WHERE the border is to go bothers many who are trying to understand what it is that is so fantastic about the infant East Asian Community (EAC).

The paradigm by which the EAC is being judged is essentially a mix of the nation state and of the European Union. But perhaps the telescope is being looked at through the wrong end.

The EAC is in truth not about creating an outside wall; it is about tearing down inside walls.

The mercantilism that gave the European Atlantic states the impetus to sail and steam far and wide in search of gold, spices and everything in between was accompanied by the wish to monopolise resources. Their competitors were other European nations. And so, the initial strategy of taking over trading ports and trading routes soon became one of conquest and of subjugating local polities.

The 'founding' of Penang and Singapore occurred together with the signing of the Pangkor Treaty.

Most importantly, the geopolitics in colonised regions were totally changed, and traditional ties built upon commercial interests were destroyed to be replaced by new ones forged in accordance with expediencies felt in faraway London, Paris and Amsterdam.

Therefore, the Dutch handed over Malacca to the British for safekeeping after Holland fell to Napoleon's armies.

After foiling the French attempt at building an European empire, the British and their Dutch allies drew a clear line in the distant Malacca Strait to demarcate their separate spheres of interests. Malacca was officially handed over to the British in exchange for Bencoolen.

Good fences make good neighbours, especially when both are occupying foreign turf and are not feeling totally welcomed by the locals.

And so, peoples living under the British came to know practically nothing about the world beyond the British perspective. Their commercial interests, their education and their concepts evolved with minimum input from other modern powers. The same thing happened throughout the region, be it in territories under the Dutch, the French or the Spanish.

More tragic than that, the people-to-people contacts over colonial borders jealously guarded by the Europeans came to a virtual standstill.

East Asia's geopolitical pre-colonial history was dismantled, and the newly formed colonial territories became strangers to each other.

This process provided the geopolitical structure for what would become the new and independent nations in Asia and Africa, each politically, culturally and commercially fenced off from each other.

The story is told often enough about how China was on the verge of being 'cut up like a melon' by European powers and Japan in the beginning of the 20th century, and how the outbreak of World War I deflated these ambitions.

After the European powers had beaten each other bloody by 1918, Japan was left alone to imbibe the whole fruit. It appeared to Japan's militarists, and understandably so, that their glorious modernised state was fated to feast alone at the vacated colonial table in East Asia.

The rest is also history.

Unlike China, the dividing of the proverbial melon did take place in other territories, and on planes other than the purely political.

In South-east Asia, the Dutch took over the trade routes of the Bugis, managing in the end to command all the major islands of the archipelago except for the easternmost ones that the Spanish had earlier settled in.

The British took the Malay Peninsula, and in time gained influence over northern Borneo, while the latecomers, the French, had to settle for the coastal regions south of the Manchurian Empire.

Very latecomers, such as the Germans and the Belgians, were left with nothing in the South-east Asian region to colonise. Economically, politically, culturally and, very importantly, epistemologically, the South-east Asian melon was neatly sliced. What needs to be recognised today, when colonialism is gone and regionalism has become the fad, is that we are not merely witnessing the founding of new structures.

Very often, acknowledgement of certain undeniable dynamics of localism is being expressed as well.

Commercial and cultural forces are still defined to a great extent by geography, climate, population concentrations and other highly stable factors.

Once the politics in the region were no longer controlled by outside interests, the great rivers of East Asia, for example, began to dictate commercial ties and, along with them, political agreements.

The Mekong basin today practically demands cooperation by the polities that share its banks.

The Changjiang, or Yangtze river, of China comes into its own, and the city at its mouth, Shanghai, grows beyond comprehension. The shores of the Yellow Sea come alive as never before to reflect the economic might of the peoples of at least three littoral countries.

In line with this rationale, one should expect a sturdy economic revival of the silk routes in Inner Asia, as well as trade ties between China and Myanmar. In South-east Asia, maritime forces are dictating ties more freely again.

Economic and cultural interests now radiate in all directions. Traditional ties with India and the Arab world are growing again, as are customary links northwards with China. What are new here are bonds southwards, with the settler colonies of Australia and New Zealand.

No doubt, much of the dynamics affecting the region are new, but just as much are not.

The idea of an East Asian Community needs therefore to be understood as part of a process of reconnection, of learning to know old neighbours anew, and of learning to know new ones. The fact that this occurs alongside the speedy global dynamics of the 21st century should not blind us to the fact that we are in many ways rediscovering pre-colonial ties and dismantling colonial walls even as we build post-colonial bonds.

At the same time, recognising pre-colonial conditions should not involve a denial of the colonial heritage as such. The nation states themselves and the corresponding identities are all part of that legacy, as are the widespread migration of peoples and the popular use of European languages. Hopefully, the long historical pluralism of East Asia and the pragmatic mindset will guarantee against any such tendency.