Ethnic Conflict in Southeast Asia: What Beginnings?

Despite the insistence of some academics, usually ones with limited historical background, that ethnic conflicts are only a result of white, Western influences in all pockets of the world, there appear to be in all places and at all times ethnic conflicts of varying intensity, with the West in the rearguard of such conflicts and not in the vanguard. The case seems especially apparent in Southeast Asia, where the modern world took form under a series of peasant uprisings -- usually, yes, directed against their colonial overlords, Westerners -- which despite being of "many different kinds" were "all…agrarian" and "took place in rural areas among persons engaged in agricultural occupations of a traditional kind."

These uprisings, which were closer to general discontent regarding misplaced and paternalistic welfare policies than to violent revolt, were the result of the visible economic inequities that were apparent...
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