Transcript for:
Geography and Culture of Southeast Asia

[Music] thank you southeast Asia lecture 21 in the geography of the global village by Dr Jonathan Smith [Music] part one a further India [Music] we have seen that a great Mountain belt cuts through Asia from west to east ancient Greek geographers called this belt the Taurus that name is today restricted to a rather small range of mountains in the country of Turkey but the great Mountain belt remains a feature of supreme importance to the geography of Asia to the north of this great range lay with the ancient geographers called Asia intratarum to the South what they called Asia extrator the second name means Asia beyond the Taurus a modern geographer might describe these two regions as Continental Asia and Coastal Asia Continental Asia takes in Russian Siberia and the Central Asian region once known as tartari the region to the south of the great Mountain belt is Coastal Asia and is divided into five great peninsulas or near peninsulas that are separated from one another by Deep invements of the sea in the far west of coastal Asia lies the Arabian peninsula bounded on one side by the Mediterranean and on the other by the Arabian Sea the next great Peninsula to the east is the subcontinent of India or South Asia pointed like a dagger towards the Indian Ocean this is bounded on the west by the Arabian Sea and on the east by the Bay of Bengal continuing eastwards we come to the great Peninsula that is the subject of this lecture geographers have given several different names to this peninsula but for now we will simply call it Southeast Asia it is bounded on the west by the Bay of Bengal and on the east by an inbayment of the South China Sea known as the Gulf of Tonkin from here the coast of Asia turns North and we come to the great bulge of China between the Gulf of Tonkin and the Yellow Sea although not a true Peninsula this bulge nevertheless repeats the characteristic pattern of coastal Asia sits on large and culturally distinctive land mass is isolated by mountains and two great embayments of the sea finally Northeast of China lies the peninsula of Korea and the archipelago of Japan although Korea and Japan are separated by the Sea of Japan and so not strictly a peninsula the two countries clearly form yet another iteration of the characteristic pattern of coastal Asia this culturally distinctive region is set apart by a mountain barrier and the great embayments of the Yellow Sea and the Sea of ox we have also seen how in the course of history distant lands emerge from the utter obscurity of a tiara incognita pass through the mist of a tiara media and then take their place in the clear light of ordinary geography for European geographers the peninsulas of coastal Asia successively came into view in this manner beginning with the Arabian peninsula in the Far West and then proceeding eastwards to India southeast Asia China and last of all Korea and Japan Arabia was the first land of exotic mystery for the West most especially the district known as Felix Arabia far away to the south on the shore of the Arabian Sea it was from Arabia that Europeans first imported tropical spices and from Arabia that they first heard marvelous Tales such as the story of Aladdin's magic lamp Beyond Arabia and across the Arabian Sea lay India a land where men were said to charm snakes with flutes and climb ropes that hung from the air and where giant ants were said to dig gold from the desert sand as we saw Alexander the Great found that the land of India was much larger than he expected and that Beyond the Valley of the Indus lay another great River the Ganges which ran East to its mouth in the jungles of Bengal 300 years after Alexander's expedition to the Indus Valley perhaps around 50 A.D a third great Asian Peninsula emerged from the darkness of tiara incognita and entered the Misty realm of Legends and half-truths that we call the Tiara media southeast Asia was first mentioned in a book by an anonymous Roman geographer that was primarily devoted to description of the lands surrounding the Arabian Sea of these lands the author appears to have had first-hand knowledge but the book also mentions Legends of lands to the east of India on the shores of the Bay of Bengal on the Far Eastern Shore of that bay this Anonymous geographer said there lay an island called Chrissy or what we today call Sumatra and a great Peninsula he called the Arya chersonesis these words are Latin and translate to English as the golden peninsula he called southeast Asia the golden Peninsula because there were rumors that it was home to minds of the precious metal but more especially because it was in this far away land to the east of India that the most valuable perfumes and spices were obtained and so it was that the Arya chersonesis entered the geographical imagination of the West nearly 2 000 years ago and the golden Peninsula continued to Fascinate the West for a very long time when Christopher Columbus sailed West from Spain in 1492 he went in search of the Golden peninsula of the Arya gersonesis where the precious spices sense and metals were to be had and the great Explorer died in the belief that he had very nearly reached that rich and fabled land in the words of his first biographer Columbus supposed that he had arrived nearly to the Arya chersonesis of the Ancients bordering on some of the richest provinces of Asia Arya chirstonesis is a romantic name but there were other