Mandala (political model)

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Important Southeast Asian mandalas, some of which have existed one after the other since the 5th century
Bunga mas , "golden flower", a symbol of the recognition of Siamese supremacy by the northern Malay sultanates

Mandala ( Sanskrit मण्डल maṇḍala , German 'circle' ) is a historical name for the political model that prevailed in Southeast Asia until the 19th century. In this pre-state world there were no sovereign territorial states , but a large number of local or regional rulers, which were called Müang in the Tai languages and Kedatuan in Malay . Their rulers could be in different degrees of dependence on more powerful, superior rulers, to whom they were tributary . Their influence gradually decreased from the center to the edge of their sphere of influence. The control of a certain territory was considered unimportant, the main focus was on the network of relationships between people. Border lines were not defined; an area could belong to several overlapping areas of influence at the same time. Orientation to its center was more important than delimiting a mandala from the outside.

The mandala model is applicable to the island as well as the plains and valleys of continental Southeast Asia . The island kingdom of Srivijaya (7th to 13th centuries), Champa in today's South Vietnam (heyday in the 9th and 10th centuries), the Khmer empire of Angkor (9th to 15th centuries), the Burma of the Bagan era (11th century) . to 13th century) and the Taungu dynasty (16th to 18th centuries), Majapahit (13th to 15th centuries), the kingdoms of Sukhothai (13th and 14th centuries) and Ayutthaya in present-day Thailand (14th to 18th century) were therefore not uniform "empires", but zones of influence of the respective tribute lord. They could expand in strong phases, when smaller centers sought protection, and in times of weakness, when the subordinate rulers strived for independence, contract or collapse completely. If one of the subordinate centers saw the influence of its overlord waning, it could declare itself independently, and if the influence of another power increased, subordinate itself to it. Earlier tribute relationships could also be reversed when a former vassal gained significantly in power and his former patron clearly lost influence.

Chinese and European contemporaries, who had a different understanding of the state, misunderstood these network-like structures, which were dependent on a powerful ruler , as unified territorial states. European cartography, which only knew uniform areas with fixed borders, reinforced this misconception.

In this sense, the wars in Southeast Asia of the pre-colonial period should not be understood as battles between nations, as was done in later, nationalist historiography, but were conflicts over supremacy within the framework of the mandala system. Rulers belonging to the same ethnic group could fight against each other and ally with rulers of another ethnic group against the common enemy. Designations such as “Siamese-Burmese War” are therefore actually misleading. Equally problematic is equating historical mandalas with today's nation states, as is common in the nationalistic historiography of Laos (with reference to the mandala Lan Xang ).

The mandala system was overcome by the colonization of Southeast Asia by European powers, although these also partially left the traditional rulers with graduated degrees of autonomy. In Thailand it was ended at the end of the 19th century with the introduction of the thesaphiban system by King Chulalongkorn and Prince Damrong Rajanubhab , who converted what was then Siam from a mandala into a unitary state.

The mandala model was first formulated in 1982 by the British historian OW Wolters , who specializes in the history of Southeast Asia . The German Indologist Hermann Kulke and the Thai historian Sunait Chutintaranond developed it significantly further. The Sri Lankan social anthropologist Stanley J. Tambiah has represented a very similar model since 1977 under the name " galactic polity" .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Derichs: Fundamentals of the history of Southeast Asia . Federal Agency for Civic Education , September 22, 2014; accessed on March 27, 2019
  2. ^ Grabowsky: Population and State in Lan Na. 2004, pp. 11-12.
  3. ^ Wolters: Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. 1999, pp. 27-28.
  4. ↑ Craig J. Reynolds: Seditious Histories. Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts. University of Washington Press, Seattle 2006, p. 39.
  5. ↑ Martin Stuart-Fox: Historiography, Power and Identity. History and Political Legitimization in Laos. In: Contesting Visions of the Lao Past. Lao Historiography at the Crossroads. NIAS Press, Copenhagen 2003, p. 82.
  6. ^ Grabowsky: Population and State in Lan Na. 2004, p. 14.
  7. ^ Grabowsky: Population and State in Lan Na. 2004, pp. 11-14.
  8. ^ Reynolds: Seditious Histories. 2006, p. 41.
  9. ^ Robert L. Brown: The Dvāravatī Wheels of the Law and the Indianization of South East Asia. Brill, Leiden 1996, p. 7.
  10. ^ Geoffrey C. Gunn: History Without Borders. The Making of an Asian World Region, 1000–1800. Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong 2011, p. 36.