New Perspectives on the History and Historiography of Southeast Asia

Continuing Explorations

Michael Arthur Aung-Thwin, Kenneth Hall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136819636
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Using a unique "old–new" treatment, this book presents new perspectives on several important topics in Southeast Asian history and historiography. Based on original, primary research, it reinterprets and revises several long-held conventional views in the field, covering the period from the "classical" age to the twentieth century. Chapters share the approach to Southeast Asian history and historiography: namely, giving "agency" to Southeast Asia in all research, analysis, writing, and interpretation.

The book honours John K. Whitmore, a senior historian in the field of Southeast Asian history today, by demonstrating the scope and breadth of the scholar's influence on two generations of historians trained in the West. In addition to providing new information and insights on the field of Southeast Asia, this book stimulates new debate on conventional ideas, evidence, and approaches to its teaching, research, and understanding. It addresses, and in many cases, revises specific, critically important topics in Southeast Asian history on which much conventional knowledge of Southeast Asia has long been based. It is of interest to scholars of Southeast Asian Studies, as well as Asian History.

1 Introduction

Michael Arthur Aung-Thwin and Kenneth R. Hall

Varieties of Subject, Commonalities of Thought

The chapters in this volume show considerable variety as well as distinct commonalities. They vary chronologically, ranging from the early (“classical cum post-classical”), the “early modern,” and the “modern” periods. Geographically, they stretch from Western, Central, and Eastern Mainland Southeast Asia (and adjacent regions) to the Eastern Archipelago of maritime Southeast Asia. Topically, they range from literacy and commerce in Vietnam to rebellion in Myanmar, American myths about the Tet Offensive to the role played by Chinese firearms in Southeast Asia, trade and commerce in the maritime regions to irrigated agriculture in the great in-land river valleys of the Mainland.

At the same time, all the essays speak in some way to nation-building: its “classical” and “post-classical” foundations, its mythology and historiography, its technological and ideological innovations, its cultural and regional developments, and its more recent political and military events. But most important, the essays are linked together in their shared approach to the history and historiography of Southeast Asia. Although manifest in several ways—their interdisciplinarity, concern for broad patterns rather than “incidents of the moment,” focus on institutions and communities rather than on individuals, a revisionistic rather than conventional tenor—the “agency” given to Southeast Asia is the central theme running throughout the essays, a topic to be discussed more fully below.

Whereas the variety stems mainly from the merger in a single book of two different and (nearly) successive generations of Southeast Asia historians, an amalgam essentially of old and new—individuals, socio-political contexts, and ideas—their shared approach to Southeast Asian history and historiography derives from having the same “pedagogic genealogy”; the sum, more important than its parts. Perhaps serendipitously, this amalgam also provides a glimpse of what the field of Southeast Asian history itself is like—how it has changed while remaining the same.

The “Cast”

Six senior scholars—whose publications and contributions have already made an impact on the field—and five junior scholars—with the promise to do the same—have been combined to represent, respectively, that “oldness” and “newness.” The “integrated approach” mirrors John Whitmore’s own inclinations about scholarship: he constantly encouraged, indeed prodded us, to learn from other disciplines, challenge old theories including his own (even though at the time, we were novices) while he himself never took umbrage when we did so ungraciously. In effect, the editors of this volume are continuing the same tradition by ensuring that the younger generation (and its more recent academic scholarship) is represented and challenges us.

Although at first glance one might have thought from this that the “old-fashioned” approach to reconstructing Southeast Asia favored by many of the first generation—firmly grounded upon hard, mainly primary evidence focused on indigenous sources that attempted to tell “what happened”—would not have mixed well with some of the newer generation’s concerns of a “post-modern” nature (one of whose tenets even includes questioning the significance of “evidence” itself). But that has not been the case. And even had there been intellectual discord of substance amongst the authors, it is not entirely undesirable in any case, for it probably reflects the way the field itself has evolved. To use the phraseology of the newer generation, this “encounter” and “negotiation” between old and new has wrought positive results.

