Department of History, National University of Singapore

Continuity and Change in the International History of Maritime South East AsiaAuthor(s): C. D. CowanSource: Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 1-11Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History, NationalUniversity of SingaporeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20067665Accessed: 12/05/2010 04:22

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CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME SOUTH EAST ASIA*

C. D. Cowan

That view of the history of maritime South East Asia which fixed

a rigid dividing line in 1511 or 1600, and regarded the assertion of

European dominance in the area as marking the frontier between

traditional and modern history, has long ago been discredited and

discarded. It led to the treatment of the earlier history of Malaya and

Indonesia as a mere prelude to the coming of the Europeans, or at

least as an era without relevance to later events, to which special criteria must be applied. The later history was treated pre

dominantly as the story of European activities and rivalries, and

purely western criteria were applied even to indigenous themes. All

this is now regarded as unscientific, and labelled 'Europe-centric'. Few, if any, contemporary historians would challenge this judg

ment so far as the internal history of Malaya and Indonesia and

their component parts are concerned, and, though there is still

ample room for discussion as to its application in practice,1 this paper does not seek to re-open the debate. It is concerned not so much with the development of maritime South East Asian society, or with

the history of individual states within what are now Malaysia and

Indonesia, as with the relations of these states with each other.

Within this special field of what Professor Resink has, in a some

what different context, called 'the international history of the

archipelago',2 a variant of the Europe-centric heresy has up till now held the field virtually without question. Whatever factors may have governed the international relations of the indigenous states of maritime South East Asia, and whatever patterns may have been discerned in those relations, it has been taken for granted that the relations between British and Dutch (and for that matter Spanish) colonial r?gimes were not explicable in those terms, since for one

*Paper read at the xxvii International Congress of Orientalists, Ann Arbor. August 1967.

1. See for instance J. S. Bastin, The Western Element in Modern Southeast Asian History (Kuala Lumpur 1960), and John Smail, "On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia", Journal of Southeast

Asian History, vol. 2. No. 2 (Singapore July 1961). 2. G. J. Resink, "Onafhankelijke Vorsten, Rijken en Landen in Indon?sie" Tussen

1850 en 1910," in Indon?sie, IX (1956), pp. 265-296.

1

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

thing they were controlled from power centres in Europe.3 Certainly many modern historians have demonstrated that the preponderating

influences which moulded British and Dutch policies lay in Europe, and that the issues of Anglo-Dutch rivalry were decided through the traditional machinery of European diplomacy.4 The question

which is still worth asking, however, is whether for all that the basic

pattern of international relations in maritime South East Asia in

the colonial period was in fact different from that in earlier years.

As a first step towards the establishment of a framework within

which the answer to this question may be sought, this paper reviews

the international history of the area from the seventh century to

the present day. It seeks, by applying the same limited criteria to

the whole of this period, and by emphasizing elements of continuity

throughout, it, to identify basic patterns in international relations

against which the significance of elements of change and of novelty, whether of indigenous or foreign provenance, can be evaluated.

It is convenient to begin by discussing the relationship of the

empire of Srivijaya (founded c. mid-seventh century) with the early

Javanese kingdoms (eighth to tenth centuries). Srivijaya, from its

capital at Palembang on the south-eastern coast of Sumatra, domi

nated the trade and politics of the western archipelago from the

seventh to the eleventh century, when hegemony on that coast passed to Jambi, a formerly subordinate centre to the northwards.5 At

the height of its power the southern Sumatran capital city controlled

the coastline of east Sumatra, and both sides of the Straits of Malacca

and, perhaps, of Sunda. The extent of its territorial control, how

ever, is not in this context of prime importance. For Srivijaya was

essentially a maritime state, and its power was derived from trade

3. See for instance John Legge's approving quotation of Hall's dictum in this

sense with reference to a period as early as the seventeenth century [J.D.

