SOUTHEAST ASIAN PEOPLE

inhabitants of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia comprises those continental margins and offshore archipelagoes of Asia lying south of China and east of India. Continental Southeast Asia includes Myanmar (formerly Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia (formerly Kampuchea), and Vietnam. Archipelagic Southeast Asia consists of Singapore, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, and the two sprawling archipelago states of Indonesia and the Philippines. It also includes Malaysia, which comprises two other parts: western Malaysia (the Malay Peninsula) and eastern Malaysia (a portion of northern Borneo). In addition, there is the sultanate of Brunei on the northern coast of Borneo. Southeast Asia extends more than 2,000 miles from north to south and 3,500 miles from east to west. Southeast Asia has a stable, homogeneous tropical climate near the Equator and a wet-dry monsoonal climate away from it. Its large, shallow archipelagic seas and extensive fringing bays help stabilize the region's average monthly temperatures at around 81 F (27 C). Four vast, southward-flowing river systems shape continental Southeast Asia's physical geography and major settlement patterns. They are the Irrawaddy and Salween (Myanmar), Chao Phraya (Thailand), and Mekong (marking the Thailand-Laos frontier and traversing both Cambodia and Vietnam). The shorter, eastward-flowing Red River (Song Hong) reaches the Gulf of Tonkin farther north, near the Chinese border. All except the Salween flow through broad alluvial plains and fertile deltas, where intensive rice agriculture sustains dense population centres and large cities. No comparably large river systems exist in the islands. Closest in length are the huge meandering rivers of Borneo, the world's third largest island. The other major Indonesian and Philippine islands are, unlike the mainland, volcanic. Their topsoils support an intensive rice agriculture. Additional reading Coverage of both insular and mainland peoples and cultures can be found in Richard Ulack and Gyula Pauer, Atlas of Southeast Asia (1989); Guy Hunter, South-east AsiaRace, Culture, and Nation (1966); Frank M. LeBar (ed.), Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia (1964), and Ethnic Groups of Insular Southeast Asia, 2 vol. (197275); Robbins Burling, Hill Farms and Padi Fields: Life in Mainland Southeast Asia (1965); Ben J. Wallace, Village Life in Insular Southeast Asia (1971); and Ronald Provencher, Mainland Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective (1975). Studies of Thailand include Frank J. Moore and Clark D. Neher, ThailandIts People, Its Society, Its Culture (1974); Jack M. Potter, Thai Peasant Social Structure (1976); Thailand in the 80s, rev. ed. (1984), published by that country's National Identity Office; and Paul Lewis and Elaine Lewis, Peoples of the Golden Triangle: Six Tribes in Thailand (1984). The Montagnards of the Vietnamese central highlands are the subject of Gerald Cannon Hickey, Sons of the Mountains (1982), covering prehistory to 1954, and Free in the Forest (1982), on the period 195476. Malaysian ethnicity is described in Iskandar Carey, Orang Asli: The Aboriginal Tribes of Peninsular Malaysia (1976); and Judith Nagata, Malaysian Mosaic: Perspectives from a Polyethnic Society (1979). Ruth T. McVey (ed.), Indonesia (1963), is a comprehensive survey. Other works on Indonesia include Jane Belo (comp.), Traditional Balinese Culture (1970); Claire Holt (ed.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia (1972); Victor T. King (ed.), Essays on Borneo Societies (1978), focusing on the Dayak peoples; and James J. Fox (ed.), The Flow of Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia (1980). Two studies on the Philippines are Leonard Davis, The Philippines: People, Poverty, and Politics (1987); and Peter G. Gowing and Robert D. McAmis (eds.), The Muslim Filipinos (1974). Peter R. Goethals The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica