Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia's Great Archipelago

by Philip Bowring

Overview

Nusantaria – often referred to as 'Maritime Southeast Asia' – is the world's largest archipelago and has, for centuries, been a vital cultural and trading hub. Nusantara, a Sanskrit, then Malay, word referring to an island realm, is here adapted to become Nusantaria - denoting a slightly wider world but one with a single linguistic, cultural and trading base. Nusantaria encompasses the lands and shores created by the melting of the ice following the last Ice Age. These have long been primarily the domain of the Austronesian-speaking peoples and their seafaring traditions. The surrounding waters have always been uniquely important as a corridor connecting East Asia to India, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

In this book, Philip Bowring provides a history of the world's largest and most important archipelago and its adjacent coasts. He tells the story of the peoples and lands located at this crucial maritime and cultural crossroads, from its birth following the last Ice Age to today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350162341
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/17/2020
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.11(w) x 9.26(h) x 0.84(d)

About the Author

Philip Bowring is a jourbanalist and author based in Asia since 1973. He was formerly Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and correspondent for the Financial Times and Wall Street Jourbanal, columnist for the International Herald Tribune, and contributor to the Guardian and South China Morning Post. He graduated in History from Cambridge University and is a student of the history and economy of maritime Asia.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Illustrations ix

Glossary xv

Preface xvii

Introduction 1

1 Child of a Drowned Parent 7

Describes how Nusantaria's maritime world was created by the flooding of Sundaland as the sea waters rose dramatically in the years before 7000 B P and the origins of its people.

2 Nusantaria's Defining Features and Early People 17

The weather and wind patterns that shaped its land and livelihood and required its inhabitants to moue by sea and trade its own and others' diverse products.

3 To Babylon and Back 29

Finds the earliest evidence of sea links between Nusantaria and lands to the west, bringing spices to Babylon and linking to Egypt and Rome via India and the Horn of Africa.

4 Ghosts of Early Empires 38

Several trading states emerge, notably Funan, as east-west trade using a land route between the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea develops.

5 Culture from India, Goods from China 46

Trade leads to the entry of new ideas: Hinduism then Buddhism, Sanskrit and Indian notions of kingship are grafted on to the existing culture and Austronesian languages.

6 Srivijaya: Vanished Great Mandala 57

Advances in ships and navigation lead to use of the Melaka straits and the emergence of the region's first large trading empire and a centre of Buddhist learning, attracting Chinese monks to Sumatra.

7 Java Takes Centre Stage 65

The Javanese kingdom, which built great monuments such as Borobudur, linked to Srivijaya to create an even more powerful entity from land and sea wealth.

8 Tamil Tigers of Trade 72

The first and last Indian military intervention in Nusantaria, by the Chola dynasty, challenges Srivijayan dominance and gets the Tamils into China trade.

9 Champa: Master of the East Sea 77

For 1,000 years this Hindu Austronesian-speaking kingdom occupied much of the coast of what is now Vietnam, playing a key role in trade between China, the Melaka straits and Borneo.

10 Malagasy Genes and African Echoes 88

Seafaring and trading skills brought Nusantarians to settle Madagascar, leave marks on the Africa, and become players in trade in three-directional trade across the Indian Ocean.

11 China Raises its Head 100

China as source and market had long been a driver of seaborne trade, but the Chinese played no role. This began to change during the Song dynasty. Kublai Khan tried force but was defeated in Java and Vietnam.

12 The Majapahit Good Life 109

The centre of power shifts to east Java, where land development and control of trade with the Spice Islands stimulate a flowering of culture and of regional commerce.

13 Tremble and Obey: The Zheng He Voyages 119

China decides to impress its neighbours, sending vast fleets around the South China Sea and Indian Ocean and offering trade in return for nominal subservience. The effort is too costly to last.

14 Nails, Dowels and Improbable Ships 123

Dubious claims for the size of Zheng He's ships obscure the differences between Chinese and Nusantarian ships and the sheer size of the Javanese vessels soon encountered by the Portuguese.

15 Malay Melaka's Lasting Legacy 136

Indian Muslim and Chinese patronage see Melaka emerge as the major port on the straits. It becomes a centre for Malay culture and laws, which spread throughout the region.

16 The Northern Outliers 147

The now Philippine archipelago was culturally part of Nusantaria but foreign trade limited. Taiwan was even more isolated despite its proximity to China and the Okinawa trading hub.

