Southeast Asia has a long history of being on the receiving end of global capitalism’s relentless search for profit. For centuries, the region’s trade networks supplied the global economy with precious spices, aromatic sandalwood, and rare items collected on coastal reefs and in dense rainforests.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, invaders from Portugal and the Netherlands brutally seized the fabled Spice Islands. The Dutch East India Company used genocidal violence to create a global monopoly as it pioneered the modern corporate structure by selling shares to investors.

In the era of high imperialism, colonial plantations forced laborers to grow cash crops such as coffee, sugar, and rubber in conditions comparable to slavery. Foreign-owned mines extracted tin in British Malaya and coal in French Indochina.