Legge, Indonesia (Prentice-Hall 1964), p. 62, quoting D.G.E. Hall, History

of South-East Asia (Macmillan 1955 edition), p. 251]. 4. Nicholas Tarling, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Malay World, 1780-1824

(Queensland 1962), and British Policy in the Malay Peninsula and Archi

pelago, 1824-1871 (JMBRAS, vol. XXX, Pt. 3, 1957), Graham Irwin, Nine

teenth-Century Borneo: a Study in Diplomatic Rivalry (VKITLV, XV, 1955), and CD. Cowan, Nineteenth-Century Malaya: the origins of British Political

Control (OUP, 1961), to name but a few.

5. Since most of the factual material incorporated in this paper is not, per se, new or controversial, I have thought it best in general not to cumber the

text with supporting references. A brief reading list for non-specialist readers

is suggested: G.C. Allen and A.G. Donnithorne, Western Enterprise in

Indonesia and Malaya,, London 1957; G. Coed?s, Les Etats Hin?ouis?s

d'Indochine et d'Indon?sie, Paris 1964 edition; H.J. de Graaf, Geschiedenis van Indon?sie, 's-Gravenhage 1949; D.G.E. Hall, A History of South-East

Asia, Macmillan, 1964 edition; J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society, The Hague 1955; M A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European In

fluence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630, The

Hague 1962; B.J.O. Schrieke, Indonesian Sociological Studies, vol. 1, The

Hague 1955; B.H M. Vlekke, Nusantara, The Hague 1959; Wong Lin Ken, The Trade of Singapore, 1819-69, JMBRAS, XXXIII, Pt. 4, 1960.

2

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

and control of the trans-Asian shipping lanes through the western

archipelago. It lacked a large labour force, produced little of com

mercial importance, and imported its rice from Java. Its

great asset was its strategic position, commanding the Straits

of Malacca, and its incorporation in a wider international trading

system stretching from India and the Persian Gulf to China.

The remarkable thing about Srivijaya was that with such a slim

economic base of its own it endured as a major power for several

centuries. The other important fact for this paper is that its in

digenous language and population was Malay, though of course its

court culture was influenced by Indian and especially by Buddhist

ideas.

The early states of Java were not so much rivals of Srivijaya as

neighbours operating within a different system. At first, in the

eighth and ninth centuries, they were located in central Java: then,

early in the tenth century, the centre of power shifted to eastern

Java. All the Javanese states, however, were of the same type, and

in complete contrast to Srivijaya. They had relatively large popu

lations, mainly employed in the cultivation of sawah, or irrigated, rice. On this agricultural base they developed a highly integrated and complex society, with a self-consciously high level of material

and intellectual culture. Its religious life was marked, on the

material plane, by the widespread construction of temples and

monuments, best known amongst them the great Buddhist Boro

budur and the Hindu-inspired Prambanan group. On the social

and intellectual level it produced a stratified and (as some historians

have termed it) 'bureaucratic' structure, able to absorb external

(mainly Indian) influences and yet maintain its distinctive Javanese

identity. The lowest levels of this society yet looked down with

scorn on the less-developed peoples of western Java and the islands

to the eastwards. In contrast to Srivijaya the early Javanese states

tended to look inwards, and were not much interested in foreign trade. Such trade as they did conduct came in the form of tribute

from the islands to the eastwards, and tended to find its way into

the routes of international trade through Srivijaya, so that in this

respect Srivijaya and Java were complementary rather than com

petitive. The two were not so much rivals as neighbours operating within different political and cultural systems, geographically and

functionally in balance.

From the end of the tenth century onwards, however, this state

of affairs began to change as the states of eastern Java increased in

power and extended the range of their external activities, both as

regards the number of the outer-island kingdoms from which they

sought to extract an acknowledgement of vassalage, and the scale of

3

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

their trade. Srivijaya then became both a political rival in the

western half of the archipelago, and a commercial competitor block

ing direct access to the outside world.

