• 동남아시아연구
• /
• 제21권2호
• /
• pp.1-41
• /
• 2011

Southeast Asia developed maritime trade from the early period due to the suitable physical and cultural conditions. The land consists of peninsular and archipelago, and located at the junction of the two monsoons in South China Sea and India Ocean. The people inherit cultural openness to receive outer influences positively. When Portuguese came to Southeast Asia in 16th century, the region had already enjoyed certain level of commercial development and sociocultural dynamics through the long time experience of interactions with outer world. The Portuguese contact to Southeast Asia was more of participation and assimilation than of conquest and rule experienced in South America. It was due to the higher level of spiritual and material civilization existed in Southeast Asia. Portuguese brought several new elements into Southeast Asia such as colonization and new weapons, Cartaz system and commercial monopoly, and Catholic mission and Casado policy. These new elements, however, did not impact much on the existing Maritime trade that played an important role to change the sociocultural structure of Southeast Asia. Even though Portuguese contact itself did not make significant differences in Southeast Asia, it was meaningful in a sense that it opened a path and left a model case for the more powerful Europeans who came soon after her.

• Acta Via Serica
• /
• 제9권1호
• /
• pp.67-90
• /
• 2024

India, Southeast Asia in general, and Siam in particular share a long history of cultural and commercial relations. Located in each other's extended neighbourhood, India and Thailand have a shared maritime boundary in the Andaman Sea. Situated in the strategic position, midway between West Asia on the one hand and East Asia on the other, India and Siam combined played a significant role in the maritime transactions in Asia and beyond. The geographical proximity between India and Siam led to multifaceted maritime interactions and exchanges. Siam was in the Indian sphere of cultural, religious, philosophical, technical, and linguistic influence much before the Common Era. The cultural and mercantile networks between India and Siam are well-attested by archaeological and literary sources. The archaeological findings in Siam and other Southeast Asian countries have revealed the dynamic trade and cultural exchange between India and Southeast Asia since the pre-Common Era. The Takola (modern Takua Pa) area served as a more suitable landing place for Indian merchants and there existed the settlement of the Indian mercantile community. Ligor (Nakhon Si Thammarat), Jaya (Chaiya), Patalung (Phatalung), U Thong, Ban Don Tha Pet, Ban U Taphao, Khao Sam Kaeo, and many other sites in Siam have brought to light a large variety of objects which demonstrate that ancient Siam had close mercantile contact with India as well as the Mediterranean world and China. The paper discusses in detail the cultural and trade links between India and Siam and their impact on the Maritime Silk Road.

• Acta Via Serica
• /
• 제8권2호
• /
• pp.95-124
• /
• 2023

Over the past 30 years, intense archaeological research has revealed a great increase in regional and transregional object mobility across the South China Sea during its Iron Age (500 BCE to 500 CE). Some objects had moved from a long distance: intaglios, seals, fine ceramic, glass containers, and gold coins of Mediterranean origin; and large bronzes, mirrors, and lacquerware connected to central East Asia. This evidence has given rise to larger-scale explanations, among which the most prominent has been the growth of (maritime) Silk Road trade. Scholars are divided as to whether the Silk Road is a suitable concept, with some emphasizing its orientalist overtones and colonial baggage and others finding it useful for the investigation of interregional networks trading in silk and other commodities. This paper explores how productive the Silk Road concept or metaphor really is for understanding transregional connectivity and social change in Iron Age Southeast Asia.

• 수완나부미
• /
• 제9권1호
• /
• pp.7-52
• /
• 2017

This paper analyzes the scholarly approaches to the problem of "local" vs. "cosmopolitan" in the context of the cultural transfers between South and Southeast Asia. Taking the "localization" paradigm advanced by Oliver Wolters as its pivot, it reviews the "externalist" and "autonomous" positions, and questions the hermeneutical validity of the fuzzy and self-explanatory category of "local." Having discussed the geo-environmental metaphors of "Monsoon Asia" and "Maritime Asia" as alternative paradigms to make justice to the complex dynamics of transregional interaction that shaped South and Southeast Asian societies, it briefly presents two case studies highlighting the tensions between the "local" and "cosmopolitan" approaches to the study of Old Javanese literature and Balinese Hinduism.