ancient names for Southeast Asia that may tell us more of what we need to know if we are to grasp the geographic character of the region because it so closely resembled the great peninsula of India ancient geographers also called it further India they saw southeast Asia as another India only farther off in the east it would be wrong to suppose that southeast Asia is a replica of India for it most certainly is not bad but the name further India does remind us that southeast Asia resembles India in some important ways another name popular among the old geographers was India beyond the Ganges or India extra ganjam for instance here is an 18th century geographer using both of these old names the countries between Hindustan and China came to be called further India or India extra ganja when geographers said India beyond the Ganges they meant Coastal Asia beyond the mouths of the Ganges which are at the head of the Bay of Bengal the position of the mouths of the Ganges is marked on this map with the letter G you will recall from the first lecture on India that the mouths of the Ganges run through a great Delta plane known as Bengal part of this Delta plane is today occupied by the country of Bangladesh which means home of the bengalis in its natural state Bengal was a great swampy jungle home to the Ferocious Bengal tiger because of the Fertile soils that form the Delta plane of the Ganges Bengal has long been home to the largest population concentration in Greater India the classic geographer Peter Hellen wrote India extra ganjum is that part of the Great continent of India which lieth on the further side of the river Ganges from hence extended Eastward as far as China and the Oriental ocean India beyond the Ganges can be thought of as a series of four little Bengals in Southeast Asia four great rivers run down from the great Mountain belt to the north as does the river Ganges as these rivers near the sea each runs out onto a Delta plane like the Delta plain of the Ganges each of these is low level wet and heavily populated in other words a little Bengal of further India this is why classic images of traditional southeast Asia always show Rivers running through a jungle and people moving about in small boats because most of the people in Southeast Asia have lived in the Delta plain of a river that annually floods classic images of traditional Southeast Asia also almost always show houses raised on stilts as another old geographer said of the residents of Southeast Asia they have this inconvenience that they are forced to build their houses upon High wooden pillars and live in their upper rooms during the flood and can have no other communication with one another but by boat in the flat country or as another geographer at about the same time wrote the southern provinces are very hot and moist especially in the valleys and lowlands near the sea and yet there the natives build most of their towns the houses standing upon High pillars to secure them from floods southeast Asia is in one sense a further India but it is also in another sense a nearer China this is because it is situated between the two great civilizations of coastal Asia and is therefore long been open to influence by both the influence of Indian civilization has been greater but the influence of China has not been negligible it was to recognize the Dual influence of these Mighty neighbors that geographers devised the name indo-china the geographer Conrad malt Baron said it is a Chinese India and India with Chinese features Western geographers have been aware of Southeast Asia for nearly 2 000 years and some European Travelers in the Middle Ages actually set foot on the soil of further India as we saw the Arya gersonesis was the goal of Christopher Columbus when he sailed West across the Atlantic and although he failed to reach his destination European ships began to drop anchor in the ports of the golden peninsula less than 20 years after Columbus discovered the new world when they did they found that the golden Peninsula had very little gold that the precious spices and perfumes came mainly from the great archipelago of islands farther south and that the enormous populations of India and China offered more opportunities for trade as a result for more than 300 years the Arya chursonesis was largely ignored less than 200 years ago a geographer could write this vast country extending from the Bay of Bengal to the Chinese sea is scarcely known except along its Shores the interior presents a field of useless and Troublesome conjectures the first comprehensive geography of the region was not written until 1904. and in this the author says lying as they do Midway upon the great sea route which leads from India to China it has been the fate of these countries to be overshadowed from the beginning by the immensity and surprising fascination of their Mighty Neighbors thus even when India and Cathay had emerged at last from the nebulous Haze of myth Superstition and conjecture Southeastern Asia continued to be wrapped in obscurity so let's remove some of that nebulous Haze of obscurity and take a closer look at the basic lay of the land in Southeast Asia [Music] part two the shape of the land [Music] if I turn the map of Southeast Asia on its side you will see that it's outlined somewhat resembles the shape of a lobster imagine that the long narrow Peninsula towards the bottom of the map is the Lobster's claw and the thick stubby Peninsula towards the