Strange Parallels: Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–1830 (Studies in Comparative World History)

Strange Parallels: Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–1830 (Studies in Comparative World History) by Lieberman, Victor. paperback edition. ISBN: 0000521804965.

In an ambitious effort to overcome the extreme fragmentation of early Southeast Asian historiography, this study connects Southeast Asia to world history. Victor Lieberman argues that over a thousand years, each of mainland Southeast Asias great lowland corridors experienced a pattern of accelerating integration punctuated by recurrent collapse. These trajectories were synchronized not only between corridors, but most curiously, between the mainland as a whole, much of Europe, and other sectors of Eurasia. Lieberman describes in detail the nature of mainland consolidation and dissects the mix of endogenous and external factors responsible.