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Migration in Southeast Asia

© John Walsh

Throughout known history, people have been migrating into and across Southeast Asia. Bands of people move at a slow pace across the often dangerous countryside searching for a better life. As long as there are differences in lifestyle, in geography, in climate and in political systems then there will always be incentives for people to migrate. Sometimes they will do so temporarily and sometimes permanently. Whenever it happens, there is an opportunity for the migrant and the receivers to benefit from exposure to different ideas and cultures, although it is more common to witness discrimination and persecution.

Patterns of migration in the past have generally been from the north and north west to the south and southeast. However, there have been some variations as certain peoples found environmental niches that suited the lifestyles they wished to pursue. On the other hand, some who had settled in particular places were then forced to move as a result of newly arriving groups seeking to seize the favourable territory and expel, marginalise or enslave the defeated people. The migrations of the Chinese are an example of family or individual movements seeking better economic opportunities than were available in the home country. By contrast, the movements of the Tais in the thirteenth century resulted from the destruction of the Nanchao kingdom by the Mongols in the 1250s and saw a mass movement and the subsequent establishment of Tai states such as Muang Mua, Luchuan and Lan Na. For more about Nanchao, see here: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1817...

The first arrivals in Southeast Asia were probably negrito people, who were then followed by Proto-Australians and then Melanesians. Some vestiges of the communities of these early arrivals are still visible, although increasingly rare, such as the so-called Ngo people still to be found in some parts of Malaysia. Stone artifacts have been found in Thailand dating back some 700,000 years and, by the Bronze Age, flourishing and culturally distinctive polities were t obe found across the mainland, as the excavations at Ban Chiang, for example, show.

From about 2000 BCE, Mon-Khmer speaking peoples from the Austro-Asiatic group of peoples migrated from India and settled throughout Southeast Asia. Proto-Malay people from the Tibet region followed in their footsteps and succeeded in driving the Mon-Khmers from most of Burma. Meanwhile, Malay people from the islands settled along the coast of mainland Southeast Asia and created the Champa state (for more about the Chams, see here: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1817... among others. The later arrival of the Tais and their success in dominating much of the mainland has tended to overshadow much of the cultural heritage of the pre-existing Mon-Khmer peoples such as the Lawas and the Mons, although some villages of these people do still remain. Most, however, have been integrated into the larger Tai states of Thailand and Laos.

The copyright of the article Migration in Southeast Asia in East Asian History is owned by John Walsh. Permission to republish Migration in Southeast Asia in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.