Victor Lieberman, "Strange Parallels," Volumes 1+2, (Cambridge University Press, 2003/2009)

Volume 1: 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 Asia's 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. Volume 2: Blending fine-grained case studies with overarching theory, this book seeks both to integrate Southeast Asia into world history and to rethink much of Eurasia’s premodern past. It argues that Southeast Asia, Europe, Japan, China, and South Asia all embodied idiosyncratic versions of a Eurasian-wide pattern whereby local isolates cohered to form ever larger, more stable, more complex political and cultural systems. With accelerating force, climatic, commercial, and military stimuli joined to produce patterns of linear-cum-cyclic construction that became remarkably synchronized even between regions that had no contact with one another. Yet this study also distinguishes between two zones of integration, one where indigenous groups remained in control and a second where agency gravitated to external conquest elites. Here, then, is a fundamentally original view of Eurasia during a 1,000-year period that speaks to both historians of individual regions and those interested in global trends. Victor B. Lieberman Early Southeast Asian Historiography Victor Lieberman, Eurasian History Mainland Southeast Asia Integration Southeast Asia and World History Patterns of Collapse in Southeast Asia Climatic and Military Influence on History Eurasian Political Systems Synchronization Endogenous and External Factors in Southeast Asia Comparative History of Europe and Asia Premodern Political Systems in Eurasia Regional Integration in Southeast Asia Indigenous Control vs. External Conquest Global Historical Trends in Eurasia Linear and Cyclic Historical Patterns