Resource Spotlight | “Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, c.1600 – c.1906” by Heather Sutherland

 

Moang Ratu Thomas Ximenes da Silva, raja of Sikka, with golden helmet, jewellery and ivory, 1927.
The Southeast Asian and Caribbean Images of the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) now held in the Leiden University Library.

 
 
 

SEAWAYS AND GATEKEEPERS

Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, c.1600 — c.1906

 

by Heather Sutherland

 
 
 
 

Published by National University of Singapore Press.

 
 

The eastern archipelagos stretch from Mindanao and Sulu in the north to Bali in the southwest and New Guinea in the southeast. Many of their inhabitants are regarded as “people without history”, while colonial borders cut across shared underlying patterns. Yet many of these societies were linked to trans-oceanic trading systems for millennia. Indeed, some of the world’s most prized commodities once came from territories which were either “stateless” or under the very tenuous control of loosely structured polities. Although individual regimes sought to control traffic, exchange between trans-regional or even trans-oceanic shippers and local communities was often direct, without mediation by overarching authorities.

In Seaways and Gatekeepers, trade provides the integrating framework for local and regional histories that cover more than 300 years, from the late 16th century to the beginning of the 20th, when new technologies and changing markets signaled Western dominance. The introduction considers theories from the social sciences and economics which can help liberate writers from dependence on states as narrative frameworks. Southeast Asian specialists can learn from this book, which ignores conventional geographic and temporal boundaries. It will also appeal to those working on wider themes such as global history, state formation, the evolution of markets and anthropology.

 
 

Jan Pieterzoon, Coen, Governor General of the Dutch territories in the Indies (1617-1623), portrait by Jacques Waber, early 17th Century
The Westfriese Museum

Saifuddin, Sultan of Tidore (r.1657-1687), National Museum in Krakow, 1680
Collection of the Princes Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland, permission to reproduce given to the author

Dancing Ambonese warrior in blue, 1675 - 1725
Rijksmuseum

A village chief of Manipa (right), and a man in Manipa dress (left), 1724. Fredric Ottens.
The Southeast Asian and Caribbean Images of the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) now held in the Leiden University Library.

Afternoon tea in a Batavia house, by Jan Brandes, 1779-1785
Rijksmuseum

Portraits of some inhabitants of Rawak Island, Raja Ampat, Papua, by Sebastien Leroy, 1819
National Library of Australia, via Trove

Resident of the island of Timor, by Jacques Etienne Victor Arago, 1822
Rijksmuseum

A Dayak in war dress from the upper reaches of the Dusun River, plate 40 from Müller, 1839
Wikimedia, sourced from https://www.hubert-herald.nl/

Clothing, mats, tools used in diamond and gold washing, paddles. Plate 56 from Müller, _Land-En Volkenkunde, _v1, 1839
The Biodiversity Library, an online resource

“Malay Chief from Sulu”, around 1848
Citation: Frank Marryat, Borneo and the Indian Archipelago with Drawings of Costume and Scenery (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848)

A Balinese and a Papuan Slave of the ruler of Buleleng, probably by Isidore van Kinsbergen, 1865
The Southeast Asian and Caribbean Images of the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) now held in the Leiden University Library.

Oil painting of Anak Agung Madé Karang Asam, the son of the last ruler of Lombok, 1890, artist unknown
The Tropenmuseum / KIT, accessed via the Atlas of Mutual Heritage

Portrait of seven unidentified Bugis in Singapore, 1865 to 1875
Rijksmuseum

Wood carriers from Sulawesi, Indonesia, by Walter Kaudern, 1919
The Swedish Museum of World Culture, via Wikimedia Commons

 
 

Heather Sutherland

 
 

Heather Sutherland is a retired professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

 
 
 

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. Art of the Ancestors does not receive a commission should any of our readers purchase the aforementioned book. Art of the Ancestors is a strictly non-commercial educational platform and has no vested interest in the professional activities of the author listed above.