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Identity and regional integration: case studies on central Asia and southeast Asia

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Identity and regional integration: case studies on central Asia and southeast Asia

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IDENTITY CONSOLIDATION AND REGIONAL INTEGRATION:
CASE STUDIES ON CENTRAL ASIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

by

Dat X. Nguyen

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS)

May 2023

Copyright 2023 Dat Xuan Nguyen

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... iv
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ v
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... vi
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER ONE: THEORY ......................................................................................................... 10
1. Regional integration and its roots ...................................................................................... 12
2. The Puzzle of Central Asia ................................................................................................ 27
3. Diverse Integration in Southeast Asia................................................................................ 33
4. Towards a new theory on regional integration .................................................................. 36
CHAPTER TWO: A BRIEF LOOK AT EUROPE ...................................................................... 48
1. Europe and the rise of modern nationalism ....................................................................... 49
2. The formation and growth of the European Union ............................................................ 51
3. Identity, sovereignty, and the European Union ................................................................. 53
CHAPTER THREE: IDENTITY CONSOLIDATION IN MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA ... 58
1. Singapore ........................................................................................................................... 64
a. Precolonial Singapore .................................................................................................... 65
b. Singapore as a British colony ......................................................................................... 67
c. Towards independence and beyond ............................................................................... 68
d. Singapore and ASEAN................................................................................................... 73
2. Malaysia ............................................................................................................................. 74
a. Precolonial Malaysia ...................................................................................................... 75
b. British Malaya and Borneo ............................................................................................ 78
c. Independence and conflict .............................................................................................. 79
d. The scope of Malay identity and Bumiputera status ...................................................... 82
e. Malaysia and ASEAN .................................................................................................... 85
3. Indonesia ............................................................................................................................ 87
a. Precolonial Indonesia ..................................................................................................... 89
b. Dutch East Indies ........................................................................................................... 91
c. Independence and Konfrontasi ....................................................................................... 93
d. Nusantara and Indonesian nationalism ........................................................................... 97
e. Indonesia and ASEAN ................................................................................................. 100
4. Philippines........................................................................................................................ 101
a. Precolonial Philippines ................................................................................................. 101
b. Spanish & American Philippines ................................................................................. 105
c. The North Borneo Dispute ........................................................................................... 106
d. Nationalism and the Dunia Melayu .............................................................................. 107
e. Philippines and ASEAN ............................................................................................... 109
5. National narratives and the road to ASEAN .................................................................... 110
CHAPTER FOUR: THE SOVIET LEGACY ON IDENTITY IN CENTRAL ASIA ............... 111
1. Kazakhstan ....................................................................................................................... 119
a. Early Kazakhs .............................................................................................................. 121

iii

b. Kazakhs and the Russian Empire ................................................................................. 125
c. Soviet Kazakhstan ........................................................................................................ 128
d. Independent Kazakhstan .............................................................................................. 132
e. Kazakhstan and Eurasianism ........................................................................................ 138
2. Uzbekistan........................................................................................................................ 142
a. Pre-Soviet Uzbekistan .................................................................................................. 144
b. Soviet Uzbekistan ......................................................................................................... 148
c. Independent Uzbekistan ............................................................................................... 150
d. Sarts, Uzbeks, and Tajiks ............................................................................................. 157
3. Tajikistan.......................................................................................................................... 160
a. Early Tajikistan ............................................................................................................ 162
b. Soviet Tajikistan & after independence ....................................................................... 163
c. Tajikistan and its neighbours........................................................................................ 165
4. Kyrgyzstan ....................................................................................................................... 168
a. Pre-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.................................................................................................. 169
b. Soviet Kyrgyzstan ........................................................................................................ 170
c. Independent Kyrgyzstan ............................................................................................... 171
d. Kyrgyzstan and its minorities ....................................................................................... 172
5. Missed opportunities for regional integration .................................................................. 174
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 175
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 183

iv

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Regional Integration in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Europe ................................ 14
Table 2: Percentage of intra-regional trade in Southeast and Central Asia in 2016 ..................... 17
Table 3: Regional cultural similarities .......................................................................................... 25
Table 4: Identity consolidation and regional integration .............................................................. 39
Table 5: Ethnic distribution in Malaya & Singapore in 1957 and Borneo in 1960 ...................... 69
Table 6: Ethnic composition of Kazakhstan according to the national census ........................... 134
Table 7: Ethnicity and language spoken at home in Kazakhstan ................................................ 136
Table 8: Interviewees’ views on Kazakh identity in independent Kazakhstan .......................... 138
Table 9: Summary of interview responses on Kazakhstan’s relationship with its neighbours ... 141
Table 10: Ethnicity and language spoken in Uzbekistan ............................................................ 152
Table 11: Summary of interview responses in Uzbekistan ......................................................... 156
Table 12: Ethnicity and home language in Tajikistan ................................................................ 168
Table 13: Ethnicity and language spoken at home in Kyrgyzstan .............................................. 173

v

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Map of Singapore .......................................................................................................... 65
Figure 2: Map of Malaysia ............................................................................................................ 76
Figure 3: Map of Indonesia ........................................................................................................... 88
Figure 4: Map of the Philippines ................................................................................................ 103
Figure 5: Map of Kazakhstan ...................................................................................................... 122
Figure 6: Territories of the three Kazakh juz .............................................................................. 124
Figure 7: Map of Uzbekistan ...................................................................................................... 143
Figure 8: Central Asia in 1900 .................................................................................................... 147
Figure 9: Map of Tajikistan ........................................................................................................ 161
Figure 10: Map of Kyrgyzstan .................................................................................................... 169

vi

ABSTRACT
Regional integration, defined as the increasing cultural, economic, and political cooperation
between countries in the same geographic region, has been a key feature in international relations
around the world since the end of World War II. While identity forms a key component of
integration projects, including in the European Union, which is the most successful regional
integration project to date, the relationship between national identity and the formation of regional
organisations is underexplored. This lacuna is empirically clear when regional organisations
beyond the EU are examined. While Europe, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia are all regions with
intense historical interactions in the same geographic, security, economic, and cultural space, only
the former two have given rise to regional organisations. Both Europe with its ethnic nation-states
and maritime Southeast Asia with its multi-ethnic states have successfully cooperated regionally,
yet Central Asia’s ethnic nation-states have not. An explanation for this paradox is found in the
consolidation of national identities. Countries that have strongly consolidated national identities
are not threatened by pooling some sovereignty with neighbours as they view their distinctiveness
as inherent. The clearest case study for this is Europe. Meanwhile, countries with unconsolidated
national identities can use this malleability to their advantage and shape their identities to be more
conducive to regional cooperation. Southeast Asia typifies this process. Lastly, countries with
partially consolidated national identities struggle with the “narcissism of small differences”, where
they both value their distinctiveness but also have not established clear boundaries with
neighbouring identities. This phenomenon explains Central Asia’s reticence to integrate. In order
to determine the trajectory of these three cases, elite rhetoric, government policy, and official
national historiography are examined to see how national identities are portrayed and shaped vis-
à-vis neighbours, showing that post-independence Southeast Asian countries constantly redefined
their own nationalisms to accommodate regional integration, while the newly-independent Central
Asian republics continued to focus on their differences and fail to cooperate, leading to the loss of
significant economic and security opportunities.

1

INTRODUCTION
Regional organisations have proliferated around the world since the end of World War II,
boosting cooperation between neighbouring states in disparate parts of the world. However, not
all regional cooperation schemes are made equal, and some regions have made significantly more
progress than others in their regional integration efforts. The root causes of these integration gaps
are not always clear. While the most successful regional integration project in the world, the
European Union (EU), provides a prototype for the formation of a regional organisation, other
regions with similar linguistic, cultural, religious, and historical advantages lack any meaningful
integration project at all. A stark example is Central Asia which is a relatively linguistically,
culturally, religiously, and historically united region with a dearth of integration projects; in direct
contrast, Southeast Asia, which is a highly diverse and disparate region is bound together by one
of the most successful regional organisations in the world, the Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN). As a result, understanding why Central Asian integration has failed to
materialise and develop thus far offers insight into the roots of the formation and development of
regional organisations.
Regions are generally considered to be constructs of “physical, psychological, and
behavioural traits” (Pempel, 2005), and regional integration is defined as the increasing cultural,
economic, and political cooperation between countries in the same geographic region and has been
a key feature in international relations around the world since the end of World War II. This
integration usually takes the form of supranational organisations that provide a forum for
cooperation for the various states in the region as members. As regional integration becomes
deeper, member states pool some of their sovereignty for various gains such as trade efficiency
within the bloc and trade power outside the bloc, increased security, and stability (by cooperating

2

on regional issues), and greater global power through the coordination of regional interests and
priorities. Across different areas of the world, various international organisations have formed to
promote cooperation between neighbouring states. However, given the various levels of
integration present in different parts of the world, ranging from regions with deep monetary,
economic, and political unions to areas with little to no intraregional cooperation beyond cross-
border trade, the roots of this integration process can frequently be unclear, with various
explanations which is particularly apparent when regions that have comparable levels of economic,
cultural, historical, or political ties display highly divergent levels of integration.
While many factors contribute to the formation and growth of regional organisations,
identity is a feature that consistently appears in regional integration efforts, even playing a central
role in many organisations’ unity, and support or opposition to regional integration is closely tied
to nationalism and national identity in different states, yet the successful EU embraces
predominantly nation-states and ASEAN encompasses many multi-ethnic and multilingual
countries, while the self-defined ethno-states of Central Asia continue to languish in their efforts
for integration. Identity clearly has a role in regional integration; for example, in the case of Europe,
the European Union’s Copenhagen criteria lays out who is eligible for membership in the
organisation, one of which is that the applicant must be a “European country”, whose assessment
of such is subject to the European Commission (Article 49, Maastricht Treaty). While this criterion
is supposed to be geographic in nature and was the basis on which Morocco’s application was
denied in 1987, in 2004, the European Union admitted Cyprus, which is geographically part of
Asia. Culture (alongside religion) also has played a role in the lack of progress in Turkey’s
accession negotiations to the European Union, with membership talks frozen as of 2022 despite
Turkey’s having been an EU candidate since 1999.

3

Key to the functioning of any regional organisation is the pooling of some sovereignty to
a supranational body. Within the context of identity, how states relate their identity to that of their
neighbours is an important facet, as the pooling of sovereignty is directly related to nationalist
impulses. For example, throughout the entirety of the existence of the EU, the organisation has
had to contend with resistance from nationalists. For example, France has always been reluctant
to compromise its own national interests and participated in the European Union only insofar as it
could play a major role in the organisation and ensure that EU and French interests were largely
congruent; this tension led to France’s veto of the United Kingdom’s first attempts to join the
European Union in 1963 and 1967. More recently, French and Dutch voters turned down
ratification of the European Constitution in 2005, citing fears of encroachment on national
sovereignty. This tension is evident in the existence of Eurosceptic organisations around Europe,
the most notable of which is the Brexit referendum of 2016, where “taking back control” featured
prominently in the rhetoric of the Leave campaign. Within the remaining states of the EU, national
values also feature prominently in Eurosceptic rhetoric, such as the October 2021 ruling by the
Polish constitutional court over the primacy of the Polish constitution over EU law. Nevertheless,
it must be noted that even despite the Eurosceptic movements around the region, membership in
the EU remains popular, with nationalist rhetoric directed more at the manner through which
integration occurs rather than the concept of regional integration itself; even for the Brexit
referendum, much rhetoric focused on membership in the European Union as distinct from the
European Community that the United Kingdom had approved in another referendum in 1975.
Nationalist rhetoric also features as a barrier to integration in other regions; meaningful
regional integration in Southeast Asia occurred only after the easing of the Indonesia-Malaysia
konfrontasi, where the Indonesian government refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the

4

Malaysian state (viewing it as a British neo-colonial project) due to overlapping claims over
Sarawak and Sabah. However, the nationalism here occurred under very different circumstances,
with the border dispute reflecting the artificiality of the division between the two countries by the
colonial powers (the Dutch and the British in this case). Nevertheless, it is clear that the giving up
of some sovereignty in regional integration processes means that the strength of national identity
bears a strong relationship to the formation and continuation of regional integration projects.
Given that national identities are simultaneously an expression of similarity (i.e., the shared
sense of belonging of members of the in-group, using a common language, culture, history, and
often, religion) as well as difference (i.e., the in-group is meaningfully different from the out-
group), intuitively, states with more clearly defined and consolidated national identities should be
more likely to be able to form and maintain lasting regional integration projects. as increased
cooperation with neighbours does not threaten the strength of the distinctiveness of the national
narrative. Moreover, it is easier to cooperate with neighbours culturally when each country’s
distinctiveness from each other is perceived as self-evident. On the other end of the spectrum,
countries that have weak senses of national identity would be expected to have greater difficulty
integrating with neighbours, as these states have overlapping claims of culture and sovereignty.
One possible example of this is that the strongest case of regional integration is in Europe, where
the nation-state has had a longstanding history of development. However, a comparative analysis
of regional integration between different regions reveals a more nuanced relationship between
identity and levels of regional integration, with states in some regions with less identity
consolidation such as Southeast Asia forming more durable regional organisations than regions
with a clearer history of ethnic-based nation-state organisation such as Central Asia. Thus, it can
be argued that national consolidation in and of itself is not directly correlated with conduciveness

5

to regional integration; rather, states should be divided into three groups of national consolidation
levels, namely fully consolidated, partially consolidated, and unconsolidated national identities,
with partially consolidated states facing the largest obstacle to regional integration. In order to
understand the three cases, an examination of their histories as well as their roads to regional
integration are necessary.
The European Union serves as the most prominent example of regional organisation.
Created in the wake of World War II, the organisation gradually grew in both depth and breadth
in the subsequent decades and now covers 27 member states. By far the most integrated of existing
regional organisations, the EU consists of various regional governance structures such as the EU
Presidency and the EU Parliament. The member states coordinate on a variety of issues ranging
from agriculture and fishery to industrial production, finance, and defence, and together constitute
the largest common market in the world, ensuring the freedom of movement of labour, capital,
services, and goods. The EU collectively negotiates free trade agreements for its members, with
member states making use of the economic weight of the combined union to obtain better terms.
Indeed, the EU is so deeply integrated that it forms a common combined membership representing
all of its member states in various international organisations. The EU is also home to the 20
members of the Eurozone, who all use a common currency, allowing the euro to gain the position
of the second most important reserve currency in the world. By pooling together some sovereignty
by subjecting themselves to EU laws and regulations, member states have managed to increase
manifold their economic and political strength within the global sphere. Consisting of nation-states
of various sizes, the EU also subscribes to a shared European cultural identity, with commonalities
arising from a history spanning from Greco-Roman civilisation through the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, bound together by the common influence of Christianity.

6

With this shared background, the distinct and culturally consolidated European states possess
conditions that are favourable to regional integration despite the recent experience of war in Europe,
and while Euroscepticism can still affect deeper integration as well as the accession of new
members, membership in the European Union among current members is popular and largely
uncontested.
In Asia, the most prominent example is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), which encompasses ten of the eleven countries in the region. Unlike many other
regional integration projects (such as the European Union, where the member states share a
common cultural background, religion, and related languages), Southeast Asia is a highly diverse
region. The region is religiously and linguistically extremely diverse and possess disparate
histories. The eleven countries represent three major religions, with Mahayana Buddhism
dominant in Singapore and Vietnam, Theravada Buddhism dominant in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand,
and Myanmar, Sunni Islam dominant in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, and Roman Catholicism
dominant in the Philippines and Timor-Leste. The official languages cover four disparate language
families (to compare, the official languages of the 27 countries of the European Union share three
language families, with the overwhelming majority in the same family), with significant additional
diversity within each country itself. However, despite all these obstacles, regional integration in
Southeast Asia has proceeded apace (albeit still with substantial hurdles to overcome) and has
taken on renewed security significance with China’s rising power and engagement in maritime
disputes with several of the member states, with the region as a zone of contention of influence
between China and the United States. Moreover, as smaller countries adjacent to major global
economies, economic integration is necessary for the region to maintain competitiveness in the
global market. In addition to negotiating a regional free trade agreement in the form of the ASEAN

7

Free Trade Area (AFTA), ASEAN has also led initiatives for free trade agreements between the
region as a whole and third parties, such as with the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade
Area in 2009 and spearheading the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership encompassing
the ASEAN countries, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea, an Japan, which came into
effect in 2022. Banding together has enabled the Southeast Asian countries to speak with a stronger
collective voice both in the security and the economic contexts globally and achieve agreements
from a stronger negotiating position.
Central Asia is a useful comparison for Southeast Asia in many ways. If economic and
security necessities appear to be significant drivers for Southeast Asia, the same considerations
should also weigh heavily in Central Asia, as China’s economic, political, and military clout also
extends westward. The five republics of Central Asia are also smaller countries adjacent to the
two global powers of China and Russia, both of which seek to extend more control over the region.
Central Asia also has advantages for regional integration, with the five countries sharing a common
religion, a common past as member republics of the Soviet Union, and closely related languages
(except for Tajikistan). Even in the pre-Russian era, the various emirates and khanates of the
region engaged in trade networks and formed an important nexus in the Silk Road. A series of
Persianate polities such as the Sassanians and Parthians came to dominate the trade centres of
Samarkand and Bukhara, which were key to the trade routes between China and Europe. These
polities eventually gave way to Turkic khanates dominated by nomadic groups arriving from the
steppes; these groups eventually adopted many features of Persian culture, leading to the Perso-
Turkic synthesis that still defines the region’s cultures and society today (as well as those of
empires where Central Asians came to dominate such as Safavid Iran, Ottoman Turkey, and
Mughal India). When the Russian Empire arrived, the region was divided between nomadic

8

khanates such as the Kazakh Khanate and three states of sedentary oasis dwellers, namely the
Khanate of Kokand, the Emirate of Bukhara, and the Emirate of Khiva. All three were eventually
subsumed into the Soviet Union.
The boundaries between the Central Asian republic today, while ostensibly serving as
logical division lines between regions inhabited by different ethnic groups, do not follow those of
these pre-Russian polities, nor are the ethnic identifications recognisable for a Central Asian of
that era. While the region has a long and ancient history, the modern republics are largely products
of the 20
th
century through the Soviet nationalities policy. The Soviet Union codified linguistic
standards, national histories, and symbols in order to create ethnic states within its own borders,
with national identity seen as an intermediate developmental step on the way to full integration
into Soviet identity. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the
subnational boundaries became international borders, and identities codified by the Soviet
government in the 1920s became the basis for independent nation states with a strong sense of
ethnic identities that also draw on the region’s pre-Soviet history. Since then, the Central Asian
republics have had to contend with border disputes, ethnic minorities, the promotion of national
identities, and the construction of a functional nation state on the international stage. Nevertheless,
the relative youth of these republics and the artificiality of the ethnic borders drawn by the Soviet
Union in the 1920s should not pose an obstacle to integration; after all, both Malaysia and
Indonesia were founding members of ASEAN despite the recent history of konfrontasi between
the two due to uncertainties resulting from colonial-drawn borders. Indeed, until recently, no
regional organisations exist that encompass all members of Central Asia, with the most developed
organisations covering both parts of Central Asia and countries beyond the region. Moreover, no
equivalent organisation that promotes ASEAN-style regional integration is present in Central Asia,

9

with existing forums consisting largely of multilateral meetings rather than meaningful
supranational governance.
Together, these three regions offer three different stages of identity consolidation with
wildly different progress in regional integration. Examination of the levels of consolidation and its
relationship to the regional integration processes in these three regions can shed light on why
countries choose to form regional organisations and how identity can inhibit or promote this
process. This comparison can be made through the examination of primary local language sources
throughout the regionalisation process in Southeast Asia and Europe with definitions of national
identity in Central Asia, augmented by interviews with Central Asian academics, businesspeople,
and students. Through these views, a clearer picture of identity and regional integration can emerge.

10

CHAPTER ONE: THEORY
Regional integration, defined as the increasing cultural, economic, and political
cooperation between countries in the same geographic region, has been a key feature in
international relations around the world since the end of World War II. In Asia, the most prominent
example is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which encompasses ten of the
eleven countries in the region. Unlike many other regional integration projects (such as the
European Union, where the member states share a common cultural background, religion, and
related languages), Southeast Asia is a highly diverse region. The region is religiously and
linguistically highly diverse and possess disparate histories. For example, while mainland
Southeast Asia is largely Buddhist (Mahayana in Vietnam and Theravada in Laos, Cambodia,
Thailand, and Myanmar), while Maritime Southeast Asia is majority Sunni Muslim (with the
exception of the Philippines, which is Catholic). The region was also colonised by various colonial
powers, including the Dutch, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the British, and the
Americans, each of whom directed each colony’s economic and commercial structures towards
serving the metropole rather than trading with each other. Finally, the countries speak unrelated
languages, with four major language families represented in the region, and individual countries
such as Indonesia having as much internal linguistic diversity as all of Europe.
However, despite all these obstacles, regional integration in Southeast Asia has proceeded
apace (albeit still with substantial hurdles to overcome) and has taken on renewed security
significance with China’s rising power and engagement in maritime disputes with several of the
member states, with the region as a zone of contention of influence between China and the United
States. Several member states have sought to ASEAN as a forum to address China’s claims in the
South China Sea as a united body, with China demanding that all negotiations be conducted on a

11

bilateral basis between China and each claimant (Tong, 2016). Moreover, as smaller countries
adjacent to major global economies, economic integration is necessary for the region to maintain
competitiveness in the global market; to this end, ASEAN led the creation of the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which ties ASEAN together with its main economic
partners around the region. Banding together has enabled the Southeast Asian countries to speak
with a stronger collective voice both in the security and the economic contexts globally. Internally,
regional cooperation also has security implications in issues such as tackling transnational crime
networks and joint maritime patrols. One area where ASEAN has been successful in tackling this
has been cooperation between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore within the ASEAN framework
(termed ASEAN Kecil, or Small ASEAN) in conducting joint naval patrols of the Strait of Malacca
to tackle piracy in the area and protect trade flows through the region.
Central Asia is a useful comparison for Southeast Asia in many ways. If economic and
security necessities appear to be significant drivers for Southeast Asia the same considerations
should also weigh heavily in Central Asia, as China’s economic, political, and military clout also
extends westward. The five republics of Central Asia are also smaller countries adjacent to the
two global powers of China and Russia, both of which seek to extend more control over the region.
Central Asia also has advantages for regional integration, with the five countries sharing a common
religion, a common past as member republics of the Soviet Union, and closely related languages
(except for Tajikistan). Even in the pre-Russian era, the various emirates and khanates of the
region engaged in trade networks and formed an important nexus in the Silk Road. Lying
strategically on overland caravan routes linking China with Europe and the Middle East, the oasis
cities of Central Asia have prospered since the ancient period throughout different rulers, with
cities such as Samarkand and Bukhara having been trading centres since at least the 1
st
and 2
nd

12

century CE. This importance to trade continued throughout history, and the oasis cities of Central
Asia became some of the most important in the Islamic Caliphate as well as in subsequent Persian
Empires, becoming one of the most important provinces of these empires.
Another potential obstacle to regional integration in Central Asia is the relative youth of
these republics and the complexity of the ethnic borders drawn by the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
which left ethnic minorities stranded outside of the republics where they are the titular nationality,
should not pose an obstacle to integration; after all, both Malaysia and Indonesia were founding
members of ASEAN despite conflict over colonial borders on the shared island of Borneo. Indeed,
no regional organisations exist that encompass all members of Central Asia, with the most
developed organisations covering both parts of Central Asia and countries beyond the region.
Moreover, no equivalent organisation that promotes ASEAN-style regional integration is present
in Central Asia. As a result, a comparison between Central Asia and Southeast Asia is a useful
way to explore why regional integration has failed to gain traction in the former while developing
much more strongly in the latter despite the two regions’ many similarities. These two regions may
be contrasted with Europe, which possesses the highest level of regional integration in the world
today, to give a more complete image of the development of regional integration in diverse
environments.
1. Regional integration and its roots
To examine regional integration, it is necessary to distinguish between regionalism and
regionalisation. According to The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism, regionalism is
defined as “a primarily state-led process of building and sustaining formal regional institutions and
organisations among at least three states”. In contrast, regionalisation refers to “the processes of
increasing economic, political, social, or cultural interactions among geographically or culturally

13

contiguous states and societies” (Borzel and Risse, 2016). Within this context, both Europe and
Southeast Asia have witnessed both regionalisation and regionalism, while Central Asia has
undergone some regionalisation but very limited regionalism. Within this framework, a region can
be said to have undergone successful regional integration with the formation of organisations that
encompass states in the region that promote regional cooperation in the political, economic, social,
and cultural spheres. The more competencies the member states cede to the regional organisation,
the deeper the level of cooperation and coordination, the higher the level of success in regional
integration can be said to be. More specifically, among the three regions mentioned, Europe has
had the most success in regional integration, followed by Southeast Asia, with Central Asia having
the least (with few meaningful intergovernmental structures covering the region).
Integration
mechanism
Southeast Asia Central Asia Europe
Trade Agreement
within region
ASEAN Free Trade
Area
None European Union
Inter-regional Trade
Agreement
Various agreements
between ASEAN
and partners (such as
RCEP); other
agreements
involving subset of
countries (e.g.,
CPTPP include
Brunei, Malaysia,
Singapore, and
Vietnam)
Eurasian Economic Union
(covers only Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan)
EU negotiates as
a whole bloc for
trade
agreements with
other economies
Comprehensive
Regional
Organisation
ASEAN, covering
all countries except
Timor-Leste
(candidate)
None (Central Asian Union
dissolved in 2004; possible
revival starting in 2019)
European Union
Inter-regional
Organisation
Various (APEC,
ASEAN+3, etc.)
Commonwealth of
Independent States,
Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (none of which
cover all Central Asia)
The EU holds
collective
membership in
many
international
organisations

14

Organisation
promoting cultural
cooperation
ASEAN Turkic Council (does not
include all countries)
EU
Table 1: Regional Integration in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Europe
There are several explanations for the emergence of regional integration. A prominent
explanation for regional integration is the realist view, which proposes that regional integration
occurs in the context of balancing against a dominant power (Walt, 1987). However, the argument
for balancing could apply equally to both Central Asia and Southeast Asia, as both regions are on
the periphery of the rising power of China and are strongly affected by Chinese infrastructure
projects such as the One Belt One Road initiative, which seeks to increase Chinese influence in
these regions through the use of Chinese capital to fund projects linking them to China (and leaving
many countries such as Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Tajikistan in debt to China in the long run).
Moreover, both regions contain states with a history of territorial disputes with China. In Southeast
Asia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei all have active disputes with China over the
South China Sea, and states in the region fear encroaching Chinese power. Similarly, in Central
Asia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan also have border disputes with China, and increasing Chinese
influence has led to anti-Chinese unrest in both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. If balancing were an
appropriate explanation for regional integration in both areas, both regions would see the same
levels of regional cooperation in order to present a united front and boost their own positions in
these disputes; however, in reality, while the Southeast Asian claimants of the South China Sea
have repeatedly sought to use ASEAN as a forum through which they can collectively negotiate
with China, no such efforts have arisen in Central Asia.
In contrast, the political economy approach uses a society-centred explanation by
examining economic and social interests that translate into state policy (Kim et al., 2016). In effect,
the political economy approach argues that the formation of coalitions translates the preferences

15

of domestic groups into the state’s foreign policy. Thus, regionalism and regional integration can
occur as a result of outward-looking coalitions that benefit from increased connectedness with
other countries in the region. These coalitions tend to consist of players that are tied to the global
economy, such as finance ministries, independent central banks, and exporters, and are opposed
by inward-looking coalitions (consisting of banks linked closely to the state, state-owned
enterprises, state bureaucracies that would be rendered obsolete by reforms, as well as nationalist
and religious factors that feel threatened by internationalisation) which largely derive benefit from
domestic factors.
For example, in Southeast Asia, strong finance ministries along with export-oriented
economies dominated by large manufacturing firms dependent on export income in countries such
as Thailand and Malaysia create major players whose interests are directly tied to greater
international cooperation and trade. As a result, places where outward-looking coalitions can
dominate, such as in Southeast Asia, tend to have stronger regionalism policies. In contrast, in
regions such as the Middle East, whose economies are either dominated by fossil fuels (which are
less dependent on open trade) such as in Saudi Arabia or Qatar, or by large state-owned firms
which supply the domestic market and are fearful of competition from imports (such as Egypt),
inward-looking coalitions tend to form, meaning that these countries are less likely to pursue
integration-minded policies. Outward-looking coalitions create regional orders in the form of
“zones of peace” that then draw in inward-looking coalitions present elsewhere in the region;
according to this theory, this is how ASEAN eventually included countries dominated by inward-
looking coalitions such as Vietnam and Myanmar, with the former having possessed a centrally-
planned Soviet-style communist economy with state-owned enterprises and limited commerce
throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, and the latter dominated by a secretive military junta

16

with limited interactions with the outside world when it became a member in 1995 (Solingen &
Malnight, 2016).
While this explanation is compelling for Southeast Asia’s experience with regionalism, it
fails to explain Central Asia’s failure to form regional organisations. The integration of the Soviet
economy as a singular market where different republics complemented each other meant that
economic ties are unparalleled, with fellow republics dependent on each other for raw materials,
transit, and infrastructure projects. For example, the most direct route linking Tashkent with the
economically important Ferghana valley cuts through neighbouring Tajikistan, while
hydroelectricity from Kyrgyzstan powers Uzbek industry. This meant that at independence, even
many coalitions that would have been considered inward-looking prior to the collapse may find
their interests aligned with similar coalitions within the region, as manufacturers face the risk of
supply chain disruption, while traders both big and small would risk being cut off from large parts
of their goods transportation as well as markets that were now divided by national borders,
necessitating onerous customs procedures. Moreover, the unified structure of the Soviet Union and
the emphasis on specialisation within different republics should have encouraged further
specialisation that would be conducive to the growth of trade, especially as it is within all parties’
interest to experience minimal disruption in the formerly-domestic economic networks, as they
can continue to capitalise on their various specialisations to supply each other’s economies rather
than engage in costly investments to duplicate economic sectors that had formerly been performed
by other parts of the USSR. The interlinked infrastructure also meant that, absence regional
integration, each republic has had to make significant investment in infrastructure such as roads,
canals, railroads, and pipelines that now cross international borders. In short, from a political
economy standpoint, while Southeast Asia and Central Asia differ significantly in the type of their

17

economic interactions, with the former tied through transnational networks of production and the
latter united and directed in a complementary manner as members of the Soviet Union for most of
the twentieth century, it is not immediately clear that outward-looking coalitions would be more
likely to form in Southeast Asia. Despite the fact that Southeast Asia consists of multiple regional
frameworks that encourage economic interactions and Central Asia lacks similar frameworks, the
degree of economic integration in terms of trade in Southeast Asia does not appear to be
significantly higher than that of Central Asia, as seen in the following data from the World Bank.
Country Percentage of Imports from
Other Countries within Region
Percentage of Exports to Other
Countries within Region
Kazakhstan 3.05 7.38
Kyrgyzstan 18.89 22.27
Tajikistan 32.84 34.04
Uzbekistan 13.68 13.79
Indonesia 21.06 22.31
Malaysia 21.85 27.75
Philippines 26.38 15.70
Singapore 24.33 25.06
Thailand 19.06 23.99
Vietnam 11.65 8.22
Table 2: Percentage of intra-regional trade in Southeast and Central Asia in 2016 (World Bank)
The data presented are particularly surprising given that Southeast Asia consists of ten countries
with a combined GDP that is several times larger than those in Central Asia. If outward-looking
coalitions were so much more dominant in Southeast Asia, the region should see comparatively
more intra-regional trade than Central Asia; instead, the picture is less clear. Put differently, given
that the picture of intra-regional trade in both regions is fairly similar, Southeast Asia and Central
Asia should, but do not, see comparable developments on integration.
On its part, the rationalist functionalist approach argues that geographical proximity is a
major driver of integration due to complex interdependence, as regions with close geographic
proximity tend to have interrelated interests and problems and set up international institutions to

18

deal with them (Keohane, 1984; Martin and Simmons, 1998). In addition, regionalism has been
argued to stem from a state’s desire to control, manage, and prevent regional conflict or consolidate
national sovereignty (Caballero-Anthony, 2008; Acharya, 2011). However, both these arguments
lose salience in the Central Asia – Southeast Asia comparison. Explanations on geographical
proximity are also not compelling, as it applies equally to both regions as contiguous units, as
evidenced by the trade networks that have existed in both regions throughout history, with Central
Asia having possessed a land trading network (which formed a key link in the Silk Road) and
Southeast Asia as home to a major maritime trading tradition (Dong, 2019). Furthermore, regional
conflict and nation-building are factors present in both Central Asia and Southeast Asia, with
countries in the latter arguably facing even more challenges than those in the former in this regard.
These explanations are inadequate in explaining discrepancies in regional integration between
Southeast Asia and Central Asia.
Another lens through which regional integration can be viewed is constructivism.
Constructivists place ideas, norms, and identities that the centre of regional integration (Adler,
2013). In other words, nations that share aspects of their own national identity or self-perception
are more likely to form regional organisations and participate in projects where they give up certain
limited sovereignty to a shared transnational organisation because of shared feelings of mutual
proximity and familiarity. Two ways that this may manifest itself are through culture and shared
ideals. Both these mechanisms are borne out in the case of the strongest regional integration
process in existence today: the European Union. All 27 members and most of the countries
negotiating accession into the European Union are majority-Christian countries who share a
common western cultural and historical heritage, all of which have to be committed to the ideals
of human rights and democracy. When these shared commonalities are weakest, such as

19

Hungary’s desire to create an “illiberal democracy” or Poland’s declaration of supremacy of
national law due to perceived differences with western European ideas about social liberalism on
issues such as immigration or LGBT rights, the regional integration project may be derailed,
particularly in situations that require unanimity among member states. One prominent example of
this was when Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (the Visegrad Group) objected to quotas
for settlements of migrants in EU member states.
The cultural component of regional integration is seen most strongly in the EU’s relations
with Turkey. While Turkey applied for membership in 1967, it was granted official candidate
status only in 2004 and has made little progress since then. One of the reasons commonly cited
for the infeasibility of Turkish membership in the EU is cultural – former French president Nicolas
Sarkozy opposed Turkish membership in the EU on the basis that Turkey was too big, too poor,
and too culturally different to join the European Union, a sentiment that is widely shared among
the European political elite and is reflected among opinion polls on Turkish membership in EU
members (Fahim, 2017). Despite having a large population of Turkish guest workers, Germany
has also been ambivalent on Turkish membership in the EU, with former chancellor Angela Merkel
opposing full membership and instead preferring a privileged partnership with Turkey (Die Welt,
2011). On its part, the German public overwhelmingly opposes Turkish membership in the
European Union (YouGov, 2018). A perception of cultural affinity, articulated whether through a
sense of shared historical European civilisation or through more explicit references to Christian
values, has formed a key part of the expansion of membership in the European Union as early as
the accession of Spain, which became a member in 1986 partly because of the perception of its
shared values as a fellow member of European Christian civilisation (Diez Medrano, 2010).

