【院生ゼミ】5月25日
【大学院】
In this week we explored the impact of the arrival of Europeans in Southeast Asia. Obviously they were not uniform. Different groups of Europeans came to different regions at different times for different reasons. This can be summarized as follows:
- In the 16th century, the Portuguese and Spanish arrived at Indonesia for spices (clove, nutmeg and mace).
- In the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company arrived at Indonesia for spices. The Dutch later introduced coffee to the region. Meanwhile, the Portuguese almost disappeared except in Timor-Leste and the Spanish were engaged in the trans-Pacific trading with Chinese merchants in the Philippines.
- In the 18th century, the characteristics of the Dutch changed from the trader to the landlord by interfering with local politics.
- In the late 19th century, the British expanded its Indian territory into Myanmar and also settled down in parts of Malaysia for trading and later for tin. The French, initially looking for a trade route with China, eventually occupied Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
One of the interesting questions regarding the colonization of Southeast Asia is why Thailand was not colonized. We will look into this before discussing the movie "Max Havelaar" in the following weeks.