17 Islam's Great Leap East 157

Melaka's fall to the Portuguese in 1511 spurs Muslim migration, combining with Indian, Persian, Chinese and other Muslim traders to create sultanates which conquered or absorbed Hindu states.

18 Nusantaria: Holed Near the Waterline 167

The successive arrivals of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English traders had varying imparts on the region and its rulers. But everywhere they undermined Nusantarian role in commerce.

19 Barangays and Baybayin 183

Early Spanish observers provide an insight into this core Nusantarian culture of hierarchy, boatbuilding, gold and poetry.

20 Makassar, Bugis and Freedom of the Seas 194

Some states briefly gained from the European spur to trade. One was tolerant, law-abiding Makassar. Another was their Bugis neighbours, who traded the region as seamen, settlers and rulers.

21 Where Kings Reign but Priests Rule 206

Spain was the only European to start with an overtly imperial policy. It proved better at preaching than governing. Looking to Mexico left the northern archipelago further out of the regional mainstream.

22 The Sulu Factor: Trading, Raiding, Slaving 217

One local sailing and trading success not suppressed until the end of the nineteenth century was Sulu, needling the Spanish, dealing with the British and Dutch, trading anyone and anything.

23 Nusantaria's Existential Crisis 225

The nineteenth century saw western desire for commerce become desire for control. The reasons were many, the process haphazard, but by the end of it foreigners ruled almost everywhere.

24 Labour, Capital and Kongsi: The Power of the Chinese 236

The Chinese role grew very slowly until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when settlement, encouraged by foreign commerce and rule, expanded dramatically, adding wealth but undermining local networks.

25 High Noon of Occupation 245

The last 100 years of western imperialism had more impact than the preceding 400. New borders, new institutions, new industries. Growth and disruption, wealth and anger flourished.

26 Empty Lands No Longer 252

Long thinly populated but relatively healthy Nusantaria saw a dramatic rise in numbers, faster than China. The reasons were several, the consequences uncertain.

27 Freedom, Fears and the Future 256

Nationalism followed diverging ideological paths but independent states settled into accommodation, though dependent on imported skills. Sense of common identity begins to re-emerge.

Notes 273

Bibliography 289

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

“Bowring, in a remarkable display of taut writing, whisks us through the archipelago's geological eruption and mythic floods to the rise and fall of multiple port states and emerging regional dynasties and into the modern era of disruption, decay and dismemberment in less than 300 pages. At the same time, he does a wonderful demolition job on Beijing's self-serving take on Asian history.”” —South China Morning Post

““[Bowring] writes this rich and rambling history as in fact a narrative of change and renewal … It is not easy to convince policymakers that history might be the place to look for solutions, yet we have nowhere else to turban to imagine what might yet be possible.”” —Literary Review

““Beautifully presented with numerous informative maps, excellent illustrations and a very useful glossary, it is both a fascinating read and a very valuable history of one of the world's most important regions.”” —Baird Maritime

““Rich in detail, and laced with vivid anecdotes ... Bowring notes that Nusantaria is just as vulnerable to climate change as it was after the Ice Age ... will the book's excellent maps of Nusantaria have to be drawn again?”” —The Correspondent

““This hardcover book is handsomely produced with a beautiful dust jacket showing fine Nusantarian galleys in the Moluccas, recorded during the Louis de Freycinet expedition of 1817–20. It's a volume that offers readers a deeper understanding of the vibrant maritime peoples and events that unfolded literally on Australia's tropical northern doorstep, to better appreciate the complex development of the human, political and economic region that we inhabit.”” —Jeffrey Mellefont, New Mandela

““This is an important and timely book. Whatever its shortcomings as formal history-and Philip Bowring states clearly that he is no specialist and no academic-for the suitably forewarned general reader at whom it is aimed, who is looking to better understand a complex and pivotal region of the modern world, Empire of the Winds is a must-read.”” —Jourbanal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong

““Bowring has taken on the mission of restoring to its rightful place in world history a region that shaped global trade, and with its unrivalled shipbuilding techniques and navigation skills drew disparate cultures – and their ideas and know-how – together across vast oceans, and whose contribution to humankind's domi­nion over this planet's resources has been largely forgotten.”” —Post Magazine

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