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The Case for a Maritime Perspective on Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Donald K. Emmerson
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Extract

On early European maps of what is now called Southeast Asia, the sea lies in the foreground, its whales and mermaids, waves and ships precisely drawn and prominent. To a modern reader looking back through centuries, with hindsight, such maps may illustrate ignorance, science lapsing into art, the greater scale ofsea features compared to those on land a straightforward function of the ocean's being a larger, blanker slate on which to draw. Yet the aquatic monster big enough to swallow Singapore, the headlands and inlets of Java's northern coast a finely charted fringe setting off the vagueness of a hinterland marked incognita — these anomalies-in-retrospect are altogether faithful to the thoroughly seagoing way in which the West first gained acquaintance with the region.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 139 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1980

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References

For their encouragement and advice, I am grateful to Daniel Doeppers, Michael Orbach, Stuart Schlegel, and David Szanton, who are not responsible for any gap between this result and their high standards.

1 The maps cited are reproduced in Lach, Donald F., Southeast Asia in the Eyes of Europe: The Sixteenth Century (Chicago, 1968), pp. 608b, 608e.Google Scholar Also see Li, Leslie Ching-yee, “Evolution of the Far East on Portuguese Portolan Charts, 1500-1650” (M.S. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1974), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

2 Note, e.g., the already featureless sea in the 1835 map reprinted as the frontispiece of D.J.M. Tate's The Making of Modem South-East Asia, vol. I: The European Conquest (Kuala Lumpur, 1971), and the topical maps of the region in the Atlas of South-East Asia (London, 1964), pp. 4–7Google Scholar, the latter visualizing climate, vegetation, population, ethnic groups, minerals, and air traffic but not ocean currents, ocean resources, or shipping.

3 Among other compilations, the Asia 1978 Yearbook (Hong Kong, 1978)Google Scholar and The CBS News Almanac 1978 (Maplewood, N.J., 1977)Google Scholar illustrate this and the preceding point.

4 See, e.g., the complaints by Tiews, K., “Fishery Development and Management in Thailand”, Achiv fur Fischereiwissenschaft 24, nos. 1-3 (1973): 282,285Google Scholar, and by Krzyzaniak, Marian and Malik, Uzir, “Market Power, Incidence of Government Policies, and Poverty: The Case of Fishermen in Northwestern Malaysia”, Rice University Studies 61, no. 4 (1975): 132Google Scholar.

5 At the end of his study, Tuc Tho Cung Cua Ngu Phu Luifi -Bang Khanh-Hòa [The Rituals of Fishermen in Khanh Hoa Province] (Saigon, 1970)Google Scholar, Lê Quang Nghiem stressed the need for land-going Vietnamese to stop looking down on fishermen. Nor, generalizing from my field experiences in 1974/73 and 1977/78, does capture fishing enjoy much status in the eyes of agrarian Javanese. The literature portrays fishermen in East and South Asia as enjoying even less esteem: See, e.g., Norbeck, Edward, Takashima: A Japanese Fishing Community (Salt Lake City, 1954), p. 12Google Scholar; Ward, Barbara E., “Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong: Their Post-Peasant Economy”, in Social Organization: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, ed, Freedman, Maurice (Chicago, 1967), pp. 274, 287Google Scholar; Saha, K.C., Fisheries of West Bengal (Alipore, West Bengal, 1970), pp. 100, 105Google Scholar; and Silva, N.N. de, “The Role of Technology in Fisheries Development in Ceylon”, Bulletin of the Fisheries Research Station, Ceylon 17, no. 2 (1964): 259Google Scholar.

6 A frequent complaint is the contamination offish ponds by pesticides. Also see Krzyzaniak, and Malik, (“Market Power”, p. 129)Google Scholar on the rice-focused irrigation of the Muda River Valley in Malaya.

7 For a Philippine illustration, see Cruz, J.Q. de la, “Socioeconomic Problems Affecting the Production, Processing and Distribution of Fisheries Products”, Philippine Journal of Fisheries 6, no. 1 (1958): 42–45Google Scholar.

8 Of the monographs written on Pare, by Dewey, Alice, Fagg, Donald, Clifford, and Geertz, Hildred, and Jay, Robert, among others, the first was Clifford Geertz's The Religion of Java (New York, 1960)Google Scholar. For the literature on Bang Chan, see Sharp, Lauriston and Hanks, Lucien M., Bang Chan: Social History ofa Rural Community in Thailand (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978) and the references on p. 15Google Scholar.

9 The reference is to Malay Fishermen: Their Peasant Economy, 2nd ed. (HamdenConn., 1966)Google Scholar. Norhas Firth's opening comment (p. xi), written in 1944, lost any of its force: that compared to tropical agriculture, tropical fishing “has suffered from neglect by both scientists and governments”. A work that approaches Firth's in wealth of detail and in sensitivity to the impacts of modernization on a fishery's socioeconomic structure is Szanton's, David L.Estancia in Transition: Economic Growth in a Rural Philippine Community (Quezon City, 1971)Google Scholar. Also noteworthy is Rusembilan: A Malay Fishing Village in Southern Thailand (Ithaca, N.Y., 1960) by Thomas M. Fraser, Jr., who treated fishing as one part of the life of a whole communityGoogle Scholar.

