Southeast Asia

Culture

Monday - Wednesday

• N&O Scavenger hunt

• Read pps. 393 – 397

• Power Points Presentation

Angkor Wat

From the west one approaches the first outer gallery over a long bridge over

the moat

• The first gallery has square pillars on the outer side and a closed wall on the inner side

• The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus rosettes

• The inside wall has dancing figures

• On the outside the inner wall is decorated with pillared windows

• This is reached via a raised plat- form with lions on both sides of a staircase

• The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas

Group Work

• In your group:– Determine the age of the building/architectural details (you may

use your text for reference)– Pick your favorite picture and create a myth that involves that

part of the building– Make a drawing of what your kingdom would look like.– Create a Confucius saying that will govern your kingdom– Determine the size of your kingdom in miles– Determine what craftsmen you will need to build your kingdom

(remember what year you are in. )– Determine the religion of your kingdom:

• Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or Christian (then note in which part of Southeast Asia that your kingdom is located by religion).

Rubric

• A=Kingdom is of the correct age, and includes drawing, myth, types of craftsmen, a Confucius saying, and planned religion

• B= may be missing one of the above

• C= may be missing two of the above

Introduction of Islam to Southeast Asia:

• The actual timing and introduction of Islamic religion and religious practice to Southeast Asia is somewhat of a debate. European historians have argued that it came through trading contacts with India, whereas some Southeast Asian Muslim scholars claim it was brought to the region directly from Arabia in the Middle East. Other scholars claim that Muslim Chinese who were engaged in trade introduced it.

• Whatever the source, scholars acknowledge that Muslim influence in Southeast Asia is at least six centuries old, or was present by 1400 A.D. Some argue for origins to at least 1100 A.D. in the earliest areas of Islamic influence, such as in Aceh, northern Sumatra in Indonesia.

• Whatever exact dates and sources one chooses to support, there is no doubt that Islamization of many peoples in present-day Malaysia, southern Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei, and the southern Philippines occurred within a few hundred years. The process of religious conversion absorbed many pre-existing Southeast Asian beliefs (often referred to as 'animism', or the belief in the power of invisible spirits of people's ancestors and the spirits of nature to influence the fortunes of humans on earth).

• The scholar Anthony Reid, Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues that this process of Islamization (and Christianization in the Philippines) occurred rapidly in Southeast Asia, especially during the period of 1550-1650.

Southeast Asia Today: Thailand

• http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/search/assetDetail.cfm?guidAssetID=E8A6B9DA-DD27-43E9-A7DA-F9C75A8FB08A

The history of SE Asia

• The history of Southeast Asia has been characterized as interaction between regional players and foreign powers. Though 11 countries currently make up the region, the history of each country is intertwined with all the others. For instance, the Malay empires of Srivijaya and Malacca covered modern day Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore while the Burmese, Thai, and Khmer peoples governed much of Indochina. At the same time, opportunities and threats from the east and the west shaped the direction of Southeast Asia. The history of the countries within the region only started to develop independently of each other after European colonialization was at full steam between the 17th and the 20th century.

• Evidences suggest that the earliest non-aboriginal Southeast Asians came from southern China and were Austronesian speakers. Contemporary research by anthropologists, linguists (Blust, Reid, Ross, Pawley), and archaeologists (Bellwood) suggests that the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago migrated from southern China to islands of the Philippines around 2,500 BCE and later spread to modern day Malaysia and Indonesia.

• The earliest population of Southeast Asia was animist before Hinduism and Buddhism were exported from the Indian subcontinent. Islam arrived mostly through Indian Muslims and later dominated much of the archipelago around the 13th century while Christianity came along when European colonization started around the 16th century.

• Europeans first came to Southeast Asia in the sixteenth century. It was the lure of trade that brought Europeans to Southeast Asia while missionaries also tagged along the ships as they hoped to spread Christianity into the region.

• Portugal was the first European power to establish a bridgehead into the lucrative Southeast Asia trade route with the conquest of the Sultanate of Malacca in 1511. The Netherlands and Spain followed and soon superseded Portugal as the main European powers in the region. The Dutch took over Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641 while Spain began to colonize the Philippines (named after Phillip II of Spain) from 1560s. Acting through the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch established the city of Batavia (now Jakarta) as a base for trading and expansion into the other parts of Java and the surrounding territory.

• Britain, in the form of the British East India Company, came relatively late onto the scene. Starting with Penang, the British began to expand their Southeast Asian empire. They also temporarily possessed Dutch territories during the Napoleonic Wars, In 1819 Stamford Raffles established Singapore as a key trading post for Britain in their rivalry with the Dutch. However, their rivalry cooled in 1824 when an Anglo-Dutch treaty demarcated their respective interests in Southeast Asia. From the 1850s onwards, the pace of colonization shifted to a significantly higher gear.

• This phenomenon, denoted New Imperialism, saw the conquest of nearly all Southeast Asian territories by the colonial powers. The Dutch East India Company and British East India Company were dissolved by their respective governments, who took over the direct administration of the colonies. Only Thailand was spared the experience of foreign rule, although, Thailand itself was also greatly affected by the power politics of the Western powers.

• Colonial rule had a profound effect on Southeast Asia. While the colonial powers profited much from the region's vast resources and large market, colonial rule did develop the region to a varying extent. Commercial agriculture, mining and an export based economy developed rapidly during this period. Increased labor demand resulted in mass immigration, especially from British India and China, which brought about massive demographic change. The institutions for a modern nation state like a state bureaucracy, courts of law, print media and to a smaller extent, modern education, sowed the seeds of the fledgling nationalist movements in the colonial territories.

