ABSTRACT
I offer this modest contribution to John Whitmore, thinking with pleasure of the intellectual atmosphere in Southeast Asian studies at Yale during the time I worked there in 1967–1970 preparing my PhD. The Asian studies faculty where John offered courses in Southeast Asian history was open to new ideas and interpretations, which permitted me to propose and conclude a thesis topic which had long been considered impossible to achieve, and which would have excluded me from at least one other of the better-known Southeast Asian programs.
