Pre-colonial Southeast Asian Military History

Introduction
While there is a rich colonial literature on the record of European conflict in the region, interest in indigenous warfare was always second to preserving the record of the European experience, and what was written about indigenous warfare was usually specifically interested in putting a particular European campaign into perspective. Research after colonial rule tends to overcompensate the other way, putting overwhelming focus on what indigenous warfare consisted of. Attempts to reconstruct a region-wide history of warfare often present an artificial uniformity to practices and technologies which were in actuality quite varied five hundred years or so ago. In many of the wars Europeans fought against Southeast Asians, Southeast Asians were significant and willing collaborators against other Southeast Asians. More importantly, national warfare cultures are anachronisms that have virtually no meaning for the cultures of war as they existed several hundred years ago. Scholarly research on warfare in the region has usefully contributed frameworks, in which their publications have been divided up below, through which difficult data drawn from battles and campaigns that make understanding historical conflict in the region easier. However, new researchers should keep in mind the artificiality of these divisions in considering new avenues for research. Our first major glimpses of major Southeast Asian battles come from depictions of warfare at Angkor, although archaeological evidence yields some evidence of weaponry and fortifications used in earlier periods. With the breakdown of the classical empires and the emergence of smaller, competitive states across the region, intense warfare became more commonplace. Chinese armies were especially active in Burma from the late 13th century and Vietnam from the early 15th century. The next century saw the arrival of the Portuguese and the conquest of Melaka in 1511. With the Spanish taking of Manila in 1565, the advance of the Dutch from 1600, the Mughal expansion in the northwest a half-century later, the French military adventure in Siam in the 1680s and again in Indochina in the 19th century, and British military involvement in the Straits of Melaka from the late 18th century, detailed foreign accounts multiply, providing large data on the martial cultures of nearly every society and most large-scale conflicts in the region. On the other hand, some historians feel that more durable cultural understandings inform indigenous accounts in a way they do not external accounts. It is this precarious balance between foreign and indigenous accounts that every historian has to consider when undertaking their study of warfare in the region.
General Overviews
Colonial scholarship on Southeast Asian military history focused almost entirely on the histories of local dynasties, the warfare conducted by individual states, and the weapons of particular cultures and societies. Burmese warfare and Vietnamese warfare, for example, might be treated, but rarely did scholars attempt a region-wide view of warfare in Southeast Asia. Often this fragmentation was encouraged both by indigenous sources which were similarly circumspect and by the language barrier in which secondary research on particular colonial societies was confined to the local language(s) and a particular European language. Later, national histories that were dominant after independence encouraged the continuity of a fragmented view of the region’s past. Although an early start was made in Quaritch Wales 1952, it would be decades before other historians tried to identify commonality in warfare across the region as a whole. An important step was Reid 1988, which attempted to identify aspects of warfare common to the region as part of a larger project to understand the early modern period in the region’s history. Building on the author’s work on warfare in South Sulawesi, Andaya 1994 contributed another survey that moved beyond Reid’s work by directing more attention to the cultural importance of warfare technology and the unity of the spiritual and earthly terrains. A decade later, different aspects of warfare across the region began to receive in-depth attention in the collections Andaya 2003, Goscha 2003, and Charney 2004a, followed by the general survey Charney 2004b, as well as a new examination of the region’s entire premodern history, including the place of warfare in it, in Lieberman 2004. Although numerous articles and chapters have appeared on warfare in parts of Southeast Asia in the decade following, no new overall survey of warfare in the region has emerged. The works in this section should thus be treated as entry paths into the field rather than as guides to where the field now stands.
Andaya, Leonard Y. “Interactions with the Outside World and Adaptation in Southeast Asian Society, 1500–1800.” In Cambridge History of Southeast Asia. Vol. 1. Edited by Nicholas Tarling, 345–401. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
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This chapter highlights the unique cultural dimensions of warfare and firearms technology in the region, but also a more sophisticated rendering of the importance of the ancestral spirit world on the human domain during conflict than that offered four decades earlier by Quaritch Wales. This piece stands as a study intermediary to the pioneering work of Quaritch Wales and where we stand today in the field.
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Andaya, Barbara, ed. Special Issue: Aspects of Warfare in Premodern Southeast Asia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46.2 (2003).
DOI: 10.1163/156852003321675718Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This special issue consists of papers presented at a panel organized by Andaya and held at the Asian Studies Association meeting in 2002. In addition to Charney 2003 (cited under War in Art and Literature), Knaap 2003 (cited under Emerging Topics), and Rodriguez 2003 (cited under The Iberians), the issue included an introduction by Andaya (pp. 139–142) and concluding observations by Victor B. Lieberman, “Some Comparative thoughts on Premodern Southeast Asian Warfare,” (pp. 215–225).
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Charney, Michael W., ed. Special Issue: Warfare in Early Modern South East Asia. South East Asia Research 12.1 (2004a).
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This special issue of the journal South East Asia Research includes selected papers from the “Precolonial Warfare in Monsoon Asia” workshop that was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2003. These papers include contributions by Barbara Watson Andaya (Andaya 2004, cited under Emerging Topics), Leonard Andaya (Andaya 2004, cited under Indigenous Wars of the Indonesian and Philippine Archipelagoes), Hans Hägerdal (Hägerdal 2004, cited under War in Art and Literature), and John Whitmore (Whitmore 2004, cited under Meaning of War)
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Charney, Michael W. Southeast Asian Warfare, 1300–1900. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004b.
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This history of warfare in Southeast Asia between 1300 and 1900 was published a half century after the last region-wide monograph to focus on indigenous warfare: Quaritch Wales 1952. Its treatment of regional patterns, cultures, and technology of warfare provides topically focused chapters.
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Goscha, Christopher E., ed. “Foreign Military Transfers in Mainland Southeast Asian Wars: Adaptations, Rejections and Change.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34.3 (2003): 491–493.
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This special issue of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, published in 2003, includes Sun 2003 and Mantienne 2003 (both cited under Impact and Circulation of Firearms), as well as an introduction by the original panel organizer and editor of the special issue, Christopher Goscha (pp. 491–493).
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Lieberman, Victor B. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Vol. 1, The Mainland. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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This gargantuan study of early modern Southeast Asian states, societies, and economies, and their precolonial integration into a handful of states that presaged modern Southeast Asia in comparison to similar patterns of development elsewhere in Eurasia, is the latest and most expansive account that provides the context for understanding the historical role of warfare in the region.
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Quaritch Wales, H. G. Ancient South-East Asian Warfare. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1952.
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This was the seminal history of premodern Southeast Asian warfare, because it was the first and because Quaritch Wales was able to approach the topic with an imagination and ability to move outside the boundaries of a single discipline to reconstruct a view of warfare in Southeast Asia’s past that was coherent and insightful. For its time and in its field, this was a landmark achievement that made later work on warfare in the region possible and still remains essential reading today.
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Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce. Vol. 1, The Lands Below the Winds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
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Asserts that Southeast Asians warfare tended to be bloodshed-averse. Southeast Asians of the time chose to flee rather than fight, as the main goal of warfare, it was suggested, was not killing the enemy but enslaving them. Scholarship now demonstrates that this was not the case for the region as a whole, but rather of limited parts of the island world only.
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Military Organization
Formal military history, the emergence of the military as an institution, has not been emphasized in Southeast Asian historiography, mainly because of the relatively late emergence of standing armies, mainly from the late 18th century. It is also the case that military history in the region is associated with the emergence of colonial militias and especially with the emergence of proto-national armies during the Japanese Occupation (1942–1945) and national armies afterwards. The two main exceptions are the Philippine Republican forces under Aguinaldo and the Thai military from the reign of King Chulalongkorn. While the Filipino army is examined in the context of American colonialism (see Americans and the Philippine War), the emergence of the modern Thai military has been examined in Battye 1974. For other countries in the region, descriptive coverage has been provided for Burma in Langham-Carter 1937 and Than Tun 1967; for Vietnam in Li 1998; for Indonesia in Schrieke 1957; and for both Champa and Angkor (Cambodia) in Jacq-Hergoualc’h 1991 and Jacq-Hergoualc’h 1979, respectively. The only region-wide look at the military, how it dressed, how it armed itself, supplied itself, and so on, is the survey offered in Heath 2003, aside from the material offered in the more general surveys listed in General Overviews. Unfortunately, there are few connections made between the historiography on premodern warfare in the region and the study of modern militaries that emerged in the 20th century.
Battye, Noel Alfred. “The Military, Government and Society in Siam, 1868–1910: Politics and Military Reform during the Reign of King Chulalongkorn”. PhD diss., Cornell University, 1974.
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The only study available in English of the early formation of the modern Thai military.
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Heath, Ian. Burma and Indo-China: Organisation, Warfare, Dress and Weapons. St. Peter Port, UK: Foundry, 2003.
