Seeing Mainland Southeast Asian Experiences from the Early Modern Empire Perspective (original) (raw)
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Southeast Asia in Global History: 1500 to Present (L22 HIS 100 Syllabus, WUSTL, 2017)
This introductory survey course traces the formation of Southeast Asia from the sixteenth century to the present. Students will closely examine how political, social and religious ideologies developed in different parts of Southeast Asia, including the nation-states of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. The course traces the conceptualization of Southeast Asia as a region, examines political configurations, trade connections, religious division, and kinship structures in both continental and insular Southeast Asia, and discusses the Indian, Islamic, and Chinese influence in the region. It will further explore the wide-ranging impact of European colonialism and competition since the seventeenth century, Japanese expansion and American involvement during and after WWII. The course concludes with an examination of nascent nation-states in the postwar period. Students will explore this history through engagement with primary and secondary sources. March 29, 2017: Registration opens for the course.
History Without Borders: The Making of an Asian World Region, 1000-1800
2011
The global trends that have seen the dramatic rise of Asian economies suggest a turning of the wheel. Students of world history will recall that China, Japan, and India held a central place in the premodern world as producers and exporters of silks, ceramics, and cottons, while their populations and economies vastly dwarfed those of medieval Europe. The sprawling tropical zone of Southeast Asia, known as a prime source of spices and natural commodities, also boasted impressive civilizations. Visitors to the temple complexes of Angkor and Borobudur, in Cambodia and Java respectively, still nd themselves awed. Still we are perplexed as to how this historical region, boasting internationally known trade emporia, dropped off the center stage of world history. Did colonialism and imperialism turn the tide against indigenous agency? Or was stagnation an inevitable feature of life? Indeed, is it even desirable to write an autonomous history of a broader East-Southeast Asian region? We acknowledge that a discussion of maritime trade in the development of modern economies in Southeast Asia is still controversial, especially with respect to the mix of social, economic, and cultural in uences. But we seek to go further by asking a series of interrelated questions, as to whether nascent capitalism ever developed in this region, or whether the region remained peripheral to the European (and Chinese) core? We also wonder about the timing and nature of change called up by the European intervention. We wish to identify local production centers, such as for metallurgy, porcelain, and textiles, just as we seek to investigate the exchange dynamics between indigenous and foreign merchant communities? Allowing for an "age of commerce" red up by the European intervention, can we adduce a 17th-century crisis in the broader East
2019
Précis: This paper examines the dominant forces at play in East Asia in an effort to chart regional dynamics within a global non-Eurocentric framework in the course of three epochs.* In the first era, spanning the 16 to the early 19 century a China-centered tributary trade order provided a geopolitical framework within which private trade could also flourish. At its height in the 18 century, as East Asia linked to a wider regional and global economy, core areas achieved high levels of peace, prosperity and stability. The second period is notable for dislocation, war and radical transformation spanning the years 1840-1970. In this era profound transformations were the product of system disintegration, colonial rule, world wars, and anti-colonial wars and revolutions. With the collapse of the regional order, bilateral relations, colonial and postcolonial, predominated. Since the 1970s there have been signs of the emergence of a third epoch notable for progress toward the formation of ...
HumaNetten, 2016
The present special issue of HumaNetten includes four essays about the historical development of the state and polity in Burma, Vietnam, and the archipelagic area east of Java. 1 All four articles examine the historical development of Southeast Asian states in original ways. Specifically, we are interested not in studying these polities in the conventional approach, either in isolation or restricted to a particular period. Building on comparative and regional studies by scholars such as Anthony Reid and Victor Lieberman, our articles focus on historical developments in Southeast Asia while seeking to make fresh and innovative connections and comparisons across periods or across regions. These connections and comparisons illuminate important aspects of Southeast Asian history that have been obscured in much existing scholarship. For example, Michael Charney ventures beyond the Southeast Asian region to compare the systems of transport in premodern and colonial Ghana to those in Burma of similar periods. In his paper, Hans Hägerdal contrasts the development of the small-sized kingdoms and principalities east of Java with that of larger states on mainland Southeast Asia. His focus is on the early modern period but he is able to draw implications for later periods. Tuong Vu's article borrows concepts from studies of central Asia and uses the contrast between China's northern and southern frontiers to explore the synergies between China and Vietnam over the length of their histories. He offers premodern, early modern, and modern examples of Vietnamese imperialism in the paper. Claire Sutherland calls on scholars of contemporary Southeast Asia to transcend the nation-state as an analytical framework. She proposes the concept of "postmodern mandala" as an alternative way to theorize about contemporary Southeast Asian politics, with Vietnam as a test case. While our articles do not cover every polity or every period in Southeast Asia, we believe the papers together make two important contributions to broad scholarship across the region and beyond. First, the papers enhance our knowledge about the differentiated process of integration and consolidation in Southeast Asia. Hägerdal's article shows that the process was disrupted in the archipelagic area east of Java because of European penetration in the