Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T10:55:37.528Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Protected Rimlands and Exposed Zones: Reconfiguring Premodern Eurasia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2008

Victor Lieberman
Affiliation:
University of Michigan

Extract

In a recent study, I sought to analyze political and cultural patterns across mainland Southeast Asia during roughly a thousand years, from c. 800 to 1830.1 In brief, I argued that each of mainland Southeast Asia's three great north-south corridors experienced a pattern of accelerating integration. This process was territorial in the sense that some twenty-three small polities in the fourteenth century were assimilated, gradually or convulsively, fully or partially, to three overarching imperial systems by the early 1800s. Integration was administrative insofar as within each imperial system mechanisms of provincial control, economic extraction, and manpower organization became more penetrating, stable, and efficient. Integration was cultural in the sense that hitherto self-sufficient communities across each of the three principal zones came to accept linguistic, ethnic, and religious norms sanctioned by imperial elites.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lieberman, Victor, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, Volume One: Integration on the Mainland (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mainland Southeast Asia comprises the modern countries of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

2 By these three criteria, southeastern Europe could be included in the “exposed zone.” “Southwest Asia” includes Persia, Transoxania, and the Ottoman lands. The three defining features of the exposed zone do not all apply as completely to Transoxania and Persia as to China and South Asia. In its civilizational precocity and subjection to Inner Asian influence, Persia, for example, clearly had much in common with other exposed zones, but along with Transoxania, Persia had a population and territory on the same modest scale as many protected rimlands. What is more, although the three defining features of the exposed zone all apply to the Ottoman lands, in those lands as in Persia and Transoxania, Islam displaced/camouflaged pre-Islamic charter-era cultural legacies far more substantially than in South Asia. The Ottoman lands were distinct too in that they escaped fresh post-1500 Inner Asian incursions such as transformed Persia, South Asia, and China. In short, depending on criteria, between the “exposed zone” and the “protected rimlands” one can find a degree of overlap, while both categories contain internal variations.

3 For varied definitions of early modernity, see Richards, John, “Early Modern India and World History,” Journal of World History 8 (1997): 197209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Penumbral Visions (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2001), 261–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldstone's, Jack contrary views in “Neither Late Imperial nor Early Modern,” in Struve, Lynn, ed., The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 242302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and discussion in Strange Parallels, I, 79–80, esp. n. 117.

4 Huntingdon, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1996)Google Scholar, chapter 8, endorses this opposition, as in varying degrees and guises do Landes, David, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York, 1998)Google Scholar; several contributors to Harrison, Lawrence and Huntingdon, Samuel, eds., Culture Matters (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; and Immanuel Wallerstein and his disciples.

5 Price, Barbara, “Secondary State Formation: An Explanatory Model,” in Cohen, Ronald and Service, Elman, eds., Origins of the State (Philadelphia, 1978), 161–86.Google Scholar

6 Much as Southeast Asia looked to India for cultural inspiration, South India looked to North India. By this criterion, though not in terms of insulation from Inner Asian incursions, South India could be categorized alongside Southeast Asia.

7 On Pagan, Angkor, and Dai Viet, see Lieberman, Strange Parallels, I, chs. 2–4 and sources therein. On Kiev, I have relied in part on Martin, Janet, Medieval Russia 980–1584 (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; Franklin, Simon and Shepard, Jonathan, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200 (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Franklin, Simon, Writing, Society, and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300 (Cambridge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, David, “Monumental Building and Its Patrons as Indicators of Economic and Political Trends in Rus, 900–1262,” Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 38 (1990): 321–55Google Scholar. On Carolingian/Capetian France, see Geary, Patrick, The Myth of Nations (Princeton, 2002)Google Scholar; McKitterick, Rosamond, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians (London, 1983)Google Scholar; McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, c. 700–c. 900 (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hallam, Elizabeth, Capetian France 987–1328 (London, 1990)Google Scholar; Bull, Marcus, ed., France in the Central Middle Ages 900–1200 (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; and Duby, Georges, France in the Middle Ages 987–1460 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar. On early Japan, see Piggott, Joan, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford, 1997)Google Scholar; Farris, William Wayne, Heavenly Warriors (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)Google Scholar; idem, Japan's Medieval Population (Honolulu, 2006)Google Scholar; von Verschuer, Charlotte, Le Riz dans la Culture de Heian, Mythe et Realite (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar; Shively, Donald and McCullough, William, eds., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 2: Heian Japan (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Totman, Conrad, A History of Japan (Malden, Mass., 2000)Google Scholar, pts. 1, 2. Arguments for Russia, France, and Japan are set forth in detail in Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, Volume Two: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands (forthcoming, Cambridge, 2009), chs. 2–4.

