Ancient Southeast Asia redefined
The dearth of textbooks on Southeast Asian historical archaeology led NUS Southeast Asian Studies Professor John Miksic to collaborate with publisher Routledge to write a book on early Southeast Asian history and archaeology. Titled Ancient Southeast Asia, the book was launched on 11 November at the National Library, and attended by students, faculty and researchers from educational institutions, as well as members of the public.
Co-written with Associate Prof Goh Geok Yian from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University, the book provides a synthesis of the latest discoveries and research in Southeast Asia archaeology. It examines how Southeast Asia’s unique cultural fusion was established by presenting the evolution of complex societies in Southeast Asia from 500 BC to the arrival of British and Dutch colonists in 1600.
Speaking about the inspiration behind the book, Prof Miksic said, “Historical sources for early Southeast Asia are few and far between, and are insufficient to enable us to envision the entire scope of such important societies as Angkor, Majapahit, Bagan, Sukhothai, (and) Dai Viet. So much new archaeological data has come out in the last 30 years that the old assumptions about pre-European Southeast Asia are not just wrong, they are seriously misleading. Much of what most people think they know about pre-modern Southeast Asia is incorrect.”
Ancient Southeast Asia paints a new picture of Southeast Asia as the hub of an ancient trading system spanning the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. According to Prof Miksic, the book has the potential to overturn basic historical assumptions on the importance of maritime trade in the formation of Asian civilisation; human interaction with natural resources water control; and the nature of early urbanisation.
Prof Miksic (left) and Assoc Prof Goh at the launch of Ancient Southeast Asia
The book makes use of a myriad of French, Dutch, Chinese, Malay-Indonesian and Burmese sources, as well as theoretical perspectives and data from archaeology, history and art history. Much of the content came from Prof Miksic’s lecture notes and background research from his 36 years of teaching the subject — of which 30 years were at NUS, as well as from summarising large quantities of raw data from history and archaeology. While he is certain that new discoveries will be made in the near future, meaning that updates will be necessary, Prof Miksic hopes this volume will motivate students to look more deeply into the study of Southeast Asia, and to look at Asia as a whole rather than as discrete areas.
“I hope to convince people that they should pay more attention to commerce and communication between regions rather than wars and the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms,” he said. “Human history as a whole has too often been taught on the basis of individual nations, which are ‘imagined communities’ in Benedict Anderson's immortal phrase. I hope to give other historians and archaeologists an example of an alternative way of looking at humanity as a whole, not as a series of conflicts, but of collaborations.”
An image of stone carvings of the Mahakarmavibhangga 0.20 party found in the book
