This article attempts to trace the historical development of the Chinese taste for bird’s nests and its impact on the Indonesian economy. The term yanwo or "swiftlet’s nest" appears apparently for the first time in a dietary compendium, the Yinshi xu zhi (Essential Knowledge for Eating and Drinking ; 1368), which stresses prevention rather than treatment. It seems that the nests were first collected in South China and eaten locally by commoners before being imported from the South Seas, especially from Champa and Insulinde during the 15th or early 16th century. In the 1590s this taste for bird’s nests was extensively shared by the elite and had spread to Northern provinces. The booming consumption of this delicacy during the following centuries resulted in a huge quest for swiftlet’s caves all over the Archipelago, and in the control of the bird’s nest trade, at first by Indonesian rulers and subsequently by the Dutch authorities. The big novelty in the bird’s nest production was a progressive shift from collecting cave and cliff nests to the practice of swiftlet farming. This swiftlet farming began in the late 1960s and developed tremendously since the 1980s in connection with political changes, and with an increasing demand from mainland China. Indonesia is now the biggest supplier of bird’s nests in the world.
Although commercial relations between Vietnam and Insulinde go back to the remote past, the Vietnamese have shown very little curiosity about their Southern neighbours ; this explains why travel accounts are so scarce. Here we intend to reflect on the reports and travel impressions written by demoted civil servants who were sent to the Hạ châu or “ Southern Countries” to redeem their faults when the Nguyễn court became interested in obtaining reports on the conditions and views of the European based in Bengal, the Straits, Java, and Luzon. The original versions of these reports have apparently not survived, but several copies are kept in various public libraries in Hanoi. The first was Lý Văn Phức (1785-1849) demoted in 1829 and dispatched to Calcutta in early 1830 via Singapore, Malacca and Penang. He wrote three texts of which a record in prose and a brief account in verse and prose more or less arranged in chronological order have survived. Cao Bá Quát (1809-1854) who in 1844 accomplished a mission to Singapore and Batavia was apparently the last demoted civil servant sent to the Hạ châu (after the arrival of the French in Vietnam the Nguyễn court developed its relations with Hong Kong). He was the first to realise that the Europeans were a particular danger to the region. In order to perceive the political situation in the Malay world the emissaries had to rely on the Chinese merchants who shared the same culture and who were the only people with whom they could communicate at least by mean of the brush.
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