What was the nature of the power of the precolonial Southeast Asian state and the power of the peasantry? Was there a shift in the balance of power between the state and the peasantry with the advent of colonialism? Did it become less or more 'rational'

Résumé du document

Southeast Asia is not an homogeneous region. That is why it can hardly been analysed as a whole and therefore must be divided into several groups. Concerning the issues related to the relations between the state and the peasantry, South East Asia countries belong mainly to two groups. According to Norman G Owen in The Emergence of Modern South East Asia, travelers could find "two main patterns of political and economic life" in the eighteenth century. I will discuss further this point of view in order to emphasize a key aspect of this topic: contrasts among the different countries of the area. The other key point to mention is the role played by the colonial power. Did colonialism impact on the structure of power and the relations between the state and the peasantry? Is it possible to stress differences according to the rulers - mainly France, Holland, Spain and Great Britain -?

Extraits

[...] On the other hand, some of the South Asian monarchies benefited from a high population density. Java, Bali and other islands were home to millions workers. In these cases, the authorities were less likely to employ the methods previously described as they did not lack labor force. An other important part of the environment is the location factor In the mountain regions and coasts, peasants were much more mobile. Thus, they could easily escape the government rules. Therefore such regions produced so many pirates and all other categories of people one could call "unstable" and then potentially dangerous. [...]

[...] They had to comply with rules edicted by aristocrats, who were mostly interested in the superficy and yield of their fields. Resulting from this situation, there are almost no relics of great empire or kingdom in these islands and mountain regions apart from Sumatra. The coastlines were thus made of weak and dispersed monarchies with little legitimacy among the population. Moreover, they were confronted to invasions and lootings on a regular basis. II) In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the European colonisation tended to reinforce the preexisting balance of power between peasantry and political power as long as their own domination ended up stronger The appearant strucure of power remained the same It is no accident that the Europeans firstly settled in the archipels previously ruled by weak sultans. [...]

[...] Consequently, in some of these countries, the officials were even graded according to the amount of peasant fleeing the areas controlled by the government. That is why the different monarchies used to employ several methods of legitimation, described by Norman G Owen as "moral persuasion, physical coercition, material inducements". As a result, the way peasants were treated differed greatly throughout South East Asia, depending on the policy of the government (depending on the methods the government employed to incite people to stay). [...]

[...] According to the findings of this essay, the answer is clearly no. The Europeans did not change people's everyday life or did not put pressure on their incomes. But they clearly deprived peasants from their liberty of choice since the former openly discussed decisions turned into the decisions of one man. Along with other mistakes affecting the structure of power, this deprivation of liberty made rebellion more acceptable by the majority of the population. Bibliographie The Emergence Of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History, Norman G. [...]

[...] Was there a shift in the balance of power between the state and the peasantry with the advent of colonialism? Did it become less or more 'rational' Southeast Asia is not an homogeneous region. That is why it can hardly been analysed as a whole and therefore must be divided into several groups. Concerning the issues related to the relations between the state and the peasantry, South East Asia countries belong mainly to two groups. According to Norman G Owen in The Emergence of Modern South East Asia, travellers could find "two main patterns of political and economic life" in the eighteenth century. [...]