Strange Parallels: Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–1830 (Studies in Comparative World History)
Cambridge University Press, 6/9/2003
EAN 9780521800860, ISBN10: 0521800862
Hardcover, 510 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This ambitious work has two novel goals: to overcome the extreme fragmentation of early Southeast Asian historiography, and to connect Southeast Asian to world history. Combining careful local research with wide-ranging theory Lieberman argues that over a thousand years, each of mainland Southeast Asia's great lowland corridors experienced a pattern of accelerating integration punctuated by recurrent collapse. These trajectories were synchronized not only between corridors, but most curiously, between the mainland as a whole, much of Europe, and other sectors of Eurasia. He describes in detail the nature of mainland consolidation - which was simultaneously territorial, religious, ethnic, and commercial - and dissects the mix of endogenous and external factors responsible. Here, then, is a fundamentally original analysis not only of Southeast Asia, but of the pre-modern world.
1. Introduction
the ends of the earth
Part A. Rethinking Southeast Asia
Part B. Implications for Eurasia
2. One basin, two poles
the western mainland and the formation of Burma
3. A stable, maritime consolidation
the central mainland
4. 'The least coherent territory in the world'
Vietnam and the eastern mainland
Conclusion.