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This contribution to the Armies of the 19th century series offers a visually pleasing and well-researched account of the armies, arms, and costume of mainland Southeast Asia in the 19th century. This coverage includes highland peoples and is well illustrated with 168 drawings.
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Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Michel. L’armement et l’organisation de l’armée Khmère aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles d’après les bas-reliefs d’Angkor Vat, du Bayon et de Banteay Chmar. Paris: Publications du Musée Guimet, 1979.
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Jacq-Hergoualc’h’s seminal work on the Khmer army in the classical period. The study mainly involves interpreting representations in the rich bas reliefs of the Bayon and Angkor Wat. There is some risk that what was represented was an Angkorian imagining of classical Indian texts rather than battlefield experience in the region. Regardless, this is essential reading for all students of premodern Southeast Asian warfare.
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Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Michel. “L’Armée du Campa au début du XIIIe siècle.” In Le Campā et le monde malais: Actes de la Conférence internationale sur le Campā et le monde malais, 27–46. Paris: Publications du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisations de la Péninsule Indochinoise, 1991.
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Jacq-Hergoualc’h’s companion work to his study of representations of the Khmer army in Angkor and Bayon bas reliefs.
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Langham-Carter, R. R. “The Burmese Army.” Journal of the Burma Research Society 27.3 (1937): 254–276.
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This article is one of the earliest and most detailed accounts of the army of Konbaung Burma. Langham-Carter was a colonial administrator who was unusually perceptive about many aspects of precolonial society; in particular, he sought to preserve as many details as possible from the oral recollections of older Burmese in the 1930s and from local and historical village traditions.
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Li Tana. Nguyen Cochinchina, Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1998.
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Li’s publication, like the earlier dissertation on which it is based, includes substantial material on the actual military organization and manpower available for war in early modern Vietnam.
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Schrieke, B. Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings of B. Schrieke. 2 vols. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1957.
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This collection of Schrieke’s writings includes an important essay on indigenous warfare entitled “Javanese Warfare and Its Consequences” (Vol. 2, pp. 121–152) which examines in addition to Javanese tactics and warfare methods, weapons, the fleet, and political consequences, but most importantly for the historiography, how Javanese armies were composed.
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Than Tun. “Former Fighting Forces of Burma.” Guardian 14.7 (July 1967): 9–10.
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This is an English-language extract from Than Tun’s entry on the precolonial Burmese army that he had written for Encyclopaedia Birmanica (Vol. 10, pp. 18–15). Discusses the organization and terminology for branches and units of the Burmese army.
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Warfare on River and Sea
Island topography in the maritime world and on the mainland a wet tropical climate and strong monsoonal systems working on the region from both the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean meant that travel and fighting by water was important in Southeast Asia. Major indigenous fleets grappled with each other, as well as with the Portuguese and the Dutch, particularly in the Straits of Melaka, and mainland states fielded larger fleets on rivers and along shallow coastal waters as well. As a result, much of the actual fighting in Southeast Asian warfare in the early modern period was on water or involved significant numbers of naval vessels. While scholars on Southeast Asian economy and society had since the 1950s been aware that the European military onslaught had not been so complete even in the island world as had long been assumed, it took until the 1980s for a series of scholars, working on different parts of the archipelago to demonstrate this, beginning with Scott 1981, working on the Philippines, and Sudjoko 1981, which discusses Indonesia. A number of works followed that paid very close attention to the technological side of the ships (and weaponry used on them) involved in warfare in different parts of the region, including Knaap 1996 on Java, Skinner 1985 on Thai and Burmese naval battles (as a lengthy introduction to the author’s translation of a Malay account of the battle), and Charney 1997 on the impact of firearms technology on river warfare in mainland Southeast Asia. Scholarship since then has widened its focus to the region as a whole, including Bogani and Ivanoff 2000 and Manguin 2012, which draws connections between European ship models and changing sea-craft in the region, including its warships. Early modern Southeast Asian warships are given a general overview in Turnbull 2002.
Bogani, Laura, and Jacques Ivanoff. “Corps social et constructions navales traditionnelles: De la technique aux symboles.” Techniques & Culture 35–36 (2000): 1–18.
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This article in a special issue of Techniques & Culture examines precolonial Southeast Asia boats.
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Charney, Michael W. “Shallow-Draft Boats, Guns, and the Aye-ra-wa-ti: Continuity and Change in Ship Structure and River Warfare in Precolonial Myanmar.” Oriens Extremus 40.1 (1997): 16–63.
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This study examines both the longevity of Southeast Asia coastal and river shipping on the mainland and the impact of the introduction of firearms on indigenous shipping technologies, arguing that shipping technology played an important role in delaying colonial expansion on the mainland.
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Knaap, Gerrit. Shallow Waters, Rising Tide: Shipping and Trade in Java around 1775. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV, 1996.
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Especially important for the understanding of indigenous ships in the archipelago that would have been involved in warfare is chapter 13, “The Evolution of Ships.”
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Manguin, Pierre-Yves. “Lancaran, Ghurab and Ghali: Mediterranean Impact on War Vessels in Early Modern Southeast Asia.” In Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past. Edited by Geoff Wade and Li Tana, 146–175. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012.
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Examines the impact of Mediterranean models on war vessels in the Malay world in the early modern period.
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Scott, William Henry. Boat Building and Seamanship in Classic Philippine Society. Anthropological Papers 9. Manila, Philippines: National Museum, 1981.
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This is a reprint of what is one of the earliest studies of boat construction and sailing in Southeast Asia and essential reading for understanding the dynamics of warfare in the Philippine islands in the precolonial period.
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Skinner, C., ed. and trans. The Battle for Junk Ceylon: The Syair Sultan Maulana Text, Translation and Notes. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris, 1985.
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Skinner’s work is important here for two main reasons relative to premodern Southeast Asian warfare. First, it includes a translation of a lengthy primary source, an epic poem composed about the 1810 fighting between the Thai and Burmese fleets for control of Junkceylon Island. Second, this work included a lengthy and detailed introduction that provides a very useful introduction to mainland and Malay warfare of the time and the technologies they used in war.
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Sudjoko. Ancient Indonesian Technology: Ship Building and Fire Arms Production around the Sixteenth Century. Aspects of Indonesian Archaeology 7. Jakarta, Indonesia: Proyek Penelitian Purbakala Jakarta, Departemen P & K, 1981.
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Sudjoko’s piece is important for its time in helping to initiate a shift in scholarly thinking about the importance of understanding the role of indigenous technologies in the region’s early modern history, particularly relative to European technologies of the time.
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Turnbull, Stephen. Fighting Ships of the Far East (1): China and Southeast Asia 202 BC–AD 1419. Illustrated by Wayne Reynolds. New Vanguard Series 61. Oxford: Osprey, 2002.
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Well-illustrated though brief examination of Southeast Asian (and Chinese) sailing vessels in peace and war prior to 1420. This represents a very useful introduction to the world of warfare at sea in Southeast Asia for a period not covered well elsewhere in the literature.
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Edged Weaponry
Before the introduction of firearms in Europe and Asia, edged weaponry held sway in war. Unlike Europe, however, where the edged weapon, with the exception perhaps of the bayonet, gave way to firearms after the gunpowder revolutions, in Southeast Asia edged weaponry remained important until the end of the precolonial period. The earliest scholarly work on edged weaponry in Southeast Asia, such as the Krieger 1926 survey of such weapons from the Philippines that are housed in the Smithsonian, consisted of cataloguing of the collections of such weapons donated to museums as exotica. Another kind of cataloguing consisted of the copying of temple bas-reliefs depicting such weaponry, such as Groslier 1921. Interestingly, while Groslier 1921 indicates an early awareness of the importance of such weaponry in a mainland society, scholarship since has largely favored the island world. Perhaps one reason for this was the rigor and popularity of early work on Malay weaponry, beginning with Gardner 1936. Scholarship that followed largely built upon and supplemented Gardner’s work. For example, Hill and Hodgson 1956 devoted more attention to the language built around the Malay kris, Draeger 1972 expanded upon the kris’ social context, Moebirman 1973 its functions and representations, and Frey 1986 has dug more deeply into the craftsmanship and the story behind the weapon. Although scholarship on Malay edged weaponry has followed a clear line of historiography, this is not true for the mainland. Despite the existence of significant expertise in edged weaponry among the art and weapons collector communities, scholarship on edged weaponry on the mainland since Groslier 1921 is practically nonexistent.
Draeger, Donn F. Weapons and Fighting Arts of the Indonesian Archipelago. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1972.
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Examines some of the martial arts and weaponry of the archipelago, from pirates, to headhunters, to Menangkabau warriors. Well-illustrated and comprehensive coverage. This text was reprinted in 1992.
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Frey, Edward. The Kris: Mystic Weapon of the Malay World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
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One of the more recent of books on the kris, one of Southeast Asia’s most common weapons during the early modern period, this work explores the craftsmanship behind the blade, its origins, manufacture, and the preservation of these weapons today. This work has been republished several times.
