Remains of ‘Java Man’ tell us that humans populated south east Asia from at least 40,000BC, with cave art, ritual burials and pottery present in modern Vietnam, Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia, Borneo and Cambodia by 3000BC.
These localised cultures disappeared during the 1st century AD with bronze and iron age cultures exerting themselves from India and China. By the 3rd century Hinduism and Buddhism flourished, causing wars for supremacy up to the arrival of Islam.
BURMA AND VIETNAM
Burma came together with the Mon kingdom in the 5th century, but in the 9th Burmans migrated from China, settling on the Irrawaddy River, unifying the country by the 13th century. Buddhist, wars against the Thai kingdoms were to occupy them until the arrival of the British in 1824.
The kingdom of Nam Viet rose in Vietnam about 200BC but was taken by China, the kingdom of Funan rising on the Mekong, expelling the Chinese by the 10th century. A Vietnamese identity arose around Annan, Cochin China and Tonkin, remaining relatively united until French arrival in the 19th century, where the region, along with Cambodia and Laos, became French Indo China.
THE KHMERS
The Funan were Hindu and took most of Cambodia. However, the indigenous Khmers kicked out the Funan in the 6th century. Buddhists, most of their kings remained Hindu but instituted a cult of god-kings in the 9th century.
With their capital at Angkor, it was a marvellous time of building, with huge temple complexes such as Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom reflecting Buddhist/ Hindu architecture in a distinct pyramidal design.
In the 13th century Buddhism took over and Thailand’s attacks came more frequently, Khmers abandoning their capital for a new city, Phnom Penh. The Cambodians sought French protection in 1863.
THAILAND
The Thais of Thailand (formerly Siam) migrated from China, thriving with Khmer decline, taking up Buddhism and forming the first Thai kingdom in 1350. They captured Angkor in 1431 and began attacking northern Malaya and Burma.
The French arrived in 1684 but the Thais were brilliant diplomats, keeping them out. The Burmese had a brief invasion of Thailand in the 18th century, the Thai capital moving to Bangkok.
With French influence increasing, they ceded Cambodia to the French and kept their independence until World War Two occupation by the Japanese. With a rising middleclass, Thailand adopted a parliament in 1932 and were well on the way to being a modern state apart from occasional military dictatorships.
MALAYA
To the south is Malaya. Originally inhabited by the Negritos, it was repopulated by peoples from China and India up to 400AD.
A strong ethnic mix meant national identity never came, with repeated foreign incursions until Muslims arrived in 1402, setting up the port of Malacca, strategic for trade between Indian and Pacific Oceans, and being ruled by a number of sultanates.
Trade attracted the Portuguese in 1511 and Dutch in 1641, until the British gained influence, taking Singapore in 1819 and creating the British controlled Federated Malay States in 1896.
INDONESIA
Between the south east Asian mainland and Australia are thousands of islands, eventually forming into Indonesia and the Philippines. Little is known of early Indonesia, but the Hindu Srivijaya Empire rose, centred on Palembang, in the 7th century, usurped in the 12th by the Java based Majapahit Kingdom.
From the 16th century Portuguese, Dutch and British influence began a battle for supremacy, the Dutch being successful by the end of the 17th, based on the capital Jakarta, then known as Batavia.
Formed into the Netherlands-Indies in 1914, independence movements began in the 1920s, fuelled following Japanese occupation during World War Two. Independence was assured by 1949 under Sukarno, but increasingly wealthy Muslim land owners whipped up fears of communism in the 1960s, resulting in General Suharto beginning a repressive regime that lasted to his death in the 1990s.
THE PHILIPPINES
The Philippines were also occupied by the Negritos and migrations from China. The centre of an Asian trading network by 1000AD, occupation by Muslim traders was complete by the 16th century, the Spaniards also infiltrating from 1521, establishing the colony of the Philippines (named after Philip II) in 1564, Manila becoming capital in 1571.
