The Resurgence of South-East Asia

Abstract

At the beginning of the twentieth century new factors of far-reaching significance may be discerned in the historical development of South-East Asia. Asia as a whole was becoming aware of itself as never before. A fermentation was in process that in many ways bears a striking resemblance to the European Renascence of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Only in South-East Asia’s case, unlike Europe’s, the attack upon traditionalism, the introduction of new ways of thinking and new techniques, and the break-up of the older regimented, feudal social order came as a result of the imposition of alien political and economic domination. By the end of the nineteenth century all her states save Siam had come under European control, and Siam’s own political independence, threatened in 1893 by France, was still in jeopardy.