top of the map is the lobster's body and head The Claw is called the melee peninsula and if you look closely you will see that it is formed by A long ridge that runs south from the Tibetan plateau you can also see that another long ridge forms the backbone of the lobster I realized that real lobsters do not have backbones but this is not a real lobster the southern section of this second Ridge is the Anam mountains and these occupy the central portion of present day Vietnam between these two great ridges you can see the great lowland of Siam which in the South Sinks below the sea in the Gulf of Siam if you look more closely still you will see that there are a great many additional ridges running south from the Tibetan plateau and although these are not as long as the ridge that forms the melee Peninsula or as large as the mountains of Anam all of these ridges run in the same general direction also if you look closely you will see that there are low lands at the foot of these ridges and in each Low Land a river that runs Southward to the Sea these lowlands are not so large as the great Low Land of Siam but they have the same general form and even the lowland of Siam is divided by a low Ridge that runs parallel to the others these parallel ridges are the bones that give southeast Asia its basic Geographic shape and the Delta planes that open out between them as they approach the sea are home to the four main cultures of the region as one old geographer described it the country consists of a series of mountain chains separated by long narrow river valleys which lie in the direction of Northwest and Southeast we can identify each of these culture regions with the river that formed its Delta plane beginning in the West the first river is the erawadi the Great River of Burma with the city of Rangoon at its mouth moving East over the ridge that forms the melee Peninsula we come to the chaofraya formerly the mynam the Great River of Thailand formerly Siam Bangkok is the city at the mouth of the shelfrya continuing East over the low Ridge that divides the Low Land of cyan we come to the Mekong River the greatest waterway in all Southeast Asia the floodplain and Delta of the Mekong are so large that they are home to two distinct groups nearest the sea the Mekong Delta was formerly known as Cochin China or marshy China it became the heart of South Vietnam and is today Southern Vietnam the great city of the Mekong Delta is generally known as Saigon although since the Vietnam War its official name has been Ho Chi Minh City farther up the Mekong above the delta the Mekong floodplain is occupied by Cambodia the principal city of Cambodia is called Phnom Penh and it is located on the Mekong River at the head of the delta crossing the Anam mountains we come to the Red River Tong kin is the ancient name for this region and this name survives in the Gulf of Tonkin which separates the peninsula of Southeast Asia from the great bulge of China the valley and floodplain of the Red River were at the heart of North Vietnam and are today Northern Vietnam Hanoi is the principal City of the Red River delta so we see that great rivers and their Delta planes form the basic geography of Southeast Asia as the great geographer Friedrich Rachel explained the rivers coming from the northern mountains form the Deltas lower Cochin China and Cambodia Siam and pegu are either entirely or in their most productive and politically important sections low-lying alluvial districts Rachel's list passes from east to west and he uses the old name pigu to denote Burma but he is otherwise in perfect agreement with the classification I just related to you there have always been more primitive peoples living in the Hills between and to the north of the great river deltas but the four alluvial lowlands have always held the largest and most advanced populations and each Delta is connected with a distinct culture and Country we have seen that the lower Mekong River is divided between Southern Vietnam and Cambodia but Burma is the country of the irawadi Thailand of the ciaofrya and Northern Vietnam of the red and these are the great cultures of Southeast Asia to quote once again from Rachel compared with the rest of further India these alluvial lands have a geographical historical and political individuality it is with them alone that the history of further India has for the most part to deal the rest of the peninsula is almost everywhere the same impossible Hill and Forest Country thinly inhabited by Savages as I said earlier each of these Delta planes is a little India or to be more precise a little Bengal Bengal is marked by the large yellow circle on the left side of this map and the little Bengals of further India are marked by small yellow circles shaded in red the basic lesson of this section is well summarized by these words from an old geographer the surface of this country is formed by a series of great mountain ranges running from north to south and forming branches from the mighty chain of Himalaya between each of these ranges intervenes a broad Valley in general of extreme fertility and watered by a large river descending from the mountain Frontier these valleys either form or have formed separate kingdoms [Music] part 3 a cultural Convergence Zone [Music] foreign I mentioned earlier that southeast Asia is often called Indochina and that this Name Records the cultural consequences of its situation between the great civilizations of India and