Why South East Asia was colonized? – Waterways, Rice, and Religion

https://steemit.com/politics/@kimspolitics/fnq5p

Why South east Asian countries were colonized? Is it too vague? Let’s think it over again.
What are the common characteristics of victims of colonization? Why do you think some countries( such as Korea? Or India?) had suffered from colonization? Why China was colonized by Europeans and Japanese? Why India become victim of the Brisitsh?

Answer is simple.

Victims of colonization, were weaker than other countries in the same era.
They were weak countries.( weak; is not about the physical size of the country, China and India has huge population with vast land, however colonized by western greatpowers. Weakness, which is multi dimensional concept, should be counted with economic power, social factors, and etc). My Country, Korea,(at that time Chosun Dynasty in late 1800s) were too weak and less-developed to fight against Japanese intruders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93Korea_Treaty_of_1876

While Japan armed their forces with modern rifles, with imported Machine guns, Korean forces were armed with old muskeets, which do not work in the heavy rain. The results was quite obvious. Korea got its independence in 1945.
Lets come back to our main question. So WHY does SEA countries were colonized? To be specific, why SEA countries were relatively weaker than other countries in the same time period?

That’s because, South East Asian countries were lagging behind in industrialization, and building Centralized Polity(modern nation state).

We set our simple, hypothesis. SEA countries were not industrialized, and not politically centralized, this led to less-development of SEA countries. And weak countries fell victim to colonization.
Now, it is a high time to figure out fundamental differences. Why does that deviation happen? In its background, there lie some cultural, and environmental factors in SEA. I will analyze with three main factors; Waterways, Rice cultivation, and Religion.

Waterways

Have you ever been to SEA? Perhaps, if you ‘ve ever been to Thailand for an adventure, think about WaterMarket in Bangkok. Lots of merchants lying on small canoes are trading home-made products and fruits. In the persepective of 21st century, it seems quite abnormal, or inefficient to trade on a river instead of ordering frozen pizza from Amazon.com. However, back in past, rivers in South East Asia were natural market with high potentials.

Without internet connections, nor the gasoline engines, the only way to transport huge, and heavy products is using waterways. By using boats, without using large labor force, by wind and sunny weather combined with rivers and sea shores, large transport was possible. When most of countries lacked paved road, water ways were the only feasible solution. In Netherlands and China, people artificially built massive canals to utilize transportation.

In SEA, things were different. If you look on the map, many countries are divided with huge rivers like Mekong, and ocean. Rivers provided transportation to people, but also, vitality to its agriculture.
countries like Philippines and Indonesia, were divided into many islands. However, the distance between each islands is not that far. If you widen your view, you can see Malacca strait next to Singapore. Via this little strait, merchants were trading goods from China to India.

However, abundance of waterways in SEA led to less-development. Due to waterways, many small, galactic polities emerged in the region. If you compare it with China and Korea (both lacked waterways), difference is obvious. Highly centralized polities emerged in China and Korea. In contrast, South East Asian countries have had difficulties controlling local polities. Simply speaking, central military power is barely projected to local islands. Although, Majapahit empire emerged in 13th century, still lacked centralization.

Rice

Rice is consumed in many Asian countries. In the globe, there are two kinds of countries; those eat rice, and those who eat wheat. Asian countries with high precipitation, and hot humid weather can cultivate rice, while relatively cold and dry European countries counted on wheat.

In the perspective of agricultural production, rice is a promising one. Given the same square miles, rice produces better yields compare to wheats. In SEA, Rice can be harvested 3 times in an year, which makes the gap wider.
SEA countries developed their civilization based on rice. Harvesting Rice has high productivity, while, heavily labor intensive. (of course, in 21st century, machines do most of the labor) In other words, rice produces more foods, and this leads to more population. And this abundant labor is then used to rice cultivation. Ironically, this cyclical structure led to tragedy.

Rice cultivation, although has high productivity, deters accumulation of wealth(capital). Productivity of rice farming is not enough to make capitals needed for industrialization. Meanwhile, Rice cultivation draining abundant labors, resulting lack of labor forces for industrialization. Combining scarcity of capital, and scarcity of urban labor workers, SEA countries were less-developed.

Religion

SEA countries have diverse traditions in religion. There are three main religions considering the size; Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Due to its close distance to India, Hinduism and Buddhism were imported. Trade route that connects China and India, brought merchants from abroad, resulting quite a lot of Sultanates in the region.

In SEA, various religions co-existed in the same country. In the viewpoint of modern civilization, co existence of religion does not seem to be problematic, but in the past, this diversity, or heterogeneity led to fragmented identity in the same polity.
Unlike European nations where Christianity prevailed, and Mid-east where islam dominated, SEA countries have had to deal with incoherent identities in the state. Still, in some of the SEA countries, uprising regarding Religious issues still happens.
SEA’s fragmented Identity led to galactic polity. Failing to build Centralized polity, and administration system, resulted inefficiency and ill performance of government apparatus.