In fact, the two generations have crossed each other’s intellectual borders rather easily. Partly, it is because of their common historiographic heritage. But it is also because the field of Southeast Asian history was relatively new and small, and therefore eager to survive (by being unified, interdisciplinary, and inclusive) rather than be absorbed or eliminated (because of disunity, parochialism, and exclusiveness). It is also because this project had no underlying academic or political agenda to pursue, allowing the authors to honor John as they saw fit.

It is true that the authors belonged to different generations, each experiencing different and/or changing intellectual and political influences that should have had important effects on their world-views. The Tet Offensive, the protests over the Vietnam War, the civil rights movements of Martin Luther King were as much a part of the mental context of the first generation, as the fall of the USSR, the reunification of Germany, and Desert Storm were of the second. Yet, even these dramatically different socio-political contexts did not appreciably affect our shared approach to Southeast Asian history and historiography.

That was mainly because John Whitmore remained the anchor through these decades, focused on the academic problems and issues in Southeast Asian history rather than allowing the different socio-political contexts of each generation to undermine that focus.¹ One could say that by the time the second generation had completed their dissertations, Southeast Asian historiography at Michigan had become a cumulative intellectual tradition difficult to separate by generation or context. Yet, this tradition never became a “school of thought” for it was less dogma than shared beliefs, hence, dualistic and inclusive rather than binary and polarizing.

The two dominant disciplines in that cumulative tradition were history and anthropology. And although all the authors in this volume are historians by training and employ a basic, traditional (cause-and-effect) approach to the reconstruction of Southeast Asia, they also embraced anthropology, and seriously considered what demography, geography, economics, political science, linguistics, religion, literature, and art history, had to offer. This ecumenical trait is quite often a characteristic of historians connected to Area Studies programs, as we were.

As a representation of this evolution of Southeast Asian studies, this book brings together under one cover the original scholarship of eleven Southeast Asia historians who belong to two successive generations but studied and/or worked with a common academic ancestor, John Whitmore. In doing so, typical of the field of study, a vast array of primary and secondary source materials have been considered and presented, along with syntheses of several social science theories and methodologies. In that sense, the book is also a fresh “survey of literature” and a “state of the art” assessment of the “Classical/Post Classical,” “Early Modern,” and “Modern” periods in Southeast Asian history and historiography.

The Issue of “Agency”

But as noted above, the paramount theme that links the essays together is our shared approach to the history and historiography of Southeast Asia, largely by giving “agency” to it. But what is our understanding of the term, “agency”?

“Agency,” quite simply, is “privileging,” emphasizing, giving weight (a “voice”) to something. The emphasis can be disciplinary, so that (for example) geography is given more weight than politics, culture more than history, and economics more than ideology. To what geographic context should “agency” be given: inland valleys, maritime coasts, or interior highlands (hence, by extension, to agriculture, maritime trade, or highland systems) respectively? If politics is given “agency,” then what loci of power should be emphasized: “centers,” “peripheries” or their “interstices?” In terms of cultural communities, who should be “privileged”: the majority, the minority, the elite, the commoners?

“Agency” can even be given to the sources one uses. Preference can be given to inscriptions rather than chronicles, law codes rather than religious treatises, cadastral surveys rather than poems, classical texts rather than village tales, and Buddha statues rather than everyday ceramic shards. Even if inadvertent, that “preference” has important repercussions. The very use of inscriptions, for example, tends to “privilege” continuity over change, for epigraphs invariably deal with enduring institutions that stress stability and continuity, while chronicles contain dramatic and sensational events, favoring upheaval and change. The particular language in which one’s sources are written also gives “agency,” not only to that language but to the people to which it “belongs,” and by extension, to the current nation-state they dominate. Thus, the mere selection of a particular genre of source material gives “agency” to it, with implications to one’s analysis, and ultimately one’s overall perspective.

Certain events can also be given “agency” that changes historical perspectives entirely. For example, if the fall of Melaka in 1511 is emphasized (as most history texts do), the role of the Portuguese in that event is given agency. Yet, the event did not destroy the relationship the Sultan of Melaka had with all the other sultans, which was the crux of his wealth and power and which the Portuguese were attempting to usurp. All the Portuguese got when they took Melaka in 1511 was the physical city and most of its population, not those important personal relationships the Sultan took with him to Brunei. If, instead, agency had been given to those relationships rather than to the fall of the city, the latter event diminishes in importance. The same can be said of the thirteenth-century Mongol invasions of Mainland Southeast Asia and the twentieth-century Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. The issue of “agency” opens up new windows into which the Southeast Asia historian can now peep more intently.

