan not only corresponded the imagery of 
the international scientific communities to “deracialize” human sciences but also fulfilled the pursuit of a knowledge 
based the WHO’s ideology of “world citizenship”. The cultural determinism approach not only matched then domi-
nant Neo-Freudian theories of psychopathology, moving away from the bequest of bio-determinism carried forward 
from the experiences of colonial psychiatry, but also laid down the foundation of the universal profiles of mental dis-
orders once attempted to establish by the WHO mental health experts. In addition, the WHO’s urgency of outsourc-
ing to identify and prioritize health issues and the underdeveloped countries’ mentality of administrative pilgrimage 
(Amrith 2006) also facilitated the international large-scale research in social psychiatry.
III. (Trans)Regional Politics
Panel: ASEAN and Regional Integration of East Asia 
convener: Jae Hyeok Shin (Korea University)
discussants: Salvador Santino Regilme (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany/Northern Illinois University), Jae 
Hyeok Shin (Korea University)

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panel abstract
Regional integration has been one of the most popular topics in the study of East Asian politics. Despite ample opti-
mism and pessimism about integration of East Asian states, few studies have offered generalizable theoretical expla-
nations of the origins of and the obstacles to regional integration. What causes regional integration? How integration 
proceeds and spreads to an adjacent region? What hinders integration process? This panel aims to address these ques-
tions in the context of East Asia drawing on the experience of ASEAN. 
The panel starts with Son, ‘Learning by Association? ASEAN Centrality, the Trilateral Summit, and the Trivialization 
of Regionalist Norms and Institutions in East Asia’, which demonstrates how integration of Southeast Asia was dif-
fused to Trilateral Summit in Northeast Asia, and investigates why the trilateral process was hampered.
The paper is followed by Kim, ‘ASEAN Centrality and Regional Integration of East Asia’, suggests that a lack of respect 
for the role of ASEAN as a dominant agent hinders East Asian regional integration. Next, ASEAN is often criticized by 
its ineffectiveness in making decisions, but Park and Shin, ‘The Decision Making System of ASEAN and the ASEAN 
Way’, find that ASEAN has effective decision making institutions that prove “ASEAN way” to be highly suitable for 
the member states. Finally, Bobowski and Drelich-Skulska, ‘Contemporary Asian Trade Regionalism: Exclusion vs. 
Inclusion Dilemma in the Context of Mega-Regional Projects of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional Com-
prehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)’, addresses an issue of membership in mega-regional trade frameworks—
TPP and RCEP—considering the orientations of Japanese and South Korean trade policies in the context of rivalry 
between China and the United States.
— Contemporary Asian Trade Regionalism. Exclusion vs. Inclusion Dilemma in the Context of Mega-Regional 
Projects of Trans-Pacific Partnership (Tpp), and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (Rcep). 
Sebastian Bobowski (Wroclaw University of Economics), Boguslawa Skulska (Wroclaw University of Economics) 
The paper is studying a phenomenon of trade regionalism in Asia, basing on currently emerging mega-regional trade 
projects of TPP and RCEP. An author attempts to explain the issue of membership in regional trade frameworks, 
pointing out the context of both intra– and extra–regional rivalry between China, and the United States, while con-
sidering orientations of Japanese and South Korean trade policies. The substance of the analysis has been drawn as 
exclusion vs. inclusion dilemma. When studying TPP, author raises the question of China’s exclusion – emerging 
regional rival of both Japan and the United States - while, in the context of RCEP, backed by Association of Southeast 
Asian Nations (ASEAN), however, intensively pushed by China – the question of exclusion of the United States and 
avoidance of exclusion by Japan. Author delivers an example of Japan’s prioritization of dominating position within 
regional frameworks, therefore, tendency towards exclusion of the other influential states, perceived as potential rivals 
over leadership in a given framework. Therefore, author regards the way Japan is playing Chinese card in TPP talks, 
so as the US card in RCEP talks. Finally, author would like to discuss South Korean’s approach to both mega-regional 
trade projects.
— Towards Value-Based, Open, Inclusive Community – East Asian Regionalism of Tommorow? 
Boguslawa Drelich-Skulska (Wroclaw University of Economics), Sebastian Bobowski (Wroclaw University of 
Economics)
East Asia is undoubtedly the region of unprecedented at the world scale dynamism of events, both in the economic 
and political terms. Growing economic power of China is presently a serious threat to the traditional regional diplo-
matic leadership of Japan, plunged into internal problems. Mutual distrust boosted by historical resentments contrib-
uted to the constitution of competing visions of East Asian regionalism, drawing, on the one hand, on the realm of 
values as the foundation of a common identity, and solidarity, on the other hand, on the different concepts of member-
ship of the Southeast, and South Asian countries, so as the representatives of Oceania. Promoted through the path of 
soft diplomacy, Japanese vision of a broad community, involving, in addition to ASEAN, democratic countries of the 
South, and Oceania, built on a foundation of universal values of the Western world, provided a natural counterbalance 
to the narrower, more conservative, strictly Asian concept of Beijing. The involvement of the core of ASEAN, namely 
Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, together with Canada, 
Mexico, Chile and Peru in the Trans - Pacific Partnership, met with Beijing’s counter-proposal in the form of Regional 
Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which indicates that the soft strategy game has gone up to the higher level. 

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The coming years will resolve the dilemma which vision of economic regionalism is more attractive and vital - the 
expected breakthroughs include, in particular, the conclusion of a trilateral China - Japan – Republic of Korea free 
trade agreement, the implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community, the intensification of discussions around 
the RCEP project, finally - the evolution of ambivalent, so far, Beijing’s stance towards TPP project. In the case of the 
latter, it is critical to observe the dialogue between China, and ASEAN at the sectoral level, initiated in 2011, imple-
mentation of the Foreign Investment Protection Agreement concluded with Canada in 2012, and finally - negotiations 
on the free trade agreement with Australia. Undoubtedly, narrow, Asian formula of regionalism in East Asia has lost 
its importance in the face of both intra – and extra – regional challenges.
— ASEAN Centrality and Regional Integration of East Asia 
Hyung Jong Kim (Yonsei University at Wonju)
This study considers the implications of the changing role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 
the process of regional integration in East Asia by investigating ASEAN centrality. The trajectory of ASEAN since the 
economic crisis in 1997-98 has shown the dual process. This process consists of on the one hand the ‘deepening’ of 
Southeast Asian regionalism towards integration, and on the other hand the ‘widening’ of this regionalism by ASEAN 
participation in East Asian regionalism. As to the mechanism, there is an increasing asymmetry among ASEAN mem-
ber states brought about by the expansion into ten states. This asymmetry becomes apparent with ASEAN engagement 
in East Asian regional regionalism where, because of rivalry of the non ASEAN states such as China, Japan and South 
Korea, bilateralism of these states with individual ASEAN members has become a significant element.
 This suggests a lack of respect for the role of ASEAN as a dominant agent for East Asian regional integration in the 
long term. The transformation of East Asian regionalism into regional integration is through a long-term incremental 
process which may not be seen clearly without undisputed leadership. This paper argues that the movement towards 
the regional integration in East Asia should be considered with basic acceptance of the ASEAN centrality which is 
under challenge and led by the continuous organized efforts of many actors who desire to see progressive changes.