Author:
Kenneth
R. Hall
Mata Kuliah Sejarah Maritim S2 Ilmu Sejarah Universitas Indonesia
Pengajar : Prof. Susanto Zuhdi
Diringkas oleh Hasan Sadeli
Diringkas oleh Hasan Sadeli
The
subject of this book is the interaction between south east asian peoples and
foreign cultures that was consequence of the strategic position of the south
east asian archipelago along the major premodern maritime route connecting east
and west. Under examination are the classical centers of power that emerged
between the first and early fourteenth centuries A.D. and the problems their
leaders encountered in ruling their domains. Two forms of classical states are
examined : the riverine coastal states of the Indonesian archipelago, the malay
peninsula, and the philipines and the lowland wet-rice states of the mainland
(burma, thailand, cambodia, laos, and vietnam) and of java.
The
book approaches the sources of the southeast asia classical era with the tools of modern economic history and highlights
the role that international trade in southeast asia played in the evolution of
classical civilizations. The view taken here is that southeast asia
response to international trade was a reflection of preexisting patterns of
exchange. Well developed internal socioeconomic and political networks existed
in southeast asia before significant foreign economic penetration took place
with the growth of interest in southeast asian commodities and the refocusing
of the major east-west commercial routes on the region during the early
centuries of the cristian era, internal conditions within southeast asian
states changed to accomodate the increased external contacts. The juncture of
the trade routes and the existing or developing forms of exchange and state
polity in southeast asia suggest the way this adjustment was made.
An
early type of exchange involved
highland hunters and gatherers who exchanged their goods and services with
lowland cultivators ; for example, trade between groups that practiced swidden
(slash and burn) and sawah cultivation.
Another type of early exchange network was charaterized by trade between hinterland populations and coastal
peoples ; the hinterland people supplied local agricultural or forest products
that were in turn dispensed to international traders. Coastal based traders
returned goods of foreign origin or specialized services for example moneylending to the hinterland
producers. In a third variant, foreign merchants established a coastal base and
the worked from this base to organize the necessary trade mechanism that
allowed them to extract local products from the hinterlands. In contrast to
some views that identify this last patterns of interaction as most
characteristic of southeast asia premodern age, this study contends that direct
contact was unusual and that southeast asia interaction with foreign merchants
was the result of indigenous initiative
and response to oppotunities that already existed.
In
this book, as in other studies by western historians, there is a tendency to impose western values on ideas of
what constituted advanced civilisations in early southeast asia. Urbanization
and the development of state system are considered signs of advancement. The
great urban centers of angkor (cambodja) and java with their massive stone
edifices thus become standars for comparison. But were the nonurban yet focused
classical societies less valid as being advanced or civilized and was it
necessary for an advanced civilizations to leave impressive temple complexes.
In
partial response to this dichotomy, the focus here is on political integration
rather than on political centralisation. The evolution of southeast asian
societies needs to be understood on their terms. An approach to this
understanding can be made by looking at instances of cultural transition an
continuity that took place wether or not there was outside stimulations or
development of a highly centralized polity that is a state in which a bureaucratic center dominated and
efectively integrated its subordinate population centers under its elaborate
system of administration, justice, and protection. The states of southeast
asia classical age are not depicted as highly bureaucratic polities even in the
case of the properous cambodian and javanese wet rice realms. Rather this study
analyzes why a higher degree of political centralization was not possible,
despite the opportunities for economic development and consequent political
innovation afforded by participation in international trade.
Statecraft
in indianezed asia geography reveals two dominant patterns. The island world is
characterized by numerous river system
that flow interior highland to ocean, a feature that had significant impact
upon the island worlds social and economic evolution. Over time people settled
among these various river systems, populations becoming concentrated only in
the broad delta regions at river mouths. This diffusion of the population had
important implications for the island realm’s political system, as those who
attempted to govern the island world found it necessary to bring multiple river
system under their authority in order to implement their political hegemony.
Because it was impracticals to control and entire river system, a pattern more
common than complete political subjugation emerged the establishment of partial
hegemony through direct rule of only coastal plains and river mouths. By
controlling the river mouth it was possible to influence movement up and down a
river system. A river mouth ruler was able to utilize his controle over the
riverine communications netwirk to forgevarious alliances with upriver groups.
In
contrass to the geographical inaccessibility of the island world caused by
multiple river system pattern, southeast asia’s mainland along with a small
number of island locales is dominated by major river system with corresponding
broad river plains, which are relatively flat, fertile, and extremly productive
agriculturraly. These river plains were conducive to the development of
population centers by those seeking to cultivate rice in the rich soil of the
plains. Rice plain population centers also proved easier to dominate
politically than the more diffused population centers of the multiple river system geography. Southeast
asia rice plain, for example pagan in the irrawady river plain of burma,
angkor near the tonle sap in cambodja, and vietnam state in the red river basin
of vietnam.
