The Straits of Malacca: Gateway or Gauntlet? 0773525157, 9780773525153

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The Straits of Malacca

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The Straits of Malacca Gateway or Gauntlet? donald b. freeman

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2003 isbn 0-7735-2515-7 Legal deposit first quarter 2003 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp ) for our activities.

National Library of Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Freeman, Donald B. The Straits of Malacca: gateway or gauntlet? / Donald B. Freeman. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-7735-2515-7 1. Coastwise shipping – Malacca, Strait of – History. 2. Trade routes – Malacca, Strait of. 3. Malacca, Strait of – Commerce – History. i. Title. hc441.f74 2003 387.5’24’0916565 c2002-905013-8 Typeset in Palatino 10/13 by Caractéra inc., Quebec City

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In memory of Claire and James Freeman

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Contents

Maps and Figures

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

Preface

xv

Note on Nomenclature and Spelling of Place Names xxi Acronyms Plates

xxiii

xxv

part one the straits of malacca in the monsoon trade system: a conceptual overview 1 1 The Geographic Importance of the Straits of Malacca 3 2 Monsoonal Circulation and Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation 10 3 Economic-Geographic Concepts of Long-Distance Trade, Spatial Duopoly, and Network Structures 28 4 Concepts and Perspectives from Political Economy 45 5 Practical Incentives and the Organization of Early Long-Distance Trade 53

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viii

Contents

part two the role of the straits of malacca as a trade gateway 67 6 Asian-European Trading Systems in the Greco-Roman Era: The Beginnings of Monsoon Trade 69 7 Monsoon Trade in the Early Fifteenth Century: The Empire of Melaka (Malacca) and its Precursors 79 8 The Portuguese Trading System in Monsoon Asia 90 9 The Dutch Trading System and Holland’s Ascendancy in the Straits of Malacca 97 10 The British East India Company Trading System 103 11 Contemporary Trading Systems: Japan, Oil, and the Straits of Malacca 111 part three

the gate-keepers

123

12 Controlling Transit Trade: The Entrepot of Melaka 125 13 The Founding of British Penang (Pulau Pinang) 135 14 The Rise of Singapore as a Global Entrepot 141 15 Changing Local Hinterlands and Products in the Straits Region: Sumatran Trade 152 16 Local Trade Hinterlands and Products on the Malay Coast of the Straits 159 part four running the gauntlet: the straits of malacca as a trade and shipping bottleneck 165 17 Natural Hazards and Navigation in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore 167 18 Piracy in the Straits of Malacca and Surrounding Seas 174 19 Twentieth-Century Military Conflicts in the Straits Area 189 20 Traffic Congestion, Hazardous Cargoes, and Pollution in the Straits in the Contemporary Period 203

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ix

Contents

part five

the future

211

21 Twenty-First-Century Trade and Globalization: The Asia-Pacific Region 213 22 Emerging Roles of the Straits in Global and Regional Commerce 224 23 Conclusion 231 Bibliography 235 Index 245

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Maps and Figures

maps 1 Southeast Asia 4 2 Straits of Malacca and Singapore 8 3 Eastern Hemisphere wind patterns: January 19 4 Eastern Hemisphere wind patterns: July 20 5 Monsoon trading systems in the Greco-Roman era 71 6 Monsoon trade in the era of the Islamic Empire of Melaka 84 7 Monsoon trade in the Portuguese era 94 8 Dutch trade in the late seventeenth century 99 9 British East India Company trade routes 108 10 Crude oil shipping routes: Persian Gulf to Japan 115 11 Asian pirate strongholds in the early nineteenth century 177 figures 1 Vance’s mercantile model: Initial stages in colony-motherland trade 35

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xii

Maps and Figures

2 Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould’s model of transport network evolution in developing countries 36 3 Bronson’s model of riverine system exchange 37 4 Hotelling’s spatial duopoly model 39

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Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of many individuals and organizations during his research for this book. Special thanks are due to Ms Terry Barringer, Librarian, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, for her interest and assistance; to my wife Dawn Freeman, for her help on a number of data-gathering forays in Southeast Asia and Britain over the past five years, and to my secretary, Laura Tortorelli. I am grateful to the Melaka Maritime Museum, Melaka, Malaysia, and the Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge, from whose collections of historical materials, maps, and photographs I have drawn information and a number of illustrations for this book. Photographic plates from the Royal Commonwealth Society are reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. The manuscript has benefited from the helpful suggestions and criticisms of several anonymous reviewers. Thanks are also due to Carol Randall of the Geography Department, York University, for drafting the maps and diagrams. Research for this book was aided by a grant from the Faculty of Arts, York University, awarded in 1996. The Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, through its Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, provided a subvention to assist publication of this book. I am grateful for this financial assistance. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for any errors, omissions, or other deficiencies in this work.

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Preface

The objective of this book is to highlight the changing roles of a strategically important, yet constricted, waterway, the Straits of Malacca, in the evolving patterns of regional and global commerce over the past several millennia. Depending on the perspective chosen, these roles may comprise, at the same time, both a positive, enabling influence on trade – the gateway role of the straits – and an impediment or hindrance against trade and navigation, requiring ships and merchants to “run the gauntlet” through this choke-point. Fully understanding the character of the straits means assessing both positive and negative aspects. Appreciating the past and present significance of this waterway also involves acknowledgment of its global, as well as local, roles as a conduit for trade: an overwhelming proportion of the total volume of cargoes carried in the straits is in the form of transit trade: only about 10 percent is local commerce. In the following interdisciplinary analysis of these contrasting roles and perspectives, emphasis is placed on geographic, economic, political, and institutionalorganizational factors and concepts that have influenced trade flows over time, rather than simply recounting the history of commerce through the waterway or describing the geographic character of the straits region. The book is divided into five parts, each of which deals with a distinctive aspect of the role and significance of the waterway in global and local commerce. Part 1 comprises five chapters that

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provide a general conceptual overview of monsoon trading systems, commencing with a description of the spatial network of routeways and the physical character of the monsoons affecting the region. The relevance of concepts pertaining to trade flows, networks, nodes and competition drawn from the disciplines of geography, economic anthropology, and political economy is then explained. Complementing this conceptual overview is an examination of the practical incentives and disincentives that, through time, have influenced long-distance trade in the Asian realm. This part of the book thus strives to illuminate the spatial, organizational, and institutional aspects underlying exchanges of goods in this region. It points to reasons for the strategic importance of the straits and weighs the physical and technological factors influencing the development of long-distance shipping, navigation, and commerce through the waterway. Notable in this context is the (belated) acquisition by Western navigators of knowledge previously confined to Asian seafarers about monsoonal circulation, a phenomenon that made the straits of Malacca a focal point in long-distance trade. Part 1 thus sets the context for the detailed empirical discussions that follow. Part 2 examines the changing roles of the straits as a trade gateway in a number of hemispheric or global trading systems over several millennia. Chapters 6 through 11, which treat as case studies the trading systems of the Greco-Roman era, the Empire of Melaka (Malacca), the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial-mercantile systems, and the contemporary (late twentieth, early twenty-first century) crude oil system linking the Persian Gulf with Japan, are each constructed around maps of the spatial trade systems concerned. Part 3 contains a series of chapters (12 through 16) that deal with the critical functions of trade facilitation, enhancement, security, and control performed at different epochs by three important gate-keeper entrepots in the region: Melaka (Malacca), British Penang (Pulau Pinang), and Singapore. It also treats the matter of hegemony exercised over local trade hinterlands, products, and ports on both the Sumatran (Sumateran) and Malay sides of the straits. Part 4 of the book, contrasting with the earlier emphasis on the gateway role of the straits, deals with the impediments to the free flow of traffic and trade through this narrow and often treacherous passage, in which ships have had to run the gauntlet of both natural and human-made hazards. Chapter 17 outlines the physical or natural hazards to navigation in the straits, while chapter 18 discusses the persistent and

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damaging effects of piracy on trade and shipping from the earliest days even to the present. The prevalence of piratical attacks in the area owed much in past times to overt sponsorship by local rulers who profited from piracy and in the present to the seeming indifference or indecisiveness of the governments in whose waters international shipping – and even tourists – are still sometimes attacked. In chapter 19 the topics of military and political conflicts among states in the region and their effects on trade and shipping are dealt with. In the precolonial and colonial periods these conflicts were part of the general saga of competition for the trade, but in the twentieth century, military conflicts in the region were part of the global, geopolitical confrontations of two world wars and, around the time of independence for Malaysia, of the Cold War. The first decades of the twentieth century reinforced the military importance of the straits, as the conflict with Germany in 1914–18 underscored the need to protect shipping lanes through strategic “choke-points” such as the Straits of Malacca, as well as the perceived value of well-positioned bastions such as Singapore. In the Second World War this stronghold was one of the first targets of the Japanese, and its capture during their seemingly unstoppable onslaught into Southeast Asia was a major strategic reversal for the Western allies. The Cold War years – featuring a confrontation between newly independent Malaysia and its neighbour, Indonesia – saw the straits become a contested zone and a hostile no-man’s land for a period. Military conflict in the 1960s and 1970s that closed another of the world’s primary transport bottlenecks – the Suez canal – provided an object lesson in the kinds of disruptions that could result from closure of the Straits of Malacca due to acts of war, international terrorism, or sabotage or as a result of a catastrophic accident. Chapter 20 discusses the current dilemma of increasing traffic congestion in the straits and the attendant problems and dangers from collisions, sinkings, and spillage of hazardous cargoes, which, from time to time, have caused pollution and other environmental damage to coastal areas. Technological advances in shipping, especially the advent of supertankers, dry-bulk carriers, containerships, and other vessels too large to negotiate the narrow waterway, have again changed the significance of the Straits of Malacca and raised the profile of competing waterways such as the Lombok-Makassar Straits. Part 5 discusses the broader implications of this study, pointing out the likely future roles of the straits in world and hemispheric

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commerce. The context for this discussion is sketched out in chapter 21, which outlines the strong current (early twenty-first-century) trends toward globalization of commerce and the part played in globalization by the countries of the Asia-Pacific realm. Chapter 22 details some of the new roles for the straits that are currently being shaped both by this globalization process and by the resurgence of the Asian economies following the 1997–98 regional recession. It then outlines the ramifications of the apparent relative decline in recent years in the volume of some forms of transit (hemispheric) traffic through the straits, as well as the effects of new agreements in the post–Cold War era, the application of the Law of the Sea, and the attempt by the now-reconciled neighbours who border the straits to use their positions to best advantage. Part 5 closes by drawing conclusions about the significance of the straits as both gateway and gauntlet, addresses some general implications of recent changes in this rapidly developing maritime region, and reflects on the benefits and limitations of interdisciplinary approaches to such complex topics. Scholarly interest in the regions bordering the straits has a long history and embraces research contributions by many physical and social science disciplines. This book, which adopts an interdisciplinary approach, has made eclectic use of many sources dealing with the physiography, history, political economy, economic anthropology, and geography of the straits region and the surrounding landmasses and waterways. As the Asia-Pacific region has gained greater importance in the current era of globalization, there has been an upsurge in the number and diversity of recent studies dealing with commerce, development, and political integration in and around the straits. Notable among these scholarly works, which comprise points of departure and companion-pieces for the present study, are several historical treatises, such as those by Andaya and Andaya (1982) on the history of Malaya; detailed tomes on early Melaka (1983) and on Singapore (1989), both edited by Sandhu and Wheatley; essays on the Southeast Asian port and polity edited by Kathirithamby-Wells and Villiers (1990); and essays on trade in Southeast Asia edited by Reid (1993). Studies focused on the Asian political economy and on global-regional commercial interactions include books edited by Stubbs and Underhill (1994, 2000), Hettne et al. (1999), and Higgott (1999). Transportation and development geography in Southeast Asia are examined in a book edited by Rimmer (1997) and in wide-ranging

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Preface

essays edited by Olds et al. (1999). Two important recent works focusing more closely on navigation and development issues in the Straits of Malacca up to the mid-1990s (i.e., before the 1997–98 economic recession that disrupted commerce in the region) are the essays edited by Hamzah (1997) and the brief but comprehensively descriptive overview of the physical and commercial geography of the straits by Cleary and Goh (2000).

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Note on Nomenclature and Spelling of Place Names

In a work of this scope, which depends on primary and secondary sources written by authors from a number of different historic periods and cultural backgrounds, problems of inconsistent nomenclature and spelling are unavoidable. The practice adopted here is based on the notion that the spelling of place names should normally conform to the most common current usage in the nation states in which the places are located. The exceptions to this rule include instances where the names of geographic places or features being discussed have wide international significance, for example, through customary use by many different nations, and where long-standing international conventions in spelling and nomenclature, although different from local or national usage, have broad currency. Wherever there appears to be a lack of general consensus and thus the possibility of confusion surrounding different spellings of place names, the spelling most appropriate to the historical or cultural context will be used, but alternative (current or superseded) spellings will be included in parentheses as needed. For example, I refer frequently to the ports of Melaka (Malacca) and Pinang (Penang) on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia but follow the international convention of referring to the waterway on which these ports are located as the Straits of Malacca rather than as the Straits of Melaka.

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Acronyms

abda apec asean bce ce cmi epz eu fcz fdi fiz ftaa gatt gdp imb imf imo itcz nafta ngo nie

American-British-Dutch-Australian Naval Force (Second World War) Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Association of South East Asian Nations before the Common, or Christian, Era Common, or Christian, Era Comité Maritime International export processing zone European Union free commercial zone foreign direct investment free industrial zone Free Trade Area of the Americas General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade gross domestic product International Maritime Bureau (division of the International Chamber of Commerce) International Monetary Fund International Maritime Organization (London) Intertropical Convergence Zone North American Free Trade Association nongovernmental organization newly industrializing economy

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xxiv

obo oecd opec seato teu tnc ukc unclos unctad vlcc voc wto

Acronyms

ore-bulk-oil vessel (multipurpose bulk freighter) Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries South East Asia Treaty Organization twenty-foot equivalent unit (standard unit of cargo container capacity) Transnational corporation under-keel clearance (measure of ship channel depth) United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea United Nations Conference on Trade and Development very large crude carrier (supertanker) Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) World Trade Organization

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1

Fortaleza de Malaca: A sketch plan of Portuguese Malacca. Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge

2

The Melaka River in 1999, showing typical river craft, docks, and export products. Author’s photograph

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3

Fort Cornwallis, Georgetown, Pulau Pinang, in the nineteenth century. Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge

4

A nineteenth-century view of shipping in Keppel Harbour, Singapore. Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge

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5

Central Office District, Singapore, 1999. Author’s photograph

6

Langkat, a trading centre in northern Sumatra, late nineteenth century. Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge

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7

Bugis Pinisi in the Lombok Strait, 1999. Author’s photograph

8

Kelang in the late nineteenth century. Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge

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9

Prai River Ferry, late nineteenth century. Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge

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PART ONE

The Straits of Malacca in the Monsoon Trade System: A Conceptual Overview

In the history of world trade there have been few more powerful or pervasive geographic influences on the pattern of flows of goods and the fortunes of trading powers than the Straits of Malacca. This constricted waterway between West (peninsular) Malaysia and the island of Sumatra, although relatively remote from the major foci of world population concentration and development, ranks among a handful of strategic shipping gateways around the globe that have played a preeminent role in ocean-borne trade. This brief list includes similar natural shipping gateways at Gibraltar, Dover, the Baltic, the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, Bab al-Mandeb, Hormuz, and the Magellan Straits, together with human-engineered, strategically located seaways and canals such as Suez, Panama, the St Lawrence, Kiel, and Corinth. These features force the convergence of shipping routes linking far-flung trading nations and funnel them through narrow, often congested and hazardous choke-points. Looked at from another point of view, however, these straits are critically important zones that make accessible a vast trading realm, giving them great strategic and commercial significance. In terms both of the number of vessels traversing it daily, annual tonnages, and the value of cargo moving through it and in terms of the considerable difficulty and cost of avoiding or skirting around this bottleneck the shipping channel through the Straits of Malacca ranks

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2 The Monsoon Trade System

among the most important of these global trade gateways (Hamzah 1997, 4). It is the objective of the first part of this book to throw light on the reasons for this convergence of trade and shipping, drawing on general concepts relating to the spatial, political, and economic dimensions of commerce and interaction in the straits. In subsequent sections of the book these ideas and concepts will be used to aid in understanding various specific trade-enabling or commercerestricting features of this strategically important waterway.