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Gardner, G. B. Keris and Other Malay Weapons. Singapore: Progressive, 1936.
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This is an early contribution to a number of works on collections of the kris, an important weapon of the Malay world by a retiring colonial civil servant of Sri Lanka and Malaya, Gerald Brousseau Gardner, who based this book on his private collection.
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Groslier, George. Recherches sur les Cambodgiens: D’aprés les textes et les monuments depuis les premiers siècles de notre ére. Paris: A. Challamel, 1921.
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Groslier’s work here is mainly relevant for its useful isolation and representation of various weapons, vehicles, and the like found in the bas reliefs of temples in Cambodia.
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Hill, A. H., and Geoffrey Hodgson. “The Malay Keris and Other Weapons: Keris Types and Terms.” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29.4 (1956): 1–98.
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This study of Malayan edged weaponry is one of the most cited works in the historiography of Southeast Asian warfare.
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Krieger, Herbert W. The Collection of Primitive Weapons and Armor of the Philippine Islands in the United States National Museum. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1926.
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This is an inventory of some of the indigenous weaponry of the Philippines kept in the Smithsonian.
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Moebirman. Keris and Other Weapons of Indonesia. Jakarta, Indonesia: Yayasan Pelita Wisata, 1973.
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Published in both Indonesian and English editions, this is an indigenous text on the preeminent weapon of the precolonial archipelago.
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Gunpowder Revolution, European Mercenaries, and Fortifications
From the beginning of modern scholarship on Southeast Asian history, attention has been given to the importance of firearms. Questions in more recent decades have focused on from whence firearms were derived, whether China, India, or Europe introduced the firearms Southeast Asians had first. Regardless, it is also clear that Southeast Asians abandoned the unsophisticated weapons they had in favor of Iberian-cast arms as soon as they became available in the region. While the impact of firearms in warfare in the region has been well-covered, the subject of fortifications represents the great lacuna in the study of Southeast Asian warfare. This may be for a number of reasons. Among the most important is the limited archaeological work on sites outside of the major temple complexes. Another reason is that stone or brick fortifications gradually gave way to quickly assembled wood and bamboo stockades that were better suited to firearm-bearing armies but left few remains that can be studied today. Although only one item, Mantienne 1988 (cited under Impact and Circulation of Firearms), really belongs in this list so far, it is hoped that more work on this very understudied area will be undertaken.
The Impact and Circulation of Firearms
An important sub-branch of literature on the history of firearms in Southeast Asia focuses on its impact on regional states, viewing firearms as being an important element in state integration and expansion over the course of the early modern period. More recent literature is looking at where the guns came from, on the one hand, and how they influenced indigenous culture as well. One of the first studies to seriously address the impact of Western firearms on the power of Asian states is Boxer 1965. Building on Boxer’s work, Lieberman 1980 argued that two maritime factors, firearms and firearms-bearing mercenaries, helped strengthen coastal polities relative to interior ones, explaining dynastic change at least in Burma in the 16th century. Sun 2003 looked further back, for the northern mainland area of Southeast Asia as a whole, and argued that it was Chinese-sourced firearms that had earlier strengthened the interior polities. Work specifically on Vietnam also examines the impact firearms had on local states (Mantienne 1988) and more specifically on fortress-building in the 18th century in reaction to the firearms and new fortress models from Europe (Mantienne 2003). More recent work has looked at Southeast Asia as part of larger networks of circulation of firearms and gunpowder, both within Asia in Lorge 2008 and in the Indian Ocean in Chew 2012.
Boxer, Charles Ralph. “Asian Potentates and European Artillery in the 16th to 18th Centuries: A Footnote to Gibson-Hill.” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1965): 156–172.
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Boxer had been a military officer stationed in Hong Kong when World War II began. His interest in the Portuguese and Dutch empires was thus coupled with a fascination with their impact on Asian societies in particular. This article focuses on the impact of Western artillery and firearms on the power of Asian states in the early modern period.
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Chew, Emrys. Arming the Periphery: The Arms Trade in the Indian Ocean during the Age of Global Empire. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
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Although this book looks broadly at the Indian Ocean arms trade, it puts into context the arms trade emanating from Europe and often directed through India that began to supply the remaining independent courts of Southeast Asia with firearms, in a period when they sought not just to amass arms, but also to “catch up” to the Western armies that would soon defeat them.
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Lieberman, Victor B. “Europeans, Trade, and the Unification of Burma, c. 1540–1620.” Oriens Extremus 27.2 (1980): 203–226.
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Lieberman’s sophisticated and ground-breaking article articulated some of his seminal observations of the impact of European firearms and firearm-bearing mercenaries on local statecraft that would be core elements of some of his later arguments in his books. A milestone in literature on the relevance of Southeast Asia’s military past to the shaping of its early modern states.
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Lorge, Peter A. The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb. New Approaches to Asian History Series. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511816598Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is one of the few texts that adequately places firearms developments in Southeast Asia into a broader, regional, or global context.
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Mantienne, Frédéric. “Le recours des etats de la Péninsule Indochinoise à l’aide européenne dans leurs relations (XVIème–XVIIIème siècles).” In Guerre et paix en Asie du Sud-Est. Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Alain Forest, 55–84. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.
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European aid in Vietnam prior to colonial rule. For one result of this influence, see Mantienne’s later article on fortifications (Mantienne 2003).
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Mantienne, Frédéric. “The Transfer of Western Military Technology to Vietnam in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: The Case of the Nguyên.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34.3 (2003): 519–534.
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The French developed fortress building to a fine art in the context of the gunpowder revolution in Europe by the 18th century. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Vietnamese began to borrow from the same model.
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Sun, Laichen. “Military Technology Transfers from Ming China and the Emergence of Northern Mainland Southeast Asia (c. 1390–1527).” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34.3 (2003): 495–517.
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This article makes the argument that Chinese firearms made an important impact on the emergence of early modern states in northern mainland Southeast Asia.
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Inventories and Descriptions of Cannon
An older body of literature on firearms has focused on gathering the details, such as the origin, the date of founding, the movement, and so on, of extant firearms in the region or those found in museums elsewhere. This literature often provides very different insights into the nature of the region’s gunpowder revolution than does the literature that assesses its impact alone. These “hard data” inventories begin with Sewell 1922 on the old cannon the author found around Siam and outside as well, for he examined two Thai cannon that had been used in the French Revolution (they had defended the Bastille). Other artillery surveys followed, including work on the firearms at Surakarta in Crucq 1938, Dutch cannon in Malaya in Gibson-Hill 1953, and the firearms and other gunpowder-based weaponry found by the British when they took Mandalay in 1885 in Kyan 1979.
Crucq, K. C. “De Kanonnen in den Kraton te Soerakarta.” Bijdragen tot de taal- land en Volkenkunde van Nederlands-Indië 77 (1938): 93–110.
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This article provides detailed information on some of the artillery the author encountered at Surakarta in Indonesia. It is one of a number of articles, such as Gibson-Hill 1953, which are useful in providing hard data on locally found weaponry useful for broader analyses.
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Gibson-Hill, C. A. “Notes on the Old Cannon Found in Malaya, and Known to Be of Dutch Origin.” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 26.1 (1953): 145–174.
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Includes useful hard data on some of the precolonial cannon still extant on the Malay peninsula at the time of authorship.
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Kyan, Ma. “Prizes of War, 1885.” Researches in Burmese History 3 (1979).
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Like Crucq 1938 and Gibson-Hill 1953, this article is mainly useful for the hard data it provides on local weaponry, in this case the weapons taken by the British from the Burmese Army in 1885 after the Third Anglo-Burmese War.
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Sewell, Seymour. “Notes on Some Old Siamese Guns.” Journal of the Siam Society 15.2 (May 1922): 1–43.
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This article is useful for the data on some extant Thai cannon from the 18th century. Translations from inscriptions on the guns are also provided. Sewell also researched the sixty cannon laid out (until the present day) in front of the offices of the Thai Ministry of War in Bangkok. This remains perhaps the most informative study today of pre-1900 Thai heavy arms.
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Understanding and Representing Warfare
The ideology of war in Southeast Asia has roots in work done in earlier decades by European archaeologists seeking to make sense of Southeast Asian kingship, but has been more fully developed in more recent decades by a handful of scholars working on very different parts of the Southeast Asian region, as seen in Myo Myint 1978 (cited under War in Art and Literature) on Burma, Chutintaranond 1990 (cited under Meaning of War) on Thailand, Hägerdal 2004 (cited under War in Art and Literature) on Bali, Whitmore 2004 on Vietnam, and Carey 1981 (both cited under Meaning of War) on Java.