In
the island world this great plain geographical pattern is found in central java
and again the brantas river basin of eastern java. As on the mainland,
population centers and great states developed in both regions. While the
majority of the island world shared a multiple river system geography and thus
what may be characterized as a riverine political system, the rich soiled rice
plains of central and eastern java allowed the development of a higher degree
of social and political integration than was possible elsewhere in the island
world.
The
problem of defining what constituted a classical southeast asian state may be
approached by a careful description of the statecraft
the management of state affairs of the riverine and wet rice plain systems.
Based on western and chinese prejudices that equate advancement with the
evolution of elaborate state system, succesful southeast asian wet rice
civilizations of the mainland and java are assumed to have become centralized
polities. Historians have also minimized the level of integration between the
coast and hinterland of the riverine states. The wet rice states were not as
centralized as most western historians have believed, however, and the riverine
states were not as isolated from their hinterlands as previously thought.
Indeed, the two system were not totally unrelated, as the mainland states had
both a west rice aspect and a coastal international trade sector that enchanced
the economy of the hinterland. Thus, the two not at opposite poles but were
part of a continuum. In both, local statecraft was organized to control people
not boundaries. Indeed, manpower was the basis of political power.
Classical
souteast asia was generally underpopulated. Would be rulers competed among
themselves to attract the manpower necessary for them to assume power. The
continued existence of a state and its management polity that is, a state in
which a bureaucratic center dominated and efectively integrated its subordinate
population centers under its elaborate system of administration, justice, and
protection, depended on the rulling elites ability to control population
centers. The control a state claimed and its actual control over people, however,
were quite different. The core of the domain was that area of land, ussualy
near the capital, that was administered directly by the state central
administration. The king was ussualy a major landholder in this core, but the
land holding rights of others normally rights to a share of the produce from
the land under their authority rahter than ownership in the modern sense were
also protected. Peripheral areas, those areas bordering the core, were in a
tributary relationship to the state. Although the state might claim to have
administratively annexed these areas, its real control was minimal, as local
elites remained in power while paying homage to the center. Although the
records of monarchs might be widely distributed, the wording employed in
engraved inscriptions found in areas outside the state’s core domain, where the
ruler’s power was not direct, honored the authority of the strong local elite.
It was through the suport of such leaders of local populations that the ruler
could command the loyalty of population centers peripheral to the state’s core.
Classical
states showed little capacity to absorb the populations of regions beyond their
core. People of various regions could be brought under state’s control, yet,
although a regional population might be engulfed by a state even for several
centuries, with the decline of that state, this same group of people was
capable of reemerging with its local traditions intact – a pattern not unique
to Southeast Asia. The key to a center’s control over manpower has its ability
to form political alliances with the locally based elite. A ruler, acting from
a center of authority, fragmented his potential enemies by reaching agreements
with the leaders of local population centers, and these potential opponents
became subordinate allies of the state. In return for their patronage of the
sate’s monarch, the local elites enjoyed enhanced status in the eyes of their
followers, and the allied population received the protection afforded by the
state’s armies and shared in a successful state’s prosperity.
Early
historiography of the classical period depicted the capitals of Southeast Asian
states a social pyramid, with the monarch and his elite on top having little
personal contact with the people below. In this view local populations were
subjugated, continually exploited, and generally in awe of the elite who
resided in the state’s capital. A more intense interaction and interdependency
existed between state centers and their subordinate populations, however. In
some cases the rulers of classical states even appointed their own clan members
to administer key “provinces,” In Java, for instance, classical states were
divided into numerous regional provinces (watek), each governed by provincial
chiefs (rakrayan) who were often the sons of the states’ monarchs.’ In the
Sumatra-based state of Srivijaya certain areas of the realm in the Strait of
Malacca were ruled by chiefs (datu), some of whom were relatives of the king,
while others were ruled by datu of nonroyal background. The distinction between
the powers of the two is not entirely clear, although it appears that the
Srivijaya monarch was quite willing to accept strong local leaders as his
subordinate datu.
Srivijaya,
Java, and other classical Southeast Asian states merged traditional indigenous
symbols of divinity and power with Indian cosmolgical symbolism and religious
theory to form an ideological basic for their kingship. The blending of
indigenous and Indic traditions is seen, for instance, in the universal
significance of the mountain in the three main land wet-rice states. In
Cambodia, “Mount Mahendra” became the home of the devaraja in the cult of Jayavarman II in the early nith century – a
cult that extensively subordinated worship of locl deities to the king’s
worship of Siva (see chap. 6). As the traditional abode of ancestor spirites,
the mountain was already considered sacred by indigenous tradition. By
incorporating the external god Siva, who was known in Indian philosphy as the
“Lord of the Mountain” and for his association with fertility, the king’s
position was reinforced. It remained for Cambodian kings to associate theselves
with this mountain and thereby symbolize their ability to guarantee the flow of
life-power from the realm of the ancestors to their subject. In Burma, the
various nat spirits were integrated into a similiar cult that also came to be
focused on a “Lord of the Mountain,” the Mahagiri spirit of “Mount Popa.” In
Vietnam, kings were regarded as descendants from the union of the naga (water)
spirit and a maiden who resided on the mountain inhabited by the mountain
spirit. The necessity of this process of incorporating indigenous folk belief
is well shown in the case of Vietnam, where one reason for the failure of the
early Sino-oriented elite of the upper Red River Delta to form a lasting state
was their unwillingness to integrate local folk traditions into their Confucian
ideology.”