20

This cultural proximity argument is also articulated in potential members of the European
Union, who view membership in the European Union as a natural development and affirmation of
their cultural proximity with the rest of Europe. For example, the leader of the Ukrainian Liberal
Democratic Party, D. Vydrin, stated in 2007 that “The EU is first of all European values and a
common European culture”. Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, also stated in
2004 that the European flag “is Georgia’s flag as well, as far as it embodies our civilization, our
culture, the essence of our history and perspective, and our vision for the future of Georgia”.
However, the EU integration project ran into difficulty in these cases due to domestic opposition,
showing that even elite support is not a guarantee of a sense of cultural togetherness (Bafoil, 2014).
Most notably, proposals of greater integration with Europe have faced significant opposition in
Eastern Ukraine, dominating several elections and setting the scene for the Russian intervention
in the Donbass and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Thus, shared culture and ideals clearly forms
an important component of the success of regional integration efforts; indeed, even in existing
successful regional integration projects, perceptions of cultural divergence or a breakdown in
shared values still causes significant friction. German (and Northern European) perceptions of
Greek profligacy and laziness (relative to perceived German hard work and thrift) during the
European sovereign debt crisis (based on factors such as Greek government spending, lower
retirement age, and low tax intake relative to Germany) contributed to the harsh terms of the Greek
bailout, in turn causing anti-German sentiment in Greece and prompting speculation of a Greek
exit from the Eurozone (Connolly, 2010).
One factor that also needs to be taken into consideration within the socio-cultural sphere is
the construction of national identities and the recentness of independence and its relationship with
the emphasis of nationalist rhetoric that hinders international cooperation. As nationalism is

21

dependent on identification with a common trait, whether language, culture, or in many cases
religion, it is in turn dependent on a sense of perceived difference with non-members of the nation
(Hobsbawm, 1990). This assertion of difference is a significant source for conflict, particularly
when overlapping differences and commonalities between neighbouring groups lead to disputes
and limiting the potential for cooperation. One example where this has been the case is in the
western Balkans, where a series of wars broke out during the breakup of Yugoslavia between the
constituent republics. These constituent republics redefined themselves as ethnic-based nation-
states distinct from each other despite all sharing closely related languages. Indeed, four of the six
newly-formed republics eventually declared separate official languages (Serbian, Croatian,
Bosnian, and Montenegrin), which are mutually intelligible due to all being based on the
Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. In this case, the cultural and linguistic similarities between
the constituent states of Yugoslavia may have driven increased conflict during the breakup of
Yugoslavia (Kolstø, 2007).
The failure of communism in Yugoslavia led to an ideological vacuum, which eventually
was filled by nationalism. This nationalism was promoted by each republic’s political elites to
consolidate their power and fuelled much of the violence among groups that had formerly been
neighbours in highly mixed communities. As national identities require the identification of the
“other”, these small differences become amplified in what has been termed the “narcissism of
small differences”. In this process, each group sees the “other” only as reflections upon themselves,
leading to fixation on the minute differences to highlight the sense of the “other”. This hyper
awareness turns neighbours into irreconcilable enemies and limits the potential for cooperation. In
the case of former Yugoslavia, the narcissism of small differences became a significant driver for
bloody ethnic conflicts. Serbs and Croats living virtually identical lifestyles side-by-side in mixed

22

communities in harmony began to perceive of themselves as distinct peoples deserving of separate
homelands and took up arms to ensure that this homeland would encompass their localities
(Ignatieff, 1999). In the Central Asian context, the indigenisation process conducted by the Soviets
in the 1920s also separated mixed populations with significant commonalities into distinct groups
with their own titular republics. Similar to what happened in Yugoslavia, after the collapse of the
USSR, these identities become the basis for nationalism promoted by the political elites. While
Central Asia did not experience the same degree of conflict as the former Yugoslavia, the
narcissism of small differences may be an explanation for low levels of regional cooperation.
However, cultural diversity is an incomplete explanation when differences in integration
between Southeast Asia and Central Asia are considered. Like most of Europe, Central Asia also
shares a common religion (Islam) and has languages from the same language family (Turkic);
indeed, the ties between the Turkic countries of Central Asia are akin to those between the
Romance countries of Europe. Southeast Asia, on the other hand, possesses high levels of diversity
both between countries and within countries, with several language families and major religions
represented. A purely cultural theory would therefore predict high levels of integration in Central
Asia and much less in Southeast Asia; however, reality shows that the opposite is the case. Shared
ideals also do not provide a compelling argument: while Central Asian states are all authoritarian
states where the Soviet-era elite have co-opted the political system to stay in power, Southeast
Asia has a dizzying variety of political institutions and arrangements that bear little ideological
resemblance to each other. It is partially because of this institutional diversity that ASEAN has
instituted a principle of non-interference in members’ domestic affairs. The “narcissism of small
differences” explanation may appear to offer compelling image of Central Asian disunity due to a
desire to assert distinctiveness from similar neighbouring peoples, yet the same impetus could be

23

applied to Southeast Asia, where Indonesia and Malaysia share a common language and contest
many national symbols, such as batik, thanks to their having been parts of the same historical
Malay world, yet whose cooperation was still essential to the formation of ASEAN. Thus, existing
constructivist approaches are insufficient in explaining the divergence between Southeast Asia and
Central Asia.
Because of the limitations of current approaches, it is necessary to look beyond just the
regional integration literature. To this end, the roots of regional integration can also be drawn
from literature on nationalism, as the development of regional organisations has many parallels
with the process of nation-building, where diverse sets of populations with diverging interests are
aggregated into one larger entity. According to Anderson, shared historical experiences through
colonial education and struggle against colonialism was a major catalyst in the formation of states
such as Indonesia and India, both of which possess more intra-country diversity than the inter-
country diversity in Central Asia, whether linguistically, culturally, or religiously (1983). This
common history allowed for the elite of diverse parts of the colony to identify with each other,
thereby building a common identity. This explanation could be expanded to explain linkages in
international organisations; after all, groupings such as the Commonwealth of Nations and the
Francophonie are based on shared colonial history. However, this theory would predict that
Central Asia would undergo substantially more integration due to the shared experience of being
in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, instead of the situation in Southeast Asia, which
underwent substantial divisions under different colonial powers and had radically oppositional
relationships during the Cold War. Thus, some modification is necessary to explain the differences
between Southeast Asia and Central Asia fully.

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This discrepancy is also borne out when examining cultural variation quantitatively. In
order to measure culture and cultural differences, numerous surveys are regularly conducted on
the values of each individual society, such as the World Values Survey, Hofstede’s Cultural
Dimensions (2001), Inglehart & Welzel’s (2005) cultural map, and Schwartz’s (2006) values.
Cultural distances are often measured using a combination of these measures, such as in Kogut &
Singh’s (1988) composite measure of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions and Demes & Geeraert’s
(2014) scale of perceived cultural distance. However, these measures have limitations in the sense
that they measure the difference between means and do not take into account the variance of
cultural differences. One attempt to rectify this issue is the cultural distance measure developed by
Muthukrishna et al (2020). This measure, named the cultural fixation index (CFST), is based on the
fixation index (FST) measure from population biology, which measures genetic distance between
different species (Bell, Richerson, & McElreath, 2009; Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, & Piazza, 1994).
The cultural fixation index adapts the fixation index and replaces various aspects of genetic
similarity in the original model with data from the World Values Survey, which is a series of
questionnaires conducted in over 100 countries and asks respondents for their views on issues
ranging from economics, politics, and culture to personal security and subjective well-being. In
doing so, it produces a measurement of cultural distance between each country dyad. Like the
original fixation index, the cultural fixation index ranges from 0 to 1, with a value of 0 indicating
complete cultural congruence and a value of 1 indicating complete cultural difference (i.e., the
lower the value, the closer the two countries are culturally according to responses on the World
Values Survey). The measure also takes into account the variance present within the responses on
the survey from each country.

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Based on this measure, the cultural distance between countries in Central Asia, Western
Europe, and Central Asia could be determined. While the data are incomplete for each region,
omitting Turkmenistan and Tajikistan in Central Asia as well as Belgium and Luxembourg in
Western Europe, they still offer a window into the similarities and differences among the countries
in the sample and show the discrepancy between levels of integration in these regions and the
cultural proximity between the countries.

Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan
Kazakhstan 0.041 0.067
Kyrgyzstan 0.041 0.058
Uzbekistan 0.067 0.058
AVERAGE: 0.055

France Germany Italy Netherlands
France

0.089 0.058 0.065
Germany 0.089

0.08 0.026
Italy 0.058 0.08

0.086
Netherlands 0.065 0.026 0.086

AVERAGE: 0.067

Indonesia Malaysia Philippines Singapore Thailand
Indonesia 0.079 0.131 0.126 0.096
Malaysia 0.079

0.042 0.054 0.062
Philippines 0.131 0.042

0.071 0.103
Singapore 0.126 0.054 0.071

0.066
Thailand 0.096 0.062 0.103 0.066

AVERAGE: 0.083
Table 3: Regional cultural similarities
The first observation from these results is that these regions are all clearly culturally close to each
other, with values never exceeding 0.150 and averages all well below 0.1. However, the level of
similarities between countries in each region varies substantially. The results of this study are
particularly interesting, as they date from the 2000s, and despite the five decades of building a
common European identity among the EU-6, the average level of cultural proximity of each

26

European dyad is still lower than that of the three Central Asian countries included in the sample.
This result is counterintuitive given the prominence of culture in regional integration process,
which would imply that the region with the most significant integration (i.e., Europe) would have
the highest levels of cultural proximity (especially salient given the rhetoric surrounding the
concept of Europe as a coherent political and cultural construct), followed by Southeast Asia,
which has the second highest levels of regional integration. However, despite being the most
culturally coherent region of the three, which would be amenable to forming a wider regional
identity, Central Asia has the lowest levels of regional integration. Given the cultural similarities
between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (particularly in the Ferghana Valley and in major cities such
as Samarkand and Bukhara), the inclusion of Tajikistan would most likely increase the level of
cultural similarities of the countries within the sample.
Another approach to nation-building that could be expanded to regional organisations is a
game theoretic approach. In The Size of Nations, Alesina and Spolaore theorised that state
formation depends on the provision of public goods. Preferences for these public goods, according
to Alesina and Spolaore, depends not only on geography, but partly on various other shared factors
of history and culture. Thus, the size of a state is dependent on striking a balance between being
large enough to provide goods effectively and small enough to satisfy the diverse preferences of
constituents (2003). The model is notable in that it ties shared preferences among populations to
characteristics of the populations themselves; for example, populations sharing a common
language are likely to have similar preferences in numerous spheres of life such as education and
government services. However, it still possesses a major shortcoming in that, if preferences are
based on measures of objective cultural similarity, Central Asian countries should possess more
shared preferences and have more robust regional integration, given that they speak similar

27

languages and share a common religion. The shortcomings of these approaches become apparent
when regional integration in Central Asia and Southeast Asia are explored in greater detail,
particularly given the history and demographics of the two regions.
2. The Puzzle of Central Asia
Central Asia appears to offer conditions ideal for the construction of a regional identity
given that the region shares a common religion, historical background, and is largely Turkic
speaking (except Tajikistan, which speaks a variety of Persian) (Olcott, 1995, 2005; Collins, 2004,
2006; Qoraboyev, 2010). The proximity of population centres from one country to the next means
that significant opportunities exist for commercial and cultural exchange, particularly as these
areas all formed part of a common state until the collapse of the USSR. Indeed, the former Soviet
states have been argued to possess greater social integration than even the European Union
(Sterzhneva, 1999). In security terms, the five republics face common security challenges,
including outmigration (and remittances), the drying up of the Aral Sea, organised crime networks,
drug trafficking, and corruption (Ubaidulloev, 2010). These issues all require substantial
coordination: the Aral Sea lies on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and is fed by
rivers that originate in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, while the crime and drug networks span across
the region and form a network that extends between Asia and Europe. Thus, it is in the strong
interest of the Central Asian countries to cooperate and integrate, as it is impossible for any
individual country to solve these issues. Without regional coordination, these issues have the
potential to spiral out of control, thus leaving significant incentives for integration over these issues.
Indeed, one of the few bright spots in Central Asian cooperation has been management of water
sources of water for the Aral Sea in a series of agreements that have encompassed all five Central
Asian countries.

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From the economic perspective, the five Central Asian countries are also highly
interdependent as they all constituted different member republics of the Soviet Union. An example
of this integration is all five states still belong to one single electricity grid (Hancock, 2009). Due
to the different factor endowments of the individual Central Asian states, each republic was given
a different role in the Soviet economy, as hydrocarbon-rich Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan provided oil and gas, while Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, because of their locations at
the headwaters of the region’s rivers, provided water and hydroelectricity to agriculture and
industry in the countries downstream (Spoor and Krutov, 2003; Zhakirova, 2013; Wegerich, 2004).
The geography of the region, compounded with the interlocking borders between the Central Asian
states, means that these countries are highly interdependent in terms of resources, as reflected by
the Soviet-era regional economic organisation. Partly as a result of this, informal “bazaar networks”
have sprung up in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union (Kaminsky and Mitra, 2012).
Kazakhstan, in particular, has engaged in substantial foreign direct investment in the region and is
in turn attracting economic migrants; however, neither of these phenomena have been extensively
studied (Korobkov, 2007). Nevertheless, studies have shown that integration has the potential to
provide great economic benefits to the five Central Asian republics (Çakmak, 2017).
Despite the signs of nascent regionalisation such as cross-border trade and investment
(albeit still extremely limited), regionalism has made very slow progress, and the number of
regional organisations in Central Asia remains quite limited, with no Central Asia-focused
organisation encompassing all five of the states. One important initiative that has arisen in the last
two decades is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which was founded in 2001 and
includes China, India Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The
organisation aims for cooperation in the political, economic, and security spheres, and has

29

promoted anti-terrorism initiatives across its member states. Another organisation that has
attempted to play a role in the region is the Turkey-led International Organization of Turkic Culture
(Uluslararası Türk Kültürü Teşkilatı), which is more commonly named TÜRKSOY. The
organisation was formed in 1993 as a cultural organisation of countries speaking Turkic languages,
and includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The
organisation was later joined by the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States, commonly
known as the Turkic Council, in 2009. The Turkic Council also officially aims to harmonise
members’ foreign policy, cross-border cooperation for security purposes, promote trade, and
encourage cooperation in all fields of mutual interest (Turkic Council, 2009). However, while the
membership includes Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in addition to Azerbaijan and Turkey, both
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan opted not to join. Finally, the initiative that has proposed the deepest
level of regional integration is the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC), which
was formed in 2000 and subsequently evolved to become Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in
2014. Encompassing Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, the EEU is both a
customs union and an economic union and seeks to increase the level of economic integration
between its members, including an eventual internal market with free movements of capital, labour,
goods, and services. Together, the single market has a population of over 183 million people and
a GDP (PPP) of over $4 trillion (World Bank, 2016).
In addition to not including all the countries in the region, all these initiatives were created
by countries outside Central Asia. One of the few post-independence attempts to date at creating
a Central Asian-led regional organisation is the Central Asian Union, which was proposed by
Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2007; however, while the proposal was met with support in Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan, both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have declined to participate, as they both

30

prioritised neutrality at the time. Moreover, Uzbekistan sought to play a more dominant role in the
organisation and had more contentious relations with Russia, leaving it at odds with Kazakhstan’s
goals. Another initiative, the Central Asian Economic Cooperation (CAEC), aimed to increase
economic cooperation and counted Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. While
the members tried to increase cooperation in foreign policy with the formation of the Central Asian
Cooperation Organisation (CACO) in 2002, the attempts failed due to the members’ reluctance to
coordinate policy with each other, particularly as members disagreed on the degree of cooperation
with Russia vis-à-vis the West and independence of regional foreign policy. Kazakhstan wanted a
greater degree of cooperation with Russia (partly as it shares a long border with Russia and
contains a large ethnic Russian population), while Uzbekistan preferred to move further from the
Russian sphere of influence and focus on Central Asia. CACO was informally folded into the
EurAsEC (an organisation that also includes Russia) in 2007, prompting Uzbekistan to withdraw
in 2008 (Laruelle & Peyrouse, 2012).
Many reasons have been advanced for the region’s lack of integration. However, the vast
majority of existing literature on Central Asia deals with the region only as a part of a wider
Eurasian sphere that also includes Russia and Eastern Europe. Arguments have been made about
the relative youth of the former Soviet states and the contradiction between regionalism’s ties to
integration with Russia and nation-building (Abdelal, 2001; Hale, 2008). However, in the Central
Asia-specific context, these arguments quickly lose their salience. While common ties to Russia
are indeed in contradiction with the construction of a post-Soviet identity as a break from a Russia-
dominated history, this contradiction is not present in regional integration projects that exclude
Russia and include only Central Asian countries, none of whom share particularly strong histories
of domination over each other. In addition, internal divisions do not appear to be inhibiting the

31

consolidation of identity in countries such as Kyrgyzstan (Joldoshov, 2013). Moreover, the relative
youth of these countries’ independence is not compelling when compared to the regionalism
present in Southeast Asia – just as the modern countries of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are
essentially products of Soviet domination (with no equivalent state having existed in the pre-Soviet
era), several countries in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the
Philippines owe much of their modern boundaries to colonial history. Both these regions have
undergone nation-building processes that drew on pre-colonial polities that often transcend modern
boundaries to emphasise an indigenous foundation of the modern borders. This artificiality did not
pose a barrier to regional integration in Southeast Asia; despite Indonesia’s initial objection to the
formation of Malaysia and territorial disputes between Malaysia and the Philippines, these
countries still founded ASEAN together in 1967. Moreover, Southeast Asia’s experience
contradicts the argument pertaining to the youth of the independent Central Asian states, as the
formation of ASEAN occurred a mere four years after the formation of Malaysia and two years
after the independence of Singapore; more strikingly, Brunei joined ASEAN one week after it
became independent from the United Kingdom in 1984. Thus, the lack of clear boundaries through
historical identity and recentness of independence are not compelling explanations for Central
Asia’s dearth of regional integration initiatives.
Other arguments examine the diverging goals of elites in regional integration and of
ideological compatibility with regionalisation (Kubicek, 2009; Darden, 2009). For example, while
the governments in both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have continued to pursue economic ties with
Russia and the rest of the world, the governments of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have pursued
more isolationist policies, which is reflected in the lack of participation of Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan in many of the proposed regional frameworks; Turkmenistan, in particular, is reluctant

32

to join multilateral organisations, whether regional or global. This divergence may be due to a
combination of several different factors. Politically, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are both more
heavily authoritarian than Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Tajikistan. Furthermore, while Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan are both heavily Russified and retain Russian as an official language, Uzbekistan
and Turkmenistan have shifted away from Russian language use, thereby distancing themselves
more culturally from Russia. Regional schemes have also failed due to competition between
Kazakhstan, the largest and wealthiest state in the region, and Uzbekistan, the most populous state
in the region, as they each hold a different claim to being the dominant regional power
(individually being significantly larger than any of the other three Central Asian republics in terms
of population or economy) and resent any regional structure that gives advantage to the other
country (Kubicek, 1997; Bohr, 2004).
However, the inclusion of Russia and the Eastern Europe-centric approach of many of these
studies have more limited application to Central Asia, as the relevance of these connections are
only going to diminish as the Central Asian states become increasingly assertive in their own
national identities and the salience of Soviet influence decreases over time, with the Central Asian
countries looking beyond the former Soviet sphere to build new relationships and partnerships.
Unlike Ukraine and Belarus, both of which are former Soviet republics that share a Slavic
background and Orthodox Christianity with Russia (along with shared histories in entities such as
Kievan Rus) and thereby possess a cultural basis for ties with Russia, Central Asia’s Turkic and
Islamic background are a stark contrast to Russian culture, with Slavic influences acquired only
during the Tsarist and Soviet eras. As a result, post-independence de-Russification in Central Asia
would sever cultural ties with the Russosphere much more completely. This process is already
being observed in the region in terms of language use, with the Russian language having lost its

33

position in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and is beginning to lose ground in Kazakhstan. Beyond
the dearth of Central Asia-centric research, a micro-level analysis of popular support for regional
integration is non-existent, especially one that tries to capture the relationship between this support
and the various complexities of social and ethnic background in Central Asia.
Due to the limitations of the existing literature on regionalism in Central Asia, an
alternative explanation is necessary. While existing work focuses more on structural issues that
afflict the region, a more cultural approach may be more appropriate for explaining the lack of
regional integration in Central Asia. Defining Central Asia as a region with partially consolidated
national identities is a way to explain why regionalism has been slow to develop among these
countries. This is a result of the development of national identities as habitus through the deliberate
policies of the indigenisation approach of Soviet policy beginning in the 1920s to create ethnic
republics with titular nationalities rather than as a coherent ideology arising organically from
ethnic and cultural considerations (Roy, 2004). This approach is particularly useful when
contrasted with the regional integration that has occurred in Southeast Asia, a region that
superficially appears to have fewer advantages for the development of regionalism.
3. Diverse Integration in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is a highly diverse region spanning eleven countries. The region is
culturally, linguistically, and politically diverse; indeed, the grouping of the region as Southeast
Asia came into popular use only in the mid-twentieth century. Despite this incredible diversity,
Southeast Asia is home to one of the most prominent examples of regional integration, with the
regional grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), covering ten of the
eleven countries in the region (with the eleventh in the process of joining). This integration has
occurred even despite the diverging history of the region over the last two hundred years, as despite

34

the trade networks that existed throughout the shallow seas of the region, throughout the colonial
era, the region (with the exception of Thailand) was carved up by various European colonial
powers (with the French dominating Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the British in Malaysia,
Singapore, Brunei, and Myanmar, the Portuguese in East Timor, and the Spanish and Americans
in the Philippines). While the colonies were originally acquired as trade posts or sources of luxury
goods such as spices, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, they became the source of
valuable raw materials for the industrial sector in the colonial power (providing goods such as
rubber and coffee). in addition, the colonies also served as markets to consume the products of
European industry, with France’s Jules Ferry famously proclaiming in 1871 that “la politique
coloniale est fille de la politique industrielle”; while French exports to colonies did not form an
overwhelmingly sizeable percentage of exports, they were crucial to some industries such as
textiles (Marseille, 1984). Similarly, Britain emphasised the colonies’ roles as markets to consumer
British goods well into the twentieth century (Meredith, 1996). This meant that rather than trading
with each other, Southeast Asian colonies’ economies were reconfigured to trade with the rest of
the respective empires initially, before subsequently also providing raw materials to other
industrial powers such as the United States (Hill, 2007). Later, the region was divided by the Cold
War, with Communist insurgencies present throughout the region. Indeed, the initial foundation
of ASEAN in 1961 was partly due to fears about communism in the region, and the initial six
members were highly critical of the communist states in the region, particularly in the wake of
Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978, which was the catalyst for ASEAN to organise formal
summits (Narine, 2002; Acharya, 2001). However, with the end of the Cold War, the organisation
took on a more regional orientation and added four members, three of whom are communist or
former communist states.

35

ASEAN has been instrumental in the economic integration of the region and has the stated
goal of reaching EU-level integration. The three pillars of integration for ASEAN are the formation
of the economic community, the political-security community, and socio-cultural community. The
ASEAN Free Trade Agreement was implemented in 1992, and the region since then has moved
forward to forming an economic union. In addition, as a block, ASEAN has signed free trade
agreements with several neighbours and is spearheading the negotiation of the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which covers the ASEAN countries along with
China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand. ASEAN is also pursuing a
collective trade agreement with the European Union; however, due to lack of progress, individual
members are negotiating their own free trade agreements with the EU. In the security sphere,
ASEAN has come under intense pressure from member states to take a collective stance on the
South China Sea dispute; however, Cambodia’s dissent has made progress on this issue slow;
indeed, Chinese influence is both an impetus and obstacle for greater integration in ASEAN
(Haggard, 2013). ASEAN has also attempted to increase cultural contact between member states
through initiatives such as the liberalisation of visa requirements within Southeast Asia.
Nevertheless, Southeast Asian regional institutions lack strength and centralisation.
Decisions made by the organisation require unanimity among members, which has led to
significant deadlock over key issues such as territorial disputes, and the organisation lacks any
enforcement mechanism for its decisions. Furthermore, the organisation takes a strong stance on
non-intervention into its members’ domestic politics, which has led to accusations of inaction
during regional crises such as the 2021 coup in Myanmar (Chongkittavorn, 2021). While the
organisation is a significant achievement given the diversity of its members, the heterogeneity of
the membership is also a barrier for greater integration. This heterogeneity extends from security

36

(for example, while the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore are US allies, Cambodia and Laos
are more aligned with China) to economics (where Vietnam and Singapore are more pro-free trade
and Indonesia is more protectionist), hampering the effective functioning of the organisation
(Kahler & MacIntyre, 2013; Capanelli et al., 2011). Nevertheless, despite these shortcomings, the
sheer diversity of Southeast Asia means that even the current level of integration exceeds
expectations. With its goals of building a regional community based on the three pillars of security,
economic, and socio-cultural cooperation, the organisation has achieved some goals in a region
with a very fragmented history. The organisation has managed to integrate Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, and Myanmar, all of which were considered political and diplomatic pariahs for much
of the period leading to their accession. On the economic front, ASEAN member states together
constitute a free trade area, significantly lowering barriers to trade in the region. Beyond Southeast
Asia, ASEAN has led efforts to create wider trade zones such as RCEP, which brings together
ASEAN and its largest trading partners, as well as served as the core for larger international forums
such as APEC and ASEM. ASEAN states have also liberalised visa restrictions among each other,
leading to significant increases in tourism and cultural exchange. Indeed, despite its shortcomings,
ASEAN has been considered one of the most successful regional integration projects in the world
(Haas, 1997).
4. Towards a new theory on regional integration
Of the existing theories on regional integration, the cultural approach offers some
promising insight into explaining the integration gap between Central Asia and Southeast Asia. In
this context, culture is defined as ‘the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and
emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature, but
lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions, and beliefs’ (UNESCO, 2001).

37

Cultural similarities, then, can be described as neighbouring states’ predominant cultures sharing
these features, such as a common religious background, related languages, or similar traditions
and beliefs. However, a clearcut linear relationship between levels of regional integration and
cultural similarities is clearly incomplete. Rather than look at cultural similarities in a linear
manner, a better cultural explanation for regional integration can be derived from the levels of
identity consolidation. Identity consolidation here is defined as having a coherent national identity
that frequently originated from the cultural and political elites and diffused sufficiently among the
general population, leading to self-identification with these norms. This identity entails clear
delineation of both signs of belong to the ingroup, such as a shared culture, history, or language,
and clear awareness of the boundary between what constitutes the ingroup and the outgroup on an
international level, particularly relative to neighbours.
What this means in practice is that countries with higher levels of identity consolidation
have a coherent and cohesive self-image of what constitutes the nation (and by extension what
does not constitute the nation), with clear boundaries and shared common symbols such as a
common national myth, national language, history, and perceived common ethnic identity.
Conversely, countries with lower levels of identity consolidation exhibit fluidity in what
constitutes the nation and who belongs to the in-group. This framework offers a compelling
explanation for the puzzle of Central Asia’s lack of regional integration, particularly relative to
Southeast Asia. Despite its less favourable conditions for the formation of regional organisations
while sharing a similar strategic environment, Southeast Asia’s early moves toward regional
integration are a good comparison to Central Asia’s lack of progress. In contrast to these two cases,
Europe, with its long history of nation statehood and uniquely strong regional integration offers a
reference point to the other two regions.

38

More specifically, Europe, with its long history with nation building and taking the form
of a community of more homogenous states (frequently enforced by official state policy through
cultural and linguistic policies), particularly in the wake of the breakup of multi-ethnic empires
such as the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires after World War I and the various population
exchanges after World War II, is the region that consists of the most consolidated states. On the
opposite end of this spectrum is Southeast Asia, whose borders were drawn largely by colonial
borders, grouping together disparate ethnic groups with diverse languages, histories, and religions
while simultaneously splitting up ethnic groups that had shared polities in the precolonial era.
Central Asia, with its legacy of Soviet republics with titular nationalities and indigenisation
policies, lies somewhere in between. However, greater consolidation does not imply greater ease
of integration. While countries that have fully consolidated national identities can integrate more
easily with similar countries given their strong identities, countries that are partially consolidated
face more challenges to integration than those that are unconsolidated due to the fact that the latter
have the flexibility to reshape identities to be more suitable for integration while the former do not.
This distinction is summarised in the table below:
Level of Identity
Consolidation
Unconsolidated Partially
consolidated
Fully consolidated
Ease of Redefining
Internal Identity
Moderately easy.
Early stages of nation-
building allow a wide
variety of choices to
build commonalities,
meaning the core
identity of national
unity can be modified.
Fairly difficult.
Process of building
coherent national
identity has created a
core identity that is
difficult to modify
without undermining
the process.
Difficult.
Longstanding notions
of nationhood,
particularly in nation-
states, have reified a
national identity that
is difficult to modify.
Ease of Redefining
External Identity
Moderately easy.
Commonalities and
differences with
neighbours can be
emphasised and
deemphasised in early
Difficult. The process
of nation building
often relies on
emphasising
differences from
neighbours, but
Easy. Strong and
longstanding core
identity means issues
of contested identity
have already been
resolved, leaving

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stages to promote
better relations.
unclear boundaries
make relationships
risky to redefine.
significant room to
find commonalities.
Case Study Southeast Asia in the
1950s and 1960s.
Central Asia in the
1990s and 2000s.
Western Europe in the
1940s and 1950s
Table 4: Identity consolidation and regional integration
Here, a comparison to Hobsbawm’s criteria for nationhood is useful. According to
Hobsbawm (1991), a nation in practice must meet three criteria: (1) A “historic association with a
current state or one with a fairly lengthy and recent past”, (2) “[T]he existence of a long-established
cultural elite, possessing a written national literary and administrative vernacular”, and “(3) [A]
proven capacity for conquest”. While criterion (3) is largely applicable to the Darwinist thought
of the nineteenth-century context that Hobsbawm was examining at the rise of modern nationalism,
criteria (1) and (2) are useful for analysing nationalism in all three regions under consideration.
Western European states meet these criteria par excellence; countries such as France, Great Britain,
or Spain are all associated with political entities with a lengthy past and are indisputably viewed
as nations despite the existence of substantial internal cultural diversity (such as the Catalans in
Spain, the Welsh in Great Britain, and the Breton in France). Others, such as Italy and Germany,
derive their nationhood from criterion (2), with standard German and Italian as unifying factors
for these nations.
Southeast Asian states in their nation-building projects also aim to meet criteria (1) and (2).
While postcolonial states on Mainland Southeast Asia such as Myanmar, Cambodia, and Vietnam
could easily draw on criterion (1) using past polities such as Taungoo, the Khmer Empire, and Dai
Viet, Maritime Southeast Asia had to actively build connections to past polities encompassing the
entire state, such as official historiography attempting to tie modern Indonesia to the Majapahit
Empire (rather than the Sultanate of Aceh or the Balinese kingdoms) or Malaysia to the Malacca
Sultanate. In all these cases, the colonial powers did not seek to encourage a unified national

40

identity in the process, which could have undermined colonial stability; indeed, even at
independence, divide and rule was much more frequently the colonial modus operandi in the
region. These countries have also used criterion (2) to build their national identities; Indonesia
adopted a form of Malay (which was already widespread as a trade language around the
archipelago) as a unifying language, while the Philippines uses a modified form of Tagalog as the
national Filipino language.
Central Asia offers the most interesting application of these terms. Formerly colonies of
the Russian Empire before becoming constituent republics of the USSR, the Central Asian
republics’ positions during the Soviet era could be described as neither colony nor equal parts of
the Soviet Union to the Russian SFSR. At the onset of the Soviet period, the region consisted of
lands formerly ruled by nomadic khanates alongside emirates based out of major cities in the
region such as Bukhara and Khiva (Kokand having been annexed by the Russian Empire in 1876).
The nomads consisted of groups known today as the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen, while the
cities and settled villages were a mix of groups now known as Uzbeks and Tajiks. The Russian
Empire largely made the distinction between nomads and sedentary dwellers, with the latter known
generally as Sart regardless of linguistic affiliation. The nomads were termed variously Kazakh
and Kirgiz; indeed, through the early Soviet period, the Kazakhs were known as Kirgiz, and the
Kyrgyz as Kara-Kirgiz (Black Kirgiz). Inhabitants were far more affiliated with their ethnically
diverse and intermixed localities regardless of later ethnic affiliation, and multilingualism was a
common phenomenon in many populations. For example, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the Ferghana
Valley both self-identified as Kipchak, while Tajik and Uzbek bilingualism was prevalent in
Bukhara without clear ethnic distinction between the two languages (Dadabaev, 2020; Finke &
Sancak, 2012). This situation would last until the indigenisation policy of the Soviet Union in the

41

1920s, when the central Soviet government began reorganising the region into ethnic-based
republics as subdivisions within the USSR.
While Russian was eventually enforced as the “language of interethnic communication”
and some degree of Russification did occur (particularly in Kazakhstan), the indigenisation policy
of the early Soviet Union attempted to create nations based particularly on criterion (2) in a top-
down manner to establish what Soviet authorities perceived as coherent groupings in the region.
In practice, this meant creating standardised versions of local languages and associating them with
past literary corpuses, such as tying standardised Uzbek (based on the Tashkent-Fergana dialect)
to Chagatai writers such as Alisher Navoiy or associating standard Tajik (as separate from other
standards of Persian such as Dari or Farsi) with writers of the Middle Persian tradition that
flourished under the Bukhara-based Samanids such as Rudaki. These historical figures usually
products of multilingual environments, wrote in multiple languages, and inhabited worlds that
translate poorly into notions of the ethno-based nation state. Ethnic groups were also delineated
linguistically, often using names that bore little resemblance to existing self-identification in the
region and cutting across traditional allegiance networks. The independent post-Soviet Central
Asian republics continue this practice and further emphasise criterion (1), as evidenced by the
Uzbek state’s official historiography on continuity with the Timurid Empire (as evidenced by
monuments to Timur constructed throughout the country since independence) or Tajik state’s
association of itself with the Samanid Empire. The top-down nature of the original codification of
these identities and their subsequent diffusion into the general public through education and
official historiography meant that the peoples of the region gradually converged towards the new
identities through a process guided by official Soviet policy and continued after the collapse of the
USSR by the newly independent republics. As a result, the Central Asian countries possess

42

nationalism as habitus rather than as coherent ideology arising from ethnic and cultural
considerations (Roy, 2004). This distinct process of nationhood means that the physical and
cultural boundaries of the Central Asian nation are well-defined in theory but often blurred and
contentious in practice, leading to a situation where regional organisations are harder to organise
on the basis of cultural proximity despite a long shared and intermixed history.
Connecting the trappings of the nation state with regional integration through the concept
of national consolidation can help explain the paradox of higher levels of integration in Southeast
Asia and low integration in Central Asia despite the greater common histories, cultures, languages,
and religions, cultural similarity, and economic and social linkages in the latter. By further refining
the cultural aspect of regional integration into cultural consolidation, a more robust cultural
explanation of regional integration is possible. Consolidated countries tend to have developed their
national identities through an organic manner dependent on antecedents of communal
commonalities, which are frequently later reinforced by policies that impose a common identity
on its population, such as France or Italy’s promotion of the national language at the expense of
local languages in education, business, and government, leading to the significant decline of
minority languages in both countries (such as Occitan or Breton in France and Lombard or
Ligurian in Italy). These nations are frequently formed through processes of “national awakenings”,
which leads to assertions of distinctiveness and promotion of a shared history, vernacular, and
sense of self. Many of these awakenings have their roots in the 19
th
century and usually start among
an elite before diffusing throughout the general population. Movements to form ethnic nation-
states have strongly shaped the political geography of Europe, whether amalgamating states with
a common language identity to form a new country (such as Germany or Italy, both of which were

43

unified from disparate independent polities) or breaking up empires into ethno-states, such as the
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
These identities have been given time to consolidate over the years, both internally through
mass adoption of new national standards (whether voluntary or coerced) and externally through
border wars and population exchanges. Notable examples of the latter include the various conflicts
between France and Prussia/Germany over Alsace-Lorraine (German-speaking but part of France),
the Italian occupation of Nice during World War II (which was formerly part of the Kingdom of
Piedmont-Sardinia, which went on to form Italy), the population exchanges between Turkey and
Greece in 1923, and the expulsion of Germans from various Eastern European countries after
World War II. Due to this process, Europe today is overwhelmingly dominated by states with
consolidated identities with few remaining serious territorial disputes. National distinctiveness is
not questioned, thereby leading to greater ease of cooperation with neighbours. In contrast,
unconsolidated states tend to be more internally diverse, potentially with multiple ethnic groups,
religions, and languages present within its borders.
Unlike in ethnically consolidated nation-states, these countries’ borders were not drawn to
encompass any one ethnic group, and most often arose as a legacy of colonialism, where borders
were drawn without regard to the local population. Maritime Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan
Africa are two areas where these states predominate; for example, the Wolof are split between
Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania. While the lack of clear linguistic and cultural boundaries may
lead to conflicts to define these boundaries (such as in Borneo between Malaysia and Indonesia or
the Western Sahara Dispute with Morocco), this also allows the boundaries themselves to be
reshaped by elite opinion to improve the nature of relations with neighbouring states to ease

44

cooperation. Thus, paradoxically, regional integration is a possibility with both fully consolidated
and unconsolidated nations.
Where regional integration runs into more significant barriers is with countries with only
partially consolidated national identities. In these cases, the states make a claim to being ethno-
states dominated by one ethnic group, with attendant characteristics of a nation state such as a
shared language, literary corpus, culture, and history. However, while shared identities of nation-
states are largely constructed to different degrees, the core identities of partially consolidated states
have neither been fully embraced by the whole population nor clearly delineated, leading to
potential issues with neighbouring countries who may claim similar symbols for their ethno-state.
This is particularly problematic when these states are established in ethnically mixed areas and
have not had time for their national identities to fully be embraced and thereby consolidated. The
partially consolidated identities are exacerbated when the separate identities are close to each other,
where close similarities lead to the fixation on small differences between groups. This enhanced
sense of difference could fuel greater conflict between similar states and inhibit cooperation.
A notable example of this is Central Asia, where the ethno-states today were largely created
on the basis of Soviet policy in the 1920s, which endowed each with a standardized language (with
a literary corpus) with a unified historiography and culture. The lack of consolidation here is a
function of the top-down nature of nation building through the Soviet bureaucracy, the tension
between these republics as homes of titular nationalities in the Soviet era with the condemnation
of bourgeois nationalism as well as later policies promoting Russian as the “language of interethnic
communication” as well as the professed goal of the “fusion of nations”, and the short period of
time that these countries have experienced as independent nation states since the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Thus, there is a simultaneous strong identification with a nation and weak definition

45

of what those entail, both internally as a matter of symbols and history, and externally in relation
to neighbours. These barriers to cooperation are exacerbated by Soviet-era borders, which
ostensibly aimed to encompass groups within their titular nations but in fact left large populations
outside the borders of their own republics. As these boundaries were never meant to function as
international borders, they are also exceedingly complex (with numerous enclaves and exclaves),
reflecting the mixed nature of these populations. Within this context, regional cooperation is
exceedingly difficult despite all the existing cooperation advantages that Central Asia possesses.
In order to explain the levels of national consolidation and their relationship to regional
integration, three regions will be examined: Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia,
with a special focus on Central Asia and Southeast Asia, which both form the core of the puzzle
and are relatively understudied in the field. The brief examination of Europe will focus on the core
of the formation of the EU in Western Europe, looking initially at the long history of nationalism
leading to greater identity consolidation before focusing on the relationship between identity and
the formation of the EU and the challenges it has faced since then through government policy and
official EU positions.
For Southeast Asia, the case will look at the histories of four of the five founding states of
ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, examining how these
countries have navigated issues of national identity relative to their precolonial and colonial
histories, and how they have shaped these identities through official government policy throughout
the early decades of independence in the 1950s and 1960s into their membership in ASEAN (while
Thailand was also a founding member of ASEAN, its status as the only country in Southeast Asia
not subject to European colonialism means that it has a distinct status among the original members
in terms of national identity and will not be considered at this time). Of particular note is how

46

precolonial antecedents are used to justify modern politics and identity and the issues that this
causes in regional interstate relations. These policies are examined through documents and
speeches from each country’s political elite, particularly rhetoric related to conflict with
neighbours.
This process is repeated for Central Asia, with an overview of each country’s pre-Soviet
and Soviet histories examined before looking at how the modern states have navigated their
national identities since independence in the 1990s and how this relates to the lack of regional
integration in the region. As Central Asia forms the core of this puzzle, these documents and
speeches from are augmented with interviews from academics, students, politicians, and business
leaders in the region. The interviews were conducted in a variety of languages, with English used
in Kazakhstan and English and some Uzbek used with respondents in Uzbekistan. The
interviewees in Kazakhstan were found through contacts at Nazarbayev National University in
Astana, Kazakhstan and in Uzbekistan through personal contacts in business and NGOs as well as
the University of World Diplomacy and Economics in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
While the respondents are not necessarily a representative sample of the entire population
due to limitations of time and resources, they still offer a wide slice of each country’s society
socially, culturally, and geographically. The interviews were open ended conversations focused on
each country’s national identity and relations with neighbours. Interviews were necessarily
circumspect in content due to censorship restrictions, particularly in Uzbekistan (where
interviewees preferred to discuss issues in person) and Kazakhstan. These interviews are also
supplemented by data from the Central Asia Barometer seventh wave from 2020 on language use,
self-identification with the state, and views of neighbours based on surveys conducted in
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Due to the closed off political situation of

47

Turkmenistan and the attendant difficulties of conducting research there, the country is included
in neither the interviews nor in the survey data.

