Why do SE Asian countries have such weird borders?

Factual Questions
1

Malaysia is split between a peninsula and a large island. It shares the large island with Indonesia. Burma and Thailand also extend into that same peninsula, splitting it into two thin strips until they hit Malaysia.

Further north, it is hard to understand how the borders of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam got that way. Especially Vietnam, which is long, thin, and bulbous at both ends.

(I do understand vaguely how Singapore got booted out of Malaysia, which is politcally weird but not geographically weird.)

Your historical and political insights into the above will be most appreciated.

2

This is a relic of competeing colonialism, Britain vs. the Netherlands. Malaysia was a post-independence federation of former British colonies, including the states of the Malay penninsula, Sarawak, Sabah ( both on Borneo ), and Singapore ( which later opted out ). Historically there had been no “Malaysia” per se, but rather fragmented statelets - Johore, Malacca, etc.

These are the result of competeing Siamese ( Thai, it was the kingdom of Siam at the time ) and Burmese imperialism in the 18th-19th centuries. Burma conquered its the southern strip, Tenassirim, from a previously independent minor state and Siam similarily marched it’s borders south.

Siam also advanced east, conquering it’s eastern bulge, the Khorat Plateau, from Cambodia.

In modern history Laos was a Siamese dependency, in fact it was essentially an outlying province of Siam and linguistically the Thai and the Laotians are pretty similar ( the Shan of easten Burma are also closely reelated and at one time had their own state ). Earlier it was an independent state as Lan Sang ( not including the southern tail ). The provinces of Laos, distant from the Siamese center, eventually became semi-autonomous and then were weened out from under Siamese control by the French to become part of French Indochina.

Vietnam also has an imperial past and has marched southwards along the coastal plain and its mountain spine from its original homeland in the Red River Delta of the north, conquering first the Hindu state of Champa ( most of modern south Vietnam ) and then a chunk of Cambodia ( Cochin China - the Mekong Delta, which forms that southwesterly curve ).

Cambodia is a rump state, a long-declining remnant of a once much more substantial empire. Indeed at the opening of the 19th century it was gone completely, absorbed mostly into Siam. In 1809 Siam ( Thailand ) encompassed all of modern Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.

  • Tamerlane
3

I don’t know about the history, but the topography of the region (determined largely by the geology) consists mainly of long, north-south-trending ridges separated by long, narrow valleys, which will be reflected to some degree in boundaries that are defined by watersheds, as many in that area are – the watersheds, in turn, imperfectly corresponding to some lingustic-cultural regions.

4

Upon reading Tamerlane’s fascinating historical commentary, one may note that some of the movements he cites, such as the Vietnamese making their way south along the coast, were surely channeled partly by the topography. I’m not making any kind of geographic determinist case by any means – just pointing out one of the reasons why the combination of historical movements so well described by Tamerlane would have resulted in a cultural distribution of peoples with strong north-south orientations.

5

Impressive knowledge, you guys. How did Cambodia come back from its disappearance?

6

“Cambodia was ravaged by Vietnamese and Thai invasions and wars up until the 19th century, when new dynasties in these countries fought over control of Cambodia. The war, that began in the 1830’s almost destroyed Cambodia. King Norodom signed a treaty that enabled the French to be a protectorate, thus effectively stopping the Viet-Thai war within. For the next 90 years, France in essence ruled over Cambodia.”

If you ever get to Bangkok, visit the national museum. If you can stomach the “Thais are the original Superpeople of the region” slant of a lot of the exhibits, there are actually quite a few very cool maps and models of suspected and known movements of the Mon-Khmer peoples, in some cases even displaying competing theories. You can certainly see how topography played a factor.

7

I knew a guy in the US who was working on his doctorate in History, with a specialization in Southeast Asia, or some aspect of it at least. He once told me that Laos was a “country by default,” in that it was what was left over after everyone else had taken what they wanted.

8

I personally dislike the word “Laotian,” but then I’m used to saying “Lao.” “Laotian” is actaually an American invention from the early 1960s, when Kennedy was first announcing that we were sending some advisers there. Americans had generally never even HEARD of Laos before, and for reasons never explained, Kennedy or his speech writers must have felt that calling the people “Laotians” would go over better than would calling them the “Lao.” This according to Christopher Robbins in his book “The Ravens,” which details the secret air war in Laos. (Robbins also wrote “Air america,” a good book that was turned into that awful movie.)

9

Bangladesh has the same “southern creep” as Myanma (Burma) and Thailand – the Chittagong Hill Tracts were inhabited by Islamic peoples related to the Bengalis and threw their lot in with East Bengal when the British were expanding through the region. They remained with East Bengal through the British Raj, the partition where East Bengal became East Pakistan, and then as part of the independent Bangladesh.

The Tenasserim area of Burma is divided by steep hills, virtually impassible in the subtropical physical geography of the area, from the Thai lands east of it. Its land and sea connections are coastal with the larger area of Burma, not overland.

