Southeast Asia specialist, professor Arnout van der Meer spoke on the origins of National identity in Indonesia. His approach to the subject was outstanding as he did not assume any pre-existing knowledge of Southeast Asia among the crowd. He summarized the historical background of the region and credited scholars who are currently focused on telling Southeast Asia’s story as a main highlight as opposed to as a side show while covering India and China. He affirmed that the region is culturally and geographically connected.\u00a0 van der Meer defended the stereotype that Southeast Asia only came alive with the arrival of the Europeans to its shores arguing that trade, culture, civilization and religion already existed long before European arrival.\u00a0 Southeast Asia experienced cultural heritage (up until 1400 BCE) that involved state\u00a0 formations and the Austronesian migrations and Indianization of the region. It also experienced the Age of Commerce that brought different religions to its lands such as Islam, Buddhism and Christianity. All these led to the colonial interlude that lasted from 1700-1945.\u00a0 The region later witnessed colonialism, imperialism and plantation economies.<\/p>\n
Opening of trade routes between Europe and Asia sparked up the interest in Southeast Asia. Eurasian civilizations pre-existed but there was limited interactions due to geographical barriers as suggested by Arnout . Southeast Asia is a region that,\u00a0 as a whole has no common religion, language, or classical culture. Paradoxically however, the diversity of Southeast Asia and its openness to outside influences were among its defining characteristics. Every state in the region was built on cultural trade-offs both internal and external.\u201d Today, modern Southeast Asia considered one of the most diverse regions of the world.<\/p>\n
Different parts of Southeast Asia tend to have a variety of both economic and cultural niches. The complex societies call for the region to be treated as a separate \u2018entity\u2019 and not as extension to \u2018mainstream\u2019 Asia. Scholars are eager to uncover more facts about the region. This far in to Southeast Asian studies it is justified to say that the common commercial and cultural inheritance are major factors that unify the region. The cultures are inseparable, the norms share commonality, the dominant societal institutions are similar. Bordered by open seas and fragile to invasion, their lifestyles sprung from common roots.<\/p>\n
Colonial Java was under the Dutch’s rule,\u00a0 in search of the origins of national identity in Indonesia, revolution leader Soemarsono inspired the citizens to seek independence. He gave a remarkable speech that is still told in Indonesia today, Soemarsono insisted that only native Indonesians could liberate the country. He sparked socio-political emancipation of the Javanese. This sociological revolution can be considered the origins of a national awakening.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Southeast Asia specialist, professor Arnout van der Meer spoke on the origins of National identity in Indonesia. His approach to the subject was outstanding as he did not assume any pre-existing knowledge of Southeast Asia among the crowd. He summarized the historical background of the region and credited scholars who are currently focused on telling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":607,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}