48

CHAPTER TWO: A BRIEF LOOK AT EUROPE
The European Union (EU), centred on the founding members in Western Europe,
constitutes the most successful regional organisation in the world due to its unprecedented level of
integration. Characterised most visibly by its four freedoms of movement (capital, labour, goods,
and services), the EU is the greatest exercise in sovereignty sharing through supranational
institutions in the world today. Uniquely among regional organisations, laws passed by the EU
take primacy over national laws of member states (as established in the case Costa v. ENEL in
1964), demonstrating an unparalleled pooling of sovereignty among member states into the
regional organisation (de Witte, 2011). This organisational success and Europe’s long history of
nation-states mean that European nationalism and regional integration are by far the most studied
within the field due to Europe’s prominence in the development of both. Consequently, a brief
exploration of European regional integration and its relationship with national identity and
nationalism is useful for understanding integration (and lack thereof) occurring in other regions in
the world.
Encompassing 27 members as of 2022, the European Union is an unprecedented effort at
integrating disparate nation-states, many of which were in deep conflict within the previous
century. The project has also been consistently expanding for almost its entire existence, with only
one member state (the United Kingdom) having exited the organisation (in addition to former
constituent parts of member states exiting when political realities changed, such as in the case of
French Algeria or Danish Greenland). From a core of six members in Western Europe (Belgium,
France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) the organisation has gradually
expanded to include twenty-seven countries, including new members in Central and Eastern

49

Europe who were part of the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War; in addition, several other states in
the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe are candidates for accession to the organisation.
Remarkably, the bloc was formed in a region that had undergone a long series of wars,
culminating in the highly destructive second world war; in fact, the direct precursor to the EU was
created with the explicit goal of making war "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible"
(Schuman Declaration, 1950). This is particularly noteworthy given the predominance of the
nation-state in Europe (indeed, Europe is arguably the birthplace of the modern nation-state and
remains its most prominent example), which was a major contributing factor to the destructive
wars in the region. Despite the rise in Euroscepticism among member states, few mainstream
parties in member states advocate exiting the European Union, with most mainstream Eurosceptic
positions pushing against further integration rather than the integration already present; this applies
most strongly to the original six members of the organisation. Given this background, the
relationship between regional integration and national identities in Europe is crucial to
understanding the roots of regional integration projects around the world. Accordingly, this section
will briefly examine European national identity as well as the formation and growth of the
European Union, before going on to consider the issues that have arisen when these two factors
interact and collide in the EU’s relations with both member states and accession candidates.
1. Europe and the rise of modern nationalism
The modern countries of Europe share substantial cultural, historical, and religious
commonalities. Unique among continents, Europe’s borders are not defined through a common
landmass (as is the case with Africa or the Americas), with the boundary between Europe and Asia
instead defined through a series of mountain ranges and rivers, encompassing an area that is far
more meaningful as a cultural rather than a geographical unit. Most modern definitions indicate

50

the boundary of Europe at the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and the Turkish straits, leaving both
Russia and Turkey transcontinental countries. As a result, Europe as a concept has certain
advantages in cultural similarity and unity that are not necessarily present in other continents.
Europe is overwhelmingly Christian (with almost all countries having populations adhering
predominantly to three main branches, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern
Orthodoxy), most European countries are dominated by speakers of Indo-European languages
(with the exceptions of Estonia, Finland, Hungary, and Malta).
Particularly throughout the last two hundred years, European states have undergone
significant nation-building projects, establishing national language standards, creating shared
symbols and traditions, and codifying a unified national historical narrative. France enforced a
unified curriculum and national language and enacted policies designed to push for the supremacy
of the French language over other languages within France. Germany and Italy were both unified
in 1871 to form nation-states for Germans and Italians, respectively, and codified a national
linguistic standard across the country at the expense of local varieties. Both countries also engaged
in irredentist behaviour in this process in order to unite regions containing their linguistic brethren.
The same process also occurred in Greece, which gradually acquired Greek-speaking territories
from the Ottoman Empire and, later on, Britain and Italy, in a process lasting until the end of World
War II. The era after World War I also saw the collapse of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman Empires, leaving in their place ethno-states that purportedly formed the homeland of a
nation. However, the boundaries between nation-states did not always correspond to the
inhabitants of these territories; accordingly, European nation-states engaged in both assimilationist
policies and population exchanges in order to homogenise their populations. Prominent examples
of the former include the suppression of regional languages in Francoist Spain, the Magyarization

51

policies of Hungary, and the Germanisation policies of Prussia and the German Empire, while the
latter include the 1922 population exchanges between Turkey and Greece and the expulsion of
Germans from Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II. The result of these policies is that by
the time European integration became a major force in European politics, Europe largely consisted
of homogenous nation states with clear dominant cultures, languages, and histories.
2. The formation and growth of the European Union
The modern projects of European integration’s antecedents can be found dating back to the
18
th
century with the 1713 treatise "Projet de Traité pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe" by
the abbey Saint-Pierre, the European commonwealth of Blöntschli in 1871, and the project of
European confederation proposed by the lawyer Gaston Isambert, continuing onto the early
twentieth century with the 1922 proposal of Comte Coudenhove-Kalergi and the 1929 speech of
Aristides Briand at the League of Nations (Menendez-Alarcon, 1995). These ideas came to fruition
in the aftermath of World War II with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) in 1951, which created a common market for steel and coal among the six original
signatories, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and West Germany. The ECSC
evolved to become the European Economic Community with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which set
up a common market based on the freedom of movement of goods, services, labour, and capital
and called for greater integration among the six members. The treaty also established a customs
union with common external tariffs for member states and created joint regional institutions and
joint policies on agriculture, trade, and transportation, and called for more cooperation in policy
making in the future, with the explicit aim of being a step towards “ever greater integration”,
leading to eventual political unification of Europe (Treaty of Rome, 1957). The Treaty still forms
the core of European integration, albeit with various amendments and new versions throughout the

52

decades since, most notably the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht, which created the European Union,
codified conditions for membership, and pushed for deeper integration among member states.
These six members became the “Inner Six” who have since then continued to form the core
of European integration. The Inner Six were later contrasted what was termed the “Outer Seven”,
which was a grouping that included European countries who were more sceptical of greater
integration, namely Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United
Kingdom, who together formed the European Free Trade Association. Nevertheless, despite some
Euroscepticism around the region, the European Economic Community gradually gained members,
starting with Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom in 1973, followed by Greece in 1981,
Portugal and Spain in 1986, and Austria, Finland, and Sweden in 1995. While enlargements
throughout the 20
th
century largely included developed countries in Western Europe, the 2000s led
to more controversial enlargements that include poorer states who were members of the former
Communist Bloc. The largest EU expansion came in 2004, when the ex-Communist states of the
Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland joined alongside Cyprus and Malta.
This was followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013, with more countries
negotiating to enter. However, a member state also left the EU for the first time in 2020, when the
United Kingdom officially left the bloc.
Parallel to this process of accession for new member states is a gradual deepening of
integration between the states. The 1950s brought the first session of the European Parliament in
1958, while the 1960s came with the advent of the first common agricultural policy in 1962 and
the full implementation of the customs union in 1968. In 1974, a mechanism was created to transfer
money from richer to poorer regions of the EEC, and the single market is finally launched to its
full extent in 1993. 2002 brought the highly significant milestone of the introduction of physical

53

coins and notes for the Euro, marking the creation of the largest monetary union in the world.
However, monetary union without fiscal union contributed to significant debt crises in the EU in
the 2010s. Overall, the European Union throughout its history has consistently grown in both
breadth and depth of integration; however, it still has not managed to entirely resolve the tension
between states that wish to integrate more quickly and those who would prefer a looser association,
as exemplified by the various different attitudes towards the Euro throughout member states, with
some new members such as Croatia joining the Eurozone at the earliest possible date while others
such as Sweden using loopholes to avoid membership.
3. Identity, sovereignty, and the European Union
Despite its position as the most successful regional integration project in the world, the
European Union has faced substantial opposition over the course of its resistance, including
accusations of low democratic accountability, erosion of national sovereignty, wasteful
bureaucracy, uncontrolled immigration, and neoliberal economic tendencies. The wide range of
this opposition is reflected in the diversity of Eurosceptic parties within both the European
Parliament and in individual member states. Notably, the erosion of sovereignty and infringement
on national culture is an issue that has appeared repeatedly throughout the history of the European
Union. Even among the Inner Six, integration was met with substantial domestic opposition from
certain quarters. In France, Gaullists, who centre the relevance of the nation state and are strong
proponents of national sovereignty, were originally hostile to greater integration; however, this
opposition gradually became pragmatic acceptance, which saw European integration, albeit in a
manner where nation-states still form the core unit with an emphasis on intergovernmental
cooperation rather than supranational institutions, as key to advancing French interests
(Guyomarch et. al., 1998), and the French and Dutch electorates both rejected the EU Constitution

54

in 2005. Studies have also shown that local populations are often concerned with the dilution of
national identity in the face of EU integration (Menendez-Alarcon, 1995).
Opposition is stronger beyond the Inner Six. For example, Sweden’s membership in 1995
had strong domestic opposition which feared a loss of national sovereignty; since then, Sweden
has refused to participate in the euro despite being obligated by its accession treaty to do so
(Sunnus, 2004). Fellow latecomer Austria opposes greater integration based on fears that it’d
compromise Austrian sovereignty, particularly in defence and immigration (Pelinka, 2004). While
older EU members frequently object to the accession of new members (usually through fears of
greater immigration through the freedom of movement or possible impediments to greater
integration due to the lack of preparedness of new member states), even the new member states
have clashed with the European Union over matters of sovereignty. Notably, the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia strongly objected EU plans to settle migrants around member states,
while the ruling parties of Poland and Hungary have fought the EU over democracy and LGBT
rights, with both seeing the latter as an imposition on their own traditional values. In addition, the
primacy of EU law over local law has been challenged by Poland, whose Constitutional Court
declared the principle incompatible with the Constitution of Poland in October 2021. These
conflicts have all prompted the EU to threaten withholding funding from member states that do
not comply with EU directives (Guasti & Bustikova, 2023).
The most extreme example of Euroscepticism within the European Union is of Brexit,
whereby the United Kingdom became the only member state to have left the European Union after
a referendum in 2016. While there are myriad reasons behind the vote for leaving the EU, the
question of sovereignty and identity played prominent roles in the debate as well as the popular
consciousness of the process. The sovereignty argument, which was frequently invoked during the

55

debates leading up to the referendum, attacked the perceived democratic deficit of the European
Union with an underlying unease at decisions being made away from the national capital (despite
the participation of all member states’ electorates in EU institutions such as the EU Parliament)
(Baldini et al, 2021). While both economic and social arguments have been made for the causes
behind Brexit, studies have found that individual support for Brexit is correlated with the level of
importance that the respondent places on British identity, demonstrating a clear cultural dimension
to Brexit (Chan et al, 2020).
Much of this tension is directly related to the explicit and implicit cultural goals of the
European Union as building a pan-European identity. The need to build a common European
identity has been repeated throughout the history of the European Union such as in the Genscher-
Colombo Plan of 1981, various meetings of EU institutions (e.g., the European Council meeting
in Stuttgart in 1988, which stated that cultural co-operation was to be undertaken "in order to affirm
the awareness of a common cultural heritage as an element in the European identity" (EC Bulletin,
1983), and explicitly in the 1991 Treaty of Maastricht. The importance of European identity has
led to the paradoxical coexistence of nationalist opposition to greater EU integration as well as
expansion of the EU to new members, most notably to Turkey. In this sense, aspects of European
identity are also being negotiated, with boundaries being drawn on what constitutes being (or not
being) European. These boundaries are frequently implicit – while the official reason for the lack
of progress made in Turkish accession negotiations is the democratic deficit in Turkey itself, these
political reasons are inextricably tied with doubts on the Europeanness of Turkey itself as well as
the compatibility of a large Islamic country with EU membership both as a political matter through
the potential influence Turkey would have in EU institutions as a result of its large population as
well as the impact of the freedom of movement of Turks across Europe, particularly given

56

perceptions of the lack of integration of existing Turkish immigrants in EU countries such as
Austria and Germany (Economist, 2021).
Given this history of interstate warfare and nationalism, that the European Union managed
to overcome these challenges to expand both in breadth and depth to become the most successful
regional organisation in the world appears to be somewhat counterintuitive. However, it is
precisely this long history of consolidation of national identities through reinforcing a common
national language, culture, and history as well as the suppression of minorities and population
exchanges that created a basis of cultural stability that could be leveraged for regional integration,
allowing European identity to be layered over national identities; as the core identities are
perceived as clearly distinct, commonalities with neighbours are easier to accept. Moreover, it is
important to note that despite the presence of Eurosceptic politics in most EU states and polls
showing substantial distrust of EU institutions, no polls show mainstream support for exiting the
European Union or Eurozone in any member state as of 2022, with parties formerly advocating
the concept such as France’s National Rally and Italy’s Five Star Movement moderating their
stance to advocate for internal reforms instead. Thus, while the terms of integration may be
contested, among most member states, the concept of integration is not controversial. Moreover,
since the exit of the United Kingdom from the EU, the European Social Survey shown that support
for leaving the EU has declined across all member states, with support not exceeding 30% in any
EU state (Henley, 2023).
While the national identities of the Inner Six have been strongly consolidated since the
foundation of the EU, partially consolidated identities still have a strong impact on both the
increasing depth of integration among member states as well as in the accession of new members.
For example, while all other member states supported the opening of accession talks for Albania

57

and North Macedonia in March 2020, the move was vetoed by Bulgaria, which considers the
Macedonian language as a dialect of Bulgarian, reflecting the still ongoing process of
consolidating North Macedonian identity which began in the twentieth century (similar issues of
Macedonian identity also hindered Macedonia’s entry to NATO, which was vetoed by Greece until
the country changed its official name to North Macedonia). The dispute was only ended in June
2022, where a compromise was reached so that accession negotiations could begin (Associated
Press, 2022). Other issues that have arisen include whether EU documents would be translated into
both Croatian and Serbian separately rather than into a single Serbo-Croatian version due to cost
reasons, and the perception of EU encroachment on traditional values in Poland and Hungary on
LGBT issues (Roache, 2019).
Despite the challenges facing European integration, the European context of homogenous
nation-states with clearly defined national identities tied to a wider shared European identity
constructed through history created an environment amenable to regional integration. While the
European Union must navigate the various nationalisms in its efforts to increase the depth of
integration, it also benefits from the clear identity boundaries established by European nation states
over the past 200 years while also relying on a shared overarching European identity formed from
historical Greco-Roman and Christian influences. Thus, while nationalist politics continues to be
an obstacle to greater integration, it did not prevent the formation and development of the European
Union as an entity, and the baseline strong identities of European states made the pooling of
sovereignty a more palatable option for individual states. These strong identities were constructed
and reinforced over long histories as nation-states and vary substantially between European
countries and still serve as an important feature in regional relations today.

58

CHAPTER THREE: IDENTITY CONSOLIDATION IN MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA
Relative to Europe and the European Union, Southeast Asia’s regional integration
structures are comparatively underdeveloped, with the analogous regional organisation, the
Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) possessing far fewer powers than the EU.
Nevertheless, ASEAN has been at the forefront of some cooperation between member states such
as a region-wide free trade zone and visa-free access for citizens within the bloc (stopping short of
EU-style freedom of movement). However, these achievements must be viewed within the
framework of the region’s diversity and fractious history to demonstrate the obstacles that states
in the region have overcome to engage in regional integration. This is most apparent in the post-
colonial states of maritime Southeast Asia, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and
Singapore, who, along with never-colonized Thailand, were the founding members of ASEAN.
Consisting of eleven countries broadly divided into Mainland Southeast Asia (Cambodia,
Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam) and Maritime Southeast Asia (Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore), Southeast Asia does not seem like an ideal candidate
for regional integration. The region that has frequently been dubbed as a designation of
convenience rather than a coherent cultural or social unit, and designation of Southeast Asia itself
was popularised only in the World War II period, initially used mainly in a military and strategic
framework by the United States (Fifield, 1983). Prior to this period, Southeast Asia was referred
to by a variety of names by groups both inside and outside the region. The region was termed
Nanyang ( 南洋), or Southern Ocean, by the Chinese, indicating the region’s location to China’s
immediate south. Correspondingly, the Japanese also called the region variously as Nanyo (using
the same characters and meaning as Nanyang), or Nanpo ( 南部), broadly meaning “the South”,

59

prior to World War II (Tachikawa, 2013). Europeans referred to the region as the East Indies, and
variously to Mainland Southeast Asia as Indochina, and Maritime Southeast Asia as the Malay
Archipelago, with the latter in reference to racialist concepts of the “Malay race”. The term Malay
Archipelago has also become widespread in Southeast Asia itself and is generally equated with the
Malay World (Alam Melayu) or Nusantara, both of which refer to the archipelagos of Maritime
Southeast Asia (Sweeney, 2011). As a result, the concept of Southeast Asia has often been
characterised as “non-indigenous”, dating only to the modern creation of the South East Asia
Command in 1943 during World War II (Steinberg, 1987). Nevertheless, these terms have come
to be embraced by the countries in the region since then and have served as important markers for
the development of a regional identity (Acharya, 1999). While the designation of Southeast Asia
may be more recent, there is also some evidence that some form of regional identity had begun to
emerge earlier. The term Malay, used to unify the people of Maritime Southeast Asia, was used
by Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh in a letter to a Russian writer in 1923, where he
described himself a member of “an ancient Malay race” (Smith, 1968). As the Vietnamese are not
Malay under any generally accepted definition, the use of the term could be interpreted to
differentiate the Vietnamese from the Chinese, indicating a sign of unity between the people of
Vietnam and the archipelago in a common regional identity (Hoskins, 2012).
Nevertheless, the cohesion of Southeast Asia as the self-contained unit we conceive of
today is not necessarily self-apparent. Moreover, while in the precolonial era, there was intense
trade and interaction among these countries, they all became colonies of different European
colonial powers for hundreds of years, meaning their economies were all oriented towards trading
and serving the rest of their respective empires rather than trading with each other (Brown, 1994).
The region is also religiously and linguistically diverse. While Mainland Southeast Asia is largely

60

Buddhist and dominated by Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, and Sino-Tibetan speakers, Maritime
Southeast Asia is mostly Muslim and Catholic and dominated by speakers of Austronesian
languages. This diversity is also present within each country, particularly in Maritime Southeast
Asia, where each state inherited its borders at independence from colonial powers. These borders
cut across historical territorial affiliations and left countries with highly diverse populations
without clear pre-colonial bases for national unity. This has manifested itself both in internal
conflicts (such as the West Papua Insurgency in Indonesia, or the Mindanao conflict in the
Philippines) and interstate conflicts (such as the North Borneo Dispute between Malaysia and the
Philippines, or Konfrontasi between Malaysia and Indonesia). Thus, building national identities in
the region appeared to be a minefield full of overlapping cultural, linguistic, historical, and
territorial claims.
Despite these challenges, the region has managed to build a lasting regional organisation,
namely the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which began with five founding
members in 1967, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore. Within little
more than a decade, the founding countries overcame the overlapping conflicts from colonial-era
inheritances to form lasting political, cultural, and economic cooperation. The core of the original
members gave ASEAN the institutional structure that later allowed it to expand to cover the entire
region (except for Timor-Leste). The formation and endurance of ASEAN is counterintuitive given
the diversity and overlapping claims of the region; however, the amorphousness of the original
member states’ national identities allowed them the flexibility to adapt and interpret their
respective national narratives, whether towards shared values or overlapping claims. As a result,
the same borderless Indonesian nationalism that led to Konfrontasi with Malaysia could be
redirected to focus on the historical ties of the peoples of the archipelago, while the demographic

61

distinctiveness which led to the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia could be redirected as
brotherhood with another state that shares similar ethnic groups (albeit in very different
proportions). Using this mechanism, these Southeast Asian countries had leeway in interpreting
their histories and national identities, allowing them to enter mutually beneficial regional
relationships that are compatible with the nationalist narratives of newly independent states. In this
section, the precolonial and colonial histories of four of the original member states of ASEAN,
namely Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines will be discussed in detail to explore
how each state has navigated its post-independence path towards regional integration both in terms
of domestic politics and international relations. Collectively, these four members constitute
Maritime Southeast Asia and correspond to most definitions of the Malay World. All had been
European colonies and have their modern borders drawn by European colonial powers.
Existing arguments fail to capture why Southeast Asia has experienced greater integration
than Central Asia. In addition to the region’s lower level of cultural similarities, Southeast Asia
also lacks the shared Soviet history of the Central Asian states, with the elites experiencing colonial
systems that oriented them towards different colonial metropoles in Europe. While Southeast
Asian countries occupy similar niches in the colonial era, all offering raw materials to colonial
European industry, before later becoming low-cost manufacturing hubs, Central Asian countries
had complementary economies and infrastructures as a product of Soviet economic planning,
making regional integration much more potentially fruitful for the latter than for the former.
From a security standpoint, both regions have states with territorial disputes with China,
which have become more salient as China becomes more assertive in its foreign policy. Moreover,
unlike Europe, which had a major power promote its regional integration (in the form of the US
with both NATO and the EU), Central Asia and Southeast Asia have security relationships with

62

an extra-regional power that has been ambivalent on the prospect of regional integration in these
areas. In Central Asia, Russian efforts to include the Central Asian countries in integration projects
always included other former Soviet republics as well as Russia itself, leading to conflict between
the more pro-Russian countries in the region (such as Kazakhstan) and the more independent-
minded republics (such as Uzbekistan), leading to the failure of these projects in the region
(Laruelle & Peyrouse, 2012). Similarly, in East and Southeast Asia, the United States has preferred
to build a “hub-and-spoke” network of bilateral alliances with partners rather than form a common
mutual alliance system as with NATO in Europe. The one US attempt to form a multilateral
defence pact in the form of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) lasted only from
1954 to 1977 and included more countries outside of Southeast Asia than in the region, with extra-
regional members including Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and France.
In this sense, SEATO has more in common with the Russian efforts to recreate a regional sphere
in the former Soviet republic centred on itself than it does with NATO’s multilateral cooperation
(Koga, 2011). Despite these security parallels, Southeast Asia still has managed to forge forward
with regional integration, while Central Asia still languishes in this respect. Consequently, an
identity consolidation-based theory has great potential in explaining the integration gap between
these two regions. If the theory on the relationship between the unconsolidated nature of their
national identities and easier regional integration applies, we’d expect to see some initial conflict
over overlapping national identities. This conflict would be followed by an active reshaping of
national identities to emphasise commonalities in service of greater cooperation and regional
integration.
While the section focuses on the four founding members of ASEAN located in Maritime
Southeast Asia as they share a common history of formal European colonialism, the remaining

63

founding member, Thailand, has also played an important role in the success of the organisation.
Despite being the only Southeast Asian country not to have become a European colony, Thailand
(formerly Siam) still experienced significant European influence in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. During this era, Thailand underwent a modernisation process, part of which entailed
negotiating the cultural, geographical, and linguistic boundaries of what it means to be Thai,
particularly in the face of European encroachment on its borders. Official Thai historiography
regards Thailand as a country that had transformed itself from a traditional state into a modern
country through wide-ranging reforms instituted by the monarchy to the economy, political system,
education, and culture. The Siamese adaptation of nation and nationhood transformed the
traditional system of small city-states called mueang ruled by vassals of the King of Siam into a
state with demarcated borders and administrative units, with Bangkok exerting centralised control
(Owen, 2005). In this process, Thailand developed what has termed a “geo-body”, which ties the
Thai nation to its territory. In ceding control over former vassals and territories to Britain and
France, then, parts of the “body” became severed from the whole.
One consequence of these changes is that the frontiers of Thailand do not map neatly into
ethnic and linguistic concepts of Thai-ness (Winichakul, 1994). For example, more Lao speakers
live in Northeastern Thailand than in Laos due to the partition of historical Lao territory between
French Indochina and Siam. In the south, while some Malay sultanates were lost to Britain,
Thailand retained control over the Sultanate of Pattani, giving the country a majority-Malay region
that became a significant source of conflict. In order to enforce Thai-ness on these minorities,
Thailand passed a series of edicts between 1939 and 1942 enforcing the Thai ethnic identity and
the Central Thai language on the entire population. For example, through this process, the Lao
people in Thailand became simply “Isan”, or Northeasterners within a common Thai identity.

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These policies were also enforced on other Tai-speaking groups such as the Lanna in northern
Thailand and, less successfully, on the Malays of the south (Numnonda, 1978). The Thaification
policies led to a sense of separation between Thai identity and non-Thai, even vis-à-vis closely
related groups such as the Lao. This history of both connection with and clear separation from
gave favourable conditions for Thailand to participate in the founding of ASEAN. As the only
founding member that’s on Mainland Southeast Asia, Thailand was crucial in allowing ASEAN
to define itself as a truly region-wide organisation rather than one centred on the Malay world.
This paved the way for the later accessions of the other Mainland states of Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, and Myanmar.
1. Singapore
The question of national identity in Singapore and Malaysia are inextricably intertwined
and relate to the two countries’ shared pre-colonial and colonial histories and form a part of the
larger interconnectedness of historical maritime Southeast Asia. Prior to colonialism, Singapore
and Malaysia often formed parts of the same polities (alongside parts of Indonesia and occasionally
the Philippines) within the wider world of the archipelago, and even today, they share significant
demographic and cultural similarities. Precolonial divisions bear little resemblance to modern
borders, which began to be codified through the colonial period and were retained with
decolonisation.
Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, both Singapore and
Malaysia were British colonies and at one point constituted one country, when the Federation of
Malaya (which itself consisted of the Federated and Unfederated Malay States and the Crown
Colonies of Penang and Malacca and was granted independence in 1957) was joined together with
the Crown Colonies of Sarawak, North Borneo, and Singapore to form Malaysia in 1963. However,

65

this situation lasted only until August 1965, when Singapore was expelled from the union. The
union and subsequent separation of Singapore from Malaysia are central to Singapore’s sense of
identity both within itself and relative to its neighbours. Despite this complex relationship, both
countries were founding countries of ASEAN and were highly influential in the early days of the
organisation alongside Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Navigating similarity and
difference with Malaysia (particularly in terms of culture and identity) has been a key part of
Singapore’s participation in regional organisations from the very beginning and is shown clearly
through the rhetoric of Singaporean politics and nation-building throughout the early years of
independence.

Figure 1: Map of Singapore (CIA World Factbook)
a. Precolonial Singapore
The precolonial antecedent as claimed by Singaporean historiography is the old Malay
kingdom of Singapura, which was recorded in the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) as founded in
1299 by Sang Nila Utama. Sang Nila Utama was a prince of the Kingdom of Srijivaya, which was

66

a polity based in Sumatra in modern-day Indonesia. The kingdom continued to prosper as a trade
entrepot and was referred to as Temasek, before changing its name to Singapura near the end of
the 14
th
century. According to the Sejarah Melayu, the last king of Singapura, Parameswara (also
known as Iskandar Shah), fled a Majapahit attack on the island in 1398 and went on to found what
would become the Sultanate of Malacca; however, Portuguese sources indicate that he originated
from Palembang and was driven out of Singapura by the Majapahit after trying to usurp the
kingdom’s throne (Miksic, 2013). From the 15
th
century on, the island was part of the Sultanate of
Malacca, before passing to the Sultanate of Johor, which was founded by a descendant of the sultan
of Malacca in the 16
th
century after the fall of Malacca to the Portuguese. In the subsequent
centuries, there was some evidence that the Sultanate of Johor maintained a trading post on the
island; however, by the 1600s, the island had sunken into obscurity.
Throughout this period, there was no clear delineation between the history of Singapore
and the history of Malaysia or Indonesia. The Kingdom of Singapura was clearly part of the world
of the polities that spanned the archipelago in the precolonial era, with the distinction between it
and what now forms Malaysia to be no greater than the distinction between the various polities
that eventually came to constitute Malaysia and Indonesia today. Indeed, the story of Singapore’s
inclusion in the Sejarah Melayu confirms its integral role in Malay historiography, given the
importance of the Annals to Malay culture and ethnogenesis due to Iskandar Shah’s foundation of
what was arguably the most important state in Peninsular Malaysia (which played a key role in the
Islamisation of the region, which in turn forms a major pillar of Malay identity today) (Roff, 1994).
This historical relationship is indicative of the lack of meaningful distinctions, whether
geographical, political, linguistic, or cultural between precolonial Singapore and Malaysia.