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1 The Geographic Importance of the Straits of Malacca

In essence, the Straits of Malacca derive their enduring importance from the simple factor of strategic location. An appreciation of this factor can be gained from a glance at the geographic patterns portrayed in map 1 showing the arrangement of continental, peninsular, and archipelagic land masses and the straits and seas around them. Within this complex and fragmented realm there arose over the centuries numerous politically and economically sophisticated and powerful state societies that were eager to trade with distant lands and to extend their influence within and beyond their immediate environs. The similarity of this economically vibrant region with another realm of peninsulas, islands, and vigorous trading societies – Western Europe – has not been lost on previous observers (Reid 1993, 19). The very closely spaced island arcs that stretch between mainland Asia and Australia form an almost continuous land barrier to shipping between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Gaps in this barrier are infrequent and generally narrow. With a few exceptions they are too shallow and treacherous for safe navigation by ships of any appreciable tonnage. Of course, for small vessels of shallow draught, such as fishing and coastal trading craft of a type that have plied these waters for millennia, finding a way through the archipelagic barrier is much less difficult than for large ocean-going ships. But the burgeoning trade in bulky commodities that has developed between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres over the centuries has relied on

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. .

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THAILAND

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.

4 The Monsoon Trade System

South China Sea

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SINGAPORE

Sulawesi

Maluku

West Irian

tr. Java Sea Sunda Strait

INDIAN OCEAN

I N D O N E S I A Java 0 0

Map 1

Lombok Str.

Ombai Str. Wetar Str.

500 km 500 mi.

Southeast Asia

finding the most direct and least costly and least hazardous routes through this region. It is this hemispheric trade that has made just a handful of Southeast Asian straits or combinations of adjoining waterways – especially the Malacca-Singapore Straits, Selat Sunda, and the Lombok-Makassar Straits – so noteworthy. By allowing shipping to pass in relative safety through the island arcs of the IndoMalaysian region, these straits have naturally become points of convergence of shipping lanes and have thereby assumed very great strategic, economic, and political importance. Each of these shipping gateways, however, has its own particular physical perils and strategic implications, as this study will show. Of these regional choke-points, the Strait of Malacca and Singapore Strait (in general discussion these are often referred to in combination simply as the Straits of Malacca (Vertzberger 1982, 3)) have been of

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5 Geographic Importance

profound significance in the historic past. Indeed, this long, constricted, and (in places) shallow channel has acted as both gateway and bottleneck, shipping node and navigation hazard, at least since earliest recorded history and probably well before that. It has been the scene of almost unending struggles for control among competing political and commercial interests, both local and distant, and yet has provided a lifeline that has brought prosperity and development to states and peoples dependent on imports or exports of goods exchanged with remotely located partners. Archaeological evidence from various parts of the world, including the Southeast Asian realm, confirms that long distance trade predates human recorded history perhaps by many centuries. Human migration and the development of agriculture and handicraft industries gave rise to interregional communication and the exchanges of goods among early human settlements, and one of the methods of transporting people and goods over long distances was by water. Initially such transport was confined mostly to riverine, lacustrine, and coastal environments, possibly because boat-building technologies and navigational skills were rudimentary: the predominantly small, simple, barely seaworthy vessels of that bygone age usually did not venture out of sight of land. Archaeological evidence from the Malay peninsula and elsewhere suggests, however, that riverine and coastal settlements in this region participated in maritime commerce more than two thousand years ago and that skills of boat-building and seamanship had progressed well beyond rudimentary levels (Sandhu and Wheatley 1983, 3–4). Over a period of at least several millennia, therefore, the role and influence of the Straits of Malacca has changed with the rise and fall of trading empires, the skills and technological sophistication of navigators, and the nature, provenance, and value of goods transported through the often shifting, narrow, and perilous channels of this trade gateway. In its search for an understanding of these changing roles, this book adopts an interdisciplinary, rather than simply a geographic or historical, approach to the topic. Explanation of changing spatial patterns in maritime interaction is facilitated by the application of concepts from various physical and social sciences, including climatology, political economy, and economic anthropology, as well as from the subdisciplines of historical and economic geography. Unquestionably, the Straits of Malacca remain a key point on the shortest sea route from the ports of India and the Persian Gulf – and from the entrepots of Europe via the Suez Canal–Red Sea route – to

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6 The Monsoon Trade System

ports on mainland East Asia. These routes have changed very little over the centuries, despite advances in ship-building technology, since minimizing cost-distance of commercial transportation has remained an overriding goal. Vigorous competition has been a persistent feature of the trade system – despite sporadic attempts to achieve monopoly control – with most rival traders having access to fairly similar transportation technologies and being subjected to the same constraints of physiography that have forced them all to use a mere handful of channels perforating the extensive land barriers across the east-west trade routes. These few major routeways, identified under the Law of the Sea Convention – unclos, 1982 – as “straits used for international navigation,” include the Straits of Malacca and Singapore and the alternative routes through Selat Sunda and the Lombok–Makassar Straits (Smith and Roach 1997, 297). In addition there are a number of minor routeways through the archipelagic barriers, many within the territorial waters of Indonesia, such as Selat Karimata on the northwest of the Java Sea, Selat Bali to the west of the island of Bali, Selat Alas, east of Lombok, and the Ombai and Wetar Straits to the north of Timor.

delineating major trade gateways in asia: the straits of malacca and alternative routes The Straits of Malacca are defined geographically as a funnel-shaped passage oriented in a northwest-southeast direction separating the west coast of peninsular Malaysia-Thailand and the east coast of the island of Sumatra. It is widest in the northern part but narrows to the southeast and joins the constricted Singapore Strait, which debouches into the South China Sea. Geographic boundary coordinates of the straits area are usually defined as follows. The northwest boundary is a line from Ujong Baka (5° 40’ n, 95°26’ e), the northwesternmost point of Sumatra, to Laem Phra Chao (7°45’ n, 98°18’ e), the southernmost point of Ko Phukit, Thailand. Further to the northwest, this waterway leads through the Great Channel, separating the Nicobar Islands from Sumatra, or through the Coco Channel north of the Andaman Islands and into the Bay of Bengal. The southeast boundary is a line from Tanjung Piai (1°11’ n, 103°31’ e), the southernmost part of Peninsular Malaysia, to Pulau Iyu Kecil (1°11’ n,

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7 Geographic Importance

103°21’ e), which is Indonesian territory, thence to Pulau Karimun Kecil (1°10’ n, 103°23’ e) and onward to Tanjung Kedabu, Sumatra (1°06’ n, 102°59’ e: Hamzah 1997, 3). Details of the southern portion of the straits are shown in map 2. The four coastal nation-states bordering on the straits are Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore, while ships entering the waterway from the northwest must pass by the Indian territories of the Andaman Islands or, alternatively, the Nicobar Islands. Thus delineated, the Straits of Malacca are about 830 kilometres in length, and about 320 kilometres wide at the northern end, but only about 18 kilometres across at the southern entrance. The main transit shipping fairways come very close to the eastern (Malaysian) side of the straits south of Cape Rachado, after passing the One Fathom Bank off Port Kelang and keeping to the east of Pyramid Shoal, Raleigh Shoal, and Rob Roy Bank (map 2). (There are three main cross-channel ferry routes: the northern link between the Indonesian port of Belawan and the port of Georgetown on Pulau Pinang (Pinang Island), Malaysia; the central ferry routes connecting the Indonesian port of Dumai, in Rupat Strait, with the Malaysian ports of Melaka (Malacca) and K-Pelabuhan Kelang (formerly Port Swettenham); and the southern link between Singapore and the adjacent Indonesian islands of Batam, Bintan, and Bengkalis. Singapore Strait This narrow, east-west routeway connects the Strait of Malacca and Selat Durian – a secondary channel used by ships travelling north through the Riau and Lingga Islands – to the South China Sea via the Phillip Channel. The navigation route threads its way through numerous small islands and shoals, from the Karimun (Carimon) Islands at the western entrance, between Pulau Nipa and Pulau Awai, and, at its narrowest point, between Pulau Takong Besar and Pulau Senang (just over 5 kilometres in navigable width). Thence the waterway passes between the island nation of Singapore – with its bustling roadstead crowded with ships awaiting loading or unloading – and the Indonesian island of Pulau Batam (map 2). From this point the channel leads past Singapore’s busy Changi Airport and the entrance to the narrow and shallow Johor (Johore) Strait and eastward between the mainland of Johor and Pulau Bintan, finally

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8 The Monsoon Trade System

Kelang

One Fathom Bank

PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

Port Dickson Cape Rachado

South Sands

Pyramid Shoal

Melaka (Malacca)

Raleigh Shoal Rob Roy Bank

Rupat

TE RR ITO RI AL BO UN Bengkalis DA RY I.

Dumai

Ramunia Shoal

pore

SUMATRA

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Ra

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100 km

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SINGAPORE

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Tebing Tinggi I.

50 mi.

sa

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Phillip Channel Durian Str.

Batam I.

Bulan

Str.

Eastern Bank

Horsburgh Shoal

Bintan I. Riau Islands

I. Galang I.

Map 2

Straits of Malacca and Singapore

entering the South China Sea past Ramunia Shoal, the Eastern Bank, and Horsburgh Shoal (formerly known as Pedra Branca). Lombok-Makassar Straits Skirting to the east of the islands of Bali and Nusa Penida and along the west coast of Lombok, then continuing northward between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi, this international shipping route adds about an extra 1,800 kilometres to the voyage of ships passing between Persian Gulf or Indian Ocean ports and Japan or China. In modern steam- or diesel-powered ships this distance translates into an extra two or three days’ sailing time. It was, of course, a much longer time in the days of wind or rowing power. As will be discussed later, the main advantage of this route is that it permits the passage of very large, deep-draught vessels such as supertankers along a deep-water line (called Wallace’s Line) that, in effect, demarcates the boundary between the Asian and Australasian continental shelves. Sunda Strait (Selat Sunda) Used mostly by vessels trading among ports on the islands of Java and south Sumatra, this passage has in the past been an important

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9 Geographic Importance

gateway to the rich spice islands of the Java Sea, especially during the Dutch colonial hegemony in this area. The northern entrance of the strait, between Cape Tua on Sumatra and Cape Pujut, Java, is relatively narrow, and the channel skirts the volcanic island of Krakatau, noted for its catastrophic eruption in 1883. Vessels in transit through this channel may also continue into Gaspar Strait, between the islands of Bangka and Belitung, opening onto the South China Sea. Minor Waterways On the west of the island of Bali is a passage (Selat Bali) that is not a major waterway in the contemporary period but has for many years been used by shallow-draught vessels mostly engaged in local commerce and fishing. Several other minor straits exist between the Flores Islands and Timor (Wetar and Ombai Straits), between Maluku (the Moluccas) and West Irian (Dampier or Sagewin Straits, known in an earlier epoch as Pitt’s Passage) and between the islands to the south of the Malay Peninsula and the Greater Sunda Islands – South Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan – notably, the Durian, Berhala, and Bangka Straits. Many of these were used from time to time by spice traders and others involved in commerce in and around the Indonesian Archipelago. While the physical configuration of land and sea in this geographically complex realm of peninsulas and archipelagoes is a primary factor in explaining the significance of the Straits of Malacca, it is not the only physical-environmental factor that needs to be addressed before the role of the Straits can be fully understood. Another critical element is the pattern of seasonal wind circulation that, especially in the era of sail, rendered this part of the world of crucial importance in long-distance trade. This climatic pattern, which has been relied on by navigators for centuries, is termed monsoonal circulation. Its importance in understanding the role of the straits will be explained in the next chapter.

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2 Monsoonal Circulation and Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

The demand for luxuries by wealthy elites, the associated need to procure raw materials and staple foodstuffs, and the institutional structures that early states erected to satisfy these demands were important in the setting up of long-distance trade between East and West, as the following chapters will discuss. Perhaps the most important factors in establishing this trade, however, were the contemporaneous revolutions in ocean navigation and shipbuilding technology, as well as the discovery of the pattern of reversing winds, or monsoons, in the eastern seas. These factors, as will be shown, made routine hemispheric trade feasible, enabling merchants to overcome the “friction of distance” at tolerable levels of cost and risk and hence to fulfill the growing demand for luxuries and staples.

evolving ship design and navigation technology The earliest shipping in the “old world” was mostly in the form of small, rather primitive coastal vessels that were able to make only limited use of the ubiquitous and seemingly chaotic winds to speed their journeys by rigging crude sails. Voyages in such rudimentary craft were usually short and almost always perilous. Smaller vessels such as reed boats or dugouts could be propelled by oars or sweeps operated at the stern, but they were not satisfactory for large ships

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11 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

undertaking long-distance voyages. Around 2900 bce (before the Christian, or Common, Era) the Egyptian Pharaoh Sneferu sent fleets of wooden craft fitted with sails and oars to Lebanon to collect cedar, a light, durable wood valuable for building sea-going vessels. About 1500 bce Queen Hatshepsut, wife of Pharaoh Thotmes II, sent sturdy trading vessels south along the Red Sea coast to the land of Punt, in what is now Somalia, to bring back ivory, ebony, aromatic resins and exotic animals (Woodman 1997, 14). By 1200 bce, when the Mediterranean witnessed numerous sea battles among oar-powered fleets (Prescott 1985, 116), enslaved or indentured oarsmen, arrayed in coordinated banks on either side of an open or partlydecked hull, gave to warships such as galleys, biremes, and triremes the freedom to set a course against the wind while traversing relatively protected waters. Although they had virtually disappeared from western seas by the mid-seventeenth century, oar-powered vessels of this sort were still commonly encountered during the nineteenth century in eastern waters, often being used by pirates to overtake, outmanœuvre, and attack slower and more cumbersome sailing ships or junks. Although it was rather late in becoming a dominant technology in ocean navigation, the use of sail as a primary means of ship propulsion has had an extensive history. Sea-going sailing ships were commonplace during the feudal age in Egypt. The wealth of lands to the south and east filled the holds of sailing vessels plying the coasts of Arabia, Africa, and the Red Sea and was ferried to the Mediterranean ports via a canal dug around 1900 bce between the northern Red Sea and the easternmost branch of the Nile river (Breasted 1944, 100–1; Haws 1975, 15). Chinese annals tell of voyages by large sailing junks to the region of the Straits of Malacca and the Gulf of Tonkin as early as the twelfth century bce (Schoff 1912, 246). These voyages were doubtless aided by the Chinese invention of the magnetic compass around 2600 bce. Vessels of the Phoenicians and their Mediterranean contemporaries in the tenth to the seventh century bce travelled out of sight of land but were obliged to follow closely the direction of the prevailing winds because their masts were braced lengthwise only, and they had rather rudimentary keels and rudders (often simply twin oars or sweeps set vertically astern). Such crude design and inadequate construction made these ships prone to capsizing or being dismasted in bad weather. Nevertheless, in the seventh century bce the Phoenicians, who were renowned seamen, are credited with circumnavigating Africa, and there was a growing seaborne trade

