Southeast Asia In The Early Modern Era

Written by two expert and highly esteemed authors, this is the much-anticipated textbook on the early modern history of Southeast Asia.

The political and religious identities of Southeast Asia were largely formed by the experiences of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, when international commerce boomed before eventually falling under the domination of well-armed European powers intent on monopoly. This book is the first to document the full range of responses to the profound changes of this period: urbanization and the burgeoning of commerce; the proliferation of firearms; an increase in the number and strength of states; and the shift from experimental spirit worship to the universalist scriptural religions of Islam, Christianity, and Theravada Buddhism. Bringing together ten essays by an international group of historians, Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era shows how various states adapted to new pressures and compares economic, religious, and political developments among the major cultures of the area.

In this volume, Anthony Reid positions Southeast Asia on the stage of world history. He argues that the region not only had a historical character of its own, but that it played a crucial role in shaping the modern world. Southeast Asia’s interaction with the forces uniting and transforming the world is explored through chapters focusing on Islamization; Chinese, Siamese, Cham and Javanese trade; Makasar’s modernizing moment; and slavery. The last three chapters examine from different perspectives how this interaction of relative equality shifted to one of an impoverished, “third world” region exposed to European colonial power.

"The Princess of the Flaming Womb," the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male–female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women’s roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500–1800)—the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, changing patterns of state control, the impact of elite lifestyles and behaviors—drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and citing numerous examples from Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Philippine, and Malay societies. In the process, she provides a timely and innovative model for putting women back into world history Andaya approaches the problematic issue of "Southeast Asia" by considering ways in which topography helped describe a geo-cultural zone and contributed to regional distinctiveness in gender construction. She examines the degree to which world religions have been instrumental in (re)constructing conceptions of gender— an issue especially pertinent to Southeast Asian societies because of the leading role so often played by women in indigenous ritual. She also considers the effects of the expansion of long-distance trade, the incorporation of the region into a global trading network, the beginnings of cash-cropping and wage labor, and the increase in slavery on the position of women. Erudite, nuanced, and accessible, The Flaming Womb makes a major contribution to a Southeast Asia history that is both regional and global in content and perspective.

This book presents extensive new research findings on and new thinking about Southeast Asia in this interesting, richly diverse, but much understudied period. It examines the wide and well-developed trading networks, explores the different kinds of regimes and the nature of power and security, considers urban growth, international relations and the beginnings of European involvement with the region, and discusses religious factors, in particular the spread and impact of Christianity. One key theme of the book is the consideration of how well-developed Southeast Asia was before the onset of European involvement, and, how, during the peak of the commercial boom in the 1500s and 1600s, many polities in Southeast Asia were not far behind Europe in terms of socio-economic progress and attainments.

The argument rests on developments such as the introduction of firearms, more intensive rice agriculture, Thai and Viet ceramic exports, Korean and Ryukyu contacts with Southeast Asia, the demise of Champa, the climax of Viet and northern Tai statecraft, the birth of Melayu-Muslim kingship in Melaka and the creation of a new Muslim Javanese civilisation on Java's north coast. Coincident with these changes, Ming China's engagement with Sourtheast Asia grew as a result of overland expansion into the Tai and Viet polities, state-sponsored maritime voyages, and private Chinese trade and migration to the region. --

At the dawn of European colonialism, the Southeast Asian region encompassed some of the most diverse and influential cultures in early modern history. The circulation of people, commodities, ideas and beliefs along the key trading routes, from the eastern edge of the Mughal empire to the southern Chinese border, stimulated some of the great cultural and political achievements of the age. This volume highlights the multifarious dimensions of exchange in eight fascinating case studies written by leading experts from the fields of History, Anthropology, Musicology and Art History. Intercultural Exchange in Southeast Asia explores religious change at both ends of the social spectrum, examining the factors which led to or impeded the conversion of kings to new faiths, as well as those which affected the conversion of the marginal communities of mercenaries and renegades. The artistic and cultural refashioning of new religions such as Christianity to suit local needs and sensibilities is highlighted in the Philippines, Siam, Vietnam and the Malay world while detailed analyses of scientific exchanges in maritime southeast Asia highlight the role of local agents, especially women, in the transmission of knowledge and beliefs. The articulation and cultural expression of power relations is addressed in chapters on colonial urban design and the use of music in diplomatic exchanges. This book utilises rare and unpublished sources to shed new light on the processes, strategies, and consequences of exchanges between cultures, societies and individuals and will be essential reading for those interested in the cultural and political origins of modern Asia.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2009! This book examines three big ideas: difference, legitimacy, and pluralism. Of chief concern is how people construe and deal with variation among fellow human beings. Why under certain circumstances do people embrace even sanctify differences, or at least begrudgingly tolerate them, and why in other contexts are people less receptive to difference, sometimes overtly hostile to it and bent on its eradication? What are the cultural and political conditions conducive to the positive valorization and acceptance of difference? And, conversely, what conditions undermine or erode such positive views and acceptance? This book examines pluralism in gendered fields and domains in Southeast Asia since the early modern era, which historians and anthropologists of the region commonly define as the period extending roughly from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.