Blog
The blog echoes the remit of the RSAA, covering current affairs, culture, travel, exploration and recent history from the Levant to East Asia.
Opinions expressed in posts are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
Contributions
Got a subject you would like to post about? Please contact us for a copy of our editorial guidance. Publication is at the RSAA’s discretion
The Textile Obsessed Island of Sumba
David and Sue Richardson are independent UK-based specialists in Asian textiles Just a 90-minute flight from the tourist-choked streets of southern Bali lies the fascinating and rarely visited island of Sumba, with its unique religion, its megalithic culture and its superb textiles. In the past Sumba was divided into over thirty domains, each led by…
Is the Resurgence of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Symptomatic of a Collapsing State?
Marcus Andreopoulos is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, and a Subject Matter Expert with the Global Threats Advisory Group at NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme Throughout April in Pakistan, shortly before tensions with India escalated into a full-blown conflict, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) momentarily reclaimed the spotlight. For a brief period, attention…
From Osh to Dushanbe: Along the Silk Road
Christopher Wilton-Steer is a travel photographer, writer and the Global Lead for Communications at the Aga Khan Foundation There were perhaps 300 people waiting to cross at the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. I estimated a six hour wait time. But, as elsewhere in Central Asia, as soon as I – a tourist – was spotted I was…
Underground Counterculture in Tashkent: The First Independent Theatre in the Soviet Union
Lucas Fraser-Taliente It’s a Wednesday night in the centre of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The darkness of the small wooden stage in front of me is disturbed only by the faint blue glow of the supertitle screens. A soft white gleam emerges to illuminate the entrance of our young protagonist, Makhzum. His father, a stiff and bespectacled…
Science Diplomacy in Asia: A Quiet Force for Peace and Progress
Dr Sandeep Sandhu FRSB is Head of Stakeholder Relationships at Innovate UK Business Connect and a trustee of the RSAA In a world where headlines are dominated by political tensions, territorial disputes, and trade wars, it’s easy to overlook a quieter but equally powerful force reshaping international relations: science diplomacy. At its heart, science diplomacy…
The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) at Angkor Wat – A Report
Hans Leisen & Esther von Plehwe-Leisen From the 9th to the 14th century the Khmer, the ancestors of modern-day Cambodians, reigned over a vast empire in Southeast Asia. Angkor was the capital city of this empire and is today home to countless temples that remain from that period. They are built from sandstone and brick…
What Does Vietnam Actually Celebrate on 30 April?
Bill Hayton is the editor of the RSAA’s journal Asian Affairs and was the BBC reporter in Vietnam in 2006-7 On 30 April, Vietnam marks the anniversary of the formal end of a war. But how long did that war last? Did it begin in 1965 with the arrival of American combat troops in Vietnam,…
Trump and Iran: Between Nuclear Compromise and Military Conflict
Amin Saikal is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Adjunct Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies President Donald Trump’s gunboat diplomacy has put Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a…
Kuwaiti Exceptionalism Under Siege
Sean Yom is Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University, Pennsylvania and Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN). Far from the fires of Gaza and the battlefields of Syria, a titanic struggle for Middle Eastern democracy is playing out in an unassuming Arabian kingdom. At the head of the Arabian…
How to build a city, fast: life in one of China’s ‘new areas’
Sean Paterson is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society living in Guangzhou Many of us in the UK are familiar with the trope of a old man taking his grandson for a walk and saying, ‘all this was fields when I was a boy’. In many parts of China, it could do with a…
Pakistan – An Era Past
Most recently a Director of VanEck in New York, Tom Butcher has travelled extensively, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. Fortunately, at a little after four in the morning during a severe thunderstorm, the sole policeman at an empty Zero Point in Islamabad flagged down one of the very few vehicles on the road and…
South Korea’s Martial Law Peripeteia
Sung-Yoon Lee is a Korea expert and board member of The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Beyond platitudes like reaffirmation of the rule of law, what the ouster of Yoon Suk Yeol – South Korea’s conservative president impeached for declaring martial law last December – illustrates is that in politics it pays to…
Islam in the Modern World
Trevor Mostyn is a Lecturer in Middle East History at the University of Oxford teaching a course on “Islam in the Modern World” Writing a book on the United Arab Emirates (UAE), I introduced myself to the town councillors of Fujairah in my best classical Arabic. Delighted, they promptly closed down their offices and produced…
More-Than-Human Heritages of the Bhutanese Highlands
Jelle J P Wouters, Erik de Maaker, Chencho Dorji, Suraj Bhattarai, & Nithil Dennis Heritage studies and projects in Asia have overwhelmingly focused on sedentary populations, valley civilisations, ancient cities, and monumental religious and political sites. These have been affirmed as historical bearers of material and cultural order, progress, enlightenment, and civilisation, and therefore worthy…
Kazakhstan’s New “Middle Power” Myth
Charles J Sullivan, PhD is a scholar on Central Asia and the author of Leaders of the Nation: Kazakhstan during the Twilight of the Nazarbayev Era and the Russo-Ukrainian War Kazakhstan is a developing country with substantial promise. It is a major oil exporter and its territory holds important rare earth deposits. Kazakhstan’s population of…
Rodrigo Duterte’s Trial Before the International Criminal Court: Unprecedented
Professor Aries A Arugay is Coordinator of the Philippine Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Michael T Tiu Jr is Assistant Professor at the latter specialising in international criminal and human rights law The International Criminal Court’s warrant of…
Laos – An Era Past
Most recently a Director of VanEck in New York, Tom Butcher has travelled extensively, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. As it is now, back in the mid ‘80s, the Isan region of Thailand’s northeast was poor. But I loved it not only for the access it offered to the Mekong, but also for the…
Earthquake Hazard in Asia: A Growing Problem
Richard Walker is Professor of Tectonics at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford. He leads the Active Tectonics and Earthquakes Research Group, and is the Oxford lead of the UK Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics. The desert town of Tabas-e-Golshan, eastern Iran, offers welcome respite from the heat…