To write the history of a nation's march to independence is to scrutinise some of its most contested foundation myths. The rise of the nation-state lies at the heart of the modern Southeast Asian experience. Yet it provokes fundamental questions about the distinctiveness of the region and the autonomy of its history: the degree to which the nation is the product of movements deep within Southeast Asian civilisation or the legacy of colonial rule; the extent to which Southeast Asia's encounter with Europe shaped its internal dynamics and values. European rule, and the manner in which colonial authority charted out its dominion, has been seen by historians as pivotal to the emergence of the modern nation-state. Historians have described how, through the prism of the colonial state, nationalists envisaged the unity of their homeland. They have shown how the rulers of post-colonial nations have employed the power of the state to bind the unity of the nation. This writing has sought to examine the dynamics for national integration, and the capacity of politicians to imagine new nations into being. Yet colonial modernity and anti-colonial nationalism have been closely intertwined. Their histories stand in an uneasy relationship to each other, and the lineage between them is neither as simple nor as direct as is often argued. Historians are now uncoupling the concepts and questioning western constructions of the nation-state in Southeast Asia.