Southeast Asia


Southeast Asia is the geographical southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of mainland Australia, which is part of Oceania. Southeast Asia is bordered to the north by East Asia, to the west by South Asia and the Bay of Bengal, to the east by Oceania and the Pacific Ocean, and to the south by Australia and the Indian Ocean. Apart from the British Indian Ocean Territory and two out of 26 atolls of the Maldives in South Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia is the only other subregion of Asia that lies partly within the Southern Hemisphere. Mainland Southeast Asia is entirely in the Northern Hemisphere. Timor-Leste and the southern portion of Indonesia are the parts of Southeast Asia that lie south of the equator.
The region lies near the intersection of geological plates, with both heavy seismic and volcanic activities. The Sunda plate is the main plate of the region, featuring almost all Southeast Asian countries except Myanmar, northern Thailand, northern Laos, northern Vietnam, and northern Luzon of the Philippines, while the Sunda plate only includes western Indonesia to as far east as the Indonesian province of Bali. The mountain ranges in Myanmar, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, and the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lesser Sunda Islands, and Timor are part of the Alpide belt, while the islands of the Philippines and Indonesia as well as Timor-Leste are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Both seismic belts meet in Indonesia, causing the region to have relatively high occurrences of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, particularly in the Philippines and Indonesia.
It covers about, which is 8% of Eurasia and 3% of Earth's total land area. Its total population is more than million, about 8.5% of the world's population. It is the third most populous geographical region in Asia after South Asia and East Asia. The region is culturally and ethnically diverse, with hundreds of languages spoken by different ethnic groups. The eleven countries in the region are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a regional organisation established for economic, political, military, educational, and cultural integration among its members.
Southeast Asia is one of the most culturally diverse regions of the world. There are many different languages and ethnicities in the region. Historically, Southeast Asia was significantly influenced by Indian, Chinese, Muslim, and colonial cultures, which became core components of the region's cultural and political institutions. Most modern Southeast Asian countries were colonised by European powers. European colonisation exploited natural resources and labour from the lands they conquered, and attempted to spread European institutions to the region. Several Southeast Asian countries were also briefly occupied by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The aftermath of World War II saw most of the region decolonised. Today, Southeast Asia is predominantly governed by independent states.

Definition

The region, together with part of South Asia, was well known by Europeans as the East Indies or simply the Indies until the 20th century. Chinese sources referred to the region as Nanyang, which literally means the "Southern Ocean". The mainland section of Southeast Asia was referred to as Indochina by European geographers due to its location between China and the Indian subcontinent and its having cultural influences from both neighbouring regions. In the 20th century, however, the term became more restricted to territories of the former French Indochina. The maritime section of Southeast Asia is also known as the Malay Archipelago, a term derived from the European concept of a Malay race. Another term for Maritime Southeast Asia is Insulindia, used to describe the region between Indochina and Australasia.
The term "Southeast Asia" was first used in 1839 by American pastor Howard Malcolm in his book Travels in South-Eastern Asia. Malcolm only included the Mainland section and excluded the Maritime section in his definition of Southeast Asia. The term was officially used in the midst of World War II by the Allies, through the formation of South East Asia Command in 1943. SEAC popularised the use of the term "Southeast Asia", although what constituted Southeast Asia was not fixed; for example, SEAC excluded the Philippines and a large part of Indonesia while including Ceylon. However, by the late 1970s, a roughly standard usage of the term "Southeast Asia" and the territories it encompasses had emerged. Although from a cultural or linguistic perspective the definitions of "Southeast Asia" may vary, the most common definitions nowadays include the area represented by the countries listed below.
All eleven states of Southeast Asia are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Papua New Guinea has stated that it might join ASEAN, and is currently an observer. Sovereignty issues exist over some islands in the South China Sea.

