Communication in Southeast Asia and its Influence

With the advent of Muslim traders in the thirteenth century and Europeans in the sixteenth, Southeast Asia encountered a new set of cultures and languages as Islam and Christianity exerted their influence. Europeans came seeking Asia's fabled wealth, particularly spices essential for preserving meat, but later trade gave way to conquest and settlement. By 1900 Europeans had divided the region among themselves, introducing a new set of languages: Spanish in the Philippines, French in Indochina (present-day Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam), English in Burma, and Dutch in the Dutch East Indies. Spanish control of the Philippines effectively ended the eastward spread of Muslim influence. Many English loanwords from Southeast Asian languages (e.g., godown, gong) date from this period.

Anthony Reid suggests that despite ideas of male superiority entrenched among courts and urban elites due to the male-dominated written traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam, women played a surprisingly influential role in society during the period of early European exploration. Because they were heavily involved in trade, including long-distance and wholesale marketing, women often knew multiple languages. European visitors left numerous accounts of female merchants who translated for them and acted as diplomats and negotiators for indigenous governments.

European traders also reported a high level of literacy among women as well as men in several locations. Reid suggests that literacy in Southeast Asia may actually have declined between the sixteenth century and the early twentieth century as Islamic and Christian education systems displaced a different, older Hindu temple of Angkor Wat, erected in the twelfth century in Cambodia. Much of the communication in Hindu and Buddhist cultures involved the sharing of religious or historical knowledge. The facade of the temple at Angkor Wat depicts scenes from Hindu epics and events in the life of King Suryavarman II. © DAVID BALL/CORBIS type of literacy. In the Lampung districts of southern Sumatra, the Philippines, southern Sulawesi, and the island of Sumbawa, the old Indonesian ka-ga-nga alphabet was written on bamboo or palm leaf, and women actively perpetuated the writing tradition by teaching it to household members. Literacy in these areas apparently existed for the sole purpose of courtship, that is, the composition of love poetry. Visitors also noted high literacy in Java and Bali. When Muslims began to dominate a region, the traditions were quickly stamped out, and women's literacy was discouraged. In contrast to these early reports, recent accounts of Southeast Asian Buddhist societies describe a disadvantaged position for women with regard to literacy. Because Buddhist texts were written in the Pali language and only males became monks and received their education in temples, women's education during the last century lagged behind that of men. In Laos, for example, which received little in the way of development resources from its French occupiers, few women became literate in Lao until the late-twentieth-century generation.