Rice In Malaya: A Study In Historical Geography

Rice is a dietary staple for virtually every Malaysian, to the extent that in each of the major languages in Malaysia, rice means food and food means rice. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Rice in Malaya opens with an examination of the often fragmentary evidence of rice-growing in prehistoric South-East Asia and then considers the great changes that followed the rise of commercial agriculture in the region before and during colonial times.

A pioneering work when it first appeared in 1977, the book successfully combines the area-by-area approach of the geographer with the period-by-period approach of the historian to give a well-balanced picture of rice cultivation. The comprehensive use of evidence in several languages made the study a definitive work.

This re-issued of Rice in Malaya presents a classic piece of scholarship available to a new generation of readers. The book remains of great importance not only to geographers, historians, agriculturalists and economists, and to anyone with an interest in South-East Asia, for it explains in great measure many of the deeply-etched patterns of life in modern Malaysia.

Publisher: NUS Press

Paperback

2012

ISBN: 9789971695774