The Making of Southeast Asian Society
Southeast Asia is taken history in the countries with China and India’s influences. In this region, the first thing why China and India come to trading. Then, they made an evolution of regional culture to response economic and cultural response afforded by international trading was the condition by consistency with preexisting patterns of civilization. The evolution in Southeast Asia societies is looked to at instances of cultural transition and continuity that stimulation and development of a highly centralized polity. The degree of political centralization despite the economic development and cultural by participation in international trade.
Origin
According to Reynolds, the origin in this context refers to the discipline of geology or archeological in which in time is a variable. This origin has rooted by history. The intent of colonial knowledge of Southeast Asia, as produced by Dutch, French, and British archeological services, was appropriate for the entire colonized entity. Early Southeast Asia as an originating tradition or system that was disabled or thrown out of alignment by European intrusion, which in turn marks the onset of the modern period (e.g., McCloud 1986; Steinberg 1987).
Southeast Asia societies are constructed by India and China, it starts from religiosity, culture, kinship, technology until the political system. It is a manifestation from domination by them, which means they have made a transformation in Southeast Asia societies. Then, urbanization as a feature of late state formation and civilization in Southeast Asia.
According to Frederick, The origin of the state turn on rulership and its connections to the social and spiritual bonds of community. Knowledge of the early prehistory of Southeast Asia has undergone exceptionally rapid change as a result of archaeological discoveries made since the 1960s, although the interpretation of these findings has remained the subject of extensive debate.
In the prehistory period, the region has been inhabited from the earliest times. The homo sapiens in approximately 40.000 years ago in the west of Makassar strait that sometimes is called Sundaland. In the land connection perhaps account for the coherence of early human development, that used stone as tools to hunting and gathering societies across Southeast Asia during this period show a remarkable degree of similarity in design and development.
The condition in about 6.000 BC was created for a more variegated environment and more extensive differentiation in human development. While migration from outside may have taken place, it did not do so in a massive or clearly punctuated fashion, local evolutionary processes and the circulation of people were far more powerful forces in shaping the region’s culture.
It perhaps because of a particular combination of geophysical and climatic factors, early Southeast Asia did not develop uniformly in the direction of increasingly complex societies. Then, the technological capabilities of early Southeast Asia societies were negligible for sophisticated metalworking and agriculture were being practiced, in Thailand and northern Vietnam.
Two crucial development in Southeast Asia’s may happen by technological changes, there are: [1] Extraordinary seaborn expansion of speaker of Proto-Austronesian languages which occurred over 5.000 years and encompass a vast area and stretch nearly half the circumference. The movements of people were evolutionary. The result of societal preferences for small group and tendency group to hive off once a certain population. It began as early as 4000 BC when Taiwan was populated from the Asian mainland, it continued southward through the northern Philippines in the 3rd millennium, central Indonesia in 2nd millennium and western and eastern Indonesia in 1st millennium. Then, there was expansion continued both eastward into the Pacific. The Southeast Asia region contributed to world cultural history. [2] Development began possibly as early as 1000 BC centered on the production of bronzed and fashioning the bronze-iron object in northern Vietnam, known as Dong Son culture. That culture is most powerful — examples of Southeast Asia societies transforming themselves into more densely populated, hierarchical and centralized communities, then they are associated with a rice trade.
Between approximately 150 BC, most of Southeast Asia was first influenced by a more mature culture of its neighbors, thus began a process that lasted for the better part of a millennium and fundamentally changed it. In some ways, Chinese concern about increasingly powerful in Vietnam disturbing its trade, and remote province of the Han empire. For India, there is no evidence of conquests, colonization or even extensive migration. They did not come to rule and have no power appear to pursue controlling Southeast Asia. In other ways, Sinicization and Indianization were remarkably similar. Southeast Asia already socially and culturally diverse, making accommodation easy.
Indigenous people shaped the adaption and adoption of outside influences, and seem to have sought out concept and practices. This called assimilation. Chinese and Indian influences were anything but superficial. They provided a writing system, a system of statecraft and concepts of social hierarchy and religious belief. For example, Hinduism and Buddhist arts tapped a responsive vein in the Southeast Asia soul. In Palembang was being visited by Chinese and other Buddhist, who came to study doctrine and copy manuscripts in an institution that rivaled in importance in India itself. Beginning in the 8th century, temple and court complexes were constructed in Central Java (Borobudur in Syailendra Dynasty), Myanmar (Pagan kingdom) and Cambodia (Angkor in Khmer Empire).
Agency
According to Reynolds, The identification of Southeast Asian agency is closely linked to the trope of origins, whether it be of kingship, cities, or state that motivates the writing of early history. As we know that India and China’s influence has been rooted in Southeast Asia societies, then it linked to Western Colonialism. the construction of the real Southeast Asia functions as a historical agency. The key processes in the historiography that give voice to an agency are “domestication,” “vernacularization,” “indigenization,” and “localization.” They are evidence of the capacity of Southeast Asian societies to shape change.
