GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING

GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING

Southeast Asia is made up of 2 parts:

Mainland SEA which includes Vietnam (Tongking, Annam and Cochin-China); Cambodia and Laos, Thailand, Burma and Malay Peninsula.

Island SEA which is made up of Indonesia and the Philippines.

The countries on the mainland have developed in the valleys of the Red River, the Mckong, the Menam and the Irrawaddy.

The archipelago of Indonesia is located south of the Malay Peninsula. It consists of 14,000 islands, the biggest being Sumatra. From the western tip of Sumatra to the east of New Guinea, the distance is 3,000 miles. The total area of this great mass of land and water is 4 million sq. miles, and the sea is at once a barrier and a means of communication between the islands.

The area is one of the most volcanic in the world - the line of volcanoes, stretched through Sumatra, Java, Celebes to the Philippines. This explains why the area contains such extremely fertile tracts of land.

The most striking fact about SEA is its "fragmentation" caused by great convulsions on the earth's surface and also by the melting of the ice-cap, whose torrential waters filled up narrow valleys like those between Malaya and Sumatra to form the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Sunda, respectively.

This explains why the most fertile lands are so widely separated from each other by sea, marsh, mountain or stretches of laterite; why they are to be found on the perimeter of the area, and consequently why the settlements are so cut off from each other.

ANCIENT SEA - ROUTE BETWEEN CHINA AND THE WEST

In ancient times, there were 2 main trade routes between east and west:

1. the overland silk route

2. the sea route running through the Straits of Malacca.

The volume of trade through the Straits depended very much on the strength and weakness of the Chinese empire:

a. When the Chinese were too weak to control the fierce nomads who roamed Central Asia, they concentrated on the sea route.

b. When the empire was powerful and the tribes were peaceful, they favoured the overland route.

BREAKDOWN OF THE ROUTE BETWEEN CHINA AND THE WEST

According to Ptolemy, the first European people to reach Malaya and South China on an all sea-route were the Romans (evidence of Roman beads found in Johore, Roman lamp in Siam, numerous Roman remains in Go Oc Eo, dd. AD 1^st century).

But by AD 215 Roman trade with the east had seriously declined. Rome's purchasing power had collapsed due to her extravagant demand for eastern wares – this led to a drain of gold bullion.

Furthermore, the political situation in China also affected the sea route. By AD 220, the great Han empire, the counterpart of the Roman empire in the east, had disappeared. For the next 4 centuries China was distracted by civil wars.

Thus, the western end of the trade route (the customers for eastern wares) and the eastern end (the supplier) were both eliminated and the sea route broke down.

PERIOD OF INDIANIZATION

From AD 1^st – 7^th centuries, Indian and Southeast Asian sailors were able to sail unchallenged (other than the threat of pirates) over that part of the sea-route that lay between India and China.

The Indo-Pacific peninsula and Indonesia saw the rise of little Indianised states and one powerful empire (Funan) and the Malay peninsula was one of the first areas to come under its influence.