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12 The Monsoon Trade System

with regions around the Persian Gulf and as far afield as India. Writing about 60–70 ce (Common or Christian Era), the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (a kind of Roman-era guidebook to the Indian Ocean and adjacent water-bodies such as the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf) speaks of trade with the Malabar coast of India, Taprobane (Sri Lanka), and This (China). References to Chryse Island (the golden isle) have been identified by analysts as pertaining to the Malay Peninsula (Schoff 1912, 259–61). In other works, the term Chersonesus Aureus was used to refer to Sumatra, the putative source of precious metals in the Greco-Roman era. The Periplus gives credit for the discovery of seasonally reversing winds in the Indian Ocean to a sailor called Hippalos, who may have been a Hellenic or an Egyptian-Greek sea captain. The exact date of this discovery by Hippalos is uncertain, with possible times ranging from 116 bce (Casson 1989, 224) to 45 ce (Schoff 1912). Armed with the knowledge of the eponymous southwest winds that are associated with monsoonal circulation in the Indian Ocean – described later in this chapter – Roman and Egyptian-Greek ships joined in the trade between the Red Sea coast of Africa and the Persian Gulf region, and perhaps even the Malabar coast of India. No longer fully dependent on oarsmen for motive power, these sturdier and more sea-worthy vessels now hoisted sails to utilize the Hippalos winds that permitted, during the months of May to October, direct navigation from the Red Sea across to India without hugging the coast. Reversal of these winds during November to April permitted a direct return course to be followed (Schoff 1912, 45). Open-ocean navigation, however, would not have been possible without improvements in ship construction and rigging, including such advances (discussed in detail later) as the lateen sail, transverse bracing of the mast, and better rudder and keel design that allowed ships to tack and to sail closer to the wind ( Hall 1985, 31). These developments extended both the length of the sailing season and the freedom available to navigators to set courses that did not simply involve “running before the wind.” While the belated discovery by Western seafarers of the seasonally reversing Hippalos winds opened the Indian Ocean to Roman shipping, as Schoff (1912, 227) comments, “it is probable that Arabian and Dravidian craft had frequented that ocean for many centuries, and inconceivable that they should not have made use of the periodic changes of the monsoons, by far the most notable feature of their climate.”

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13 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

It should not, however, be assumed that the same individual vessels made the entire journey between the ports of ultimate provenance and disposal of the trade goods they carried. On the contrary, the reversing monsoons rendered much more convenient the use of intervening entrepots for transshipment and exchange of cargoes, shortening the overall journey for individual vessels and greatly reducing the time and risks involved in trading voyages. At the time of the Periplus, indeed, cargoes from the West were generally offloaded at entrepots in Somalia, South Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Malabar, and the Straits of Malacca, and Eastern cargoes were then taken on board for the return voyage. Various merchant middlemen specialized in carrying trade goods between entrepots and often jealously guarded their monopolies on this trade (and even monopolies on information about ultimate sources of trade goods) so that merchants further west or east could not bypass them or otherwise challenge their status as middlemen. Long voyages that linked directly the furthest ports of the early trading system were thus very rare: Chinese ships usually went no further west than the Straits of Malacca, leaving to Malay vessels called colandia the carriage of their silk, porcelain, and cinnabar to India. As Schoff notes, “it remained for the Arabs to complete the ’through line’ by opening direct communication under the Bagdad Caliphate, between the ends of the earth, Lisbon and Canton” (Schoff 1912, 228). The pattern of ocean transportation did not change greatly during the period of European aggrandisement and mercantile expansion in the Indian Ocean–Southeast Asian realm: reliance on the reversing winds and the strategically located entrepots of the region continued to be as great as ever. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, steelhulled vessels using steam propulsion had joined the fleets of sailpowered, wooden, or iron-hulled merchantmen plying the eastern seas, and the dependence on wind power for navigation was reduced. With it went the need to follow the ancient dictates of the monsoons.

alternative systems of long distance trade: the silk road Early seafarers such as the Polynesians, Sea Dyaks, Phoenicians, and Vikings had achieved considerable success in navigating their longboats or outriggers over great distances of open sea using a combination of sail and rowers or paddlers. But such vessels, generally

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14 The Monsoon Trade System

used for conquest, exploration, or defence, were impractical for transporting large quantities of bulky trade merchandise or for negotiating stormy seas on exceptionally long voyages. For centuries before and after the imperial Roman era, merchants chose alternatively to exchange goods between East and West mainly by using overland routes such as the famous Silk Road through Central Asia to China. Continental trading caravans that covered vast distances through hostile terrain were, however, very slow, costly, and hazardous. Lying across the northern route of the Silk Road through Bukhara and Samarqand, for example, were the territories of many tribes and nations who were either fiercely protective of their middleman status in the trade or else piratical or xenophobic and who thus took a heavy toll on the overland trade in both taxes, lives, and booty. When political and military conflicts threatened to cut completely the overland routes through Central Asia, traders, of necessity, turned increasingly to sea transport as an alternative. Unfortunately, most trading vessels of early times, as previously noted, were slow, cumbersome, poorly constructed, and scarcely up to the challenge of long voyages through eastern waters legendary for their dangers. Navigation techniques, instruments, and charts were similarly crude and inaccurate, making investments in such mercantile ventures risky in the extreme. Merchants tried wherever possible to cut the distance of their sea journey, portaging where necessary over land barriers such as the Isthmus of Kra between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The high value of European trade with China and India, however, often made the daunting risks of seaborne commerce worthwhile. Thus select groups of navigator-middlemen arose whose experience and skill in conveying goods across the Arabian, Bengal, and South China Seas were both in demand by merchants and jealously guarded, as the key to a lucrative monopoly, by the middlemen themselves. At an early date, possibly before the heyday of imperial Rome, some of the middlemen-sailors who plied the eastern trade routes had not only uncovered the secrets of navigating using seasonally reversing winds but also discovered routes around the Malay Peninsula that obviated the need for costly and dangerous portaging. The use of better quality, Western-made compasses and astrolabes or sextants superseded ancient customs of navigating by the stars or by crude local or Chinese-made compasses, which, although invented centuries before, seemed not to have improved by the time of Marco Polo’s journey to Cathay (Haws 1975, 14).

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15 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

The reign of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), however, witnessed major advances in navigation, astronomy, ship design, and seamanship. Under Henry’s far-sighted sponsorship, Portuguese scholars made great strides in translating the most recent discoveries in physics and geography into practical advice for ships’ captains, and from that time onward Western navigation became more of a science and less of an art or a gamble.

the discovery of monsoonal wind circulation as the basis for long-distance trade The knowledge of wind reversals in the Indian Ocean, as noted earlier, was unavailable to Western navigators until the time of the Romans, although undoubtedly this potentially useful knowledge had existed among seafarers further east for perhaps millennia beforehand. While not fully understood even by scholars until the twentieth century, the physical basis for this relatively reliable seasonal wind reversal – the monsoon, of which there are numerous regional variants – is to be found in the global airmass patterns that are activated by insolation and atmospheric circulation. These, in turn, are linked to the Earth’s rotation (which produces a force, called the coriolis force, that bends or curves airstreams) and act in combination with the differential heating of land and sea surfaces at different latitudes.

global airmass patterns: latitudinal banding The global pattern of atmospheric circulation is, therefore, the partial result of a complex web of interconnected physical influences that redistributes heat in the atmosphere, producing a global heat balance. This process of heat redistribution generates strong air pressure gradients and wind streams – between cooler high-pressure regions and hotter low-pressure cells – as well as uplifts and downdrafts of air within these cells, and a swirling action in surface airmasses over wide areas in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The resultant pattern of airmasses features latitudinal bands that shift north and south with the seasons. Typical seasonal patterns of prevailing winds in the eastern hemisphere associated with these

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16 The Monsoon Trade System

airmass bands (for the representative months of January and July) are shown in maps 3 and 4. In some of these latitudinal zones there tends to be a constant procession of eastward-moving cells of low or high pressure, while in others semistationary pressure cells or bands appear to be the norm.

equatorial airstream patterns: the intertropical convergence zone The mechanism for the specific pattern of reversing monsoonal circulation in tropical Asia shown in maps 3 and 4 is quite complex. A central belt, the thermal equator, shifts north and south with the changing position of the sun relative to the earth’s surface. This traces out the globe-girdling path of most intense insolation (and consequently the greatest surface and atmospheric heating) at a given time of the year. Land areas in this seasonally shifting band absorb and transmit heat to the overlying atmosphere more rapidly and strongly than water areas in the same band. These water areas, by comparison, absorb warmth more slowly and retain it more effectively, releasing it gradually through long-wave radiation and convection. Torrid air overlying the heated surface in this equatorial zone of greatest insolation rises in vertical columns, producing a belt of relatively low pressure that draws in air at the surface from both north and south to replace the rising air, creating a surface convergence zone. Acted upon by the coriolis force, these extensive, converging air streams may curve or twist relative to the Earth’s surface. The specific spatial arrangement of land and sea in this band of moving airstreams, and the tilt of the Earth on its axis of rotation relative to the sun cause this Intertropical Convergence Zone (itcz) to oscillate latitudinally from season to season. The band of most intense uplift of air – the ”ground zero” of the itcz – is positioned over the continental landmasses of tropical Asia and North Africa in the Northern Hemisphere summer and over south-central Africa and northern Australia in the Southern Hemisphere summer. Close to the equator there is an absence of the pronounced twisting motion of the airmasses that results from the coriolis force. Consequently, the band of tropical low pressure over Asia and Africa and surrounding seas – the itcz – does not usually resolve itself into distinct cells of swirling air, as in the case of airmasses in higher latitudes. Instead, it is a continuous and semipermanent band,

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17 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

producing extensive regions of barometric depression, large areas of becalmed air, intense surface heat, and stifling humidity along its axis that prompted a part of this belt to be called the doldrums. The itcz may, indeed, be stalled over parts of Asia and Africa for long periods during the high-sun period in those regions. Also, since there is relatively less land and more ocean in the Southern Hemisphere, the convergence of winds at the margin of the itcz is often less regular or pronounced in the Southern than in the Northern Hemisphere. While the reliability of the shifting pattern of the itcz has long been one of its hallmarks, this relatively stable and widespread pressure pattern may occasionally be interrupted or distorted, as for example in recent dramatic oscillations known as El Nino/La Nina and also by very large and intense atmospheric cells that, polewards of about eleven degrees from the equator, obtain enough twisting action from the coriolis force to form violent tropical cyclones, or typhoons. These occasionally wreak havoc in parts of the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the South China Sea, and have long been an extreme hazard to shipping, discouraging traders from venturing into these waters at certain times of the year.

midlatitude high pressure belts: the trade winds The rising air from the Intertropical Convergence Zone spreads both north and south and cools at high altitudes and then descends to the surface in northern and southern midlatitude regions to create belts of relatively high pressure (maps 3 and 4). Here the coriolis force creates large anticyclones of descending, cooling air, calm at their centres but swirling toward their margins, that track regularly from west to east across the midlatitudes. These are especially well developed and reliable in the Southern Hemisphere, where their counterclockwise swirling gives rise to the southeast trade winds of low to midlatitudes. As their name suggests, these winds aided merchantnavigators on their voyages in midlatitudes during the age of sail. The high-pressure, anticyclonic belts associated with the trade winds also shift north and south with the changing seasons in concert with the progression of the itcz. Calm zones beneath the centres of highpressure systems characterize the so-called horse latitudes. Poleward of the tradewind belt is another zone of eastward-moving low pressure cells that in the Southern Hemisphere contributes to the stormy

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18 The Monsoon Trade System

conditions and the strong westerly winds of the Roaring Forties that sped the trading vessels of the Dutch and British across the South Indian Ocean in centuries past.

the monsoons: seasonallyreversing airstreams Of all the wind systems associated with the global pressure belts, as indicated earlier, the most significant winds for navigation along routes to the Orient during the age of sail, and specifically for shipping and trade through the Straits of Malacca, were and are the monsoons. The term “monsoon” derives from the Arabic word mausim, meaning “season” or “seasonal wind” (Webster 1987, 3; Chang and Krishnamurti 1987). In simple terms, monsoonal wind circulation features a reliable and direct reversal in airstream direction between winter and summer in a particular part of South, Southeast, and East Asia. This is associated with the pattern of differential heating (or cooling) of land and sea and the concomitant creation of areas of low and high pressure that respectively draw in or expel surface air, as mentioned above. During the Northern Hemisphere summer half year (from May to October) there is a strong, generally northward, on-shore flow of air – a monsoonal flow – expelled from the Southern Hemisphere highpressure belts over the cooler areas of Australia and the South Indian Ocean. This is directed toward the regions of greatest continental heating in peninsular and midlatitude Asia, with some directional modification effected by the coriolis force. Depending on the region of southern Asia or Indonesia, this summer monsoon (a term valid only in the Northern Hemisphere) may be known locally as the southwest or southeast monsoon. The turbulent passage of its northerly trending airstreams over warm equatorial seas causes the moistureladen winds to deposit heavy precipitation over most of southeastern Asia, its peninsulas, and fringing island arcs during the months of May through October – the “rainy season” in much of southern and eastern Asia. This monsoon, blowing from southerly directions, has been a prime aid to navigation from the east coast of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula toward India and onward to the Malay-Indonesian realm, as well as into the South China Sea (maps 3 and 4). The slowness of ocean navigation by even the most advanced sailing vessels, however, has meant that the entire journey across the Indian Ocean and South China Sea could rarely be completed in one

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19 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

January

L

Arctic Circle 60°

60°

L

H

40°

40°

Tropic of Cancer 20°

20°

Northeast

Monsoon

Equator

0°

0°

L Southeast

L

Trades

20°

Tropic of Capricorn

20°

H H

H 40°

40°

Roaring Forties 60°

Map 3

60°

Eastern Hemisphere wind patterns, January (Strahler, 1984, 83, p1.b3)

southwest- or summer-monsoon season during the age of sail. Early winter in the Northern Hemisphere saw the southwest monsoon falter and die, as the northern continental landmasses cooled, generating high-pressure belts of descending, outward-spreading air from midlatitude Central Asia and Siberia. Pressure contrasts between land and water caused by this intense cooling of northern landmasses are greater in January than those in July, often resulting in more forceful off-shore winds comprising desiccating continental air flowing outward from the Siberian high-pressure system. This southward flow usually gives a prolonged dry season in parts of South Asia between October and March. The globe-girdling belt of the itcz and the associated area of greatest surface heating are shifted further south into Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Australia in the summer half year in the Southern Hemisphere (November–April). During these months, therefore, in the Northern Hemisphere the winter monsoon airflows in the region are generally from north to south, again with directional modifications