The problem on localizing agency shifts the focus onto Southeast Asians and their future, away from their suspect origins as mere borrowers and culture brokers. The southeast Asian agency is seen to have the capacity, the inventiveness, the genius to adapt, and this capacity is what makes localization, indigenization, and vernacularization work.
According to Frederick, many Southeast Asian civilizations can be said to have reached their definitive premodern shape during this “golden” age, which also is modern scholarship’s best source of information on the classical cultures of the region before the ravages of 19th- and 20th-century colonialism. Urbanization was another development of importance. Although some societies, notably that of the Javanese, seem not to have been affected, the growth of large and densely populated centers was a widespread phenomenon.
By the 16th century, some of these rivaled all but the very largest European cities. Malacca, for example, may have had a population of 100,000 (including traders) in the early 16th century; in Europe, only Naples, Paris, and perhaps London was larger at that time. Finally, Southeast Asians during the 16th and 17th centuries appear to have enjoyed good health, a varied diet, and a comparatively high standard of living, especially when compared with most of the population of Europe of the same period.
Theravāda Buddhism buoyed the kingship and introduced a vigorous intellectual leadership; it also spread broadly among the populace and thus played an important role as a cohesive social and cultural force from which the people of modern Thailand and Myanmar later were to draw much of their sense of identity. Christianity made its appearance in the early 16th century, brought by the Portuguese, Spanish, and, somewhat later, the French.
It spread easily in the northern Philippines, where Spanish missionaries did not have to compete with an organized religious tradition and could count on the interested support of a government bent on colonization. The conversion process was gradual, for Muslim traders from the Middle East and India long had traveled the sea route to China; it seems likely that they traded and settled in the port cities of Sumatra and Java as early as the 9th or 10th century. Perhaps as a result of a weakening of the Hindu-Buddhist courts and the rise of smaller, independently minded trading states and social classes, Islām made important inroads among both ruling elites and others.
Many other parts of the world on the eve of European expansion, long had been a cosmopolitan region acquainted with a diversity of peoples, customs, and trade goods.
The arrival of Europeans in force in the early 16th century (others had made visits earlier, beginning with Marco Polo in 1292) caused neither wonderment nor fear. Long-distance travel by then was no novelty, and already there was impressive precedence for the arrival of foreign delegations rather than of individual trading vessels. Europeans presented a rather different prospect for Southeast Asia, however, above all because they sought riches and absolute control over the sources of this wealth.
The Europeans were few in number, often poorly equipped, and generally could not claim great technological superiority over Southeast Asians, but they were also determined, often well-organized and highly disciplined fighters, and utterly ruthless and unprincipled. Europeans could accomplish little politically or militarily without strong Southeast Asian allies. Individual adventurers often were useful to a particular Southeast Asian ruler or aspirant to the throne, but they were carefully watched and, when necessary, dispatched. Europeans soon discovered that they were quite unable, even by the most drastic means, to monopolize the spice trade for which they had come.
They generally were forced to engage in commerce by Southeast Asian rules and soon found themselves dependent on the local carrying trade for survival. European commercial tools, especially the ability to amass large amounts of investment capital, were different and, from a capitalistic point of view, more sophisticated and dynamic than those of the Southeast Asians. Although company directors in Europe warned against the dangers — and costs — of involvement in local affairs, the representatives on the spot often could see no other course.
Differences
According to Reynolds, differences in a Southeast Asian agency can be glimpsed and brought to life. The historian’s task is to identify, document, and communicate differences among Southeast Asian societies or between a particular society and Western historical experience. Key terms for leadership, units of social organization, and religious terminology are examples of the kinds of things historians focus on in an effort to distinguish Southeast Asian experience and make it culturally specific. They are aids for the imagination to immerse itself in another world.
According to Asia Society Organization, there are some differences in the physical environment of mainland and island Southeast Asia. The first feature of mainland geography is the long rivers that begin in the highlands separating Southeast Asia from China and northwest India. A second feature is the extensive lowland plains separated by forested hills and mountain ranges.
These fertile plains are highly suited to rice-growing ethnic groups, such as the Thais, the Burmese, and the Vietnamese, who developed settled cultures that eventually provided the basis for modern states. The highlands were occupied by tribal groups, who displayed their sense of identity through distinctive styles in clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles. The third feature of mainland Southeast Asia is the long coastline. Despite a strong agrarian base, the communities that developed in these regions were also part of the maritime trading network that linked Southeast Asia to India and to China. Differences in the physical environment affected the political structures that developed in Southeast Asia.
When people were nomadic or semi-nomadic, it was difficult to construct a permanent governing system with stable bureaucracies and a reliable tax base. This type of state only developed in areas where there was a settled population, as the large rice-growing plains of the mainland and Java. However, even the most powerful of these states found it difficult to extend their authority into remote highlands and islands.