The pattern for the next three hundred years was thus one of

intermittent conflict between the Javanese and Srivijayan polities, and the overall trend was towards a weakening of the Srivijayan

position. Tamil raids weakened the authority of the ruler of

Palembang in the eleventh century. Moreover, from the twelfth

century, when Jambi had become the capital, the commercial mono

poly of the Malays who acknowledged the leadership of Jambi was

being continually eroded by the increasing numbers of private Chinese traders who were themselves visiting many centres of pro duction in the Southj Seas, thus undermining Srivijaya's entrep?t business. For this reason the latter's influence in the Malay world

dwindled, and more and more small Malay port-states were able to

sustain an independent trading role. In these circumstances the

Javanese had an advantage over their competitor for influence in

the archipelago, and King Kertanagara of Singhosari (1268-92), seek

ing to assert his suzerainty over the western archipelago and the

Straits area, succeeded in making the ruler of Jambi (now living inland in the Menangkabau hinterland of Malayu) acknowledge the

overlordship of Java. At about the same time the Thai were able

to take advantage of Malay disunity to extend their suzerainty over

most of Srivijaya's former client-states on the Malayan peninsula.6

It was this confused situation which saw the rise of the Javanese

empire of Majapahit. Kertanagara himself was overthrown in the

course of a dynastic civil war, common in these Javanese states,

which happened on this occasion to coincide with the arrival of a

Chinese military expedition, despatched by the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, intent on subjugating the states of the South Seas to

his overlordship. One of the contenders for the succession, Kerta

nagara's son-in-law, welcomed the Chinese, and co-operated with

them in the destruction of his rivals, before turning on them, out

manoeuvring and defeating in detail the units into which they had

incautiously been induced to divide their force, and expelling them

from the country. He then founded in 1293 the new state of Maja

pahit which, after a pause for internal consolidation, resumed Ker

tanagara's policy of expansion with the objective of extending Java nese domination over the whole of the archipelago. By the middle

of the fourteenth century this overlordship had been asserted in

large portions of the archipelago and almost certainly in Sumatra

6. I am obliged to Professor O.W. Wolters of Cornell University for his advice

and criticism of this portion of the paper, and for allowing me access to

an as yet unpublished paper of his own bearing on the subject.

4

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

as well, and according to the Nagarakertagama (a verse epic by the court poet Prapantja traditionally dated 1365) it extended to vir

tually the whole of modern Indonesia, and the Malayan peninsula. In practice this probably added up to little more than the acknow

ledgment of suzerainty and the receipt of tribute from the more

important states of the outer islands of the archipelago, enforced by intermittent punitive expeditions. The accession of the Ming

dynasty in 1368 saw a temporary reduction in the number of Chinese merchants trading overseas, and both Jambi and Palembang once

again began to perform an important entrep?t function in the trade with China, conducted by non-Chinese. The Javanese, however, were sensitive to this Sumatran Malay bid for power, and shortly after 1377 they mounted a series of punitive expeditions against the

south-east coast of Sumatra that put an end to it. Despite this

Majapahit herself seems never to have been able to exert any con

tinuing control over the use of the Straits of Malacca. But for all

these reservations as to the actual extent of the Majapahit empire it

was by far the greatest and most powerful of the Javanese states, and had no rival within the archipelago for more than a century.

It was not until the middle of the fifteenth century that the

earlier balance of power in the archipelago was restored by the decline of Majapahit, and the rise of the new maritime power of

Malacca to assume in part the r?le formerly played by Srivijaya. Supported both by a tributary relationship with Ming China, and

by incorporation into an external trading system which reached west

wards to India and the Red Sea, and along whose routes came the

powerful new force of Islam, the Malacca sultanate (founded c.

1400) soon built up an empire of its own on both sides of the Straits of Malacca. As the political overlordship of Malacca spread along the east coast of Sumatra and in the Malayan peninsula, where it

grappled with and contained Thai competition, so the Islamic

trading system of which Malacca was the South East Asian centre

spread through the archipelago, whilst Malacca itself also developed as the main centre of the Chinese trade. In Java itself, as Islam

began to penetrate, its political and social side-effects made more

difficult the maintenance of Majapahit's overlordship in the island.