10 According to Fuson, Robert H. (ed.), Southeast Asia: A Cartographic Analysis (Tampa, Florida, 1965)Google Scholar, as cited by Tilman, Robert O. (ed.), Man, State, and Society in Contemporary Southeast Asia (New York, 1969), p. 594Google Scholar, mining, forestry, and fishing together account for only 3% of the labour force.

11 Fisher, Charles A., “A View of Southeast Asia”, Southeast Asia: An International Quarterly 1, nos. 1-2 (1971): 11Google Scholar.

12 These and all other coast: land ratios used in this article were calculated from data in the National Basic Intelligence Factbook (Washington, D.C., July 1975)Google Scholar.

13 On the Shelf, see Fisher, Charles A., South-east Asia: A Social, Economic and Political Geography, 2nd ed. (London, 1966), pp. 12–14Google Scholar. On the traffic, see, e.g., the maps in Wheatley, Paul, “Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in Sung Maritime Trade”, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 32, no. 2 (1959): 5–140Google Scholar and the essays in Archipel 18 (1979)Google Scholar.

14 Patanne, E.P., The Philippines in the World of Southeast Asia: A Cultural History (Quezon City, 1972), pp. 326-27, 329, 335, 357–58Google Scholar.

15 World Bank, World Development Report, 1978 (New York, 1978), pp. 76–77Google Scholar; Christian Science Monitor (Midwest Ed.), 11 May 1979, p. 15Google Scholar.

16 “Fishery Development and Management in Southeast Asia; Spotlight on Thailand”, ICLARM Newsletter (Manila), 1, no. 2 (1978): 10Google Scholar.

17 Asia 1978 Yearbook, p. 143.

18 Dobby, E.H.G., Southeast Asia, 2nd ed.(London, 1969), p. 361Google Scholar.

19 This description has been cited by Williams, Lea, Southeast Asia: A History (New York, 1976), p. 4Google Scholar.

20 E.g., Pelzer, Karl, in his Pioneer Settlement in the Asiatic Tropics (New York, 1945), p. xviiGoogle Scholar, as cited by another sea-conscious geographer, Fisher, , “A View”, p. 11Google Scholar.

21 See his Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The Hague, 1955)Google Scholar. These essays were originally written between 1934 and 1942.

22 The heterogeneity of Southeast Asia has become a standard opening remark in the literature. Examples include Kahin, George McTurnan, Preface to Governments and Politics of Southeast Asia, ed. Kahin, , 2nd ed. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1964), p.vGoogle Scholar; King, John Kerry, Southeast Asia in Perspective (New York, 1956), p. xivGoogle Scholar; Pye, Lucian W., Southeast Asia's Political Systems (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), p. 1Google Scholar; and Tarling, Nicholas, A Concise History of Southeast Asia (New York, 1966), p. xiGoogle Scholar. Three of these four authors were political scientists when they wrote.

23 These claims are mapped and discussed in Polomka, Peter, Ocean Politics in Southeast Asia (Singapore, 1978), pp. 5-16, 236CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an Indonesian view, see Kusumaatmadja, Mochtar, “The Legal Regime of Archipelagoes: Problems and Issues”, in The Law of the Sea: Needs and Interests of Developing Countries, ed. Lewis M. Alexander (Kingston, R.I., 1973), pp. 166–77Google Scholar.

24 For a Philippine illustration, see Baum, Gerhard A. and Maynard, John A., Tobuan/Sual: A Socio economic Study (Manila, 1976), pp. 7, 27Google Scholar.

25 The classic statement by economists is Christy, Francis T. Jr, and Scott, Anthony, The Common Wealth in Ocean Fisheries: Some Problems of Growth and Economic Allocation (Baltimore, Md., 1965)Google Scholar.

26 The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, Conn., 1976), pp. 63–64Google Scholar(on ownership and use), p. 95 (on taxation).

27 In parts of Southeast Asia, such an attitude may encourage coastal pollution by industry and the recycling of disease through defecation into fishponds.

28 Prof. Smith made these (and other) points in her “Comments on the Heuristic Utility of Maritime Anthropology”, Maritime Anthropologist (East Carolina University), 1, no. 1 (1977): 2-5, 8Google Scholar.

29 In Southeast Asia, this possibility remains especially underinvestigated. For suggestive leads from Hong Kong and the Pacific region, respectively, see Anderson, E. N. Jr, “Sacred Fish,” Man, n.s., 4, no. 3 (1969): 443–49Google Scholar, and Pollnac, Richard B., “Continuity and Change in Marine Fishing Communities”, International Center for Marine Resource Development, University of Rhode Island, July 1976, pp. 72–74Google Scholar.

30 See, e.g., Mintz, Sidney W., “A Note on the Definition of Peasantries”, Journal of Peasant Studies 1, no. 1 (1973): 91–106, and the references thereinCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Wolf, , Peasants (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

32 Kroeber, Alfred L., Anthropology (New York, 1948), p. 284Google Scholar; see also Wolf, , Peasants, p. 8Google Scholar.

33 Added to these “ifs” is the requisite coordination of maritime and land-based development policies.For a review of some of the damage that can be done to local econiches and institutions in the fragile zone of overlap between sea and land if this condition is not met, see Collier, William L., “Development Problems and Conflicts in the Coastal Zone of Sumatra: Swamps Are for People”, Programmatic Workship on Land-Water Interactive Systems, United Nations University and Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor, Indonesia, 18-22 Sept. 1978Google Scholar.