Although the inhabitants of the region now known as Southeast Asia have interacted for many centuries, Southeast Asia as a single entity and as a world region materialized politically only during the Second World War in the Pacific theatre. It was reinforced as the newly formed nation-states gained independence from their colonial masters after the war. While the post-colonial borders of Southeast Asian states echo those drawn by their previous colonizers, the new realities of these post-colonial nations generated new relations both within the region and between the region and the rest of the world. Craig Lockard traces the complexities of these dynamics in his Southeast Asia in World History.

The vast and diverse region of Southeast Asia began to emerge as an entity not long after the end of the Second World War, but, compared with other regions of Asia, it has remained less familiar to outsiders in...

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