Theme: 2. From Oceanic Crossroads: Empires, Networks and Histories
Guo-Quan Seng
National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
Faizah Zakariah
National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
Farabi Fakih
Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Guo-Quan Seng
National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
Farabi Fakih
Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Wasana Wongsurawat
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Lisandro Claudio
University of California - Berkeley, United States
Panarat Anamwathana
Thammasat University, Thailand
Anthony Medrano
Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Pham Van Thuy
Vietnam National University, Vietnam
Roundtable Abstract:
Global capitalism has been in crisis mode since 2007-8 but one may not notice it living in and reading scholarship on Southeast Asia. In contrast to North America and Europe, and to some extent East and South Asia, relatively few historical works have emerged in recent years to trace, reflect on and chart the trajectory of capitalism in our region. In fact, staying neutral on geopolitical divides, and populated with relatively young societies, Southeast Asia has been touted by pundits as the new growth region, and the future hope of the tired world economy. All the more, then, the call is on us to grasp the logic, dynamic and history of global capitalism in Southeast Asia and from a regional perspective.
This roundtable is convened to start a dialogue among historians on the historiography of global capitalism from a regional standpoint, with the aim of bringing out an edited book volume or journal special issue on the subject in 2025/26. We bring together scholars mostly based in the region to discuss their ongoing scholarship in relation to the broad themes highlighted in Ulbe Bosma’s The Making of a Periphery: How Island Southeast Asia Became a Mass Exporter of Labor (Columbia University Press 2019). Bosma argues that the European colonization of the region as labor-scarce commodity frontiers, coupled with rapid population growth, turned it into an impoverished labor-exporting region. How might this dismal history of world economic integration be re-assessed from within sub-regions in Southeast Asia, with new questions, or from a more recent period of global capitalist development?
With Ulbe Bosma in attendance, our dialogue at the roundtable will unfold along the three following themes: 1) Farabi Fakih, Wasana Wongsurawat and Lisandro Claudio look into the continuities and discontinuities of economic institutions, ideologies and governance in twentieth century Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines within the context of modernization and decolonization debates during and after the Cold War; 2) Guo-Quan Seng, Panarat Anamwathana and Pham Van Thuy consider the questions of race, gender and labor in relation to the emergence of creole and indigenous business sectors in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam; 3) Faizah Zakaria and Anthony Medrano examine the ecological impact of capitalistic development during the long twentieth century, paying particular attention to the conversion of forest landscapes to plantations and to the infusion of capital into brackish marine ecosystems.