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20 The Monsoon Trade System

July

L

Arctic Circle

60°

60°

40°

40°

H L Tropic of Cancer 20°

20°

Southwest Monsoon Equator

0°

0°

Southeast Trades

20°

20°

Tropic of Capricorn

H

H 40°

60°

Map 4

Roaring Forties

L

H

40°

60°

Eastern Hemisphere wind patterns, July (Strahler, 1984, 83, p1.b3)

caused by the coriolis force (maps 3 and 4). Across most of southern and southeastern Asia this curving airflow is known as the northeast monsoon, the harbinger of cool, dry winds that, nevertheless, rapidly become heated over southern land areas and laden with moisture wherever the air moves over tracts of open sea (such as the South China Sea). These winds aided early navigators setting out from China or Indonesia in their voyages toward India and points further west. Again, from harbours in China such as Cattigara, the limitations in speed of sailing vessels made virtually impossible the completion of the entire voyage to India, Arabia, eastern Africa, or Europe in a single season.

complex seasonal wind shifts in the straits of malacca Over the equatorial belt of Southeast Asia, including the Malay Peninsula and adjacent Indonesian islands, however, seasonal pressure

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21 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

changes are generally fairly small (with a range of less than 2 millibars: Ooi Jin Bee 1976, 30). Consequently, seasonal variations in pressure are often masked by greater diurnal variations. Thus, in the area of the Straits of Malacca at times of the year when the dominant monsoonal airstream is weakening, locally complex wind shifts may occur in association with strong local atmospheric convection cells and land-water pressure gradients (afternoon sea breezes and overnight land breezes). The Straits of Malacca thus experience four distinct seasons: the northeast monsoon (from November to March), a transitional period of weak and variable winds (April to May), the relatively gentle southwest monsoon (from June to September or early October), and a second transitional period of variable winds in October and early November. The importance of careful timing of the arrival of vessels at entrepots in the straits region, in order to take advantage of these seasonal wind conditions and avoid adverse winds, is thus apparent. In the past, the longer the voyage, of course, the more difficult it was to ensure such favourable arrival times, meaning that additional, frustrating delays in the straits were often experienced by early mariners due to periods of calm or adverse winds. Interestingly, areas in the northern sector of the straits, such as Pulau Pinang, experience a greater number of days with calms than at Melaka further south, which receives fairly regular sea breezes in addition to more general monsoonal winds – a factor that had to be taken into consideration in the era of sail when choosing a suitable place for an entrepot.

convective squalls and cyclonic storms Although relatively light prevailing winds are the norm in the area of the Straits, each year, nevertheless, numerous sudden and often violent squalls are recorded, especially in the southern half of the waterway. These storms may be associated with convective, heat-cell cumulonimbus cloud formations or with the undercutting of one airmass by another, producing a local cold or warm front. These cellular or line squalls, known locally as sumatras, feature sudden shifts in wind speed and direction. Consequently, as discussed later in this book, in the context of hazards to shipping in the straits, they can be very disruptive and dangerous. Sumatras of a particularly violent character occur in the southern straits in the period from May to August, usually at night or in the early morning hours. At other

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22 The Monsoon Trade System

times convective squalls are less frequent, occurring in the early afternoon. There are few squalls during the period from November to February (Ooi Jin Bee 1976 , 40–3). At the northern approaches to the straits and across the Bay of Bengal, destructive tropical cyclones are a common occurrence, particularly during May and October when there is a reversal of direction of the monsoon in the bay. These storms can render shipping along the northern Coromandel coast of India extremely hazardous. Similarly, severe typhoons occur frequently in late summer across the South China Sea and the coastal regions of eastern Asia. These large and violent depressions are, however, absent entirely from the straits themselves, since this area is too close to the equator for the coriolis force to produce such cyclonic disturbances.

the role of the straits of malacca in monsoon-dependent trade A combination of the very limited speed of ships plying the east-west trade routes and the reliability of the monsoonal circulation based on seasonal reversals of wind direction, therefore, helps explain the importance of the Straits of Malacca as a focal point in long-distance trade. These strategic narrows were roughly at the halfway mark in the long sea journeys between China and India, at a location, moreover, where northern and southern equatorial airstreams converged. Thus it was possible at this vantage point for navigators coming from the northeast, across the South China Sea, or from the northwest, across the Gulf of Thailand, to meet and trade with merchants coming from the southeast, along the Indonesian island arc or from the southwest, across the Indian Ocean. The latter was the main route to and from Europe via the Cape of Good Hope, the Mozambique Channel, and eastern Africa or Madagascar. Other mariners converged on the Straits of Malacca from southern or western India or indeed from northern parts of the Bay of Bengal. There was no real need for merchants to accompany their trade-goods over the entire two- or three-year journey from Europe, Arabia, or India to East Asia so long as they could meet their counterparts at a suitable intervening entrepot. This would facilitate the exchange of goods expeditiously and on favourable terms, after which merchants could wait in safety for the reliable seasonal reversal of the monsoon winds and set out on their journey home that same year with a profitable cargo.

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23 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

The northern Indian Ocean is, unfortunately, notorious for frequent and often violent squalls similar to the sumatras encountered in the Straits of Malacca. These hazards have exacerbated the dangers from the larger but more sporadic tropical cyclones mentioned earlier, and during the age of sail this meant that the exposed southern coastlines of Sumatra, Java and the other main islands facing the open Indian Ocean had few safe anchorages. Ocean currents in the vicinity of the Indonesian archipelago were also strong and unpredictable, making navigation close to the windward sides of these islands dangerous even for skilled sailors and well-designed sailing vessels. Consequently, these exposed coasts were mostly avoided by merchants. At the dawn of the monsoon-dependent trading period, as noted earlier, vessels lacked the capacity to tack, or sail against the wind, often wanting the substantial keels and rigging needed for the sails to be set appropriately. Triangular lateen sails, however, which are simple and versatile, have been used since very early times, giving vessels such as Arab dhows some – albeit limited – ability to sail across the direction of the wind. Lateen sails, copied from the Arabs, became common in Western ship designs about the eight century ce (Haws 1975, 44). Not until the advent of the Portuguese caravela latina (caravelle), however, could pure sailing vessels set their courses at significant angles to the wind direction. The caravelle, which was smooth-hulled, and rakish, was equipped with lateen sails and steered by means of a transom-hung rudder that gave the vessel excellent manœuvrability (Woodman 1997, 56) . The combination of the lateen sail and the monsoonal reversal of wind in the Indian Ocean dominated the pattern of navigation in the spice trade for many centuries. Mariners in most types of merchant vessels plying the eastern seas, however, needed to allow wide margins for steering errors. The narrow gaps between the Indonesian islands were simply too treacherous for early sailors in their cumbersome ships to negotiate successfully. Consequently, the much wider, funnel-shaped, northern entrance to the relatively protected waters of the Straits of Malacca became the preferred alternative for most mariners journeying between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

ship design and construction From earliest times the design of ocean-going sailing vessels tended to stress sturdiness and seaworthiness over speed and manœuvrability.

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24 The Monsoon Trade System

Such ships were expensive to build and maintain and required large crews to handle the rigging, as well as to protect the ship in case of attack. Ocean-going Chinese and Malay vessels, notably the ponderous, teak-hulled jong, or junks, were ungainly-looking but generally very sea-worthy and long-lived. They were constructed in a manner quite different from Western ships, being built up from a flat bottom instead of a keel. Five or more solid bulkheads divided these large vessels into watertight compartments, or petak, that bestowed great strength and sea-worthiness, while a sophisticated, hinged rudder and multiple masts mounted fore and aft made the versatile junk surprisingly manœuvrable (Donnelly 1924, 4 – 5; Woodman 1997, 38). To the great surprise of Portuguese and other Western sailors venturing for the first time into Eastern waters, these Asian vessels were often larger than the biggest European ships, frequently averaging more than five hundred tonnes deadweight (Manguin 1993, 197). Teak used in constructing junks, which was obtained from coastal forests in such places as Java, Borneo, and Pegu (Myanmar), was much less subject to dry rot or sea worm attack than European oak. The oily, tough wood was immensely strong and weather resistant and even protected iron nails in the hull from rust. Chinese junks were, however, usually lightly armed by comparison with Western ships, so that the advantages of large size and sturdy construction were nullified in the event of a naval clash between Chinese and Western vessels. Whether through European naval superiority and aggression or through changes in the patterns of regional commerce, large Asian trading vessels had mostly disappeared from the straits area by the seventeenth century (with the exception of the Chinese and Gujerati junk fleets). They were replaced by smaller classes of trading and war vessels that were more suited to the new maritime regimes of Southeast Asia in the early modern period. While the average tonnages of Asian vessels declined, however, fleet sizes did not. Coastal and regional trade continued to flourish and to be carried in Malay, Javanese, and Bugis ships, in spite of Portuguese and, later, Dutch trade restrictions. European men-of-war often encountered battlefleets of galleys that numbered in the hundreds of vessels in their struggles to wrest strategic control of the sea lanes and trade networks in the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries (Manguin 1993, 208–12). Heavy armament, rather than superior design or overwhelming numbers, was the key factor that allowed Western ships to gain early

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25 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

superiority in the spice trade. Apart from being somewhat less seaworthy as a result of being built of vulnerable European woods such as oak, elm, and Baltic pine (for the masts), the banks of cannon on Western ships made them rather top-heavy and prone to capsizing. In a storm, moreover, a loose cannon on a pitching vessel was indeed cause for grave concern. In the fifteenth century large, multidecked ships called carracks, with fore and aft castles, massive masts, and square-rigged mainsails were becoming common in Western navies. Some of these vessels were used in the early voyages by the Portuguese to India and beyond after 1498. Throughout the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, however, merchant ships built in the West were generally smaller than men-of-war. This was partly a consequence of commercial considerations of the cost – and risk – of obtaining expensive commodities in sufficient quantities to utilize cargo space fully and then committing these valuable cargoes to the hazards of long sea voyages in a single, large vessel. These risks were distressingly high, as the litany of lost ships and priceless cargoes that went to the bottom over several centuries will attest. A greater number of smaller trading vessels spread this risk and to some extent avoided the inevitable problem of the depression of market prices for luxury items that occurred each time a large cargo from an arriving ship was disgorged into limited local markets for such luxuries. Thus, with the exception of certain classes of armed merchant vessels, such as the Portuguese Carrack, the Spanish Galleon, and the English East Indiaman (which often exceeded six hundred tonnes), the majority of European trading vessels were small, mostly under two hundred tonnes, at least until the latter part of the eighteenth century. Often, merchant ships and junks – even the smaller ones – had ample space in their holds for lower-value staples such as grain and other bulky commodities that were carried alongside the less bulky spices and similar luxuries. Thomaz (1993, 82) mentions the sixteenth-century custom of permitting various merchants and crew members of junks trading at Melaka to hire petak (watertight compartments in the vessel’s hold) for transportation of goods being traded on their own account. Such merchant vessels may thus have carried a wide variety of goods with greatly contrasting value relative to their bulk. The main improvements in ship design and performance over the period in which monsoon winds controlled the rhythm of trade and navigation in the eastern seas occurred not in hull design or construction but in the steering mechanism and rigging of sailing vessels.

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26 The Monsoon Trade System

Early steering oars or sweeps gave way to tillers attached to hinged rudders in the thirteenth century, and these in turn were replaced in the eighteenth century by the wheel-controlled rudder, which could be steered much more readily by one or two seamen at a time. Heavy anchors could be manipulated by relatively small crews using the innovation of the capstan. These inventions gave a great saving in labour, especially in strong following winds and seas and in unprotected anchorages, such as were frequently encountered on the outward journey across the Indian Ocean when the boisterous southwest monsoon was at full strength. Likewise the reliable and dependable lateen sail eventually gave way to various combinations of squarerigged sails set on projecting yards and hoisted on two or three masts (Duché 1969, 43). These permitted an increased total area of canvas but featured more subdivisions for easier furling and handling. Square rigging was supplemented by fore-and-aft sails, doing the work of the older lateens with less need for heavy labour. These improvements in rigging gave greater flexibility and manœuvrability, while requiring fewer hands for making sail changes. During the latter part of the age of sail, indeed, Western merchant vessels were usually identified or classed according to their distinctive types of canvas rigging (e.g., brigs, schooners, ships, or barques) rather than by size. As intimated earlier, ships during the era of sail did not enjoy long service lives. After four voyages from England to the Orient, ships of the East India Company built of European oak, for example, were usually replaced as no longer seaworthy. After the advent of coppering – an eighteenth-century English innovation that protected the oak hulls of sailing ships from dry rot, barnacles, and wood worms – vessel life and performance both improved somewhat, with six voyages being considered the normal life of an East Indiaman (Parry 1971, 212). Vessels built in India of highly durable Asian teak had still longer service lives, a fact used to advantage in the later epoch of trade by the British East India Company. Major improvements in the design and use of navigational instruments, notably binnacles, astrolabes and sextants, chronometers, and sounding equipment, as well as more accurate charts, sailing instructions, and navigational tables, also greatly improved the ability of seamen during the age of sail to reduce the dangers and uncertainties of long voyages in the eastern seas. As will be discussed later, further revolutions in ocean navigation have greatly altered the nature of

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27 Revolutions in Shipping and Navigation

seaborne commerce. These have produced steel-hulled, screw-driven, fossil-fuel-powered vessels operated by a mere handful of people who are aided by automated navigation and propulsion equipment, satellite telecommunication, and positioning systems, and a host of other technological advances that have taken much of the uncertainty – and the sense of adventure and romance – out of the life of the modern navigator.

the role of the straits in trade and communication: general concepts Concepts drawn from economic geography and related disciplines can assist our understanding of the role of the Straits of Malacca and alternative waterways by illuminating the significance of long distance trade and the networks of routes and nodes through which it moves. Several of these concepts, which provide a geographic dimension to the more general modern theory of trade (the HechscherOhlin theory: Wood 1999, 153) and which some now consider classical interaction models, highlight the cost-related effects of distance and of impediments to trade, as well as the stimuli that gave rise to distinctive patterns of economic interaction. They must, however, be supplemented with more current concepts and ideas from political economy that set the study of commercial interaction within a milieu dominated currently by the phenomenon called globalization, within which supranational regional entities of considerable economic power have arisen. These concepts will be discussed in the next two chapters as a prelude to an examination of the practical incentives and disincentives that shaped the trade in different epochs.