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b. Singapore as a British colony
The founding of modern Singapore dates to the founding of a British trading outpost by Sir
Stamford Raffles in 1819 as part of the British East India Company to challenge the Dutch
stranglehold over the region through their holdings in Sumatra and Java. At that point in time,
Singapore still constituted part of the Sultanate of Johor. By intervening in the succession of the
Sultan of Johor, the British outmanoeuvred the Dutch in the sultanate and gained the right to
establish a trade post on the island. Subsequent treaties gradually led to the island being ceded to
the British East India Company in 1824. Singapore came to form one of the Straits Settlements
(along with Malacca and Penang) and became a Crown Colony (governed directly from London)
in 1867. Thanks to its role as a free port on the strategic Strait of Malacca, the city became a major
trading port during this period both as a point of export for tin and rubber coming from British
Malaya (for which Singapore was the administrative centre from the 1870s to 1880s, before losing
this title to Kuala Lumpur), then as a refuelling point and entrepot with the forced opening of China
and the construction of the Suez Canal. By 1880, over 1.5 million tons of good passed through the
port, making it one of the most important ports in the world. This state of affairs would largely
continue to the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 during World War II (Turnbull, 2020).
Throughout this period, Singapore attracted significant immigration from around the world.
Notably, large numbers of Chinese labourers came to the island and came to form the majority of
the population, with increasing numbers staying permanently in the twentieth century. Indian
immigrants also came in large numbers, surpassing the Malays to become the second largest
community in 1860. Large numbers of Malays also remained, and the demographic changes of
this era still characterise the demographic mix of Singapore today, with a Chinese majority and
substantial Malay and Indian minorities (Saw, 2012). Nevertheless, while the proportions differ,

68

the major groups that compose the Singaporean population are still largely identical to those of
peninsular Malaysia today; however, this distinction would set the stage for conflict between
Singapore and the other colonies both in the colonial era and after independence.
c. Towards independence and beyond
Even after World War II and decolonisation, no clear cultural distinction existed between
Singapore and the rest of the colonies that became Malaysia. After the British re-established
control over Singapore from the Japanese at the end of WW2, Singapore became its own crown
colony in 1946. The rest of Malaya (including the two other Straits Settlements, Penang and
Malacca) was amalgamated to form the Malayan Union. The failure of the British to defend the
island during WW2 led to a loss in faith in the infallibility of British power in the colony and
marked a significant increase in agitation for independence, with the British correspondingly
lowering levels of engagement by introducing greater local rule. While Singapore began seeking
to join the Malayan Union in 1955, the offer was repeatedly rebuffed by the Malayan government
due to demographic fears – the inclusion of Singapore’s overwhelmingly Chinese-majority
population would lead to ethnic Chinese outnumbering Malays in the entire union, negating one
of the primary goals of Malay nationalism. This conflict is central to understanding both the
relationship between Malaysia and Singapore in the 1950s and the 1960s as well as Malaysian
politics today. At the heart of the matter, two competing narratives characterise the nature of
Malaysian nationalism and politics – Malaysia for the Malays (Malaysia untuk orang Melayu)
alongside Malaysia for the Malaysians (Malaysia untuk orang Malaysia). While the former
espouses an ethnic basis for Malaysian politics and places ethnic Malays in a privileged position,
the latter calls for a more civic nationality politics, where Malaysians of all ethnicities (whether
Malay, Chinese, or Indian) hold an equal position in an independent Malaysia. The government of

69

Malaya was led by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), who envisioned a country
where ethnic Malays would be dominant and feared the demographic changes that would result
from the admission of Singapore into the union.
Malaya was eventually granted independence in 1957 under the leadership of UMNO.
Subsequent negotiations led to the admission of Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah (formerly British
North Borneo) into the union to form Malaysia in 1963. Singapore’s inclusion into the federation
was perceived as more palatable alongside British Borneo, as it was felt that the inclusion of the
Malay and indigenous Bornean communities in the latter would balance out the ethnic Chinese in
Singapore. In aggregate, in 1965, Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah together was 39%
Malay, 7% Dayak, Iban, and other indigenous Bornean peoples, 42% Chinese, and 10% Indians;
while the Chinese still formed the largest group overall, the indigenous Borneans were counted
together with Malays as bumiputera (sons of the soil), combining to make the largest demographic
in the new federation (Lee, 1965).
Malay Chinese Indian Indigenous
Borneans
Others
Singapore 13.6% 75.4% 8.6% n/a 2.4%
Malaya 49.8% 37.2% 11.3% n/a 1.8%
Sarawak 17.4% 30.8% n/a 50.7% 1.1%
Sabah 0.4% 23% n/a 50.0% 26.5%*
Table 5: Ethnic distribution in Malaya & Singapore in 1957 and Borneo in 1960 from census
data *Includes 15.8% classified as “Other Muslim Groups”.
Singapore’s accession to the Malaysia Agreement included several provisions of additional
autonomy for the island, namely that it would retain control over education and labour, and in
return for this increased autonomy would send only 15 delegates to the national parliament instead
of the 25 that it would have been entitled to by population. Singapore also pledged to send 40% of

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its state revenue to the federal government and would extend a loan to Sarawak and Sabah in return
for the common market with the rest of Malaysia (Malaysia Agreement, 1963).
The agreement failed to resolve the ethnic tensions in the newly founded country, and
federal politics was immediately plagued by the conflict between different visions of Malaysian
national identity. Almost immediately, conflict arose over Singapore’s budget contribution, with
the national government proposing raising the contribution level to 60% (Durai, 2015). More
importantly, the national ruling party UMNO came almost immediately into conflict with the
ruling party of Singapore, the People’s Action Party (PAP), led by Lee Kuan Yew. In particular,
while Malaysia had granted citizenship to ethnic Chinese communities at independence, UMNO
wished to pursue a policy that gave bumiputera a privileged position in Malaysian politics and
economy, which it saw as in accordance with Article 153 of the Malaysian constitution, which
emphasised the Malay nature of Malaysia and proclaimed Islam to be the state religion. In a more
practical sense, this emphasis was seen as necessary for the Malay population to catch up
economically and socially with the Chinese population, who overwhelmingly dominated the
economy. In practice, this meant that Malays were granted special financial and economic benefits.
This policy put UMNO on a direct collision course with the PAP and the Chinese-majority
population of Singapore, who resented these privileges and wanted a more multicultural Malaysia.
Indeed, Lee Kuan Yew laid out this view in a 1965 speech:
“…we are building a new community. And this is the forerunner of what is
possible in the rest of Singapore and indeed in the rest of Malaysia if we are
prepared to be forebearing with each other, to build a Malaysian Malaysia, a
Malaysia in which all Malaysians regardless of race, language, religion, share
equally in the opportunities of life… Are we Malaysians or are we Malays?
Because I can't be a Malay. I can be a Malaysian. And 61% of the people of
Malaysia can become Malaysians; can become loyal to Malaysia, accept the
concept of a Malaysian Malaysia.”

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Ethnic tensions continued to brew alongside the political tensions between Singapore and
Kuala Lumpur. The UMNO government accused Lee Kuan Yew of divisive politics, with Syed
Jaafar Albar terming Lee Kuan Yew an oppressor of Malay rights in Singapore and called for
Malay unity against this oppression in a speech in 1964; in addition, Syed Jaafar Albar also
condemned Malay members of the PAP. Race riots ensued, and Lee Kuan Yew accused the
UMNO government of fomenting anti-Chinese sentiment among the Malays, asserting that, “First,
if you allow these people every day in [prominent Malay-language newspapers] Utusan Melayu
and Utusan Zaman to tell the Malays: "Malays unite, Malays unite" -- they talk about race, never
talk about nation, they always talk about "bangsa", race; never nation” (1965). There was also an
electoral component to this – although the PAP and UMNO agreed not to field candidates in each
other’s territories, both broke this promise during the 1964 Malayan election. However, even non-
Malay members of the UMNO government baulked at Lee Kuan Yew’s tactics - the then-Minister
of Finance, Tan Siew Sin, stated that "It would be far easier for the camel to pass through the eye
of the proverbial needle than for the Central Government to co-operate with the Government of
Singapore”, describing Lee Kwan Yew as the "greatest, disruptive force in the entire history of
Malaysia and Malaya”.
Nevertheless, despite the agitation between the federal government and the government of
Singapore, the partition of Singapore from Malaysia was viewed with great scepticism by much
of the Malaysian political elite, who feared the violence and bloodshed that had been seen in the
partitions of India and Cyprus. The Leader of the Opposition also dismissed the PAP and its allies
as serious threats, referring to them as “peanut parties” (kachang puteh, or kacang putih in modern
orthography, meaning “easy” in Malay slang) (Straits Times, 1965). At the same time, Malaysia

72

was also undergoing significant conflict under konfrontasi with Indonesia, making the security
situation especially delicate.
While the riots appeared to have been ethnic in nature, party politics clearly played a
prominent role – UMNO included ethnic Chinese members in leadership, and at the same time,
PAP included ethnic Malays in its leadership as well. Thus, while the political elite made extensive
use of ethnic grievances in their rhetoric, it would be an oversimplification to declare the separation
between Malaysia and Singapore to be purely ethnic in nature (Noordin Sopiee, 2005). However,
ethnic divisions would play a major role in the subsequent dissolution of the union, and despite
last-ditch efforts to salvage the situation, on 9 August 1965, the Parliament of Malaysia voted
unanimously to expel Singapore from Malaysia (the Singaporean delegates did not participate in
this vote), and on that same day, a tearful Lee Kuan Yew declared Singapore independent and
became the Prime Minister of the new Republic of Singapore. However, there is some evidence
that negotiations for separation had actually begun in 1964, and the expulsion was merely
presented as a fait accompli to members of the public who were still supportive of the union (Lim,
2015).
Even in separation, the close-knit cultural ties between Malaysia and Singapore remained
clear. In his speech announcing Singaporean independence, Lee Kuan Yew emphasised that “[for
the] whole of my adult life… I have believed in merger and the unity of these two territories. You
know it's a people connected by geography, economics, and ties of kinship”. A political separation
in this case is hardly a rejection of the shared roots, history, and culture between the two sides
despite the history of inter-ethnic violence and political agitation and would set the stage for
increased cooperation in the region in the future despite the two entities no longer forming one
single state.

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d. Singapore and ASEAN
Just two years after this separation, Singapore and Malaysia both became signatories to the
ASEAN Declaration on 8 August 1967 (alongside fellow founding members, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and Thailand). The economic and security case for Singapore to join was clear – as a
small country that was still tied in terms of security with Malaysia and sandwiched between
Malaysia and Indonesia, regional stability was tantamount to Singapore’s continued independence;
indeed, the fear of communism was an implicit impetus in the formation of ASEAN (Acharya,
1998). Moreover, as a city-state, Singapore needs to import necessities such as food and raw
materials from other countries in the region; in addition, as an economy that heavily depends on
its status as a trade entrepot, Singapore is dependent on good economic relations with its
neighbours. In turn, Singapore offered neighbouring countries a convenient centre of global
commerce. Nevertheless, while Singapore is uniquely dependent on ASEAN among member states,
its small size made Singapore an anomaly within the organisation (Rau, 1981).
Shared culture and values were also central to the formation of ASEAN (Acharya, 2000;
Estanislao, 2001; Narine, 1998) despite difficulties due to the amorphousness of colonial borders.
From a cultural perspective, Singapore used its size and cultural ties to its advantage despite having
a population that largely originated outside the region. With a national identity that has been
described as marked as much by an absence as by a presence (Chua, 1998), Singapore inserted
itself into the regional narrative through emphasising shared commonalities. This is made easier
by Singapore’s rejection of defining itself as an ethnic Chinese entity, embracing instead a
multicultural entity with four official languages (English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil). While
English is the most dominant language in Singapore, followed by Mandarin Chinese, the country
still recognises its Malay history through declaring Malay the national language in the constitution;

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the national anthem, Majulah Singapura, is also in Malay (Tan, 2014). Singapore also became the
country most closely associated with the concept of “Asian values”, which was claimed to
emphasise communalism, thrift, and the giving up of certain personal freedoms to ensure stability
(de Bary, 1998). Asian values were conceived as a rejection of what was seen as the Western
values of international institutions and formed a key part of the rhetoric of regional leaders such
as Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamed (Thompson, 2004). In doing so, Asian values provide
a model of Asian modernity that could serve as a unifying aspiration for other countries in the
region.
Throughout this process, it is apparent that despite the ethnic overtones of the separation
of Singapore from Malaysia, the fluidity of national identity in Singapore’s case allowed for
significant flexibility in regional cooperation; indeed, the emphasis of commonality from
Singapore even came to serve as a useful rhetorical tool for countries around the region in the form
of Asian values. The lack of clear cultural boundaries between Singapore and its neighbours,
particularly Malaysia, paradoxically allowed for a greater level of regional cooperation due to the
ease with which Singapore could construct a multicultural national identity and emphasise
different aspects of its own history and culture to build commonality with its neighbours. This has
allowed the city-state to occupy the position of the financial centre of Southeast Asia and ensuring
its security and economic welfare in regional structures.
2. Malaysia
Malaysia’s position as a founding member of ASEAN was uniquely precarious, as it had
conflicts with most of the other founding members in the period leading up to the Bangkok
Declaration in 1967. It experienced a military confrontation with Sukarno’s Indonesia over the
legitimacy of Malaysia, particularly in Borneo, from 1963 to 1966, it had expelled Singapore from

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the federation in 1965, and had an active dispute with the Philippines over North Borneo (now
Sabah), whose government broke off relations with Malaysia in 1963 over the issue. In addition to
these disputes, neighbouring Thailand also was undergoing an irredentist Malay Muslim
insurgency that continually posed a difficult question in Malaysian politics with the potential to
affect Malaysian-Thai bilateral relations. That ASEAN was formed in such close proximity to of
all these disputes highlights the challenges that the regional organisation faced and the improbable
odds that were overcome. These security concerns alongside the relatively developed nature of the
Malaysian economy meant that Malaysian engagement with ASEAN was much more lukewarm
than Thailand or Indonesia in the early years (Rau, 1981).
These disputes speak to the past interconnectedness in the region, particularly in Maritime
Southeast Asia, reflecting the lack of clear boundaries, whether political or cultural, across the
region in the precolonial era. As a result, the national identity of an independent Malaysia held
significant overlap with the national identities of all its neighbours in a potent mix of politics,
history, culture, and language. It shares its official language with Indonesia (with Indonesian
simply a different standard of Malay), while the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia is just as much a
part of the Malay heartland as peninsular Malaysia, while Singapore was close enough
geographically, socially, and culturally that it briefly formed a part of Malaysia itself. Meanwhile,
Malaysian Borneo shared significant ties with Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan), while Sabah had
far closer ties to the Philippines’ Mindanao than to Malaya. Thus, navigating these competing
claims over history was crucial to Malaysia’s participation in regional integration projects.
a. Precolonial Malaysia
The Malay Peninsula was home to a series of Malay polities who exerted control over
various parts of the Southeast Asian archipelago, most notably the Langkasuka Kingdom (which

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lasted from the 2
nd
to 15
th
century CE) in the northern part of the peninsula and the island-spanning
Srivijaya Empire (lasting from the 7
th
century to 13
th
century CE), which originated in Sumatra but
came to cover the Malay Peninsula and parts of Java at its height in the 8
th
century. Both had Old
Malay as their primary language and were heavily Indianized Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms. By the
14
th
century, the Srivijaya Empire had given way to the Javanese Majapahit Empire, which
controlled land and tributaries ranging from Sumatra in the west to Papua in the east and is often
portrayed to be the antecedent of modern-day Indonesia (Suporno, 1979).

Figure 2: Map of Malaysia (CIA World Factbook)
The dominance of these Hindu-Buddhist polities would gradually wane with the arrival of
Islam in the region in the 14
th
century, setting the stage for the formation of Malay as an
ethnoreligious identity. In the 15
th
century, the Sultanate of Malacca was founded by Parameswara
(who was the King of Singapura and related to the Srivijaya court) after his conversion to Islam.
Situated on the strategic Strait of Malacca on major trade routes connecting East Asia with Europe

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and the Middle East, the sultanate quickly grew and prospered, establishing diplomatic relations
with Ming China, and attracting Chinese traders to set up bases there alongside Japanese, Ruykyan,
Gujarati, and Arab traders. According to the Sejarah Melayu, by the 1420s, the ruling class and
subjects of Malacca had embraced Islam, with the ruler Muhammad Shah adopting the title of
Sultan. Malacca became key to the Islamisation of the archipelago to as far afield as Mindanao in
the Philippines. In addition to transforming the political system, Islam also became a central
marker of Malay identity (Barnard, 2004).
Malacca reached the zenith of its power in the mid-fifteenth century after defeating several
Siamese invasions and ruled over an area covering the Malay Peninsula up to southern Thailand
and the east coast of the island of Sumatra on the other side of the Strait of Malacca. This era
marked a golden age not just for Malacca but also for the Malay sultanates around the region. The
Malay variety of Malacca became the regional lingua franca, and Malacca was key to the formation
of Malay identity. The era also inspired the composition of the Serajah Melayu (Malay Annals)
between the 15
th
and 16
th
centuries and is considered as one of the most important texts in the
Malay language. The Annals depict a romanticised history of the rise and fall of the Malacca
Sultanate and still serves as the most comprehensive compilation of precolonial Malay history; in
addition, it defined the relationship between the ruler and the ruled in an Islamic entity (as opposed
to the god-king that was prevalent in previous Malay polities). Malacca’s wealth attracted the
attention of Europeans, who had begun participating in the spice trade in Southeast Asia, and in
1511, Malacca fell to a Portuguese attack. After abortive attempts to retake the city, the sultan’s
family fled, with two princes forming successor states in Perak and Johor.
The sultanate was also central to a process of Malayisation across the archipelago, with
many Austronesian ethnic groups adopting Malay language, culture, and Islam, particularly with

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the indigenous Orang Asli and Orang Laut populations. This Malayisation continued even after
the fall of Malacca, incorporating peoples from the Batak in Sumatra to the Dayak in Borneo, with
its influence felt even in precolonial Philippines (Milner, 2010). Within much of the region,
Malayisation was cultural and religious rather than ethnic – by adopting Islam and Malay dress
and culture, members of neighbouring groups could become Malay (Kipp, 1993). One example of
this is that the Malay state of Negeri Sembilan is of Minangkabau origin (from Sumatra in modern
Indonesia). Indeed, Malay remains the dominant lingua franca in both Malaysia and Indonesia
today (in its Indonesian variety). The period also saw the birth and gradual consolidation of the
Alam Melayu (Malay world), which encompasses the Austronesian peoples of the archipelago, all
of whom have been influenced by Malay language and culture in some form. The Sultanate of
Malacca also served as a model for other Islamic polities in the region such as Johor, Perak, and
Pahang, many of which have survived as constituent states of Malaysia today and continue to play
a role in regional politics.
b. British Malaya and Borneo
Malacca was subsequently taken by the Dutch in 1641, and the British arrived in the region
in 1786 when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang to the East India Company. Colonial conflict
between these two countries were eventually resolved by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, which
divided the two sides of the Strait of Malacca, giving the British control over the Malay Peninsula
(including Malacca) and the Dutch suzerainty over Sumatra. While the modern border between
Indonesia and Malaysia reflects this treaty, the division effectively divided the Malay heartland in
two, with the Malay populations of Sumatra now separated from those of the Malay Peninsula.
The British eventually exerted control over the remaining sultanates on the peninsula by signing
treaties and, in some cases, wresting control from the Siamese, turning them all into protectorates

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by the turn of the twentieth century, while Penang, Malacca, and Singapore were retained as crown
colonies under direct administration.
The British colonies on Borneo, which are geographically separated from Malaya by the
South China Sea, were administered separately from those in Malaya throughout the colonial
period. Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to British soldier James Brooke, whose
descendants ruled the area as the “White Rajahs” until the territory became a crown colony in 1946,
while North Borneo (now Sabah) consisted of territory ceded to the British by the Sultan of Brunei
and the Sultan of Sulu and was made a protectorate in 1888 before becoming a crown colony in
1946. The colonies soon became a major source of raw materials for the British empire, most
notably rubber and tin. In all these territories, the British encouraged the immigration of Chinese
and Indians to fill labour shortages in the colony, particularly in the plantation and mining economy,
while other immigrants filled many urban white-collar professions. These waves of immigration
significantly altered the demographic balance of both Malaya and Borneo – on the Malay
Peninsula, Malays and Chinese came represent roughly equal proportions of the population. These
demographic changes would set the stage for later agitation within Malaysian politics as well as
its relations with Singapore.
c. Independence and conflict
This demographic conflict came into the fore almost immediately after the Allies retook
Malaya from the Japanese. While the British failure to defend Malaya and Singapore encouraged
independence sentiments among the local population, the Malays chafed at the notion that the
Chinese would be granted citizenship in the federal arrangements that the British proposed and
feared being outvoted. This reluctance also extended to union with Singapore in the federation
despite deep historical, cultural, and social ties, as the inclusion of Chinese-majority Singapore

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would further tip the demographic balance in favour of the ethnic Chinese community (Time
Magazine, 1952). The Malay population also objected to the reduction of the sultans’ political
power, and the leading Malay independence organisation called on Malays to begin a campaign of
civil disobedience by refusing to participate in the new political structure. This opposition led to
the collapse of the Malayan Union (1946-1948), which was subsequently replaced by the
Federation of Malaya, which had more restrictive requirements for citizenship. In both cases,
Singapore was excluded from the union.
Parallel to this process was an ongoing Communist insurgency, which was termed the
Malayan Emergency, and lasted from 1948 to 1960. Pro-independence fighters of the Malayan
National Liberation Army engaged in guerrilla warfare against British economic assets such as
rubber plantations and tin mines in an effort to win independence from the British and establish a
socialist economy with equality for all the races. This vision drew significant support from the
ethnic Chinese population, who were effectively disenfranchised in the political arrangement,
which further hardened the opinions of the Malay elite, who came to associate the insurgency with
ethnic Chinese (Deery, 2007).
The ethnic question also governed relations with Singapore and the crown colonies across
on the island of Borneo. As the inclusion of Singapore would have meant that ethnic Malays would
be outnumbered (and consequently outvoted) in a country ostensibly founded as their nation-state
(per the clauses placing Malay identity as a central guiding principle in the constitution), Singapore
eventually joined Malaya together with Sarawak and Sabah to form Malaysia in 1963; however,
the decision of the Sultan of Brunei not to participate (largely due to the Brunei Revolt) left the
bumiputera majority slimmer than anticipated. Despite extensive ethnic, historical, and cultural

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ties, the ethnic question clouding the Singapore-Malaysia relationship was never resolved, and
Singapore was expelled from the union in 1965.
The union of Sarawak and Sabah with Malaysia also precipitated conflict with Indonesia,
who controlled the southern 80% of the island of Borneo. The leader of Indonesia, Sukarno, saw
Malaysia as a British neo-colonial project designed to suppress genuine independence in Southeast
Asia. This policy was consistent with previous Indonesian diplomatic and military activity – in
1962, Indonesia had acquired Netherlands New Guinea, which the Dutch had retained when
granting Indonesia its independence in 1947 and gave support to the Brunei Revolt (which opposed
Brunei’s joining Malaysia), which was a major contributing factor for Brunei’s eventual decision
not to join Malaysia. Konfrontasi lasted from 1963 to 1966 and entailed Indonesia infiltrating
Malaysia (in both Borneo and Malaya) and engaging border raids, which were retaliated with
British incursions into Indonesia. In addition, Indonesia also provided support to movements in
Sarawak and Sabah as well as Bruneian rebels who objected to union with Malaya, preferring
instead to form their own North Borneo political unit. These organisations were often communist
in orientation and had the support of the Chinese as well as some of the Dayak communities in
Borneo (Kheng, 2009). These moves demonstrated the fact that Indonesia did not see the colonial-
era political boundaries of the archipelago as natural or organic, a perspective that is further
reinforced by Indonesia’s 1976 invasion and annexation of Portuguese Timor. Indeed, it has been
argued that Indonesia’s interventions in Brunei and Malaysia under Sukarno were at least partially
inspired by the concept of a Greater Indonesia or Malaysia which encompassed all territories
sharing a Malay identity (Poulgrain, 1998).
Sukarno was not the first to espouse this concept – the founding father of Philippine
independence, Jose Rizal, also was a strong proponent of pan-Malay ideology. On its part, the

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Philippine government also claimed Sabah through historical connections with the Sultanate of
Sulu, which had ceded all of its territory (consisting largely of the Sulu Archipelago off the coast
of Mindanao) to the government of the Philippines in 1915, when the Sultan renounced his political
roles. While the Philippine government did not follow Indonesia’s lead in pursuing this claim
militarily, it also refused to recognise Malaysia as the successor state of the Federation of Malaya,
leading to the cessation of ties between the two countries. The Philippine claim to Sabah would be
intermittently pursued throughout the following decades of the twentieth century. Within the
context of these disputes, regional cooperation and stability appeared to be very elusive, making
the subsequent formation of ASEAN a notable achievement.
d. The scope of Malay identity and Bumiputera status
The various disputes between Malaysia and its neighbours stem in large part from the
contested nature of what it means to be Malay. While Malaysia is the only country in maritime
Southeast Asia that explicitly privileges Malay culture and identity as the central guiding feature
in its political system, the broadness and amorphousness of the term means that ideologies such as
pan-Malay movements have been present not just in Malaysia, but also in Indonesia and, to a lesser
extent, the Philippines (all of which are inhabited predominantly by speakers of Austronesian
languages). At its broadest, the Malay world can be said to encompass all of maritime Southeast
Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. The current political
boundaries in the region are a legacy of colonialism and do not necessarily reflect cultural or
historical divisions between the peoples of the archipelago.
The complexity of Malay identity is also key to understanding Malaysia today. Far from
being associated exclusively with the Malaya or with modern-day Malaysia, the term Malay, or
Melayu, has had a contested history and referred to many polities on both sides of the Strait of

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Malacca. In fact, the modern Malaysian view of Malayness as stemming from the activities of the
Sultanate of Malacca may be said to be derived from British colonial historiography, who, in their
effort to consolidate control over the peninsula, pushed for fifteenth-century Malacca to be seen
as the origin of all things Malay, setting the tone for what was considered the “gold standard” for
Malay culture, language, religion, and behaviour (Andaya, 2001). However, the term had been
used widely on both sides of the Strait, as also evidenced by the Malay language’s homeland being
equally on Sumatra as on the Malay Peninsula.
Linguistic theories tend to place the origin of the Malayic languages on the western side of
Borneo (Collins, 1998). From there, the languages spread into Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.
Polities with Malayic languages soon arose, and there is evidence that the term Melayu was first
used to refer to the area around Jambi, Sumatra, which formed the heartland of Srivijaya (Wolters,
1970). The culture spread around the region, and Old Malay inscriptions were found as far afield
as the Philippines, but prior to the founding of Malacca, Melayu referred largely to Sumatra; indeed,
even according to the Serajah Melayu, Malacca was founded by figures originating in Sumatra.
Even this, the central text of Malay history, was not uncontested – the Sultanate of Aceh made its
own claims to centrality in the Malay world through the Hikayat Aceh, the Minangkabau had their
own extended version that placed their own founders in a central position, while the kingdom of
Siak also produced the Hikayat Siak, which also claimed their importance in the Malay realm.
That all three of these polities were on Sumatra speaks to the fluidity of the designation
“Malay” (Andaya, 2001). However, with the colonial division between the Dutch and the British
down the Strait of Malacca, the narrative of the Malay Peninsula as central to the concept of Malay,
and this view of history pervades popular consciousness today. Nevertheless, despite these
divisions, pan-Malay sentiment continued to exist and manifested itself in the various

84

decolonisation movements across Maritime Southeast Asia that sought to abolish colonial barriers
and reform a polity that would span across the entire archipelago. The nationalisms of Malaysia,
Indonesia, and the Philippines were intertwined for much of their history, reflecting a shared
cultural, linguistic, and historical heritage that was abruptly disrupted by the arrival of European
colonialism in the region. Nevertheless, this common past continued to be both a source of
cooperation and conflict even after colonisation, allowing these states to navigate their various
nationalisms to accommodate both integration and confrontation with their neighbours.
Within Malaysia itself, Malay-ness is complicated by its relationship with the bumiputera
status and the related social policies enacted by the Malaysian government since independence.
Bumiputera constitute 68.8% of the population of Malaysia in the 2010s, with Muslim Malays
forming almost 80% of this population. The other 20% of bumiputera largely consist of Orang
Asli in Peninsular Malaysia and the various groups inhabiting the interior of Sarawak and Sabah,
where they form the majority of the two states’ population. As a condition of accession to the
union, the two Bornean states retain the ability to operate their own immigration controls; however,
the Sabah government has promoted policies encouraging Malayisation and Islamisation of the
non-Malay bumiputera, with the promotion of Quran-reading competitions and missionary
activities among the Dusun; these policies were considered consistent with the Malaysian
constitution’s provision on the promotion of Islamic institutions (Cheah, 2002). This
encroachment on indigenous lands is compounded by the fact that both Muslim Malay and non-
Malay groups are considered indigenous under bumiputera status, with activists for increased
indigenous rights frequently suppressed by the Malaysian state with accusations of separatism.

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e. Malaysia and ASEAN
Despite disputes with all its neighbours, Malaysia became one of the original members of
ASEAN alongside Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. While konfrontasi initially
put a damper on pan-Malay movements, rhetoric soon once again emphasised the kinship between
the Malaysian and Indonesian peoples (Shafie, 2000). The emphasis on the brotherhood between
the two peoples was so strong that konfrontasi came to be seen as an aberration in relations, with
the post-konfrontasi period characterised by a desire to return to relations that existed before the
era (despite these commonalities also constituting much of the Indonesian justification for
engaging in the dispute to begin with). This is particularly noteworthy given that transborder
linkages were actively destroyed during konfrontasi, with one notable example being the Malay-
speaking Riau Islands, for whom the destruction of transborder commerce destroyed the local
economy, and it was not until regional integration became possible that the region’s economy
began to recover in earnest (Sutjiatiningsih, 1989).
Despite the two countries’ elites’ distrust of each other during konfrontasi, the rhetoric in
the period after shifted to cooperation, and while Indonesia failed to attain the goal of preventing
the union of Borneo with Malaya, post-konfrontasi Malaysia was content to let Indonesia take a
leading role in the region, as evidenced by Indonesia’s centrality to the ASEAN project
(Melbourne Age, 1966). Moreover, both countries shared the domestic concern of the dominance
of ethnic Chinese in the commercial sector, leading to greater convergence of nationalist and
economic interests. The goodwill of the bilateral relationship was so strong that there was even
talk of moving Indonesians to Malaysia to help increase Malay numbers to ward off Chinese
demographic dominance (Bentley, 1966). The formation of ASEAN was the clearest manifestation
of this rapprochement and would not have been possible had commonalities between the two

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countries not been emphasised in the aftermath of conflict (Jones, 1999). Indeed, some
commentators have stated that, as the ESCS was formed to prevent war in Europe, ASEAN was
formed partly to prevent a recurrence of konfrontasi (Utusan Malaysia, 1990). This rapprochement
was made easier by the collapse of the left-leaning Sukarno government; the Tunku declared on
his visit to Indonesia in 1968 that “Malaysians are blood brothers of the Indonesians. We are few
in number. I sometimes wonder whether the Malays would have come into being if it had not been
for the Indonesians. Thanks to Allah, Confrontation is over. It was not Indonesians confronting
Malays, but communists opposing non-communists.” This visit also included efforts to unite the
Malaysian and Indonesian varieties of Malay, which ultimately culminated in a 1972 reform that
unified the orthography of the two sides (prior to this, Malaysian Malay was strongly influenced
by English orthography, while Indonesian Malay was influenced by Dutch). In return, when
visiting Malaysia in 1970, President Suharto proclaimed ‘There are many things in common
between Indonesia and Malaysia and therefore we want to foster our brother relations with the
Malaysians.’
On its part, the Philippines also sought to downplay the North Borneo dispute in order to
promote good relations. It quickly resumed relations in 1963 and put the North Borneo dispute to
the side in order to maintain good relations. While the Republic Act No. 5446 made it clear that
the Philippines retained its claim over North Borneo, the government made no strong movements
to assert this claim. The issue continues to be present to various degrees in Philippines politics
largely without affecting relations with Malaysia; notably, in Philippine President Ferdinand
Marcos declared at the ASEAN Summit of 1977 that the Philippines would try to withdraw its
claim on North Borneo in the interest of promoting better ASEAN unity; however, this promise
was never followed through.

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The shared history, culture, and language of Malaysia and Indonesia are clear, and
overlapping national narratives led to the konfrontasi between the two states. This shared heritage
also affected Malaysia-Philippine relations with regards to the North Borneo dispute. However, in
both cases, the states re-leveraged this shared history into a shared identity, stressing
commonalities to build stronger regional integration and promote stability. This degree of identity
shift is only possible with an unconsolidated national identity, where the national narrative is still
in its early stages and can be shaped at will by the elite.
3. Indonesia
Indonesia is unquestionably the most important country in ASEAN. As both the most
populous country with the largest economy in the region, Indonesia is key to any regional
integration projects. A reflection of Indonesia’s regional prominence is the location of ASEAN’s
secretariat in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. However, Indonesia’s relationship with its neighbours
since independence has often been contentious, with unclear boundaries leading to border disputes
ranging from confrontation with Malaysia over its union with North Borneo to the annexation of
West Papua and East Timor. These disputes are indicative of the complex history of the region,
leading to overlapping identities in these independent states.
Consisting of 17,000 islands and 1,300 ethnic groups and languages, finding a unifying
national identity for Indonesia was always going to be a challenge. With its modern borders defined
largely as a result of colonial competition between the English and the Dutch, Indonesia’s
relationship with its precolonial history is complex, with the country extending claims to various
precolonial antecedents with various different degrees of control over the archipelago; indeed,
even the name Indonesia was originally used by Europeans, deriving from Greek rather than a
local language. The colonial divisions also divided multiple ethnic groups between Indonesia and

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its neighbours. Nevertheless, the various ethnic groups of Indonesia have had intensive
commercial, cultural, religious, and political interactions over the past several centuries (alongside
groups from neighbouring countries in Maritime Southeast Asia) and constituted integral
interconnected parts of the common world of the archipelago. One major consequence of this
history of both separation and unity in a common maritime world is that Indonesia has as its official
language Bahasa Indonesia, which is a variety of Malay that has served as the lingua franca of the
region for centuries, instead of Javanese, the language spoken by the by far most demographically,
culturally, and socially dominant group of the country (the Javanese constitute 40% of the national
population). Modern Indonesian politics as well as its relationship with its neighbours has been
dominated by the delicate act of balancing ethnic groups, history, and national unity. Given its
sheer size and diversity, how Indonesia manages its internal contradictions and navigates regional
relations is crucial for the survival and growth of any regional organisations in Southeast Asia.