China as the geographer Conrad malt broon put it it is a Chinese India and India with Chinese features malt baroon actually proposed to call Southeast Asia chin India because he felt this construction more accurately stated the fact that it was India with Chinese features but his proposal was not adopted another 19th century writer had this to say of the people of Thailand they resembled the Chinese and on the other hand there is something so purely Indian in their appearance they are indeed indo-chinese and their institutions political or religious Their Manners and their Customs partake of the same mixed character the mixing of Indian and Chinese influences took place in a region that is as we have seen corrugated by ridges and valleys that run north and south perpendicular to the direct line of movement between the core of China and the core of India in the north as you can see on this map the corrugation is extremely rugged making contact between China and India almost impossible so the cultural influence of both China and India tended to flow South towards the Low Land of Siam where these influences met and achieved a sort of balance among the Thai people in the Delta of the ciao Faria farther west in Burma the Indian influence was dominant farther east in Tonkin the dominant influence was Chinese in fact the lay of the land in Southeast Asia caused Chinese and Indian influences to mix in different proportions in each of the four Delta planes this was recognized by the great French geographer Elise recluse when he wrote here the mountain ranges and river valleys are so disposed that a zone of gradual transition occurs everywhere from Burma Siam and Anam as indicated by the very name of Indochina this land belongs both geographically and historically to both of the adjacent regions here is our old friend James Bryce noting the same thing about Southeast Asia the course of its civilization has been inspired by impulses derived from the two civilized countries of India and China hence the justification for the name indo-china on the Northern Frontier and in the west we find a Restless movement and process of struggle between the Chinese and the native races while in the South and West Hindu civilization is everywhere Victorious this is a modern photograph of the great Hindu temple at angor Cambodia Angora was the capital of Cambodia from about 1 000 to 1200 A.D and was in its day one of the largest cities in the world the temple was built around 1100 A.D and obviously represents the cultural influence of India on the Mekong River basin when we look at the influence of India and China in this region we should not imagine two identical forces since they differed in both timing and character the Indian influence came first and took the form mainly of religious ideas the Chinese influence came somewhat later and took the form mainly of economic colonization thus the geographer Friedrich Rachel wrote the peninsula cannot be simply halved for the Indian and Chinese influences have relieved each other India began earlier and then slackened afterwards came a predominance of Chinese influence pressing slowly South at about the same time as the German barbarians were overthrowing the Roman Empire Indian missionaries began traveling by land and sea to the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal they brought to Southeast Asia the doctrines of Hinduism but the reform movement known as Buddhism was already underway and they brought the seeds of the new religion as well in general we may suppose that Hinduism at first absorbed the various tribal religions of Southeast Asia in much the same way as it had absorbed the various tribal religions of the dravidian peoples in India thus the fundamentally Indian character of Indochina was introduced in the words of a modern Indian historian Indian civilization was carried to indo-china by merchants and Hindu priests and established in those countries during the first few centuries of the Christian era nearer home Burma also became a cultural colony of India thus by about the 9th century the entire region constituted what is now called greater India this missionary effort was focused on the populations clustered beside the Great Rivers especially in the lowland of Siam in the words of another Indian historian the Gulf of Siam and the banks of the Great Rivers of Cambodia seem to have been the central points of brahmanical influence from upper Burma to Cochin China countless temple ruins are to be found with Rich ornamental sculptures and Sanskrit inscriptions this brahmanical influence included Hindu and Buddhist elements and for a long time it would have been impossible for anyone to separate the two but in time brahmanism in Southeast Asia became more distinctly Buddhist while brahmanism in India became more distinctly Hindu one reason for this may have been the unwillingness of Southeast Asians to submit to the caste system Buddhism civilized the Primitive peoples of Southeast Asia because it taught that moral conduct was the way to Nirvana you will remember the concepts of Dharma and Karma from the previous lecture Dharma is essentially the moral law and Karma is the consequences that result from following or failing to follow the moral law a good man who follows the Dharma would have good karma which is to say good consequences he could expect to be reincarnated in his next life at a higher level and would thus be one step closer to Nirvana for his