It is generally known that mainland and maritime Southeast Asia experienced a period of development of new states in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries after the decline of the old charter states (the Khmer Empire, Pagan, Majapahit, the Buddhist kingdom of Dai Viet). For obvious reasons, academic discussions have focused on the principal mainland kingdoms, and the newly Islamized maritime and insular polities (Melaka, Aceh, Demak, Mataram). Factors of state development discussed here have included trade mechanisms, control over manpower, kingship, religion, and the role of external groups (such as Chinese and Europeans). The present paper, by contrast, undertakes a comparative study of the small-sized kingdoms that arose east of Java after the decline of Majapahit in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries. These include Indianized kingdoms on Bali and Lombok, Islamic states on Sumbawa, the Islamic spice sultanates of Maluku, and a number of loosely structured polities on Flores, Solor, and Timor. The paper asks whether the trajectories of state development in this part of Southeast Asia can be informed by comparison with developments among the larger states; in other words, if the societal changes underpinning integration of the mainland and major archipelagic states are also partly valid for the world east of Java in the early-modern era.