Figure 3: Map of Indonesia (CIA World Factbook)

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a. Precolonial Indonesia
Like the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia, what is now Indonesia was dominated by a series
of Indianised polities, which exerted control over various parts of the archipelago. Islam first
arrived in the 12
th
to 13
th
century and gradually spread around the region – today, Indonesia is the
most populous Muslim-majority country in the world. Throughout all these changes, one constant
was the deep and repeated interactions of groups across the archipelago.
Several empires spanning much of what is now Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei
have existed throughout the centuries. The most notable of these are Srivijaya, which lasted from
the seventh to the thirteenth century and was based out of Palembang, Sumatra, and the Majapahit
Empire, which lasted from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century and was based out of the island
of Java. While Srivijaya was a maritime trade-based empire centred on Sumatra and the Malay
Peninsula, the Majapahit Empire was a more land-based entity centred on Java and extended over
most of what is Indonesia today (Pigeaud, 1960). Both these polities were Hindu-Buddhist in
religion (as with most Southeast Asian polities of the era) and Indianised in culture; the Majapahit
era, in particular, still informs much of Javanese art and high culture and is often cited as the
precolonial predecessor to the modern state of Indonesia in Indonesian historiography. Despite
their coexisting in a similar space, their social environments and economic models led to somewhat
different models of political control and legitimacy, with Srivijaya far more dependent on trade
and its attendant flows of people than Majapahit, which commanded in its own right a strong
prosperous heartland in Java.
Another polity, the Sultanate of Malacca, rapidly rose in power during the waning days of
the Majapahit Empire. Centred on the Malay Peninsula, the sultanate extended control over much
of the strait of Malacca and played an important role in the Islamisation of the region. Despite its

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location in what is now Malaysia, historians have argued that in many ways, it is, if not a direct
continuation of Srivijaya, then a polity with strong Sumatran roots, sharing with Srivijaya its
economic, security, and social organisation system due to both polities’ arising and prospering out
of the trading network of the Strait of Malacca and the transient nature of the populations of such
an economic system (Brissenden, 1976). The fall of Malacca to the Portuguese gave rise to a series
of competing polities based on the same model, based in Aceh, Riau, and Johor. Indeed, historians
have argued that an unbroken line can be traced from Srivijaya to Malacca to Riau and Johor due
to the continuities in social, cultural, and economic models (Andaya, 1982).
However, one thing to bear in mind when discussing these polities is that the territoriality
of these entities was reckoned differently by their own rulers – the extent of empire was considered
less an issue of territorial control and more the allegiance of different local leaders around the
archipelago. Thus, central rulers who commanded the allegiance of more and further flung local
leaders could be said to have a larger and more influential empire. This notion was not exclusive
to the Hindu-Buddhist polities (with the characteristic mandala model), but also applied to Islamic
Sultanates like Malacca, whose rulers conceived of their power more in the number of subjects
who owed them allegiance rather than a specific geographical control (Christie, 1995). This also
allowed for a degree of overlap on the outlying peripheries of the empires, where local rulers may
owe allegiance to several different imperial rulers at the same time. As a result, the boundaries of
these empires cannot be understood in the same way that modern borders are conceived of today,
which in turn can lead to difficulties in examining their roles in national historiographies in
Malaysia and Indonesia. Moreover, despite the fact that all these polities transcend modern
boundaries, they are viewed in both Malaysia and Indonesia as their historical antecedents without
regard for modern borders, with both claiming these polities as their own historical heritage and

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as bases for nationalist movements against the colonial powers (Mackie, 1974). The claims are not
entirely unreasonable – in addition to being linked through politics and trade, the ruling families
across the archipelago were closely linked by marriage and migration as well. Indeed, the modern
borders cut across what was frequently a much more salient divide between Sumatra and the Malay
Peninsula, represented by Srivijaya and Malacca, on the one side, and Java, represented by the
Majapahit on the other. Historical annals of the Malay polities on the peninsula and Sumatra often
portrayed struggles against the Javanese, with the Minangkabau and Malays united in their struggle
against the Javanese (Palmer, 1962).
The claims of precolonial antecedents and their mismatch with colonial boundaries
subsequently became key to the Indonesia-Malaysia relationship. Nevertheless, while the various
of the archipelago clearly had strong distinctions, whatever the case may be, it can be safely said
that prior to colonialism and even during, the differences between Indonesia and Malaysia or the
Philippines were no more significant than the differences between various components of
Indonesia today. Understanding this dual nature of both shared and contested histories is crucial
to understanding regional relations, particularly between Malaysia and Indonesia, today.
b. Dutch East Indies
The advent of colonialism in the region signified major shifts in how the various polities
related to each other. The two preeminent colonial powers in the Southeast Asian archipelago were
the British and the Dutch, and the colonial competition between these two countries still shape
regional politics today. The Dutch first appeared in what is now Indonesia in the 16
th
century for
the spice trade, and trade interests were eventually amalgamated in the United East Indies
Company, or the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie). The VOC gradually expanded a
trade network through the archipelago through building forts, signing treaties, and waging war

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(Ricklefs, 1993). In addition to trading in highly lucrative spices such as nutmeg, pepper, cloves,
and cinnamon, the VOC also introduced numerous other cash crops to the areas they controlled,
which came to include many areas beyond the trading forts in order to maintain their monopoly on
the production and trade of spices (Vickers, 2005). The centre of the VOC trading network in the
archipelago was Batavia, which was founded in 1619 after a war with Banten. The main
competitors for the Dutch during this era were the Portuguese, who had conquered the port of
Malacca in 1511 and threatened the Dutch monopoly on spices through their own trade network,
leading the Dutch to take Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641.
The mounting costs of war along with corruption, smuggling, and mismanagement
bankrupted the VOC, and the company was formally dissolved in 1800, with its colonial
possessions taken over by the Dutch government. In response to English encroachment in the
region, particularly with the presence of the English in Bencoolen (modern Bengkulu) in Sumatra
in 1685, founding of George Town in Penang in 1769, and founding of Singapore in 1819 led to
the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, which divided the region along the Strait of Malacca, with the
Dutch giving up Malacca to the British in return for Bencoolen and cementing Dutch control over
Sumatra and British control over Malaya. This division still forms the border between Indonesia
and Malaysia and was a huge disruption to the region, as the two previously formed a common
social, political, linguistic, and cultural space (Drakard, 1990).
The mid-nineteenth century on saw the Dutch extending their control over the archipelago,
which had previously been largely limited to trading ports and some productive hinterlands for the
purpose of VOC commerce (Vickers, 2005). While Java became the core of the colony
(particularly after the Dutch victory in the Java Wars in 1830), the Dutch also went on to wage a
series of wars against other areas of the archipelago, gradually extending their control. Many native

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kingdoms put up stiff resistance, with many areas such as Bali and Aceh coming under Dutch
control only in the early twentieth century. With the Dutch acquisition of West Papua in 1920, the
Dutch East Indies came to encompass the entire territory of Indonesia today. Thus, while
Indonesiia’s borders are a reflection of Dutch colonialism, the territory of Indonesia was ruled in
its entirety by the Dutch for less than three decades.
c. Independence and Konfrontasi
Dutch colonialism in Indonesia came to an abrupt end during World War II. After the Dutch
capitulated to the Germans in Europe in May 1940, the Dutch East Indies fell under the sphere of
Germany’s ally, Japan. The Japanese considered the natural resources of the Netherlands East
Indies to be crucial to their war effort and invaded in January 1941, with the Dutch army in the
Indies surrendering by March (Ford, 1993). The Japanese were initially welcomed as liberators
against the Dutch and quickly set about dismantling the Dutch colonial state, replacing it with their
own extractive structures (Vickers, 2005). However, the Japanese administration also inverted the
Dutch racial hierarchy and interned all Dutch citizens, placing Indonesians in many administrative
and leadership positions (Ricklefs, 1993). This newfound social prominence enabled the existing
independence movements to consolidate and expand through recruitment, paving the way for
Indonesian independence after the war.
After the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, nationalist leaders Sukarno and
Mohammed Hatta declared Indonesia independent. However, the Dutch immediately tried to
reassert control over their former colony and a war ensued. While the Dutch managed to regain
control over much of the archipelago, a successful guerrilla warfare campaign forced the Dutch to
capitulate and recognise Indonesian sovereignty in December 1949. However, the newly

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independent Republic of Indonesia did not include Netherlands New Guinea (modern West Papua),
which the Dutch retained control of despite strong opposition from the Indonesian government.
Seeing itself as the successor state of the Netherlands East Indies, the Indonesia continued
to agitate for the inclusion of Western New Guinea into the republic. This campaign took many
forms under the Sukarno government and sought to connect with the Indonesian nationalist
factions in Western New Guinea. On its part, the Dutch government justified its retention of New
Guinea through the significant cultural differences between the island and the rest of the
archipelago and sought to prepare the colony for self-rule. Negotiations between the Dutch and
Indonesian governments began in 1950; however, in 1952, the Dutch Parliament voted to
incorporate New Guinea into the Netherlands (Djiwandono, 1996). In 1954, Indonesia brought the
dispute to the United Nations, where Indonesia gained the political support of the Non-Aligned
Movement as well as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. On its part, the Netherlands
was supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, western Europe,
and some Latin American countries (Platje, 2010). However, diplomatic efforts by Indonesia at
the United Nations largely failed. Indonesia also engaged in an active campaign against Dutch
economic interests in Indonesia and nationalised the assets of Dutch companies in the country,
before severing relations with the Netherlands in 1960. The Netherlands, in response, founded a
New Guinea legislature and gradually increased self-rule in the colony.
With the failure of diplomatic options, Indonesia staged incursions into Papua, with
Sukarno ordering the army to prepare for an invasion in 1961; however, Indonesia’s military
incursions failed to produce significant results (Platje, 2010). Meanwhile, fearful of Indonesia’s
increasingly close ties with the Soviet Union over the matter, the United States facilitated
negotiations between Indonesia and the Netherlands in 1962 and pressured the Netherlands to

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conceded to Indonesian demands, ultimately leading to the New York Agreement, which had the
Netherlands hand over control of Netherlands New Guinea to the United Nations in October 1962,
which then in turn ceded the territory to Indonesia in May 1963. The Agreement also stipulated
that a plebiscite among Papuans in 1969 to determine whether the islanders wished to remain part
of Indonesia. The Act of Free Choice took place in August 1969, where 1,025 local leaders selected
by Indonesia voted unanimously to remain part of Indonesia. The act was rejected by sections of
the Papuan population, who have carried out an insurgency since then (Singh, 2005). The conflict
is just one of several instances where Indonesia looked beyond its borders at the time to incorporate
other regions into the country.
Indonesian attempts to change borders extended beyond former Dutch colonies. Another
notable example of this was konfrontasi with the British colonies of Malaya and Borneo. Sukarno
saw the impending union between Malaya and Sarawak along with North Borneo to be a British
neo-colonial project. Partly due to Indonesia’s history of gaining independence from the Dutch
through conflict, it saw independence through struggle as the only legitimate form of
decolonisation. As a result, the Indonesian government viewed Malaysia’s decolonisation process
with great suspicion, particularly proposals for the unification between Malaya and the British
colonies in Borneo (Liow, 2005). To combat this, Indonesia conducted a campaign of diplomatic
and military hostility against Malaysia between 1963 and 1966, which included incursions into
British Borneo (Sarawak and Northern Borneo, now Sabah) along with intervention in the Brunei
Revolt, which was largely responsible for Brunei’s not joining Malaysia. The campaign also was
supported by some North Borneans who opposed federating with Malaya. Konfrontasi ended only
in 1966 with the gradual ousting of Sukarno from power, replaced by Suharto, with both Malaysia
and Indonesia declaring the conflict over at a conference in Bangkok (Carver, 1986).

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Another example where Indonesia took over territory that was not a part of the Netherlands
East Indies was its invasion of Portuguese Timor in 1975. Unlike the rest of Timor and the
archipelago, the eastern half of Timor was colonised by the Portuguese instead of the Dutch, with
the border demarcated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1915. While the rest of the
European colonial powers rapidly decolonised after World War II, Portugal under the Estado Novo
dictatorship of Antonio Salazar continued to exert control over Portuguese overseas territories.
However, when the Estado Novo regime was overthrown in the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the
Portuguese government gradually withdrew from its colonies, and East Timor quickly came to be
ruled by the left-wing FRETILIN. Indonesia subsequently invaded in 1975 and annexed the
territory as a province of Indonesia. A number of reasons have been proposed for the Indonesian
invasion, ranging from the danger East Timor posed as an example of an “independent province”,
attempts to promote closer ties with the United States through eliminating the communist-aligned
FRETILIN, and potential natural resources in the area (Taylor, 2003). The Indonesian government,
on its part, claimed the invasion as an example of anticolonial unity against the remnants of
European colonialism in the archipelago, and that the division of Timor was an artificial legacy of
Dutch and Portuguese colonisation and an obstacle to the natural unity of the archipelago (Alatas,
2006). The Indonesian invasion of East Timor is another example of the unclear boundaries of
Indonesian nationalism – while in the case of New Guinea, the annexation was justified through
the Republic of Indonesia’s claim as the successor state to the Netherlands East Indies, the invasion
of East Timor spoke of wider archipelago unity more akin to the konfrontasi against Malaysia.
East Timor remained the 27
th
province of Indonesia despite continuing FRETILIN armed
resistance until 2002, when it again became independent as the Republic of Timor-Leste after a
bloody conflict and a UN-supervised referendum.

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d. Nusantara and Indonesian nationalism
The conflicts between Indonesia and its neighbours as well as the Netherlands over
Western New Guinea are evidence of Indonesian nationalism’s complex relationship with history
and boundaries. On the one hand, Indonesia claims to be the successor state to the Netherlands
East Indies, and with the acquisition of Western New Guinea, its borders are coterminous with the
Dutch colony. On the other hand, Indonesia also claims continuity with polities that extended
across the archipelago beyond colonial boundaries (particularly as a revival of the old Majapahit
Empire, which was also dominated by Java) and aspires to a sense of archipelago unity, which led
to conflict with both East Timor and Malaysia. This complexity in Indonesian nationalism (along
with Malaysian nationalism) predates independence and took on various different ideological
forms throughout both countries’ colonial period.
One avenue through which this united nationalism took place was through the lens of pan-
Islamic unity. Interactions between Indonesian and Malaysian students occurred in the early
twentieth century at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the foremost Islamic institutes in the
world (Roff, 1994). Within this environment, students from the archipelago perceived themselves
as common victims of non-Muslim oppressors and sought to use Islamic reformism to rebuild the
common Malay-Islamic identity (Kahin, 1952). These students disseminated Arab reformist
Islamic documents with an added nationalist dimension for the archipelago, with many such
pamphlets decrying the division between Indonesia and Malaysia and spoke of Indonesia and the
Peninsula as “one community, one people, with one Adat, one way of life, and what is more,
virtually one religion”, calling for unity between the Peninsula, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo (Roff,
1994). These students went on to return to their respective homelands and founded organisations
pushing nationalism through reformist Islam, which were quickly embraced by large sections of

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the colonial population (Benda, 1958). These movements quickly drew the alarm of the colonial
authorities, with both the British and the Dutch trying to tamp down on their influence among the
native population (Abdullah, 1971).
Another nationalist current that also extolled archipelagic unity was those influenced by
socialist ideas, which also often drew on precolonial history to support their visions of a united
Indo-Malay world. Unlike the Islamic reformists, these activists drew their vision for
decolonisation based on concepts of a secular civic citizenship. One prominent Malay socialist
who espoused the union of Malaysia with Indonesia was Ibrahim Yaacob, who saw the struggle
of independence as uniting the Bangsa Melayu (Malay nation) as a revival of the unity of the
people in the Srivijaya era and seeing no difference between Melayu Raya and Indonesia Raya
(Greater Malay and Greater Indonesia) (Yaacob, 1951). Moreover, proponents of union also saw
Malaya’s inclusion in Indonesia as a way to bolster their demographics in a larger state to forestall
an independent Malaysia where Malays are outnumbered by Chinese and Indians. This ideology
was most prominently represented by the Young Malays’ Union (Kesaturan Melayu Muda, or
KMM), which was founded in 1938 with the aim of uniting the two peoples. This also translated
into support given by Malayans to Indonesian independence fighters in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo
(Abdullah, 1985). From the Indonesian side, Indonesian nationalists also embraced the possible
union as a revival of the Majapahit Empire, which also encompassed the Malay Peninsula (Yamin,
1954). This was felt most keenly by Sumatran nationalists, who naturally felt the strongest kinship
to the Malays on the peninsula due to historical and cultural ties that the colonial separation had
not managed to sever completely. This unity was given a boost when both Sumatra and Malaya
were placed under the same administrative unit under Japanese occupation.

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The failure of union to materialise came down to several interconnected reasons, largely
due to the different nature of the interaction between the Dutch and British colonial administrations
with the local population as well as the different forms independence movements took in Malaysia
and Indonesia. The Indonesian experience with Dutch colonialism was far more disruptive than
the Malaysian experience with British colonialism, with much more precolonial life retained in the
latter’s model of governance. In turn, this led to different political alignments of the two colonies’
elites (Liow, 2005). In Indonesia, in March 1946, revolutionary violence broke out against the
sultans of Sumatra, who were highly integrated into the Dutch colonial system and were seen as
symbols of the colonial order; several sultans were killed or imprisoned (Reid, 1967). This was
anathema to the conservative elites of the Malay Peninsula, who saw these sultans as part of the
traditional order upholding Malay culture and society; these elites were more concerned with the
relative position of Malays in their own polity than in pursuing wider unity (Kessler, 1992).
Moreover, many conservative Malay leaders still had lingering suspicions of Indonesian
nationalism as a Javanese project (Liow, 2005). Malaysian nationalism was dominated by these
conservative elites, and this distinction is still relevant today, where Malaysia still retains the
sultanates after independence in a rotating elective constitutional monarchy. Nevertheless, the
independence leaders of Indonesia such as Sukarno and Hatta commanded substantial popular
support among substantial portions of the Malaysian population, who saw them as not just leaders
of the Indonesian struggle but of their own as well (Department of Information, 1964). This
underlying current of unity would once again be brought to the fore when regional integration
efforts began to take prominence after the conclusion of konfrontasi.

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e. Indonesia and ASEAN
The participation of both Indonesia and Malaysia just two short years after the end of
konfrontasi was a remarkable shift in national policy for both countries and marks a major success
in Southeast Asian regional integration. Post konfrontasi rapprochement happened rapidly, aided
by the change of government in Indonesia, which also took on an anti-communist stance. This
shared security interest even led to shared border patrols in Borneo, the site of significant disputes
during konfrontasi (van der Kroef, 1968). Nevertheless, Suharto’s government continued the view
that Indonesia was the leading power in both the Malay world and the wider region; however,
Suharto made it clear that the experience of konfrontasi convinced the government to seek
dominance through cooperation rather than conflict (Leifer, 1980). Concurrent with these political
changes, the rhetoric of brotherhood between the people of the two countries resumed almost
immediately, with konfrontasi viewed as an aberration in ties (Shafie, 2000).
The formation of ASEAN was the culmination of this process of rapprochement (Antolik,
1990). In joining a new regional organisation, Malaysia quietly acquiesced to Indonesian regional
dominance, while Indonesia rechannelled its regional efforts into diplomacy and gained a measure
of recognition of its own regional dominance, with the ASEAN Secretariat placed in Jakarta. While
disputes continued to occur between the two countries, they continue to form an integral part of
ASEAN and have both taken strides towards promoting regional integration within the ASEAN
framework, including the expansion of membership to Brunei in 1984, and notably of Vietnam in
1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999 in the wake of the end of the Cold War.
The reshaping and redirecting of Indonesia’s sense of commonality with its immediate neighbours
allowed the vision of a Greater Indonesia to be changed from a source of conflict to a source of

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cooperation and integration even beyond the Malay world and is crucial to the success of ASEAN
as an organisation.
4. Philippines
The Philippines offers an interesting case in Southeast Asian integration. A majority-
Catholic country in Maritime Southeast Asia (which is largely Islamic except for parts of eastern
Indonesia and Timor-Leste), the Philippines’ borders, like those of Malaysia and Indonesia, were
also colonially determined, this time by Spain. The Philippines also experienced a longer process
of colonialism (while the Dutch presence in Indonesia had a similar length of time, the Spanish
exerted greater control over the islands more quickly) and also underwent significant social change
during colonisation, particularly through religion. Administratively, the colony was administered
from New Spain (modern Mexico) until the mid-nineteenth century. The Philippines then became
an American colony in 1898 after the Spanish-American War before becoming independent after
World War II.
As a result of this history, the Philippines stands somewhat apart from the rest of Maritime
Southeast Asia, which share a history of strong Indic influence followed by Islamisation.
Nevertheless, the Philippines still shares ethnic, linguistic, and historical ties with the rest of the
archipelago, all of which played a role in Philippine nationalism throughout both the Spanish and
American eras. While these old connections also gave rise to territorial disputes with neighbouring
countries around the region, the Philippines has since become an enthusiastic participant in
regional integration projects and was a founding member of ASEAN.
a. Precolonial Philippines
The precolonial Philippines shared many traits with other parts of Maritime Southeast Asia,
with the islands home to many trading polities, who were very frequently more strongly linked to

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other coastal polities than those in the interior of their own islands (Newson, 2009). These polities
traded extensively across the region and had substantial political, cultural, and commercial ties
with polities elsewhere in the archipelago (Junker, 1999). In addition, these polities also traded
extensively with China, with many participating in the tributary system of Chinese dynasties (Scott,
1994). These polities were established all throughout what is now the modern Philippines, and
there was no meaningful division with what is now Indonesia or Malaysia. Moreover, inhabitants
of the Philippine polities could be found all across the archipelago as traders, showing great
integration into the maritime networks of Southeast Asia (Scott, 1994). However, unlike the case
of Malaysia and Indonesia, there were no large nationwide precolonial antecedent (like Srivijaya,
Malacca, or Majapahit) that the Philippines could draw on to claim continuity with a past empire;
nevertheless, the various smaller polities across the islands still play an important role in the
country’s historiography, particularly in issues such as the North Borneo Dispute.

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Figure 4: Map of the Philippines (CIA World Factbook)
Some notable polities during this period include Tondo and Maynila on Luzon, Cebu in
the Visayas, and Butuan, Lanao, Maguindanao, and Sulu in Mindanao. Both Tondo and Maynila
were located in what is now Metro Manila and had extensive trade relations across Southeast Asia
as well as with Japan and China. The ruling families of both intermarried and had extensive
political ties with the Sultanate of Brunei; nevertheless, Islam had just begun to arrive in the region
and had yet to make a significant impact (Junker, 1998). Similarly, Indic influences also reached
the region but never became as dominant as in other parts of Maritime Southeast Asia (Jocano,
2001). However, some Bruneian oral sources claim that Maynila was in fact established by the

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Sultanate of Brunei in 1500 as a trading colony; others cast doubt on this claim due to a lack of
textual evidence (Scott, 1994). Whatever the case, by the late 1500s, both had been subsumed into
the Spanish Empire.
According to local lore, Cebu and Butuan were ruled by families who were related to each
other, and both were Indic-influenced polities in the central Philippines. Like Maynila and Tondo,
both were full participants in the trading networks of both Southeast Asia and East Asia, becoming
major centres of trade for the region, and were Hindu-Buddhist states led by Rajahs (Saran, 2018).
This Indic influence indicated the strong ties they had with other polities throughout the
archipelago and is still visible in the region today, with Sanskrit words still present in Cebuano.
Despite initially fending off Magellan during first Spanish contact, both were taken over by the
Spanish Empire in the late 1500s.
Further to the south, Maguidanao, Lanao, and Sulu were all sultanates – Islam had arrived
in Maguidanao from Johor, which then spread it to Lanao, while Sulu was part of the Bruneian
Empire before 1578 (Hayase, 2007). Both Maguidanao and Lanao survived into the twentieth
century, with the former until 1905 and the latter still existing in an informal form into
independence. Sulu also thrived long after the Spanish arrival in the region – in the 18
th
century, it
controlled much of the east coast of Borneo and launched pirate raids around the area. However,
the sultanate gradually lost territory and became part of the Spanish Empire in 1851; interpretations
differ on the nature of the treaty, with the Spanish viewing it as a capitulation and the sultanate
seeing it as a treaty of friendship. In 1878, the sultanate also signed a treaty giving control of North
Borneo to the British; whether this was a lease or a cession is a matter of dispute (due to
translations) and is at the heart of the North Borneo dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines.
All these polities maintained extensive ties with the rest of Southeast Asia and were clearly part

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of the interconnected world of the region politically, diplomatically, culturally, socially, and
commercially.
b. Spanish & American Philippines
The Spanish began the conquest of the Philippines in Cebu, in 1565, moving their centre
of operations to Manila in 1570 due to Portuguese raids and supply shortages (Newson, 2009).
They gradually extended and consolidated their control over the entire island chain, successfully
fending off Chinese pirates in the 1570s, the Japanese in 1582, the Dutch in the early 1600s, and
the British in the 1760s. Their rule put the entirety of the Philippines under a singular
administration for the first time from 1565 to 1821 (first as part of New Spain, then directly from
Spain after Mexican independence), and brought about significant changes to local society. Spain
introduced the economienda system and spread Catholicism widely throughout the islands.
Originally run as a trading colony, the Philippines came to be a source of raw materials in
the nineteenth century, bringing significant wealth to many local families (Cullinane, 2003). This
period also led to increased nationalist agitation, particularly after the independence of Spain’s
Latin American colonies, leading to the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution in 1896. The
revolution ended with a ceasefire in 1897; however, Manila was then captured by the Americans
during the Spanish-American War in 1898; the whole Philippines was ceded to the US in
December of that year. The US then defeated Filipino nationalists in a war that lasted until 1902.
Nevertheless, the US eventually prepared for the eventual independence of the Philippines in the
Jones Law of 1916, which was followed by several independence missions from the Philippine
government (US Congress, 1916). However, preparations for independence were disrupted by the
outbreak of World War II, where fierce fighting took place during the Japanese occupation of the

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islands as part of its plan to gain the resources of Southeast Asia. The Philippines would eventually
be granted independence in 1946, after the end of World War II.
c. The North Borneo Dispute
The roots of the North Borneo dispute date to the Sulu Sultanate, which had received
Eastern Sabah as a reward for helping the Sultan of Brunei in 1658. The Sultan then signed an
agreement with the British in January 1878. This agreement contained the Malay word pajakan,
which has been translated as both “lease” (the interpretation favoured by the Filipino side) and
“cede” (the interpretation favoured by the British, and later Malaysian, side) (Government of the
Philippines, 1962; Maxwell & Gibson, 1924). The British, consistent with their interpretation,
continued to pay a cession fee to the Sultan of Sulu. However, in July 1878, the Sultan of Sulu
also relinquished all his possessions to the Crown of Spain (International Court of Justice, 2003).
Finally, in 1885, Spain renounced all claims to North Borneo in the Madrid Protocol with Britain
and Germany (British Government, 1885). The British subsequently established a protectorate
over North Borneo, now known as Sabah (Severino, 2011).
The Philippines asserted its claim to North Borneo in 1962 under President Diosdado
Macaspagal, basing it on the fact that the Sultanate of Sulu had ceded its own territory and titles
to the Philippines, making the Philippines its successor state (Government of the Philippines, 1962).
This claim occurred during discussions on the inclusion of North Borneo in Malaysia, and the
Philippines broke off relations with Malaysia over the inclusion of Sabah in the federation.
President Ferdinand Marcos also secretly ordered troops to be trained for an incursion into Sabah
in 1967 (similar to Indonesian actions in konfrontasi); however, the training programme failed. In
1968, the Philippine Congress reaffirmed the country’s claims to Sabah in Republic Act No. 9446,

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and in July 2011, the Supreme Court of the Philippines also confirmed the country’s continuing
claim to Sabah.
Despite these disputes, a number of attempts have been made over the years to withdraw
the national claim in order to promote better regional relations and stronger ASEAN unity. In 1977,
President Marcos declared at the annual ASEAN meeting that the Philippines would withdraw its
claim to Sabah and solve one of the regional territorial disputes (Richardson, 1977). However,
despite negotiations and another reassurance between President Marcos and Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia, no concrete steps were ever achieved in resolving the dispute
(UPI, 1984). Following the return to democracy, President Corazon Aquino also tried to drop the
claim before the 1987 ASEAN summit (de Castro, 2010). However, attempts to repeal Republic
Act No. 9446 in the national legislature were hampered by opposition to giving up perceived
national territory as well as accusations of diminution of the Sultanate of Sulu’s legacy by Muslim
members of Congress. Since then, the government of the Philippines has chosen not to engage in
the issue one way or the other in order to preserve good relations with neighbouring countries;
nevertheless, occasional flareups still occur in bilateral relations.
d. Nationalism and the Dunia Melayu
Philippine nationalism has characteristics that are influenced both by its history as a
Spanish colony and location in maritime Southeast Asia. Like across Spanish America, early
resentment centred on the privileged positions of peninsulares brought from Spain over local elites
(both indigenous and native-born Spanish), particularly in the clergy. This led to an intellectual
awakening, particularly among the local middle class, who had grown in size as the economy
became more integrated into the global commercial structure. These figures started propaganda
campaigns, first from within the Philippines and later from abroad due to government suppression

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to call for unity among the people and independence. These agitations eventually led to the
Philippine Revolution of 1896.
One feature of the independence rhetoric that places it firmly within Southeast Asia,
however, is the relationship between Philippine identity and the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia
and the re-examination of the precolonial links between the Philippines and Malaysia and
Indonesia. The foremost figure in Filipino nationalism, Dr Jose Rizal, sought to unite the Malay
peoples, whom he saw as artificially divided by colonial frontiers. The people of the Philippines
form a clear component of the Malay World in this narrative, alongside the peoples of Malaysia
and Indonesia – Rizal even famously referred to Filipinos as “Malayan Filipinos” in a famous
essay. This sentiment is not entirely a one-way street – Jose Rizal has also been referred to in the
Malaysian parliament as “one of the greatest Malayans” (Manila Times, 2021). During the
American Commonwealth Era, Philippine patriot and later resistance leader Wenceslao Vinzons
called for a Malaysia Irredenta (unredeemed Malaysia), which would unite all the Malay peoples
in one land. In 1959, Major Abdul Latif Martelino wrote the book Someday, Malaysia to advocate
for Malay unity. That nationalists in the Philippines used the name Malaysia even before the
existence of the modern country of Malaysia is clear evidence of the strong support for linkages
between the Philippines and the rest of Maritime Southeast Asia, particularly as nationalists sought
a pre-Hispanic past for the Philippines. Some academics have even gone so far as to refer to
Filipinos as “Hispanicized Malays” (Merican, 2019). However, despite its prominence in the
popular consciousness, the inclusion of the Philippines within the Malay world is not without
detractors (Curaming, 2011). The Filipino historian, F. Landa Jocano, argues that there is a lack
of evidence tying Filipinos to the Malay world, with commonalities frequently adaptations to the
same natural environment in maritime Southeast Asia (1975). These debates are also inevitable

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given the fluidity of the Malay world, particularly when compared to the supposed rigidity of the
modern nation-state.
The inclusion of the Philippines within the Malay world has had a number of political
consequences, particularly in the country’s relationship with its neighbours. One proponent was
President Macapagal, who proposed a Maphilindo confederation, which would include Malaya,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei, and Singapore alongside Sarawak and Sabah. This was seen as
a realisation of Malay unity in the region and culminated in a series of agreements signed in Manila
in 1963 (de Viana, 2017). However, the agreements failed to resolve tensions between the three
countries over Sarawak and Sabah; while Indonesia and the Philippines both saw the federalisation
of these regions with Malaya as a British neo-colonial effort, Malaya also suspected that it was an
effort to prevent the formation of the federation (Sussman, 1983). The agreements were dissolved
a month later when Indonesia under Sukarno decided to pursue a policy of konfrontasi towards
Malaysia and has since been superseded by ASEAN.
e. Philippines and ASEAN
The Philippines was a founding member of ASEAN and has played a key role in the
regional grouping. In many ways distinct in its own region, the country is ultimately strongly aware
of the historical linkages it has with its neighbours as well as its place within the wider Malay
world in Southeast Asia. These connections are also a source of contention, as the drawing of
colonial borders has also led to disputes between the Philippines and its neighbours, particularly
in the case of North Borneo. However, the fluidity of these past narratives has allowed the country
to capitalise on historical awareness to increase regional ties through proposals such as Maphilindo
and has even led to attempts to resolve territorial disputes with neighbours through recasting the
limits of the nation, often with deleterious effects on domestic politics – the recasting of the North

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Borneo dispute is a clear sign that the Philippine government has sought to redefine national
boundaries and identity in order to promote regional integration, particularly as these attempts all
occurred after the formation of ASEAN. Like in Malaysia and Indonesia, the successful navigation
and recasting of fluid past identities has allowed the Philippines to embrace commonality and
move past disputes in order to participate in a more sustainable regional order.
5. National narratives and the road to ASEAN
Throughout the early years of the Southeast Asian integration project, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, and Singapore overcame significant bilateral disputes to form ASEAN, which has
become one of the most prominent examples of regional integration in the world today. Despite
bilateral conflicts such as konfrontasi between Malaysia and Indonesia, the expulsion of Singapore
from Malaysia, and the North Borneo Dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines, the countries
of the region came together quickly after the resolution of their respective disputes. While these
disputes arose from the amorphous nature of the region’s borders as a result of colonialism, these
countries leveraged the very same unconsolidated national identities to their advantage and
reshaped the national narrative in order to stress cross-border linguistic, cultural, and historical
linkages to promote regional integration. For example, the official rhetoric of Indonesia changed
their common history from a source of dispute to a source of cooperation. Likewise, Singapore
and Malaysia’s demographic differences were de-emphasised in favour of the two countries’
common histories and kinships between groups across the border. In doing so, Southeast Asia
reshaped official national narratives to promote a version more amenable to regional cooperation,
thereby enabling the formation and growth of ASEAN.

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CHAPTER FOUR: THE SOVIET LEGACY ON IDENTITY IN CENTRAL ASIA
Despite standing to gain significantly from regional integration and possessing many
factors that could facilitate this process, Central Asia is one of the least integrated regions in the
world. The Central Asian republics formed a coherent economic and political unit throughout their
time as constituent republics of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to 1991. Central planning meant
that each republic’s economy was specialised to be complementary to the rest of the union such as
cotton and manufacturing in Uzbekistan and electricity generation in Tajikistan. Moreover, their
roles as constituent parts of the same country meant that infrastructure such as pipelines and roads
followed the most convenient route, disregarding boundaries and frequently crossing them
multiple times between major population areas. Thus, from a logistical point of view, the collapse
of the Soviet Union was highly disruptive to Central Asia, whose impact could have been mitigated
by the easing of movement and lowering of trade barriers through greater regional integration.
Existing explanations for regional integration have failed to explain the lack of regional
integration in the region, particularly relative to the progress made in Southeast Asia. The region
not only shares history as constituent parts of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire prior to
that, the populations also belongs to the same religious background (Sunni Islam), with most
speaking Turkic language (with the exception of Tajiks; however, Tajiks have coinhabited the
same space as the Turkic peoples for centuries and exerted a powerful influence on Turkic
languages) and sharing a common history of both nomadism and sedentary social organisation in
close proximity with other groups. Sandwiched between Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Iran,
they also share common security challenges in maintaining their newly gained independence such
as managing great power relations and mitigating the impact of transnational terrorism. As a result,
the region appears to be perfect for regional integration projects. However, despite these

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advantages, no regional organisation exists that encompass the five republics, with attempts to
create one having ended in failure at a great opportunity cost to these countries. Relations between
these states also have been contentious, with numerous disputes and ethnic violence flaring up and
rivalries emerging, most recently the border skirmishes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 2021
and 2022. These conflicts occurred despite most republics’ retaining the same leadership as during
the Soviet era during the early years of independence, meaning the elites having received the same
education and were socialised within the same political structure and formed a ready-made
transnational community which shared values and experiences from their past as members of the
Soviet leadership. However, the existence of this shared past among the elite did not lead to
meaningful efforts toward regional cooperation and integration.
While each republic’s circumstances are different, they all share a few common features
that could inhibit greater cooperation. All five claim, to varying degrees, to be ethno-states, with
the titular nationalities of each republic becoming the dominant group after independence.
However, despite a strong sense of differentiated nationhood, most of these designations date back
only to the indigenisation process of the Soviet Union, with none of these republics existing in
their current form prior to that era. For example, peoples commonly termed Tajik and Uzbek today
were both referred to as “Sart” by nomadic dwellers, some of these nomads in turn self-identified
as “Uzbek”. Significant parts of the population simply self-identified as “Muslim” (Golden, 1992).
In this process, national languages were codified (while all these languages were written down
before, literacy was far from widespread, and the nomadic cultures of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and
Turkmen were largely oral in nature), and a coherent national identity with a common history,
literature, and symbols was forged. The process was contentious – for example, in the codification
of national languages, there was vigorous debate over which dialect would be used as a national

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standard in each of these republics (Edgar, 2006). The scope of the indigenisation policy also
changed; while in the 1920s and early 1930s, the use of the local language was promoted for all
purposes in each republic’s administration and non-locals were encouraged to learn the language,
from the late 1930s on, each local language became relegated to administrative activities that were
deemed “closest to the people” such as education and health, while higher level governmental
functions came to be conducted in Russian as the “language of interethnic communication”,
leading to the necessity of learning Russian for career advancement (Martin, 2001).
Throughout the Soviet era, this identity was promoted through cultural and educational
institutions in each republic to varying degrees (for example, the Stalin period was more
characterised by suppression of nationalities), gradually becoming embraced by the general
population. In this sense, a national identity was created and imposed from above, leading to
national identity as habitus rather than as emerging organically as a coherent set of ideology among
the population (Roy, 2004). This is evidenced in the constant changes in political divisions that
were meant to encompass single ethnic groups; indeed, whether the Turkic republics should have
formed one single republic was a major issue in the Bolshevik-era debates about the shape that a
Soviet state would take. The eventual decision to divide the region into five separate republics also
belies the intermixed nature of the population of the region, who lived side by side without strong
self-identification into different groups. This mixed nature resulted in complex, unwieldy borders,
characterised most strongly by the division of the Fergana Valley between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
and Uzbekistan.
In fact, these national identities were meant to be temporary before converging gradually
into a common socialist Soviet identity. Yet, in the end, since the collapse of the Soviet Union they
have had to serve as vehicles for national unity and identity in nation states. In the post-

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independence era, the national identities promoted in the USSR continue to diffuse downward
from the government to the population, albeit without the message of unity between the nations
and common Soviet citizenship that had characterised their use in the Soviet era. The partial
consolidation of these identities, where a clear sense of distinctiveness collides with blurry
intermixing on the boundaries due to deeply shared histories, creates a situation of distrust over
the narcissism of small differences and inhibits cooperation within the region. Whereas the various
peoples of Central Asia coexisted in the same space and frequently identified more closely with
their place of origin than with their ethnic groups, the solidification of political boundaries and
ethnic identification tied to these borders has led to contestation over shared symbols and places
of cohabitation. For example, the placement of the predominantly Tajik speaking but ethnically
mixed cities of Bukhara and Samarkand in Uzbekistan has led to accusations from Tajikistan that
Uzbekistan is erasing Tajik history and culture, while the Uzbeks assert that Tajikistan’s claims
on these cities is an attempt to appropriate Uzbek history (Dagiev, 2013). This partial consolidation
became more consequential with the cultural and social proximity of these groups, as this
proximity promoted some “narcissism of small differences”, where the close cultural, linguistic,
and historical connections generated acute awareness of minute differences when each people saw
themselves as deserving of their own homeland at the exclusion of other groups.
When the Central Asian republics gained independence in the 1990s, they inherited a
legacy of constructed national identities without nationalism, where national symbols, languages,
and histories were juxtaposed with efforts to ensure that these identities would serve as a bridge to
eventual Soviet identity rather than form bases for nation states. All five republics came to identity
as ethno-states to varying degrees and officially continued the national narratives of the Soviet era,
albeit now in the serve of constructing a nation state. However, approaches varied substantially.