The Meaning of War
The historical record of warfare in the region begins with the rise of the classical states, from about the 7th or 8th centuries in some areas of the region, and the introduction of scripts, which allowed for the recording of historical references to warfare and campaigns in inscriptions and later in chronicles, as well as Indic temples and bas-reliefs which depicted these campaigns visually. Later, especially from the 18th century, the growth of literacy and the emergence of wealthy indigenous states and independent patrons who could sponsor chronicles meant indigenous writing on warfare also grew incredibly fast. As a result, we have a significant body of visual and written material that informs us as to how Southeast Asians viewed warfare, what it meant, what it was for, and how it was fought, regardless of how it might be played out on the actual battlefield. But imbalances in the availability of this source material also include a danger for the historian. For example, the extensive literature produced from the 18th century lends greater weight to perspectives that emerged about and from within the region as it was becoming influenced more by emergent national or proto-national cultures. Thus, some caution must be exerted in relying on how an Indonesian 19th-century text, to take one example, portrays Indonesian warfare of a few centuries earlier. Research on religion and proto-religions in the region and their connection to politics has demonstrated how important warfare was for political leaders. Wolters 1999 looks furthest back, to the first men of prowess who proved they could lead through success in battle. Tambiah 1976 examines the importance of the model of cakravartin, or world conqueror, for Buddhist kingship in Cambodia and Thailand, while Chutintaranond 1988 and Chutintaranond 1990 look more closely to how attempts to realize the cakravartin ideal motivated and characterized early modern warfare between Burma and Siam. Carey 1981 examines some of the supernatural elements that motivated Southeast Asians to follow prospective political and military leaders in the author’s study of the Java War (1825–1830). Whitmore 2004 shows how Vietnamese martial leaders interpreted warfare against different peoples according to different models. The literature in this section examines what warfare meant to Southeast Asian rulers, those who often sponsored the campaigns, and how they benefited from conflict.
Carey, Peter. Babad Dipanagara: An Account of the Outbreak of the Java War (1825–1830). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: M.B.R.A.S., 1981.
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This is a seminal work on the leader of the Javanese during the Java War, the most significant threat to colonial rule before the 20th century.
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Chutintaranond, Sunait. “Cakravartin: Ideology, Reason and Manifestation of Siamese and Burmese Kings in Traditional Warfare (1538–1854).” Crossroads 4.1 (1988): 46–56.
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This is a summation for a longer period of the arguments Chutintaranond would make in his dissertation two years later. This remains one of the most significant texts regarding the ideology that drove indigenous rulers in mainland Southeast Asia to go to war.
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Chutintaranond, Sunait. “Cakravartin: The Ideology of Traditional Warfare in Siam and Burma, 1548–1605.” PhD diss., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1990.
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This thesis deals with the ideology underlying royal campaigns in premodern warfare in mainland Southeast Asia. Essential reading for any student of warfare in the region.
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Tambiah, Stanley. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511558184Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
While normally considered relevant to Buddhist studies per se, this analysis is also useful for understanding why Southeast Asian rulers waged war. This should be read alongside Chutintaranond 1990.
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Whitmore, John K. “The Two Great Campaigns of the Hong-duc Era (1470–97) in Dai Viet.” South East Asia Research 12.1 (2004): 119–136.
DOI: 10.5367/000000004773487965Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Whitmore deals with both Vietnamese campaigns against Tai highlanders and the Chams, but also considers the changing ideological dimensions exemplified between these two conflicts.
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Wolters, O. W. History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 1999.
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Alongside Chutintaranond 1990 and Tambiah 1976, Wolters helps to explain why Southeast Asian rulers had to prove themselves at war.
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War in Art and Literature
In addition to theoretical models of Southeast Asian martial leadership, warfare in the region and its portrayal was shaped by the art and literature that recorded it. The following works deal with different aspects of how warfare was represented in art and literature and why, and how this related (or did not) to what actually happened on the battlefield. Not surprisingly, given the easy availability of artistic representations, art and warfare was tackled first, in Paris 1941 in its examination of the Angkorian bas-reliefs. However, some of the Southeast Asian materials most directly connected to warfare are literary texts, both martial treatises and chronicles. For example, a number of Southeast Asian texts drew upon or copied Sanskrit texts from India to provide an idealized model of how warfare was fought, although it bore little resemblance to what actually happened in the field. An important example of this literature is Let-wè-thondara 1943 which is the Burmese-language version of two Sanskrit texts the Burmese poet adapted in the late 18th century. Translations of both texts, as well as an important preliminary analysis, were conducted in English in Myo Myint 1978. Indigenous sources have been shown to hold different views on the same battles, for example, the recent examination of what Burmese sources have to say about the conquest of Ayudhya in Soe Thuzar Myint 2011, and between indigenous sources and European accounts of these same battles as shown in Charney 2003. Hägerdal 2004 has shown how the elements of literary accounts of warfare reveal the structures of power in the kingdom.
Charney, Michael W. “A Reassessment of Hyperbolic Military Statistics in Some Early Modern Burmese Texts.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46.2 (2003): 193–214.
DOI: 10.1163/156852003321675745Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article seeks to explain why the Burmese chronicles include such seemingly exaggerated statistics regarding the size of indigenous armies.
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Hägerdal, Hans. “War and Culture: Balinese and Sasak Views on Warfare in Traditional Historiography.” South East Asia Research 12.1 (2004): 81–118.
DOI: 10.5367/000000004773487956Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article examines how warfare is represented in the babad literature genre, what these accounts have to say about the means, purpose, and foreigners involved in warfare, and seeks to understand how these elements fit into the structure of power in Bali and Lombok before Dutch rule.
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Let-wè-thondara. Thenanga Byuha-sit-thamaìng hnín Byuha-sakki-pyó. Rangoon, Burma: Hanthawaddy, 1943.
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The two war treatises presented in this work are 18th-century Burmese versions of earlier Sanskrit texts concerning war.
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Myo Myint. “The Literature of War and Tactics in Pre-colonial Burma: A Study of Two Eighteenth Century Texts.” MA thesis, Monash University (Melbourne), 1978.
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This thesis includes both an analysis and translations of the treatises on war included in (Let-wè-thondara 1943).
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Paris, Pierre. “Les bateaux des bas-reliefs Khmers.” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 41 (1941): 335–364.
DOI: 10.3406/befeo.1941.5713Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An early effort at understanding the portrayal of conflict in the bas reliefs at Angkor.
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Soe Thuzar Myint. The Portrayal of the Battle of Ayutthaya in Myanmar Literature. Edited by Sunait Chutintaranond and Chris Baker. Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 2011.
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An important new thesis that analyzes the two Burmese versions of the siege of Ayutthaya found in texts by U Pon Nya and Let-wè-thondara.
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Indigenous Wars
The literature is far richer regarding the actual conduct and other details of historical military campaigns, in part because the details are often laid out straightforwardly by the chronicles and other indigenous sources that emphasized the military functions of rulership. Because the chronicles related much more material on, for instance, Burmese campaigns against Siam in the 18th century, historians working on the country in this period, who knew the indigenous languages, would be more likely to include accounts of warfare in their research, whereas these historians traditionally shunned topics like material culture, for which the indigenous sources were far less explicit. This section is divided into four regions on the basis of the operational contexts in which most warfare was historically fought.
Western Mainland
The western mainland includes mainly Burmese warfare, either between various city-states in its early postclassical history, or against one or another of the various highland states, often populated by ethnic minorities such as the Kachin, the Shan, the Chin, or other groups One of the earliest examinations in modern scholarship was Luce 1922 which challenged the supposed Cambodian identity of the attackers of Thaton in the early 11th century, identifying instead the hill tribes as the most likely culprit. Fernquest embarked on a series of examinations of warfare in Burma and the Shan states demonstrating the impact of these states on the rise of the First Toungoo Dynasty in Burma in Fernquest 2005, the importance of martial leadership in Fernquest 2006, and the ecological basis for different martial regimes in upper and deltaic Burma in Fernquest 2008. Research on the early modern warfare in the Tai areas derived from detailed examination of the chronicles has also been offered in Liew-Herres 2007.
Fernquest, Jon. “Min-gyi-nyo, the Shan Invasions of Ava (1524–27), and the Beginnings of Expansionary Warfare in Toungoo Burma: 1486–1539.” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3.2 (Autumn 2005).
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This article examines how the military campaigns of the founder of Burma’s First Toungoo dynasty presaged the larger and more expansive campaigns of his successors over the course of the 16th century.
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Fernquest, Jon. “Rajadhirat’s Mask of Command: Military Leadership in Burma (c. 1348–1421).” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 4.1 (Spring 2006): 3–29.
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Fernquest examines the role of military leadership in Burmese warfare in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
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Fernquest, Jon. “The Ecology of Burman-Mon Warfare and the Premodern Agrarian State (1383–1425).” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 6 (2008): 70–118.
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Fernquest uses both Burmese and Thai language sources to consider the agrarian basis of warfare between the Burmese and the Mons in the 14th and 15th centuries.
