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 labour had enabled a
number of centres to 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
centre and 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.