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Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan moved quickly to push Russian out of the official sphere and
switched to the Latin alphabet, while Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan all retained both the
Cyrillic alphabet and Russian as an official language. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan both experienced
different degrees of conflict between domestic groups (with Tajikistan descending into civil war)
as well as border issues with neighbours. Kazakhstan, on its part, had a delicate balancing act
between a multi-ethnic state and the assertion of Kazakh cultural and linguistic supremacy within
the republic, largely due to relative demographic weakness of ethnic Kazakhs in Kazakhstan
relative to the titular ethnicities in other central Asian republics. With former internal boundaries
becoming international borders, all the republics had to deal with the legacy of splitting up mixed
populations with close linguistic and cultural affiliations, setting the state for mutual distrust and
internal turmoil. At independence, the Central Asian republics are good examples of partially
consolidated identities. Identifying themselves as ethno-states, these republics and their
populations have internalised the Soviet-era national narratives to a large degree and see
themselves as the rightful rulers over their respective lands. However, the nature of the
construction and delineation of these identities mean that these republics inherited complex
borders with mixed populations and national symbols and historiographies that don’t always neatly
with modern ethnic distinctions.
Since independence, the Central Asian republics have all been under various forms of
authoritarian rule, and while popular national identity has less salience in authoritarian systems
than in democratic systems (where preferences of the population are translated upward much more
directly), ethnic nationalism still plays a major role in how Central Asian authoritarian systems
derive their legitimacy. While the leadership of all these states in the immediate post-independence
period were members of the Soviet political elite, the collapse of the USSR meant that they couldno

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longer rely on Communism to demonstrate their political legitimacy. In this absence, all five
republics in the region turned to ethnic nationalism as their central guiding ideology to consolidate
their power in the face of competing ideologies such as Islamism (Marat, 2006). While it is hard
to measure popular perceptions of legitimacy in authoritarian system, what is clear is that all five
Central Asian regimes have consciously used nationalism and national myths to bolster the
perceived legitimacy of their governments (Mellon, 2010).
This process can be observed in each of the republics. In Kyrgyzstan, former president
Akayev made extensive use of the Epic of Manas to portray the modern Kyrgyz state as the
descendants of this legacy and laying claim to a long history over the land (Smith, 2003). In
Uzbekistan, President Karimov centred the national narrative around Tamerlane, also known as
Amir Timur, appropriating him as the national Uzbek hero and replacing Lenin’s quotes in
textbooks (Pope, 2005). In doing so, Karimov portrayed himself as his state as the continuation of
a long legacy of Uzbek rule over the territory of modern Uzbekistan (Adams, 2004). In Kazakhstan,
the gradual reassertion of Kazakh culture and language in the public sphere serves to bolster the
regime’s credentials as the ruler and protector of Kazakh culture in the ethno-state of the Kazakh
people (Pope, 2005). In Turkmenistan, while the new nationalist projects were centred on the then-
president Niyazov rather than on historical figures, this new focus was also accompanied by a
“[transformation] of the former Soviet republic into a bastion of Turkmen culture” (Pannier, 2008).
In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmonov dropped the Russian “-ov” ending from his name and
encouraged his people to do the same (Ganieva, 2007). In all these cases, authoritarian rulers
promoted national identities and official historiographies to bolster their legitimacy, thereby giving
greater relevance to the partial consolidation of these national identities, particularly given the
overlapping histories, cultures, and mixed ethnicities present in reality.

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One disastrous consequence of the overlapping cultures and mixed populations in states
that define themselves as ethno-states has led to interethnic violence against minorities,
particularly those associated with neighbouring states often with the quiet acquiescence (if not
outright support) of the state. The most prominent example of this is the ethnic violence between
Kyrgyz and Uzbek in Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan in 1990 and 2010. Prior to the division of the
two republics, the Kyrgyz and Uzbek of the region both self-identified as “Kipchak”. During the
indigenisation process of the 1920s, based on language, the lowland dwellers were then defined as
Uzbek and the highland dwellers as Kyrgyz, and assigned to their respective republics where they
would be the titular nationality (Lubin et al., 1999). However, the division left a significant Uzbek
minority on the Kyrgyz side of the border, and Kyrgyz views of disproportionate economic and
political power in their titular republic fed the violence (Laruelle, 2012). Of the five Central Asian
republics, only Kazakhstan defines itself as a multi-ethnic state; however, this may be a matter of
temporary political necessity, as evidenced by the increasing emphasis on Kazakh-ness in politics
and business in the republic as ethnic Kazakhs regain their demographic advantage in the republic.
The continuing important role that Russia plays in the region also complicates integration
projects. As a legacy of Soviet infrastructure, Russia still plays a central role in the Central Asian
economies, especially for countries dependent on hydrocarbon exports such as Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan due to pipelines being routed through Russian territory. Russia itself has attempted
to form a series of regional organisations encompassing the former Soviet republics. Two
prominent examples are the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which acts as a
military alliance, and the Eurasian Economic Union, which promotes economic cooperation.
Neither of these organisations are centred on Central Asia, and neither include all Central Asian
countries in their membership. Neither Uzbekistan nor Turkmenistan are members of the CSTO

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(Uzbekistan was a member from 1994 to 1999 and from 2006 to 2012), which Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are not members of the Eurasian Union. This division reflects the
differences in attitudes between the Central Asian republics towards Russia; while Kazakhstan has
historically pursued closer ties to Russia (due to both an affinity for a Eurasian identity and the
necessity of cooperation given the large ethnic Russian population and the long border with
Russia), Uzbekistan wishes to distance itself more from Russia and views its experience as part of
the Russian sphere much more negatively. This disagreement over the role of Russia has strongly
inhibited regional integration (Laruelle & Peyrouse, 2012). With the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
the appetite for Russian-led integration projects in Central Asia has fallen across the board
(Umarov, 2022).
Parallels can be drawn between Russia’s role in regional integration in Central Asia with
the role of the United States in Southeast Asia. The US’s most prominent involvement in Southeast
Asian integration was with the military alliance SEATO, where the alliance structure created by
the United States was centred on each country’s bilateral relationship with the US rather than on
regional cooperation among neighbours and included countries beyond the region. Both these
cases stand in contrast to Europe, where the United States fostered NATO as an explicitly
multilateral organisation and promoted European integration (Koga, 2011). However, Southeast
Asia has managed to overcome this uneven security structure to pursue regional integration
independent of global powers while Central Asia has not.
Despite the clear benefits to be gained from as well as the plethora of supporting factors
for regional integration, Central Asian integration still languishes, lagging far behind regions that
face significantly larger barriers in the process. Despite progress in recent years, particularly with
the rise of President Mirziyoyev in Uzbekistan, the region remains one of the least integrated in

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the world (Vakulchuk & Overland, 2019). In this section, the histories of the four republics of
Kazakhsta, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan will be examined from the pre-Russian era to
independence to analyse the roots and construction of their ethnic identities and how these
identities affect their domestic and international relations in the post-independence era. This is
augmented with interviews with local businessmen, academics, and politicians as well as survey
data from the Central Asian Barometer Survey in 2020. If the theory of partially consolidated
identities holds true, we’d expect to see the consequences of Soviet-era ethnic and cultural
delineation play out as conflict in ethnically mixed areas and along frontiers. We’d also expect the
new states centring their new national identities as ethnic states based on these models, thereby
exacerbating distrust along the fractures that were more concealed when they all formed
constituent republics of the USSR and the divisions between the republics were merely internal
borders rather than international frontiers.
1. Kazakhstan
Among the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, Kazakhstan occupies a unique position.
Originally conceived of as a homeland for Kazakhs, its titular national ethnicity’s share of the
population declined precipitously during the 1930s (where up to 40% of Kazakhs perished in
famine), with ethnic Kazakhs becoming a minority in their own republic for most of the Kazakh
SSR’s existence (being outnumbered by Russians for most of the Soviet era). In addition to
Russians, the Kazakh SSR became home to ethnic groups from all across the Soviet Union as a
result of mass deportations to labour camps and settlement during the Virgin Lands Campaign. It
was only in the 1989 census that Kazakhs once again became a plurality of the population of the
Kazakh SSR and only in 1999 that they became the majority, largely as a result of the emigration
of other ethnicities. While ethnic Kazakhs form over 70% of the population in the 2020s,

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Kazakhstan is still home to a multi-ethnic population, and Russian cultural influence remains
strong, especially as this history meant that the ethnic Kazakh population is significantly more
Russified than other titular nationalities in Central Asia (Dave, 1996). In addition, several districts
in the northern parts of the country are still majority ethnic Russian.
As a result of this history, Kazakhstan has significantly less leeway to enforce nationalist
linguistic and cultural policies, particularly vis-à-vis the Russian minority. Russian nationalists
have claimed since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Northern Kazakhstan rightfully belonged
within Russian territory, with agitation coming from both Russia and the Russian community in
Kazakhstan. In 1992, a group of politicised Russians in northern Kazakhstan united with Cossacks
to demand an autonomous republic in the north of the country. In 2014, in the wake of the Russian
annexation of Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin answered a student question on northern
Kazakhstan with the assertion that prior to the Soviet Union, “Kazakhs had no statehood”, drawing
an inferred analogy with Ukraine. This assertion set off a plethora of groups demanding to “return
lands to Russia”, culminating in the arrest of three Russian Kazakhstanis. More recently, in 2020,
a member of the State Duma from the ruling United Russia Party, Vyacheslav Nikonov, claimed
that “territory of [modern] Kazakhstan was a great gift from Russia and the Soviet Union”.
(Zhanmukanova, 2021). Moreover, the structure of Soviet-era gas pipelines means that gas exports
from Kazakhstan must transit Russia, making good relations crucial for Kazakhstan’s economy
(Umarov, 2022).
Because of these factors, Kazakhstan must navigate a significantly more multi-cultural
national policy than its neighbours. Consequences of this include the design of the country’s
institutions to include national minorities, and terms such as Kazakhstani to denote nationality,
rather than Kazakh, which denotes ethnicity (Қазақстандық/Qazaqstandıq vs. Қазақ/Qazaq;

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compare Русский vs. Российский in Russia). However, Kazakhstan has also taken pre-emptive
action against separatism, such as forbidding the holding of multiple citizenships. Moreover, as
the demographic advantage of ethnic Kazakhs has grown, the Kazakhstani government has
continued to promote the Kazakh language more strongly in the public sphere across all ethnic
groups (non-Russian ethnicities are usually Russophone) beginning in the 2000s and accelerating
significantly since the late 2010s, most recently with a new law passed in April 2022 removing the
requirement that signage and advertising be bilingual in Kazakh and Russian and mandating only
the inclusion of Kazakh. Nevertheless, because of this background, Kazakh politics tend to be less
overtly nationalistic relative to the other Central Asian republics to be cognizant of the concerns
of both the Russian Federation with regards to the Russian minority as well as potential Russian
separatists in Kazakhstan itself. Relative to the other Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan’s
diplomatic orientation has been less “Asian” in outlook, with the country preferring to refer to
itself as a “Eurasian” country, as evidenced by national institutions such as the Eurasian National
University. This orientation signals that Kazakhstan looks simultaneously to Europe and to Asia
for its identity and views itself as a bridge and has echoes of the Russian Federation also defining
itself as a Eurasian country. Nevertheless, there is also strong awareness of the country’s position
as a Turkic state like the other Central Asian republics; both these factors influence Kazakhstan’s
relations with its Central Asian neighbours and role in efforts to form regional organisations.
a. Early Kazakhs
Early Kazakh history is difficult to determine due to a dearth of records about the nomadic
life of the Kazakhs, with most sources coming either from the surrounding settled peoples, who
did not pay as much attention to the goings on of the steppe, or later from observations of Russians
conquering the region (Grodekov, 1887; Tolybekov, 1971). Nevertheless, most sources tend to

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concur that the Kazakhs as a political entity came into existence in the mid-fifteenth century when
two brothers broke away from the Uzbek khan to form their own khanate to take advantage of the
power vacuum created by the defeat of the Oirats. They first occupied the area between the Chu
and the Talas Rivers, before expanding across the area surrounding Lake Balkhash, extending
along the Syr Darya River to the north-western shore of the Aral Sea by the end of the sixteenth
century. The Kazakh nation largely consisted of Uzbek-Turkic stock and encompassed around a
million people by the 1510s across its territory during the reign of Qasim Khan. It was also during
this period that it was possible to speak of the Kazakhs as a separate entity in political terms, as
unlike the Uzbeks, they did not recognise the authority of Shaybani. However, they were still
linguistically, culturally, and economically indistinguishable from the Uzbeks of the era, despite
being internally united in these criteria and considering themselves a separate group (Olcott, 1995).

Figure 5: Map of Kazakhstan (CIA World Factbook)

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Many origins have been proposed for the name Kazakh. Proposals include the Turkic qaz,
meaning to wander (reflecting the nomadism of the Kazakhs), the Mongol khasaq to refer to the
carts used by Kazakhs to transport their tents, and kaz meaning goose and aq meaning white to
refer to the mythical white goose that gave birth to the first Kazakh (as symbolised at Bayterek
Tower in Astana). Whatever the case, the Kazakh nation traditionally consists of three groupings
of Kazakh tribes called juz: the Great Juz (Ұлы Жүз/Ūly Jüz), the Middle Juz (Орта жүз/Orta
Jüz), and the Little Juz (Кіші жүз/Kışı Jüz). While legends claim that the three descended from
three brothers who were sons of the Kazakh founder Alash, there is no historical evidence to
support this, with the legend most likely arising as an attempt to promote the unity of the people
(Aristov, 1896). A Juz, which literally translates as a “hundred” but is also often rendered as Horde,
most likely had its origins in confederations and alliances between many tribes, which was a
common political arrangement among Turco-Mongol nomads, who shared a common natural
environment which generally were self-contained areas with summer and winter pastures as well
as access to trade routes (Vostrov & Vukanov, 1978). The Great Juz traditionally occupy Southern
Kazakhstan, the Middle Juz Central Kazakhstan, and the Little Juz Western Kazakhstan. While
the divisions were largely based on internal matters of common land use, they took on separate
political dimensions after the collapse of the Kazakh Khanate in the 18
th
century and each Juz
becoming politically and diplomatically sovereign, resulting in foreign powers such as the
Russians dealing with each Juz individually.

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Figure 6: Territories of the three Kazakh juz (Sala & Deom, 2013)
Throughout their history, the people who later would become the Kazakhs had intense
interactions with both the sedentary groups of Central Asia and the Mongol hordes that swept
across the region in 1218. The region was characterised by waves of nomadic Mongol-Turkic
peoples who migrated through the region and competed for power, with successive polities formed
by the Seljuq, Karakhanid, and Karakitae before the Mongol Empire came to dominate the region
before fragmenting into rival khanates. Throughout this entire process, the more sedentary cities
of the oases were fought over by the various nomadic groups. The Kazakhs themselves broke away
from the Uzbeks, and the fifteenth century was characterised by rivalries between the two (note
that there also is a distinction between the historical Uzbek nomads and the modern Uzbek peoples,
with the terminology more codified in the Soviet Era). The fluidity of this world means that
overlapping influences were common, with urban centres controlled in quick succession by
different groups who were simultaneously related and rivals of each other and whose numbers
were constantly bolstered by other nomadic groups from elsewhere in the region (Olcott, 1995).

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b. Kazakhs and the Russian Empire
The lands of the Kazakh khanate came under the attack of the Kalmyk (who were Mongol
nomads from further east) in the 1620s, who by the mid-1720s had overrun much of the lands of
the Kazakhs. In order to seek protection from the Kalmyk, in 1731, the Khan of the Little Juz and
his sons swore their loyalty to the Russian empress (who had reached the region after conquests to
the north and west and built a series of forts to pacify the region); khans of the Middle Horde
followed in 1732 and 1740. However, while this gave the khans Russian protection, the khanates
were still not nominally seen as part of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, this allowed the Russian
Empire to build settlements further south than before and try to attract settlers to the region, in the
process excluding the Kazakhs from some of their pasture lands. The increase in the number of
settlers led to competition over land use, resulting in conflict between the nomadic Kazakhs and
Russian peasant settlers as well as other Russian subjects such as the Bashkirs.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the khans’ rule had disintegrated because of unrest
throughout the Kazakh lands, both as a result of competition over pasture lands and rebellions
against the tsarist authorities. Taking advantage of the unrest caused by the Pugachev Rebellion,
the khan of the Junior Juz rebelled against the tsarist government in 1752 but was soon defeated.
The Russians continued to consolidate control over the khanates in the 19
th
century, with khanate
rule abolished in the Middle Juz and Little Juz in 1822 and 1824, respectively, with the territories
of both incorporated into direct Russian rule. The Russian government also drew up boundaries
that nomadic groups could not cross and tried to induce the Kazakhs to become farmers. The lands
of the Greater Juz, which had been contested between the Russian Empire and the Kokand Khanate,
were also annexed by the 1860s. Throughout this period, the Russian government referred to the
Kazakhs as “Siberian Kirgiz”, an appellation that reflects the fluidity of groups in the era, as Siberia

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in fact lies to the north of the Kazakh homelands, while “Kirgiz” was used to refer to a diverse
group of Turkic peoples well into the twentieth century.
The Russian government promoted settlement by farmers in the region through laws
permitting seizure of “excess lands” (i.e., lands that did not have permanent settlement with
structures, which was at odds with the nomadic lifestyle of the Kazakhs) throughout the nineteenth
century. While the seizure of good pasture lands had a deleterious effect on the Kazakhs’ economic
wellbeing, by the beginning of the twentieth century, a combination of the “land hunger” felt
elsewhere in the empire as well as the desire to turn the steppes into a grain producing region led
to concerns for Kazakhs’ economic wellbeing to be disregarded (Kaufman, 1896 & 1903). These
policies transformed the demographics of the steppes. Between 1865 and 1895, only around 35,000
settlers came from European Russia to to the four northern oblasts, and in 1897, Slavs formed only
15.7% of the population in the northern oblasts. However, this number had risen to 41.6% by 1916,
with Slavs forming the majority in some of the northernmost districts and rapidly spreading south.
This settlement movement corresponded with the loss of Kazakh land ownership; in the Syr Darya
Oblast in 1916 Kazakh families owned less than 700,000 desiatins (1 desiatin = approx. 1.09 ha)
of land compared to 1.5 million desiatins owned by Russians (Demko, 1969).
The Russian Revolution of 1905, which ended the absolute monarchy and instituted a
parliamentary constitutional monarchy, allowed this discontent to be expressed in the Russian
State Duma in St Petersburg. This newfound openness led to the formation of the Alash Party in
December 1905, which asserted the rights of Kazakhs in their homeland through ratifying the
platform of the national Constitutional Democratic Party, which contained language that stated “In
the Kirghiz [i.e., Kazakh] Steppe no one other than the Kirghiz has any rights; the laws which
declare that the Kirghiz Steppe belongs to the Crown, and that peasants and Cossacks can be settled

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on it at no cost need to be revoked.” (Brainin & Shafiro, 1935). Organised political meetings of
the Alash Party also gave a forum to determine the needs of the Kazakh people, allowing the
Kazakh population to articulate their needs as a whole for the first time. Kazakh participation in
the Muslim caucus, which was dominated by the Tatars, would also lead to wider exposure to the
ideals of pan-Turkism, an ideology which advocated the unity of the Turkic peoples around the
world, most of whom were under Russian rule. This connection to pan-Turkism would later
become influential in Kazakh writings. Prominent members of the Alash Party saw Russian policy
as tantamount to the destruction of the Kazakh people and sought to spread awareness of these
issues among the Kazakh population through several prominent journals, which they saw as
necessary for the preservation of the Kazakh nation (Olcott, 1995). However, these movements
also emphasised the need for the Kazakh nation to modernise and move away from tradition and
religion, which led to a contentious relationship with the traditional chiefs and Islamic authorities,
particularly in matters of the role of religion within Kazakh society (Dave, 2007). The increasing
political awareness among the Kazakh population highlighted their grievances towards the Russian
government.
When conscription was introduced among the Central Asian population in 1916 during
World War I, it set off a widespread rebellion across Central Asia among the Muslim population,
particularly the Kazakh and the Kyrgyz. The rebellion attacked not only Russian government
apparatuses but also European settlers. When it was finally suppressed, the revolt crackdown had
cost the lives of between 100,000 and 270,000 Central Asians (largely Kazakh and Kyrgyz), with
many civilians dying in the high passes of the Tian Shan Mountains as they fled towards Chinese
territory to escape Russian reprisals (Morrison, 2021).

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c. Soviet Kazakhstan
The Bolshevik takeover during the October Revolution in 1917 heralded the beginning of
the Soviet Era, which brought many changes to the Kazakhs. The new Soviet government sought
to break away from tsarist era policies towards ethnic minorities and sought instead to build a
community of nations within a union. Indeed, in 1917, Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks,
famously proclaimed the Russian Empire to be the “prison of the peoples” (Тюрьма народов),
and policies in the early Soviet Union had the explicit stated goal of giving ethnic minorities within
Russia genuine political and cultural representation. Parallel to this, Kazakh elites also they
advocated for the rights of the Kirgiz (meaning Kazakh in this era) to the land as well as the
introduction of Kirgiz education and the autonomy of Kirgizia in the new union (Dimanshtein,
1930). In order to achieve these goals, they established the Alash Orda in 1917. When the Russian
Civil War broke out, the Alash Orda allied itself to the anti-Bolshevik Whites in the Russian Civil
War before switching sides and beginning negotiations with the Bolsheviks in 1919 in the waning
days of the war (Peimani, 2009).
The Bolsheviks took over the region in 1920 and established the Kirgiz Autonomous
Socialist Republic, which was renamed the Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Republic in 1925. The
republic was an autonomous part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian
SFSR), before becoming its own constituent republic of the union as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist
Republic (Kazakh SSR) in 1936. The boundaries also changed numerous times throughout this
period. The steppe region in the north of the republic was permanently assigned to the Kazakhs
aside from the area around Orenburg,. Karakalpakstan, which lies to the southwest and was the
autonomous region of the Karakalpak people, was also part of the Kazakh SSR until 1936, when
it was transferred to the Uzbek SSR. The Kazakhs and Uzbeks disputed Tashkent, which was

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majority Uzbek, but surrounded by Kazakh-inhabited countryside; the city was ultimately awarded
to the Uzbeks, while surrounding areas were assigned to the Kazakh SSR (Olcott, 1995).
The Soviet period is widely credited with inculcating the broader Central Asian populations
with a sense of nationhood beyond the activities of the Kazakh cultural elite such as the Alash
Party (Dave, 2007). This was achieved through an official policy of transforming “backward
peoples” into “nations”. Nations were determined according to four objective criteria: territory,
language, common mode of life, and national characteristics; however, in reality, national
characteristics as defined were often vague, and territory changed for political convenience. In the
early period, regions were often reassigned between constituent republics; for example, Khujand
was reassigned from the Uzbek SSR to the Tajik SSR in 1929. Boundaries also stranded groups
outside of their titular republics. For example, when Samarkand was assigned to the Uzbek SSR
despite possessing a Tajik majority, the Tajiks accused the government in Moscow of favouring
Uzbeks at the expense of other groups (Bergne, 2007). Nevertheless, in line with the policy of
indigenisation, the Soviets tried to increase the participation of ethnic Kazakhs in the new regional
government with varied success. These efforts included targeting both old Kazakh elites (such as
Alash Orda leaders) as well as those with discontent against the traditional Kazakh hierarchies.
However, this drive for participation was also volatile; numerous purges occurred against many
members of the Kazakh party in this period (Dave, 2007). The indigenisation policies fostered a
strong connection between the culture of the titular group and the territory of the republic, even in
areas of mixed population, engendering a sense of ownership and belonging between the titular
group and the territory. The growth of this connection would accelerate significantly with
independence.

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The Soviet period also saw significant changes in the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan.
Forced collectivisation and sedenterisation during the Stalinist era caused the death of 1.3 million
ethnic Kazakhs between 1931 and 1933, representing between 38% and 42% of the ethnic Kazakh
population. By percentage, the Kazakhs suffered the largest losses of any ethnic group during the
famines of the 1930s in the USSR. The forced sedenterisation also broke the traditional connection
between Kazakhs and nomadism, irrevocably changing the traditional Kazakh way of life (Arch,
1993). The famine significantly altered the demographic makeup of the Kazakh republic, with
ethnic Kazakhs, who formed 60% of the population prior to the famine, dropping to 38% after
(Pianciola, 2001). Kazakhstan would also become the destination of ethnic groups forcibly
removed from their homelands during the World War II era, beginning with the transfer of 172,000
Soviet Koreans in 1937. Groups as diverse as the Volga Germans, Meskhetian Turks, and the
Kalmyks would follow in the 1940s, all ostensibly to mitigate the risk of collaborationism and
infiltration during World War II (Pohl, 1999). This period also saw the establishment of labour
camps in Kazakhstan, most notoriously the Karlag near Karaganda in 1931, which quickly became
one of the largest in the USSR. These deportations and population transfers would alter the
demographics of Kazakhstan, making Kazakhstan the most diverse republic in the USSR and
further diminishing the proportion of ethnic Kazakhs in the republic.
The advent of the 1950s and 1960s would further exacerbate the demographic situation of
the Kazakhs within their republic. In a bid to increase grain production, in 1954, Soviet Premier
Nikita Khruschev announced the Virgin Lands campaign, which put huge tracts of Kazakh grazing
land under grain cultivation. The campaign lasted until 1965, during which hundreds of thousands
of non-Kazakhs were sent to the republic to farm the steppes. As a result, the proportion of Kazakhs
in the republic fell further to 30% in 1959. More non-Kazakhs would continue to arrive in the

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1960s and 1970s, as the Soviet Union continued the industrialisation of Kazakhstan that had begun
during World War II (as a matter of necessity) (Olcott, 1995). However, during this period, the
Kazakh population began to recover from the famine, and the proportion of Kazakhs in the republic
increased to 38% by 1979. Nevertheless, the Kazakhs would not constitute a majority of the
population of their titular republic again until after independence, when other groups emigrated in
significant numbers.
Despite the Kazakh demographic decline within the republic, ethnic Kazakhs continued to
participate actively in the state’s governing structure. The First Secretary of the Communist Party
of Kazakhstan from 1964 to 1986 was an ethnic Kazakh named Dinmukhamed Kunaev. While the
Kazakh SSR was largely politically quiet, the replacement of Kunaev with Gennady Kolbin, an
outsider with no ties to Kazakhstan, prompted large protests to break out in December 1986. The
unrest began with a gathering of several hundred students in Alma-Ata to protest the appointment
of a non-Kazakh to the post. The crowd quickly swelled to between 1,000 and 5,000 students.
When troops were called in to disperse the protestors, the protests quickly turned into civil unrest,
with clashes between students and government troops. The unrest quickly spread around the
country; estimates of the number of participants ranged from 200 to 30,000. Over 2,000 people
were arrested, with at least 3 killed. While the events have since been characterised as nationalist
in nature by the government of Kazakhstan, contemporary reports indicate that they were more an
expression of anger at Moscow’s arbitrary control over local politics than any strong secessionist
sentiment (Bransten & Jiyenday, 1996). This characterisation is consistent with the Kazakh vote
in the March 1991 referendum, where 94.1% of votes cast supported retaining the union in a
reformed structure.

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d. Independent Kazakhstan
The lack of Kazakh demographic dominance in a Kazakh ethno-state has had a significant
influence on Kazakh policy after independence. At the last Soviet Census in 1989, ethnic Kazakhs
formed 39.7% of the population, and ethnic Russians 37.8%; when combined with Ukrainians and
Belarusians, Slavs, constituted 44.3% of the population. This number is also bolstered by Russified
non-Slavic minorities, making ethnic Kazakhs outnumbered by Russophones in the country. This
problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Russophone population is concentrated in northern
areas bordering Russia (with Kazakhs concentrated in the South), with seven out of nineteen
oblasts less than 40% ethnic Kazakh. 38% of the Russian population was also born elsewhere,
making their ties to Kazakhstan more tenuous. Moreover, the Kazakh population had a far more
positive relationship with Russians on their territory than other Central Asian did, having lived
side by side with Russians and other Slavic groups for over two hundred years.
This demographic and cultural complexity made Kazakhstan more reticent about
independence, both as a result of the complex interdependent relationship between Kazakhs and
Russians and because of fears that the Russian population would want to redraw the border
between Kazakhstan and Russia (Zhanmukanova, 2021). As a result, the Kazakh SSR was the last
constituent republic of the USSR to declare independence (even after Russia itself) and was even
dubbed ‘the accidental state’, reflecting the desire among the population to retain some links to the
Slavic and Eurasian world (Dave, 2007). Upon independence, Kazakhstan had no national
liberation movement or national heroes to rally its national identity around (Olcott, 1995);
moreover, as with in other post-Soviet republics, the infrastructure was built to serve the all-union
economy, making interdependence a reality in the region. The boundaries were also drawn
somewhat arbitrarily as a product of administrative choices, and Kazakhstan was deliberately

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developed as a showcase of Soviet social and economic policies, so despite the republic’s status
as ostensibly a Kazakh territorial unit, in reality, Kazakhs did not dominate the republic to the
same degree as in other post-Soviet republics (Malashenko, 2000).
In order to deal with these realities, the Kazakh government has had to tread carefully
around ethnic policies and could not immediately pursue an overtly Kazakh-centric national
identity as in the other Central Asian republics, such as the immediate removal of the Russian
language’s official status in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. This reality is not new to independent
Kazakhstan – since the 1970s, the Kazakh leadership had been well aware of the unusual
demographic circumstances of the republic and tried to build an identity that was inclusive of both
Russians and Kazakhs, using the term kazakhstanets (Kazakhstaner/Kazakhstani) to be an
ethnically-neutral way to refer to an inhabitant of Kazakhstan, a distinction which is still retained
by the government of independent Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has continued to pursue a multi-ethnic
national policy since independence, proclaiming both Russian and Kazakh as official languages.
This also had a practical purpose – much of the educated classes spoke Russian, and the skilled
labour pool was disproportionately Russophone. However, the government has also gradually been
increasing the presence of Kazakh in the official sphere and creating more distance with the Soviet
past, notably following Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan’s examples in switching to the Latin
alphabet from Cyrillic beginning in 2023. This process has also been accelerated by the exodus of
Russians and other Slavic ethnic groups from Kazakhstan, reaching almost half a million a year
by 1994 but slowing down after before accelerating again in 1997 (Vishnevski, 1995). These
population movements are reflected in the changes in the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan’s
population since independence.

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Ethnic group Year
1989 1999 2009 2021
Kazakh 39.7% 53.5% 63.1% 70.4%
Russian 37.8% 29.9% 23.7% 15.5%
Others 22.5% 16.6% 13.2% 14.1%
Table 6: Ethnic composition of Kazakhstan according to the national census
While Kazakhstan managed to avoid the interethnic conflict that engulfed many post-
Soviet republics, the new state of affairs was still a reversal of the previous political arrangement
– although Russians and Kazakhs have lived together since the tsarist era, this had always been in
situations where Russians were the dominant political power. The political balancing act is most
apparent in the 1995 constitution, which does not mention special rights for ethnic Kazakhs and
speaks instead of the “people of Kazakhstan” with a “common history”. In effect, the Kazakh
government simultaneously wanted to build a pan-ethnic civic identity while still promoting ethnic
Kazakh interests in their own state. State symbols from the flag to the national anthem are clearly
Kazakh by design and emphasising the state’s Kazakh nature has strong support among ethnic
Kazakhs, with nationalists decrying the lack of emphasis on the Kazakh nature of the country.
Moreover, the Kazakh-ness of the country was a consistent theme regardless of government policy
on multiculturalism, with the Kazakh nation playing an “integrating role” (Nazarbayev, 1993).
Ethnicities are guaranteed spots in the national legislature, and officials from the ruling Nur-Otan
Party have indicated strong support for the continuation of this system.
Kazakh views of Russians are also distinct from those of the neighbours such as the Uzbeks.
While Uzbeks view their culture and civilisation as equal to that of the Russians and speak of
Russian domination in colonial terms (as evidenced by the rhetoric of Uzbek president Islam
Karimov), Kazakhs tend to view Russia as the vehicle through which they accessed the rest of the
world and attribute suffering during the Soviet era to misrule rather than to any fundamental fault
of Russian language, culture, or people (Nazarbayev, 1996). In this narrative, Russians were fellow

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victims of misrule alongside Kazakhs. Accordingly, Kazakhs still show willingness to learn
Russian, albeit not at the expense of the domination of their own language in their country. Russian
also has remained the language of business, and many Kazakhs still used Russian as their primary
language outside the home even after independence (Gudkov, 1994). On their part, Russians were
reticent to learn Kazakh and generally show reluctance to even go for partial assimilation, seeing
little economic benefit in learning Kazakh, especially given the highly linguistically assimilated
Kazakh population (Laitin, 1998).
This imbalance is borne out even in 2020 in the language preferences of the population of
Kazakhstan. While over a quarter of Kazakh respondents speak Russian at home, no Russian
respondent reported Kazakh to be their primary home language. Russian is also the predominant
home language for almost all respondents from other non-Turkic minorities, even those who are
not Slavic. In addition, respondents from two Turkic ethnic minorities, Tatars and Uyghurs, also
overwhelmingly speak Russian. Kazakh is the predominant home language only for the two
Karakalpak respondents, as well as some of the Uzbek and Kyrgyz respondents (the overlap
between Uzbek-speaking Kazakhs and Kazakh-speaking Uzbeks may reflect the linguistic
situation in cities such as Turkestan and Shymkent, where both languages are spoken). From these
results, it is clear that despite government promotion of the Kazakh language, Russian still holds
a predominant position among non-Kazakhs and there is little assimilation from the Russophone
population into Kazakh language and society.
Ethnicity Language most often spoken at home Total
Russian Kazakh Uzbek Other
Kazakh 224
(25.6%)
647
(74.1%)
2
(0.2%)
1
(0.1%)
874
Russian 383
(99.7%)
0 0 1
(0.3%)
384
Ukrainian 31
(93.9%)
0 0 2 33

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Uzbek 6
(17.1%)
5
(14.3%)
24
(68.6%)
0 35
German 27
(100%)
0 0 0 27
Uyghur 20
(100%)
0 0 0 20
Tatar 29
(85.3%)
2
(5.9%)
0 3
(8.8%)
34
Korean 6
(100%)
0 0 0 6
Karakalpak 0 2
(100%)
0 0 2
Kyrgyz 2
(50%)
2
(50%)
0 0 4
Table 7: Ethnicity and language spoken at home in Kazakhstan (Central Asian Barometer, 2020)
One notable physical consequence of the country’s ethnic distribution is Kazakhstan
moved its capital from Almaty, in southern Kazakhstan near the Kyrgyz border, to the city of
Aqmola (which was then renamed Astana) in northern Kazakhstan in 1997 in order to be more
central for the whole country. This shift was as much practical as security-minded – the new capital
lay in areas that were more heavily Russian and helped the government maintain control over this
region, as while Kazakhs view this area as an integral part of their homeland, Russians often saw
it as an “empty frontier” that was settled by their ancestors (akin to views on the American
westward expansion) (Solzhenitsyn, 1995). Nevertheless, as Kazakhs become increasingly
confident in their own position within Kazakhstan, the government has quietly increased the
Kazakh nature of the country, thereby aligning it more closely with the notion of a Kazakh nation-
state akin to its neighbours in the region, such as no longer mandating that Russian be used in
labelling and advertising and shifting Kazakh to the Latin alphabet. In an interview in 2019, a
respondent who is a professor in Turkic Studies at the Nazarbayev University in Astana stated:
“The Kazakh language is being promoted in all spheres of life in Kazakhstan
with an eye to replacing Russian as the language of business, media, and
culture… [the Kazakh language] is mandatory in the education system… This
shift is also apparent among students at the university, who are educated

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Kazakhs who consciously choose to use Kazakh as their main language of
communication”.
Concurrent with this is the promotion of a Kazakh elite capable of dominating social,
economic, and political life while using the Kazakh language. Another interviewee, a professor in
the department of Political Science and International Relations at Nazarbayev University stated:
“Astana, or Nur-Sultan, is significantly different from [the more Russified
largest city] Almaty. It draws educated Kazakhs from all over the country and is
more Kazakh in nature…[Astana] is the place to go to get ahead in the new
Kazakhstan”.
This distinction between Astana and Almaty is also reflected in the demographics of the
two cities; while ethnic Russians make up over 25% of Almaty (while making up 13% of the
surrounding Almaty Region), they constitute only 12% of Astana (despite forming 33% of the
surrounding Akmola Region and 50% of the adjacent North Kazakhstan Region). This reversal of
the urban/rural distribution of Russians and Kazakhs speaks to the role of Astana as a Kazakh
urban centre in shaping the future of Kazakhstan. Overall, interview respondents generally
expressed that Kazakhstan was becoming more Kazakh in nature.
Location Date Profession No. of
Respondents
General findings
Astana,
Kazakhstan
Oct
2019
University
professors
6 - Kazakh language and culture is
more emphasised in education,
culture, the media, and business
- A Kazakh-speaking elite is
forming and developing
quickly.
- Students are now more
comfortable with expressing
Kazakh nationalism.
- Students generally see no
conflict between a Kazakh
identity and a Eurasian identity.
- Legislation being passed to
distance Kazakh from Russian
more; however, the form that
the alphabet change is taking is
somewhat contentious.