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3 Economic-Geographic Concepts of Long-Distance Trade, Spatial Duopoly, and Network Structures

This chapter explores the factors that have promoted trade and transport through the Straits of Malacca and that, therefore, have made these straits important in global commerce. Understanding the significance of the straits means understanding the motives and processes that impelled the creators of the systems of goods exchange among geographically remote communities and induced them to overcome the costs and difficulties of long-distance trade. I begin with ideas of exchange derived from economic anthropology and then introduce geographic concepts relating to spatial patterns of trade flows.

exchange concepts Economic anthropologists identify several discrete types of goods exchanges. These comprise ritualised reciprocity (the balanced giving and receiving of gifts or presents of equivalent value), redistribution (the collection and subsequent disbursement of products by some centralized authority), administered trade (exchanges in which equivalencies are set by tradition, political fiat, or some other nonmarket mechanisms) silent barter (cross-cultural exchanges without actual face-to-face negotiation of trade equivalencies), and market exchange (the buying and selling or face-to-face barter of goods and services). The key characteristics of market exchange comprise haggling over

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29 Economic-Geographic Concepts

prices or negotiating mutually satisfactory equivalencies, which are thus ultimately set by demand and supply considerations (Le Clair and Schneider 1968). These modes of exchange are often regarded as forming a kind of hierarchy or scale related to the degree of sophistication of the economic and sociopolitical systems involved. Reciprocity is at the “lower” end of this scale, while market trade – especially over long distances – is usually associated with highly advanced economic and sociopolitical systems. The degree of geographic specialization of production and trade in goods that are surplus to local requirements has been the mark of economic development within human societies over an extended period. Long-distance trade involving overland transport or seaborne shipment has usually been associated in the past with the development of sophisticated tastes, acquisitive behaviour, and accumulated wealth in a society, often concentrated in the hands of an elite. In the modern era mass demand has also become a major stimulant of long-distance trading and complex marketing systems. The intricacies of such transactions often nurture the growth of a specialized class of merchants or middlemen who make their living through exchange dealings. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests that several forms of nonmarket and market exchange were present in the Asia-Pacific realm, including territories linked by the Straits of Malacca, from the earliest times. Some forms were based more on social, religious, or political motivations than on economic stimuli. An example of traditional, ritual exchanges of goods by water-borne transportation in the western Pacific was the Kula Ring of the Trobriand Islanders, probably carried on for centuries but first studied by Bronislaw Malinowski in 1915 (Malinowski 1932; Belshaw 1965, 12–20). Redistribution exchanges, common in early state societies in both the new and old worlds over several thousand years, included the tribute exacted from subjugated peoples in the Pharaonic Egyptian, Dynastic Chinese, and Roman empires in return for “gifts” bestowed by the governing power as a kind imperial favour (Dalton 1975). Formal, reciprocal exchanges among polities of equal power and status are a second kind of politically motivated interaction, as, for example, in the early southern Indian entrepot of Calicut (Thomaz 1993, 72). Economic exchanges over long distances based on motives of acquisitiveness among producers, consumers, and middlemen have frequently included transactions involving very different cultural

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30 The Monsoon Trade System

groups. These exchanges have at times depended on silent barter trade, for instance in parts of Africa during the early period of European contact (from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries). The common form of silent trade, which may also have been involved in exchanges among early polities in the Southeast Asian realm, involved goods from a distant culture being landed from a ship at a chosen place on shore. The sailor-merchants withdrew to wait some distance away while their prospective, often culturally dissimilar trading partners decided on an equivalent offer of goods. These were then placed near the seafarers’ trade articles, after which the local group also withdrew to wait at a distance. The foreign traders landed again to assess the value of the new bundle of proffered articles, often adjusting quantities and withdrawing several times before they were satisfied that the two bundles were equivalent in value. Then the merchant mariners removed the bundle of local produce and sailed away, leaving their “partners” in the trade to pick up the goods the seafarers had originally placed on shore. Once a bond of trust had been established in this way, silent trade may have continued for years or even centuries without close face-to-face contact between the trading partners. As human societies have become larger and more complex, however, highly sophisticated forms of indirect and direct exchange have emerged. Administered trade was a feature of some centrally planned economies in the twentieth century, but has since virtually ceased to exist, being replaced even in nominally Marxist states by market exchange and pricing. Barter and cash market trading are highly efficient systems that involve considerations of relative scarcity of supply and strength of demand as the mechanisms for setting the boundaries for agreement on the general equivalency of the goods offered and accepted in trade, with specific equivalencies being decided through haggling. Large numbers of buyers and/or sellers commonly negotiate face-to-face in such market exchanges and often haggle keenly before striking an accord. The kinds of state societies in which barter markets flourished certainly existed in the regions adjacent to the Straits of Malacca before the beginning of the Common, or Christian, Era (Sandhu and Wheatley 1983, 8–9). According to archaeological evidence, some of these polities give every indication of having engaged in barter trade with distant societies, often transporting their trade goods by water. The use of a medium of exchange, such as silver or gold coins, metal ingots, and even cowrie shells, is also indicated at various periods and places in the precolonial Asian trade pattern,

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31 Economic-Geographic Concepts

as discussed in a later chapter. This market-oriented form of trade, together with face-to-face barter exchange, predominated in the commercial flows through the Straits of Malacca over most of the period covered in this study. An earlier debate in the literature of economic anthropology focused on the question of a predominantly sociopolitical, as opposed to a purely economic, motivation for trade and marketing in the early empires and state societies (Le Clair and Schneider 1968; Dalton 1961,1–25). This book adopts the position that trade flows over the historic period in this region were and are predominantly economic in nature but that they are not without important sociopolitical ramifications, such as cementing alliances and cultivating useful cultural and political contacts. As economic interactions, trade and commerce are motivated by acquisitive aspirations of buyers and sellers intent on overcoming, and even benefiting from, regional disparities in the production of goods and services. These disparities give rise to comparative advantages favouring producers in different regions who specialize in the production of goods in which they enjoy a relative abundance of cheap, readily accessible, and exploitable raw materials or other productive factors. This doctrine of comparative advantage is at the basis of the modern theory of trade (Ohlin 1933). Of course, aberrations or distortions of these economic motivations have from time to time influenced the actions of merchants and traders. An example is the misguided notion, common during the mercantilist period of European history, that continuous accumulation of money or treasure is the key to real wealth, rather than the acquisition of the useful goods and services that such liquid currency or treasure could make possible. There was a failure at that time to appreciate the factor of price inflation that was exacerbated by such rampant mercantilist expansion. For a period, mercantilism had a significant impact on the fortunes of the trading systems utilizing the Straits of Malacca. In particular, mercantilist, rather than nonmarket, forms of exchange appear to have predominated at the entrepot of Melaka from the earliest recorded period (Thomaz 1993, 71). Sociopolitical influences are often closely associated with economic factors in the organization of trading systems, however. Over long distances, the goods transported between points of production and ultimate consumption may pass through many hands, and control of this system may, as mentioned earlier, be exercised by specialized middlemen and carriers who have a political stake in excluding

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32 The Monsoon Trade System

competition, maintaining by force if necessary their exclusive position as monopoly providers of intermediate transshipment or transportation. Military and naval power, therefore, is often a concomitant of commercial exchange and the maintenance of middlemen and carrier functions. This has certainly been the case for at least the past six centuries in the region bordering the straits. Similarly, where certain strategic points occur on trade routes, such as at a convenient transshipment port or entrepot or at a strategic waterway, naval and military power may be deployed to protect such a vulnerable point in a nation’s own trade system. Alternatively, it may be used to extract from other traders a toll reflecting the value of this waterway as a less-costly short-cut on otherwise long and dangerous shipping routes. In times of war such choke-points can be closed completely to hostile shipping, denying an opponent the advantage of using a strategic waterway. The history of commerce in the Straits of Malacca provides a very clear example of this.

geographic analyses of commodity flows Within the geographic discipline, international waterborne trade can be viewed as a subtopic within the field of spatial interaction, which includes analysis of commodity flows, population movements, and capital and information flows (Lowe and Moryadas 1975). Conventionally, these flows have been studied in a framework of flow stimulus factors (e.g., complementary supply-demand relationships for commodities produced in one place and demanded in another, “push” and “pull” factors influencing human migration, the global pattern of capital markets and centres of financial decision making and currency trading, and so on) and flow impediments, or factors producing friction against movement of goods, people, and capital or information. A major impediment or cost, of course, is the friction of distance against the movement of goods, which is proportional to the length of the trade voyage. This factor, together with the complementary factors of volume of supply and demand (often represented by a surrogate such as populations of origin and destination regions) has frequently been incorporated into the classical gravity model of human interaction, long used by geographers but enjoying a recent revival in the discipline of economics, where it is considered something of a novelty.

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33 Economic-Geographic Concepts

This study, in short, follows the general conceptual approach discussed above that views the role of the Straits of Malacca in the light of hemispheric – and in some aspects, global – patterns of demand and production of trade-goods funnelled through the straits, but it is mindful of the fact that these patterns are constrained by various physical and human-created impediments or by transportation costs and hazards. These relationships can be grouped under the following headings: complementarity (specific supply-demand relationships); transferability (the degree to which the goods being transported can overcome costs or withstand hazards encountered en route from origin point to destination, which generally increase commensurately with distance travelled – hence the term “friction of distance”); intervening opportunity (the presence or absence of more suitable and better-located alternative supply points or markets for the goods in question); and substitutability (the ease with which alternatives or substitutes for the specific goods might be produced and the degree to which the mobile factors of production for those goods might move in their stead: Freeman 1973, 31–5). The way in which flows are organized by the agency initiating movement of goods also has a geographic component. At times, although relatively rarely, flows of goods enjoy a spatial monopoly: an environment in which no rival organization challenges for the right to compete with the specific flows into a particular spatial market. More often, however, there is some degree of competition and interpenetration of a spatial market by alternative suppliers and interchangeable goods. The well-known economic concept of comparative advantage in trade, which helps to explain the patterns of global and regional commodity flows, also has a geographic component, since the patterns of productive-factor endowments that underlie this model show regional variation and, thus, impinge on the factor of competition in trade. Even where global markets may be ruled by atomistic (near perfect) competition, at the local scale, there may be something akin to a spatial monopoly enjoyed by a local supplier for a particular product. Thus, even if the product price is spatially invariant, the fact that the suppliers or producers are geographically separate means that consumers will not be indifferent to which marketplace they frequent but will be likely to deal with the closest producer, simply because travel costs to that location are less than to an alternative producer’s location. This principle is the basis for the well-developed body of theory

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34 The Monsoon Trade System

of consumer behaviour known as central place theory (Berry 1967). It can be argued that seafaring merchants plying the trade routes of the East tended historically to act in accordance with this principle. Geographical models of trade stress that, besides economic conditions of supply and demand in the producing and consuming regions engaging in trade, the costly friction of distance acting against the free flow of goods between distant trading partners is also an important consideration in explaining commodity trade (Freeman 1973, 47–8). All other things being equal, we expect (and the gravity model predicts) that higher volumes of trade will flow between adjacent partners with given population sizes and market conditions than between similar but further removed trading societies, and considerations of transport cost will dictate that only those goods valuable enough to withstand the friction of distance will be exchanged over great geographic distances. Similarly, where a closer supply of a certain good is available, a society will draw its supplies from that “intervening opportunity” in preference to a more distant source of the same good that would be more costly to transport, even if the market price at that distant point may be somewhat lower. Refinements to this classic geographical model of trade have included the consideration of technological factors that improve accessibility while reducing the costs of transportation, as well as complexities of cultural, political, demographic, economic, and environmental factors that alter supply and demand conditions in the trading partners themselves. Some of these factors are detailed in the next chapter under the rubric of political-economic concepts of trade. Under certain circumstances, of course, transshipment becomes inevitable, as between different modes of transportation (e.g., sea and land) or where intermediate manufacturing, bulking, or “break-bulk” operations take place. Such nodes become entrepots with special importance in the trading system and often occur at points of centrality in the network, i.e., at places of convergence of many trade routes. The development of the ports of Melaka (Malacca), Pulau Pinang, and Singapore, as will later be explained, owes much to this concept of strategically located entrepots. Changes in trade patterns through time, therefore, are explained in the theory of trade by an alteration in the mix of the explanatory factors mentioned above. Trade is, of course, a dynamic phenomenon that is connected with the development of the societies that engage

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35 Economic-Geographic Concepts Motherland

Colony Initial search phase of mercantilism

ation

Economic inform

ge

ed

rch

for

l ow kn

a Se

Testing of productivity and harvest of natural resources

Tim

ber

Ships with producers plus their st

Fish

Furs

aple prod

uction

Periodic Staple Production

Fisherm

en and

other p

roduce

rs

Planting of settlers who produce staples and consume manufactures of the home country

Point of attachment

Figure 1

Vance’s mercantile model: Initial stages in colony-motherland trade (Vance 1970)

in exchange, and this relationship of trade and development is treated in several other geographical models, notably those of Vance, Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould, and Bronson. James Vance’s mercantile model of trade considers a relationship between a developed society (such as Europe) and an undeveloped territory with which it conducts an exploitive trade based on valuable, staple commodities such as furs or precious metals that can withstand long-distance transportation (Vance 1970). This model details the pattern of penetration of transport lines into the interior of the new territory and of settlement and development geared to

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36 The Monsoon Trade System I2

I1

I1

I2

P2

P1 P2

P1

Stage 1

Stage 3

Stage 2

I1

I2

I1

I2

N1

N2

N1

N 2 N1

P1

P2

Stage 4 coastal villages (pre-colonial) colonial towns

Figure 2

P2

P1

Stage 5

I2

I1

N2

P2

P1

Stage 6

P1, P2 port cities

transportation lines

interior collection nodes N1, N2 intermediate nodes

trunk (high capacity) route

I1, I2

Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould’s model of transport network evolution in developing countries (Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould 1963)

the trading pattern (figure 1). The model by Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould (1963, 29) shows typical patterns of transport expansion in underdeveloped countries, detailing the way in which a network of penetration lines is established in a colonial territory as a consequence of ocean trade with a distant “mother” country (figure 2). Bennet Bronson’s model (1977, 39–52) is very similar to the earlier Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould model, showing riverine penetration lines into an interior trading hinterland by each of several coastal port settlements that engage in interregional trade (figure 3). (There is no evidence, however, that Bronson, an economic anthropologist, was aware of the earlier work in geography on essentially the same kind of phenomenon – an argument for greater interdisciplinary coordination and awareness.) Each of the models discussed above has relevance for the real-world pattern of trade that emerged in the Straits of Malacca, although they all have certain deficiencies that require discussion. For example, all of them neglect to make explicit their underlying assumptions about

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37 Economic-Geographic Concepts

F

F

F

F

E

E D

C

B

D

C

C

B A

A

X

D

C mountains

C

D

C

1

ocean

X

Key A, A : competing river mouth 1 trade centres (first order centres) B,C,D: second, third and fourth order centres at river junctions

Figure 3

E,F: X:

productive hinterland areas overseas trading partners

Bronson’s model of riverine system exchange (Bronson 1977)

the degree of competition among trading partners or about the efforts by the latter to secure greater comparative advantage in trade by adjusting their locations or expanding their hinterlands to undercut competitors. The models of Vance and, especially, of Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould imply that the “mother country” has a virtual monopoly over the trade in its colonial territory and that the spatial arrangement of port settlements, interior routeways, and nodes are the result simply of fiat, based on efforts to extract the needed raw materials as efficiently as possible without the mechanism of competition. As applied to historical (and certainly to contemporary) trade in some parts of Southeast Asia, this assumption is questionable. Bronson’s model talks of competition between estuarine port settlements that struggle for control over their own interior hinterlands and against each other in a quest for a greater share of the trade with a distant foreland society that can switch allegiance among the rivals to suit itself. But although Bronson is really talking about dualistic competition between his estuarine states a and a 1, he does not introduce the concept of spatial duopoly in any operational sense, as does Harold Hotelling in his classic “ice-cream vendor” model of duopolistic competition in a linear market, the significant elements of which are reviewed below.

