*Civilisation has existed in the Indian Subcontinent since at least 6500 BC, when the oldest known evidence of wheat cultivation has been dated.  Pottery from at least 5500 BC has been discovered, and by 2600 BC, a major regional culture with cities of thousands of people existed in the Indus River Valley.  This culture is sometimes called the Harappan Civilisation, because the first city excavated was near the modern city of Harappa, in Pakistan.

*Little is known of the Harappan culture or language because their civilisation began to decline about 1,800 BC, and was replaced (perhaps forcibly) by an Indo-European people who called themselves Aryans.

*As the Aryans settled in the Indus Valley, they brought with them the Vedas, a series of sacred writings (in Sanskrit) that became part of the Hindu religion (which mixes Indo-European beliefs with some existing gods and traditions of the Harappans and Dravidians).

*Among other things, the Vedas organised society into four castes, the Brahmin (priests and teachers), the Kshatriya (kings, princes, and warriors), the Vaishya (merchants, landowners, and some craftsmen), and the Shudra (farmers and manual labourers).  There were also the Dalit, or outcastes, who performed unclean jobs that made everyone else shun them.  The caste system exists to some degree in India today, although it has declined somewhat.

*The most difficult aspect of the caste system was the fact that everyone was born into their caste, and could not (typically) change it (except, possibly, to go down).  This is because Hinduism teaches that people are reincarnated—born anew as they strive towards perfection.  Perfection does not come all at once—in fact, the three highest castes were called the ‘twice-born’ because to get to one of them, a person must have been a person at least once already (one could also be born as an animal). 

*While living, a good Hindu strives to follow the dharma, or moral law and duty (which is slightly different for each caste, each of whom has different tasks to fulfil), in order to improve one’s karma, which is improved by good deeds (in accordance with dharma) and worsened by bad deeds.  Eventually, good karma allows one to be reborn in higher and higher forms, until eventually one is reunited with the divine spirit.

*Many Hindus practise vegetarianism, although this is not strictly required.  Even those who are not completely vegetarian will not eat beef, and Hindus will not even use leather.  This is because cattle in ancient India were more useful for their milk and as pack and plough animals than they were as sources of meat.  Although cows are not actually worshipped, they hold an honoured place in Hindu society.

*Because there is ultimately one divine essence (Brahman), Hinduism can be seen as monotheistic.  However, the divine essence is also manifested in many gods and spirits (including, as fast as some Hindus are concerned, the gods of other religions, too), which are worshipped differently and which have different personalities, so it can also be seen as a polytheistic religion.

*Around 537 BC, an Indian man of the Brahmin caste named Siddhartha Gautama began to preach that the cause of misery was desire.  He was viewed as an enlightened teacher, or Buddha (‘Enlightened One’), and he taught the Four Noble Truths: 
1.There is suffering. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life also experienced as dissatisfaction, discontent, unhappiness, impermanence.
2.*There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment and desire.
3.There is a way out of suffering, which is to eliminate attachment and desire.
4.The path that leads out of suffering is called the Noble Eightfold Path (a series of right actions).

*Buddhism became popular in India, where it mixed freely with Hinduism (more or less), as both sought enlightenment and a reunion—and self-abnegation—with a peaceful divine essence (called Nirvana by the Buddha).  Buddhism also spread to China, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, where it ended up being far more permanent and lasting than it had been in India.

*Until the 1500s, India existed mostly as a series of minor kingdoms.  However, in 1526 a group of Mongol invaders came into India and set up what came to called the Muhgal Empire.  This was a Moslem empire, the first major one on the Subcontinent (although there had been some earlier invasions by Islamic peoples, some of which had established minor sultanates, and briefly even extended beyond India, carrying Islam to Indonesia).  The Mughals would rule until 1857.

*In 1498, Vasco de Gama charted a sea route from Portugal to India.  In 1510, Portugal claimed the territory of Goa, and controlled it (and other small ports) until 1961.  In 1673 the French began trading in Pondicherry, and eventually took it over.  The Portuguese also claimed Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), but it was taken from them by the Dutch, and then by the British.  Even the Danes and the Austrians briefly had small enclaves.

*Britain was represented in South Asia only indirectly, through the Honourable East India Company.  Created by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600 to trade with the Far East, it began negotiations with the Mughal Emperor in 1615.  These were very successful, and the Company began to set up trading posts in major Indian cities.  By 1689, the Company was as powerful as any other nation on the Subcontinent, administering vast areas for its own benefit.

