Southeast Asia

Mao Zedong once said that Taiwan should be independent, but the Chinese Communist Party has since changed its mind on the ‘renegade province’. How Chinese is Taiwan?

Thailand’s monarchy is today one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful, but the king has faced a constant struggle for survival. 

The Thai-Burma railway was built by prisoners of war in appalling conditions. The dead were treated with a dignity denied the living.

The story of Indonesia’s anti-Communist coup, the rise to power of a pro-western regime and its murderous aftermath.

The Indonesian genocide of 1965 has been smothered in silence for half a century.

Vietnamese national identity has been forged in opposition to foreign invaders. But while a united Vietnam is a recent development, the country has long been coloniser as well as colonised.

South-East Asia’s ‘Golden Triangle’ dominated the world’s opium production during the 1980s. David Hutt reveals how a young soldier from north Burma took on the United States government to become the region’s most notorious drug lord.

Possibly the most destructive volcanic eruption of all time occurred on 10 April 1815.