The mere selection of a period by historians on which to conduct research, also gives “agency” to that period. And when these periods are then used to organize (that is, periodize) Southeast Asian history, “agency” is given to any number of things. A period can be lengthened or shortened, giving (or denying) “agency” to the dynasty that ruled it and the period that circumscribed it. Thus, a book on the history of Southeast Asia which contains only a few chapters on the pre-colonial phase (representing 1,000 years), but many on the colonial and modern phases (representing 100 years) gives “agency” not only to colonialism, but to recent-ness, privileging the importance of the present over the past as well as (in most cases), the colonizers over the colonized.

Indeed, simply being a historian “privileges” historical over (say) anthropological methodology, so that cause and effect, chronology and events, patterns and processes come to assume center-stage, while social and political structures, economic and cultural institutions, beliefs and values retreat as background. Practicing the historian’s craft also means giving “agency” to time, and since that is often equated with change, diachronic reconstructions tend to be favored over synchronic ones. Historians by nature also “privilege” the past over the present, to show how the former has shaped the latter. The political scientist, on the other hand, might turn it around so that the present is given “agency” which is then projected backward to shape the reconstruction of the past. Thus, the mere choice of being part of a discipline inevitably “privileges” that discipline’s methodology. This might be one of the reasons for the popularity of interdisciplinary studies and its methodology amongst many scholars: “agency” is better distributed.

But “agency” can also be used as a means to a desired end, a self-serving methodology that can be problematic. Although we are not unaware of these kinds of tautological pitfalls, giving “agency” to an entity is virtually unavoidable in the academic world. Even the “hard sciences” give “agency” to (say) the chemicals they choose to mix, or the particular genes they select to study. Given that reality, the choice for historians of Southeast Asia comes down not so much to whether, but to what entity should we give agency.”

It is not surprising that all the authors in this book give “agency” to things indigenous (to a lesser or greater degree, implicitly or explicitly, inadvertently or deliberately), particularly when juxtaposed to things exogenous. Southeast Asian activities, events, beliefs, institutions, communities, individuals, and of course, historical narratives are emphasized, given weight and “privileged” over those of the exogenous. And it is this “agency” given to things Southeast Asian that is the common theme running throughout the book. The main reason for it, to reiterate, is they all had a common “pedagogic genealogy.”

“Agency” and Southeast Asian Historiography

Of course, neither the issue of “agency” in historiography nor the “privileging” of Southeast Asia by its historians is new, although the term itself is relatively new both to the discipline of history and the field of Southeast Asian studies. As a historiographic issue about which historians were usually aware, it can be traced back at least to Herodotus’ Histories.² Thereafter, one finds it continuously in historiographic literature, especially that of nineteenth- and twentieth-century “scientific” European and American historians, who usually expressed it as an issue of “subjectivity–objectivity.”

In the field of Southeast Asian history, weight given to the exogenous—which in practice meant India, China, and the West—was already being challenged over fifty years ago. Indeed, the older generation of historians in this book was some of the first batch of Southeast Asia graduate students involved in that debate. Their sentiments had been expressed in a volume of essays they wrote as graduate students at Michigan (and under John Whitmore’s guidance) titled Explorations in Southeast Asia.³ It was, in large part, to address the issue of Southeast Asian “agency,” although it was not called that at the time, that inspires our current title, Continued Explorations …. And nearly all of the current senior historians had clamored for indigenous “agency” at the time, which had become a cause célèbre. Indeed, it was almost “academically incorrect” not to give “agency” to Southeast Asia. Perhaps it was that experience that accounts, in part, for the revisionist tenor in most of these essays, and (to varying degrees) the revisionist in all of us.