The
early Southeast Asian monach’s powers were bestowed through ceremony. The royal
court, its activities, and its style recreated a world of the gods – in theory,
a heaven on earth. Here all greatness and glory were concentrated. By
successfully fulfilling his role as the hypothetical focus of all sanctity and
power, the king maintained the orderliness of the world. The king’s court
attempted to develop ritual links to its subordinate centers of power by
integrating local religious cults into a state religious system, whereby the
subordinate centers imitated the ritual syle of the royal center.” Local
deities and, of most consequence, local ancestor worship were blended into the
state’s religious ceremony. The state made great use of indian (or, in the case
of Vietnam, Chinese) ceremony, performed by religious specialists or elites who
assumed the role of priests. These state ceremonies, however, were built on
traditional beliefs of how spirits and ancestors were to be manipulated to
guarantee the prosperity of the living. Indic or Sinic patterns were thus
utilized to enhance locl religious views to the advantage of the elite, whoes
ritual magic was presented to their subjects as being greater than that of
earlier practice.
The
state elite’s patronage of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions from India brought
them into a wider univers of symbols and attachments and provided an indian
framework for their statecraft. Southeast Asian kings utilized Sanskrit
vocabulary, described the world in the idiom of Hindu and Buddhist thought, and
sponsored art and architecture that expressed the Hindu and Buddhist world
views. Royal monuments were cosmological symbols redefining the boundaries of
time and space to the advantage of the state’s elite. A vast and orderly cosmos
was substantiated by the most advanced mathematical astronomy of the time and
was the foundation for Hindu and Buddhist thought. States were patterned on the
order of the cosmos and linked the sacred and secular orders. A ruler and his
capital were at the center of the univers; cosmological and magical symbols
expressed royal power. In the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of state the ruler
faciliated the establishment of a secular society that was more nearly in
harmony with the natural cosmic order (dharma).
In a successful estate, society was harmonious as well as properous. The most
effective ruler did not force conformity by use of physical might (danda) but achieved success due to his
righteous victory (dhammavijaya/dharmavijaya)
and continued peacful leadership.
Summarizing
their perceptions of the hindu and Buddhist traditions, early Southeast Asian
rulers fused these cosmological principles with Indic topographical formulas (mandala – a “contained core”) that
provided a design for the integration of clan or lineage-based groups into more
complex centralized polities. In the Indian philosophical tradition a mandala was a sacred diagram of the
cosmos that was normally depicted in art as a geometric construct of
encompassed circles and rectangles. The worldly mandala (state) in early Southeast Asia was defined by its center,
not its perimeter, as there was no notion of a firm frontier.” Subordinate
population centers surrounding the center were variably drawn to participate in
the ceremony of the state system. To encourage their participation, the
personal and regional cults practiced in the state’s regions were assembled at
the center. One theoretically moved from the mundane world toward the spiritual
one by appraching the sacred axis from one of the four quarters (defined by the
points of the compass). The devotee/subject was to become caught up in a
psychological state that grew in intensity as he was drawn to this sacred core
of the universe and its “world mountain” (normally a central temple complex)
that joined the celestial powers with the fertile soils of the earth.
While
in a theoretical sense the king’s only duty was ths to maintain the world order
– to promote prosperity and to faciliate passage to the realm of the ancestors
– in practice his duties sometimes involved the application of customary law
regarding land and labor. In an inscription from central Java dated 860, for
example, state administrators were asked to intervence in a local dispute when
the village elders and a certain individual, who represented a religious
foundation (temple), could not resolve the method of repaying a considerable
debt owen to the local community. However, since Southeast Asian epigraphy does
not contain many references to the adjudication of local disputes, one may
assume that the state normally remained above such conflicts during the
classical age, discouraging all but major disputes from clogging the state’s
adminstrative system. This policy encouraged the continuity of local custom,
which the state generally left untouched as long as it was not disruptive to
state harmony.
The effective ruler
also took an interst in his state’s economic activity. In addition to being the
ideological center of state, the royal capital was the economic center of the
monarch’s domain. The economic resources of the state’s cor were very important
to its ability to maintain power. Rulers of wet-rice states therefore attempted
to increase the agricultural output of their core. Under state supervision the
construction of water tanks and irrigation system were undertaken, and economic
development in gneral was encouraged. In Java, for example, to develop
economically peripheral lands, reward loyal followers, and extended the control
of the throne, royal land grants known as sima
(“freehod”) were given. Although such land was considered to be outside the
administrative authority of the king – freeing it from royal demands for taxes
and service – a ceremony dedicating the sima
land grant emphasized that the grantee was expected to remain loyal to the
Javanese state. This ceremony involved an oath in which the grantee pledged his
loyality, and it culminated with the pronouncement of a curse by a religious
official threatening those present who were not loyal to their monach.