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Liew-Herres, Foon Ming. “Intra-dynastic and Inter-Tai Conflicts in the Old Kingdom of Moeng Lü in Southern Yunnan.” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 5 (2007): 51–112.
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Examines conflict in the Tai states in Yunnan, an often ignored corner of early modern Southeast Asia, due to its integration into the modern Chinese nation.
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Luce, G. H. “A Cambodian (?) Invasion of Lower Burma: A Comparison of Burmese and Talaing Chronicles.” Journal of the Burma Research Society 12.1 (1922): 39–45.
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As with Luce’s other works, a detailed examination of the source materials for particular events, in this case a battle in early 11th-century Thaton.
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Central Mainland
The central mainland was dominated by the various successive Thai states, especially Ayudhya, although on several occasions, in the 16th and 18th centuries, the Burmese were able to conquer the region and hold it for a short period of time. Because of numerous other Burmese incursions, and the failure of the Thais in most cases to counter-invade Burma, when scholars refer to Thai-Burmese warfare, they are usually referring to fighting that took place within what today we would call Thailand. The forerunner of all major scholarship on warfare between Thailand and Burma is the work of Prince Damrong (Damrong Rajanubhab 2001), which was a broad survey of all the campaigns by decade for many centuries. Expanding upon Damrong’s work, Surakiat 2005 and Surakiat 2006 directed attention to the larger scale politics that impacted and were impacted by warfare between the two kingdoms. One branch of work focuses on specific aspects of warfare in this geographical area. Grabowsky 1999 examines the manpower resource base that drove early modern campaigns. Other work focuses on the specific campaigns or even battles themselves. Wenk 1968, for example, provides the most detailed study of a series of failed campaigns conducted across the Thai border by King Bodawhpaya of Burma. Myo Myint 2002 directs attention at the reasons for the failure of Alaunghpaya’s 1759–1760 campaign against Ayudhya. Terwiel 1988 connected the Battle of Nong Sarai (1593) with important political changes. Most recently, Smith 2012 has demonstrated the importance of warfare in the Chiang Tung area on the overall political picture of its lowland neighbors.
Damrong Rajanubhab, Prince. Ours Wars with the Burmese: Thai-Burmese Conflict 1539–1767. Translated by Phra Phraison Salarak Thein Subindu. Edited by Chris Baker. Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001.
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Prince Damrong wrote the first major examination of the history of Burma’s wars with Thailand in the early modern period. He structures his discussion on a war-by-war basis. Should be read with Surakiat 2006.
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Grabowsky, Volker. “Forced Resettlement Campaigns in Northern Thailand during the Early Bangkok Period.” Journal of the Siam Society 87.1–2 (1999): 45–86.
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Examines population deportations that would have an important impact on the availability of Thai manpower for the royal army.
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Myo Myint. “Alaunghpaya’s Campaign in Thailand (1759–60).” Myanmar Historical Research Journal 9 (June 2002): 45–64.
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Alaunghpaya’s invasion of Thailand was one of the great events of both Thai and Burmese military history. Ultimately it ended in failure and Alaunghpaya’s death, although one of Alaunghpaya’s sons, Hsin-byu-shin, would succeed in conquering Thailand just a few years later.
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Smith, John Sterling Forsyth. “The Chiang Tung Wars in 19th Century Tai History.” MA thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 2012.
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An important new study of indigenous warfare between Burma and Thailand is provided in this recent thesis.
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Surakiat, Pamaree. “Thai-Burmese Warfare during the Sixteenth Century and the Growth of the First Toungoo Empire.” Journal of the Siam Society 93 (2005): 69–100.
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Surakiat eschews focusing on the nitty-gritty of technologies to examine the broader strategic significance of warfare for Burma’s political development in the 16th century.
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Surakiat, Pamaree. The Changing Nature of Conflict between Burma and Siam as Seen from the Growth and Development of Burmese States from the 16th to the 19th Centuries. ARI Working Paper Series 64. Singapore: Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 2006.
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Moving beyond her earlier work, Surakiat widens her lens to consider the long haul of Thai and Burmese warfare over the course of the early modern period.
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Terwiel, Barend J. “The Battle of Nong Sarai (1593) and the Relationship between the Largest Political Units in Mainland Southeast Asia.” In Guerre et paix en Asie du Sud-Est. Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Alain Forest, 39–54. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.
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An important late-16th-century battle and its political ramifications are examined in this piece.
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Wenk, Klaus. The Restoration of Thailand under Rama I, 1782–1809. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968.
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Wenk’s study is relevant here mainly because of the large sections providing a narrative of fighting between the Burmese and the Thais during their late-18th and early-19th-century wars.
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Warfare of the Eastern Mainland
The mountain ranges that separated coastal Vietnam from the rest of mainland Southeast Asia did much to keep warfare unique to the area. While Vietnamese armies, particularly in the south, maintained Southeast Asian martial culture, they also drew upon Chinese models more than any other Southeast Asian country. Moreover, Vietnam fought for longer and more intensely than any other regional country against Chinese expansion in the pre-19th-century period. Nevertheless, Vietnamese military encounters also occurred in the Tai highlands in the north and the Mekong River delta in the south. And most Vietnamese warfare was directed at other Vietnamese, as shown in Forest 1988 on the Vietnamese civil war between the Trinh and the Nguyen and in Taylor 1988, which examines fighting among the Vietnamese over the course of six centuries, and Pérez 1940 on the Tayson revolt. Two studies have brought attention to areas of warfare in the eastern mainland generally neglected in warfare studies. First, the late early modern Cambodian conflicts just prior to French rule are examined in Samnang 1988 and second, Murray 1987 sheds light on the importance of pirates along the South China Coast, including Vietnam. Given the nearly chronic place of warfare in the eastern mainland for most of its history, there are few general overviews, aside from Dutton 2003 which lays out the main technologies and practices of Vietnamese warfare.
Dutton, George. “Flaming Tiger, Burning Dragon: Elements of Early Modern Vietnamese Military Technology.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 21 (2003): 48–93.
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A comprehensive study of important elements of Vietnamese military technology in the early modern period.
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Forest, Alain. “La guerre et le militaire dans le Tonkin des Trinh.” In Guerre et paix en Asie du Sud-Est. Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Alain Forest, 135–158. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.
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Examines the fighting in the civil war that waged between the Trinh in the north and the Nguyen in the south.
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Murray, Dian H. Pirates of the South China Coast 1790–1810. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987.
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One of the few serious studies of the phenomenon of piracy in the South China Sea during this period.
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Pérez, P. Lorenzo. “La Révolte et la guerre des Tayson d’ après les Franciscains espagnols de Cochinchine.” Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises 12.3–4 (1940): 65–106.
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This is an early Western study of the Tayson rebellion, which brought an end to the warfare between the Trinh and Nguyen, the replacement of the Le, and ultimately led to the rise of the Nguyen as Vietnam’s final dynasty. Translated by M. Villa.
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Samnang, Sorn. “Guerre et paix au Cambodge dans la deuxième moitié du XIXème siècle.” In Guerre et paix en Asie du Sud-Est. Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Alain Forest, 303–316. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.
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Examines war and peace in Cambodia prior to the establishment of the French protectorate.
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Taylor, Keith W. “Regional Conflicts among the Viêt Peoples between the 13th and 19th Centuries.” In Guerre et paix en Asie du Sud-Est. Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Alain Forest, 109–134. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.
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Covers the full early modern period and the conflicts the Vietnamese found themselves in, with peoples including the Cham, the Tai, and the Chinese.
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Indigenous Wars of the Indonesian and Philippine Archipelagoes
A fourth area of armed conflict in the region in the pre-1900 period was in the extended Indonesian and Philippine archipelagoes. The wars in this area tended to concentrate on sea campaigns, either campaigns waged against isolated communities in search of captives or heads, or against the Europeans who sought to exert state or company dominance over the trade routes. From the 17th century, warfare in Java increasingly drew in Dutch involvement and changed shape from indigenous wars to colonial wars, while Spanish rule in the Philippines was characterized by continual violence throughout, in particular in warfare between the Spanish and the Moros in the south. The best treatment of warfare in the Philippines is Angeles 2007, although the similar operational environments, means and extent of European colonization, and indigenous cultures make comparisons between warfare in the Philippines and Indonesia easier than with other areas of the region. The ground-breaking work on warfare in the Indonesian archipelago was Andaya 1981, which established some of the major themes that would inform the author’s other work cited in other sections of this article as well as Andaya 2004 included here. But it is also a very in-depth look at what was happening in warfare in a period of change, between the old ways of fighting and the new weapons and technologies available. Andaya 2004 moves its analysis further in the direction of culture. Hägerdal 2012, shows how, to a surprising extent, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) was indirectly complicit in local headhunting, given the reward system for their local allies, indicating a local venue for warfare in which indigenous warfare and colonial statecraft were intimately connected. The last century of warfare that led Java to fall into the hands of the Dutch is examined in two studies that in effect are sequential, Ricklefs 1993 and Remmilink 1994. Two translations of the Malay annals, indigenous source material on warfare in the Straits of Melaka and on the Malay Peninsula, are provided in Winstedt 1938. Knaap 2010 pushes the study of warfare in the archipelago to its eastern limit, with his study of warfare in Papua.
