How, then, can we explain the variations observed across Southeast Asia in the trajectories of nationalism over the past several decades since the transitions to independence in the 1940s and 1950s? As I have argued, the diverging fates of nationalism in the region can be understood from a perspective very different from that suggested by Geertz. The crucial questions, challenges, cleavages, and conflicts facing the new nation-states of Southeast Asia, it has been shown, were not those of “national integration” in contexts of “internal” ethnic diversity, but those concerning (re)integration into the world capitalist economy and the Cold War geopolitical order. Whether cast in terms of imposed constraints or ideological choices, the ways in which various nationstates negotiated their international relations served as critical determinants of nationalist (de)mobilization, nation-building, and nationhood. How else to understand the conspicuous similarities between Thailand and the Philippines, the belated divergence between Burmese and Indonesian nationalism, or the disparity between successful federation-making in Malaysia and federationbreaking in Indochina? The consequences of capitalist development and the circumstances of the Cold War era smiled far more favorably on some nationalisms than on others.