final release from the wheel of suffering a bad man who failed to follow the Dharma would have Bad Karma which is to say the bad consequences of plenty more suffering obviously the doctrines of Dharma and Karma encourage moral behavior and widespread moral behavior is a key element in the development and maintenance of a complex civilization there if civilizing effect was recognized by a historian of Buddhism when he wrote Buddhism in these Eastern lands has exerted a beneficial influence by putting Karma the law of cause and effect in the place of the Caprice of demons and tribal gods and a lofty system of morals in the place of tribal custom and taboo for ordinary men Buddhism taught a simple and civilizing Dharma good consequences would follow if only a man would refrain from killing stealing sexual immorality lying and in sobriety of course a society in which most people follow these Simple Rules will be an orderly and civilized society and a society in which most people do not follow these rules will be something else entirely so this social and moral order that raised the people of Southeast Asia above the Savage State and that set them on the road to civilization which is why the historian I have been quoting said the history of Ceylon and Burma as of Siam may be said to begin with the entrance into them of Buddhism the Chinese influence on southeast Asia was greatest after the Indian influence and where the Indian influence had been spiritual the Chinese influence was material it was not so much Chinese teachings that spread south into the river deltas of Southeast Asia as it was Chinese Merchants Chinese coolies and the commercial practices they brought with them Chinese influence spread to Southeast Asia in much the same way as we saw it spread to Korea and Japan It Came In Waves connected to what we call the pulse of China and it naturally had the greatest impact on the Delta Plains in Tonkin and Cochin China since these were closest to China itself here's the geographer Friedrich Rachel by the 3rd Century BC China was sending its colonies to Tonkin and Cochin China every Insurrection every year of dearth flung thousands of Chinese upon the less densely settled country this is one of the first European maps of East Asia you can easily see the great bulge of China in the North when political revolutions or famine drove refugees out of China many were naturally drawn to the attractive river deltas to the South and when the central power strengthened in China the Chinese emperor just as naturally tried to Annex these deltas as a 19th century ambassador to Cochin China explained Anam was conquered by China in 214 BC when numerous Chinese colonists were planted among its barbarous inhabitants who disseminated among them the language laws and opinions of China in the year AED 263 it really gained its independence but paid tribute to China but as I said the main Chinese influence came later and was of a distinctly commercial or economic nature the photograph shows the Mansion of a wealthy Chinese Merchant in Saigon at about the time of the American Civil War the quote is from the English Explorer and Sea Captain Henry dampier who visited the Mekong Delta in the first part of the 18th century dampier wrote trade is the life of a Chinese an English Diplomat who had been sent to meet with the King of Siam reported that Chinese Merchants dominated the city of Bangkok and the trade of Siam of the foreign trade of Siam the most important branch is that with China the whole of Chinese Trade Centers in Bangkok a geographer traveling up the Mekong River in 1867 reported that Chinese Merchants were dominant in Saigon and throughout the Mekong Delta two French Traders complained greatly of the state of trade in Saigon where China men are engrossing all the business while Merchants from Europe reap but slender prophets Chinamen are able in three or four years to amass ample fortunes residences of Chinese Traders at Saigon already exceed in their magnificence any that are to be found in Singapore farther up River among the Hill tribes of Laos this same writer found that trade was almost entirely in the hands of Chinese merchants we reached krabin Laos needles thread and other indispensable articles of foreign manufacture are introduced by the Chinese who are planted in great numbers all over the country and the economic dominance of the Chinese was not limited to trade and commerce Chinese Planters owned many of the largest plantations in the Mekong River delta and their fields and rice paddies were in many cases worked by Chinese coolies it is to the pepper plantations along the banks of the river that the place owes its principal importance the latter are wholly in the hands of the Chinese who cultivate them with their usual industry formerly many junks visited both this place Phnom Penh and Saigon bringing coulees and other immigrants in large numbers from China [Music] part four Burma also known as Myanmar Myanmar was long known as Burma both names refer to the dominant ethnic group The burmar or Berman people and the two names may be used interchangeably the country of Burma is essentially a basin filled with low Hills that flatten to Plains and a River delta in the south this Basin is ringed by high ridges and plateaus on its Western Northern and Eastern sides at the bottom of this Basin runs the irawadi the Great River of Burma and the banks of the irawadi and the low Hills and plains are the