History of Southeast Asia

Cotterell Arthur

Description

A History of Southeast Asia narrates the history of the region from earliest recorded times until today, covering present-day Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia and East Timor. Concisely written and filled with historical anecdotes, this authoritative volume is presented in three parts, covering both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia: Part 1 - Early Southeast Asia (the earliest civilisations) Part 2 - Medieval Southeast (the colonial period) Part 3 - Modern Southeast (the present-day era, following the Pacific dimension of the Second World)

Sujets

• Histoire
• Southeast Asia
• History of Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 10 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814634700
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 31 Mo

Extrait

A HISTORY OF
SOUTHEAST ASIA

A HISTORY OF
SOUTHEAST ASIA
ARTHUR COTTERELL
2014 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited Text Arthur Cotterell
Project editor: Lee Mei Lin Design by Lynn Chin Nyuk Ling
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: [phone], fax: [phone]. E-mail: [e-mail] . Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Cotterell, Arthur. A history of Southeast Asia / Arthur Cotterell. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2014. pages cm ISBN : 978-981-4361-02-6 (paperback) eISBN : 978 981 4634 70 0
Southeast Asia--Civilization. 2. Southeast Asia--Antiquities. 3. Southeast Asia--History. I. Title. DS525 959 -- dc23 OCN864455899 Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd On the cover: a seventeenth-century Dutch map by William Janzsoon Blaeu.
For Yong Yap

CONTENTS

PREFACE xi
INTRODUCTION xvii
LIST OF MAPS xxv
PHOTO CREDITS xxvi

PART ONE : E ARLY S OUTHEAST A SIA

CHAPTER 1 EARLY BURMA 3

The Earliest States 7
The Rise of Pagan 15
City of Virtue and Merit 21
Pagan s Fall 29

CHAPTER 2 EARLY CAMBODIA 37

Funan 38
Zhenla 42
The Founding of Angkor 45
The Great Kings 51
From Angkor to Lovek 65
CHAPTER 3 EARLY VIETNAM 67

Southern Yue 69
Ma Yuan s Legacy 72
The Protectorate of Annam 78
Vietnamese Independence 81
Champa 88

CHAPTER 4 EARLY INDONESIA 97

Chinese Tributary Relations 100
Srivijaya 103
Java and Bali 114
Mongol Intervention 122
The Empire of Majapahit 124

PART TWO: L ATE S OUTHEAST A SIA

CHAPTER 5 LATE BURMA 131

The First Toungoo Dynasty 134
The Restored Toungoo Dynasty 142
The Konbaung Dynasty 149

CHAPTER 6

LATE THAILAND AND CAMBODIA 155

Ayudhya 157
Siam 170
Lovek 176
CHAPTER 7 LATE VIETNAM 179

The Le Dynasty 180
A Divided Country 186
The Nguyen Dynasty 198

CHAPTER 8 LATE ISLAND POWERS 205

Malacca and Aceh 206
Mataram 213
Brunei 224
The Philippines 227

PART THREE: M ODERN S OUTHEAST A SIA

CHAPTER 9 THE COLONIAL ERA 239

The British Possessions 241
The Dutch East Indies 254
French Indochina 259
The American Colony of the Philippines 265

CHAPTER 10

THE GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE 269

A Sudden Rampage 270
The Failure of Japan s New Order 280
Post-War Decolonization 287
CHAPTER 11

INDEPENDENCE: THE MAINLAND NATION STATES 295

Myanmar 298
Thailand 305
Vietnam 317
Laos 329
Cambodia 332

CHAPTER 12

INDEPENDENCE: THE MARITIME NATION STATES 341

Malaysia 343
Singapore 354
Brunei 357
Indonesia 358
East Timor 368
The Philippines 372