Andaya, Leonard. The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A History of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century. Verhandelingen Van Het Koninklijk Instituut Voor Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 91. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981.
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-3347-2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A ground-breaking work that examines an important period of warfare in this region of the island of Sulawesi.
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Andaya, Leonard. “Nature of War and Peace among the Bugis-Makassar People.” South East Asia Research 12.1 (2004): 53–80.
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Approaches the culture of war in the central Indonesian archipelago.
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Angeles, Jose Amiel. “The Battle of Macan and the Indigenous Discourse on War.” Philippine Studies 55.1 (2007): 3–52.
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A sophisticated analysis that uses one battle in the Spanish Philippines as a means to discuss Southeast Asian warfare in the maritime world as well.
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Hägerdal, Hans. Lords of the Land, Lords of the Sea: Conflict and Adaptation in Early Colonial Timor, 1600–1800. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV, 2012.
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Warfare is a focused topic in one subsection (pp. 209–216), but the social and political context of warfare and actual conduct of campaigns is discussed throughout this important history of early modern Timor.
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Knaap, Gerrit. “Robbers and Raiders: Papuan Piracy in the Seventeenth Century.” In Pirates, Ports, and Coasts in Asia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by John Kleinen and Manon Osseweijer, 147–177. Amsterdam: International Institute for Asian Studies, 2010.
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This is a study of piracy and raiding in the eastern archipelago in the 17th century.
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Remmilink, Willem. The Chinese War and the Collapse of the Javanese State, 1725–1743. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV, 1994.
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This is an examination of warfare in the late days of precolonial Mataram.
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Ricklefs, Merle C. War, Culture and Economy in Java, 1677–1726: Asian and European Imperialism in the Early Kartasura Period. Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1993.
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Ricklef’s study of a half-century of Mataram’s history provides detailed discussion of the context and progress of a number of conflicts increasingly involving the VOC. There are a number of useful campaign maps to illustrate the discussion.
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Winstedt, R. O., ed. “The Malay Annals or Sejarah Melayu.” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 16.3 (December 1938).
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This examination and translation of an important Malay historical source includes important information on indigenous perspectives on warfare.
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Wars with Outsiders
Like many other parts of the world, Southeast Asian states found themselves fighting not just between themselves but also with states and groups external to what we would define as the region of Southeast Asia today. As a result, it is very difficult to speak about indigenous warfare in the region, as European states, their companies, or their exiles became heavily involved in local conflicts. The subsections that follow divide the entries according to several external opponents or by the individual contest in which they were involved.
China and India
In older academic work, only Europeans were seen as foreign to the region, but in more recent times Southeast Asia’s emergence as a separate region with proud and unique traditions has encouraged new directions in historiography that views Indian and Chinese military threats to the region as no less damaging as European colonial expansion. From time to time, military threats from South Asia were significant, in particular the Rajendra Chola’s early-11th-century raids on Srivijaya, work on which was pioneered in Majumdar 1961. Recently, Sen 2009 has put the raids into the context of broader geopolitical relationships stretching through the archipelago, while more detailed attention to the reasons behind the raids and the technologies mobilized to carry them out is provided in Sakhuja and Sakhuja 2009. Nevertheless, the longest and arguably most serious threats came from China. Under the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty in particular, mainland Southeast Asia was invaded at several points by punitive Chinese expeditions. China’s military contacts with maritime Southeast Asia were also strengthened by the passage of Cheng Ho’s armadas through the region under the Ming Dynasty. The Chinese would be followed by the Iberians and then by the Dutch, the British, the French, and the Americas, but China would continue to have an important impact on the mainland until the end of the early modern period. Early scholarship on this impact focused mainly on diplomacy, tribute, and economy, although Luce 1925 is an important exception. Luce examined in comparison both Burmese and Chinese sources on a series of Chinese invasions of Burma, locating the causes and playing out of these military crises as both a historiographical and a methodological project. The pioneering work for a new wave of literature on conflict in the zone where China and Southeast Asia meet is Liew 1996, which examined the Luchuan-Pimngmian Campaigns and how China viewed and garrisoned its frontiers with Southeast Asian states. Work that has followed these seminal works include Sun 2003 (cited under Impact and Circulation of Firearms), Wade 2005, which provides translations of contemporary Chinese source references to Southeast Asia, including many references relevant to warfare, and Fernquest 2006 whose study of warfare between China and Burma in the Tai zone in the period just before that covered in Liew 1996 has opened up an entirely new period-place for examining Southeast Asian warfare. Sun 2006 has directed attention to the impact of Chinese firearm technology in Vietnam from the 15th century.
Fernquest, Jon. “Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382–1454).” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 4.2 (Autumn 2006): 27–90.
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A detailed and reliable examination of the fighting between the Burmese and the Chinese in the Tai states in the late 14th and 15th centuries.
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Liew, Foon Ming. “The Luchuan-Pingmian Campaigns (1436–1449) in the Light of Official Chinese Historiography.” Oriens Extremus 39.2 (1996): 162–203.
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The first major study in English of the Luchuan-Pingmian campaigns. Essential reading.
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Luce, G. H. “Chinese Invasions of Burma in the 18th Century.” Journal of the Burma Research Society 15.2 (1925): 115–128.
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This is a close analysis of both Burmese and Chinese sources on Chinese military invasions of Burma in the 18th century.
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Majumdar, R. C. “The Overseas Expeditions of King Rajendra Cola.” Artibus Asiae 24.3–4 (1961): 338–342.
DOI: 10.2307/3249234Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A classic study of the Chola raids on Southeast Asia.
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Sakhuja, Vijay, and Sangeeta Sakhuja. “Rajendra Chola I’s Naval Expedition to Southeast Asia: A Nautical Perspective.” In From Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia. Edited by Herman Kulke, K. Kesavapany, and Vijay Sakhuja, 76–90. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009.
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A detailed examination of the technical details of the Chola raids.
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Sen, Tansen. “The Military Campaigns of Rajendra Chola and the Chola-Srivijaya-China Triangle.” In From Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia. Edited by Herman Kulke, K. Kesavapany, and Vijay Sakhuja, 61–75. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009.
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Sen puts the Chola raids into a broad geopolitical and economic context.
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Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: An Open Access Resource.
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This online source consists of translations of dated entries from the Ming Shi-lu which include numerous references to Chinese invasions of mainland Southeast Asian states. Useful as a primary source.
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Sun Laichen. “Chinese Gunpowder Technology and Dai Viet, ca. 1390–1497.” In Viet Nam: Borderless Histories. Edited by Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid, 72–120. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
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Sun connects the existence of Chinese firearms in the country after a long period of Chinese occupation as evidence of technology transfer.
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The Iberians
The Spanish and Portuguese were the first Europeans to wage wars in the region and hence they often figure prominently in studies of early cultural interchange between Europeans and Southeast Asians. By the time that other Europeans came to the region, Southeast Asians had already become well-versed in the European ways of wars due to their early experience with the Iberians. Further, by the 17th century and in some places earlier, Iberians aided Southeast Asian rulers as mercenaries against other European latecomers. The broadest view of Portuguese involvement in Asia is offered in Subrahmanyam 1993, which looks at the nuts and bolts of the Portuguese empire in Asia, as well as how local conflicts fit into them. More specifically, Boxer 1964 looks at how Portuguese sources dealt with a specific battle, in this case, Melaka, to understand the nature of their enemy and the terrain, an approach followed in Manguin 1988. More attention was devoted to the larger Acehnese political and military context of the 1629 attack in Lombard 1967. Interestingly, Rodriguez 2003 shows how what was interpreted as a European victory was not always seen the same way by their indigenous opponents. Mukherjee 2008 is returning attention to the Indian Ocean sphere of South and Southeast Asian conflict with the Iberians, beginning with the author’s research on the Bay of Bengal.
Boxer, Charles Ralph. “The Acehnese Attack on Malacca in 1629, as Described in Contemporary Portuguese Sources.” In Malayan and Indonesian Studies. Edited by John Bastin and R. Roolvink, 105–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964.
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An important work by Boxer, in which he uses the Portuguese accounts to discuss the indigenous assault on their fortress at Melaka a decade and a half before its loss to the Dutch.
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Lombard, Denys. Le Sultanat d’Atjeh au temps d’Iskandar Muda, 1607–1636. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1967.
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Although this study covers the reign of Iskandar Muda generally, it also provides useful perspectives on Aceh’s military competition with the Portuguese, most significantly the failed Acehnese attack on Portuguese Melaka in 1629.