*During the Seven Years’ War, Company troops (both Englishmen and Indian Sepoys) fought French soldiers in India (while American militiamen and British regulars fought them in North America).  In 1757 the Company won a major victory in Bengal, and spent the next hundred years consolidating its power in the Subcontinent (although increasingly in competition with the Mughals).

*The Company operated to make a profit, and was often uninterested in the welfare or the culture of the people it ruled.  The Company’s insensitivity eventually caused serious problems that led to the downfall of the Company.

*Among other things, it was thought that the Company supported the activities of Christian missionaries in India (although there had always been a small Indian Christian community there).  In fact, the Company discouraged this, but many individual members of the Company did it anyway.

*The Company also tried to westernise India by outlawing (among other things) child marriage, Sati, female infanticide, and the Thuggee (a religious cult that practised highway robbery and murder).  The Company also tried to build a railway, which was thought to be a demon.

*Finally, the Company fielded one of the largest armies in the world (257,000 troops in 1857, more than the British Army).  However, when the Company tried to send them to Burma, they objected because they felt they would lose their caste if they left India.  The Company also used (or was thought to use) paper musket cartridges that had been greased with pig or beef fat, offensive to many Hindus and Moslems since the cartridges were usually torn with the teeth. 

*Finally the Indians (or at least some, mostly in the north) had had enough, especially the Company troops, and in 1857-58 they rebelled in what has been called the Sepoy Mutiny.  In the end, the Mutiny was put down, but the Company was dissolved, and India was put under direct British control, often called the Raj, from the Hindi word rajah, or king.  This was the end of the Mughal Empire, and within 20 years, Queen Victoria had been recognised by many of the lesser princes of India as their Empress.

*Unlike the Company, which had tried to modernise India, the British viceroys found it was easier to work with the existing system.  Although Sati and other particularly offensive practises were still outlawed, the caste system was recognised, and in many places the British still ruled through existing local princes—which in some cases remained independent from India forever, as in the cases of Nepal and Bhutan.

*India (which included Bangladesh and Pakistan) was the crown jewel of the British Empire, and although the Indian people were typically accorded second-class citizen status, they were still subjects of the Empire (and so better off than most people in colonial Africa), and Britain developed India tremendously, building roads, schools, hospitals, and more.  India already had a wide range of social classes, and the British worked with them, befriending the upper and middle classes, and using them to keep the lower classes in line.

Southeast Asia and the Indies

*Southeast Asia has been inhabited for thousands of years, with the first evidence of both rice cultivation and bronze working appearing about 3600 BC in what is now Thailand, making it one of the first places in the world to use bronze (over 1000 years before the Chinese did it, although at about the same time as it was used in Mesopotamia).

*This was a fertile area, capable of producing vast food surpluses, with which village chiefs would sometimes provide feasts for entire villages.  Cattle, chickens, dogs, and pigs were probably first domesticated in Southeast Asia.

*One of the greatest empires of Southeast Asia were the Khmer, based around the Mekong Delta.   They eventually conquered most of the Indochina Peninsula and the northern part of the Malay Peninsula and, despite occasional civil wars and some periods of weakness, the Khmer empire lasted until 1431 (and in places its traditions lasted longer).

*The Kmher used complex systems of canals and other irrigation systems to produce 3-4 crops of rice per year.  The Khmer are most famous for their architecture, particularly Angkor Wat, one of many temples in the capital city and temple complex of Angkor, located in modern Cambodia. 

*The entire temple complex around Angkor Wat makes it the largest religious structure in the world, covering almost one square mile (more than the Vatican City).  Construction began sometime between 1113 and 1150 AD, and it remained in use even beyond the fall of the Khmer empire.  It was initially a Hindu temple, but eventually it was used by both Hindu and Buddhist monks, and after the fall of the Khmer Empire it became a purely Buddhist temple, and was used and maintained as a religious site almost continuously afterwards.  Angkor Wat is a national symbol of Cambodia, and appears on the national flag.

*While the Khmer were ruling most of the mainland, a thalassocracy developed in the East Indies.  Based on the island of Sumatra, the Srivijaya Empire controlled the seas and islands of Southeast Asia from about 600 AD to 1414 AD.  Between 1068 and about 1088 the Srivijaya and India’s Chola Empire fought, which weakened both of them, but did not destroy them.  About the same time, Islam began to spread through the traditionally Buddhist empire, changing the culture.  In 1414 the last prince of Srivajaya converted to Islam, but by then most of what is now Malaysia and Indonesia had already reverted back to separate kingdoms and sultanates, more and more of which were Moslem, although some pockets of Hinduism and Buddhism remained.