8 Cf. McNeill, William, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, N.Y., 1976), chs. 3, 4Google Scholar; Jannetta, Ann Bowman, Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Japan (Princeton, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Farris, Japan's Medieval Population; Lieberman, , Strange Parallels, I, 50, 97–98, 224Google Scholar.

9 On climatic changes c. 600–1300, see Lieberman, , Strange Parallels, I, 101–12, 224–26, 363–64Google Scholar, and sources cited therein.

10 Japan fit this pattern less well insofar as trade and cultural contacts with the continent tended to decline c. 900–1200.

11 See n. 7 supra; and Henley, David, “Population and the Means of Subsistence,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36 (2005): 337–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 On thirteenth/fifteenth-century crises, their etiology and manifestations, see sources in n. 7 supra; and Lieberman, , Strange Parallels, I, 119–31, 236–47, 367–72Google Scholar; and II, chs. 2, 4, which in turn rely in part on Fennell, John, The Crisis of Medieval Russia 1200–1304 (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Crummey, Robert, The Formation of Muscovy 1304–1613 (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Ostrowski, Donald, Muscovy and the Mongols (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; Potter, David, ed., France in the Later Middle Ages 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; Allmand, Christopher, The Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Benedictow, Ole, The Black Death 1346–1353 (Woodbridge, U.K., 2004), which sets forth the link between plague and new commercial circuitsGoogle Scholar; Yamamura, Kozo, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 3: Medieval Japan (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mass, Jeffrey, ed., The Origins of Japan's Medieval World (Stanford, 1997)Google Scholar; and Adolphson, Mikael, The Gates of Power (Honolulu, 2000)Google Scholar. In France, the interregnum of 1337–1453 was actually the second, the first having come c. 890–1110, between Carolingian collapse and early Capetian vigor. In this sense, as Lieberman, Strange Parallels, II, ch. 2 explains in detail, fusing the Carolingian and Capetian periods into a composite charter era, while convenient for this brief exposition, artificially conflates two administrative cycles.

13 I take the period between Carolingian collapse and early Capetian consolidation as the first interregnum. If we start with the Hundred Years War and proceed through the Wars of Religion to the Revolutionary upheavals, the ratio, depending on definitions of breakdown, would be in the order of 116:36:2.

14 See Lieberman, , Strange Parallels, II, ch. 1.Google Scholar

15 On political integration c. 1450–1830, see Lieberman, , Strange Parallels, II, chs. 2–4Google Scholar, based on, inter alia, Crummey, Formation of Muscovy; Kollmann, Nancy Shields, Kinship and Politics (Stanford, 1987)Google Scholar; idem, By Honor Bound (Ithaca, 1999); Hellie, Richard, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kivelson, Valerie, Autocracy in the Provinces (Stanford, 1996)Google Scholar; LeDonne, John, Absolutism and Ruling Class (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; de Madariaga, Isabel, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven, 1981)Google Scholar; Potter, David, ed., France in the Later Middle Ages 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; Holt, Mack, ed., Renaissance and Reformation France 1500–1648 (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; Doyle, William, ed., Old Regime France 1648–1788 (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar; Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, The Ancien Regime (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; Beik, William, Absolutism and Society in 17th Century France (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collins, James, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woloch, Isser, The New Regime (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Yamamura, Cambridge History; Hall, John Whitney, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4: Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jansen, Marius, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5: The 19th Century (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, John Whitney et al. , eds., Japan Before Tokugawa (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar; Totman, Conrad, Early Modern Japan (Berkeley, 1993)Google Scholar.

16 Within 1825 boundaries, between 1300 and 1825 the population of France rose roughly 70 percent, those of Burma and Siam perhaps 100 percent, that of Vietnam some 250 percent, of Japan 500 percent, and of Russia 600 to 900 percent.

17 Flynn, Dennis, “Comparing the Tokugawa Shogunate with Hapsburg Spain,” in Tracy, James, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires (Cambridge, 1991), 332–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barrett, Ward, “World Bullion Flows, 1450–1800,” in Tracy, James, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires (Cambridge, 1990), 224–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Gorski, Philip, The Disciplinary Revolution (Chicago, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the dynamics and limits of cultural integration in each realm, sources in n. 15 supra, plus Stephen Batalden, ed., Seeking God (DeKalb, Ill., 1993); Baron, Samuel and Kollmann, Nancy Shields, eds., Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine (DeKalb, Ill., 1997)Google Scholar; Kivelson, Valerie and Greene, Robert, eds., Orthodox Russia (University Park, Pa., 2003)Google Scholar; Roche, Daniel, France in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar; Chartier, Roger, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham, 1992)Google Scholar; Bell, David, The Cult of the Nation in France (Cambridge, Mass., 2001)Google Scholar; Batten, Bruce, To the Ends of Japan (Honolulu, 2003)Google Scholar; Howell, David, Geographies of Identity in 19th-Century Japan (Berkeley, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burns, Susan, Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan (Durham, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Strange Parallels, I, chs. 2–4, passim; Lieberman, Victor, “Ethnic Politics in Eighteenth-Century Burma,” Modern Asian Studies 12 (1978): 455–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and previous note.

20 Discussion of Chinese political, cultural, and economic history follows Lieberman, Strange Parallels, II, ch. 5, which in turn relies on, inter alia, Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar; Skinner, G. William, ed., The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford, 1977)Google Scholar; Mote, F. W., Imperial China 900–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1999)Google Scholar; Elman, Benjamin, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 2000)Google Scholar; Franke, Herbert and Twitchett, Denis, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Volume 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368 (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar, Chaffee, John, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; Johnson, David, The Medieval Chinese Oligarchy (Boulder, 1977)Google Scholar; Bol, Peter, “This Culture of Ours” (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar; Hymes, Robert, Statesmen and Gentlemen (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; Bossler, Beverly, Powerful Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hansen, Valerie, The Open Empire (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; McKnight, Brian, Village and Bureaucracy in Southern Sung China (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar; Smith, Paul Jakov and Glahn, Richard von, eds., The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (Cambridge, Mass., 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wong, R. Bin, China Transformed (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997)Google Scholar; Hucker, Charles, ed., Chinese Government in Ming Times (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Huang, Ray, Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Bartlett, Beatrice, Monarchs and Ministers (Berkeley, 1991)Google Scholar; Rawski, Evelyn, The Last Emperors (Berkeley, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Struve, , Qing Formation; Naquin, Susan and Rawski, Evelyn, eds., Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 1987)Google Scholar; Elman, Benjamin and Woodside, Alexander, eds., Education and Society in Late Imperial China 1600–1900 (Berkeley, 1994)Google Scholar; Reed, Bradly, Talons and Teeth (Stanford, 2000)Google Scholar; Liu, Kwang-Ching, ed., Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar; Esherick, Joseph and Rankin, Mary, eds., Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance (Berkeley, 1993)Google Scholar; Perdue, Peter, China Marches West (Cambridge, Mass., 2005)Google Scholar; Elliot, Mark, The Manchu Way (Stanford, 2002)Google Scholar; Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar; Sommer, Mathew, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford, 2000)Google Scholar; Johnson, David et al. , eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 1985Google Scholar; Rowe, William, Saving the World (Stanford, 2001)Google Scholar.

21 Smith, Paul Jakov, “Introduction,” in Smith, and von Glahn, , eds., Song-Yuan-Ming Transition, 34Google Scholar.

22 Perdue, China Marches West.

23 Lorge, Peter, War, Politics, and Society in Early Modern China (London, 2005)Google Scholar; Perdue, China Marches West; Cosmo, Nicola Di, “Did Guns Matter?” in Struve, , Qing Formation, 121–66Google Scholar. As noted, a pacific post-1640 environment also nullified firearms improvement in Japan.

