Stretched out along the Western rim of the Pacific, historically torn between Chinese and US influence, the Philippines has been troubled by internal conflicts since its independence in 1946. In 1972, following two decades of communist insurgency and social unrest, President Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law and established a 14-year dictatorship. Although Marcos was overthrown in 1986, the democracy that followed, as in many South-East Asian states, has been beleaguered by insurgency, mutiny, corruption and violence. Post-Colonial Statecraft in South East Asia, an historically aware ethnography of the region, aims to account for centralizing measures by the state and the resistance that it encounters when policing the frontiers. In the first study of its kind, and the result of several years of field research, Pak Nung Wong maps out the complex interweaving power structures of the tribal rulers in the northern regions of the Philippines.Featuring interviews with a range of local ac
