The history of Southeast Asia has been characterised as interaction between regional players and foreign powers. Each country was intertwined with all the others as depicted in the Southeast Asian political model. For instance, the Malay empires of Srivijaya and Malacca covered modern day Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore while the Burmese, Vietnamese and Khmer peoples governed much of Indochina.
At the same time, opportunities and threats from the east and the west shaped the direction of Southeast Asia. The history of the countries within the region only started to develop independently of each other after European colonialisation was at full steam between the 17th and the 20th centuries