In the Melaka Straits, Chinese copper cash has been recovered archaeologically, in varying quantities, from land settlement sites dated to between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Despite their apparent importance, their role and function in a regional context is still largely unknown. This article seeks to reconstruct the usage of these coins in the Straits region through the integrative use of Chinese textual information and archaeological data.
Ships form a critical component of the study of Southeast Asia’s interaction both within itself as well as with the major centers of Asia and the West. Shipwreck data, accrued from archaeologically excavated shipwreck sites, provide information on the evolving maritime traditions that traversed Southeast Asian waters over the last two millennia, including shipbuilding and navigational technologies and knowledge, usage of construction materials and techniques, types of commodities carried by the shipping networks, shipping passages developed through Southeast Asia, and the key ports of call that vessels would arrive at as part of the network of economic and social exchanges that came to characterize maritime interactions.
The Strait of Melaka and connected waterways have been critical to, and directly affected, the formation of littoral states, societies and economies in eastern Sumatra, the Riau Islands, the Malay Peninsula, and Singapore. The history and nature of statehood in the region is interrelated to the way in which naval capabilities evolved, but, as argued in this article, perhaps not in the straightforward fashion often assumed. Naval capabilities and strategies evolved in tandem with state policy to adapt to changes in the wider Asian maritime political economy which was dominated at various times by China and India. This article examines the factors that affected maritime policy in the Melaka Straits c. 500 to 1500 CE, and the extent to which these furthered the viability of the mainly Malay port-polities, and in particular the regional hegemonic state of Srivijaya in eastern Sumatra. The study utilises textual records, epigraphic materials, and literature to reconstruct a more nuanced picture of maritime states and naval power in premodern Southeast Asia.
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