In what’s now Vietnam, the Annamese Empire, with capital at Hue, absorbed the southern area of Cochinchina (roughly from Cam Ranh south past Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City), and the former Chinese dependency of Tonkin, the compact inland area upstream from Hanoi. Annam itself was a coastal kingdom, a long narrow strip of land between mountains and sea. So it became an even longer narrow coastal state, again divided by mountains from the Thai dependency of Laos. It in turn was absorbed into French Indochina, then partitioned de facto when the French were thrown out/left. There’s still a circa-1954 vintage agreement hanging fire on a plebiscite on reunifying North and South, never acted on for Cold War reasons.

10

Interesting theory you have there. Too bad it’s not correct. The word comes into English, unsurprisingly, from the French word laotien. Here’s a cite for you.

11

If you want weird borders, take a look at Africa and North America. What on Earth would possess someone to make a border based on an arbitrary line that you cannot see? Natural borders follow topography (and change with it). They may look strange on the map, but they make all the sense of the world in the place itself.

The border between Venezuela and Colombia provides an interesting example of what happens when you try to impose arbitrary borders on a rugged region. Venezuela was first set with a square border on its SW corner. That corner, though, was cut off by an impassable river. It wasn’t long until that corner was lost to neighbouring Colombia who had full access to it. (sorry I can’t provide a cite as it is something I learned in grade school but it is not a particularly obscure fact. It shouldn’t be too hard to find for someone with an interest in geographical history).

The US got lucky that they tried it on a fairly flat terrain and the squiggly borders between some states show where that didn’t quite take because of geography.

12

Someone explain Chile while we are at it.

13

Thanks. Alas! Someone needs to tell Chris Robbins. Strange, but you’d think he would have known that.

14

Argentina saw the Andes and said “oh no I’m not climbing that thing!”

Seriously, I think the Andes has a large active volcano population. Add to that the Atacama Desert to the north and Cape Horn to the south, and I can see why the Argentinians didn’t have much interest in going any further west.

15

If you’re in Chile, you really can’t drive too far west before you run into some trouble. There are passes in various sections of the country, but they aren’t always easy to get through.

And the Atacama Desert in the north is the driest spot on earth.

One thing I did realize when I visited Chile is that it still stretches a long way. I was looking into flights from Santiago down to Tierra del Fuego and they weren’t short hops.

16

Like driving into the Pacific Ocean? :smiley:

17

Hitting the very first paragraph of the OP:

The north side of Borneo was among the possessions of the Sultan of Brunei, who used to be a fairly powerful potentate with a great deal of land in the Malay Archipelago. The southern shore was occupied by native tribes, and not of great interest to the various Malay kingdoms in Java, Bali, etc. Britain established a trading post at an offshore island named Labuan, by treaty with the Sultan. From this, they gradually asserted a protectorate over the Sabah area, in northeast Borneo. Meanwhile, Sir James Brooke, a british adventurer, obtained a grant of land in the western part of the north coast from the Sultan of Brunei, and established a quasi-independent kingdom, Sarawak, as the first of the White Rajahs, expanding his territory at the expense of Brunei until that state was reduced to the present small area. Sarawak was always closely linked to the U.K. and depended on the Royal Navy for protection. Viner Brooke, the 3rd rajah, was caught in Australia when the Japanese attack seized Sarawak, and after the war ceded Sarawak to the U.K. in exchange for a pension. Meanwhile Britain had extended its influence over the south end of the Malay Peninsula, establishing protectorates over each of the minor sultanates there, as well as over the reduced Brunei.

The nine protectorates became independent as Malaya in 1958, with a Paramount Sultan elected by the nine sultans from among their number. When Sarawak and Sabah were ready for independence four years later, it was decided to merge them, along with Singapore, into a new Federation of Malaysia. Singapore, as already noted, seceded from that union two years after that.

As the Dutch extended their authority over the islands of the Malay Archipelago, they took the hitherto-neglected southern part of Borneo, Kalimantan, and incorporated it into the Dutch East Indies, which gained independence as Indonesia in 1949.

Along with Borneo, there is another Indonesian island divided between two countries: Timor, half of which is Indonesian and half was formerly Portuguese Timor, and is now the independent nation of Timor Timur. (The odd name results from timo/ur being the term in various Malay dialects for “east” – the island of Timor got its name from being at the east end of the archipelago, and the new nation was the eastern half of Timor, or Timor Timur.)

(Plus of course New Guinea, now half Indonesian and half the main part of the republic of Papua New Guinea.)

18

Sir James Brooke was quite a character. I’ve read that he was actually the model for a lot of the Ripping Yarn-type tales read avidly and much beloved by 19th-century British and even American boys. Rumor has it that the Brooke line descended through his nephew because he had his gonads shot off while serving in the army in India. Some contemporary writings seem to confirm this, others hint otherwise; still debated.

19

No problem. Language is my bag (Linguistics major). Oddly enough, one of the things I find very interesting in that field is folk etymology.

20

Take a flight from Chile to Argentina and come to your own conclusion while you are changing underwear. Those mountains are huge!