Although
different in nature, the economic center
of the Srivijaya maritime state was functionally similiar to the wet-rice
producing states. It served as a locus for economic redistribution, fulfilling
roles both as a trade entrepot and
as the central trasury for a series of ports. A downriver port on the edge of
the Sumatra hinterland, the Srivijaya capital was more vulnerable to attacks
from outsiders as well as to the rebellions of its hinterland inhabitants than
the land-based states that were established inland well away from the coast. Yet the capital’s economic control over its
disparate subject population – upriver tribesmen and coastal sea nomads – was
similiar to that of the land-based states. Because it was difficult to control
directly tribal producers who were distant form capital, the Srivijaya state
relied on either physical force or alliance rlationship, symbolized by an oath
administered to state subodinates, to establish and maintain its economic
hegemony in peripheral areas. While a royal navy of sea nomad maintained the
capital’s position as the dominant port on the Sumatra coast, a network of
alliances with its hinterland tribesmen allowed a flow of goods from the
interior to the ports – giving Srivijaya its economic and thus its political
strength.
The
classical political systems, whether wet-rice or riverine, attempted to draw
the resouces of their realms – in the form of tribute, talent, men,
and goods – to their centers. Central Javanese states, for instance, expected
both taxes in kind an labor service from their subjects (see chap. 5).
Inscriptions report that rulers of eastern Java’s states received specified
shares of local products such as rice and cloth, as well as goods supplied
regularly by traders such as spices, ceramics, and cloth of foreign origin.
Resources acquired from a state’s own core, when added to tributed extracted
from politically subordinate peripheral areas, supplied the centers with large
quantities of wealth. This wealth was in turn redistributed to maintain loyalty
to the state. One type of investment was the regional constuction of large
temple complexs that emhasized the state’s theoretical powers. Often such
construction was financed by the transfer of the royal right to a share of
local products and labor to a community, and the community applied this
designated income to finace local temple construction and the temple’s
maintenance. In such instances the royal investment also provided for economic
development in the vicnity of the temple, and the construction of elaborate
temple complexs promoted the growth of an indigenous artisan class.”
Payments
to various state armies and administrators were important revenue outlays of
the state. Military power was essential in the process of concentrating as many
resources as possible at the center. Military strength allowed the state to
“proctect” its subordinate territories – whether in theory or in fact – which
in turn facilitated the establishment of the state’s economic base, the
administration of oaths, and the formulation of the various royal cults. To
insure the flow of revenues that supported the classical state, a system of
record keeping was initiated and in the more developed wet-rice states a
council was formed to handle it. This royal administrative council,
concentrated at the center, was composed of a small group of administrators who
were generally literate and capable of dealing with a variety of matters.
Periodically they were sent out individually or as members of a mobile royal
retinue traveling from place within the realm to act on disputes that could not
be solved locally or on affairs that were considered to be in the state’s
interest. These state administrators also participated in the various state
ceremonies. In a system of statecraft in which ritual links were a vital tool
of integration, it was essential that the ritual at the center be performed by
an elite who knew how to conduct the required ceremonies properly.
To achieve political
integration, the leaders of a classical Southeast Asian state had to diversify
the state’s economy as well as manipulate aset of symbols that would
distinguish them from other elites in the state. Therefore, the ruling elite of
a coastal-based state who had ambitions of political grandeur, for example, had
to make their state a leader in the externally focused international trade
sector. To accomplish this, they had to establish their economic and political
authority over upriver populations as well as over the maritime-oriented
inhabitants of coastal enclave. To depend only on the redistributions – the
allocation of rewards and resources that served to help intgrate the society –
derived from facilitating trade in a coastal enclave with limited upriver ties
made a coastal-based riverine political system vulnerable to the fluctuations
of international trade. If revenues derived from international trade
diminished, political and economic alliances that depended on the redistribution
of trade goods could no longer be sustainde. As the maritime trade diminished,
the sate’s mairitime allies might turn to open piracy to maintain their
personal livelihood, thereby further destroying the coastal center’s viability
by discouraging international traders from navigating the state’s waters.
Likewise
a state too dependent on income derived from is wet-rice plain base was also
limited in its development potential. The rice plain state elites of both Java
and Angkor shared land control with rival tanded elites and institutions. Some
of the competing institutions had been created by the state’s elite to
reinforce the state’s legitimacy. For example, temples and temple networks were
heavily endowed with economic resources by various classical-era rulers.
Initally this patronage returned merit and bestowed superior status on the
state elite, but over time the continued endowment of temples could have left
the temples with income right exceding those of the state. A network of temples
could – and in the case of the Burmese state of Pagan did” – use their wealth
and their control over large segments of the state’s land and labor to
influences state policy.