• 수완나부미
• /
• 제8권2호
• /
• pp.7-11
• /
• 2016

• 수완나부미
• /
• 제9권2호
• /
• pp.7-34
• /
• 2017

Various models have been presented to describe early Southeast Asian political formations that draw on both indigenous and imported Indic ideas. The most influential of these are the "Mandala" (Wolters 1968, 1982, 1999), "Galactic" (Tambiah 1976), "Negara" (Geertz 1980), and Anderson's 1972 "The idea of power in Javanese culture." This paper represents an initial attempt to compare the salient features of these models with historical and archaeological data from South Sulawesi where, exceptionally and importantly, societies developed independently of Indic ideas. South Sulawesi is unique in being the only region of maritime Southeast Asia where there are sufficient written and oral sources, often substantiated by archaeological data, to document the social evolution of its society from scattered, economically self-sufficient communities with ranked lineages practicing swidden agriculture to large political units (kingdoms) constructed around indigenous cultural and political concepts with economies based on wet-rice agriculture. This wealth of data provides us with a much more detailed picture of the emergence, development and support structures of early kingdoms than found in the models, which makes South Sulawesi of fundamental importance in understanding the social and economic evolution of pre-Indic influenced Austronesian societies in Maritime Southeast Asia.

• 동남아시아연구
• /
• 제28권1호
• /
• pp.1-20
• /
• 2018

2017년 동남아의 정치경제는 대미의존적 안보질서와 대중의존적 경제질서가 중첩하는 역설적 '이중질서'로 요약되는 동아시아의 지정학적 지경학적 조건에서 전개된다. 경제발전의 지속적 진전과 정치발전의 만성적 부진이 날카롭게 엇갈리는 동남아의 두 얼굴은 동남아와 동북아를 포괄하는 동아시아의 두 얼굴을 충실하게 반영한다. 정치적 차원에서, 전체주의의 향수를 떨쳐내기 어려운 베트남, 라오스, 캄보디아, 미얀마 등 구사회주의권은 전체주의와 권위주의 사이의 완충지대에 서식하고, 민주주의의 명분을 저버리기 어려운 필리핀, 태국, 인도네시아, 말레이시아, 싱가포르 등 원자본주의권은 권위주의와 민주주의 사이의 회색지대를 전전한다. 경제적 차원에서, 계획경제의 거대한 유산을 포기하기 어려운 구사회주의권은 신국가주의적 '베이징 콘센서스'로 분장되는 중국형 국가자본주의의 은밀한 유혹과 타협하고, 시장경제의 화려한 신화를 외면하기 어려운 원자본주의권은 신자유주의적 '워싱턴 콘센서스'로 포장되는 미국형 자유자본주의의 오만한 압력에 노출된다. 그에 따라 동남아의 지역통합을 대변하는 아세안 공동체는 대륙세력과 해양세력의 경쟁적 협공에 따라 '신냉전'의 부상이 예감되는 전략적 곤경에서 끊임없이 부침한다.

• 수완나부미
• /
• 제11권1호
• /
• pp.7-40
• /
• 2019

The essay reflects on the work of Adrian Lapian (1929-2011), an Indonesian scholar of archipelagic/maritime Southeast Asia and its "sea people-sea pirates-sea kings." The essay suggests that Lapian's writing mirrors navigation at sea, and the constant re-orientation and ever-changing, multiple points of view that are part of it. This is contrasted to Foucault's "panopticism" and academic desire for discipline. Taking cue from Lapian's writing and from the present author's experience of seafaring, the essay envisions Southeast Asian studies as a fluid, precarious, disorienting, even nauseating multiplicity of experiences, dialogues, and moving, unstable, and uncertain points of view; a style of learning that is less (neo)colonial, more humble, and closer to experiences in the region, than super-scholarship that imposes universalizing, panoptic standards, theories and methods (typically self-styled as "new") that reduce the particular into a specimen of the general, a cell in the Panopticon. The essay concludes with reflections on certain learning initiatives/traditions at the National University of Singapore, including seafaring voyages-experiences, encounters, and conversations that make students and scholars alike to move and see differently, to be touched, blown away, rocked, swayed, disoriented, swallowed, transformed, and feel anew their places, roots, bonds, distances, fears, blindness, powerlessness.