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38 The Monsoon Trade System

spatial duopoly models In long-distance trade, especially in the precolonial and colonial periods, there has arisen from time to time and in certain regions a situation strongly reminiscent of the classic duopoly concept, in which two competitors, manœuvring to gain the upper hand in a linear market, end up by locating literally side by side at the geographic centre of the market. This is a real-life, geographic instance of the icecream vendor problem, first theorized by Hotelling (1929, 41–57), that is illustrated in figure 4. Examples of this problem have previously been described for the fur trade system in the Canadian West (Freeman and Dungey 1981, 252–70). This duopolistic process, shown here as a sequence of stages, can at times be destructive and mutually ruinous unless a modus vivendi can eventually be arrived at between the two competitors. During the duopolistic competition process each will attempt to capture part of its rival’s market, and locational moves and counter-moves (“leap-frogging” over their competitor) will give first one the edge, then the other. Eventually, an equilibrium stage or situation will be reached, usually as one of the competitors completely overpowers its rival and absorbs its market share or, alternatively, as the two vendors decide to operate side by side in a peaceable fashion. The end-product will be a spatial market shared equally by the competitors from their joint, centralized location. For a period, as will be discussed later, trade patterns in the straits evinced elements of strong duopolistic competition. A variant of Hotelling’s duopolistic model, also more common in the past, is consensual, or partitioned, monopoly. A relevant example involves the empires of the Spanish and Portuguese, whose monarchs, by signing the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 under the mediation of Pope Alexander VI, agreed to divide the known world so that each had an equal share of global wealth and each enjoyed a monopoly within an exclusive sphere of influence (Morse 1966, 1; Parry 1971, 17). The Portuguese “share” of Asia incorporated India, the Spice Islands and Melaka, while the Spaniards were awarded the Philippines. Variants of Hotelling’s spatial duopoly model, therefore, have important applications to the pattern of trade focused on the Straits of Malacca, where powerful rivals jockeyed for geographical, as well as economic and political, advantages. Hotelling’s model shows that where a market is contested by two relatively equal competitors, a

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39 Economic-Geographic Concepts

Stage 1

A

J

B

X

Y

Stage 2

A X

J

B Y

Stage 3

B

J

A Y

X

Stage 4

J A

B Y

X market midpoint

Key A,B: competing market vendors

J: point of indifference in consumer travel to market

X–Y: linear market segment

Figure 4

Hotelling’s spatial duopoly model (Freeman and Dungey 1981; Hotelling 1929)

fairly predictable sequence of moves and countermoves by the antagonists can be anticipated, as each attempts to “trump” the other and garner a greater share of an extensive linear or spatial market through preemption. The concept of spatial duopoly thus helps to explain why bitter trade rivals were impelled at various points in the history of the Asian trade to converge on a critical, central nexus in the system of trade routes between the West and the Orient – the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. The turbulent commercial histories of rival port polities in Sumatra and Java during the period 1000–1400 ce, leading to the emergence of a handful of dominant but almost adjoining ports in this region, may be interpreted in this light (Hall 1985, 220). Some of the Sumatran polities, such as Jambi, also expanded through the

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40 The Monsoon Trade System

acquisition of upstream (hulu) hinterlands that had previously been tied to competing estuarine (hilir) trading centres (Andaya 1993, 102). The critical nexus in the trade system that endured longest and was most influential, however, was at Melaka. This commercial node was never simply an outport for a productive hinterland, such as was the case for other regional port polities. On the contrary, almost from its inception Melaka acted first and foremost as an entrepot, deriving its wealth from importing, warehousing, and re-exporting produce from widely scattered forelands (Thomaz 1993, 71). Its importance is ascribable purely to its location at a strategic point where all shipping routes were obliged by geographic conditions to converge and where monopoly control of the entire regional system was possible for any power strong enough to take sole possession of this pivotal location. The quest for monopolistic control was a prime motivation of many trading powers operating in the eastern seas. Curiously, some major trading polities, such as the Chinese, seemed uninterested in projecting direct monopolistic control over the area, being content with gestures of fealty by local rulers in the Nanyang (southern seas). Duopolistic or multilateral competition was, nevertheless, more often the norm even in the era during which British sea power utterly eclipsed rival claimants for this coveted, pivotal location at the convergence of hemispheric trade routes. The British, with their leanings toward free trade, never pressed their monopolistic advantage to its fullest extent, as the Dutch and Portuguese before them had attempted unsuccessfully to do. It remains, however, to be explained in detail why, of all possible alternatives this small segment of the global trade routes passing through the Malay world proved to be so crucial. That explanation will occupy subsequent chapters of this book.

concepts of imperialism Other themes and emphases in geography that bear on the significance of the Malacca trade gateway include studies in the geography of imperialism, specifically, the spatial implications and underlying motivations for European colonization and hegemony over less-developed territories and peoples. Recent geographic approaches to this topic tend to adopt a postmodern perspective (Godlewska and Smith 1994). Geographic studies of colonial domination in the Malaysian realm also comprise works examining hill stations – Imperial Belvederes – and

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41 Economic-Geographic Concepts

important entrepots such as Singapore and Melaka (Aiken 1994; Sandhu and Wheatley 1983, 1989). In this book, however, imperialism constitutes a backdrop to the geographical, economic, and political manœuvrings of traders using the straits and its entrepots that are of central interest.

geographic concepts of transportation network structure Another useful set of geographic perspectives on trade flows such as those in the straits region involves ideas borrowed from graph theory in which the system of trade is envisaged as a network of nodes, or points of convergence of routeways, along which various types of flows take place. The locations of these nodes and the orientation and configuration of routeways is based on the factors mentioned earlier (complementarity, transferability, intervening opportunity, and substitutability). Thus, geographic patterns within transportation networks are readily understandable and quantifiable, showing both clear spatial order and continuous adjustment in accordance with changing patterns and magnitudes of flow stimuli and impediments. Commodities flowing through systems of transportation networks involving routes and nodes that function as points of origin, destination, and transshipment of goods can thus be visualized as topological entities, comprising simple, two-dimensional patterns of paths and nodes. Such patterns are classed in network terminology as trees, that is, patterns involving both trunk and branching lines without closed circuits. Trade flows in the river systems feeding into the Straits of Malacca are of this type. Some of the paths – the trunk lines – are more heavily travelled than others and are more central to the network, indicating that these paths and their associated nodes have a higher order of significance and centrality, with greater connectivity to other parts of the network system (Kansky 1963, 1–4). Where a large number of paths or routes converge on a particular node in the system such that its volume and frequency of traffic greatly exceed others, this node is said to have primacy in the hierarchy of nodes. The functions of such primate nodes in a network tend to be more complex and far-reaching, reflecting the importance of the node (Dolman and van Ettinger 1992, 9). Flows along certain routes or paths can be one-way, indicating, for example, purely extractive functions of the particular routes and load

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centres, or two-way, indicating more balanced communication and commerce, such as would occur at entrepots in a trade system. Twoway routes and nodes tend to have higher-order positions in a hierarchy of nodes and routes in a network, with a greater traffic frequency, and thus tend to occupy areas of higher connectivity and centrality in a transportation system. Entrepots use their favoured locations within connectivity networks to expand the range and scale of their trading operations, developing warehousing, transshipment, finance, and insurance functions, as well as merchandising and servicing activities such as ship procurement, repair, refuelling, and refurbishing. While some entrepots have grown by diversifying from their primarily hinterland-serving functions, others lack local hinterlands altogether, thriving only on their participation in long-distance, waterborne commerce. In the transport networks or trading systems that focus on the Straits of Malacca, therefore, it is possible to classify various nodes in accordance with their degree of centrality and functional significance, with emporia such as Melaka, Pulau Pinang, and Singapore emerging at particular times as primate nodes by virtue of their great importance as entrepots and as major points of convergence of numerous shipping routes.

gateways Favoured locations of this sort, sitting astride the confluence of numerous routeways that connect the location to a large number of far-flung nodes, are identified as gateways in the network system (Lowe and Moryadas 1975, 54–6). All networks, however, have limits on the quantity of flows and the frequency of vessels that can pass through them in a given time period. Network capacity, in other words, is a limiting factor on the successful operation and expansion of a trading system. Both individual nodes and routes can have an effect on limiting the capacity of the entire network, using the analogy of the weakest link that limits the strength of an entire chain or the slowest vessel in a wartime convoy that limits the speed of the entire flotilla. Capacities of nodes – for example, ports or load centres such as those in the straits area – can be gauged by the relative rates of arrival and departure of vessels as well as their tonnages. If the two rates are equivalent, then the capacity of the node will never be exceeded, all else being equal. If, on the other hand, the rate of arrival exceeds

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the rate of departure of vessels from the port, then clearly it will be only a matter of time before there is a line of waiting vessels forming at the entrance to the port, indicating that its capacity has been exceeded. It takes only one such node in a system to produce eventual paralysis in the entire network, as the back-up of vessels or vehicles extends backwards to produce a traffic jam or, ultimately, grid-lock in the entire system. Even when the average rates of arrival and departure of vessels from a node are equal, however, through the laws of probability there can still be periods when traffic jams in the system will occur. It is, therefore, imperative for the healthy functioning of a trade network that there be excess capacity in the traffichandling ability of all nodes and especially of the main entrepots or gateways. To the present, although congestion occurs occasionally at ports such as Singapore and Kelang in the straits region and demurrage costs consequently increase, port facilities have been periodically upgraded and expanded and thus appear adequate to handle the steadily increasing absolute tonnages of merchant shipping in the region for some time to come. The same problems of capacity apply to the routeways connecting nodes in the transport network. Ocean shipping systems are not usually subject to capacity limitations on routes, since vessels can spread out and thus avoid crowding on the high seas. At certain places in a network, however, such a dispersal of vessels is not possible, and the monitoring and regulation of traffic separation and queuing become critical issues. Unlike motor vehicles in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a road, large ocean-going vessels cannot stop and start rapidly, and especially when there is heavy traffic in a seaway, vessels must observe speed and separation restrictions to avoid catastrophic collisions. These considerations, as will be explained in more detail later, apply with particular significance to the contemporary shipping patterns through the Straits of Malacca and some of its alternative routeways, where the term “transport bottleneck” is increasingly an appropriate description. With transit frequencies exceeding 280 large vessels per day – not taking into account the myriad smaller, crossstraits and local trading, fishing, ferry, and pleasure craft – the Straits of Malacca comprise one of the most congested waterways in the world. The implications of this fact will be also be discussed in detail in a later chapter. Concepts of spatial organization of trade networks and entrepots provide only a partial framework for understanding the trade systems

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that converge at the Straits of Malacca. In the contemporary era, trends such as the globalization of commerce, the rise of supranational economic regions, and novel production systems under transnational corporate umbrellas have supplanted older economic arrangements. These trends, together with the concomitant displacement of the nation-state as the principal economic actor in international commerce and on-going revolutions in the speed, reach and effectiveness of communications technologies, all require that classical geographic concepts be viewed in the light of newer ideas from the discipline of political economy. These concepts and ideas will be dealt with in the following chapter.

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4 Concepts and Perspectives from Political Economy

The political economy perspective, which focuses on relationships between political power and wealth creation (Underhill 1994, 17), is of increasing relevance to an understanding of economic interaction in the straits region as we move into the twenty-first century. Such relationships may be either harmonious or conflict-ridden, and, as Jacob Viner (1948–9, 10) once pointed out, both kinds of relationship have for an extended period been intertwined in the creation and execution of state policies. External political and economic relations, not simply domestic policies and wealth creation within states, have long been interpreted in the light of concepts and perspectives of political economy. But in the past several decades – and particularly since the decline of the centrally planned and socialist state systems, the ascendancy of transnational corporate and institutional structures and of regionalism within states has raised questions about the continued relevance of some traditional viewpoints from political economy. Thrift (1999, 58–9), for example, contends that while the disciplines of political economy and economics are important as discursive elements of states – conceptualizing and justifying policy matters that states determine to be of economic importance – capitalist businesses in the contemporary world may “play to different drums.” With the exception of financial economics, which is one of the foundation stones of corporate finance, political-economic principles or theories, in Thrift’s view, currently have little bearing on the conduct of business. In

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essence, therefore, corporations in the contemporary global milieu function more on the basis of political and commercial pragmatism than on the basis of formal theory. Baldwin et al. (1999, 1) comment that while political economy analysis views regionalism as more attractive than multilateralism to producers and traders, more attention needs to be given to economic analysis of the institutional arrangements for trade decisions within trade blocs. In this chapter I will argue that concepts and viewpoints from political economy, far from being of declining significance, have a continuing role in illuminating the functions of states, transnational and multilateral institutions, and corporate structures. They are thus a valuable supplementary framework within which to examine economic and political factors underlying interactions in the region of the Straits of Malacca. These conceptual elements, together with the notion of regional integration, form a complementary overlay on the economic-geographic concepts of trade and spatial interaction mentioned in the previous chapter. Important perspectives from political economy include the profound significance of globalization and regionalism (between which there is a complex dialectic: Higgott 1999, 95) and the supremacy in the post-Cold War world of marketdriven, corporate agendas over nonmarket, ideological forces in international production and trade patterns.

changing roles and significance of the state In the classical models of trade and international economic interaction discussed in the previous chapter, it was assumed that the main actors in commodity trade, capital flows, and aggregate labour migration were state entities. Current viewpoints have stressed the need to modify these classical assumptions to take account of the growing importance of supranational and subnational structures that have gained power in the contemporary global political-economic order. Gertler (1997, 23) asserts that “the nation-state is increasingly less functional [or] central to the needs of contemporary capitalism.” In the context of developments in Southeast Asia, however, Lasserre and Schutte (1995, 281) argue conversely that “strong government is seen as essential to the initiation and pursuit of successful development policies.” The emerging consensus appears to be that, while the

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state remains the most crucial element in the analysis of trade and international political relations, it can no longer be viewed as a monolithic entity in decision-making. As Underhill (1994, 22–23) comments, the state may still be a key decision-making institution, but there is a new interdependence “among states and their societies.” Contemporary, neorealist perspectives stress the importance of understanding the content of domestic politics (a reflection of this new interdependence) within influential states that are engaged in international economic interaction as a necessary basis for understanding their behaviour in the global community (31). The above viewpoints are, of course, based more on simple observation than on abstract theory: by the start of the twenty-first century the world had witnessed more than a decade of political movement toward neoliberalism and deregulation of a kind not seen since the early 1930s. This has been associated with moves at the global scale to relax restrictions on trade and financial flows (but not, to the present, on mass international movements of labour). This spirit of political openness and readiness to accept global integration as desirable and even inevitable is unprecedented and is, without doubt, a major driving force for profound economic restructuring. As Wallerstein (1971, 364) prophetically remarked, “political breakthroughs make possible the process of economic change.” The Southeast Asian states, particularly those most heavily engaged in international trade, have been embroiled in a process of political transformation over the past decade or more that is leading them inexorably toward greater international integration both politically and economically. Moves toward greater democracy in post-Suharto Indonesia and changes toward business-friendly governments in Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines have shared the spotlight with hesitant, yet positive, steps toward social and economic deregulation in mainland China and Vietnam. China, in particular, has begun to reap the benefits of this process of integration and internal transformation. In the years since the Asian financial crisis of 1997, China has received annual inflows of foreign direct investment (fdi) of almost $40 billion, in contrast to still-faltering Indonesia, which suffered a net outflow of $4 billion in 1999–2000 (Economist 2001c, 9). China’s turbulent external political relationships – particularly those with the new u.s. administration that took power in 2001, together with the global economic slowdown and the commercial disruption that followed the events of

