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Political Elites in Coloninal Southeast Asia: an Historical Analysis*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
Present-day political systems in the nation states of Southeast Asia can be classified in accordance with various criteria; they can, for example, be politically grouped on a spectrum ranging from parliamentary democracy to totalitarian dictatorship. The focus of the present inquiry is the sociology of political elites rather than the forms of polity which these elites have created or helped to create. It deals exclusively with the ruling “national” elites, leaving out of consideration secondary groups, such as territorially- or ethnicallybased local and regional elites, religious leaders, and other traditional elites. Two kinds of “national” elite can be discerned in contemporary Southeast Asia, which we shall call “intelligentsia elites” and “modernizing traditional elites”. Disregarding for the time being the constitutional frameworks and the degree of popular participation of each individual state, it may be said that both elites are in many respects oligarchies.
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References
1 Such classifications have i.a. been attempted by Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S. (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar, 532 ff., and Shils, Edward, “Political Development in the New States”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, II (1960), 265–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 293–411. (Separately published, Mouton and Co., 1962.)
2 This terminology is borrowed from Geertz, Clifford, “Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States”, in Geertz, (ed.), Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa (Glencoe, 1963), 105–57.Google Scholar
3 This shared experience and outlook is important for both civilian and military intelligentsias.
4 See Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (London, 1948), esp. ch. 3.Google Scholar
5 I have discussed this concept in two earlier essays, “Non-Western Intelligentsias as Political Elites”, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, VI (1960), 205–18Google Scholar, reprinted in Kautsky, John H. (ed.), Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries: Nationalism and Communism (New York and London, 1962), 235–51Google Scholar; and “Intellectuals and Politics in Western History”, Bucknell Review, X (1961), 1–14.Google Scholar
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14 The exceptions were lands — at times entire villages — granted to religious personnel, usually in perpetuity.
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27 This “magnet effect” needs a great deal of careful research. One typical example is that of Sumatrans drawn to Java in colonial times. A study of Indonesian “political decision makers” in the mid-1950's shows that Sumatrans, who in 1930 accounted for 8% of the total population of the Netherlands Indies, supplied 20% of cabinet members and 18% of top-level civil servants. See Soemardi, Soelaeman, “Some Aspects of the Social Origin of Indonesian Political Decision Makers”, Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology (London, 1956), 340Google Scholar; on the coincidence of such high offices with university training, see ibid., 342.
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32 The term is here used descriptively to denote the existence, side by side, of a capitalist and a subsistence economy. I am not here concerned with the inferences drawn from this co-existence by such scholars as H. Boeke, which have given rise to a voluminous and controversial literature.
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36 The interplay between traditional religious or ideological and modern socialist, especially Marxist thought, has as yet received inadequate attention. A penetrating analysis of Confucianism and Marxism can be found in Mus, op. cit., Chs. XIV, XVIII and XIX. Cf. also Sarkisyanz, Emanuel, Russland und der Messianismus des Orients: Sendungsbewusstsein und politischer Chiliasmus des Ostens (Tübingen, 1955)Google Scholar, and the same author's “Marxism and Asian Cultural Traditions”, Survey 43 (1962), 55–64Google Scholar and 129, and “Kommunismus und Geisteskrise Asiens: Marxismus und orientalische Weltanschauungen”, in Oberndorfer, Dieter (ed.) Wissenschaftliche Politik: Eine Einfiihrung in Grundfragen ihrer Tradition und Theorie (Freiburg, n.d.), 335–64.Google Scholar
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39 See Emerson, op. cit., 24 ff., 248 ff., 351 ff. For a brief but clear analysis, see Kaberry, Phyllis M., The Development of Self-Government in Malaya (London, 1945).Google Scholar
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41 Since this essay deals with colonial Southeast Asia, the special case of Thailand has been omitted from this discussion, even though important parallels do exist. Cf. Wilson, David A., Politics in Thailand (Ithaca, 1962)Google Scholar, Ch. I, and Lauriston Sharp (ed.), Thailand (New Haven, 1956), Ch. 6.
42 Cf. Soenarno, Raden, “Malay Nationalism, 1900–1945”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, I (1960), 1–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. his comparison between Malay and Indonesian nationalism, 27–33.
43 Since the traditional Thai elite demonstrated a negative response to economic modernization quite similar to that of elites in colonial, Indianized Southeast Asia, the importance of the colonial factor must not be exaggerated. Cf. Sharp, op. cit., 160–67. Geertz (op. cit., 130 ff.) draws parallels between Java and Japan which would seem less relevant than comparisons within Indianized Southeast Asia.
44 For a brief summary of French colonial policies towards the three pays, see Devillers, Philippe, Histoire du Vêit-Nam de 1940 ê 1952 (Paris, 1952), 28–29Google Scholar. Cf. also Isoart, op. cit., Ch. IV, and Lê Thánh Khôi, op. cit., 394–406. Of Cochinchina one French historian observed that it possessed “une tonalité française, caracteristique de cette portion d'Indochine”, Georges Taboulet, La geste française en Indochine, I (Paris, 1956), 522.Google Scholar
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46 Cf. Chesneaux, op. cit., Ch. X, and Sacks, I. Milton, “Marxism in Viet Nam”, in Trager, Frank N. (ed.), Marxism in Southeast Asia (Stanford, 1959), 102–70.Google Scholar
47 See Wickberg, Edgar, “The Chinese Mestizo in Philippine History”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, V (1964), 62–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
48 Cf. Geertz, Clifford, Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns (Chicago and London, 1963), esp. Ch. 4.Google Scholar
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