The salutary influence of irrigation on human settlement, economy and political power in pre-modern southeast Asia

  • 01/10/2005

  • Asian Agri-History

The tropical monsoon rhythm for over centuries obviously occasioned the development of water works which facilitated wet rice cultivation in pre-modern Southeast Asia. The small-scale water works, purely an outcome of local initiative which survived for many centuries and outlived the state, were developed in the dry zone of Irrawaddy valleys in the rain shadow region of Menam Basin and on the terraced hill sites of Champa as well as in some lowland areas and volcanic uplands of insular basin.