Contents List of Illustrations vi List of Maps and Tables vii Preface by M. C. Ricklefs viii Acknowledgements xii Orthography xiii Abbreviations and Acronyms xiv Maps xvi 1 Ethnic Groups, Early Cultures and Social Structures 1 2 Early State Formation 18 3 ‘Classical’ States at Their Height 36 4 New Global Religions and Ideas from the Thirteenth Century 69 5 The Rise of New States from the Fourteenth Century 92 6 Non-Indigenous Actors Old and New 116 7 Early Modern Southeast Asian States 134 8 Colonial Communities, c.1800–1900 165 9 Reform, New Ideas and the 1930s Crisis (c.1900–1942) 238 10 World War II in Southeast Asia (1942–1945) 292 11 Regaining Independence in the Decades After 1945 318 12 Building Nations, to c.1990 363 13 Boom and Bust in Southeast Asia c.1990–2008 425 14 Southeast Asia Today 461 Recommended Readings 472 Bibliography 488 Index and Glossary 517 v 1 Ethnic Groups, Early Cultures and Social Structures Introduction The ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity of Southeast Asia is by no means a recent phenomenon; archeological evidence suggests that this diversity extends back thousands of years into the distant past. Much of the prehistoric era, of course, remains difficult to reconstruct. Carbon dating and other tech- niques allow us to sketch out a rough chronology for the prehistoric period, along with some general inferences about agriculture, social ranking, and primordial spiritual beliefs. Linking these traces of long-vanished peoples to present-day inhabitants is another matter, however. A skull can be measured and identified in terms of some human group, but it cannot tell us what language the person spoke. Common patterns in burial practices or pottery motifs in different areas suggest communication links and cultural ties, but we cannot be certain whether these different peoples were related to each other or simply in regular contact. Moreover, scholarly theories about migration into and within Southeast Asia have changed drastically over the past half-century, thus reshaping our understanding of the broader pre-historic picture. Ethnohistory It is often helpful to approach the ethnic mosaic of Southeast Asia through an overview of the main linguistic families. Language and ethnicity do not always overlap, because over time individuals and groups can change their speech as well as their ethnic identity. However, focusing on language does allow us to make some general observations about different groups of peoples and also to suggest long-term patterns in the movement of these peoples. After a brief introduction of the major families, we will attempt to place each of them within the larger history of Southeast Asia. With a few exceptions found in the easternmost islands of Indonesia, all indigenous Southeast Asian languages can be assigned to one of five families: Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Tai, Tibeto-Burman, and Hmong-Mien. The term 1 2 A NEW HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA ‘indigenous’ is used here to exclude the languages spoken by more recent immi- grants from China and India. The Austroasiatic languages – often referred to as Mon-Khmer – include Vietnamese and Cambodian (Khmer), as well as Mon (spoken in parts of Myanmar and Thailand) and the languages of several dozen ethnic groups scattered through the uplands of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. Mon-Khmer languages are also spoken by a few groups found in southern Thailand and Malaysia. By contrast, the Austronesian (Malayo- Polynesian) languages are found mainly in insular Southeast Asia – with the exception of Malay, which is also spoken in southern Thailand, peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and a few of those in the highlands of central and southern Vietnam and north-eastern Cambodia. Virtually all of the languages of Indonesia and the Philippines belong to this group. The Tai – sometimes called Tai-Kadai – family spans a wide belt of territory stretching from both sides of the China-Vietnam border to Assam in northeast- ern India. It includes the national languages of Thailand and Laos, as well as the tongues spoken by some upland groups found in those countries, Vietnam, and Myanmar. The Tibeto-Burman family includes Burmese, the national language of Myanmar, as well as a band of languages spoken in the uplands of northern Southeast Asia. Finally, the Hmong-Mien (previously called Miao-Yao) languages are spoken by the descendants of a wave of migrants from China, who settled in the uplands of Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand over the last century or so. The earliest inhabitants of Southeast Asia were hunter-gatherers, meaning that they had no agriculture as such, but lived on what they could hunt, forage or gather from the forest, rivers, and sea. A crucial development came with the arrival of rice agriculture, which is believed to have spread from southern China over the course of the third millennium BCE. At this point it is important to stress the fact that the ‘border’ between ‘China’ and ‘Southeast Asia’ was once much further north than it is now. The Han people – those that we now think of as ‘ethnic Chinese’ – only expanded southward at a much later point in time, and in many respects present-day southern China below the Yangzi river had much closer ethnic, linguistic, and cultural ties to Southeast Asia. The spread of cultivated rice was a long, slow process measured in centuries, and there is no evidence that hunter-gatherers eagerly abandoned foraging to become farmers. Archeological evidence from different sites across the region suggests that the two means of livelihood coexisted in close proximity to each other and, in some cases, within the same communities. Current scholarship agrees that nearly all the languages presently spoken in Southeast Asia can be traced back to distant roots somewhere in southern China, and many – though not all – Southeast Asians are descended from peoples who migrated from different parts of that region. It seems probable that the knowledge and practice of rice agriculture spread outward from the Yangzi river area along with the ancestors of the various Southeast Asian languages as their speakers moved south. The two major linguistic families – Austronesian and Austroasiatic – can both be linked to migration. The Austronesian-speaking peoples are now believed to have originated on the south-eastern coast of China, from where they moved to Taiwan. The indigenous or ‘aboriginal’ ETHNIC GROUPS, EARLY CULTURES AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES 3 peoples of that island still speak languages from this family. Probably some 4000–5000 years ago, Austronesians took to the sea and launched one of the largest migrations in history, spreading through most of the Pacific islands, the southern part of Southeast Asia, and as far west as the island of Madagascar. Many of the existing inhabitants of the islands were culturally and linguistically assimilated into the migrant populations, though in a few places – notably the island of Papua or New Guinea – they remained separate. On the mainland it was the Austroasiatic speakers who became the dominant group, completely absorbing the existing inhabitants and their languages. As was the case for the island world, it seems that these new arrivals were agricul- turalists who gradually assimilated the hunter-gatherer populations. Although small groups of hunter-gatherers survive even today, they have adopted Austroasiatic languages. The two great linguistic families overlap on the Malay peninsula, where many of the groups known in Malaysia as ‘orang asli’ (‘origi- nal people’) are Austroasiatic – rather than Malay-speaking. The chronology of Austroasiatic migration into Southeast Asia remains fuzzy. It is probable that they were directly responsible for the spread of rice cultivation into the region beginning around 3000 BCE, although some scholars believe that they may have come even earlier and subsequently acquired this knowledge from other groups in southern China. By the end of the prehistoric period, then, most inhabitants of Southeast Asia would have been speaking languages from one of these two families, and those whose ancestors had pre-dated the arrival of the Austroasiatics and Austronesians were largely absorbed into the population descended from the latter two. By the beginning of the Common Era, there were speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages in Southeast Asia as well, concentrated in the terri- tory of present-day Myanmar. The most important group, the Pyu, flourished during the early centuries of the first millennium CE, but they were subse- quently assimilated by the ethnic Burmese, a later group of migrants speaking a related language. The last large-scale migration came in the late first and early second millennia, when Tai speakers began to move southward and westward from a homeland probably located in the present-day China-Vietnam border region. The Tai spread as far west as Assam and as far south as the Malay penin- sula. While they seem to have adopted certain cultural features – notably Buddhism – from the Mon-Khmer-speakers among whom they settled, they achieved political dominance almost everywhere and, in some cases, completely assimilated the original inhabitants. By the thirteenth century the distribution of ethnic groups and language families across Southeast Asia had taken roughly its present pattern, with a few important exceptions. First of all, the Vietnamese, whose civilization began in the Red river delta area, gradually expanded southward through a centuries- long process of migration, colonization, and assimilation. This expansion took place at the expense of the Cham along the coast and the Khmer (ethnic Cambodians) in the Mekong delta. Second, the last few centuries have seen a steady trickle of upland peoples moving southward from China. Many of these recent arrivals are Hmong or Yao, while others speak Tibeto-Burman languages. Finally, the advent of colonial rule brought large-scale migration of 4 A NEW HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST ASIA Indians and Chinese into various parts of the region, and they constitute signif- icant minorities in several countries today.