Introductionlated into Thai that he used as evidence for indigenous state warfare, he
was a progenitor of the autonomous history of Southeast Asia school.
Like Jacob Cornelis Van Leur, whose 1930s work Indonesian Trade
and Society greatly influenced Smail’s previously mentioned work,^17
Quaritch Wales attempted to give Southeast Asia a regional insularity,
informed by a shared culture that would not be changed by either time
or by state. Since the publication of Quaritch Wales’s work, scholars who
have attempted to understand the history of Southeast Asian warfare
have identified different drivers for change, but they have rarely chal-
lenged the regional nature of this warfare beyond the much discussed
and accepted distinction between large interior societies and the coastal
societies of the maritime world. Moreover, as the study of non-Western
warfare has advanced considerably and examinations of Southeast Asian
warfare have been included in transregional studies of ever-increasing
scale, local nuance and variations within the region have received less
focused attention in the general historiography on warfare.^18
The present collection of essays is directed at bringing an acceptance
of the diversity within Southeast Asian warfare back to the academic
table. Their contribution to the historiography on warfare is arguing,
like Wales, for a cultural approach to warfare in the region. However,
the present approach is one that abandons the notion of regionality,
arguing instead for a new and particular take to local culture and ac-
cepting the clear internal diversity of societies in the region. Before
articulating this approach, however, it is necessary to outline in brief
the various historiographical approaches that have been applied to
warfare in the region since Quaritch Wales’ time. In this regard, it is
important to keep in mind that the study of warfare in the region has
never been a dense historiographical field. The scholars who populated
it were occasionally interested in warfare, but rarely situated warfare at
the centre of their research interests. This has been partly a function
of the dominance of area studies in Southeast Asian historiography,
which emphasized comprehensive understandings of society, language,
and culture as a means to understand the region and thus encouraged
- J. C. Van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian social and Economic
History (The Hague–Bandung: W. van Hoeve, 1955). - For example, Kenneth Warren Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003); Alfred W. Crosby, Throwing Fire: Projectile
Technology through History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).