he eleven countries grouped under the heading of South-Eastern Asia in United Nations data and
documents is a modern construction. In many ways it is more a statistical convenience than political,
economic or social reality. Academic reference to the region most often refers to Southeast Asia, and the
political unit formed in 1967 covering the most of the countries is called ASEAN – the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations. Timor Leste is the only nation that is not yet a full member, but it does have
observer status.
“Before the Second World War, all but one of the eleven countries that today make up Southeast Asia
were ruled by colonial powers” (Osborne, 2002: p.6). Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia (and Singapore), and
Brunei were under British rule. Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam were grouped as Indochina and under
French control. The Philippines was ruled from Spain for centuries, only to be taken over by the United
States, before finally gaining independence in 1945. The whole of Indonesia was administered by Holland
as the Netherlands East Indies, covering hundreds of distinct ethnic groups settled across thousands of
islands. Sharing one of those islands was Portuguese-controlled East Timor, which was only to gain
independence at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Only Thailand was relatively free and autonomous
throughout the twentieth century.
As a region the eleven nations are notable for disparities in religion, gender roles, education, and
governance -- all key social determinants of fertility and demographic structure. Colonialism served to
create and consolidate nations. In the process, the new nations institutionalized differences reflecting their
dominant religions, ideologies, and world views. Each nation is notable for notions of majoritarianism
used to define their state or culture. Indonesia claims to be the largest national population of Muslims,
Thailand’s monarchy is linked to Buddhism, Viet Nam and Lao PDR are Communist uni-party states,
while Catholicism guides much of the political debate of the Philippines and Timor Leste. The nations in
each case acknowledge national minorities, but in doing so only reinforce the control of the majority.
Indonesia’s motto of “Unity in Diversity” is on the surface an expression of tolerance for a multi-cultural
society, and it could be extended to refer to the whole region of South-Eastern Asia. It is the sort of value
underlying the spirit of ASEAN, so often referred to by regional leaders. This is essentially a region with a
rich history of coastal trading links that tie together societies and pre-colonial cultural traditions that set
them off from the Sinic and Indic cultural groups to the north and west, but also create great differences
among themselves. Prior to the coming of the patriarchal legal structures and traditions Christianity, Islam,
and colonial rulers, nuclear family forms and strong status and roles of women were central to social
structure. They were also at core of what differentiated South-Eastern Asia from the countries of South
Asia and East Asia.
Between 1950 and 2000 the demographic profile of South-Eastern Asia was shaped by social forces
arising out of these differences in social and cultural institutions, and out of the extreme contrasts of fate
as political conflicts rocked the region. Waves of armed conflict struck the different nations, often with
catastrophic results as in Cambodia, Viet Nam, and Timor Leste, though sometimes with persistent local
disruption like the rebellions in Mindanao, Aceh, Southern Thailand, and Myanmar. Inevitably such
conflicts served to interrupt government programs to promote social welfare, at least in local enclaves but
sometimes throughout the nation. As Table 1 shows, the populations of each of the countries rose
precipitously between 1950 and today. Indonesia was, and still is, the regional giant, with almost forty per
cent of the population, while the Philippines, Viet Nam and Thailand each have over ten per cent, with
Myanmar coming up quickly with its 50 million people representing 9 per cent of the total. The population
projections to the year 2050 imply that the region as a whole could add another 200 million in the coming
four decades, with much of that growth going to the island nations of the Philippines and Indonesia. The
engines to that growth are the different fertility rates found across the region.