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Manguin, Pierre-Yves. “Of Fortresses and Galleys: The 1568 Acehnese Siege of Melaka, after a Contemporary Bird’s-Eye View.” Modern Asian Studies 22.3 (1988): 607–628.
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X00009719Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides details on the fighting between the Portuguese and the Acehnese at Melaka.
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Mukherjee, Rila. “The Struggle for the Bay: The Life and Times of Sandwip, an Almost Unknown Portuguese Port in the Bay of Bengal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Revista da Faculdad de Letras 3.9 (2008): 67–88.
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Examines the role in local warfare of Sundiva Island which was used as a base of operations by Sebastiao Gonsalves y Tibao in the early 17th century for his attacks along Burma’s western coasts.
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Rodriguez, Felice Noelle. “Juan de Salcedo Joins the Native Form of Warfare.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46.2 (2003): 143–164.
DOI: 10.1163/156852003321675727Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This study turns the tables on the Spanish accounts of their victory over the Filipinos in fighting in 1570. What was seen by the Spanish as their victory was interpreted differently from the perspective of indigenous warfare.
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Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History. New York: Longman, 1993.
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Subrahmanyam’s far-reaching work puts the mercenary and pirate De Brito, based in Lower Burma, in the context of the Portuguese empire.
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The Dutch
The Dutch were involved militarily, at one time or another, nearly everywhere in the region, but most fighting with the Dutch was either on Java or the outer islands. As a result, research on conflict with the Dutch often focuses on the Indonesian Archipelago. There are important exceptions. Recent work in Dijk 2006, for example, has revealed important Dutch activity in Burma and the importance of the Dutch for the military resources of the kingdom. The main wars fought on Java were the various succession struggles involved in the gradual disintegration of Mataram, covered extensively in Ricklefs 1993 (cited under Indigenous Wars of the Indonesian and Philippine Archipelagoes), and in Nagtegaal 1996, which directed attention to the conflicts along the northeast coast of Java at the intersection of Javanese, Dutch, and Chinese interests. Other research tends to confine itself on the myriad local campaigns in the outer islands that led to the building up of the Dutch East Indies. This includes Bakker 1993, Reid 1969, and Schulten 1988 on the four-decade Aceh War and van der Kraan 1995 on the conquest of Bali. General studies of Dutch warfare with Southeast Asians, however, are not numerous, aside from Reid 1982. An important exception is the study of the military system of the Dutch East India Company as a whole offered in Mostert 2007. A broad political overview is also provided in De Moor 1989.
Bakker, J. J. “The Aceh War and the Creation of the Netherlands East Indies State.” In Great Powers and Little Wars. Edited by A. Harnish and E. J. Errington, 53–82. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993
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Examination of the impact of the Aceh War on the Dutch East Indies.
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De Moor, J. A. “Warmakers in the Archipelago: Dutch Expeditions in Nineteenth Century Indonesia.” In Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa. Edited J. A. De Moor, 50–71. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1989.
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This account covers Dutch wars of conquest in the archipelago during the 19th century.
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Dijk, Wil O.. Seventeenth Century Burma and the Dutch East India Company, 1634–1680. Copenhagen: NIAS, 2006.
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Invaluable study of early modern Burma’s Dutch experience, with subsections on gunpowder and firearms in 17th century Burma.
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Mostert, Tristan. “Chain of Command: The Military System of the Dutch East India Company, 1655–1663.” MA thesis, Universiteit Leiden, 2007.
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This dissertation examines the VOC as a military machine, focusing heavily on Southeast Asia and considering literature on warfare in the region in this context. This text also has a devoted website.
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Nagtegaal, Luc. Riding the Dutch Tiger: The Dutch East Indies Company and the Northeast Coast of Java, 1680–1743. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV, 1996.
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Nagtegal examines the Dutch intrusions along the northeast coast of Java from 1680 until the China War in 1740, and in passing highlights both the importance of understanding Javanese modes of warfare and of the nature of the Dutch intervention, largely consisting of Javanese fighting other Javanese.
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Reid, Anthony. The Contest for North Sumatra: Atjeh, the Netherlands and Britain, 1858–1898. London and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Oxford University Press, 1969.
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This is an important study of the Aceh War that embroiled northern Sumatra for three decades in the 19th century.
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Reid, Anthony. Europe and Southeast Asia: The Military Balance. Centre for Southeast Asian Studies Occasional Paper 16. Townsville, Australia: James Cook University of North Queensland, 1982.
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An early laying out of the some of Reid’s ideas about warfare in the region.
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Schulten, C. M. “Tactics of the Dutch Colonial Army in the Netherlands East Indies.” Revue internationale d’histoire militaire 70 (1988): 59–67.
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This article provides a military account of the Aceh War in three stages from 1873 until 1913.
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van der Kraan, Alfons. Bali at War: A History of the Dutch-Balinese Conflict of 1846–49. Clayton, Australia: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1995.
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This is a very interesting account of one of the very late colonial campaigns of the central Indonesian Archipelago.
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The British and the Anglo-Burmese Wars
British forces before 1900 were mainly involved in the region in three wars against the Burmese kingdom over the courts of the 19th century. These include the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826), the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–1853), and the three-week third Anglo-Burmese War (1885). The last was succeeded by a fourth conflict that is sometimes seen as part of the third, the Pacification Campaign that went on for much of the decade, but was mainly fought between the years 1886 and 1889. Official and firsthand accounts are widely available for the three wars. Allott 1994 provides a translation of the section of the Burmese royal chronicles that discusses the end of the First Anglo-Burmese War, providing a Burmese point of view for a conflict usually understood entirely from English-language sources. Snodgrass 1827 and Maw 1832 are both firsthand British accounts of the fighting in the First Anglo-Burmese War; although Snodgrass is the better known of the two, Maw had access to documentation that helped him correct dates and places. Laurie 1853 is considered the most authoritative account of the Second Anglo-Burmese War, which was the briefest of the three wars in effect although not in detail (the official war lasted three weeks, but the Pacification Campaign that followed went on for years). India 1887–1889 is the official history of the Third Anglo-Burmese War and is both detailed and authoritative, although its focus is on the movements of European and Indian troops. Well-researched overviews of the conflicts generally are Bruce 1973, which is directed at a more popular audience, and Pollak 1979, which is more archival-based and analysis-driven. Building upon Pollak 1979, another stream of scholarship has examined the commercial and economic causes of one or another of these wars, including Webster 1998 on the Gentlemen Capitalists and the third Anglo-Burmese War.
Allott, Anna. The End of the First Anglo-Burmese War: The Burmese Chronicle Account of How the 1826 Treaty of Yandabo Was Negotiated. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1994.
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This publication consists mainly of a translation of a section of a Burmese chronicle on the end of the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826).
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Bruce, George. The Burma Wars, 1824–1886. London: Hart-Davis, 1973.
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General account of the three Anglo-Burmese wars. Useful for gaining an overall view of the conflicts.
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India. History of the Third Burmese War. 3 vols. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1887–1889.
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The most detailed account available of the British side of military operations during the third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885 and the Pacification Campaign which continued on for several more years.
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Laurie, William F. B. The Second Burmese War: A Narrative of the Operations at Rangoon in 1852. London: Smith, Elder, 1853.
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This is considered the standard account of the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–1853).
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Maw, H. Lister. Memoir of the Early Operations of the Burmese War. London: Smith, Elder, 1832.
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Maw’s is one of a number of accounts that examine the British side of operations during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826).
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Pollak, Oliver B. Empires in Collision: Anglo-Burmese Relations in the Mid-nineteenth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979.
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This is the best general account of the Anglo-Burmese Wars.
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Snodgrass, John James. Narrative of the Burmese War, Detailing the Operations of Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell’s Army from May, 1824, to February 1826. London: John Murray, 1827.
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Major Snodgrass was a participant in the First Anglo-Burmese War and provides perhaps the most widely read firsthand account of the conflict. In addition to details on the fighting, a number of useful illustrations, including a tree-mounted cannon, contributed to the notion of exotic Southeast Asian warfare.
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Webster, Anthony. Gentleman Capitalists: British Imperialism in Southeast Asia, 1770–1890. International Library of Historical Studies 9. London: I. B. Tauris, 1998.
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Webster examines the role played by British commercial interests in British expansion in Southeast Asia, including the background to the Third Anglo-Burmese War.
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The French and the 19th-Century Indochina Wars
The French conquest of Indochina happened over the course of a number of decades and each period involved a different area of what would become French Indochina. As a result, most studies and related resources have tended to focus on one geographic zone and period rather than look more broadly at Vietnam or Indochina as a whole, although the place of the French conquest of Vietnam in French imperialism is examined in Fourniau 1989. Osbourne 1969 examined the history of French expansion along the Mekong, involving first the conquest of South Vietnam and then the extension of a protectorate over Cambodia. Further scholarship would examine these processes separately, for example, the study of the French conquest of South Vietnam in Langlet 1988 and the examination of the conquest of Cambodia in Lamant 1988. Scott 1885, by a journalist known mainly for his writings on Burma, offers one of the earliest accounts of the French conquest of northern Vietnam. Aside from “official” French military campaigns, more the subterrain of rebellion and anti-French violence from the 19th century has been opened up in Hansen 2008.
