Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era Quotes

“The more balanced power equation between women and men Below the Winds encouraged serial monogamy and easy divorce for both parties… Hybridity was therefore the norm for these cities, up to the point when communication with the homeland became so well established that its prejudices were imported.…. Southeast Asian women were therefore the pioneers of cultural interaction with outsiders, a creative role appreciated by neither nationalist nor imperialist authors.”
― Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era: Trade, Power, and Belief

“The very prominent images of the Javanese aristocratic daughter Kartini learning ‘liberation’ from her Dutch correspondent... began a discourse of ‘female liberation’ as a modern western import... The reality of the high colonial period was however closer to the reverse. Up until the nineteenth century the great majority of Southeast Asian women had more latitude and agency than their European (or Chinese or Indian) counterparts, and played economic roles equivalent to (though different from) those of men.”
― Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era: Trade, Power, and Belief