Yet this colonial experience, which was enormously significant in its social impact and served to divide South-Easi Asia into separate political and cultural areas, was merely the later phase of a long period of contact with and influence from outsiders. This is hardly surprising given the fact that South-East Asia is a geo-politically fragmented, 'low pressure area (Du Bois, 1964: 28), located at a crossroads between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and between the relatively heavily populated and solid continental landmasses of India and mainland China. In geographical terms mainland South-East Asia is cross-cut by rivers and mountain ranges, and the maritime regions comprise a scatter of islands, some large like Borneo and Sumatra, some small like Bali and Nias. In other words, South East Asia has served as something of a vacuum to be filled by outside cultures and populations, and it has been torn, as it were, between the competing attentions of visitors from India. the Middle East aud Europe to the west, the Americas to the east, and China and later Japan to the north