*Most of the rest of Southeast Asia existed as a series of minor kingdoms, most of which did not last.  Many of them were conquered or dominated by China, and later by Europeans.  The one major exception to this was the Kingdom of Siam.

*Between 1350 and 1767 the Thai people were ruled by the Ayutthaya Empire, a Buddhist kingdom that managed a patchwork of small territories that owed allegiance to the king.  It was an advanced kingdom, with commercial ties to much of the rest of the region and eventually even to Europe—King Narai and King Louis XIV exchanged ambassadors in the mid-1600s.

*In 1767 armies from Myanmar (Burma) invaded Siam and destroyed the Ayutthaya Kingdom, but two Thai generals (with the help of China) fought back and defeated them.  One general, Thaksin, became King of Siam in 1767, and upon his death in 1782, his friend Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke became king.  His rule was known as the First Reign, or Rama I, and that title has been given to all subsequent Thai kings (all of whom are his descendents), including the current Rama IX, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has been king since 1946 (making him the longest-serving monarch currently on his throne).

*Rama IV (Mongkut; 1851-1868) and Rama V (Chulalngkorn; 1868-1910) both made serious efforts to modernise their country and to maintain good relations with Europe.  They were successful, unlike all other Southeast Asian rulers, whose countries were eventually colonised by Europeans.

*In 1939, Siam changed its name to Thailand, and (except between 1945 and 1949) has kept it that way.  Thailand means ‘land of the free,’ but it also means ‘land of the Thai people,’ which some citizens of non-Thai ethnicity find obnoxious. 

*Thailand was unique in its independence, though.  In the 1500s, the Portuguese set up colonies in the East Indies, including what is now East Timor, making it one of only two Catholic countries in the region, the other being the Philippines, conquered by Spain in 1565.  It would remain a Spanish colony until 1898 when it was taken the USA during the Spanish-American War. 

*The Philippines were a hard country to rule, though:  the Japanese attempted to claim it at various point and demanded tribute, the British took some of the islands during the Seven Years War (but gave them back in the Peace of Paris), and in the late 1800s, a number of uprisings began.  Philippine independence movements would continue under US rule and the Japanese occupation (1941-45).  In 1947 the US would give the Philippines their independence, which has been followed by a mixture of democratic and dictatorial governments.

*The Dutch came to Indonesia starting in 1602, and, through the Dutch East India Company captured the city of Jakarta, burnt it to the ground, and rebuilt it as Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies.  Eventually the Dutch East India Company went bankrupt, and the Dutch government took over in 1816.  This was one of the wealthiest parts of the Dutch trading empire.

*The British came to Southeast Asia in the 1600s as well, and for a time they fought with the Dutch for control of the East Indies (eventually trading a few islands there for the island of Manhattan when the Duke of York seized it in 1664; this gave the Dutch a worldwide monopoly on nutmeg).

*Starting in 1786, the British East India Company began to acquire land and concessions in the Malay Peninsula (previously dominated by the Portuguese, and then the Dutch).  In 1819 Sir Stamford Raffles acquired Singapore and made it a British colony.

*In 1824 the British and the Dutch signed a treaty describing their possessions in what are now Malaysia and Indonesia, and the boundaries have not changed significantly since then, even through there are Malay people in both Malaysia and parts of Indonesia, and some would like to have a truly united nation-state.

*Between 1824 and 1886 the British took possession of Burma, which became very important as a source of food after the Suez Canal made travel to the region faster and easier. 

*Brunei was an independent sultanate since at least 1405, but between 1888 and 1986 it was a British protectorate, with the Sultan having local control but Britain managing the country’s foreign affairs.

*The French also began to expand in Southeast Asia in the 1800s, although they had sent merchants and missionaries there since the 1600s.  In 1858 French troops landed in what is now Vietnam, and by 1885 they had conquered the whole country, although they retained the imperial family as figureheads.  In 1863, the King of Cambodia agreed to let his country be a French protectorate.  In 1887 the entire region was named French Indochina, and what is now Laos was added to it in 1893 after being taken from Thailand (who had taken it from its last native kings not long before).  Its kings also remained as figureheads.