As the fifteenth century progressed the balance slowly swung against

Majapahit, and the north Javanese ports were one by one converted to Islam and drawn into the commercial orbit of the Malaccan entre

pot. By the time the Portuguese arrived on the scene at the

beginning of the sixteenth century Majapahit survived only as a small

inland state in east Java, a shrunken remnant of her former self.

Looking back from that point in time at the pattern of the inter

national history of maritime South East Asia in earlier centuries,

5

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

a number of basic elements in it are clearly discernible. The crux

of the international situation in the archipelago seems to have been a balance between the essentially land-power of populous and agri cultural Java, at the centre of the area, and the maritime and com

mercial power of a rival system in or near the Straits area, and a

contest between them for control or influence over the intervening territories. The balance swung to and fro. But even when at the

height of its power, as under Kertanagara before 1292 and Hayam Wuruk of Majapahit in the middle of the fourteenth century, a

Javanese state was rarely able to exert any continuing de facfo control over the Straits of Malacca and the northern periphery of

the archipelago. Nor when one of its rivals was in the ascendant, as during the time of the Malacca sultanate, was the r?le of Java

completely eclipsed. The north Javanese ports of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries, strong in the population and resources of their

hinterland, played an equal and active r?le in the Muslim trading

system centred on Malacca, whilst in the interior Majapahit withered

away, to be replaced by the end of the sixteenth century by a

nominally Muslim successor. The other point which must be made

here is the often decisive influence of outsiders. This influence

seems to have been of two kinds. At times it was what one may term political and, in a sense, fortuitous or superficial. In this

category one may place the Tamil raids on Srivijaya in the eleventh

century, and the Mongol invasion of Java at the end of the thir

teenth century. These were acts whose perpetrators either had no

intention of moulding long-term events in the archipelago in a part icular way, or if they had did not succeed in doing so, but

which because they occurred at critical moments did in fact change or accentuate developments there. At other times outside influence

was more fundamental, in that it was long-term in nature and

formed an essential part of the continuing structure of the situation.

In this category one may cite the r?le of the China trade and of

Chinese traders in determining the fortunes of the maritime entre

pots, the protection afforded by Ming China as suzerain to her vassal

Malacca, and the r?le of Arab and Muslim Indian traders and pro

selytizers in underpinning the Malaccan trading system and in

introducing Islam itself.

The intervention of the colonial powers complicated but did not

basically change this pattern. The Portuguese were a relatively weak

power whose occupation of Malacca in the sixteenth century, far

from breaking up the Straits system previously centred there, merely

provoked the emergence of alternative Muslim trading centres in

the Straits area, in Atjeh, Johore and Brunei. At the same time

the militant Christianity of the Portuguese perhaps played a part in

6

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

stimulating the re-absorption of the ports of north Java by the deve

loping Muslim state of Mataram in the interior of the island. To a

very limited extent, therefore, it is possible to see the Portuguese intervention as assisting accidentally in an incipient revival of the

Javanese polity. We should note, however, that the most impor tant of the north Java port-states, Bantam in the west, remained

independent of Mataram, and that the maritime trading system of

independent Muslim port-states was still in the ascendant at the end

of the sixteenth century, a fact attested to by the official conversion

of the ruler of Makassar to Islam in 1603.

The Dutch East India Company at first clearly functioned in the

archipelago in the r?le ot a Straits polity rather than a Javanese one.

For most of the seventeeenth century, though their headquarters were at Batavia, in west Java, they had no Javanese power base.

They were a maritime power, concerned primarily with the sea

routes and trading centres of the archipelago as part of a general Asia trading system. Initially they traded with and in the establish

ed port-centres of the archipelago and the peninsula, though deve

loping from the first a special position in the spice-producing islands

of the Moluccas. Increasingly, however, from their bases of Batavia

and Malacca (captured from the Portuguese in 1642) they sought to reduce the independent trading ports to clients and appendages

of their own commercial system, and to impose on producing areas

of commodities such as tin and pepper (which were also in most

cases the principal markets for imported goods such as textiles and

opium) treaties guaranteeing to themselves a monopoly of the trade

in these commodities, often at fixed prices. Before the end of the

century, to cite but a few important examples, the effective indepen dence of Makassar (1667) and Bantam (1684) had been subverted, and the external influence and mercantile r?le of Atjeh greatly reduced, whilst Dutch factories and Dutch sea-power dominated the

main trade-routes of the archipelago, and controlled the Straits of Malacca and Sunda.