Political divisions

Sovereign states

Geographical divisions

Southeast Asia is geographically divided into two subregions, namely Mainland Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia.
Mainland Southeast Asia includes:
Maritime Southeast Asia includes:
While Peninsular Malaysia is geographically situated in Mainland Southeast Asia, it shares many similar cultural and ecological affinities with surrounding islands, thus it is often grouped with them as part of Maritime Southeast Asia. Geographically, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India is also considered a part of Maritime Southeast Asia. Eastern Bangladesh and Northeast India have strong cultural ties with Mainland Southeast Asia and are sometimes considered transregional areas between South Asia and Southeast Asia. To the east, Hong Kong is sometimes regarded as part of Southeast Asia. Similarly, Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands have strong cultural ties with Maritime Southeast Asia and are sometimes considered transregional areas between Southeast Asia and Australia/Oceania. On some occasions, Sri Lanka has been considered a part of Southeast Asia because of its cultural and religious ties to Mainland Southeast Asia. The eastern half of the island of New Guinea, which is not a part of Indonesia, namely, Papua New Guinea, is sometimes included as a part of Maritime Southeast Asia, and so are Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau, which were all parts of the Spanish East Indies with strong cultural and linguistic ties to the region, specifically, the Philippines.
Timor-Leste and the eastern half of Indonesia are considered to be geographically associated with Oceania due to their distinctive faunal features. Geologically, the island of New Guinea and its surrounding islands are considered as parts of the Australian continent, connected via the Sahul Shelf. Both Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands are located on the Australian plate, south of the Sunda Trench. Even though they are geographically closer to Maritime Southeast Asia than mainland Australia, these two Australian external territories are not geologically associated with Asia as none of them is actually on the Sunda plate. The UN Statistics Division's geoscheme, which is a UN political geography tool created specifically for statistical purposes, has classified both island territories as parts of Oceania, under the UNSD subregion "Australia and New Zealand".
Some definitions of Southeast Asia may include Taiwan. Taiwan has sometimes been included in Southeast Asia as well as East Asia but is not a member of ASEAN. Likewise, a similar argument could be applied to some southern parts of mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau, may also considered as part of Southeast Asia as well as East Asia but are not members of ASEAN.

History

Prehistory

The region was already inhabited by Homo erectus from approximately 1,500,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene age. Distinct Homo sapiens groups, ancestral to Eastern non-African populations, reached the region by between 50,000BC to 70,000BC, with some arguing earlier. Rock art dating from 40,000 to 60,000 years ago has been discovered in the caves of Sulawesi and Borneo. Homo floresiensis also lived in the area up until at least 50,000 years ago, after which they became extinct. During much of this time the present-day islands of Western Indonesia were joined into a single landmass with the Malay Peninsula known as Sundaland due to much lower sea levels. The Gulf of Thailand was dry land which connected Sundaland with Mainland Southeast Asia.
Distinctive Basal-East Eurasian ancestry was recently found to have originated in Mainland Southeast Asia at ~50,000BC, and expanded through multiple migration waves southwards and northwards respectively, giving rise to both Oceanian and basal East Asian lineages.
Ancient remains of hunter-gatherers in Maritime Southeast Asia, such as one Holocene hunter-gatherer from South Sulawesi, had ancestry from both the Oceanian-related and East Asian-related branches of the Eastern non-African lineage. The hunter-gatherer individual had approximately ~50% "Basal-East Asian" ancestry, modeled as Onge or Tianyuan-like ancestry, and was positioned in between the Andamanese Onge and the Papuans of Oceania. The authors concluded that the presence of this ancestry in the Holocene hunter-gatherer suggests that East Asian-related admixture from Mainland Southeast Asia into Maritime Southeast Asia may have taken place long before the expansion of Austronesian societies. Geneflow of East Asian-related ancestry into Maritime Southeast Asia and Oceania could be estimated to ~25,000BC.
The pre-Neolithic Oceanian-related populations of Maritime Southeast Asia were largely replaced by the expansion of various East Asian-related populations, beginning about 50,000BC to 25,000BC years ago from Mainland Southeast Asia. East Asian-related ancestry was already widespread across Southeast Asia by 15,000BC, predating the expansion of Austroasiatic and Austronesian peoples.
Samples dated to –2000 BCE from the Hoabinhian hunter-gatherer lithic techno-complex in Mainland Southeast Asia, which predated the Austronesian and Austroasiatic expansions, display the closest genetic affinities to basal East Asian lineages related to the Upper Paleolithic Tianyuan man from northern China, as well as the prehistoric Jōmon peoples of Japan. Compared to modern populations, they share the closest affinities to the Andamanese Onge and Jarawa, and the Semang and Maniq in the interior of the Malay Peninsula.
File:The proposed route of Austroasiatic and Austronesian migration into Indonesia and the geographic distribution of sites that have produced red-slipped and cord-marked pottery.png|left|thumb|The Austroasiatic and Austronesian expansions into Maritime Southeast Asia.
In the late Neolithic, the Austronesian peoples, who form the majority of the modern population in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste, migrated to Southeast Asia from Taiwan in the first seaborne human migration known as the Austronesian Expansion. They arrived in the northern Philippines between 7,000 BC to 2,200 BC and rapidly spread further into the Northern Mariana Islands and Borneo by 1500 BC; Island Melanesia by 1300 BC; and to the rest of Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Vietnam, and Palau by 1000 BC. They often settled along coastal areas, replacing and assimilating the diverse preexisting peoples. The remainders of these preexisting populations, known as Negritos, form small minority groups in geographically isolated regions.
The Austronesian peoples of Southeast Asia have been seafarers for thousands of years. They spread eastwards to Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as westwards to Madagascar, becoming the ancestors of modern-day Malagasy, Micronesians, Melanesians, and Polynesians. Passage through the Indian Ocean aided the colonisation of Madagascar, as well as commerce between Western Asia, eastern coast of India and Chinese southern coast. Gold from Sumatra is thought to have reached as far west as Rome. Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History about Chryse and Argyre, two legendary islands rich in gold and silver, located in the Indian Ocean. Their vessels, such as the vinta, were capable to sail across the ocean. Magellan's voyage records how much more manoeuvrable their vessels were, as compared to the European ships. A slave from the Sulu Sea was believed to have been used in the Magellan expedition as a translator.
Studies presented by the Human Genome Organisation through genetic studies of the various peoples of Asia show empirically that there was a single migration event from Africa, whereby the early people travelled along the south coast of Asia, first entered the Malay Peninsula 50,000–90,000 years ago. The Orang Asli, in particular the Semang who show Negrito characteristics, are the direct descendants of these earliest settlers of Southeast Asia. These early people diversified and travelled slowly northwards to China, and the populations of Southeast Asia show greater genetic diversity than the younger population of China.
Solheim and others have shown evidence for a Nusantao maritime trading network ranging from Vietnam to the rest of the archipelago as early as 5000 BC to 1 AD. The Bronze Age Dong Son culture flourished in Northern Vietnam from about 1000 BC to 1 BC. Its influence spread to other parts Southeast Asia. The region entered the Iron Age era in 500 BC, when iron was forged also in northern Vietnam still under Dong Son, due to its frequent interactions with neighbouring China.
Most Southeast Asian people were originally animist, engaged in ancestors, nature, and spirits worship. These belief systems were later supplanted by Hinduism and Buddhism after the region, especially coastal areas, came under contact with Indian subcontinent during the first century. Indian Brahmins and traders brought Hinduism to the region and made contacts with local courts. Local rulers converted to Hinduism or Buddhism and adopted Indian religious traditions to reinforce their legitimacy, elevate ritual status above their fellow chief counterparts and facilitate trade with South Asian states. They periodically invited Indian Brahmins into their realms and began a gradual process of Indianisation in the region. Shaivism was the dominant religious tradition of many southern Indian Hindu kingdoms during the first century. It then spread into Southeast Asia via the Bay of Bengal, Indochina, then Malay Archipelago, leading to thousands of Shiva temples on the islands of Indonesia as well as Cambodia and Vietnam, co-evolving with Buddhism in the region. Theravada Buddhism entered the region during the third century, via maritime trade routes between the region and Sri Lanka. Buddhism later established a strong presence in Funan region in the fifth century. In present-day mainland Southeast Asia, Theravada is still the dominant branch of Buddhism, practised by the Thai, Burmese, and Cambodian Buddhists. This branch was fused with the Hindu-influenced Khmer culture. Mahayana Buddhism established presence in Maritime Southeast Asia, brought by Chinese monks during their transit in the region en route to Nalanda. It is still the dominant branch of Buddhism practised by Indonesian and Malaysian Buddhists.
The spread of these two Indian religions confined the adherents of Southeast Asian indigenous beliefs into remote inland areas. The Maluku Islands and New Guinea were never Indianised and its native people were predominantly animists until the 15th century when Islam began to spread in those areas. While in Vietnam, Buddhism never managed to develop strong institutional networks due to strong Chinese influence. In present-day Southeast Asia, Vietnam is the only country where its folk religion makes up the plurality. Recently, Vietnamese folk religion is undergoing a revival with the support of the government. Elsewhere, there are ethnic groups in Southeast Asia that resisted conversion and still retain their original animist beliefs, such as the Dayaks in Kalimantan, the Igorots in Luzon, and the Shans in eastern Myanmar.