Since
income derived from the land was the major source of a rice plain-based elite’s
ability to exercise political sovereignty, providing the would-be ruler with
material as well as “symbolic” capital with which to construct alliance
networks, a successful sovereign had to have either immense personal prowess or
greater economic resources at his personal disposal than did potential sovereigns
from other elites within the realm. It was only when those claiming sovereignty
in a rice plain state became more actively involved in external commercial
affairs that the aurhority of the state leaders and their court relative to
competing regionally based elites and instirutions became more secure. Economic
leadership in the commercial sector provided a new source of income for
wet-rice plain monachs and in turn enhanced their political accomplishments.
Development of an international trade sector also promoted the prosperity of
the wet-rice sector, providing new markets for local rice prodution and
facilitating the expansion of wer-rice agriculture, which then stimulated the
development of a more integrated political and economic order.
Structures
of Trade in the Classical Southeast Asian World
Two
models may be used to explain the ways that external trade came into contact
with existing and developing internal forms of exchange. One reflect the
riverine political system, in which upriver exchange networks connected with
foreign trade at coastal centers through the agency of river mouth rulers who
shared trade-derived prosperity with the interior. The second model attempts to
show how trade was coducted in the state’s theoretical powers. Often such
construction was financed by the transfer of the royal right to a share of
local products and labor to a community, and the community applied this
designated income to finace local temple construction and the temple’s
maintenance. In such instances the royal investment also provided for economic
development in the River plain realms of the southeast asian mainland and java.
Contact with foreign merchants was similar to that in the riverine states.
Trade gravitated toward the coastal centers, and the trade’s profits were
redistributed to empashize the ruler’s hegemony. But the geography of a rice plain economy
held greater potential for the evolution of an integrated and hierarchical
system of market exchange, which was capable of facilitating political and
social inegration. In both economic system the potential for conflict with
foreigners was minimized because trading activities were confined to the coastal ports, where business was
transacted by indigenous merchants who supplied the rice, pepper, and other
products the foreign seafarers desired.
Diagram of exchange in
decentralized southeast asian riverine political system. In this model, an
economic system trade center. (A) is coastal base located at a river mouth.
Points B and C are secondary and third order centers located at upstream
primary and secondary river junctions. Point D identifies distant upstream
centers, the initial concentration point for products originating in more
remote parts of the river watershed. Point E and F are the ultimate producers
the nonmarket oriented population centers of the hinterland and upland or
upriver villages whose loyalty to the marketing system dominated by A is
minimal. A, represents a rival river mouth center and its marketing system. A,
can compete for the loyalty of E and F as well as for trade with X, an overseas
center that consumes the exports and supplied imports for A and A.
This
riverine system model can be applied to the sriwijaya maritime states as
documented in the early seventh century inscriptions discussed in chapter 4.
Initially sriwijaya center was in the palembang area of sumatera, a point of
the intersection of several river system upriver from the coast, a strategic
position that allowed sriwijaya rulers to dominate commerce flowing upriver and
downriver from its harbor. Palembang control over its hinterland was based on
its own physical might, but was especially dependent on an oath of allegiance
that was administered to the state subordinate elites, inclucations, the
systematic redistribution of wealth from the royal treasury, alliances with
local chieftains (datu), and event the assignment of royal princes to
leadership positions in the hinterland. Sriwijaya marketing network was based
more upon alliances and the common sharing of the wealth derived from foreign
trade than on direct coercion. The sriwijaya monarc was recognized as the
source of the system prosperity.
Palembang’s natural
enemy was jambi, a rival coastal center dominating the BatangHari river system. Consequently, one of the sriwijaya rulers
first expeditions of conquest was againts Jambi in A.D. 682 sriwijaya victory
over the rival river system center and subseuqent victories over other river
mouth centers on the sumateran, malayan, and western javanese coast guarated
sriwijaya control over the flow of goods within the strait of malacca and as
well from the region into the international trade route.
The riverine system
model implies that the riverine system was by nature impermanent, and indeed
some historians believe that sriwijaya as a political entity was characterized by
a shifting center. The sriwijaya capital may have initially been on the musi
river system but in the eleventh century was a jambi and was likely focused on
other riverine centers in the strait of malacca region at times in between.
Chinese dinastic records
documents this internal competition among the various malay river systems.
Numerous river mouth centers sent tribute missions to the chinese court in
hopes of receiving recognition as a preferred trade partner of the chinese.
Such recognition would seemingly have reinforced a riverine center’s ability to
trade not only with the chinese but also to assume a special position in trade
with western merchants who would stop in
the southeast asian archipelago on their wat to china.
Contemporary javanese
inscriptions portray networks of clustered vilages called wanua as the most important units of local integration in the pre
islamic javanese hinterland. These vilage networks are generally viewed as
units of social and political integration ; what is not understood is how the
indigenous village cluster markets. Merchants who had a role in providing this
commercial linkage. Such encouragement may be seen, for example, in the royal
grants to merchants that freed them from royal tax assesments on their transactions
within specified village cluster markets. However, the village clusters may be
equally understood as local marketing networks whose nucleus was in every
instance a periodic market, identified as in Java Inscription.