By the end of the seventeenth century, however, this pattern had

already begun to change. From 1676 onwards the Dutch were drawn into a series of succession disputes and dynastic struggles in Java itself

which continued throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, and they took advantage of this to reduce the indigenous rulers to a state of dependence. By the end of the so-called '3rd Javanese

War of Succession' (1749-57) the kingdom of Mataram had been

split into two parts, both of whose rulers, and the sultan of Bantam

in the west, were vassals of the Dutch. In addition they had acquired

outright large portions of the island, including virtually the whole

of the north coast. Long before this, however, they had acquired de

7

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

facto economic control over the most productive areas of Java, levy

ing large-scale deliveries in kind as tribute from their vassals and

clients, and introducing new crops, such as coffee. By so doing they

gradually transformed their system into a Java-based polity, con

centrating more and more on the exploitation of Java's natural

resources. But their new status as landlord and developer of Java was won at the expense of their r?le as merchant-prince in the

archipelago, and throughout the eighteenth century their maritime

power and their grip on trade in the outer island areas declined.

Employing some degree of hyperbole, we may perhaps say that they had exchanged the mantle of Srivijaya and Malacca for that of Maja

pahit.

In these circumstances there appeared at the end of the century a new Straits maritime system, as formidable a competitor to the

Dutch Java-based polity as Malacca had been previously to Maja

pahit. This new system was centred on the British settlements of

Penang and (after 1819) of Singapore. During the first three

quarters of the nineteenth century the Straits Settlements, and

the European, Indian, and increasingly numerous Chinese merchants

who operated from them, steadily absorbed the major part of the

trade of the archipelago, and even a significant proportion of that

of the Java ports themselves. At first the rise of this new Straits

system was perhaps assisted by the complete eclipse of Dutch power

during the Napoleonic Wars, and by the British occupation of Java

(1811-16). In the main, however, the mercantile success of the

Straits Settlements can more reliably be ascribed to their position as a major centre on the revived trade route between China and the

west, to their free trade policy, and to their direct political and com

mercial connection with the first state in the world to move into

the stage of industrial mass production, which made them the prin

cipal distributing centre in the area for its products. As a con

sequence the Dutch in this period were restricted virtually to the

development and export of the products of Java.

In one respect, however, this phase in the international history of

the area was unique. For, despite the predominance of the Straits

maritime polity, the Dutch Java-based polity, unlike its Majapahit

predecessor, did not entirely lose its political position in the outer

islands. Instead the Dutch and their British rivals, motivated partly

by the desire to keep out others, partly by purely European con

siderations, divided the archipelago between them into mutually

agreed spheres of political influence. The division was not achieved

without a good deal of friction and diplomatic jostling, especially in

Borneo and northern Sumatra. But it preserved for the Dutch

their claims to the major part of the archipelago, even if it does not

8

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

fully deserve the description which I have heard applied to it by

my Russian colleague, Professor Guber of Moscow, of an Anglo Dutch condominium.

Thus, when the balance began to swing again, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Dutch were able to consolidate their

hold over the whole of the area known then as Netherlands India, and now as Indonesia, by the development of effective commercial

and administrative systems centred on Java, whilst the Straits

Settlements turned more and more after 1875 to the development of

their own hinterland in Malaya. The Straits merchants and capi talists, however, Chinese as well as Westerners, retained a significant stake in the economy of Netherlands India, so that up to the time of

the Japanese invasion of 1941-42 the two systems may be said to

have been in balance.

