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AbstractThis exploratory study addresses the trading networks in the Bay of Bengal region of the Indian Ocean during the 1300-1500 era. In this case it is less about the exchange of products than the membership of trading communities, the relationships among the regionally networked ports-of-trade and their merchant communities, and the regional cultural and economic consequences. The focal issue here is the transitional nature of maritime trade and cultural identities in this sub-region of the international East-West maritime route immediately prior to the Portuguese seizure of Melaka in 1511 (see map 1). This article addresses the alternative understandings of this era's Bay of Bengal regional trade relative to maritime diasporas and other networked relationships; in doing so it incorporates the latest discussions of early urbanization in this region by focusing on networking between secondary and primary centers.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="FN1">1</xref>Cette contribution s'adresse au Golfe de Bengale dans la période 1300-1500, notamment à l'ensemble de ses littoraux, et le considère comme une unité. Pour cette raison elle aborde à peine les ports individuels. Cet espace vit des Chinois, des Perses, et des Yéménites s'associants au visiteurs du Moyen-Orient, et les activités des diasporas issus de l'Inde du Sud et du Sri Lanka. Le maillage de ses réseaux régionaux étant fluides et perméables se modifiaient suivant les événements et s'adaptaient au fluctuations entre les diasporas euxmêmes. Ses communautés actives dans le Golfe de Bengale seront perçues au niveau conceptuels comme des espaces peuplés par des individus, des familles, et la multiplicité des leurs circuits politiques et socio-économiques dérivées, eux, de leurs pays d'origine ainsi que de leurs destinations.

This article explores how Old Javanese texts, 'literary temples', can be used to help reconstruct the 'textual community' (rather than a hegemonic polity) that existed prior to Java's sixteenth-century Islamic conversions. Instead of the physical and economic might of an emerging elite, it focuses on a society's empowering acceptance and understanding of a common culture that is centered in a ritualized court. This ritualized court culture is not, however, just religiously inspired, but also develops out of Java's new generalized prosperity and the court's control over its public's access to material objects, which became the markers of social distinction.

AbstractSoutheast Asian sources that report regional connection with the Majapahit and Angkor polities reflect upon a rapidly changing fourteenth and fifteenth century world order, the result of new trading opportunities as Europeans were becoming more direct participants in affairs beyond their Western home-lands. In the face of the individualistic and destructive tendencies of the wider global community circa 1500, in the Strait of Melaka region there was less dislocation and isolation than is supposed by many twentieth century scholars. Despite the number of political and religious transitions underway, in the Southeast Asian archipelago and mainland there was a sense of regional self-confidence and progress among societies who had enjoyed over two hundred years of widespread socio-economic success. These successes were the product of the functional international, regional, and local networks of communication, as well as a common heritage that had developed in the Strait of Melaka region during the pre-1500 era. This study not only addresses the role of Majapahit and Angkor in the shaping of regional inclusiveness circa 1500, but also explores the enduring (and often exclusive) legacy of these two early cultural centers among Southeast Asia's twentieth century polities.

Kenneth R. Hall
Durant la période des années 1200-1500, la mobilité dans l'échelle sociale javanaise s'explique par une richesse nouvelle et des opportunités de distinction de statut. La cour encouragea l'élite des communautés rurales à se penser comme partie d'un ordre royal hiérarchique basé sur les lignées et à participer à la vénération des ancêtres du roi. Une personne pouvait prendre place dans le réseau rituel royal et profiter d'une amélioration de son statut personnel en recevant un nouveau titre. Elle se soumettait ainsi au pouvoir du roi, de ses ancêtres et des dieux indiens avec lesquels ils se confondaient. Des familles étaient encouragées à rechercher richesse et statut et à développer la conscience du lignage, ce qui eut pour effet de donner un essor aux activités rurales. Les profits de l'économie rizicole javanaise largement excédentaires aux XIVe et XVe siècles permit à l'élite et aux aspirants à celle-ci (en compétition avec la vieille élite pour ses privilèges) de participer dans tout le royaume aux fêtes et célébrations fastueuses qui culminaient dans les cérémonies de cour dans lesquelles elle faisait montre de son succès matériel. En théorie, le roi contrôlait toutes les forces affectant la prospérité terrestre ainsi que le salut éternel, ce qui lui permettait d'incorporer ses sujets terrestres dans la société centrée sur la cour de Majapahit.

Humanities Open Book Program, a joint initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ; This book brings something new in both dimension and detail to our understanding of Southeast Asia from the first to the fourteenth centuries. It puts Southeast Asia in the context of the international trade that stretched from Rome to China and draws upon a wide range of recent scholarship in history and the social sciences to redefine the role that this trade played in the evolution of the classical states of Southeast Asia. By examining the sources of Southeast Asia's classical era with the tools of modern economic history, the author shows that well-developed socioeconomic and political networks existed in Southeast Asia before significant foreign economic penetration took place. With the growth of interest in Southeast Asian commodities and the refocusing of the major East-West commercial routes through the region during the early centuries of the Christian era, internal conditions within Southeast Asia adjusted to accommodate increased external contacts. Hall takes the view that Southeast Asia's response to international trade was a reflection of preexisting patterns of trade and statecraft. In the forty years since Coede's monumental work The Indianized States of Southeast Asia was published, a great deal of archaeological and epigraphical work has been done and new interpretations advanced. By integrating new theoretical constructs, recent archaeological finds and interpretations, and his own informed reading and research, Kenneth R. Hall puts his historical narrative on a large canvas and treats areas not previously brought together for discussion along comparative lines. Like Coedes' work, his book will be important as a basic text for the teaching of early Southeast Asian history.

Southeast Asia's strategic position in the major pre-modern international maritime route connecting East and West brought inevitable interaction between Southeast Asian peoples and foreign merchants. Initially, foreign merchants were concerned only with passing through Southeast Asia on their way to China or India. Southeast Asian coastal centres (entrepôts) facilitated this trade by providing suitable stopping places for sailors and traders; available to them were food, water, and shelter as well as storage facilities and market places for exchange. Soon, however, Southeast Asian merchants began to supplement demand for Eastern and Western products by substituting the products of the jungles of the Indonesian archipelago for those from other sources, and then built upon this initial incursion to market other indigenous forest products. Foreign demand for Southeast Asian products reached a peak when spices from Indonesia's eastern archipelago began to flow out of the Java Sea region to the international ports in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.

Recent scholarship has speculated that there were two forms of "classical" Southeast Asian states in pre-modern Southeast Asia, one associated with the inland wet rice states of the Southeast Asian mainland and Java, and the other represented by the thalassocracy of Srivijaya. It is suggested that while the wet-rice states derived their income from the land, the Srivijaya state depended more upon income from its external contacts — income generated from Srivijaya's participation in the East-West international maritime route which passed through the Malacca Straits region. It is held, however, that the classical states, whether landed or maritime in their focus, had a good deal in common. One dominant characteristic of Southeast Asia's classical states was their "centre" orientation; each state's capital acted as the centre of the king's domain, the centre of his administration and royal cult, and the focus of the king's power and authority. The centre drew in the resources of the realm — tribute, talent, men, and goods — which were then used to support the ruler's power. Via various redistributive mechanisms, classical rulers tapped their centre's treasury to share these resources with their supporters: this redistribution sometimes took the form of direct payments, or more generally-this sharing of prosperity was indirect, as for example in the endowment of temples.