historic homeland of the Berman peoples the ethnic minorities they have historically dominated inhabit the high ridges and plateaus that border the Berman Homeland like an inverted letter u the Basin of the irawadi has been influenced by the great civilizations of India and China that lie immediately east and west of it but this influence has in both cases been buffered by the physical barriers of mountain and jungle that protected Burma against simple absorption into these giant civilizations in the west the arkan mountains separated Burma from Bengal and from the Great Plain of Hindustan west of that even 100 years ago there was no Easy Overland communication between Bengal and Burma and even today the roads are neither good nor numerous in 1905 a British colonial officer wrote Burma is shut off from India by a massive densely forested mountains running in Steep and high ridges intersected by deep and narrow valleys secure in almost impenetrable jungles through which no right-of-way from west to east exists or ever has existed Burma is part of Indochina and not part of India because of the buffering effect of this barrier of the arkan mountains Burma is part of Indochina and not part of China because of the buffering effect of a high table land that is cut by the Deep Gorges of rivers running down from Tibet for hundreds of years a Tribute Road ran East from Burma into China but this was not really a road until the Burma Road was built to supply China during the second World War even then Bridging the great Gorges of the salween and Mekong Rivers was a formidable challenge the dissected plateau that separates Burma from China splays out in separate ridges in the south as we saw in the second section of this lecture the westernmost Ridge not only divides the Burmese Basin from the lowland of Siam but it also continues South as the melee peninsula the heartland of Burma is in the Basin between these arkan Mountains and the dissected plateau and at its Center is the irawadi river an old geographer put it this way the chief River of the Burman Empire is the irawadi which rises in Tibet and falls into the sea by several mouths like the Nile or the Ganges inundating the plane it dispenses fertility in abundance while it affords a commodious Inland navigation quite through the country to the borders of China drawing an analogy that will make the significance of the irawadi more comprehensible to an American student a pair of more recent writers say what the Mississippi meant to the American West when Mark Twain was young the irawadi means to the new and loose-knit Union of Burma the wet nurse of its Fields the bearer of its trade the highway of its people when they describe the irawadi as a wet nurse to the fields of Burma they mean that the water and sediment of the irawadi feed the rice paddies of the lower Burmese basin traveling north from the coast in 1907 the American politician William Jennings Bryan remarked in going by land from Rangoon to Mandalay one sees nothing but rice I've indicated the road Jennings was traveling with a yellow arrow Mandalay and Rangoon are the two principal cities of modern Burma Mandalay is the heart of the Burmese Basin and the capital of the Berman Empire was located in or near Mandalay for nearly a thousand years like the city of Delhi and India the traditional capital of Burma occupied a central position that simplified control of the Burman Empire which included the Berman people near the river and the subjugated tribes in the surrounding Highlands just as the position of Mandalay rep resembles the position of Delhi so the position of Rangoon resembles that of Calcutta both cities are located in a great Delta Plain on one of the distributaries of a Great River as the quote says lower Burma is physically similar to lower Bengal also like Calcutta Rangoon was an insignificant place until it was captured by the British who transformed The Village into their capital and into the gateway to the colony of Burma the port of Rangoon quickly grew into the largest city in Burma it was through this port that Burmese rice and teak wood was exported to the world like any Port City Rangoon soon attracted a Motley and Cosmopolitan population of Indians Europeans and needless to say Chinese by the early 19th century a geographer could write of Rangoon here are to be found fugitives from all the countries of the East and of all complexions a hundred years later a visitor to Rangoon neatly captures the city's curious mix of the traditional Buddhist culture of Burma Chinese merchants and the Shady underworld of a major Seaport it seems to me that Rangoon consists chiefly of pawn shops and pagodas in the Chinese quarter the town gristles with pawn shops [Music] part 5 Thailand formerly known as cyan [Music] foreign was historically known as Siam and it is from the old name that we have the name of Siamese cats and Siamese twins it's setting resembles that of Burma although the country is far more level than the dividing Ridge to the east is much lower this is how the typical landscape of Thailand was described by a geographer who visited the country in the middle of the 19th century Siam is flat alluvial country entirely devoted to the culture of rice the natives appear to be a branch of the melee family the floors of their bamboo thatched Huts are raised some four feet above the ground their clothing a simple cloth round the waist and whatever they are engaged in one hand is generally