The Big Picture: Major Influences - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 15

namon and cassia on the east coast of Africa in the first
century AD.The great sea-borne empire of Srivijaya, cen-
tered in current-day Palembang near the east coast of
Sumatra, controlled the Malacca and Sunda straits domi-
nating east-west sea routes in the seventh century .
China was also involved in ocean trading. The tal-
ented Admiral Cheng Ho, in a series of voyages from
1405 to 1433, touched base at virtually every port in the
region, from southern China to the east coast of Africa.
He discovered that Chinese merchants were already well
established in many of these places. Europeans truly
were latecomers to this dynamic, lucrative world.

Figure 1-12
I had always wondered what mace looked like in the nutmeg
plant. Finally , I got a chance to see it in a market in Penang,
Malaysia. Mace is the reddish stringy stuff covering the thin shell
of the nut that is found in the pod. It' is amazing to think that
spices such as nutmeg and mace changed the face of the world.
Photograph courtesy of B. A. Weightman.

Europeans: Exploration,
Commerce, and Conquest

By the late 1400s and early 1500s, Europeans became
familiar with what Arabs had long been aware of: the
annual reversal of winds associated with Asia' s monsoon
climatic system (see Chapter 2). “Monsoon” comes from
mausim, Arabic for “season.” By sailing west along the
coast of the Atlantic Ocean and then south, around
Africa' s Cape of Good Hope and following the prevailing
winds across the Indian Ocean between June and Septem-
ber, and doing the reverse from December to March, sail-
ing vessels could make the round trip in less than a year.
This was the Age of Exploration for Europeans on
a zealous mission to convert the heathen to Christian-
ity . But the real driving force was economic and thus
similar to the aims of earlier Islamic traders. And so the
Europeans ventured across the globe in quest of spices,
gold, and other riches. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias of
Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed as
far as the Persian Gulf. Upon returning home he an-
nounced that the sea route to India was open! Then in
1498, V asco da Gama sailed as far as Calicut on India' s
Malabar Coast and later entered Lisbon' s harbor with
the first cargo brought from the “Far East” to Europe by
sea. Ferdinand Magellan pioneered the westward route
around South America' s Cape Horn in 1519. Reaching
the Philippines in 1522, he initiated Spain' s entry into
the region. Holland' s (The Netherlands') 350-year in-
volvement in the East Indies (Indonesia) commenced
with the 1595 voyage of Cornelius de Houtman, who
returned to the Netherlands with three shiploads of
pepper and nutmeg.
England' s Sir Francis Drake obtained a cargo of spices,
plus booty plundered from a Portuguese ship, in his cir-
cumnavigation of the world (1577-1580). This accom-
plishment, in concert with Britain' s defeat of the Spanish

An international world system of commerce was
now functioning via a network of trading ports and ship-
ping lanes. By the fifteenth century , Muslim enclaves
dotted the northern coasts of Java and Sumatra.
Muslim-controlled Banten (Bantam) was also the focal
point of Chinese trade in Southeast Asia. Makassar in
Celebes (Sulawesi) was the key to the Spice Islands
(Maluku). Achin (Aceh), Sumatra, was situated at the
northern entry to the Straits of Malacca. Of great impor-
tance was the founding of a transhipment point or entre-
pot at Malacca (Melaka). Indians, Javanese, Chinese, and
others migrated to these nodes of perceived opportunity
where many of their descendants remain to this day .
Why this much interest? What was to be gained?
Quite simply: riches. Demand was soon created for
sandalwood and other aromatic woods; teak and other
hardwoods; silk and porcelain; slaves and exotic ani-
mals; and countless other products. But pepper, along
with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a host of other
aromatic and edible spices became the most desired
(Figure 1-12). Arabs conjured tales of gross birds har-
vesting cinnamon from ferocious bat- and snake-
guarded swamps to dissuade others, especially the
Europeans, from discovering their spice sources.
Neither Arabs nor Europeans were first in the spice
trade. Indigenous states and empires were trading such
commodities long before outsiders arrived. The Roman
historian Pliny told of Indonesians in outrigger canoes
driven by the prevailing winds unloading cargoes of cin-