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Almaty,
Kazakhstan
Nov
2019
Businesspeople 3 - It is important for a Kazakh to
be proficient in the Kazakh
language.
- Kazakh is becoming more
prominent in the business
community; however, Russian
still plays a key role,
particularly when working with
foreign partners.
Table 8: Interviewees’ views on Kazakh identity in independent Kazakhstan
e. Kazakhstan and Eurasianism
One way that Kazakhstan has tried to accomplish this balancing act is through embracing
an official policy of Eurasianism, where Kazakhstan seeks to be a bridge between Europe and Asia
and seeks to play a central role in regional integration projects that span across both. In this vision,
Kazakhs must acknowledge the significant influence that European culture and society have had
on the country and embrace both aspects of its identity (Nazarbayev, 2011). To this end, numerous
institutions in Kazakhstan have been named “Eurasian”, such as the Eurasian National University
and emphasise their Eurasian nature through engaging with both Europe and Asia and participating
in the Russosphere. These policies embrace the multi-ethnic nature of Kazakhstan’s society and is
an attempt to formulate a more inclusive civic identity and bridge the gap between Russians and
Kazakhs, even as Kazakh language and culture hold primacy in the republic. Central to this vision
is that even Kazakh identity itself is Eurasian, and Kazakhs cannot deny the strong influence that
Europe has had on their culture and society through two hundred years Russian and Soviet rule
(Mostafa, 2013).
One particular impact of this is that Kazakhstan has been central to many attempts at
regional integration with the former Soviet republics from both Europe and Asia, including Russia.
However, given that the other states have a less positive view of their shared history with Russia,
reactions from the other four Central Asian republics have been lukewarm. Consequently,

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Kazakhstan has pushed for greater integration with both Russia and Belarus, particularly with the
formation of the Eurasian Customs Union (Mostafa, 2013). This is as much a strategy of self-
preservation as of genuine warmth towards Russia. One interviewee, who is a member of the ruling
Nur-Otan Party, stated:
“As the only Central Asian state that borders both China and Russia, it’s
important for Kazakhstan to maintain good relations with both…Only by
serving as a bridge can we ensure peace and stability in the region."
Another interviewee, a professor in the Political Science and International Relations at
Nazarbayev University, added:
“Kazakhstan is in a tough position between Russia and China. However, anti-
Chinese sentiment can be quite strong…While people can be ambivalent about
Russia, it is a known quantity. Kazakhstan knows how to navigate its
relationship with Russia.”
In addition, the presence of a large ethnic Kazakh population in China poses a dilemma for
the government – while it has encouraged the “return” of ethnic Kazakhs to the territory to bolster
numbers under the oralman policy, guaranteeing them citizenship (akin to Israel’s Law of Return),
transborder family ties still exist with the community in China. As China continues its crackdown
on its Muslim population in Xinjiang (which includes both Uyghurs and Kazakhs), Kazakhs are
reluctant to speak out. One interviewee, a professor in history at Nazarbayev University, shared:
“When the topic of Muslims in Xinjiang came up, many students refused to share
their opinion…Several came to my office hours later to tell me that they have
family members in China and are afraid that there will be consequences for their
relatives if they are too outspoken on the issue in public.”
Respondents also agreed that political developments in both China and Russia (in the aftermath of
the annexation of Crimea) has placed Kazakhstan in a precarious position. One respondent from
the Department of Political Science and International Relations stated:
“I have never felt the situation in Kazakhstan to be so helpless diplomatically.
Kazakhstan is normally able to navigate its relationships with both China and
Russia well…Recently, [these bilateral] feels more out of control than it’s ever
been”.

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Beyond Russia and China, Kazakhstan’s relationship with the other Central Asian states
have been coloured by its distinctiveness in having a far more diverse population and consequent
inability to formulate a national policy based on ethno-nationalism. In accommodating its large
Russian minority, Kazakhstan has also tried to carve for itself a Eurasian identity that in many
ways ties itself as much to the Slavic world as the Turkic world of the other Central Asian states.
However, this closeness to the Slavic world may be just as much a security strategy, and
Kazakhstan has simultaneously pursued a domestic policy of placing Kazakh identity at the centre
of the new state and taken action to move away from Russian influence such as the adoption of the
Latin alphabet. In its quest to balance various facets of its identity after independence as a republic
where the titular nationality was the minority, Kazakhstan’s attempts at regional integration have
often been at odds with its neighbours’ desires by tying the region once again to Russia such as
through the Eurasian Economic Union.
As a result, despite Kazakhstan’s size and historical enthusiasm for integration (manifested
in projects such as Nazarbayev’s attempt to spearhead the Central Asian Union) have not borne
much success in Central Asia throughout the years. Moreover, as the wealthiest population in
Central Asia, Kazakhs are more sceptical of the poorer other Central Asian states. One respondent,
a professor of economics at Nazarbayev University, stated:
“The average Kazakh sees little point in integrating with the other Central Asian
countries, as they are perceived to be poorer and have nothing to offer
Kazakhstan.”
In contrast, members of the business community expressed different sentiments on the prospect of
regional integration. One respondent, a businessman in Almaty, shared:
“[The opening up of] Uzbekistan has been great for business – there are now far
more opportunities along the southern border…Easier customs control would be
very good for business.”

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However, regional integration was also perceived as a risk by some. Another businessman in
Almaty explained:
“Many members of the business community are concerned about Uzbek
competition… Now that it’s easier to do business there, their cheaper workforce
gives them an advantage. There might be pushback on integration based on this”.
Overall, interview responses can be summed up as follows:
Location Date Profession No. of
Respondents
General findings
Astana,
Kazakhstan
Oct
2019
University
professors
6 - Due to Kazakhstan’s location
bordering both Russia and
China, it must pursue a
balanced foreign policy.
- Kazakhs generally see little
purpose in integrating with
poorer neighbours.
- Kazakhs feel a cultural gap with
the other Central Asian states,
who are perceived as “less
Eurasian”
Almaty,
Kazakhstan
Nov
2019
Businesspeople 3 - Lower trade barriers with
Uzbekistan has been good for
business, so integration could
improve this.
- Competition with Uzbekistan is
a potential risk.
Table 9: Summary of interview responses on Kazakhstan’s relationship with its neighbours
Torn between close ties to Russia in the north and Turkic neighbours to the south and
possessing uniquely diverse demographics in the region, Kazakhstan has struggled to forge a
coherent vision for regional integration for itself. However, as ties with Russia become more
distant in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine and Central Asian neighbours open up more,
Kazakhstan has the potential to be an enthusiastic participant in regional integration projects.

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2. Uzbekistan
By far the most populous country in Central Asia, Uzbekistan has played a key role in
regional politics since the Soviet era; the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, was the fourth largest city in
the USSR and became a centre of industry, culture, and education for the entire region (Stronski,
2011). However, a united Uzbekistan was also a product of the borders drawn by the Soviet
nationalities policy, with the area of the modern country having been divided into the Khanates of
Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva. The boundaries also divided up the ethnically mixed Ferghana
Valley between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, leaving exclaves and enclaves across the
region and stranding ethnic minorities outside the borders of their ethno-states. While these borders
were of little consequence when they were internal to the Soviet Union, since independence, they
have become major obstacles to mobility in each of these states. Ethnic minorities left beyond the
borders of their own republics have also been subject to interethnic violence, most notably between
Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan in 1990 and 2010. The drawing of boundaries also
meant that major Tajik-speaking cities such as Samarkand and Bukhara were included in
Uzbekistan, leading to a significant Tajik-speaking minority in the country. Uzbekistan also
includes the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, which was attached to the Kazakh SSR until
1936 and whose inhabitants, the Karakalpaks, are more closely related to the Kazakhs than the
Uzbeks (Richardson, 2012).
An additional complication for the case of Uzbekistan is the historical changes between
ethnic identification throughout the region. Similar to how the Kazakhs were called “Kirgiz” in
the early Soviet era, the term Uzbek originally referred to Turkic nomads, which stands in contrast
to the modern nomenclature, where Uzbeks are associated with the inhabitants of the largest and
most historically important urban areas in the region such as Tashkent and Khiva (Golden, 1992).

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Prior to the Soviet era, Uzbeks were grouped together with the also-sedentary Tajiks as Sart, with
both language communities existing in the same spaces and bilingualism common throughout most
of their history (with most prominent figures from the area speaking and writing in both Tajik and
Turkic languages). This fluidity, coupled with Soviet era policies that compelled self-reported
Tajiks to move to Tajikistan to bolster the republic’s population, means that many Tajik speakers
in Uzbekistan officially identify as Uzbek despite using Tajik as their primary daily language
(Dagiev, 2013). Thus, the relationship between Uzbekistan and its neighbours is complex and
reflects changing notions of ethnic identities and communal relations with the state throughout
both the Soviet era and independence.

Figure 7: Map of Uzbekistan (CIA World Factbook)

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a. Pre-Soviet Uzbekistan
The territory of what is now Uzbekistan has been inhabited since the first millennium BCE
by Iranic speaking peoples who formed key cities in the region such as Samarkand and Bukhara.
In 327 BCE, the region was conquered by Alexander the Great. The cities of the region were
subsequently ruled by various Persian empires such as the Sassanians and the Parthians and
became exceedingly wealthy thanks to their strategic location on the silk trade between China and
western Eurasia. By the 7
th
and 8
th
centuries CE, Turkic peoples had begun appearing in the region,
and there was close interaction between the Persianate and Turkic populations of the cities and
countryside even during this era. In the 8
th
century, the region was conquered by the Arabs and
became part of the Islamic Caliphate. While the region was Islamised in this era, it remained
essentially Persian in culture throughout this period. During the Caliphate era, Bukhara became
one of the greatest centres of culture and learning in the Islamic world and produced numerous
important works that are still important to Islam today, including the works of the most important
hadith scholar, Muhammad al-Bukhari. Persian rule returned in the early 9
th
century with the
Samanids, who broke away from the Abbasids and had their capital in Bukhara. The period saw a
flourishing of Islamic Persian culture and witnessed increasing numbers of Turks arriving in the
region and serving in the region’s armies. Eventually, the Samanids were overthrown by Turkic
forces and the region was ruled by a succession of Turkic groups, including the Karakhanids, the
Ghaznavids, and the Seljuks. Despite the Turkic origin of the rulers of these states, the court culture
and governance structure were still highly Persianate and the Perso-Islamic culture of the region
that had arisen after the Arab conquest and during the Samanid period was retained (Allworth,
1990).

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The succession of Turco-Persian polities in the region was thrown into upheaval with the
invasion of the Mongols, who conquered the region between 1219 and 1225 and wrought great
destruction to the Central Asian cities (few buildings in Samarkand or Bukhara survived the
Mongol attacks) as well as the irrigation networks of the region. The invasions accelerated the
Turkification of Central Asia, as the Mongol troops also consisted of large numbers of Turkic
nomads. After the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, the region was assigned to his son, Chagatai.
In the 14
th
century, when Chagatai’s territory began to break up, one chieftain, Timur (Tamerlane)
emerged victorious and conquered a vast empire in Central Asia and Iran. Many of the national
symbols of modern Uzbek identity dates from the Timurid period, with Tamerlane’s statue
occupying a prominent square in central Tashkent. The Timurids ordered the construction of grand
palaces and monuments throughout the cities of his empire and patronised Persian art, culture, and
architecture. However, one notable change was the Timurid promotion of the Chagatai dialect of
Turkic as a literary language, which has been claimed by both Soviet and Uzbek historians as the
precursor of the modern Uzbek language, even terming Chagatai as Early Uzbek. The greatest
Timurid writer, Alisher Navoiy, is now considered the father of Uzbek literature, with numerous
localities named after him throughout modern Uzbekistan; however, despite preferring Chagatai,
he also wrote extensively in Persian and Arabic. The different framework for identity in the era
means that it’s an open question whether he could be tied to the modern Uzbeks (Kutlu, 1977).
The internal fighting among the Timurids led to the Uzbek invasion of the region in 1501
under Shaybani; the conquests were completed by 1520, and several Uzbek states arose in the area,
the largest of which were the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva. In the 18
th
century, a
third khanate centred on Kokand in the Fergana Valley was established on territory that was lost
by Bukhara. These states started to go into decline in the early 19
th
century due to internal turmoil

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as well as conflict with nomadic groups from the stepped to the north, who constantly raided the
cities of the region. By the mid-nineteenth century, the khanates had fallen to the Russian Empire,
who was encroaching south from the steppes and seeking alternative sources of cotton due to the
outbreak of the American Civil War. Tashkent fell in 1865, followed by Bukhara in 1867 and
Samarkand in 1868, with the Emirate of Bukhara becoming a protectorate of Russia later that year.
The Khanate of Kokand followed in 1869, and the Khanate of Khiva in 1876 (Roy, 2004).
While Khiva and Bukhara remained Russian subjects and exercised substantial domestic
control while being subservient to the governor general in Tashkent, the Khan of Kokand resisted
Russian rule. In response, tsarist forces attacked Kokand and defeated the Khan after six months
of fighting, resulting to the annexation and abolition of the Khanate in 1876, with its territory
incorporated into the Fergana Oblast. In addition, even though the khanates retained their
autonomy, but increasing numbers of Russians moved into the region and the Russian government
intervened more in the internal affairs of the khanates, particularly after several uprisings in the
1890s (Burton, 1997).

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Figure 8: Central Asia in 1900
In the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, many Uzbeks were key to the Jadid movement,
who advocated modernity through embracing an Islamic social and political reformation for
Muslims throughout the Russian Empire. The movement opposed both the Russians, whom they
saw as oppressors of Muslims throughout the empire, as well as the traditional ulama, whom they
felt were holding back the progress of their people. The movement started many schools and
engaged in extensive publications to promote their ideas; however, the most common language
among the Jadids in Central Asia was Persian (unlike in the North Caucasus, where Turkic
languages such as Volga Tatar were also employed. Like in the rest of Central Asia, the lands of
Transoxiana broke out in revolt in 1916 over the imposition of conscription on Muslims during
the First World War. While the revolt lasted until after the October Revolution, with the Central
Asian rebels generally fighting against the Bolsheviks, many of the Jadids joined forces with the

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Bolsheviks and played instrumental roles in overthrowing the Emirate of Bukhara and Khanate of
Khiva and incorporating them into the USSR (Khalid, 1998).
b. Soviet Uzbekistan
During the Russian Civil War, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva were both
overthrown by anti-Monarchists in alliance the Bolsheviks in 1920, becoming the People’s
Republic of Bukhara and the People’s Republic of Khiva, respectively. In 1923, the People’s
Republic of Khiva became the Khorezm Socialist Soviet Republic (SSR), and the People’s
Republic of Bukhara followed suit and became the Bukharan SSR in 1924. Later in 1924, the
borders of Russian Turkestan were redrawn to reflect ethnic boundaries as a part of the
indigenisation policies of the Soviet Union. In this process, most of the territory of the Bukharan
SSR and Khorezm SSR became part of the Uzbek SSR, which became the homeland for the Uzbek
ethnicity. These boundaries would shift substantially over the ensuing decade. The Tajik ASSR,
which originally was part of the Uzbek SSR, became its own republic in 1929, and in 1936, the
Karakalpak ASSR was transferred from the Kazakh SSR to the Uzbek SSR. Other smaller
territorial changes between the Kazakh and Uzbek SSRs occurred throughout the years following
the Second World War (Haugen, 2003).
The intermixed nature of the populations in the region resulted in numerous disputes over
territory and exclaves and enclaves, particularly in the Ferghana Valley, which was divided
between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. While these boundaries posed few challenges
when they were internal borders of the USSR and populations moved freely using infrastructure
that frequently crossed the borders multiple times in short succession, after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the creation of national boundaries became a significant source of conflict to the
region as well as a logistical challenge, with many cities and towns effectively cut off from each

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other by formerly short journeys that now required multiple border crossings, often through
disputed territories.
Indigenisation was conducted concurrently with the process of drawing new borders with
the codification of a united Uzbek identity for the republic. However, a distinct national identity
was in several important ways incompatible with the long history of mixed communities in the
region. Due to the long cohabitation of Uzbeks and Tajiks, it was almost impossible to definitively
assign historical polities or cultural achievements to one group over the other, meaning any choice
made would be contentious. For example, while the Emirate of Bukhara is now portrayed as an
Uzbek entity, it contained in equal measure Tajiks and had a substantial bilingual population
(Allworth, 1990). Even the selection of a dialect to codify the language was controversial, as the
term Uzbek referred to very divergent Turkic varieties. While the Kipchak dialect of Turkestan (in
modern Kazakhstan), which was more “Turkic” and made extensive use of vowel harmony was
initially chosen, the standard eventually shifted to the Tashkent-Ferghana dialect, which is heavily
influenced by Tajik and has lost the characteristic Turkic vowel harmony (Bronnikova, 1993). This
spectrum of identity would lead to disputes between Tajiks and Uzbeks over both territory and
cultural figures.
The demographics of Uzbekistan also changed significantly under the Soviet Union. While
population transfers on the territory of the Uzbek SSR did not alter the demographics of the
republic as much as those of the Kazakh SSR (largely due to both the Uzbeks’ large population as
the third largest nationality in the USSR after the Russians and Ukrainians and not undergoing any
mass famines analogous to the Kazakh forced sedenterisation), the republic still became home to
deported ethnic groups from other parts of the union during the Stalinist purges, most notably
Soviet Koreans, Crimean Tatars, and Chechens, who were deemed security and infiltration threats

150

in their home regions (Lubin, 1996).. Substantial investment was also made in infrastructure, both
in industry (particularly during the Second World War to move it far away from the front lines
with Nazi Germany, bringing with it Russian workers and increasingly Russifying the cities) and
in agriculture in a bid to boost cotton production. One lasting consequence of the push for cotton
was the construction of large irrigation systems along the Amu Darya River, which ultimately
diverted so much water (particularly due to the inefficiencies of the system) that it gradually led
to the drying up of the Aral Sea and the economic devastation of towns and cities surrounding the
sea. Tashkent became the centre of Central Asia, and by the collapse of the Soviet Union had
become the fourth largest city in the USSR and a major centre of education and manufacturing
(Stronski, 2011).
The late Soviet period in Uzbekistan was the scene of interethnic violence, the most notable
of which was the 1989 Fergana Massacre, which targeted Meskhetian Turks who had been settled
in the region after their expulsion from Soviet Georgia during World War II. The pogroms were
allegedly perpetrated by Uzbek nationalists and led to at least 97 deaths. The reason behind the
massacre has never been clear; it is speculated to have originated from economic resentment
against the Meskhetian Turks, who were largely businessowners. In the aftermath, the majority of
the 100,000-strong Meskhetian community in Uzbekistan fled the country, largely to Azerbaijan
(Pravda, 1989). Tensions also grew between Uzbeks and Russians, with the former accusing the
latter of being “colonists” and the latter resenting the increasing emphasis on Uzbek language in
the public sphere (Dobbs, 1990).
c. Independent Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan declared its independence from the USSR on 31 August 1991, making it the
first republic in Central Asia to secede, alongside Kyrgyzstan. Unlike in neighbouring Kazakhstan,

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where the precarious ethnic balance made the leadership reluctant to push too strongly towards
independence and ethnic-based policies, the Uzbek demographic dominance in Uzbekistan meant
that the state could pursue overtly pro-Uzbek policies. This was aided by the rapid exodus of ethnic
Russians, whose population peaked in the 1959 census at 13.5% of the population. Since then, the
number of Russians in Uzbekistan has declined as a share of the population due to lower fertility
rates, before declining in absolute numbers starting in the 1980s. In the last Soviet census in 1989,
Russians still constituted 8.4% of the population; however, by 2017, Russians only constituted
2.5% of the populations. Meanwhile, the percentage of Uzbeks also rose from 62.2% in 1959 to
71.4% in 1989 and 83.7% in 2017 (O'zbekiston Respublikasi ochiq ma'lumotlar portali). The
percentage of Tajiks also increased in 1989, largely due to the fact that it was the first census where
ethnicity could be self-reported rather than relying on the official listed nationality in identity
documents, where many Tajiks had registered as Uzbeks to avoid having to move to the Tajik SSR
(Allworth, 1990).
Thanks to this demographic dominance, Uzbekistan declared Uzbek to be the sole official
language in 1992 and switched to writing in the Latin alphabet officially in the same year (with an
additional reform in 1996), with education being conducted only in the Latin alphabet since 2000.
However, rather than adopting an orthography closer to the Common Turkic Alphabet, (which
would resemble Anatolian Turkish), Uzbekistan chose a writing system with many of its own
idiosyncrasies, such as using ch, sh, and o’ in place of ç, ş, and ö, respectively, thereby
demonstrating a certain degree of suspicion of pan-Turkism as a Turkish project, at least in
linguistic policy (the same approach was also applied in Azerbaijan to a lesser degree, despite its
close ties to Turkey). Pan-Turkism is also avoided in official Uzbek historiography, with modern
Uzbekistan portrayed instead as the inheritor of the ancient civilisations of the Transoxiania region,

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with Timur as the central historical figure (Finke, 2006). In addition, Karakalpak, which is closely
related to Kazakh, holds official status in the Republic of Karakalpakstan.
Despite the removal of Russian as an official language, Russian continues to play an
important role in interethnic communication (having replaced previous widespread Uzbek-Tajik
bilingualism among the population) and in science, government, and business. However,
proficiency in Russian has declined sharply, particularly among the younger generations, reflecting
a broader shift overall among most of the non-Slavic post-Soviet republics. Tajik also continues
to be an important spoken language, dominating in large pockets of the country, including in
Samarkand, Bukhara, and the Surxondoryo Province; while Tajiks officially constitute only 4.7%
of the population, estimates show that Tajik speakers may constitute up to 10-15% of the
population; some estimates from both inside and outside Uzbekistan place the proportion of Tajiks
within the population as high as 30% (Cordell, 1998). This is a consequence of the Soviet era
Uzbekisation policy, under which Tajiks in the Uzbek SSR registered themselves as Uzbeks in
order to prevent being moved to the newly formed Tajik SSR.
Ethnicity Language most often spoken at home Total
Russian Tajik Kazakh Uzbek Other
Uzbek 33
(2.8%)
33
(2.8%)
1
(0.0%)
1078
(92.5%)
22
(1.9%)
1166
Russian 43
(100%)
0 0 0 0 43
Tajik 3
(5.4%)
39
(69.6%)
0 14
(25.0%)
0 56
Kazakh 7
(9.3%)
0 42
(56.0%)
14
(18.7%)
12
(16.0%)
75
Table 10: Ethnicity and language spoken in Uzbekistan (Central Asian Barometer, 2020)
Survey data from Central Asian Barometer indicates that the crossover between Tajik and Uzbek
speakers is still very much active in Uzbekistan, with the same number of ethnic Uzbeks speaking
Russian and Tajik at home.

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Politically, the newly independent state was led by Islam Karimov, who was also the leader
of the Uzbek SSR. Karimov would be president for the next twenty-five years until his death
through a series of criticised elections and referenda. The era saw the banning of the main
opposition party, brutal suppression of Islamist extremist groups (who had conducted terrorist
attacks in 1999 and 2004), and tensions with neighbouring countries. Mines were laid along the
Tajik border in 2000, while disputes also arose along the Kyrgyz and Turkmen borders in the early
2000s (Putz, 2020). Domestic dissent was also crushed, most notably in 2005, where troops fired
into protestors in Andijon, killing between 300-500 people (OSCE, 2005). The violence was
blamed on Islamists, who were commonly used as justification for suppressive measures (Chivers
& Wilensky-Lenford, 2005). Uzbekistan has also been accused of exporting its own Islamic
extremism problem by expelling Uzbek Islamists from the country, who then go on to destabilise
other regions (Ioffe, 2017). However, Uzbekistan reacted only in a limited manner to inter-ethnic
violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in 2010, where interethnic violence killed 420 people,
largely Uzbeks, which was then followed by suppression of Uzbek language and culture in the
country. The country was also significantly more closed off economically and politically during
the Karimov era and did not participate in many international organisations, frustrating efforts at
building regional organisation infrastructure both in Central Asia and across the former Soviet
sphere. These efforts cannot ignore Uzbekistan due to both its large population and central location
in the region.
Karimov’s death in 2016 marked a significant change in Uzbek politics; his replacement,
Shavkat Mirziyoyev, upended the security state (dismissing the head of internal security, Rustam
Inoyatov, in 2018 and removing him from the Presidential Council in 2021) and dismantled many
of the isolationist measures of the Karimov era, opening up the country to tourism and trade and

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showing increasing interest in regional integration prospects, pushing for an annual meeting of
Central Asian leaders, with the second of which held in Tashkent in 2019 (with the first hosted by
Kazakhstan’s Tokayev in 2018). This marks a turning point in Uzbekistan’s relationship with its
neighbours; however, the breadth and depth of this change remains to be seen. Nevertheless, many
academics and government advisors are optimistic. When asked about Uzbekistan integrating with
its neighbours, a professor at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Tashkent, who
also has an appointment as an advisor to the office of the president stated:
“Uzbekistan is the highest population in Central Asia and borders every other
Central Asian republic. This makes it a natural leader in regional organisations,
which must include Uzbekistan…It’s time for Uzbekistan to reclaim its natural
place at the centre of the region”.
Another professor at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in the department also
indicated optimism at future integration prospects:
“Uzbekistan is not entirely unfamiliar with regional cooperation. Water sharing
agreements with neighbours have been in place since the 1990s… we can build
on this past experience for future cooperation. The natural place for this is
Central Asia…we have a lot in common with the other countries”.
Compared to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan also has a different relationship with both Russia and China.
Another respondent who works for an NGO in Tashkent opined:
“We don’t border China or Russia directly, so they don’t pose as much of a threat
to us as they do to Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. Because of this, we can also focus
more on cooperation with our Central Asian neighbours.”
Moreover, unlike Kazakhs, Uzbeks view Russification far more negatively and has always been
more sceptical of Russian-led integration projects (Dave, 2007). However, not everyone is as
sceptical of Russia. One respondent who currently works for an NGO but had previously worked
as a high school teacher said:
“I taught Russian and English to high school students for many years. Even in
Tashkent, Russian proficiency has decreased significantly among the young…in
the countryside, Russian proficiency is even lower…It’s a shame really, as we’re
losing our connection to that world.”

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On the part of China, unlike the Kazakhs, the Uzbeks do not have a diasporic population
in China, removing a potential point of contention. Even relations with Tajikistan have gradually
improved, with President Mirziyoyev visiting President Rahmon and signing 27 accords in 2022
(Tashkent Times, 2022).
Interviews with the business community has also indicated that the opening up under
President Mirziyoyev has led to significant improvement in trade ties. One respondent who works
in the import-export industry stated:
“Since the easing of border crossings, business has boomed…It is much easier
for us to export now, and many opportunities have come up around the
region…One place where we’ve even managed to do business is exporting wheat
to Afghanistan!”
The removal of the official exchange rate in 2017 has also spurred business growth. Another
businessman working in export import stated:
“Navigating the official and black-market rates was a nightmare. You could
exchange dollars to [Uzbek] so’m [at the official rate] but not vice versa! People
say that the lines at the bank are all hired actors to prevent people from using the
official rate…Now, even though imports are more expensive, it’s much easier to
conduct business.”
Overall, interview respondents were optimistic about the changes happening in Uzbekistan and the
prospect for greater regional cooperation.
Location Date Profession No. of
Respondents
General findings
Tashkent,
Uzbekistan
Oct
2019
University
professors
3 - Uzbekistan is the natural leader
of Central Asia and should play
a key role in regional
integration projects.
- Cooperation with other Central
Asian countries should be a
priority due to shared values.
- Regional cooperation has been
successful in the past
Tashkent,
Uzbekistan
Oct
2019
Businesspeople 3 - The opening up of borders has
been great for imports and

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exports. Further lowering of
trade barriers would be very
good for the Uzbek economy.
Tashkent,
Uzbekistan
Oct
2019
NGO workers 3 - Regional cooperation is
important as we have a lot in
common with our neighbours.
- Russian proficiency has
declined precipitously among
the younger generations
Table 11: Summary of interview responses in Uzbekistan
From the Kazakh side, there is some apprehension about Uzbek economic competition in the
region (see Kazakhstan interviews). However, other sources indicate that the opening up of
Uzbekistan to trade and foreign investment is a great opportunity for Kazakhstan, with the rivalry
encouraging each side to adopt more competitive reforms as well as the significant potential
synergy between the two economies in a regional economic context through integrating supply
chains and making use of each country’s comparative advantage (Bisenov, 2019).
While relations with neighbours have continued to warm with the change in leadership and
increasing indigenisation of Uzbek society and economy, the new government still faces numerous
challenges around the domestic consolidation of power. As of 2022, Uzbekistan is undergoing a
process of constitutional reform, which has the purported aim of strengthening civil rights and
giving a more humanitarian face to the government – indeed, it begins by stating “Biz,
O‘zbekistonning yagona xalqi, inson huquqlariga va erkinliklariga, milliy va umuminsoniy
qadriyatlarga, davlat suvereniteti prinsiplariga o‘z sodiqligimizni tantanali ravishda eʼlon qilib…”
reaffirming the importance of human rights (inson huquglar) and freedoms (erkinliklar) as well as
the principles of state sovereignty (davlat suvrenitet) (O‘zbekiston Respublikasining
Konstitutsiyaviy Qonuni Loyihasi, 2022). Notably, it also extends the presidential term from five
years to seven years and opens up the possibility of Miziyoyev extending his time in office. Most
controversially, the amendments decreased the autonomy enjoyed by the Republic of

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Karakalpakstan, including mandating closer alignment between Karakalpak and national
legislation as well as taking away the republic’s right to hold a referendum for independence from
the rest of Uzbekistan. These changes prompted thousands to take to the streets in Nukus, the
autonomous republic’s capital city, as well as other urban centres around the republic
(Kommersant, 2022). These changes indicate a bigger focus on national territorial integrity and is
particularly important for Karakalpakstan, whose titular nationality are far more closely related to
the neighbouring Kazakhs than the Uzbeks. As a result of the protests, the consultation period was
extended, and the amendments will be put to a national referendum before final ratification.
d. Sarts, Uzbeks, and Tajiks
When Soviet Turkestan was divided into separate republics rather than remaining a single
Turkic republic, the fluidity of identities and the intermixed nature of the population in the region
became a significant challenge to administrative boundaries, with Tajiks and Uzbeks intermixed
in towns, cities, and the countryside. In addition, many inhabitants identified more closely with
their place of origin than with co-ethnics elsewhere in Turkestan. The delimitation based on
language also belied the significant bilingualism that existed among these populations, particularly
in the towns (Allworth, 1990).
During the tsarist era, inhabitants of Central Asia were generally divided into nomads and
town and city dwellers, with the nomads generally termed as “Kirgiz” (hence the Kazakh SSR’s
original appellation as the Kirgiz SSR, while the Kyrgyz were known as the Kara-Kirgiz, or Black
Kyrgyz), while city dwellers were generally called “Sart”. The distinction between Sart and Uzbek
was unclear, and Sart generally came to encompass all city dwellers, who were largely Tajik or
Uzbek speaking, and frequently bilingual, meaning that many figures important in the nation-
building process of both peoples were bilingual and were equally comfortable writing in both

158

languages. As a result, contemporary figures in the late 19
th
century such as the Kazakh scholar
Serali Lapin affirmed that there is no distinction between Sart and Uzbek (Bronnikova, 1993).
What Uzbek referred to was also unclear – while the term originated with the nomadic followers
of Shaybani, it came to refer to various different Turkic varieties that were not particularly close
to each other, with some being closer to the Kipchak languages (i.e., Kazakh and Kyrgyz), while
others were more clearly Karluk (i.e., closer to Uyghur). Complicating matters, inhabitants of the
region often identified more strongly with tribal affiliations rather than any specific ethnicity
(Haugen, 2003). It was only in 1924 that Uzbek became clearly defined as sedentary Turkic
speakers. While standard Uzbek was initially proposed to be the variety spoken in Turkestan (in
modern Kazakhstan), which was less Persianised, it was eventually shifted to the more commonly
spoken Tashkent-Fergana dialect, which has heavy Tajik influence in both vocabulary and
grammar and is the only major Turkic language lacking vowel harmony. Indeed, in many ways,
Uzbek and Tajik are two sides to the same coin, with the former a heavily Persianate Turkic
language and the latter strongly Turkic-influenced Iranic language, reflecting the long coexistence
of the two groups in Central Asia.
The confusion over identity and language in the region also led to contentious choices
being made during the indigenisation process in the Soviet Era. The Uzbek language became
associated with Chagatai, with Chagatai literature identified as part of the Uzbek corpus and
referred to as Old Uzbek in both Uzbek and Soviet literature. As a result, the poet Alisher Navaiy
became known as the father of Uzbek literature despite existing before any meaningful construct
of Uzbek ethnicity ever existed, leading to claims that this was a significant distortion of history
(Allworth, 1990). Moreover, Navaiy also wrote extensively in Persian, as was common in pre-
Russian Turkestan. Thus, the division between Tajiks and Uzbeks reinforced during the Soviet

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nationalities policy and the drawing of complex borders laid the setting for difficulties for
Uzbekistan to cooperate with its neighbours as a state that simultaneously has a strong sense of
self-identity, yet has overlapping histories, cultures, languages, and symbols with its closest
neighbours. The division also took time to filter down to the population to be adopted as badges
of self-identification; interviews conducted as late as 2010 still show strong memories among older
populations of a collective identification as “Muslims” rather than Uzbek or Tajik (Dadabaev,
2010). This set the stage for much of the modern conflicts between Uzbekistan and its neighbours;
not coincidentally, Tajikistan, the nation with which Uzbekistan has the worst bilateral relationship,
is also historically the most intertwined with the long history of cohabitation between Uzbeks and
Tajiks.
This is further complicated by the undercounting of the number of Tajiks in Uzbekistan,
due to the fact that many Tajiks declared themselves as Uzbeks during the Soviet era to prevent
removal to the remote and rural Tajik SSR. Consequently, this meant that while cities such as
Bukhara and Samarkand and predominantly Tajik speaking, this is not reflected in official statistics.
While this discrepancy was of limited consequence during the Soviet era, the increased importance
of Uzbek as the national language has gone hand in hand with the suppression of the Tajik language
within Uzbekistan, with the Independent Human Rights Organisation of Uzbekistan claiming that
Tajik-language books were systematically destroyed under the guise of the removal of
“ideologically incorrect books” at schools and libraries even in predominantly Tajik-speaking
regions such as Bukhara, Samarkand, and Surxondoryo (Ergashev, 2001). However, in contrast to
this, ethnographic research in Bukhara has indicated that the locals were comfortable with being
both Tajik and Uzbek at once, with the boundaries between the two identities fluid and ethnic
affiliation not necessarily correlated with language use. In this study, the closure of Tajik schools

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is not perceived as official government policy, but rather a product of Tajik-speaking parents
wishing for their children to be educated in the national language (Finke & Sancak, 2012). While
interview respondents would make passing comments on relations with ethnic minorities, none
were willing to discuss the issue in depth. Nevertheless, it is clear that the consolidation of Uzbek
nationhood has consequences both for the state’s relation with its neighbours as well as treatment
of ethnic minorities within the Uzbekistan itself.
3. Tajikistan
Tajikistan stands out in post-Soviet Central Asia as the only non-Turkic republic, with the
national ethnicity, the Tajiks, much more closely related to Iranians and Tajik language mutually
intelligible with both Farsi of Iran and Dari of Afghanistan. In addition, a significant percentage
of Tajiks live outside the borders of their nation state, with only 6.8 million out of a total ethnic
population of 18-25 million residing in Tajikistan itself (Foltz, 2019). However, speakers of Indo-
Iranian languages have inhabited Central Asia for centuries, and Tajik-speaking cities such as
Samarkand and Bukhara were integral parts of the Persian-speaking world. Moreover, the Tajiks
form an indispensable part of the cultural landscape of Central Asia and share significant affinities
with their Turkic neighbours. This affinity is particularly strong with the Uzbeks, with whom they
were placed under the grouping Sart in tsarist times to denote the settled lifestyle (compared to the
nomadic Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen) and lived in mixed communities in the towns and cities
of the region (Soucek, 2000).
The simultaneous separation of Tajikistan from the rest of the Persian-speaking world and
the exclusion of large groups of Tajik speakers (whether through deliberate Soviet government
policy or the difficulty of drawing precise borders to create ethno-nationalist states in areas with
historically mixed populations) has led to several unusual features in the political and cultural

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organisation of Tajikistan. The use of Tajik as a standardised variant using the Cyrillic alphabet
instead of the Perso-Arabic script (as in Afghanistan and Iran) and its designation as a separate
language (despite mutual intelligibility with the varieties of Persian spoken elsewhere) during the
Soviet Era separated Tajikistan and the rest of the Persophone world. While proposals have been
made to switch the script back to Perso-Arabic to reconnect with other Persian-speaking countries,
none have been successful to date (Ehteshami, 2002). Moreover, while written Tajik makes full
use of many words from classical Persian, vernacular Tajik contains many more Russian
loanwords in daily life. In addition, the dialect on which standard Tajik is based is not that of any
of the regions of modern Tajikistan, but instead the northern dialect of Samarkand and Bukhara,
which have never been included in the Tajik Republic, due to the fact that they were and remain
the major urban centres for Tajik speakers, and that many of the early leaders of the Tajik SSR
came from these cities; however, more recently, the language has undergone shifts to emphasise
southern varieties spoken in Tajikistan more strongly (Sobirov, 2006).