24 Trigger, Bruce, Understanding Early Civilizations (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scarre, Christopher and Fagan, Brian, Ancient Civilizations (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2003)Google Scholar; Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History, chs. 1–3.

25 For geographic definitions and historical overviews of Inner Asia—also termed “Inner Eurasia,” “Central Eurasia,” or in its western sector “Central Asia”—see Soucek, Svat, A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Christian, David, “Inner Eurasia as a Unit of World History,” Journal of World History 5 (1994): 173211Google Scholar; idem, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Volume 1 (Malden, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar; Elliott, Manchu Way; Perdue, China Marches West; Barfield, Thomas, The Perilous Frontier (Cambridge, Mass., 1989)Google Scholar; Cosmo, Nicola Di, “State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History 10 (1999): 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sinor, Denis, “Central Eurasia,” in Sinor, D., ed., Orientalism and History (Bloomington, 1970), 93119Google Scholar.

26 Lieberman, Strange Parallels, II, ch. 5, n. 212.

27 Cf. Cosmo, Nicola Di, “Review of The Cambridge History of China, vol. VI,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 56 (1996): 493508CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Elliott, Manchu Way.

29 Rawski, Last Emperors; Elliott, Manchu Way; Perdue, China Marches West.

30 Cf. n. 24 supra; and Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York, 1997)Google Scholar.

31 Lee, James, Campbell, Cameron, and Feng, Wang, “Positive Check or Chinese Check?Journal of Asian Studies 61 (2002): 500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 See “Introduction” and other essays by Skinner in idem, City in Late Imperial China.

33 See Reed, Talons and Teeth.

34 For China, see Naquin, and Rawski, , Chinese Society, 219Google Scholar; Feuerwerker, Albert, “State and Economy in Late Imperial China,” Theory and Society 13 (1984): 298307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, , The City, 2021, 29Google Scholar; Vries, P.H.H., “Governing Growth: A Comparative Analysis of the Role of the State in the Rise of the West,” Journal of World History 13 (2002): 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Europe, see Kahan, Arcadius, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout (Chicago, 1985), 345Google Scholar; Hellie, Richard, “The Costs of Muscovite Military Defense and Expansion,” in Lohr, Eric and Poe, Marshall, eds., The Military and Society in Russia 1450–1917 (Leiden, 2002), 66Google Scholar; Mathias, Peter and O'Brien, Patrick, “Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810,” Journal of European Economic History 5 (1976): 601–50Google Scholar, esp. 607–9; Brewer, John, The Sinews of Power (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 91Google Scholar; Hoffman, Philip and Norberg, Kathryn, eds., Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government 1450–1789 (Stanford, 1994), 299302Google Scholar. For Southeast Asia we lack statistics. For Japan, a pacific environment, rapid commercial and handicrafts expansion, and late Tokugawa inertia allowed effective tax rates on rural incomes to fall to the range of 15–40 percent. Francks, Penelope, Rural Economic Development in Japan (London, 2006), 4547, 79 ff.Google Scholar; Philip Brown, personal communication, 13 Nov. 2006. But this too was considerably higher than Chinese rates, arguing again for structural constraints in China.

35 Feuerwerker, “State and Economy,” 300; Vries, , “Governing Growth,” 94–95; Ray Huang, “The Ming Fiscal Administration,” in Twitchett, Denis and Mote, Frederick, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, Part. 2: The Ming Dynasty 1368–1644 (Cambridge, 1998), 113, 124, 134, 138, 144–48, 166Google Scholar.

36 Huang, , “Ming Fiscal Administration”; Naquin, and Rawski, , Chinese Society, 225–26Google Scholar; Zelin, Madeline, The Magistrate's Tael (Berkeley, 1984), 305–8Google Scholar; Wang, Yeh-chien, Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750–1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 8–9, 30, 26–35, 131Google Scholar.