To be sure, we actually took the cue from other, even older scholars in the field such as J. C. Van Leur, J. G. de Casparis, Paul Mus, J. Bosch, D. G. E. Hall, Harry Benda, John Echols, Alton L. Becker, Paul Wheatley, Stanley J. O’Connor, O. W. Wolters, John Smail, Ian Mabbett, and David Wyatt. By the early 1960s, just before the older generation of historians in this volume entered graduate school, the “agency” issue was already part of a broader concern raised by John Smail and his fellow Cornell University graduate students, generally known in the field as “autonomous history” wherein the “angle of vision” from which one viewed Southeast Asian society and history gave “agency” to that perspective. Its aim was to allow the consideration of an alternate view that no longer looked at Southeast Asia from the “deck of a ship,” which had placed Southeast Asia in the background of an exogenous (colonial) foreground. “Autonomous history” was not a moral stance but a methodological positioning, so that the mere “angle” from which one looked reversed the foreground and background and made all the difference in the world as to how Southeast Asian history was to be understood and written.

Despite these gains, because the field had privileged the exogenous for so long, India, China, and the West as foci continued to prevail, represented by the terms “Indianization,” “Sinification,” and “Westernization,” the three long-term historical patterns in which Southeast Asian history has been placed. Southeast Asian historiography had also taken “hand-me-downs” from better-developed European historiography. The field inherited its organization of history from the latter into “periods” equivalent to the “classical,” “medieval,” and “modern,” and now also “Early Modern.” Even Western historiography’s assessment regarding the nature of history itself (linear and progressive); its definition, chronology, and characteristics given to the modern “nation” (along with the circumstances from which it developed); and its “privileging” of political and economic factors over (say) religious and social ones as paramount in society and the making of history, are all vestiges of European historiography. For Vietnam specialists there was the added burden of the “Smaller Dragon” syndrome, the characterization of Vietnam as a “Little China,” while the rest of “Indic” Southeast Asia had to suffer the ignominy of a “Farther India.”

Past scholarship had also given “agency” to Indic more than to Sinic influences. Empirically, this was not totally inaccurate, for the bulk of the evidence did in fact support Indic influences in nearly every aspect of life in nearly all of Southeast Asia. This includes religion, the writing systems, literature, measurement of time, notions of leadership, authority and legitimacy, conceptions of the universe, and the arts. In more recent years, however, archeologists and art historians have increasingly emphasized the important role of Sinic (or more accurately Northern) influences, especially in the very early phases of Southeast Asian history prior to the arrival of Indic influences, as well as in later periods after South Asia had made its initial impact.

Giving “agency” to Southeast Asia came to be known subsequently as “localization,” a term introduced by O. W. Wolters. But it was never meant to imply that exogenous forces and factors were unimportant; just that they were changed, adapted, mixed, reshaped, refitted into indigenous state and society so much that they were no longer separable. “Localization” was also a compromise between analytical extremes that earlier framed the discussion as an inexorable indigenous–exogenous “divide.” Indeed, many of us have now tempered our previously held stance on this issue, and admit the depth and scale of influence that the two great civilizations, India and China, have had on Southeast...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Contents
• Maps, tables, figures and illustrations
• Contributors
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction
• 2. John K. Whitmore’s contribution to Vietnamese and Southeast Asian studies
• 3. A new/old look at “classical” and “post-classical” Southeast Asia/Burma
• 4. Sojourning communities, ports-of-trade, and commercial networking in Southeast Asia’s eastern regions, c. 1000–1400
• 5. Chinese-style gunpowder weapons in Southeast Asia: focusing on archeological evidence
• 6. To catch a tiger: the suppression of the Yang Yinglong Miao uprising (1587–1600) as a case study in Ming military and borderlands history
• 7. Maritime subversions and socio-political formations in Vietnamese history: a look from the marginal center (mien Trung)
• 8. “1620,” a cautionary tale
• 9. The imported book trade and Confucian learning in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Vietnam
• 10. Literacy in early seventeenth-century Northern Vietnam
• 11. The limping monk and the deaf king: peasant politics, subaltern agency, and the postcolonial predicament in Colonial Burma
• 12. The myths of the Tet Offensive
• Bibliography
• Index