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11 September 2001, appear to be the only impediments to an even more impressive upsurge within China of foreign investment and industrial predominance in the Asia Pacific realm. Even in the face of the economic slowdown, increases in gdp of over 7 percent per annum have been the norm for China in recent years. In summary, while states – as primary policy-making entities – are clearly undergoing political and economic transformations that have profound implications for their places and roles in global and regional interactions, they retain their essential importance as actors in this process. This continues to be true despite stresses within some of them that threaten political fragmentation (currently evident in Indonesia, for example) and despite pressures exerted on them to readjust their policies, production, and trade to fit into the new relationships of globalization and regionalization.

concepts of globalization In the disciplines of political economy, economic history, and geography a large literature has recently emerged on the phenomenon of globalization. This is variously defined as a process of world-scale economic integration, the creation of a new global political order, or the ascendancy of hegemonic, international political or commercial structures that grew out of formerly state-oriented institutions (Hettne 1999, 3). The nature and implications of globalization have, concomitantly, become the subject of intense debates. Like its physical counterpart – global warming – the economic-political concept of globalization raises two separate questions. First, is it a real phenomenon or simply an intellectual construct? And second, if it does exist, is globalization, on balance, a negative or a positive process? The preponderance of recent studies have concluded that the phenomenon is undoubtedly real and is gaining in importance as a framework for understanding changing relationships in the contemporary world. Thus, Higgott (1999, 92) defines globalization as “the emergence of a set of sequences and processes increasingly less hindered by territorial or jurisdictional barriers and one that enhances the spread of trans-border practices in economic, political, cultural, and social domains.” The actual “sequences and processes” are not specified in this definition. The difficulty with settling on a broadly acceptable definition of globalization is, obviously, the complexity and subtlety of the concept, as Higgott’s definition indicates. A

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summation of the earmarks of globalization might include the following characteristics: 1 a weakening (but not elimination) of the individual nation-state as an independent agent of economic regulation and its partial replacement by nonstate (i.e., corporate, ngo, or multinational) and parastatal organizations that have global, or at least international, economic power; 2 the triumph of global (corporate) market capitalism over (national) central planning and socialism as a basis for the production and redistribution of wealth; 3 the maturing of technological means of global dissemination of information, especially economically useful information, unhindered by national borders and featuring almost instantaneous transmission; 4 transnational corporate mergers and other forms of business reorganization aiming to secure stronger competitive positions in global markets; 5 the rise of global financial networks organized from an axis of three world financial centres (London, New York, and Tokyo); and 6 active courting by competing nation-states (some in Southeast Asia) of transnational corporations with global production and marketing ambitions, challenging established Western manufacturing “core areas” or else linked to them. In the present context, which is focused on explaining the role of the Straits of Malacca, the key elements of globalization are the internationalization of commodity production, investment, and merchant banking; national and multilateral policies of regulation and deregulation; and the institutions governing the distribution, marketing, and consumption of goods and services that are reshaping the commercial flows in and around the straits. Although the political economy of international trade is important, as Higgott (1999, 95) cautions, an excessive concentration on trade in the globalization literature has led to the neglect of the political economy of capital mobility and the lesstangible question of regional identity building. Inter- and intraregional capital flows in Southeast Asia, as will be discussed in part 5, have been fundamental in underpinning the region’s development by providing the finance needed for new ventures in a period characterized by fiercely competitive global capital markets. More generally,

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the place of Southeast Asia in the globalization process needs to be clarified, since this region has been notable over the past decade for the pace at which it has been transforming itself – notwithstanding the short, sharp Asian financial crisis in 1997–98 – and globalization has been acknowledged as a driving force in this transformation (Olds et al., 1999, 1). One of the key ingredients in this process has been the ascendancy of transnational corporations (tncs) ready to exploit labour, raw material, financial, and market opportunities at a global scale and able to achieve unprecedented levels of growth and profitability from their global vision and reach. In the view of some political economists, this disruption of preexisting concepts of spatial differentiation and interaction has brought about “the end of geography” (Hettne 1999, 3).

regionalism and the global-local dialectic Some theorists consider that evolving relationships among states need to be viewed in the context of a changing dialectic between globalization and the conscious formation of regional groupings: a dialectic that influences both the processes and the ideology of economic management (Higgott 1999, 95). Again, a debate is raging over whether such regional integration arrangements and sharpened regional identities are building blocks or stumbling blocks in the multilateral trading system (Bhagwati 1991, quoted in Winters 1999, 7). There is some consensus that regionalism may be both a reaction against globalization and a mechanism (involving supranational integration or agglomeration of states) by which globalization has progressed. In its latter manifestation, regionalism has emerged as “a potent force in the global restructuring of power and production” (Mittelman 1999, 25). Besides seeing it as a response to globalization, however, some analysts have viewed it as a mechanism for the creation of a shared identity and a community of interest among contiguous actors at different spatial and institutional scales (Hveem 1999, 103–4). Global market integration has been accompanied by various forms and patterns of institutionalized regional economic interaction that have become, in some instances, strong and effective supranational entities (Coleman and Underhill 1998, 1–3). Some of these, such as nafta and the eu, show every sign of expanding into even broader and more powerful regional groupings. Thus, in 2001 the heads of

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state of all nations in the Americas and the Caribbean (with the single exception of Communist Cuba) met in Quebec City, to explore the possibilities of creating a free trade area of the Americas (ftaa) that would embrace twice the population of the eu and would be the world’s most powerful regional economic association. Other economic regions, such as Mercosur (incorporating Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay), appear to be in decline or in a state of transition to newer, more broadly encompassing forms such as the nascent ftaa. It seems that the new regionalism is producing diverse supranational entities, some of which may indeed be stepping stones in the path toward greater global integration, while others more closely resemble either stumbling blocks or a veritable cul-de-sac. Only continuous monitoring of the formation of such cooperative entities in a comparative political-economic framework will resolve Bhagwati’s conundrum concerning the enabling or inhibiting role of various regional groupings in an era of globalization (Higgott 1998, 42). In geography, where the current debates about globalization and regionalism are no less lively, regions – the entities that are the ingredients or the end-products of regional integration – gain their distinctiveness, identity, and boundaries through either their functional or their formal characteristics, or both. Political and economic regions are functionally integral, spatial entities that evolve through time under the effects of economic, social, and political processes, and regional integration involves the process of forming or reforming such cohesive and distinctive entities under changing global and local circumstances (Potter et al. 1999, 82). Thus, in political geography, regional integration is the focus of a subfield of integration theory that emerged specifically to deal with incidences of regionalism in the global system (Nieman 2000, 15). As a consequence of the processes mentioned above, local distinctiveness, far from being eliminated or homogenized by globalization, may instead be accentuated and underscored. Caught up in this regional realignment, the contemporary state is increasingly subjected to a tug-of-war between forces of subnationalism and supranationalism, both of which are creating new regional patterns and new local opportunities for post-Fordist, global enterprises. The production modes in such enterprises involve localization – that is, sensitivity to and exploitation of local circumstances. This makes possible rapid responses to changes in niche markets, e.g., shifts in regional consumer tastes, product demand-design linkages, quicker time-to-market, and

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more effective client-customer services. Thus, advantages of industrial agglomeration still exist at certain localities in a global economic system and are exploited by firms and nation-states that provide incentives to multinational corporations to locate and do business there. This is leading to global networks of local production agglomerations (Gertler 1997, 23). Significantly, in the straits region, as will be discussed in part 5, the Singapore-Johor-Batam growth triangle is just such a region. It must be noted, however, that as regards agglomeration or regionalisation, firms do not behave – economically or politically – in the same manner as states. Corporations, for example, are not democratically run, and their policies are not driven by populism; when they integrate, they may do so through hostile take-overs almost as much as through voluntary mergers; these days they do not insure themselves against future uncertainty or vulnerability by stockpiling necessities but operate on just-in-time principles; and they can rearrange their global production without much concern for the effects of such rearrangement on local populations and without much fear of a backlash. While agglomerations of international firms result in industrial regions, therefore, these regions do not necessarily act in the same manner as regional groupings of nation-states. Concepts from political economy are, thus, potentially useful adjuncts to geographic and economic models in explaining patterns of interaction among polities using or bordering on the Straits of Malacca. A necessary additional consideration, however, is the very practical matter of the specific incentives that impelled traders, both past and present, to ship merchandise through the straits. The discussion of these incentives – in particular the main commodities that comprised the trade and the organization of the commercial systems set up to satisfy the demand for these commodities – will occupy the following chapter.

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5 Practical Incentives and the Organization of Early Long-Distance Trade

The story of trade, according to a popular generalization, is the story of spices. While this association of a single class of precious commodities with the origins of commerce may be an overstatement, it carries an underlying grain of truth: no long-distance trade would occur unless the economic or sociopolitical rewards for the difficulties, costs, and risks of such exchanges were considered ample by those engaged in them. While the last hundred years have witnessed the growth of long-distance bulk transportation of raw materials or fuels that are low in value relative to their volume, in past epochs, as we have seen, navigation was so hazardous and expensive that such items were not often carried as principal cargo over very long distances. It must, however, be remembered that some materials that today are considered of low value, such as iron, charcoal and common salt, were in such high demand in the preindustrial world that they sometimes comprised the principal commodities in long-distance commerce, for example in the trans-Sahara overland trade in precolonial Africa. There is, however, some evidence that the transport of staples and other bulk goods in earlier epochs may have been linked mainly with the trade in luxuries (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 76–7). In many cases such bulky, low-value commodities may have comprised back-haul cargoes, stocks of “trade baubles” to be exchanged with local peoples for precious furs, gems, or aromatics, or even a form of ballast. Indeed, relatively few trade goods were of such outstanding

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quality, rarity, and durability and in such demand and of such value relative to their bulk that they could overcome the huge friction of distance involved in overseas trade, and very few could be relied upon to satisfy the merchants’ requirement of ample and assured profitability. The list of such rare and valuable commodities has, since time immemorial, included precious metals, jewels and pearls; aromatics and perfumes; furs, ivory, tortoiseshell, and horn; rich and costly fabrics, intricate artworks, manufactures embodying much skill, novelty, and ingenuity; exotic creatures, slaves, and concubines; medicines and mood-altering substances; rich foods; and, last but not least, flavourings and spices.

”for christ and spices:” the admixture of religious and commercial motivations for trade in premodern southeast asia The term by which the Sumatra – Malay Peninsula area was known to the Greco-Roman world was Chersonesus Aureus: the Golden Chersonese. The glittering prize that impelled European adventurers over the centuries to brave the dangers of the journey to the remote East, however, was spice rather than gold, even though this metal, together with tin, has long been produced in considerable quantities in the straits region. The great value of spices in times past came not only from their prized qualities as food and drink flavourings and preservatives but also from their use as herbal remedies believed to be effective against a wide range of maladies. Obtaining them was well worth the cost and the risk. To Europeans in the age of sail, the term “spice trade” was synonymous with sea voyages to the Orient – daring and dangerous, but richly rewarding. En route to the East, intrepid European mariners encountered merchants and emissaries from many other cultures. In the trade ports they dealt with Arabs, Persians, Indians, Indonesians, Siamese, and Chinese with whom they shared little other than the determination to garner as much wealth as they were able and the hope that, through pious devotion or appeasement of supernatural forces, they could escape the earthly perils of seafaring and eventually secure favours in the afterlife. Many, especially Christians and Muslims, also felt compelled to spread their creeds to all with whom they came in contact. Indeed, more than a few merchants were religious zealots

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who wielded considerable spiritual and sociopolitical, as well as economic, influence in the region (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 6). Thus did Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity take root in various emporia and their hinterlands within the monsoon trade region while the wealth and temporal power of merchant elites increased. Spices and aromatics, more valuable relative to their bulk than gold, were, therefore, the main incentives for Western and Arab sailor-merchants to risk their fortunes and their lives in long-distance exchange with the East. But profitable trading in staples or other bulk goods and spreading the true faith were significant ancillary motives in certain periods. Some of the most extensive trading systems established over the centuries were built primarily on only one or a few commodities, as will be discussed in detail in part 2 of this book. Of the muchdemanded luxuries that spurred East-West commerce and underpinned major trading regimes the most significant were pepper, cloves, and nutmeg and mace (Reid 1993, 11). Pepper Probably no other commodity over the years has been more important in the monsoon trading system than Piper nigrum, the pungent berry of a tropical vine that has become the universal and indispensable article of cuisine known as black or white pepper. The difference between these two forms is a matter of quality and means of preparation, rather than any intrinsic botanical distinctiveness. Because the vine from which pepper is produced is notoriously delicate and demanding as regards its edaphic and climatic requirements, very few places on the globe can produce this crop with the requisite sustainability and quality. For many years its production was confined to a few favoured regions in southern India and Indonesia, notably the Western Ghats behind the Kanara and Malabar coasts in what is now the state of Kerala, India, as well as areas of northern and western Sumatra, Jambi (since the mid-sixteenth century), and the Sunda Strait area (Andaya 1993, 97). Pepper is a monsoon trade product par excellence, requiring a tropical wet-and-dry climate with two extensive rainy periods per year and uniformly hot conditions in order for the pepper vines to flourish and to bear high quality berries. In favoured monsoon regions soils recently cleared of forest vegetation through slash-and-burn techniques – and consequently

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with high initial fertility – have traditionally been planted with pepper vines, since this valuable crop requires the best available soils if it is to produce prolific harvests of top-quality pepper. In Kerala, for example, clearing and planting are governed by the onset of the rain-bearing southwest monsoon around early June. The vines take about three or four years to mature and will bear for several years thereafter until the soil becomes leached and the quality and quantity of pepper declines. In areas such as the Western Ghats, where annual rainfall may exceed five thousand millimetres, the process of leaching is swift, and the onerous process of slash-and-burn clearing and planting must be repeated frequently. Because the pepper berries, or corns, ripen unevenly on the tall vines, the harvest – involving selection and hand picking of the ripe berries only – is a labour intensive, time-consuming activity. The reddish berries are sorted and spread in the sun to dry into the familiar shrivelled black corns, and stalks are separated from the berries by either hand rubbing or mechanical means at this stage. White pepper is produced from the same species of vine as black pepper but is processed to remove the outer coating on the corns. Usually only the best-quality corns are selected for processing in this fashion. Since pepper is so difficult to produce and harvest and yet in such wide demand throughout the world, the laws of supply and demand have ensured that this spice is very high in value relative to its bulk. In the past it often ranked with gold and precious stones as one of the most valuable of all traded commodities. In the reign of the emperor Domitian a thriving pepper market was operating in Rome to satisfy the cravings of the patricians, and during the declining years of the Roman Empire a siege of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth in 408 ce was terminated only after payment of a ransom that included quantities of pepper as well as gold (Ferguson 1997, 6). Pepper was one of the main luxuries sought in the straits region by Chinese traders since at least the fourteenth century (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 25); it provided much of the wealth of Venice in its heyday, and was the basis for the attempted monopolization of European-Asian trade by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century (Disney 1978, v). Cloves The clove tree (Eugenia caryophyllus) has been cultivated in the Maluku (Molucca) and Banda islands for many centuries. It is native to the