37 Discussion of South Asian political, cultural, and economic history follows Lieberman, Strange Parallels, II, ch. 6, which relies on, inter alia, Allchin, F. R., The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; Thapar, Romila, Early India (Berkeley, 2002)Google Scholar; Asher, Catherine and Talbot, Cynthia, India before Europe (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ludden, David, An Agrarian History of South Asia (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Raychaudhuri, Tapan and Habib, Irfan, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume 1: c. 1200–1750 (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar; Pollock, Sheldon, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men (Berkeley, 2006)Google Scholar; idem, ed., Literary Cultures in History (Berkeley, 2003); Wink, Andre, Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, 2 vols. (Delhi, 1990, and Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; Jackson, Peter, The Delhi Sultanate (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar; Talbot, Cynthia, Precolonial India in Practice (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richards, John, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, eds., The Mughal State 1526–1750 (Delhi, 1998)Google Scholar; Alam, Muzaffar, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India (Delhi, 1986)Google Scholar; Bayly, C. A., Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; idem, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1988); Eaton, Richard, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761 (Cambridge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ed., India's Islamic Traditions (New Delhi, 2003); Bayly, Susan, Caste, Society and Politics in India (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar; Trautmann, Thomas, Aryans and British India (Berkeley, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 This post-1640 vigor India shared with Japan and South Russia, but not with Western Europe or China. Cf. Richards, Mughal Empire, ch. 9; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500–1650 (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Cf. Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam, Volume 3: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gommans, Jos, Mughal Warfare (London, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Pollock, Language of the Gods, esp. chs. 8–12.

41 Bayly, C. A., Origins of Nationality in South Asia (New Delhi, 1998)Google Scholar.

42 Ali, M. Athar, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (Bombay, 1966)Google Scholar; idem, “Towards an Interpretation of the Mughal Empire,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1978): 38–49.

43 But in turn, because South Asia lacked a universal administrative language comparable to Chinese, the Turkic insistence on Persian was perhaps unavoidable. Sanskrit was a primarily religious tongue associated with Hinduism, while the congeries of dialects that evolved into Hindi lacked sufficient standardization or prestige, the Delhi sultans and Mughals felt, to serve as an imperial lingua franca.

44 Discussion of island Southeast Asia follows Lieberman, Strange Parallels, II, ch. 7, which in turn relies on, inter alia, Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1988, 1993)Google Scholar; Ricklefs, M. C., A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1200 (Stanford, 2001)Google Scholar; Lombard, Denys, Le Carrefour Javanais, 3 vols. (Paris, 1990)Google Scholar; Taylor, Jean Gelman, The Social World of Batavia (Madison, 1983)Google Scholar; Andaya, Barbara Watson and Andaya, Leonard, A History of Malaysia (Honolulu, 2001)Google Scholar; Andaya, Leonard, Leaves of the Same Tree (Honolulu, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kathirithamby-Wells, J. and Villiers, John, eds., The Southeast Asian Port and Polity (Singapore, 1990)Google Scholar; Wolters, O. W., Early Indonesian Commerce (Ithaca, 1967)Google Scholar; Phelan, John, The Hispanization of the Philippines (Madison, 1959)Google Scholar; Doeppers, Daniel and Xenos, Peter, eds., Population and History (Madison, 1998)Google Scholar.

45 A Cola attack on southeast Sumatra in 1025 and a failed Mongol assault on Java in 1293 were exceptions proving the rule.

46 Andaya, , Leaves of the Same Tree, ch. 2; idem, “The Search for the ‘Origins’ of Melayu,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32 (2001): 315–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, II, chs. 1–2.

48 Ottoman military aid to Aceh in the seventeenth century hardly negates this claim.

49 Admittedly, Europeans also intervened on the pre-1824 mainland. For example, Spanish forces entered Cambodia in the 1590s, French troops were stationed in Siam in 1687–1688, and both Portuguese and Dutch meddled in the Vietnamese civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. But all these short-lived, generally half-hearted actions either had no long-term impact or, often inadvertently, strengthened local authorities.

50 On the pre-1415 foundations of European expansion, see Ringrose, David, Expansion and Global Interaction, 1200–1700 (New York, 2001)Google Scholar; Scammell, G. V., The World Encompassed (Berkeley, 1981)Google Scholar. Cf. Adas, Michael, “Imperialism and Colonialism in Comparative Perspective,” International History Review 20 (1998): 371–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Perdue, China Marches West.

52 See nn. 23, 39 supra.