“Strengthening the Economic and Social Stability of the Region”: Teaching Regional Trade Agreements and Southeast Asia

Over the last two years, I’ve spent a lot of time traveling across Southeast Asia. Everywhere I went, I kept seeing billboards and banners for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It made me think about how I taught the spread of regional trade agreements and economic liberalization in the late twentieth century. I often started with the European Union/European Economic Community and described how the trend spread worldwide. But why do we have to approach this development in a Eurocentric manner? Why not start in Southeast Asia? Southeast Asian states agreed to their first regional just four years after the creation of the European Economic Community.

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