• With the rejuvenated nationalist movements in wait, the Europeans returned to a very different Southeast Asia after World War II. Indonesia declared independence in 17 August 1945 and subsequently fought a bitter war against the returning Dutch; the Philippines were granted independence in 1946; Burma secured their independence from Britain in 1948, and the French were driven from Indochina in 1954 after a bitterly fought war against the Vietnamese nationalists. The newly-established United Nations provided a forum both for nationalist demands and for the newly demanded independent nations.

Wednesday,Thursday, and Friday

• Scavenger hunt

• Read pps 398 – 399

• United Streaming

• Riki Tiki Tavi video

• Power points on India

• Begin reading “Homeless Bird”

• Homeless Bird Project

Discussion

• What if you had little choice when it came to choosing a job? Suppose that you were expected to work in the same occupation as the rest of your family--an occupation that your family has worked at for hundreds of years. How would you feel about this situation?

• Read pps 398 - 399

United Streaming

• http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/search/assetDetail.cfm?guidAssetID=AD2EDB9D-ABA6-4E2B-BEE8-6A6B592453C6

Homeless Bird Project

1. Create a cover page

2. Rename each chapter

3. Journal Entry for each chapter

4. Drawing of Bride of Groom’s kimono

5. Compare and contrast the life of the groom and the bride before the wedding.

6. Compare the groom’s mother to the bride’s mother

7. Rewrite the ending

Homeless Bird Project

• All pages must be stapled together

• Each section is on it’s own numbered page

• Each chapter must be numbered and renamed.

• Kimonos must be in color

• Must use thinking map for the comparisons

India’s Caste System

• According to the ancient Hindu scriptures, there are four "varnas." The Bhagavad Gita says varnas are decided based on Guna and Karma. Manusmriti and some other shastras mention four varnas: the Brahmins (teachers, scholars and priests), the Kshatriyas (kings and warriors), the Vaishyas (traders), and Shudras (agriculturists, service providers, and some artisan groups). Offspring of different varnas belong to different Jātis. Another group excluded from the main society was called Parjanya or Antyaja. This group of former "untouchables" (now called Dalits) was considered either the lower section of Shudras or outside the caste system altogether. Passages from scriptures such as Manusmriti indicate that the varna system was originally non-hereditary.[15]

The Confusing Caste System

• The confusion in the caste system begins by the use of the word caste. The Indians in their different languages use the word 'Jat' for any community who have something common like religion, language, origin, similar geographical background and so on. The Indians also use the word 'Jat' for Varna. The Portuguese who were the first European power to arrive in India distorted the word 'Jat' into caste. The British who arrived to India much later after the Portuguese also used the word caste. The British used the word Caste instead of Jat and Varna. And so sometimes in English the caste system is explained in a confusing way according to which, the caste system consists of four castes which are divided into many castes. Sometimes in English the word caste is used for Varna and the word sub-caste for Jat. In this section to prevent confusion we will use the words Varna and Jat.

• The hierarchy between the Varnas. All the Jats accept that the Brahman Varna is the highest Varna in the hierarchy and the untouchables are outcast and lowest in the hierarchy. But most of the Jats in different Varnas claim to be superior and higher than other Jats. Some of the Jats as stated earlier break up into smaller communities or Jats. In these Jats that break up into different communities, there are communities that look at themselves as superior or higher in hierarchy than other communities. Among the Brahman Varna, there are Jats that consider themselves as superior than other Brahman Jats. Some of the Brahman Jats break up into smaller communities, and between these communities within the Jat there also exist a hierarchy.

• Jat is determined by birth and it cannot be changed. In the beginning the caste system was not a strict system and people could move from one Varna to another. Indologists give different dates to this period of change. Some claim the change occurred around 500 B. C. and other claim 500 A. D. Until then, communities and even singular person moved from one Varna to another Varna, because of their desire to adopt different occupations. There were some kings who belonged the Kshatria (warrior castes) and changed their status to become religious Brahmans. There were also who changed their status to become warriors. And even after the caste system was organized in a strict manner there were many communities who did not always follow their status occupations. There was a case of a Jat that lost its high status because they did not profess the profession worthy of their Varna. The Kayastha of east and north east India originally belonged to the Kshatria Varna (warrior caste). Some time in the past among warriors communities, there developed a bureaucratic unit whose job was writing and listing war events and they were called Kayasthas. Because these unit members were not warriors, they were excluded from the Kshatria status and were given a lower status. But the Kayasthas even today claim Kshatria status.

BRAHMIN

• Rajput Landowner Smoking HookaHere is a Rajput and his family on their land.  He is smoking a

hooka, or water pipe.  He is a member of the caste Kshatriyas, which is right below the Brahmans.  He is important to the community because he is a farmer and is a main source of food.

Fruit MerchantThe Fruit Merchant is part of the Vaishya caste.  The Vaishya caste are

shopkeeper and sell products, unlike the Shudra who sell services

• Patriarch with FamilyThis man is a member of the Shudra caste.  Within the caste of Shudra there are many different groups.  Each one of these groups performs a service.  Their specific service is a birthright and is somewhat similar to unions in the U.S.  Here, he is standing among many others in his caste.

Formerly the Untouchables

• MusiciansIn India musicians are part of the lowest caste.  They are Harijans (god's children) which used to be known as untouchables.  Though their music is enjoyed by many, the act of playing some of these instruments is considered to be unclean.  The saliva that is being blown into the horns is thought to be very unhygenic, therefor not fit for people in higher castes to play these instruments.

References

• Southeast Asia Today: Thailand. United – Learning

(1994). Retrieved March 30, 2008, fromunitedstreaming: http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/

• Eureka: The India File: The Struggle for – Freedom. Channel 4

(1997). Retrieved March 30, 2008, fromunitedstreaming: http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/