Fourniau, C. “Colonial Wars before 1914: The Case of France in Indochina.” In Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa. Edited by J. A. De Moor, 72–85. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1989.
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This chapter examines French wars in Indochina before the late 19th century.
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Hansen, Anne Ruth. “Gaps in the World: Harm and Violence in Khmer Buddhist Narrative.” In At the Edge of the Forest: Essays on Cambodia, History and Narrative in Honor of David Chandler. Edited by Anne Ruth Hansen and Judy Ledgerwood, 47–70. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2008.
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This chapter examines the roots and meanings of violence in rural Khmer Buddhism, but places it in the context of warfare beginning with the French conquest and resistance to French rule afterwards, particularly in the form of millenarian violence.
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Lamant, Pierre. “Quand l’intervention de l’Occident brise un processus historique: Le cas de la France au Cambodge.” In Guerre et paix en Asie du Sud-Est. Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Alain Forest, 293–302. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.
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This study examines the role of French intervention in 19th-century Cambodia.
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Langlet, Thanh Tâm. “Situations de guerre et de paix dans le sud du Vietnam actuel au XIXème siècle.” In Guerre et paix en Asie du Sud-Est. Edited by Nguyên Thê Anh and Alain Forest, 259–292. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.
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The place of war in the experience of southern Vietnam in the 19th century.
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Osbourne, Milton. The French Presence in Cochinchina and Cambodia: Rule and Response (1859–1905). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969.
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This is the classic study of French expansion, military and diplomatic, up the Mekong from South Vietnam to Cambodia.
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Scott, James George. France and Tongking: A Narrative of the Campaign of 1884 and the Occupation of Further India. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1885.
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Scott, better known for his writings on Burma, spent time as a journalist writing about the French conquest of northern Vietnam.
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The Americans and the Philippine War
The United States fought essentially two wars in the Philippines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first was in alliance with the Filipinos against the Spanish, which in Southeast Asia represented the indigenous Filipino revolution and the global Spanish-American War. After the Spanish were defeated, the Americans turned on the Filipinos. Over the next few years, a conventional war gave way to a guerrilla campaign, which, in the far south, would go on for another decade or so. The literature in this section covers this conflict in different ways. The lack of preparedness of the American military for conflict in the Philippines is clear from the diary of a participant in Agnew 1979. A study of the US military and its development as an institution in connection with the war is examined in Cosmas 1971. The experience of Filipinos in the first year of the conflict is examined in Agoncillo 1960 and their feelings about the conflict as the war progressed are addressed in Mojares 1999. More recently, work has addressed the perspectives of both sides, Western and indigenous historiography balanced out in Silbey 2007. The latter work also addresses the place of the Philippines in the expanding American empire. Along these lines, Rockoff 2012, in a broader study of the economic costs of America’s warfare over the course of the 20th century, includes a detailed assessment of the impact of the Philippine campaign on the American economy. Broad, authoritative, historical surveys of the conflict are offered in Gates 1993 and Linn 2000.
Agnew, James B. “Carromatos and Quinine: Private Longden and the Medical Corps of 1898.” Military Review 59 (July 1979): 11–21.
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Reveals the extent to which the Americans were unprepared for the conflict in the Philippines.
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Agoncillo, Teodoro. Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1960.
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Examines popular Filipino support for the anti-American cause.
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Cosmas, Graham A. An Army for Empire: The United States Army in the Spanish-American War. Columbia: University of Missouri, 1971.
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Study of the US military in its development relative to the conflict and including in passing the Philippine campaign.
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Gates, John M. “The Limits of Power: The U.S. Conquest of the Philippines.” In Great Powers and Little Wars. Edited by A. Hamish Ion and E. J. Errington, 125–144. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993.
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Like Linn 2000, examines the American conquest of the Philippines.
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Linn, Brian McAllister. The Philippine War, 1899–1902. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.
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After the United States allied with the Filipino rebels to defeat the Spanish, the Americans then turned on the Filipinos in a brutal colonial war. This is a standard history of that conflict.
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Mojares, Resil B. The War Against the Americans: Resistance and Collaboration in Cebu, 1899–1906. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999.
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This study uses the war as a way to understand the complexities of Cebuano society and in the process confronts some of the key myths of the American war there, which is often portrayed in different terms than other colonial wars of conquest.
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Rockoff, Hugh. America’s Economic Way of War: War and the US Economy from the Spanish-American War to the Persian Gulf War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139046534Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Broad study of the economics of US foreign wars, chapter 4 focused specifically on the Philippine campaign.
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Silbey, David J. A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.
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This survey of the Philippine War examines it as a war of empire, on the frontier of an American empire expanding across the Pacific.
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Emerging Topics
Rettig and Lanzona 2008 redirected attention to the place of women in Southeast Asian warfare and this promises to be a rapidly emerging field with relevance to numerous disciplines. Rettig and Hack 2006 also showed that although colonial militias are usually viewed for their 20th-century relevance, they have a long history in the region, even going back to the Ming occupation of Vietnam. Headhunting has always been accepted as an important part of ritual warfare between villages in the highlands on the mainland and among populations in the outer islands of the Indonesian Archipelago, but its relevance to other aspects of the relationship between Southeast Asians and warfare have been shown in Andaya 2004 and Hoskins 1996. Knaap 2003 has shown how headhunting organization was even used as a convenient means of mobilizing manpower by the Dutch. Santanee and Scott 2008 demonstrated the importance of cartography to understanding warfare in the region. Most recently, although Than Tun 1984 first directed attention to the important place of Thai war captives in Burmese royal service, Beemer 2009 has revealed the importance of these war captives as more than just manpower resources acquired in battle, but as carriers and intermediaries of culture. Research on animals and warfare in the region is difficult to readily identify because it often deals with animals in other contexts, with their wartime importance relegated to a chapter or a part thereof. Nevertheless, work on this badly neglected topic is emerging in more explicitly warfare-related publications.
Andaya, Barbara Watson. “History, Headhunting and Gender in Monsoon Asia: Comparative and Longitudinal Views.” South East Asia Research 12.1 (2004): 13–52.
DOI: 10.5367/000000004773487938Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This study of headhunting focuses on its ritual dimensions regarding fertility rites and gender roles.
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Beemer, Bryce. “Southeast Asian Slavery and Slave-Gathering Warfare as a Vector for Cultural Transmission: The Case of Burma and Thailand.” The Historian 71 (2009): 481–506.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6563.2009.00243.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The article focuses on the case studies of Burma and Thailand. One of several contributions of this article is the consideration of slave-gathering warfare as a means of cultural transmission, adding to a growing body of recent work on cultural exchange in the early modern period in the region, a warfare dynamic.
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Hoskins, Janet, ed. Headhunting and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
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Well-received study of the cultural context of headhunting in Southeast Asia and its relationship to both colonialism and violence.
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Knaap, Gerrit. “Headhunting, Carnage and Armed Peace in Amboina, 1500–1700.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46.2 (2003): 165–192.
DOI: 10.1163/156852003321675736Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article makes a number of contributions. It examines headhunting as an early motive for the population of the Amboina islands, but its main importance is not only in its examination of the emergence of local fleets (hongi) in warfare, but also how the Dutch would later come to rely on the hongi for their own purposes as well.
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Rettig, Tobias, and Karl Hack, eds. Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2006.
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Rettig and Hack have edited an important volume that focuses on colonial militaries, some of which, such as the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, were substantially developed prior to 1900. There is also a chapter by Geoff Wade on Ming Chinese armies in Southeast Asia.
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Rettig, Tobias, and Vina Lanzona. “Women Warriors in Asia.” IIAS Newsletter 48 (Summer 2008): 3.
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Rettig and Lanzona introduce a special issue on female warriors, in a region in which women, as shown in research in Reid 1988 (cited under General Overviews) and Barbara Watson Andaya in other work, were uncommonly present on the battlefield at different historical junctures.
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Santanee, Pasuk, and Philip Scott. Royal Siamese Maps: War and Trade in Nineteenth Century Thailand. Bangkok: River, 2008.
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Reproductions of, and introductory text for, each of seventeen maps rediscovered in 1996 in the Thai royal palace that were used in the 19th century for war and commerce.
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Than Tun. “Ayut’ia Men in the Service of Burmese Kings, 16th & 17th Centuries.” Tonan Ajia Kenkyu (東南アジア研究) 21.4 (1984): 400–408.
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Than Tun turns his lens to the place of Thai mercenaries and war deportees in the Burmese army.
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