Chau tho Me Kong va the gioi thuy bien the ky XVIII [The Mekong River Delta and the world of water frontier]

The colonial notion of rigid, impermeable and unchanging boundaries and unchangeable peoples in premodern Southeast Asia, enunciated here by Virginia Thompson but accepted by so many others at the time, has been challenged by scholars in the last few decades. Newly uncovered data further expose the wide gap between colonial perceptions and Southeast Asian historical experiences. Here I discuss the issues with respect to precolonial Southeast Asian trade. Together with the works of earlier revisionist scholars, new data challenge the nationalist historiographies that read back in time from the clear cut boundaries of contemporary Southeast Asia. Unavoidably, questions are raised, such as what was internal and external, within and without, local and especially national in eighteenth century Southeast Asia. With an eye to such questions, this chapter looks at the internal mechanism that made the region effectively one economic unit, and explores the connections between the broader Mekong Delta region and its neighbors