History attests to the amount of European influence in Southeast Asia, also known as the
age of colonialism, beginning in the early 1500s. The Europeans at the time, referred to this territory as the
East Indies and its inhabitants simply as
natives. Countries such as Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Britain and France made every effort to find new trade routes to China and saw the southeast as their ticket. Included is a map and propaganda from the early days of trading, some hundreds of years ago.
While the Portuguese were often the first to colonize, they were gradually eclipsed by other European nations as they duked-it-out to gain new markets in distant lands. I have witnessed European influence in most southeastern countries, such as
Dutch influence when visiting Indonesia
(view this post), the
Spanish in the Philippines and Taiwan,
British influence in Malaysia
(view this post), Singapore and Burma (which remains at the heart of current day issues in that country), along with the
French rule in areas of Vietnam
(view this post), Cambodia and now Laos.
As for Thailand, visitors can detect indications of European influence like the
Dutch East India Co warehouses along the
Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, a trading route, but these indications are far and few between. It is important to note that "Thailand survived as the only Southeast Asian state to avoid European colonial rule because the French and the British decided it would be a neutral territory to avoid conflicts between their colonies." The Dutch storehouses in Bangkok are now part of a shopping complex accessible to residents and visitors by river taxi
(view this post).
Between the years of 1870s and World War I, the Japanese, Germans, Russians and Americans also gained influence as new imperial powers in the region. The age of colonialism, however, gradually died during the period of the World Wars because the imperialist powers could not fight the wars and maintain direct rule in Asia at the same time. Colonialism formally ended with the independence of the Portuguese Empire's last colony of East Timor in the year 2002.
