1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

C00123268
Geographic and Ethnographic Identifying Key Issues in Ethnic Relations
Perspectives on Ethnic Conflict in
Southeast Asia For purposes oTthis discussion, I will focus on four
key aspects of ethnic tension in the Southeast Asian
region. The first factor relates to environmental issues
Eric Crystal and the competition for agricultural land in highland
Coordinator regions. The second factor is centered on religious
Center for Southeast affiliation, identification, and proselytization. The
Asia Studies third factor focuses on tensions in the border regions
University of California at Berkeley 7 of Southeast Asia. The fourth aspect relates to vesti-
gial ideological conflicts in this region often articu-
lated in terms of ethnic interest.
Geographic/Ethnographic Overview
Few regions of the world present so wide a range of Highland-Lowland Ecological Distinctions and
natural environments and sociocultural adaptations as Ethnic Tensions
does Southeast Asia. The enduring geographic and
ethnographic diversity of the region has been com- From the perspective of precolonial India and early
pounded in recent decades by the forces of national- China, Southeast Asia was a frontier region, inhabited
ism, impact of ideology, intervention of external by exotic races and peoples. Relatively low in popula-
powers, and differential pace of development in the tion in comparison to India and China in prehistoric as
10 nations of the region. In brief, Southeast Asia today well as more recent times, Southeast Asia yielded
provides an extraordinary range of economies, societ- valuable tribute and trade products such as aromatic
ies, cultures, and geographical regimes. Per capita sandalwood, exotic bird of paradise feathers, and
income ranges from $17,000 per year in Brunei to much coveted rhinoceros horn (Hickey, 1982; 33-34).
$120 per year in Laos. The stability and technological
sophistication of Singapore, the newly industrialized From late neolithic times to the present, the geograph-
status of Thailand, and the burgeoning agroindustrial ical distinction between the alluvial plains and moun-
base of Malaysia contrast strongly with the stark real- tain hinterlands tended to define interethnic relations
ity of brutal military rule in Burma, the current in the area and from the earliest articulation of state
attempt at national reconciliation in Cambodia, and society-perhaps in the second century AD-to the
the efforts to emerge from a subsistence economy in present a sharp division between lowland and high-
Laos land populations has obtained in Southeast Asia.
Plains dwellers adapted and refined wet-rice cultiva-
In the brief time allotted to me here, I wish to discuss tion, producing surpluses and articulating stratified
the past, present, and prospective dangers posed by societies well over 2,500 years ago. Early kingdoms in
ethnic tensions in a region that, in the past decade, has Southeast Asia such as Oc-eo in Vietnam and Funan
evidenced an average rate of economic growth (7 per- in Cambodia further articulated the development of
cent) higher than any other on the globe. Although culture to the level of the state. Kingdoms in the
poverty and lack of human and natural resources may region from Myanmar (Burma) to Cambodia soon
contribute to ethnic tensions, so also may the rise of a adopted the religion and the buttressing ideology of
middle class and the perception of the monopolization Hinduism, which was brought in the wake of Hindu
of power by discrete minorities in the most economi- trade missions to the wealthy frontier states in "the
cally successful of Southeast Asian states. lands below the wind" in Southeast Asia (Reid; 1988).
'The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author.
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