The Poverty of Regionalism: Limits in the Study of Southeast Asia

Abstract

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the term Southeast Asia referred most commonly to the mainland peninsula, now comprising Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma. The Indonesian archipelago was often considered part of the Pacific, rather than Asia. The short-lived and unlamented South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO, founded in 1954) even included Pakistan. Of course Pakistan’s eastern wing, now Bangladesh, bordered on Burma, but technically SEATO gave Southeast Asia a border with Afghanistan and Iran. The Philippines, for its part, was often barely considered Asian at all and was treated as a transPacific extension of Latin and North America.