The colonial era in maritime South East Asia, as we have noted

at the beginning of this paper, has been generally agreed to have

been distinguished from earlier periods by the fact that the ultimate

power bases of competing systems within the archipelago lay out

side the area. In the light of the preceding analysis, however, this

author would suggest that the actual pattern of international

history in the area was, despite that, not markedly different from

that established in previous centuries. The continuing theme of

an unstable and changing balance between the influence of a polity based on a populous and agricultural Java, on the one hand, and

that of the commercial and maritime power of a rival system in or near the Straits area on the other, can be observed throughout the colonial era, as before it. To emphasize the element of continuity in the international history of the area, however, is not to deny that there were also elements of novelty and change involved. We may, for the sake of argument, select the three new developments which seem to this author to have been the most important.

The first was the emergence of a new if somewhat weak compe titor for influence in the archipelago on its north-eastern periphery, in Luzon. This was of little immediate significance so far as the

area's international history was concerned in the colonial period it

self, since neither the Spanish nor the American r?gimes in the

Philippines were, for reasons mainly of metropolitan and world

politics, interested in pushing their control and influence beyond those limits allowed by their colonial neighbours. In the post colonial period, however, it was clearly destined to play a percept ible, if difficult to assess, r?le in modifying the relationship between

the two longer-established systems to the south-west. The second

important element of change was that, with the economic develop ment of Malaya (and to a lesser extent of the British Borneo terri

9

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

tories), the commercial and maritime Straits system, whilst retain

ing its essentially mercantile character, acquired for the first time

a major commodity-producing base, which its Srivijayan and Malac

can predecessors had never really possessed. This in historical

terms was perhaps as important as the growth in the Chinese element

of its population, since both its predecessors had also possessed large and vigorous foreign Asian communities. The third important new

development was that the Dutch had achieved in practice, in the

twentieth century, what had been claimed for Majapahit in the four

teenth, and had united virtually the entire archipelago into an effec

tive administrative and political unit centred on Java. They did not create a nation; that was for others to do after de-colonization.

Nevertheless 'Netherlands India' provided a framework within which

Indonesian political ideas and aspirations could evolve, thus ensuring that future Java-based systems would have a totally different internal

character.

The full significance of these new developments is clearly not yet

apparent, since they have still to work themselves out in practice. The weight of the evidence so far available, however, suggests that

they should be regarded as developments occurring within the basic

and long-established pattern, and tending to induce minor modifica tions in it, rather than as revolutionary changes outweighing those elements of continuity which we have already discussed. It would

seem, too, that, whilst they emerged during the colonial period, they were to be of importance in the main after the colonial r?gimes had

disappeared.

Since it is the primary purpose of this paper to open up the subject for discussion, rather than to attempt any definitive answers to the

questions posed at the beginning of it, it may be appropriate to end

by presenting for consideration in summary form the main phases of the international history of maritime South East Asia implicit in the analysis of it offered here, as a sort tentative periodization of

subject. These main phase would seem to be as follows:

1. Eighth to tenth centuries. A phase in which the maritime,

commercial, and essentially Malay Srivijayan system, and the

land-based, agricultural Javanese polity were not so much rivals

as neighbours operating within different political and cultural

systems, geographically and functionally in balance.

2. Late tenth to fifteenth centuries. Increase in the power and

range of activities of the Javanese states and gradually accelerat

ing decline of Srivijaya, culminating in the predominance of the

Java-based polity of the Majapahit period.

10

INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF MARITIME S.E.A.

Mid-fifteenth to late seventeenth centuries. The balance of

advantage swings back to the Straits polity with the rise

of Malacca, and the Java-based polity remains in eclipse until

the end of the seventeenth century, the early Dutch trading

system being in character a maritime system, and without a

power-base in Java.

Late seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries. The Dutch East

India Company transforms itself into a Java-based polity, con

centrating on the exploitation of Java whilst its maritime power and grip on the trade of the outer islands declines.

Late eighteenth century to c. 1875. Rise of new Straits system centred on the Straits Settlements, which absorbs major part of the trade of the archipelago whilst the Dutch are restricted

virtually to the development of Java.

c. 1875 to 1942. Revival of the Java-based polity as the Dutch

develop effective commercial and administrative systems cen

tred on Java, whilst the Straits Settlements turn to the develop ment of Malaya. Both systems in balance.

11