Southeast Asia
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 11, Lesson 7
A discussion of Southeast Asia from 1500-1900, including its consolidation into Buddhist kingdoms, European colonization, and the roles of key figures like Osoet Pegua and Emilio Aguinaldo in resisting colonial rule.
For the countries of mainland Southeast Asia—Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam— the period from 1500-1750 was predominantly marked by political consolidation into Buddhist kingdoms. Growing access to European gunpowder weapons allowed local kings to expand their territories. For example, King Bayinnaung (1551-1581) helped expand Burmese political and economic influence into parts of Thailand, Laos, and C ambodia. As the population of the region grew, local governments became larger and demanded more taxes, and this encouraged a shift away from subsistence agriculture toward cash crops such as sugar. Buddhist kings profited from such trade and taxation. As a means of both legitimizing their rule and demonstrating their power, these kings invested in the creation of religious texts, libraries, monasteries and Buddhist temples.
Both the Chinese and Japanese wished to expand their influence throughout Asia. While China’s primary influence in neighboring areas like Vietnam or Burma remained primarily economic, Japan sought political control over areas such as Taiwan, which it conquered in 1895. The four colonial powers in the region— Britain, France, the Netherlands and Spain—thus had to navigate the politics of local kingdoms plus Chinese merchants and Japanese imperial officials.
In the early 1600s, English merchants sought to break into Chinese-dominated markets. Although cast out of southeast Asia by the Dutch, the English returned to wrest Melaka from Dutch control in 1795. Twenty- four years later, the British Empire established control over Singapore. Whereas Melaka represented only a regional power, Singapore was a commercial center for all of southeast Asia. This allowed the British to control much of the trade in the region and to cast its grasp further afield.
In 1786, the British East India Company negotiated with the Sultan of Kedah to create a military and trading center on Penang Island. Worried about Dutch domination of the tea, pepper and opium trade, the British sought to create a presence in southeast Asia. Over the next century British colonial officials played different Malay states against one another, eventually creating a protectorate over the entire region in 1909. Both Burma and Malaysia underwent rapid economic growth under the British. In addition to building railways and developing steam navigation and oil drilling, Burma also increased rice cultivation and produced timber and teakwood. The port of Rangoon (Yangon), the colonial capital, developed into a significant transaction crossroads for the region. Tin mining developed in Malaya, and Chinese laborers were recruited to work in the mines. In time, Chinese immigrants came to represent nearly half the population of Singapore. A large concentration of Chinese also migrated to Kuala Lumpur, the colonial capital of the Federated Malay States. Indian laborers likewise became a sizable population in Singapore and throughout Burma. For the greater part of the 19th century, Malaysia was divided into the British-owned straits settlements – Penang, Melaka and Singapore, whose sultanates became British client states. In the late 19th century, British officials increasingly consolidated control over the Malay states, culminating in the creation of the Federation of Malaya in 1948.
Siam (Thailand), located between the British in Burma and Malaya and the French in Indochina, retained its independence from colonial powers throughout this period. King Mongkut (1851-1868) brought western science and political techniques to the nation. Although forced to grant Britain and France extraterritoriality status in Bangkok, Mongkut kept his country independent. The Thai economy developed rice, rubber, tin and tropical hardwood industries. Bangkok accordingly developed into a major trading center.
In the early 1520s, Chinese diplomats took advantage of a bloody civil war in Vietnam. Although they did little to stem the violence, Ming officials encouraged Vietnam’s ruling Le Dynasty (1428-1788) to adopt the trappings of neo-Confucian ideology and culture. Dutch and Muslim merchants likewise exploited wartime scarcities by selling Indian opium and cloth respectively on the docks of Saigon and Hanoi. With their knowledge of local languages and customs, Chinese and Japanese merchants fared better than their European counterparts. Chinese traders sold metal wares, porcelain and cloth throughout Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in return for large quantities of refined sugar.
Spotlight On | OSOET PEGUA
Historically, many Southeast Asian women worked as merchants. As women traditionally managed households, working as merchants was seen as an extension of their domestic duties. Osoet Pegua (1615-1658) represented one such individual. Little is known about her life. In fact, no portrait of Osoet was ever made. Born in 1615 in Ayutthaya, the capital of Thailand (Siam), Osoet was of Burmese and Mon descent. At a young age, she began working at the walled compound of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC). Quickly learning Dutch, the 16-year-old Osoet began a relationship with Dutch trader Jan van Meerwijck. Following van Meerwijck’s death, Osoet married Jeremias van Vliet (c. 1602-1663), the leading VOC official in Thailand, in 1638. Over the next four years, the couple produced three daughters. Over time, Osoet became an intermediary between King Prasat Thong (c. 1600-1656) and the VOC. However, when Dutch officials recalled van Vliet to Batavia over corruption charges, King Thong refused to let Osoet or her daughters leave Thailand. Osoet then formed a relationship with junior VOC partner Jan van Muijden. Using the hapless van Muijden as a proxy, Osoet effectively took over the management of the VOC office in Ayutthaya. Under her capable leadership, the VOC secured record profits and gained considerable influence with the Thai royal court. Following her death in 1658, King Sanpet VI (1630-1656) allowed for her to be buried in the Dutch compound in Ayutthaya and permitted her children to immigrate to the Netherlands.