A hundred years of revolt led to independence in 1896 just as America realised their strategic importance, imposing US rule in 1901. Self-government was granted in 1935, interrupted by Japanese invasion. From 1946 successive governments proved futile, leading to President Marcos declaring Martial Law in 1972. Plagued by Muslim separatist groups, democracy came in 1983 with Corazon Aquino becoming President.
JAPAN
Just off the Asian mainland lies Japan. Originally peopled by the Ainu, they were displaced by migrations from Polynesia and Asia, Japanese history beginning with the emperor Jimmu in 660BC.
By 300BC a definite culture emerged based on rice growing, metalworking and textiles. Japan was unified under the Yamato dynasty in the 4th century AD, based on the feudal system of great feudal families such as the Jujiwara and Minamoto. Writing, the arts and a central bureaucracy also arose during this period.
By the 12th century the feudal system was perfected by the ‘daimyo’, feudal lords who ruled locally for a military government known as the ‘shogunate’. Based on a code of warriorship, under the daimyo were the warrior ‘samurai’, followed by merchants and workers.
All powerful, the shogunates repulsed the Mongols and the Europeans, kicking out the Spaniards in 1624. Japan then went into ‘sakoku’, or isolation from the world, until 1853 when the Americans opened up trade with them.
The Japanese decided to modernise, installing an emperor in Tokyo and ending the shogunate in 1868. The emperor was symbolic, power held in the hands of a small group of politicians, who brought in a new code of law and constitution in 1889 based on the Imperial German model.
SHINTO
Buddhism gained a strong hold on Japan, but the principle religion is Shinto, animist in origin and based on a oneness with natural forces, or ‘kami’, which exists in mountains, trees, caves and other features.
Ceremony is based on purification so requests can be made before kami. Demanding high standards rather than moral code, daily ritual is carried out in communal shrines or small ‘godshelves’ in the home.
Meaning ‘way of the spirits’, Shinto offers a coming together of the physical and supernatural in ritual, but from the 4th century a modification began with the near veneration of the first emperor, Jimmu.
By the 8th century oral tradition had given way to Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) and Nihon-gi (Chronicles of Japan), containing myths of superheroes and gods, giving the emperor a divinity.
Such ancestor worship formed in the 19th century into a State Shinto, highly nationalistic and demanding loyalty to the God-emperor. It was an explosive mix of politics and the supernatural, fuelling Japanese conquests.
Following World War Two it was abolished, traditional Shinto re-emerging with the idea of the unity of all things and the existence of a ‘spirit-force’ below the physical world.
THE PACIFIC
Shinto was no doubt an advancement on original tribal religious forms. Go from Asia to the Pacific and this tribal form is still to be found in the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
New Guinea was populated about 60,000 years ago, people populating as far as Hawaii by about 2000-1300BC, the time of the occupation of Fiji. Maritime people, they formed links based on trade.
About 800AD they reached New Zealand, adopting the name Maori, meaning ‘normal’, only when Europeans arrived. By the 18th century they numbered some 100,000, living in tribal areas and often going to war with each other.
Believing in an underlying spirit world, artifacts show evidence of animist and fertility beliefs. A Maori pantheon was headed by Rangi, or Father Sky, and his consort, Papa, or Mother Earth.
AUSTRALIA
In Australia, aborigines populated the land about 50,000 years ago but never became as culturally organised as the Maoris, not developing a pantheon or agricultural lifestyle, remaining hunter/gatherers.
They used crude scrapers as tools and painted rocks and caves with red ochre. When Europeans arrived they numbered half a million. A hundred years later, there were 50,000 left.
Nomad, aborigines moved from area to area, following food sources. Organised into clans of 50 to 500, there was no war, with clans sharing food and religion. This was centred on the belief in the Creation Period which over spilled into the present in Dream Time, a temporal phenomenon and a state of being induced through ritual involving a re-enactment of a mythological event or lonely sojourn at a sacred site.
Creating a trance through meditation, the individual reverted to the Creation Period, becoming one with the ancestors. Thus we again find an identical notion of an interactive spirit world underlying physical existence, through which man can bridge the gap through meditation.
© Anthony North, September 2007
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