Introductionnot explained why there is so great divergence across the region in its
actual historical experience with warfare.
The old cultural approach was eventually joined by the state forma-
tion approach. Modelled by historians such as Victor B. Lieberman,
M. C. Ricklefs, and Pamaree Surakiat, a number of scholars see war
as a reflection of broader processes emanating from changes in the
economy and the trajectory of state formation and its consequences.^19
Amongst the more important contributing factors was the impact of
the introduction of firearms, in particular those of the Portuguese
and Europeans who followed. The state formation approach, however
effective at explaining the scale of warfare and war-making capacity
could not be expected to explain why comparable states, such as Ava
in northern Burma in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the
polities of South Sulawesi during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, manifested warfare with very clear differences in martial culture
and concepts of war. This approach also favours in its analysis lowland
states, those that have left rich archival records, at the expense of
highland societies or those societies in the lowlands not yet absorbed
by what James Scott terms expanding state space, terrain that is easily
managed by the state.^20 Conversely, the problem of including highland
societies and lowland areas without rich archival records, and often
societies historically documented through oral traditions, is that the
latter tend to be inclusive, flexible, and adaptive, progressively changing
the record to suit contemporary needs.^21 In both cases, local warfare of
a particular era becomes increasingly faint as court sources (or later,
- Victor B. Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830,
Vol. 1, Integration of the Mainland; Vol. 2: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China,
South Asia, and the Islands (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003–2009);
Idem, “Some Comparative Thoughts on Premodern Southeast Asian Warfare”,
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46.2 (2003): 215–25; M.
C. Ricklefs, War, Culture and Economy in Java, 1677–1726: Asian and European
Imperialism in the Early Kartasura period (Sydney: Asian Studies Association of
Australia in Association with Allen and Unwin, 1993); Pamaree Surakiat, “The
Changing Nature of Conflict between Burma and Siam as seen from the growth
and development of Burmese states from the 16th to the 19th centuries”, ARI
Working Paper, No. 64 (March 2006) [http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/docs/wps/
wps06_064.pdf ]. - James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland
Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009): 48. - Ibid., 230.