WELL KNOWN AS a “crossroads of civilizations,” Southeast Asia has been in contact, directly or indirectly, with many parts of Eurasia for over two millennia. Linked by population movements north from China, east as far as Easter Island in the Pacific, and west to Madagascar and the coast of East Africa, inhabitants of this region have long been connected, mainly by sea, with the rest of the eastern hemisphere. They were well placed in already existing networks when, about 2,000 years ago, other parts of Eurasia, east and west, desired contact across its expanse, pushing routes of commerce and communication to and through Southeast Asia. Specifically, Southeast Asia was linked by water, the maritime silk route, to and benefited from the Indic and Sinitic civilizations of South and East Asia, gaining economically, culturally, and politically. There were, in addition, overland routes through the mountains north and west that contributed in lesser ways to such exchange. Southeast Asians, maintaining their own indigenous social and cultural patterns, have selectively adopted and adapted the foreign to their own ways of life.

Here I examine three broad areas of the region: the mountain world to its north, the lowland world of the mainland river plains, and the coastal world of the islands. In this period, the areas most strongly affected by the trade routes were the northern mountains and the seacoasts. Political developments in the lowlands across the mainland came later, at least in part in reaction to the mountain and coastal activities. I first describe power relations in the region through the seventh century and into the middle of the eighth, then the important belief systems of the eighth century, before returning to power and its significant growth from the middle of the eighth century through the middle of the ninth. In pursuing this topic, I model my approach on that of Hermann Kulke. Looking at Southeast Asian politics from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries, Kulke saw three phases that succeeded one another: “the local, regional, and imperial.” These phases developed from the chieftainship to the local lord, the regional lord, and ultimately the imperial overlord. In the beginning was the chiefdom, based on the development of proximate local social hierarchy and leadership.