授業関係のお知らせ

In this week, we discussed the following topics in the movie Max Havelaar.

1. The Dutch colonialism in Indonesia was an indirect rule in the sense that it relied on local rulers to control the villagers' production of commodity products, such as coffee. While the farmers were exploited, both the Dutch and the local rulers benefitted from this system.

2. The movie shows a Chinese man among the grievants at Max Havelaar's office in Manado. He wore his hair in the style called the queue, which was imposed on Chinese men by the Manchurian rulers during the Qing era. In Southeast Asia, many Chinese men took the role of middlemen between the ruling Dutch and the ruled local population in what is often called a "plural society."

After dealing with the movie, we briefly discussed the reasons why Thailand managed to avoid being colonized by European powers (even though it had to give up parts of the territory). One of the reasons is that Thailand was regarded as a buffer zone by the French and the British. Another reason is that Thai rulers became conscious of the importance of the nation-building and modernization of Thai society. We watched and discuss a video clip from the 1956 movie "The King and I" to see how Thai's modernization process was dealt with (in a Holywood way).

In the following week, we will continue to discuss Asian immigrants, especially Chinese, in Southeast Asia.