ABSTRACT

South-East Asia is a region of multiple and often complex ethnicities. The simplifying strategies of its European colonizers - their practices of 'racial' classification and boundary-drawing - only spawned new and often hybrid identities at every margin. One of colonialism's most visible legacies, however, in this region as in others, was the creation of 'majority' and 'minority' communities within new political collectives. Millions of SouthEast Asians found themselves (and find themselves still) in the status of 'minorities', with the multiple insecurities that designation generally implies. 'Majority' status, on the other hand, could be demographically fragile and unreflective of political or economic influence, especially as the colonizers often assigned minorities special and often privileged functions.