Southeast AsiaBefore the first states

Sept. 17, 2013

Review

•Where did the first cities in Asia appear?

•Can we talk about a state at the time of the Indus River civilization?

•What is a state?

•What is feudalism?

What is Southeast Asia?• Mainland and maritime components

• Divided today along religious lines (Maritime Southeast Asia tends to be Muslim. Mainland Southeast Asia tends to be Buddhist. But that difference is relatively recent.)

• Several different language families:

• Austronesian, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burmese, Tai and, in recent centuries, Chinese. (Lockard, p. 13)

• Different peoples: Malays, Vietnamese, Tai, Khmer, Burmese, Mon, etc.

• What is the relationship of ethnicity to language?

Early Humans

• Homo erectus--maybe as long ago as 1.7 million years ago.

• Homo floresienis. “Hobbits”

• Homo Sapiens around 40,000 years ago.

• How did they get to the islands?

• They walked! (Lockard, pp. 5-6)

the Malay peoples

• Neolithic communities in southern China by 7,000 BCE

• Moved to Taiwan around 6,000 BCE and then, around 4,000 BCE, began moving southward (and possibly northward as well). Eventually they dominated Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and moved on to Polynesia (and also to Madagascar)

• They are a seafaring people speaking an Austronesian language. They are not Chinese. (Lockard, 13-17)

early VietnamVietnam, although it doesn’t count as a “Southeast Asian” state, since it was a Sinitic state, provides the first verifiable evidence of a state in Southeast Asia.

Hoabinhian --from paleolithic to neolithic. Spread widely across SE ASIA

Followed by rice-growing and, around 2,000 or 1,500 BCE, bronze-working (producing Dongson bronze drums).

3rd century BCE: King An Duong and then Zhao Tuo: the first state emerges (Lockard, 18)

Becomes Annam (a Chinese province) in 111 BCE.Remained part of China for 1,000 years.Elite culture grew closer to Chinese culture than to Southeast Asian

culture; Mahayana Buddhism, Chinese writing, etc.

Problematizing racial labels

• Can we talk about Vietnamese 2,500 years ago?

• Can we talk about Chinese 3,500 years ago?

• Were the Malays originally Chinese?

• Can we call the people of the Indus Valley Civilization members of the “Indian race”?

• Or should we talk about how people became Vietnamese, became Chinese, and became Indian?