THE FRAGMENTATION OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
•None of the great centresof the seventeenth century survived into modern times. By the early 1800s new dynasties ruled in Burma, Siam and Vietnam; in the island world Bantenand Makassar had both lost their status as independent entrepots, Mataramwas divided into two, and Aceh had been torn by two generations of civil strife.
•In tracing the reasons for these developments in mainland Southeast Asia, it could be argued that the very process of centralization contained within itself the seeds of fragmentation.
•Only a powerful centrecould maintain its position in the face of the cumulative tensions induced by continuing efforts to tighten supervision of people and resources. Whenever the dominance of the capital was questioned, it was reflected in the steady seepage of manpower away from royal control. In societies where the king was heavily reliant on his armies to maintain his own standing against potential opposition, this loss of manpower was serious, especially if it coincided with conflicts over succession or the sharing of power.
•Added to this was the fact that many royal servicemen were evading their obligations by avoiding registration, commuting their service through payments, entering the monkhood or placing themselves under the protection of other princes or nobles
•Much of the island world in the mid-eighteenth century was also in disarray. It would be easy to attribute this to the influence of the Europeans
•The impact of the Europeans on political developments in the archipelago one must also remember that their numbers were never great. In concluding commercial treaties, VOC officials dealt almost exclusively with the ruler and his court, and this meant that outside Java comparatively few areas were deeply touched by the Dutch.
•the advent of the Dutch had brought hostility and conflict, there were numerous others for whom the VOC was a powerful and protective friend.
•The question often arises as to why the Dutch were able to maintain their position in the island world for so long.
•In part, the reason lies in the profusion of small political units which had always been a feature of the island world and which the VOC helped to perpetuate by working to prevent regional alliances which might form the basis of an anti-Dutch coalition.
•Furthermore, the Dutch were always able to find one Indonesian group to use against another because local rulers themselves often saw a VOC alliance as a means of gaining an advantage over some long-time enemy.
•Conclusion
•In the first place, there had been a marked trend towards a greater centralization of authority, particularly among the mainland states. A combination of prosperity, administrative reform, and control of labourhad enabled a number of centresto confirm their ascendancy over their neighbours, so that by the eighteenth century the typical Southeast Asian state was not so much a confederation of nearly equal communities as a hierarchically organized polity where the component parts paid some kind of allegiance to a dominant centre.
•An important aspect of the expansion of political authority was the creation of a 'capital culture'. Distinctive features of dress, language and custom which had once been key aspects in a community's separate identity now came to be seen as variations of the dominant culture which emanated from the political centre.
•In the island world the process of centralization was not nearly so apparent, facing as it did formidable obstacles of geography and wide cultural variation.
•The peoples of the Philippines still thought of themselves very much as 'Cebuanos' or 'Tagalogs', and to these localized loyalties was added the deeper divide between the Christianized north and centreand the Muslim south. Nonetheless, significant changes had taken place. The Spanish administration had helped to impose a degree of political uniformity, blurring some of the regional differences existing before the conquest, and their emphasis on the development of Manila gave it a pre-eminence which has survived to the present day.
•Nor is it difficult to point to features of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago which were to be of critical importance in the creation of contemporary nation states. The trading network which had long served to link areas as distant as Timor and Melaka was not broken, despite VOC efforts, while the Dutch dependence on Malay as a medium of communication reinforced its position of lingua franca, and promoted its use in places where it had previously been little heard.
•By the seventeenth century the perception of a 'country' had enabled outsiders visiting mainland states to produce books such as de la Loubere'sDescription of the Kingdom of Siam, and the History of the Kingdom of Tonkin by Alexander of Rhodes. The concept of a 'national' history was also developing among indigenous scholars.