Southeast Asia

Joost Schouten was one of the ablest servants of the 17th-century Dutch East India Company, but he came a serious cropper when his fellow countrymen discovered his ‘crimes against nature’.

Administrator, Orientalist, patron of science and founder of Singapore, Raffles was an enlightened Governor of Java during the British occupation, 1811-1816.

Britain’s loss of Singapore in February 1942 was a terrible blow. But Japan failed to make the most of its prize, says Malcolm Murfett.

The ill-fated fortress was opened on February 14th 1938.

Marilyn V. Longmuir asks if Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent election victory completes the political journey begun by her father?

The conquest of Java, now part of Indonesia, is one of the least known episodes of British imperialism. But this short interregnum influenced the governance of the Indian Raj and proved a significant stepping stone in the career of the founder of Singapore.

It is a deeply unfashionable thing to ask, says Tim Stanley, but might a nation's history be affected by the character of its people?

Richard Cavendish remembers the attempted coup against the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, in 1960.

The American soldiers who fought their way through the islands of the Pacific during the Second World War encountered fierce Japanese resistance but few local people. That all changed with the invasion of the Mariana Islands, says Matthew Hughes.

Richard Cavendish remembers how a former-British colony gained a long-serving leader.