Leonard Y. Andaya

This is a scholarly tome about how trade shaped the region we today know as Southeast Asia. It was the Malayu 'ocean', which once spanned from the east coast of Africa to the east coast of China that formed the geography where land was an impediment to travel and commerce--where 'paddle cultures' committed to trade and commerce, motivated by profit and power, and tied through kinship links (of both blood and milk) were the forces that formed the region. The story begins with migrants from western Borneo moving across to southern Sumatra where Jambi and Palembang reigned as trade centres due to their advantageous location in the Straits of Melaka. Once trade centres for such Arabian products as frankincense and myrrh, they gained in stature and importance when local oleoresins were found to be attractive to Chinese traders. The author then follows the spread of this 'Malayu' culture/ethnic group throughout the region covering such topics as the emergence of Minangkabau's separate culture, Aceh's rise and fall as an important entrepôt, the role of the 'Peoples of the Sea', the founding of Melaka, and the arrival of the Europeans. Buddhism, we discover, went hand-in-hand with trade in an almost symbiotic relationship, and it is from early Buddhist travellers in the region that we often have our earliest accounts, together with indigenous histories, Chinese court records, and such travelogues as that penned by the Portuguese Tome Pires who arrived in Melaka just after the Portuguese captured the city in 1511.

This volume would be of interest to anyone interested in the history of Southeast Asia, or the story of trade between the 4th and 16th centuries in the region. It more importantly raises the question whether the Indian Ocean didn't contain and encourage the same sorts of contacts, commerce and compulsions as that of another 'great sea'--the Mediterranean.
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