Ethnie formation

The effects of colonial rule or influence on ethnie-formation varied widely. The different styles and motivations of the rival colonisers was one factor, but far more important was the type of Southeast Asian society with which each interacted. We need to distinguish at least four types of interaction, which I will label (i) expanding an ethnie core ... 

Aceh follows as the ethnie nationalism most threatening to the Indonesian state. Chapter 5 demonstrates that the strength of this ethnie nationalism, by contrast with the stateless examples that follow, is precisely its memory of state. Acehnese may be less distinctive as a minority than Indonesia s Bataks or Malaysia s Kadazan, but they inherit an unusually strong sense of state resistance to outside control. The Batak and Kadazan cases, in chapters 6 and 7, reveal the different paths of political identity formation and assertion of previously stateless peoples that were possible in Indonesia and Malaysia respectively. The different outcomes are largely set by the gulf between the two state nationalisms with which they contended post-revolutionary, centralising civic nationalism in Indonesia evolutionary, federal and ethno-nationalist Malaysia. 

One of the greatest benefits of the formation of Malaysia in 1963 was that it at last created a neutral and artificial name for the country distinct from that of any ethnie. It thereby could in principle, like Indonesia and the Philippines but unlike Thailand, Burma and Vietnam, emphasise the national identity without necessarily marginalising minorities. But there were still profound tensions between the concepts of core ethnie and of neutral citizenship. Lee Kuan Yew s Singapore was expelled from the new country after less than two years because his vigorous campaign for a civic or territorial nationalism— Malaysian Malaysia the assertion that We are here as of right —was considered by Alliance leaders as certain to lead to violent conflict with Malay ethno-nationalism (Mahathir 1970 122). 

Both the Dutch and British colonial constructs remained extraordinarily plural, in language, religion and political formation. Few in the 1930s (except the Indonesian nationalists) believed that they could or should ever become single nation-states. Yet the pluralism was so pervasive at every level that lesser ethnie nationalisms had even more difficulty... 

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