This article will concentrate on one aspect of a major question in Southeast Asian maritime history: an attempt will be made to describe and determine the origins of the type of ship that was the main form of transport for the trade of the maritime kingdoms of the western half of Southeast Asia until the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Surprisingly enough — if the general importance of the commercial network of maritime Southeast Asia is considered — such a study has not yet been attempted. The very few authors dealing with the economic history of the region are usually content to dismiss the problem by saying that the ships are locally called “junks”, and that their tonnage is small. (The reader is thus left with the idea that Chinese ships were being used, since the word “junk” has long been applied almost exclusively to this very specific type of ship.) The general conclusion of this study is that Southeast Asian maritime powers built, owned, and operated ocean-going ships of respectable size as early as the first few centuries of the first millennium A.D. Needless to say, this has a considerable historical significance (which will not be examined here).
Malay literary texts, known to have been put into written form after the 15th century, have in their repertoire a variety of metaphoric means to convey the concepts of a periphery befitting a harbour-based city-state, the abode of a ruler. 3 One such metaphor is repeatedly found in texts such as the renowned epic Hikayat Hang Tuah or the more historically minded Sejarah Melayu, when their narrators need to convey the concept of the polity taken in its entirety. It is then, in most cases, the two standard phrases anak sungai and teluk rantau, alone or in combination, which convey the notion of a political entity compliant towards the centre. A few examples shall suffice: 4 "Maka terdengarlah kepada segala anak sungai dan teluk rantau yang banyak itu bahawa sekarang negeri Bentan itu telah adalah raja…" [Thus it was heard in all the numerous confluents, bends and reaches that the polity of Bintan now had a ruler…] (HHT: 18) "Maka Bendahara (…) mengerahkan segala orang besar-besar yang memegang anak sungai dan teluk rantau itu suruh bawa rakyatnya berhimpun ke Inderapura." [The Bendahara (…) summoned all the prominent people who controlled the confluents, bends and reaches to require that their (own) people gather at Inderapura] (HHT: 445) "… segala rakyat dalam negeri Melaka itu sampai habis pada segala teluk rantau dan anak sungai jajahan yang takluk ke Melaka itu." [… all the people in this polity of Melaka, to the last one, in all the confluents, bends and reaches that submit to Melaka…] (HHT: 517) "… jadi tiada diambilnya negeri dengan segala anak sungainya itu oleh Wolanda yang duduk di Melaka dan Jayakatra itu…" [… so the Dutch who had their seat at Melaka and Jayakarta/Batavia did not succeed in taking over the polity with all its confluents…] (HHT: 525) "Maka (...) dirusakkannya segala teluk rantau jajahan Melaka." [All the bends and reaches under the control of Melaka were ruined.] (SM: 145) "… pada zaman itu rakyat dalam Melaka juga sembilan laksa banyaknya, lain pula rakyat segala teluk rantau…" [… at that time the people in Melaka, in number ninety thousand, not included the people in the bends and reaches…"] (SM: 225
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. ParisThe South China Sea is the first leg of the long distance trans-Asian trade route leading from China to the Mediterranean. It fed into this route the products of its own interregional exchange network. To its north, natural and manufactured products from the vast Chinese mainland were gathered in the harbours of the southeastern and southern provinces to be shipped, through various stages, to SouthEast Asia, the Indian Ocean countries, the Middle East and Europe. Further to its south and east, the wide variety of tropical and equatorial climes of South-East Asia produced an array of trade goods that were in high demand the world over. The peoples living around the South China Sea, another "Mediterranean" in its own right, were among the shippers and traders that kept this major trade route of the Old World in lively operation.The Chinese participation in the history of South China Sea shipping has been thoroughly investigated-and over-emphasized--for many years. However, the South China Sea, in its broadest geographical setting, also comprises the South-East Asian maritime for their critical comments. Indonesian shipwreck sites mentioned in this paper were excavated within a cooperation program between the Indonesian National Research Centre for Archaeology and the Ecole frangaise d'Extreme-Orient, with financial assistance of the Ford Foundation. This content downloaded from 195.78.108.20 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 01:31:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 254 PIERRE-YVES MANGUIN expanses to its South and East. Serious research on the maritime history of South-East Asia started only three decades ago, and it was only in the late sixties that the dynamic role played by the South-East Asian peoples in shaping these trade networks was fully acknowledged by historians. In his important book on Early Indonesian Commerce (1967), 0. W. Wolters was instrumental in shifting attention from activities directed from outside the region to early Malay World shippers and traders. I shall examine this general problem from a different angle and will attempt to answer a question which needs to be posed in clear terms: did polities around the South China Sea master the ocean-going techniques that would have allowed them to play the major economic role outlined above? Assuming the evolution of socio-economic patterns is intimately connected with technical developments, what will then be considered here is the historical evolution of shipbuilding techniques, that is the development among South-China Sea peoples of the technical skills necessary to build...
This article updates research into the sewn‐boat traditions of Southeast Asia with recent finds that provide evidence of the transition from stitched planks with lashed‐lug frames to planks fastened with dowels and locked dowels alongside lashed‐lug frames. The differences between Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Indo‐Arabic boatbuilding are discussed and the meaning of anomalies, such as the Maldivian dhonis, examined. Considering the known history of trade and exchange throughout the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, the lack of hybridization between boatbuilding traditions is noted.
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