east and southeast asia cannot be studied in isolation, as though separated from international forces. European colonialism from the sixteenth century, while sporadic and uneven in effect, cumulatively exerted a profound impact on the region. While local histories remained important, colonialism brought with it profoundly new forms of economic production and exchange, as well as new forms of political organisation. It was via the medium of colonialism that the industrial revolution and capitalism were exported from Europe to this and other regions of the world. Colonialism also brought, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the ideology of nationalism and the concept of the nation-state. These European imports had a dramatic influence on the countless millions of people who lived in East and Southeast Asia. Their lives were profoundly altered by their incorporation into a world increasingly interrelated through the mechanism of the international market and the logic of a world dominated by nation-states. The village in Asia and the local market for which it produced were progressively drawn into larger networks of production and exchange. This occurred relatively quickly and with considerable compulsion in some areas, such as the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth century, where the imposition of the cultivation system saw traditional forms of agriculture largely replaced by sugar and other cash crops produced for the markets of Europe. In other areas, changes were more gradual. Cumulatively, however, and perhaps over several generations, the effect of these changes was considerable.