The pken
markets were centers of local exchange. Market participants included farmers
and artisans who sold their products and who purchased local goods or those
commodities transported to the market by itinerant
peddlers. To facilitate easy access
for the population, pken marketplace
would have to have been located within walking distance of the homes of the
village clusters inhabitants. Thus dictating the pken market position near the geographical center of the village
cluster. A local official controlled access to the marketplace, collected
taxes on goods offered for sale, and in general represented the village
clusters interest in dealings with the intinerant peddlers.
These itinerant
peddlers, identified in the inscriptions by the titles adwal and apikul, linked village clusters horizontally into
marketing networks composed of multiple wanua comunities of exchange. Pedlers
circulated among pken markets and made their travels conform to the indigenous
marketing cycle or the local marketing cycle conformed to the travels of the
peddlers. In either case the various village cluster communities of exchange
were integrated into market cycles, which allowed one wanua community pken
market to hold its transactions on a certain day of the week and others one
each on the other four. A band of roving participating in a different pken
market every day and trading in each village cluster once every five days.
The peddlers and their
pken market networks, in turn, were integrated by intermediate full time market
centers. Unlike the pken markets, the intermediate centers of exchange had
permanent shops or at the minimum a market that net everyday. Such centers were
inhabited by adagang, large scale
traders, who conducted both a retail and wholesale trade, as well as groups
of artisans. Also based in the intermediate center were abakul, market based middlemen who where the
key to the natural flow of commodities between village clusters and the
intermediate market center. Both serviced the needs of the pken focused
intinerans peddlers, supplying goods of various sorts in exchange for local
products acquired by the peddlers on their circuit. abakul were whosale
specialists who traded in bulk for local
production, especially for the rice, salt, bens, and dyes that figure so
prominently in lists of java major exports.
Goods acquired by
abakul intermediate traders were transmitted to adagang, the large scale
traders who in turn transferred goods to higher order merchants, identified by
the title banyaga bantal, who conected the intermediate marketing centers to hogher
order markets that were inhabited by banyanga, large scale and seafaring traders those who encircle the sea, those
who travel throughout the sea these higher markets were major commercial
centers integrating the various networks of exchange below them and were
normally located during this age at coastal ports rather than at a royal center
or a major pilgrimage center the negotiation of major commercial transactions
would have been inappropriate to such sanctified urban centers. It is
noteworkthy that banyanga do not appear in lists of those participating in pken
market exchange, implying that there was a hierarchy of merchants and marketing
activity within the early javanese economy.
Javanese
kings especially in the post tenth century era of eastern javanese dominance,
played a key role in facilitating trad e. They encouraged and legitimized the
incursions of port based traders
(banyanga) into the javanese hinterland to collect specified amounts of
produce. The royal stance in relation to the trade is reflected in an
inscription that elaborates five royal instructions on the conduct of trade,
quality control, and the use of standards and approved weights and mesures at
warehouses and rice granaries. In the tenth century, according to one
inscription, a javanese ruler removed royal taxes from twenty vessels and the
shippers of goods of twelve different classes a total of 135 vessels were
operating from one north coast port
reflecting a sizeable trade.
Another tenth century inscription
records a royal grant to encourage settlement along the river and roads leading
to an eastern java port to lessen the danger to merchants and coastal people
from banditry.
It is important to
remember that the centralization of trade constituted not only a convenience
for all participants but also served as a merchanism for minimizing the
penetration of the hinterland by outsiders. For a river plain state desiring to
participate in the international commercial networks, the aid of foreign
merchants and seafares was a necessary source of extended economic contacts
with china and india. Indeed, eastern javanese inscriptions reflect
considerable interaction with a south india based international trade
consorsium. The use of seafarers as
maritime allies was a double edged sword, however. Southeast asia early history is full of
references to maritime raids, one of the most famous being the 1292 maritime
expedition of the mongols againts java. Most javanese ports therefore had
fortified enclosures that were under the charge of the ports merchant comunity.
Maritime
trade in early southeast asia : Zones and eras.
Premodern
maritime exchange in southeast asia was transacted in five commercial zones.
The first zone encompassed the northerns malay peninsula and the southern coast
of vietnam and was the first to openly solicit and facilitate east west trade
during the last milennium B.C. in this age southeast asia was reharded by
foreign seamen as an intermediate and virtually unknown region lying between
the riches of India and those into the east of china. The initial agents of
foreign contact were Malayo-polynesian
sailors who made voyages to as far west as the african coast and to china
in the east. Passage through southeast asia by international traders became
important in the second century. As the central asian caravan routes, the
previously prefered connecting link between east and west commercial networks,
were distrupted by internal strife .
during the second and third centuries the transport of goods shifted to the
sea, and shipping flowed along a maritime route between the southeastern coast
of china to the bay of bengal via a land portage across the 2upper isthmus of
kra. Merchants transit through southeast asia followed ports on the western
edge of the mekong delta, said by the chinese to have been under the authority
the early southeast asian state of funan.