• 수완나부미
• /
• 제9권2호
• /
• pp.51-89
• /
• 2017

Strategically situated between the East-West maritime crossroads, the peoples of Southeast Asia over the centuries witnessed the comings and goings of traders from territories from East Asia, South Asia, West Asia and Europe. There were also those from North America that crossed the Pacific for commercial profits in this region. Foreign traders undoubtedly in the course of their visits and sojourns had liaisons with local women, some engaged in marriages. Offspring of these interracial miscegenation possessed rather unique characteristics. As a community, they were identified with the Malay term, peranakan, from the root word, "anak" meaning "child," hence "offspring" or "descendent". Specific terms - Baba Nyonya, Tionghoa-Selat, Chitty, Jawi Pekan, Pashu, Kristang - referred to particular groups. Although socially they appeared 'neither here nor there', members of mixed parentage were able to carve an especial niche in the local environment throughout Southeast Asia, conspicuously in urban, port-cities where trade and commerce predominated. Following in the footsteps of their progenitor, the Peranakan acted as intermediaries, comprador between foreign and indigenous enterprises, profiting financially and socially from trade and commerce. Tapping on the author's personal experiences and first-hand observations, complementing with oral sources, and support from secondary materials, this present essay explores, discusses, and analyzes the eclectic sociocultural practices and traditions of the Baba Nyonya of George Town, Penang. Purposeful intention is to further enlighten our understanding, and in turn, our appreciation, of these ever increasingly diminishing communities and their cultures across Southeast Asia.

• 동남아시아연구
• /
• 제20권3호
• /
• pp.263-297
• /
• 2010

The relics of the Southeast Asian civilizations in the first phase are found with the relics from India, China, and even further West of Persia and Rome. These relics are the historic marks of the ancient interactions of various continents, mainly through the maritime trade. The traces of the indic culture, which appears in the historic age, are represented in the textual records and arts, regarded as the essence of the India itself. The ancient Hindu arts found in various locations of Southeast Asia were thought to be transplanted directly from India. However, Neither did the Gupta Hindu Art of India form the mainstream of the Gupta Art, nor did it play an influential role in the adjacent areas. The Indian culture was transmitted to Southeast Asia rather intermittently than consistently. If we thoroughly compare the early Hindu art of India and that of Southeast Asia, we can find that the latter was influenced by the former, but still sustained Southeast Asian originality. The reason that the earliest Southeast Asian Hindu art is discovered mostly in continental Southeast Asia is resulted from the fact that the earliest networks between India and the region were constructed in this region. Among the images of Hindu gods produced before the 7th century are Shiva, Vishnu, Harihara, and Skanda(the son of Shiva), and Ganesha(the god of wealth). The earliest example of Vishnu was sculpted according to the Kushan style. After that, most of the sculptures came to have robust figures and graceful proportions. There are a small number of images of Ganesha and Skanda. These images strictly follow the iconography of the Indian sculpture. This shows that Southeast Asians chose their own Hindu gods from the Hindu pantheon selectively and devoted their faiths to them. Their basic iconography obediently followed the Indian model, but they tried to transform parts of the images within the Southeast Asian contexts. However, it is very difficult to understand the process of the development of the Hindu faith and its contents in the ancient Southeast Asia. It is because there are very few undamaged Hindu temples left in Southeast Asia. It is also difficult to make sure that the Hindu religion of India, which was based on the complex rituals and the caste system, was transplanted to Southeast Asia, because there were no such strong basis of social structure and religion in the region. "Indianization" is an organized expansion of the Indian culture based on the sense of belonging to an Indian context. This can be defined through the process of transmission and progress of the Hindu or Buddhist religions, legends about purana, and the influx of various epic expression and its development. Such conditions are represented through the Sanskrit language and the art. It is the element of the Indian culture to fabricate an image of god as a devotional object. However, if we look into details of the iconography, style, and religious culture, these can be understood as a "selective reception of foreign religious culture." There were no sophisticated social structure yet to support the Indian culture to continue in Southeast Asia around the 7th century. Whether this phenomena was an "Indianization" or the "influx of elements of Indian culture," it was closely related to the matter of 'localization.' The regional character of each local region in Southeast Asia is partially shown after the 8th century. However it is not clear whether this culture was settled in each region as its dominant culture. The localization of the Indian culture in Southeast Asia which acted as a network connecting ports or cities was a part of the process of localization of Indian culture in pan-Southeast Asian region, and the process of the building of the basis for establishing an identity for each Southeast Asian region.