Figure 9: Map of Tajikistan (CIA World Factbook)

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a. Early Tajikistan
Tajikistan has no direct antecedent in history; however, the territory of what is now
Tajikistan was part of the Persian-speaking Achaemenid Empire, which lasted from 550 BCE to
330 BCE, when it fell to Alexander the Great. The area was ruled by a succession of empires,
including the Arab Caliphate, who brought Islam to the region, before once again coming under
Persian rule in 819 CE with the Samanid Empire, which lasted until 999. Covering large parts of
what is now Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Kyrgyzstan,
the Samanid Empire claimed continuity from the Persian Sassanian Empire and was key to the
development of the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, both of which served as the capital of the
empire throughout its existence (Frye, 1975). The Samanids were key to the formation of an
Eastern Persian identity in what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, as opposed to the
Iran-centred Western Persian identity (Litvinsky, 1996). The modern Tajik state claims much
continuity from the Samanids (despite the modern Tajik-speaking cities of Samarkand and
Bukhara being in Uzbekistan), with a large map of the Samanid Empire adorning one of the large
parks in central Dushanbe. The Samanid era also produced figures central to modern Tajik national
identity. The most notable figure is the Panjakent-born poet Rudaki, who received significant
patronage from the Samanid state and is considered the founder of Tajik literature in modern Tajik
historiography (Bergne, 2007). Overall, the Samanid Empire marked a flourishing of Persian,
which was influential not only for Tajikistan but also Iran and Afghanistan.
The Samanid Empire was replaced by the Kara-Khanid Khanate, which marked the
beginning of Turkic dominance in the region (as evidenced by the other four Central Asian
Republics being Turkic states). The Kara-Khanid Khanate lasted until 1211, when the Mongols
swept through the region. In 1370, Turco-Mongol ruler Tamerlane founded the Timurid Empire,

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which had its capital in Samarkand. The region subsequently came under the rule of the Khanate
of Bukhara during the 16
th
century, followed by the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Kokand
from the 18
th
century on. While all these polities were led by ethnically Turkic elites, the culture
was Persianate in form, with the court culture being essentially Persian in content. These states
represented examples of the Turco-Persian tradition that dominated the region at the time, and
were all based in cities in what is now Uzbekistan. As a result, Tajikistan’s history during this
period is inseparable from Uzbekistan’s, and the intertwining of Tajik and Uzbek cultures can still
be observed in the region today (Canfield, 1991). The Russian Empire brought both these entities
under their control, conquering the Khanate of Kokand in 1876 and vassalizing the Emirate of
Bukhara in 1873. Tsarist Russian rule was mostly uneventful, but the region was also swept up in
the Basmachi rebellion, which arose as a reaction against the conscription of Muslims during
World War I.
b. Soviet Tajikistan & after independence
During the Soviet era, the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik ASSR) was
formed in 1924 as part of the Uzbek SSR, and it was not until 1929 that Tajikistan became its own
republic. It was also given Khujand Province in 1929, carving up the Ferghana Valley and creating
huge logistical challenges for transportation after the collapse of the USSR. However, the cities of
Samarkand and Bukhara (along with the province of Surxondoryo) were not given to the Tajik
SSR and remained within the Uzbek SSR (despite strong Tajik protest, leading to accusations of
Soviet favouritism towards Uzbeks). Consequently, many Tajiks from these cities migrated to the
new republic, which consisted largely of the mountainous hinterlands of the Tajik-speaking
territories and came to dominate the social and cultural life of the new republic (Dagiev, 2013).
One result of this is that standard Tajik is based on the North-western dialects spoken in Samarkand

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and Bukhara rather than the dialect of the new capital of the republic, Dushanbe, reflecting the two
cities’ importance to Tajik culture. The delimitation was complicated by the fact that the Tajik and
Uzbek populations inhabited mixed communities without clear ethnic or geographic distinctions,
and that Tajiks formed the majority in cities and towns that were surrounded by non-Tajik rural
areas. One consequence of this is that in addition to the Tajik minority in Uzbekistan, there is also
an Uzbek minority in Tajikistan, which constituted 12.2% of the population in the 2010 Census.
According to Soviet historiography and consequently modern Tajik historiography, the
Tajiks are the oldest inhabitants of Central Asia, predating the Turkic peoples of the other four
republics. However, when indigenisation was occurring in Tajikistan and a standard language was
being codified, Tajik and Tajikistan’s relationship with the rest of the Persian-speaking world came
into contention. This was also complicated by the fact that the Tajik spoken in Samarkand and
Bukhara both also had strong Turkic influence as a result of centuries of Tajiks and Uzbeks living
side-by-side in these places (conversely, Uzbek is also heavily Persian influenced, with standard
Uzbek having lost some key features of Turkic languages such as vowel harmony). Debates over
whether literature from other Persian-speaking areas could be considered part of the Tajik canon
were also swirling around the early days of the republic. On the one hand, the inclusion of literature
from around the Persian-speaking world would give the language a rich literary corpus spanning
a major transnational linguistic community; on the other hand, this increased connection could
leave Tajikistan susceptible to outside influence, particularly from Iran (Bergne, 2007).
Ultimately, the language debate boiled down to whether the variety chosen would be a
vehicle for exporting revolution to the rest of the Persian speaking world (and is therefore closer
to the varieties spoken in Iran and Afghanistan), or a “pure” variety spoken by the mountain Tajiks.
The compromise was that the language should be comprehensible to Tajik speakers across the

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Union, but also have characteristics different to Persian varieties spoken elsewhere. It was also
decided to abandon the Arabic script, which was determined to be unsuited to Tajik phonology,
first by the Latin alphabet in 1928, followed by the Cyrillic alphabet in 1939. Since independence,
the language has re-established contact with Farsi and Dari, enriching its own vocabulary from the
Persian varieties spoken in Iran and Afghanistan (Dodikhudoeva, 2004).
After independence, Tajikistan descended into civil war in 1992, pitting troops from the
Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan regions against the central government, which was dominated by
people from Khujand and Kulob. While the conflict peaked in 1992-1993, it only ended in 1997
and claimed the lives of up to 100,000 people. The government side was supported by Russia and
Uzbekistan. The war devastated the country and exposed its internal divisions, and Tajikistan was
the only Central Asian post-Soviet republic to experience a civil war (Akiner, 2001).
c. Tajikistan and its neighbours
The question of regional integration and identity in Tajikistan is tied closely to how it
relates to its neighbours politically and culturally. The sole non-Turkic people in Central Asia, the
Tajiks perceive themselves to be the original inhabitants of the region. This self-image is often
interwoven with a narrative of Turkicisation and oppression through the conquest and subsequent
settlement of the region by the Turkic peoples (Bergne, 2007). While Turkicisation did occur
throughout the centuries, it is an oversimplification of the historical relationship of the Tajiks to
the surrounding Turkic peoples. Tajiks and urban-dwelling Turkic-speakers were both classified
as Sart in the Tsarist era, while early Soviet attempts at classification were frustrated by the
blurriness of ethnic identification in the region, with many self-identifying using tribal affiliations
than ethnic. Sart society was also a mix between Uzbek and Tajik speakers, many of whom were
bilingual and intermarried freely between the two groups – indeed, many prominent figures in

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early Tajik and Uzbek nationalism were equally comfortable in both languages and wrote
extensively in both, reflecting the close interactions between these two peoples (Soucek, 2000).
Moreover, both Tajik and Uzbek influenced each other strongly, particularly in areas where they
coexist like the Fergana Valley. This division is complicated by the fact that the designation of
Uzbek referred originally to nomadic groups and only later came to refer to the Turkic-speaking
town and city dwellers. Tajik-speaking cities were often interspersed with Turkic hinterlands, but
even then, both the cities and countryside were mixed in their ethnic composition. This mixed
composition led to complex borders that split up cities from their hinterlands and left important
Tajik-speaking cities including Bukhara and Samarkand outside the borders of Tajikistan, leading
to accusations of the Soviet authorities favouring Uzbeks over Tajiks (Bergne, 2007).
The separation had especially dire consequences after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as
the formerly purely administrative boundaries became national borders, sundering different parts
of the community. This became especially bloody when the borders are poorly demarcated –
clashes broke out between Kyrgyz and Tajik border guards in 2021 over a reservoir and pumping
station, leading to the deaths of at least six civilians (Reuters, 2021). Soviet-era relocation policies
also led to many Tajik-speakers claiming to be Uzbeks in official paperwork yet continuing to use
Tajik in both their daily and professional lives.
Parallel to this, Tajik society is also portrayed as distinct from Iranian society, with
conscious differences such as the use of the Cyrillic script instead of the Perso-Arabic script
(although proposals have been made to return to the Perso-Arabic script). Independence was seen
in Tajikistan as an opportunity for the country to redefine its relationship with the rest of the world,
particularly the Persian world which it had been cut off from for much of the Soviet era. However,
Tajikistan’s being Sunni as opposed to Iran’s Shiism has caused issues in bilateral relations – while

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post-independence Tajikistan looked to Iran as a natural cultural partner, the government of the
Islamic Republic was more focused on the religious differences between the two countries rather
than the shared history and language. Moreover, Tajikistan was viewed by Iran as the junior partner
in the relationship, with Tajiks perceived as provincials who needed Iranian guidance. As a result,
cooperation between Iran and Tajikistan has been less than would be expected given their
commonalities and enthusiasm from the Tajik side after independence (Atkin, 1993).
As with other post-Soviet republics, independent Tajikistan’s infrastructure and economy
were closely integrated with other republics as part of the Soviet Union. For example, Tajikistan’s
water resources were crucial for agriculture in the countries downstream, particularly Uzbekistan
(Dalbaeva, 2018). However, Tajikistan’s relationship with its neighbours is complicated by the
vagaries and complexities of borders that were never meant to function as international boundaries
and the mixed nature of the pre-Soviet population leading to exclaves and enclaves and exclusion
of Tajik-speaking areas from the territory of Tajikistan. This is combined with the historical
narrative of Turkification of the region, leading to resentment from Tajiks towards both the Turkic
republics and the perceived favouritism that the tsarist and Soviet governments showed towards
the Turkic peoples, thereby further encroaching on historical Tajik-speaking lands.
The Turkic-Tajik dichotomy ignores the fact that for most of the region’s history, the
division was between nomadic and settled groups, with the Tajiks and Uzbeks both comprising
the latter and living in mixed communities with high frequencies of bilingualism. This mix is
evident in the existence of a large Tajik minority in Uzbekistan and a large Uzbek minority in
Tajikistan. The linguistic and ethnic fluidity can also be seen in the language of choice for people
in Tajikistan, which shows that some self-identified Uzbeks in Tajikistan have Uzbek as their
primary language and vice versa.

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Ethnicity Language most often spoken at home Total
Russian Tajik Uzbek Other
Tajik 34
(2.7%)
1209
(94.6%)
15
(1.2%)
20
(1.7%)
1278
Uzbek 6
(3.5%)
50
(29%)
113
(65.7%)
1
(0.3%)
172
Table 12: Ethnicity and home language in Tajikistan (Central Asian Barometer, 2020)
The application of the Soviet model of nationalities based on language disrupted this
system and separated both economic and cultural units in the region. Modern Tajikistan claims
historical antecedence from entities that covered territory beyond its borders and is still acutely
aware of the deprivation of the most important Tajik-speaking cities from the republic. These
differences have made it difficult for Tajikistan to engage with the Turkic Central Asian republics
despite the economic, cultural, and historical linkages between these countries and the immense
benefit that such cooperation would bring to Tajikistan, which remains the poorest former Soviet
republic.
4. Kyrgyzstan
Mountainous Kyrgyzstan has significant potential to benefit from regional integration
projects. Landlocked high in the Tian Shan mountains, Kyrgyzstan controls the source of many of
the region’s rivers, which are key to agriculture downstream in Uzbekistan (Ibraimov, 2022). The
country is also rich in mineral resources, most notably at the Kumtor Mine, which is one of the
largest gold mines in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan’s borders with its neighbours is very complex with
exclaves and enclaves particularly common in the south. The border also divides historically mixed
populations of the Ferghana Valley meant that Kyrgyzstan has a large Uzbek minority in cities
such as Osh and Jalalabad, and interethnic relations have been contentious, leading most notably
to race riots in 1990 and 2010. Since independence, the country has also undergone economic

169

troubles, and is currently one of the poorest former Soviet republics, with a GDP per capita of only
$1276 a year as of 2021 (World Bank).

Figure 10: Map of Kyrgyzstan (CIA World Factbook)
a. Pre-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
The name Kyrgyz derives from two potential sources, meaning either “we are forty” or
“forty daughters”, both referencing the forty clans who were united by the national hero Manas
and referenced in the forty rays on the sun in the national flag (Pulleyblank, 1990). According to
the Epic of Manas, they were united into a nation in the 9
th
century and migrated south as a result
of the Mongol expansion. By the 18
th
century, the lands inhabited by the Kyrgyz had become part
of the Qing Empire, before being taken over by the Khanate of Kokand in the early 19
th
century.
In the late 19
th
century, the territory was ceded to the Russian Empire through the Treaty of
Targabatai and was incorporated into the empire as Kirgizia in 1876. Throughout this period, the

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Kyrgyz population was mobile, and some migrated to the Pamir Mountains in Afghanistan as a
result of the Russian takeover.
Like the rest of Central Asia, the Kyrgyz rose in revolt when conscription was enforced
upon the Muslim population of the empire during the First World War. The Russian Empire
responded with brutal massacres of the Kyrgyz population, leading the survivors to flee over the
Tian Shan Mountains, with many perishing in the high passes. Estimates of deaths during the revolt
range from 40,000 up to 270,000, which would constitute 40% of the Kyrgyz population at the
time (Sokol, 2016). Termed the Urkun (Exodus), the event was not included in textbooks during
the Soviet era; however, since independence, it has increasingly become viewed as a formative
event for the Kyrgyz nation (Pannier, 2006).
b. Soviet Kyrgyzstan
After Bolshevik control was established in the region in 1919, the Kara-Kirgiz
Autonomous Oblast was established within the Russian SFSR (until the mid-1920s, Kirgiz referred
to the Kazakhs, while the Kyrgyz were Kara-Kirgiz, or Black Kirgiz). During this period, as in
other Soviet republics, a strong emphasis was also placed on building a Kyrgyz national identity
and increasing literacy in the Kyrgyz language. Many Russians also moved to the republic, and by
the Soviet census of 1989, only 22% of the population of Frunze (now Bishkek) was ethnically
Kyrgyz. Nevertheless, the Kyrgyz population continued to predominate in the countryside, and
the republic was overall 52.4% Kyrgyz and 21.5% Russian. However, the nationalities policy also
divided populations that previously identified with each other; for example, while residents of the
Osh region prior to the Soviet era all self-identified as Kipchaks, the lowland Kipchak were
designated Uzbek and the highland Kipchak Kyrgyz largely based on language in the 1920s; to
this day, residents of the region still identify Kyrgyzstan with the mountains and Uzbekistan with

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the flatlands (Lubin, 1999). The delimitation of borders also left a significant Uzbek minority
within the country, largely in the south, who constituted 12.9% of the population in 1989. Friction
between the Uzbek and Kyrgyz communities led to the Osh Riots in 1990, which claimed the lives
of 186 people. In August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from the Soviet Union.
c. Independent Kyrgyzstan
Pro-Russian Askar Akayev led the republic from 1990 through independence, holding onto
power until 2005, when he was overthrown in during the protests of the Tulip Revolution to be
replaced by Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Bakiyev’s rise was perceived as a triumph of of the southern
Kyrgyz elite, who had been side-lined during Akayev’s presidency (which favoured northerners).
Significant political violence ensured, with several members of the national legislature being
assassinated in 2005 and 2006. Civil unrest broke out again in 2010, when protestors attacked
government offices and state radio and television stations, resulting in at least 75 deaths, driving
the country to the brink of civil war as various factions claimed to be the legitimate government
of the country. Bakiyev finally resigned in April 2010, and Russia was accused of orchestrating
the protests as a response to the Kyrgyz government’s letting the US use the Manas Air Base for
its operations in Afghanistan (Laruelle, 2012).
Ethnic violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbek broke out again in 2010, when clashes between
local gangs spread in an environment of simmering anti-Uzbek sentiment. Violence quickly
engulfed the city of Osh (the second largest in Kyrgyzstan), leading to 170 deaths and 30,000
Uzbeks to flee across the border (BBC News, 2010). While there were fears that the Uzbek
government would try to influence events, Karimov kept intervention to a minimum. In the
aftermath, the new Kyrgyz government was accused of not doing enough to protect minority rights,
while the government blamed Bakiyev for instigating the riots. Soviet-era boundaries also led to

172

deadly clashes between Kyrgyz and Tajik border forces in 2021 over a disputed water reservoir,
killing at least 55 people, and again in September 2022, with 94 deaths (BBC News, 2022).
d. Kyrgyzstan and its minorities
The two largest ethnic minorities in Kyrgyzstan are Uzbeks and Russians. Alongside
Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan was one of the three Central Asian republics to retain
Russian as an official language and has resisted switching Kyrgyz writing from Cyrillic to Latin
(as had been done for Turkmen, Uzbek, and Kazakh), and while many Russians left the country
after independence, they still constituted 5.1% of the population in 2021 (Kyrgyz National Census,
2021). Moreover, Kyrgyzstan remains one of the most Russified Central Asian republics, with
Russian remaining the language of business and politics, particularly in the northern half of the
country, where Russian remains a prominent daily language in the cities. This influence is
bolstered by the large number of Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia, who continually move back
and forth between the two countries (this movement is so significant that transportation patterns
in the country reflect this, as prices rise on northbound trips towards Russia when migrants return
to their jobs). However, as in other republics in Central Asia, the Kyrgyz language is gaining
dominance at the expense of Russian in Kyrgyzstan. The movement of southern elites into Bishkek
in the wake of the Tulip Revolution has increased the number of Kyrgyz-speaking professionals
in the city, and as Kyrgyz continues to play a more prominent role in society, more and more
educated Kyrgyz are ensuring that their children are proficient in the national language. However,
unlike in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, most of the movement away from Russian is more a result of
micro-level changes within the community rather than top-down policy (Kosmarskaya, 2015).
However, there have been incidents where Kyrgyz nationalists have attacked members of the
Slavic minority for insisting on speaking Russian rather than using Kyrgyz (Ibraimov, 2021).

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Nevertheless, results from the Central Asian Barometer show that, while there is a non-negligible
of Russified Kyrgyz, unlike in Kazakhstan, some Russians in Kyrgyzstan do report Kyrgyz as their
primary home language.
Ethnicity Language most often spoken at home Total
Russian Kyrgyz Uzbek Other
Kyrgyz 90
(7.4%)
1120
(92.0%)
3
(0.2%)
5
(0.4%)
1218
Uzbek 4
(5.2%)
4
(5.2%)
68
(88.3%)
1
(1.3%)
77
Russian 72
(93.5%)
4
(5.2%)
0 1
(1.3%)
77
Table 13: Ethnicity and language spoken at home in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asian Barometer,
2020)
In southern Kyrgyzstan, the most significant minority is the Uzbeks, who constituted
14.8% of the national population in the 2021 census and are concentrated in urban areas adjacent
to the Uzbek border. The boundaries in this region are exceedingly complex, with numerous
enclaves and exclaves and boundaries cutting across major roads. To complicate issues, prior to
the Soviet era, inhabitants of this region collectively identified as Kipchak (Lubin, 1999) The
Uzbek population are dominant in the local economy, particularly in trade, leading to accusations
that they are profiting off unwitting Kyrgyz. Uzbeks on their part complain of being shut out of
local administration and have made demands for greater representation for the Uzbek language
and reserved seats for the minority in government, which led to accusations of the minority trying
to undermine national unity. Former President Bakiyev, who enjoyed strong support among the
Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan, was also accused of being anti-Uzbek, with tensions increasing
after his rise to power in 2005. Complicating matters is Kyrgyz fears that more-populous
Uzbekistan would seek to influence Kyrgyz politics through its ethnic minority (Laruelle, 2012).

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Overall, Kyrgyzstan’s domestic issues and often contentious relationship with its
neighbours means that it has not been as active in pursuing integration with other Central Asian
nations. Coupled with the fact that Kyrgyz identity was largely consolidated during the Soviet era,
from which it has also inherited a legacy of patchwork borders, means that these conflicts are
unlikely to be resolved in the near future. However, like Kazakhstan (and unlike Uzbekistan),
Kyrgyzstan actively participates in Russian-led projects that encompass the former USSR beyond
Central Asia such as the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Eurasian Union.
5. Missed opportunities for regional integration
The unique formation of Central Asian national identities as Soviet projects to create ethno-
republics which embody national identities through symbols, historiography, language, and
literature without encouraging nationalism continues to impact how Central Asian states view
themselves and each other today. These national identities and boundaries cut across mixed
populations and culturally fluid ethnic identifications and cut across traditional divisions among
the peoples of the region. Since independence, these identities have become central to the new
states, granting each republic’s titular ethnic group a sense of ownership over their republic.
Nevertheless, the legacy of the old mixed populations and remain, whether through the complex
borders of the Ferghana Valley between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, or the placement
of the most important Tajik-speaking cities outside of Tajikistan and the various ethnic minorities
“stranded” outside their titular republics. The imposition and gradual adoption of these borders
and ethnic division have led to a partial consolidation of the national identities of these republics,
where distinctiveness is taken for granted but not fully defined. This tension is borne out in the
interstate conflicts the region has experienced, alongside domestic ethnic violence, and is a major
inhibiter to greater cooperation and integration among Central Asian countries.

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CONCLUSION
Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe present three very different states of
regional integration. While both Southeast Asia and Europe have experienced some level of
success in regional integration, Central Asian regional organisations are still very much in their
infancy. While there are many factors around the formation of regional organisations, the
consolidation of national identities in each country is a key factor in enabling the regional
coordination and cooperation that are necessary for the formation of regional organisations. In
Western Europe, fully consolidated national identities allowed for cooperation without the risk of
conflict over what constitutes each nationality, while in Southeast Asia, the unconsolidated
national identities allowed rhetoric to be malleable and shape the nascent nations in ways amenable
to regional integration by emphasising the commonalities between neighbours. National
consolidation is also a major source of the lack of regional integration in the case of Central Asia;
partially consolidated identities lead to unclear boundaries with neighbours, feeding into
competition and fear and inhibiting regional cooperation despite conditions highly advantageous
for regional integration projects.
The European Union (EU) marks the most significant regional integration project in the
world and was formed after a series of devastating wars between European countries in the first
half of the twentieth century. Encompassing 27 member states, the EU stretches across the
continent and is unparalleled in the depth of its integration, with members pooling sovereignty in
issues ranging from agriculture to foreign policy, trade, and economics, most strongly exemplified
by the four freedoms of the movement of goods, labour, capital, and services. Several members
have gone even further and adopted a common currency, the euro, marking the most ambitious

176

monetary union in the world today. Because of these successes, the EU is often viewed as the
blueprint for other regional integration projects around the world.
As the birthplace of the modern concept of nationalism, Europe is also the region of the
world that is most dominated by ethnic nation-states, resulting in the EU encompassing a group of
countries where there is significant overlap between ethnicity, language, and citizenship. European
countries have engaged in extensive nation building projects since the eighteenth century,
enforcing a common codified language, history, and ethnic identity on their own populations. As
the concept of the nation-state spread around Europe, new countries were formed based on shared
identities, ranging from some which were an amalgamation of existing polities (such as Germany
and Italy, which united German and Italian speakers, respectively), and others arising out of
crumbling multi-ethnic empires that had become incompatible with the new mode of state. This
process was further bolstered by various population exchanges, culminating in a post-World War
II Europe with largely homogenous nation states with strongly consolidated national identities
based on common symbols, history, and language, with populations that have clear senses of unity
and difference. Combined with this strong consolidation, Europe’s shared history and religion
meant that states could accede to a larger regional organisation without having their distinctiveness
threatened and be nation states with a strong European outlook.
In contrast to the EU and its reliance on a strong European identity as a basis for
membership, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) formed and expanded despite
the odds of regional identity being stacked against it. Given Southeast Asia’s religious, ethnic,
historical, linguistic, and political diversity, the region appeared to be an unlikely candidate for
successful regional integration. In addition to these differences, these countries have a history of
territorial conflict, such as the konfrontasi between Malaysia and Indonesia, Singapore’s fraught

177

history as a part of Malaysia, and the Borneo dispute between the Philippines and Malaysia, with
some going so far as denying the legitimacy of the existence of a neighbour. These conflicts
frequently arise as a result of the region’s history, where borders between modern states are a result
of colonial boundaries that divide up traditional communal links and place highly diverse
populations with different historical and cultural backgrounds within the same political entity
(evidenced by conflicts such as the fraught ethnic concerns in the formation of Malaysia and the
West Papua Dispute) which were never intended to constitute culturally and socially coherent
nation-states. As a result, countries in the region had to undergo significant nation building projects
after independence, such as the bumiputera policies of Malaysia to elevate Malays economically
and socially in the country, to the use of Bahasa Indonesia as the national language in Indonesia
in place of Javanese, the language spoken natively by the largest proportion of the population.
States also found their antecedents in diverse ways; Malaysia claimed pre-eminence in Malay
history despite Malay polities historically having been spread across both Malaya and Sumatra,
while Indonesia claimed continuity from both precolonial polities such as the Majapahit Empire
and from the Netherlands East Indies, leading to claims on West Papua (part of the Netherlands
East Indies but retained by the Dutch at Indonesian independence) and the invasion of Portuguese
East Timor. These complexities created an environment with many potential sources of conflict
among the newly independent states.
Given this background, ASEAN’s success, while more limited than that of the European,
has been impressive – from the original five members, the organisation has grown to encompass
the entire region and is notable for the diversity of political systems and alignments. Despite this
diversity, the organisation has managed to achieve some success in integrating regional markets
and lowering barriers to movement of citizens around the region. Unlike Europe, it managed to

178

build this up absent a long process of national consolidation reinforced by population exchanges
and suppression of minorities; however, the amorphousness of post-colonial national identities in
these states allowed the elites in each country to drive the national narrative. This less consolidated
national identity allowed these countries to highlight the commonalities between the founding
member states and overcome the sources of conflict that had plagued the region in the preceding
era, as evidenced by the quick turnaround in rhetoric between Indonesia and Malaysia after the
conclusion of konfrontasi to emphasise the brotherhood and shared heritage between the two
countries (and casting the conflict as an aberration in brotherly relations), the Singaporean
constitution’s designation of Malay as the de jure national language even after seceding from
Malaysia, or the Philippines’ attempts to place itself as part of the Malay world. The cooperation
of the original members set a basis for the expansion of the organisation to encompass the entire
region as well as form the core of several cooperation initiatives that stretch beyond Southeast
Asia itself. In effect, by leveraging the malleability of national identities, the political elites of
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore could reshape the national narrative from one
of competition to one of cooperation, enabling regional integration projects to have a greater
chance of success.
In contrast to the experience of Europe and Southeast Asia, Central Asia has struggled to
build sustainable regional institutions despite sharing significant cultural and religious
commonalities as well as a history as constituent republics of the Soviet Union, which led to
significant economic and infrastructure interdependence between the republics, thereby boosting
the potential gains (or indeed the necessity) for regional cooperation and integration. Despite these
advantages, the region has had limited success in cooperative efforts, with the 1990s and 2000s
characterised by closed off security states, most notably in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, largely

179

dominated by strongmen leaders. The region also retained a contentious relationship with Russia,
with Kazakhstan and, to a lesser extent Kyrgyzstan, opting for greater integration with Russia and
the rest of the former Soviet states in Russia-led organisations, while others viewed Russia with
more suspicion. Disputes also broke out among the neighbours over issues such as borders and
water resources, leading to border skirmishes. Intercommunal violence also broke out with
minorities who were now stranded outside their titular republics. Instead of approaching greater
integration, the newly independent Central Asian republics actively worked to disengage
themselves from each other and remove structures that had bound them together during their time
as part of the USSR.
The lack of integration despite these advantages boils down in large part to the top-down
implementation of unified national identities in the Soviet era that was supposed to simultaneously
define titular nationalities in their republics as well as help these nationalities accede to Soviet
citizenship followed by more conventional nation-building exercises after independence in Central
Asia. From the beginning, the top-down construction of national identities divided mixed
populations who frequently identified more with each other than with ostensible co-ethnics who
were more geographically distant within their republic. These complications were exacerbated by
the political nature of much of the boundary demarcation during the Soviet era, which placed ethnic
groups as minorities outside their own titular states and created numerous exclaves and enclaves;
while these mixed populations and complex borders bore fairly little consequence when they
existed between subnational units, their conversion into national borders with the collapse of the
USSR has led to significant conflict and instability in the region. This historical legacy has led to
a situation of highly contested partially consolidated national identities, with unclear physical and

180

cultural boundaries between states, inhibiting cooperation in the region and playing a big role in
the lack of regional integration success in Central Asia.
However, since independence, the Central Asian republics have continued to consolidate
their national identities in their new roles as independent nation states. Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
and Uzbekistan continue to push for the prominence of their national languages in the public and
private spheres, while even avowedly multi-ethnic Kazakhstan has quietly pushed Kazakh culture
and language to the centre of social, political, cultural, and economic life in the republic. As these
states continue to consolidate a vision of post-independence nationalism distinct from the Soviet
model of eventual accession to Soviet identity, the potential for successful regional integration
increases significantly. This has somewhat been borne out in the late 2010s and early 2020s; after
almost a decade of relative dormancy, the Turkic Council renamed itself to the Organisation of
Turkic States in 2021. In addition, meetings between the presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
were restarted in 2018 with a view to rebooting the Central Asian Union initiative between the five
Central Asian republics after a decade of inactivity. Uzbekistan also moved to increase ties with
Tajikistan, increasing economic and social ties in a series of agreements. Nevertheless, challenges
still remain; deadly clashes broke out between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan along their still yet to be
demarcated border in 2021 and 2022.
Relations in the region also were thrown into turmoil with the Russian invasion of Ukraine
in 2022, which fundamentally shifted the power structure and diplomatic priorities in Central Asia.
The 2022 Central Asia Barometer polls indicate significant concern among Central Asians over
the invasion, with 70% of Kyrgyz and 55% of Kazakhs indicating that it’ll have a negative or very
negative impact on their country. The war also has a strong impact on their economies, with
sanctions on Russia impacting remittances from Russia, with the World Bank estimating that

181

remittances to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan declining 33%, 22%, and 21%, respectively.
Russia’s focus on Ukraine and the subsequent fallout has also led to one of the biggest geopolitical
shifts in the region in its relations with Kazakhstan. Long the closest ally of Russia in the region
(partly out of necessity due to the long border between the two countries and the large Russian
population in Kazakhstan), Kazakhstan was at the forefront of integration efforts that included the
wider Soviet Union as a whole (frequently to the chagrin of the other Central Asian countries, who
had stronger distrust of Russia). This partly reflects the complex views on the USSR in Kazakhstan,
which bore the distinction of having been the last Soviet republic to declare independence (after
Russia itself). However, the government of Kazakhstan has stated clearly that it objects to the
Russian invasion of Ukraine and refused to recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics,
condemning Russia’s annexation of occupied territories in Ukraine. At the UN, Kazakhstan
refused to back the Russian position on Ukraine, instead abstaining, and cancelled the May Day
celebrations in 2022, seen symbolically as an indicator of shared history between the Soviet states.
Parallel to this, Kazakhstan has boosted its cooperation with the rest of the world, participating in
the Summit of the Organisation of Turkic States in November 2022. In effect, the Russian invasion
of Ukraine accelerated the consolidation of Kazakhstan’s national identity as it moves further away
from the Russian sphere, leading to increased efforts to improve relations with Central Asian
neighbours.
From these three cases, it is clear that the process of national consolidation plays a role in
regional cooperation in regions such as Central Asia. Despite possessing clear advantages, the
failure of Central Asia to integrate can partly be attributed to the contentious relationship between
neighbours still within the process of nation building, who simultaneously possess a clear sense of
difference and distinctiveness of their own people but have less clear dividing lines between

182

themselves and the titular nations of the neighbouring countries due to the top-down nature of the
original construction of the national identities. Nor is the relationship between national
consolidation and regional integration necessarily a binary relationship. Just as national
consolidation is a spectrum, so is the depth of integration in regionalisation projects. As regional
organisations deepen the level of integration, new issues may become more salient to less
consolidated states, causing issues in the future. These conflicts may occur even in organisations
that have hitherto had a record of successful integration; Hungary and Poland’s conflict with the
EU over LGBT rights and migration may be partly due to the recentness of their statuses as explicit
nation states (rather than Eastern Bloc states where Communism was predominant rather than
national ethnic identity). As a result, these states may feel the need to assert their differences from
values they view as imposed by countries in Western Europe. Accordingly, projects of integration
must take this factor into account as they proceed in increasing the level of integration pursued by
the regional organisation. While partially consolidated identities are less of a hindrance to the
expansion of existing regional organisations thanks to the core of existing member states, they still
may play a role. One place to examine on this is the accession of the Western Balkans states to the
European Union, where thorny issues of language, culture, and national boundaries will need to
be addressed as Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and North Macedonia seek to join
the European Union. Already, conflict has already arisen over North Macedonia’s relationship
with Bulgaria, with the latter claiming that Macedonian is merely a dialect of Bulgarian. Thus,
even as regional organisations continue to grow in both breadth and depth, identity consolidation
remains a salient issue for the foreseeable future.

183

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Creator Nguyen, Dat Xuan (author)

Core Title Identity and regional integration: case studies on central Asia and southeast Asia

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Political Science and International Relations

Degree Conferral Date 2023-05

Publication Date 04/18/2023

Defense Date 03/02/2023

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