It
is unlikely that the same groups of sailors made the complete journey from the
middle east to china or vice versa, in part due to the seasonal nature of the moonson winds, which were critical to
navigation. Westerly winds from the
southern indian ocean begin in april and peak in july. In januari the wind flow
reverses direction as the northeastern moonson bring easterly winds. This means
that voyagers had to wait at certain points until the next season winds could
take them to their destination. Because the complete transit from one end of
the routes to the other was not possible within a single year, sailors found it
expedient to travel only one sector of the route. One group would make the trip
between middle eastern ports and india, and another made bay of bengal voyage
to the Isthmus of kra, where their goods were transported across the isthmus
and shipped from the gulf of thailand to the lower vietnam coast. There
commodities from the west were exchanged for those of the east. Another group
of sailors then made the voyage from funan to south china. By the time flects
arrived in funan ports, those ships traveling the china leg of the routes had
already gotten underway, initially no local southeast asian products were
exported from funan ports.
During
this second and third century era a second commercial zone emerged in the java
sea region. This java sea network was chiefly involved with the flow gharuwood,
sandalwood, and spices such as cloves among the lesser sunda islands, the
moluccas, the eastern coast of borneo, java, and the southern coast of
sumatera. The development of commercial center, known in chinese records as
Ko-Ying, on the northern edge of the
sunda strait region , was critical in connecting the riches of the java sea
region with the international route. The sunda strait location was ideal as a
point of the end of the java sea where the flow of commerce within the java sea
beyond java could be concentrated. Likewise a sunda strait entrepot offered
easy acces to funan and its international clientele. Malay sailors initiated
the transport of spices from Ko-Ying to Funan. They also began to supplement
eastern and western products with products from the forest of the indonesian
archipelago. Ko-Ying well represents the indigenous response to the potential
for trade provided by the new maritime activities.
By
the early fifth century the southern sumatra coast assumed an additional
importance, due in part two java sea spices. The principal east west maritime
routes shifted from its upper malay peninsula portage to a nautical passage
through the strait of malaca, making direct contact with northwestern edge of
the java sea. The strait of malaca thus became the third zone of southeast asia
commerce, and its center on southeastern sumatera coast soon became the focal point
for malay trade in western borneo, java and the eastern island as well as the
upper malay peninsula and its hinterland, the chao phraya and irrawady river
system. O.W. wolters described southeastern sumatera as a favored
coast that aided the flow commerce, marketing its own sumatera forest products
and java sea goods and utilizing malay ships and crews to connects indigenous
exchange networks with the international route.
Under
the sriwijaya maritime state, which dominated strait commerce until the early
eleventh century, a pattern of riverine statecraft emerged built on alliances
with malay coastal populations and
balanced by an expanding inland power base. In the eyes of the chinese,
sriwijaya was the perfect trade partner. It was able to keep goods moving into
south china ports by servicing vessels voyaging through the southeast asian
archipelago. Sriwijaya ports were utilized as centers of exchange for those
ships traveling over but one segment of the maritime route or
as ports of call for ships a waiting the appropriate monsoon winds to take them
to their destination. Sriwijaya also succesfully protected the southseast Asian
zone of the international commercial route from piracy. In recognition of
Srivijaya’s power the Chinese granted the maritime state preferred trade
status, suggesting that those who utilized Srivijaya’s ports were given
preferential treatment when entering Chinese ports. Wolters argued that this
Chinese connection was critical to Srivijaya’s prosperity and that Srivijaya’s
power was dependent upon the fluctuations of the Chinese economy. When trade
with China’s ports was properous, Srivijaya thrived. But when China’s ports
periodically closed, the economic repercussions were disastrous to Srivijaya’s
political authority. With declining trade revenues Srivijaya was unable to
maintain the loyalty of its seafarers, who shifted their energies to open
piracy.
The Srivijayan era of
economic hegemony came to an abrupt close in 1025, when the south Indian Cola
dynasty successfully attacked the Malacca region’s ports and shattered
Srivijaya’s authority over the strait. This raid began a two-century
restructuring of the patterns of Southeast Asian maritime trade. In this era
not only Indian but also Chinese and Arab traders began more openly to
penetrate Southeast Asia’s marktes, moving more directly to the sources of
commercial goods. Foreign merchants began to regularly travel into the Java Sea
region to acquire spices, a movement that encouraged the development of
Javanese ports on the northern and eastern Java coasts as trade intemediaries
and as ports of call for foreign mechants from the West. The destruction of
Srivijaya’s hegemony also allowed the reemergence of the southern Vietnam coast
as a commercial power, as coastal centers in the Cham domain became more
prominent ports of call on the way to China.