actively employed in warring against the Swarms of mosquitoes Thailand bulges out in the East to touch the Mekong River and a narrow arm of the country runs down the melee peninsula but the heart of Thailand is in the floodplain and Delta of the chaofraya formerly known as the minam river as one old geographer put it Siam consists of an extensive veil pervaded by a large river and enclosed on either side by a ridge of lofty mountains its Chief geographical features greatly resemble Egypt when he says that Thailand resembles Egypt he does not mean the Egypt of the Sandy Sahara Desert but the lush green and watery Egypt of the Nile Delta with its productive fields and large population and then making a comparison to a region closer to Thailand this same author writes towards the mouth of the mine am the country consists of wild and intricate wildernesses resembling the sunderboons of the gangetic delta the sunderbones is the swampy and jungle covered Islands at the mouth of the Ganges Bangkok is the great port city at the mouth of the show Faria or mainam river although today a large and modern city with more than 9 million residents Bangkok will always be remembered as The Marvelous City on the water where the houses were built on stilts over the water and the people moved up and down the streets in boats the city of water delighted and amazed early visitors to Bangkok such as this one in the 1860s there are a few more novel and striking scenes than that which the city of water Bangkok presents the majority of the houses Repose on the bosom of the broad and beautiful minam the river and canals Supply the place of roads and streets at Bangkok or as another old traveler described it while in our land to walk or ride through a city would be the only way of seeing the sights in Bangkok one takes a boat and passing up and down the river in or out of the canals which spread in every direction sees the sights and takes his ease as in Rangoon and other great port cities of Southeast Asia Chinese Merchants dominated the Bangkok economy they are content to leave politics to the locals an old proverb of the Chinese in Bangkok is we don't mind who holds the head of the cow provided we can milk it more than 100 years ago a visitor to Bangkok observed as one half of the population of about a million is Chinese these industrious and enterprising people are seen everywhere [Music] part six the Mekong Delta [Music] the eastern half of the lowland of Siam is today occupied by Cambodia and the southern part of Vietnam this is the flood plain and Delta of the Mekong River the greatest of all the waterways of Southeast Asia and it is the regular floods of the Mekong that have made this one of the most productive agricultural districts of the world the fertility of the lower Mekong River has attracted migrants and colonizers for a very long time so the ethnic composition and political history of the region is very complex as was mentioned earlier the Mekong Delta was long known as Cochin China which means marshy China and the name reminds us that Chinese peasants have long sought to escape that crowded Land by moving to the Mekong Delta in the 19th century Cambodia and Cochin China were part of French Indochina a large Colony that collapsed during the second world war and fragmented into North Vietnam South Vietnam Laos and Cambodia Viking continued in French Indochina for the next 30 Years and the last half of that conflict is what Americans know as the Vietnam War American soldiers lost a great deal of blood in the Mekong Delta [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] history aside the Mekong Delta is very similar to the Delta of the Ganges in Bengal the Delta of the irawadi in Burma and the Delta of the ciaofraya in Thailand in its natural state it was a great swampy jungle but under human cultivation it became a vast landscape of rice paddies cross-cut by Rivers creeks and canals that's how it was described by this geographer traveling through Cochin China in the late 19th century the mouths of the Mekong which form a considerable Delta traversed by innumerable canals and branches 300 years earlier an Italian Seafarer visited Cochin China and wrote the first book on the region this is how he described the basic relation between humans and their environment in the Mekong Delta there come Waters in such abundance that they overflow all the country the benefit that cometh thereby is the fattening of the earth making it more fruitful and abundant in all things and especially rice the commonest nourishment of all the kingdom this same writer goes on to extol the wonderful fertility of the Mekong Delta one may easily judge of the fruitfulness of Cochin China by the prophet which the loot bringeth the land becometh so fat and so fruitful by this loot or overflowing that Thrice every year they gather their rice and that in such great quantity and abundance that there is none will labor for his living everyone having plenteously we're on to live there are two important cities adjacent to the Mekong Delta Saigon officially known nowadays as Ho Chi Minh city is just North of the Delta on a small river that gives it access to the Sea gnom Penh is located at the head of the delta in the territory of Cambodia this geographer writing towards the end of the 19th century gives a good description of the position and character of Saigon the depth of the river on which it is placed its vicinity to the Sea and its extensive