Introductiontory way.^10 Post-war historiography has slowly but steadily challenged
colonial analyses although war studies as a discipline remains largely
Eurocentric,^11 thereby diluting to some degree the methodological and
documentary advances that have been made since independence. Early
attempts to correct Eurocentric historiography on warfare in this region
were necessarily eclectic.^12 Although histories of indigenous warfare
in component parts of modern South East Asia have early roots, the
modern historiography of warfare of South East Asia as a region did not
begin until the publication of H. G. Quaritch Wales’ ground-breaking
and multi-disciplinary work, Ancient South East Asian Warfare in 1952.^13
Quaritch Wales, celebrated today for his work on the art treasures of the
region, was a man of many talents and, having a foot both in and outside
academia, he drew widely upon different kinds of sources and approaches
to provide an overall picture of a region whose official regionality he
observed in its making. The term “Southeast Asia” was first used to
designate Lord Louis Mountbatten’s South East Asian Command during
World War II, just eight years before the publication of Ancient South East
Asian Warfare, and it came into common parlance thereafter.
Quaritch Wales’ contribution, while pioneering and important,
remains problematic. It was part of a large approach to knowledge
about Asia that succumbed to a discourse that Edward Said’s classic
- James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial
Conflict: 330. - Richard J. Reid, Warfare in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012): x. - This is true of African historiography on warfare as well, with early publications fo-
cusing on particular ethnic groups or sub-regions of Africa, for example, Ade Ajayi,
J. F., Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1964); Joseph P. Smaldone, Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate: Historical and
Sociological Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and
R. S. Smith, Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa (London: James
Currey, 1989). Only recently have broad surveys, such as Reid (2012) cited above,
been written on warfare on the continent as a whole. Other recent efforts in this
regard include Bruce Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa 1830–
(London: UCL Press, 1998); John K. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa 1500–
1800 (London: UCL Press, 1999); and William Reno, Warfare in Independent
Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). - H. G. Quaritch Wales, Ancient South-East Asian Warfare (London: Bernard
Quaritch, 1952).