Week 11

Mainland pre-colonial patterns,

colonial transformations and resistance

Michael Buehler
Email: mb107@soas.ac.uk
Office: Room MB 4412
Office Hours: Monday 1–3pm

SEA Week 11 1
 Learning Goals Week 11

At the end of this week, you will be able to…

1) …understand the dynamics of precolonial state

formation in mainland Southeast Asia.

2) …critically discuss different accounts of how

peasant communities reacted to the expansion of the
state.

3) …explain why colonialism changed the dynamics of

peasant resistance.
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 State formation in mainland Southeast Asia

State formation in mainland SEA similar to Eurasia.

Why were local ethnicities and dialects integrated into

more coherent imperial or kingdom-wide cultures in
mainland SEA?

i) Territorial consolidation

ii) Administrative centralization

iii) Cultural integration

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 Territorial and administrative consolidation

1) Irrawaddy Basin in the West

2) Chaophraya-Mekong lowlands in the center

3) Narrow Eastern littoral

a) Pagan in the West

b) Angkor in the center
c) Champa (modern central Vietnam)
d) and Dai Viet
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Territorial and administrative consolidation (cont.)

Pattern of integration and subsequent collapse…

a) population outstripped irrigable land

b) soil erosion began to reduce productivity

c) decentralized character of political institutions

d) external factors

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 Cultural integration

Cultural integration occurred along two axes:

1) Vertically: select practices spread from elites to

lower strata.

2) Horizontally: Culture from the capital and

outlying provinces entered into some more
sustained dialogue.

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Explaining integration in mainland Southeast Asia

1) Expansion of material resources

2) New cultural currents

3) Intensifying interstate competition

4) Diverse state interventions

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 State-building in mainland SEA
and Europe compared
1) States growing more coherent with similar
consequences.

2) Universal religion merged with great ease with

ethnic/ political particularism

3) Growing proportion of people willing to identify

ethnically and culturally with ‘core’

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 Counter-narratives to state formation

Hill area that is so remote and

inaccessible that it became
populated by people and groups
that for various reasons did
not want to assimilate into the
emerging states in lowland

i) Taxes and corvée labor Zomia

ii) War
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 Migration to avoid incorporation into state

Migration

Culture and agriculture of escape

a) physical mobility
b) subsistence practices
c) social organization
d) settlement patterns

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 “Avoidance protest”

1) “Contest state” in much of mainland SEA

2) Precolonial states relatively weak

administratively

Competitive elites and weak administrative capacity

created opportunities for peasants to avoid state
exploitation

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The expansion of the colonial bureaucracy and
its limiting effects on avoidance strategies
1) Penetration of society by colonial state

2) Colonial state changed structure of peasant

communities

3) Declining mobility for peasant communities

4) Expansion of policing reduced “social banditry”

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 Protests during the colonial period

More spontaneous acts of vandalism

Mode of resistance shifted from ‘avoidance’ to more

open and more direct forms of ‘protest’

Vertical linkages increasingly replaced by horizontal

networks

Rise of nationalism and communism

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 Take-away points Week 11

1) Precolonial state formation in mainland

Southeast Asia very different from maritime
Southeast Asia.

2) Early state formation triggered protest not seen

in maritime Southeast Asia

3) Avoidance protests increasingly rare after

expansion of colonial state
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