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5 - Politicized Ethnicity in Precolonial Southeast Asia

from Part i - The Politics of Ethnicity, Nationhood, and Belonging in the Settings of Classical Civilizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2023

By
Michael W. Charney
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

The historiography on politicized ethnicities in Southeast Asia has for a long time gone hand in hand with the story of nationalism. Colonial rule was believed to have introduced the kinds of registers that stemmed from the Enlightenment into non-Western societies. Colonial ethnographers divided up populations by languages and culture, sometimes deciding that one or another embodied the genuine national identity. Benedict Anderson, working with indigenous literature and new research on the Southeast Asian geobody, introduced the notion that nationalism was a socially constructed political community. Like religious communities, it was an imagined community, in that any one member felt they were part of a larger, horizontal group whose full membership transcended their personal acquaintance.

Keywords

EthnicityReligionState SpaceMelayuAge of CommerceSoutheast AsiaAnthony Reid
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 96 - 114
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Andaya, Leonard, Leaves of the Same Tree: Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charney, Michael W., Powerful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma’s Last Dynasty, 1752–1885 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoogervorst, Tom Gunnar, “Ethnicity and Aquatic Lifestyles: Exploring Southeast Asia’s Past and Present Seascapes,” Water History, 4/3 (2012), 245–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keyes, Charles, “Presidential Address: ‘The Peoples of Asia’ – Science and Politics in the Classification of the Peoples of Southeast Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies, 61/4 (2002), 1163–1203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieberman, Victor B., Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, vol. i: Integration on the Mainland: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, Studies in Comparative World History Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Lieberman, Victor B., Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, vol. ii: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands, Studies in Comparative World History Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Scott, James C., The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Wolters, Oliver, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives, new edition (Ithaca: Cornell SEAP Publications, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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