Inland communication constitute it an important Emporium it is intersected by many canals full of boats like Chinese towns for many people live constantly on water the Chinese alone have respectable houses Saigon was like Calcutta Rangoon and Bangkok a port from which to export the produce of a tropical Delta and it was dominated by Chinese merchants an early 20th century traveler noted this resemblance between Saigon and other cities of Southeast Asia like most cities in Indochina Saigon is situated in the midst of a Labyrinth of streams which flow into the sea near the mouths of the Mekong the steamer threads its way through swamps covered with low-green shrubs and arrives at last at a rather commonplace French town [Music] part seven king or North Vietnam [Music] the fourth important Delta plain of Southeast Asia lies north of the Mekong Delta on the far side of the great Ridge of the Anam mountains this was historically known as Tonkin a name that is Remembered in the Gulf of Tonkin the great indainment that separates southeast Asia from the Bulge of China when the colony of French indo-china collapsed after the second world war Tonkin became North Vietnam today it is the northern portion of the unified country of Vietnam as you can see Tonkin merges with the coastal lowland of southern China and there is no great physical barrier between it and the large Chinese cities of the Pearl River delta to the north although it lies some distance south of the core of China no mountain wall has buffered the influence of that great civilization thus of all the regions of Southeast Asia Tonkin is the most Chinese a visitor in 1880 remarked on the physical and cultural resemblance of Tonkin to China the inhabitants are for the most part slight and Below middle height resembling the Chinese in their features though of Darker complexion although followers of Buddha the tonkinoa are not very bigoted in their religion when Norman says the Tonkin Noir are not very bigoted in their religion he means that although they follow Buddha Buddhism here is less important than it is in other Buddhist countries the relative religious indifference of the Chinese was often noted and often said to be an important difference between China and India so it is hardly surprising to find that the stamp of Buddhism is lighter here in tulden King at the Far Eastern end of Southeast Asia the Red River Runs Through the Heart of tongking like the Red River of Texas this River takes its name from the color of its water which is exceptionally muddy the sediment of the muddy Red River made the Delta plain of Tonkin the English ambassador to the King of Siam whom I have already quoted visited Tonkin in the early 19th century and described it this way it is an extensive campaign country principally watered by one Great River and its numerous branches the word campaign originally meant a level country that was open and clear of trees we get the word campus from this original meaning because open level country made a good Battlefield the word campaign was later used to name a military operation because candidates running for office in a democratic election must battle their Rivals we came at last to call their running for office a campaign but the word first had the geographical meaning of an open level country such as the floodplain and Delta of the Red River of Tonkin like other Delta planes of Southeast Asia the Delta plain of the Red River is ringed by Mountains and the lowlands are covered with irrigated rice paddies as the traveler with whom I began described it a hundred years ago the northern and western frontiers of the country are formed by lofty mountain ranges clothed with magnificent Forest of teak from these ranges spring innumerable Rivers which Traverse the central plains in every direction rendering the marvelously fertile in addition to these natural means of irrigation the tonkanoa have constructed a vast network of canals enabling them to flood the rice fields which cover these fertile Plains 200 years ago the English Explorer William dampier sailed up the Red River Into the Heart of Tonkin and he described the campaign country this way as we passed up the river sometimes rowing and sometimes sailing we had a delightful Prospect over a large level fruitful country it was generally either pasture or rice field and void of trees except only about the villages the city of Hanoi was the capital of Tonkin and the main European countries established trading houses in Hanoi in the 1600s they joined Chinese traders who had been there for hundreds of years Tonkin became part of the French colony of Indochina in the mid 19th century and was under French control for nearly a century the French simply took advantage of a phase of weakness and disintegration in the regular pulse of China and it is hardly surprising that they were ejected when Chinese power revived after 1945. and even when France had formal political control of Tonkin economic power remained in the hands of the Chinese a Frenchman visiting Tonkin in the middle of its time as a French Colony noted this when he wrote by the side of the Native populations we find that Chinese element here as elsewhere we shall see them holding the purse strings and continually filling their pockets at the cost of the inhabitants among whom they live while the latter are indolent and very lazy working only to live the Chinese live only to work that is to pile up wealth [Music] foreign