Introductionand regionalist historical paradigms.^25 Nevertheless, this approach has
been too dependent upon a single actor and cannot explain why two
societies that had guns saw them apply the same technology in different
ways in war and with very different results. Of the three main approaches
outlined in brief above, none are able, on their own, to offer an explana-
tion for the great historical diversity of warfare across the region.
In the past decade or so, there has been a broader, global histo-
riographical shift in approaches to non-Western warfare that Jeremy
Black has referred to as the cultural turn in warfare studies. Black has
warned, however, that cultural concepts change over time and can ex-
ist simultaneously and indeed can even contradict one another in the
same society.^26 Rather than presenting a singular, regionally-shaped,
culturally-determinist approach to warfare, we are instead embracing
the diversity within the region, broadening our attention to include
more localized perspectives.
As the chapters of the present book demonstrate, local Southeast
Asian societies had their own individual experiences that were unique.
The contributors to the volume focus on the relationship between par-
ticular warfare cultures and politics, the latter shaped by both local and
regional factors. Environment, demographics, the prevailing trade pat-
terns, religion, culture, the legacies of administrative experimentation,
and a host of other factors made holding particular societies together
and the acquisition of resources difficult in different ways. Particular
martial cultures emerged in this context as did the political aspirations
of warring rulers. Looked at broadly over the course of decades and
centuries, all societies sought the same things in war such as resources,
which in Southeast Asia often meant people, prestige, and political sta-
bility. Looked at closely, however, local conflicts across the region were
waged in different ways, by different means, and with particular goals in
each conflict. Beneath the generalities the historiography often focuses
- Christopher E. Goscha, “Foreign Military Transfers in Mainland Southeast Asian
Wars: Adaptations, Rejections and Change (Introduction)”, Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies 34, 3 (2003): 492. - See the Preface to, as well as Chapter 1 in, Jeremy Black, War and the Cultural Turn
(Cambridge: Polity, 2012). This literature has sought to avoid technological de-
terminism, on the one hand, and keeping warfare within its social context, on the
other. Wayne E. Lee, “Introduction”, in Wayne E. Lee (ed.), Warfare and Culture in
World History (New York: New York University Press, 2011): 2.