Regional wars and epidemics also swept across southeast Asia during this time. The Kingdoms of Lan Xang and Lanna (current day Laos) fought off a series of invasions from Thailand and Vietnam. Under the capable leadership of King Settathirath (1534-1571), the unified kingdoms of Lan Xang and Lanna began a period of rebuilding and economic development. From the 800s to the 1600s the Khmer Empire flourished in what is today Cambodia. Under the able reign of Jayavarman II (c. 700-850) and Jayavarman VII (c. 1122-1218) the Khmer built complex temples and palaces such as Angkor Wat. However, a series of civil wars in the 1400s allowed King Borommaracha II (1424-1448) of Thailand to conquer Khmer in 1432. For the next four centuries, Cambodia would remain a Thai vassal state.
China politically and economically dominated southeast Asia until the 19th century. In 1862, the French Empire used the persecution of French Catholic missionaries as a reason to invade the southern provinces of Vietnam, including the strategic port of Saigon. By 1885, French forces occupied northern Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. French colonists used forced labor to create massive rice and rubber plantations along the Mekong delta. Under the pretense of “civilizing” the Vietnamese, French officials renamed the region French Indochina, forced Vietnamese to adopt French names, learn the French language and convert to Roman Catholicism. To avoid prison, the Vietnamese opposition leader Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) traveled abroad. During this time, he visited France, Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and China. Converting to socialism, Ho became head of the Vietnamese communist party, through which he created a resistance movement to overthrow the French imperial regime.
While Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia struggled to survive Chinese and French expansion, the people of the Philippines struggled to resist Spanish domination. In 1521, Admiral Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), leading a fleet of five ships, claimed the Philippines for Spain. In 1565, a Spanish invasion fleet seized the island of Luzon and established a colonial capital at Manila. From 1565 – 1821, Spanish officials in Mexico City administered the Philippines as part of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Following the independence of Mexico in 1821, the Philippines became a royal colony governed from Madrid. Spanish officials in Manila used lavish gifts to forge alliances with local chiefs. Over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, Manila became a Spanish settlement filled with merchants, soldiers, Catholic missionaries and some bureaucrats that would stay connected to Mexico City. Outside of Manila, a Chinese merchant community began to form. Many Chinese converted to Catholicism and intermarried with local elites.
Spotlight On | EMILIO AGUINALDO
One of the leading figures of Philippine independence, Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy was born into a wealthy family of Chinese and Tagalog descent in Cavite el Viejo on March 22, 1869. He attended the Colegio de San Juan de Letran and became a captain-general of his home province in 1895. Aguinaldo became involved with the Katipunan, a secret society that led an armed resistance against Spanish colonial rule the following year. Becoming a skilled insurgent known as “Magdeleno” (after Mary Magdalene), Aguinaldo and his “Magdelano” forces became known for carrying out planned attacks on Spanish colonial forces. For instance, at the Battle of Zapote Bridge in February 1897, Aguinaldo ordered his troops to ring a local bridge with dynamite and lace the river beneath with punji sticks. When a Spanish army of 12,000 attempted to cross, the Magdelenos destroyed the bridge and routed the army. In March, representatives of the Philippine revolutionary government elected Aguinaldo as its generalissimo. In October 1897, Aguinaldo commissioned the creation of a constitution that further legitimized his regime. Following extensive negotiations with Spanish officials, Aguinaldo agreed to cease resistance, dissolve his government and go into exile in Hong Kong. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Commodore George Dewey arranged for Aguinaldo to be brought to the Philippines to create a new revolutionary government. After a prolonged siege, Spanish authorities surrendered Manila to American forces. Although Spain agreed to cede the Philippines to the U.S. in return for $20 million, Aguinaldo declared the creation of a provisional Philippine republic in January 1899. Aguinaldo would lead a guerilla war against occupying U.S. forces for the next two years. Captured by American forces in Luzon on March 23, 1901, Aguinaldo acceded to U.S. control of the Philippines. Ironically, when imperial Japanese forces invaded the Philippines in December 1941, Aguinaldo re- emerged to lead a pro-Japanese collaborationist government. In February 1942, Aguinaldo took to the airwaves to give his “Bataan Address,” which urged American forces in the Philippines to lay down their arms. Captured when American troops retook the islands in 1945, Aguinaldo was released from prison under a general amnesty for all former Japanese collaborators. He then lived a quiet life in retirement, dying in 1962.
Catholic missionaries from several orders established hundreds of schools and rural churches, most concentrated in the islands of the north and some in the south reaching through the Visaya archipelago and into northern Mindanao. Resistance against Spanish encroachment grew and a group of nationalists, including José Rizal (1861-1896), demanded reform. By 1896, the reform movement had grown to include militant elements, including a secret society known as the Katipunan, which started an armed revolt against Spain. Arrested and found guilty of treason, Rizal was executed by means of a firing squad on December 30, 1896. In doing so, Spanish authorities turned Rizal into a martyr in the cause of Philippine independence. In 1898, the Spanish-American war reached the Philippines, and nationalist hero Emilio Aguinaldo (1869-1964) declared independence from Spain on June 12, 1898, which would lead to the establishment of the First Philippine Republic on January 21, 1899.
Spain turned the Philippines, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, over to the U.S. following the American victory in the Spanish-American War (1898). Consequently, the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) broke out. More than 200,000 Filipinos died, mostly due to famine and disease. The Philippines would not gain its independence until 1946.