Conventional wisdom holds that the key to power in Southeast Asia rested on control over populations; these provided the labour necessary to convert abundant land into wealth, and the coercive force needed to ensure obedience and respect. That other essential prerequisite for good fortune, capital, has received less attention. This reflects a common emphasis on Indonesia as a primarily agrarian society; the Java-focus of much research; and an assumed division between Java's relatively Islamic and commercial north coast, and the dominant rice-growing interior. Beyond Java, the undoubtedly trade-centred port settlements of the outer islands tend to be seen as merely barter-based, exchanging products from the interior (gold, wax, rattan, and suchlike) for imported commodities such as textiles, salt, and iron.

Relative exceptions to this image of Asian economic simplicity are provided by the “diaspora” merchants, active in the archipelago for perhaps a thousand years before the arrival of the Europeans. The networks and commerce of such foreigners, primarily Indians and Chinese, were once regarded as inscrutable and remote, but comparative reassessments of economic performance in Asia and the West have modified such Orientalist preconceptions. However, data are scarce and opinion divided as to the extent and significance of both urbanization and long-range trade, although the significance of cross-cultural transactions and change over time is now widely acknowledged. These were most intense in port-towns, where various groups lived in close proximity and many shared at least one passion — the search for the profitable deal.

The Dutch East India Company or VOC (1602–1799) was a mercantile enterprise wielding political power. The intra-Asian trade crucial to Company profits was channelled through networks of polyglot ports, the most strategic of which were subjected to Dutch rule. However, the VOC settlements were not just Dutch forts adjoining clusters of Asian villages and the compounds of powerful local leaders.