POSTSCRIPT: PRESENT-DAY SOUTHEAST ASIA 379
CHRONOLOGY 383
FURTHER READING 393
INDEX 401
PREFACE

You lost, sir, a Land Dyak student informed me one Monday morning at the Anglican school where I taught in Kuching, capital of newly independent Sarawak and one of the states in the Federation of Malaysia. The previous Saturday in mid-1967 I had travelled to his longhouse at Giam, some 30 kilometres into the jungle. The local art club had arranged for its members to sketch there, and so we were expected.
Unexpected though was our reception because, across the rapids which gave the longhouse its name, and beneath a large Union Jack, stood the headman wearing a smart blue suit. Once ferried safely across to the opposite bank, the headman expressed his joy at our arrival, for the good reason that assistance was urgently required with a debate taking place that evening. He told me his suit was a present from a departing district officer, while the flag dated from 1946, the year in which the last white rajah ceded Sarawak to Britain. Both were obviously intended to make my wife and I feel welcome, over and above the generous hospitality shown to longhouse visitors.
After checking that we had no objection to ceremonies involving the ritual slaughter of several chickens, the consumption of their blood and an elaborate sword display, we settled down to a meal of rice and arak, an extremely strong rice wine. At a distance from this traditional reception of guests, I noticed a group of young men clustered around one who was playing a guitar. When I asked about their absence from the meal, the headman told me that it formed the subject of the debate. The young men had said that such traditional customs were out of date and the longhouse should convert to Christianity, and this was the issue to be settled by a vote of all the inhabitants after our departure.
But the headman was uneasy. He feared the debate would be too one- sided, since not enough reasons could be found to oppose the adoption
xii

A spirit carving. For Dyaks birds are messengers

of Christianity. He wondered if I might help with suggestions as to why conversion should be rejected. In this Lord Jim situation, I racked my brains for Dyak examples of wise inaction. Pointing out how indigenous plants grew better than imported varieties, the story of Foolish Alois came to mind. This comical character is renowned for always making the wrong decisions. Offered a half share in a banana plant, he chose to cut off the leaves at the top, entirely ignoring the main stem and the roots. How could anyone be certain then that the Christian faith was not unlike Foolish Alois leaves? If it failed to transplant successfully and withered as they had done, the longhouse would have given up its traditional beliefs for nothing.
xiii

On the way back to Kuching, I reflected on the impact that evangelical preachers were having on isolated longhouses. The Sarawak government had sanctioned missionary activity provided it was accompanied by social benefits-an American hospital had opened close by. But what struck me most about the visit to Giam was the thoroughly democratic nature of the longhouse. Its spokesman, the besuited headman, possessed no hereditary privilege; his chief concern was to ensure fair and open discussion. The Land Dyaks living in the longhouse would decide its future, once everyone who wished to express an opinion had done so. They did and Foolish Alois was consigned to history.
Conversion hardly changed, however, the longhouse s relationship with the spirit world. Even though Christianity provided an additional defence against the malignant spirits lurking in the jungle, it still left plenty of scope for the unseen powers that haunt Southeast Asia. Whether they are called nats in Myanmar, nak ta in Cambodia, ba in Vietnam, tujul in Java or hantu in Borneo, belief in their influence on human affairs is unshakeable. That they existed in Kuching was

A Balinese lady offers flowers at a garden shrine
xiv

confirmed when a Sea Dyak clergyman informed me how he was often molested by ghosts in the school s grounds. During the Second World War its buildings were used as an interrogation centre by the Japanese military police, the dreaded Kempeitai. The neighbouring girls school housed an army brothel, its comfort women forcibly recruited from Korea and Taiwan.
Bomo, the Malay word for black magic , exactly sums up the outlook of Austronesian speakers, who dispersed around 3000 BC from the Yangzi delta. Besides the Malayan peninsula, southern Thailand and central Vietnam, they occupied the whole of maritime Southeast Asia so that belief about communication with spirits through trances, sometimes by means of transvestite specialists as in Sulawesi, is common throughout the islands. Indian ideas have been influential, as indeed have been the teachings of Islam, but bomo remains central to Southeast Asia s eclectic heritage. Watching women collecting in a plastic bag their snipped locks from the floor of a hairdressing salon reveals how magical manipulation is still feared today. Not dissimilar anxieties can be observed among mainland Southeast Asians, even in ultra-modern Singapore.
Hardly surprising then in 1991 was the television announcement by Myanmar s military strongman General Saw Maung that he did not use black magic; nor was there any reaction a few years earlier in Cambodia when a suspicious magistrate obliged a witness to swear the truth of his testimony by a nak ta, whose dwelling place was a tree next to the courthouse. The witness changed his story once an oath invoked the wrath of an indigenous spirit rather than the one he had already sworn on the Buddhist scriptures. By far the most dramatic instance of bomo was the spell placed in 2009 on Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia s first directly elected president. He said the revolving clouds sent against him by an ill-disposed s