The relationship of the
plain-based and internally focused Javanese state of the outside world changed
radically during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. During the eighth and
ninth centuries the Javanese capital and the territory under its control had
been situated in and arround the Kedu Plain of central Jaca, to the south of
the Merapi Perahu mountain range. After the removal of the Javanese state’s
political center to the lower Brantas basin of eastern Java in the tenth
century, and the subsequent consolidation of the eastern and central Javanese
plains under one authority, Javanese rulers began to take a more active
interest in overseas trade. This change was in part due to the shift of the
royal center to Brantas River basin and in part to the increasing economic
potential that direct interaction with the maritime traders provided.”
Not only was this the
era of Srivijaya’s demise, it also coincided with a significant increas in the
volume and economic importance of trade with China during the reign of China’s
Sung dynasty. At the same time that the Java Sea zone flowered as a commercial
power during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the penetration of Chinese
seamen from the north through the Sulu Sea to acquire the products of the Spice
Island brought the development of the Philippines and northern Borneo as the
fourth Southeast Asian commercial zone. Chinese traders established trade base
in the Philippines during this era. To distribute imports and to extensive
network of native trade evolved in this age, and it stimulated major changes in
Philippines society.” The archeological remains of early Laguna, Mindoro, and
Cebu society especially document the rapid growth of trade centers, as people
from the interior and other islands congregated around ports fortified with
brass artilery – to protect against the piracy rampant in this region’s sea
channels – in response to the opportunities and demands afforded by foreign
trade.”
The growing interst
among the mainland powers at Angkor and Pagan in directly participating in
international trade activities resulted in the development of a fifth Southeast
Asian trade region, in the Bay of Bengal regional trade encompassed the
mainland political systems and the former Srivijayan domains on the upper Malay
Peninsula and the northern and western coasts of Sumatra and made contact with
the intentional route in southern India and Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, southern
Sumatra and the lower Malay Peninsula remained the principal Southeast Aian
landfall for the international traders. Arab traders focused their contact on
the Kedah coast of the lower Malay peninsula and shifted their activity from
Palembang to Jambi on the Southern Sumatra coast in the late eleventh century.
By the thirteenth
century Southeast Asia’s internal trade was back in the hands of Southeast
Asians, as foreign merchats found it once again more expedient to deal with
Southeast Asia-based intermediaries at major international entrepots rather
than attemping to deal directly with the people who controlled the sources of
supplies. This was due in part to the growing efficiency exhibited by Southeast
Asians in capably providing goods for the foreigners at selected port. As
opposed to the Srivijaya era, when trade was dominated by a single Malay state
and its ports, by the thirteenth century all five Southeast Asian maritime
zones had become prosperous an independent economic networks, not as
competitors for maritime dominance but representing an overall commercial
prosperity within Southeast Asia. The strongest of the island realm’s political
systems, Majapahit, was centerd in east Java. Javanese rulers facilitated the
Java Sea spice trade but found no need to dominate the ports of the Strait of
Malacca as Srivijaya had in the earlier age. The javanese established a loose
hegemony that saw the emergence of new ports; among them were northern Sumatra
ports that depended heavily upon commercial interaction with Arab and Indian
seamen.
Java’s
limited control over the strait region is also linked to the rise of strait
piracy. The eventual established of Malacca at the end of the fourteenth
century was a result of initiatives given out by the Chinese Ming dynasty to
fill what they perceived to be the absence of a major political power in the
area that could be depended on to contain piracy, which was jeopardizing the
steady flow of commerce into Chinese ports. By the 1430s, however, Malacca’s
prosperity depended less on Chinese support and more on interaction with
Javanese merchants and Javanese commercial networks. The Javanese controlled
the island traffic to and from the strait and used Malacca as a trade
intermediary through which to market Javanese rice and Java Sea spices.
A new era of Southeast Asian
commerce unfolded after Portuguese entry into the strati region in 1511. Not
only did the Europeans take over Malacca, but they also penetrated the Javanese
sphere in the eastern archipelago, attempting to break Java’s hold on the spice
trade. Over the next four hundred years the Portuguese and other Europans who
followed attempted to impose their direct control over the sources of products
and to eliminate the indigenous intemediaries who had controlled trade in
Southeast Asia sice its inception. Although the Europans’ attemts to monopolize
Southeast Asia’s trade failed, they did successfully open the archipelago to a
variety of competing groups, both Eastern an Western. By the seventeenth
century ports on Java’s north coast, which had emerged as independent economic
centers during decline of the Majapahit state, were destroyed by the emerging
inland power at Mataram in central Java. This victory effectively internalized
Javanese commerce and ended the remaining control of Javanese merchants over
the Java Sea trade. Henceforth control over the international trade was assumed
by others. In the Strait of Malacca, in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra,
and in Johor on the southern Malay Peninsula, there emerged successors to
Malacca and the Javanese; and in the eastern archipelago Malay seamen in Brunei
and Sulu assumed control over the regional and Chinese trade with the Spice
Islands.
The waxing and waning
of states in various parts of Southeast Asia were directly tied to shifting
international trade routes, just as trade routes shifted in response to local
power configurations and local initiatives. The following chapters discuss this
pattern of growth and decline in detail.