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volcanic northern Malukan islands of Ternate, Tidore, Moti, Makian, and Bacan (L. Andaya 1993, 1). Cloves are actually flower buds picked from the trees while still unripe and then sun-dried. Trees reach maturity after about eight or nine years. For many years green cloves were used locally in Maluku as a delicacy and herbal medicine and when pickled, dried, and powdered or distilled to extract their essence, were avidly adopted by other Eastern and Western cultures that attributed numerous health benefits to their consumption in food or medicines. Cloves were the mainstay of the trade from the Spice Islands during the Portuguese and Dutch colonial periods, with Ternate and Tidore and, later, Ambon (Amboina) being important centres of production. The very demanding environmental conditions needed for the successful growth of clove trees, as well as the draconian efforts by the Dutch colonialists to limit planting and consolidate their monopoly on production, prevented widespread cultivation of this crop (Davies 1961, 55). Only a handful of locations around the globe, such as Martinique, Maluku, and Zanzibar – currently the world’s leading producer – are suitable for commercial production. Although delicate, clove trees will live and bear for a very long period under favourable conditions (Stavorinus 1798, 334). Indeed, at Afo, on the island of Ternate, there is a thriving clove tree – the world’s oldest – that has been dated as over four hundred years of age. Nutmeg and Mace The peach-like fruit of a single species of tropical tree (Myristica fragrans) produces both of the spices known as nutmeg and mace. Mace, the more expensive of the two, is the dried, reddish rind, or aril, surrounding the seed, while nutmeg is the powdered or grated kernel obtained by drying the seed, or nut, encased within the fruit. Again, Maluku and, especially, the Banda Islands – to which this species is native – were the prolific producers of these spices both before and during the colonial epoch. The Bandanese, aware that mace was in much greater demand than nutmeg, attempted to regulate the market by stipulating that merchants must agree to purchase certain quantities of nutmeg in order to be given access to the coveted supplies of mace (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 94). The Portuguese carried on direct trade with Banda for these spices, while the Dutch, after achieving dominance in the mace-producing regions of Maluku and Banda, strenuously resisted any attempts by other European traders to break

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their (nevertheless shaky) monopoly on production. They even went so far as to attempt to destroy both wild and cultivated stands on all islands except for the Banda Island group, which they controlled (L. Andaya 1993, 201). Their efforts were unsuccessful, however, and British-owned plantations of nutmeg were established in the straits region from the eighteenth century onward, first at Bencoolen (Bengkulu) on Sumatra, then in Pulau Pinang and even at Singapore. Production from estates and smallholdings throughout Indonesia and Malaysia still continues, although relative to other economic activities the nutmeg trade has declined considerably with time, and production has shifted significantly toward the New World, for example, the Caribbean island of Grenada. Other Spices and Aromatic Woods Cinnamon, camphor, aromatic woods and resins, and similar tree products likewise found their way into trade through the Straits of Malacca from very early times. The spice called cinnamon is actually the aromatic bark of several tropical Asian tree species, e.g., Cinnamomum zeylanicum – originating in Sri Lanka and the Malabar Coast of India (Arasaratnam 1986, 107) – as well as Cassia fistula or Laurus cassia obtained in Thailand (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 72). This spice remains a popular food and drink flavouring around the globe, currently being produced in considerable quantities in northern Sumatra. Sandalwood (Pterocarpus santalinus), used in fine furniture manufacturing and incense making, is still exported from the Sumba, Flores and Timor Islands, while camphor oil is produced from a tree (Dryopalanops aromatica) common in northern Sumatra and elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago. A form of incense obtained from various trees of the genus Styrax and known to generations of traders as benzoin or benjamin has formed a significant part of the trade from Sumatra, Java, and the Spice Islands until relatively recently. Ebony wood, obtained from trees of the genus Diospyros, which are found in a number of Indonesian islands, has also been in demand for high-quality carvings and furniture over many years. These and other tropical products, such as the tannic astringent gambier (Uncaria gambir), rattan or rotan canes (Calamus spp.), lac, edible sago, cardamom, and copra, added to the value of cargoes of spices, silks, precious metals, tea, cotton textiles, tortoiseshell, and even opium that drew traders from distant lands to the emporia in the Straits of Malacca for centuries.

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Gold and Tin Coinage and ingots made of gold and tin, together with silver bullion and specie, as well as gold dust, have been important as media of exchange in the Asian trade in past epochs. These metals were also in demand among elites both in Asian sultanates and kingdoms for personal adornment and religious regalia. An early reference to the special importance of gold and tin in the trade of ports such as SamudraPasai (northern Sumatra), their use as media for goods exchanges, and the fact that Sumatra was a major producer of these metals was given by Friar Odoric in the early fourth century (quoted in Hall 1985, 216–7). During the first millennium ce, when hostile tribes cut off access to Siberian gold mines, the Sumatran mines became more important to hemispheric trade. Indian merchants, in particular, sought out supplies of the precious metal from Southeast Asia, referring to these sources as Suvarnabhumi (golden land) or Suvarnadvipa (golden island: Stone 1965, 11). Aceh was long noted for its wealth in gold, displayed for example in its splendid mosque (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 365). Melaka obtained quantities of the precious metal during its Islamic period from the Sumatran region of Minangkabau. Tin has been produced from alluvial workings and mines throughout the Malay-Thai peninsula and the western Indonesian archipelago since before recorded history. Its popularity as a useful metal in the crafting of tools and weapons derives from its ease of smelting, durability, resistance to corrosion, and the practicality of alloys such as bronze that combine it with copper. Its use for bronze-alloy coinage was widespread in the ancient world. Pure tin ingots, however, were used as currency in Melaka and elsewhere in the Islamic period. Indeed, the powerful Melaka sultans for a time required neighbouring places along the straits, such as Perak, Selangor, and Klang, to supply stipulated quantities of the metal as a condition of treaties concluded with their rulers (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 29). Together with gold from the region and imported silver, tin played a significant role in the rise of powerful regional trading empires such as Srivijaya, Majapahit, and Melaka. This continued into the period of European colonial hegemony in the straits region (Hall 1985, 244). Extensive and sophisticated trading systems were organized by many polities, both European and Asian, for the express purpose of acquiring and controlling supplies of one or more of these principal trade commodities during the precolonial and colonial eras. While

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the detailed history of these administrative and logistical systems is beyond the scope of the present study, an understanding of the patterns of trade and entrepot locations in the straits region necessitates an overview at this point of the development of major European and Asian trading regimes and institutions and their connection with particular commodity complexes.

the evolution of european trading institutions The organization of long-distance trade by Europeans has shown a gradual evolution over many years. First came individualized trading initiatives, perhaps backed by a few rich investors and wealthy families. Then there was trade sponsored by the ruling elites of princely states, many of which could be termed thalassocracies (states based on seaborne commerce). Eventually there arose European joint-stock companies (the “companies of merchant adventurers” who often enjoyed monopolistic charters granted by a king or some other potentate), which in turn led to limited-liability companies and modern corporations that are frequently multinational or transnational in their institutional structures. In the history of trade through the Straits of Malacca, almost all of these forms of trade organization have been present at one time or another. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, European trade in the Indian Ocean was being conducted simultaneously by several quite different institutions. These included a state (the Kingdom of Portugal), which attempted to arrogate to itself monopoly rights over trade with the East; a handful of chartered companies from rival nations; and numerous adventurers trading without official licence or approval, often being closer in nature to privateers or buccaneers than legitimate merchants (Parry 1971, 59). As an example of a European state-operated trading system, the Portuguese trade involved exclusive rights of the Crown to conduct trade, the maintenance of both naval and land-based military forces for ensuring monopoly control, the building of fortified way stations and factories for victualling the trade, and the amassing of fleets of ships that were the property of the Portuguese Crown and operated on the sole behalf of the royal household. This complex militarymercantile system was centrally coordinated from Lisbon, with ecclesiastical and political goals also needing to be met throughout the

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far-flung parts of the system, not simply secular or economic objectives. Vice-regal capitals, notably Goa on the west coast of India, projected Crown control over both trade and missionary activities in Asia and were closely associated with the local production of precious commodities. In the case of Goa, among other functions close control was exercised over the trade in pepper from nearby Kerala as well as procurement of cinnamon from Malabar and Sri Lanka (Disney 1978: 24–5). A problem with such a Crown monopoly was that the commercial functioning of the system – the foundation needed to underwrite the religious and political goals of the state – was frequently neglected or subjected to arbitrary interference by noncommercial interests. Thus, missionary attempts to coerce “pagans” and “idolators” into accepting Christianity drove many merchants away from Portuguese controlled entrepots. There was, moreover, often a cavalier disregard for practical matters such as risks and costs. Extravagant, wasteful, and corrupt practices and lax administration jeopardized the entire trading system. No clear accounting of loss or profit from the trade was considered necessary: indeed, since often no organized records were kept, such an accounting was not even feasible. Favouritism and nepotism among courtiers, combined with private trading by colonial officials, undermined the royal monopoly on trade, and thus only a fraction of the wealth expected from the Indies actually reached the king (Masselman 1963, 222–3). The chartered companies of that period, on the other hand, operated without direct Crown control over their day-to-day functioning, and thus the commercial aspects of their operations were more prominent than the strategic, political, or religious aspects that were so noticeable in the case of the Portuguese state-operated system. Governments such as those of England or the Netherlands could thus escape the burdens of actual administration of the trade possessions and facilities established by their subjects, to whom were delegated the matters of defence of the system against competitors and the expensive administration of trading factories and logistical networks. The Crown could thus share in the profits of the trade without being obliged to underwrite the costs of maintaining the system. In the early seventeenth century a new type of company, the jointstock company, began to replace the older regulated companies (Chaudhuri 1965, 25). Major joint stock trading companies that operated in the East in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries

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included the English United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies – later known more simply as the British East India Company – which was chartered in 1599, and the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (voc), created in 1602. The English company’s European operations were concentrated in London under a charter granted by Elizabeth I for a period of fifteen years of exclusive trade. This commercial enterprise was the model for later English and European companies, such as the Royal African Company, formed in 1660, and the English Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay, chartered in 1670. The Dutch company, on the other hand, was created out of numerous small enterprises at the strong urging of the government of the United Provinces at the Hague (Israel 1989, 69). The intention in both Holland and England was to curb the mutually ruinous, chaotic trading by independents that threatened commercial stability and prosperity. Earlier West European trading ventures had been carried on by “regulated companies” and other small enterprises that grew out of the old medieval trading guilds. The system of regulated companies enforced apprenticeship as a means of gaining entry to the company unless payment of an agreed fee was made, subject to the approval of the existing company members. Individual members traded solely on their own account, however, but could be fined by the company for infringement of regulations. Where a regulated company had Crown permission to operate, no independent trading by any other subjects of the Crown was permitted. The royal charter for such regulated companies, in theory at least, provided protection against competitors both from within the European realm and from outside it. Joint-stock companies, by contrast, had the advantages of limited indemnity for members. Unlike the regulated companies, in which shareholders were liable for the company’s debts to the full extent of their household assets, in joint-stock companies liability was limited to the value of the shares held by an individual. No longer was it necessary to be an apprentice in order to join the company, and shares could be sold or transferred to others without first obtaining the consent of all company members (Ray and Freeman 1978, 11). Renewal of the royal charter, however, sometimes proved problematic. The English company’s charter was renewed several times – but not without difficulties and challenges – in the reigns of James I, Cromwell, and Charles II (Morse 1966, 7).

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63 Early Long-Distance Trade

The voc, in contrast to the English joint-stock companies, retained in its organisational structure the vestiges of its original form as an amalgamation of a number of independent regional trading establishments. Its six provincial chambers, representing the main trading regions of Holland, comprised directors appointed by municipal governments in the six regions, some of which were larger and more influential than others. They exercised their differential powers in appointing the seventeen governing general directors of the company – the Heeren xvii – who controlled most aspects of the company’s policy and operations both in Holland and in the East. Each independent chamber, however, owned its own ships, although the Heeren xvii decided how they were to be deployed. The most powerful and influential of the independent trading chambers was Amsterdam, so that the company tended to reflect policies and decisions that favoured this centre (Parry 1971, 61–2). It did not, however, completely dominate the voc: out of seventeen directorships on the board only eight were allocated to Amsterdam, four to Zeeland, and two each to South Holland and the North Quarter, with the remaining directorship allocated on a rotating basis (Israel 1989, 69). Apart from a small number of other, lesser European national chartered companies, such as the Compagnie des Indes Orientales, established in France in 1664, and the Ostend Company, formed by an international assortment of private traders and chartered by Emperor Charles VI in 1722, in the heyday of early colonialism there were few institutionalized and organized rivals in the East for the Portuguese Crown or the chartered monopolies of the English and the Dutch. This did not, however, mean that competition from other European traders in the Orient was negligible. Unauthorized – essentially outlawed – traders from Europe operated with relative impunity throughout the East, defying the laws that granted charter monopolies to the major joint-stock companies. Efforts by the companies to halt these outlaws were usually ineffectual, as there was no real system for enforcing monopoly rights and trade goods smuggled by monopoly-breakers into European ports found a ready market. Even the ships’ captains and other crew members employed by the companies were themselves usually engaged in private trading on their own behalf, to the frequent detriment of their employers. This was often in lieu of or as a supplement to regular pay, which usually did not nearly compensate for the hardships and dangers of the voyage. Ships’ crews were,

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64 The Monsoon Trade System

moreover, not above acts of outright piracy and pilfering of cargoes of other vessels where the opportunity presented itself.

non-european trading institutions Over the centuries a large number of different Asian or indigenous trading organizations and institutions helped to regulate the flows of commerce in the area of the Straits of Malacca. These included the well-ordered imperial system of China, those of Southeast Asian empires, kingdoms, and major sultanates such as Srivijaya, Sailendra, Majapahit, and Aceh ( Achin, or Atjeh), as well as individual city states, minor sultanates, and other “river mouth polities” that lined the coasts of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. From these states, traders moved back and forth, dealing either on behalf of an aristocratic elite, whose demand for luxuries and staples was a major engine of Asian trade over the centuries, or else on their own behalf as individual or corporate merchants and entrepreneurs. Evidence on the details of Asian trade in the straits area before about 1400 ce is sketchy, and earlier published accounts are subject to challenges and revisions as new data and interpretations appear in the literature. Information relating to early Chinese trading systems is perhaps more complete and reliable than information on Indian, Arab, or Southeast Asian systems and institutions of the same period. Direct seaborne trade between China and the Southeast Asian region probably began after the development of ocean-going junks around the ninth century ce (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 8–17). Current evidence suggests, however, that the powerful Chinese imperial trading system around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, like the later Portuguese system, was essentially a state-run monopoly that gave the emperor the right to all tribute paid by vassal states in his realm. An extensive bureaucracy was set up to keep track of goods taken in tribute as well as the gifts given in return by the Chinese imperial court to dutiful vassal rulers in the Nanyang and elsewhere. At least during the period of the Mongol and Ming dynasties, when Chinese imperial power was a force to be reckoned with in Southeast Asia, there were no well-developed cadres of independent Chinese merchant adventurers operating on their own behalf, as in the case of Western merchant navigators during the same period. Instead, there was a centrally controlled system with political as well as commercial motivations at work behind it. Linkages were maintained

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through periodic visits by envoys and larger political missions. The Chinese imperial court, however, relied frequently on the services of non-Chinese middlemen and other intermediate collection systems for the goods it required from the Nanyang. Other state-controlled commercial systems in the early period of trade in the region included the empire of Funan, centred on the Indochinese peninsula; the thalassocracies of Srivijaya, the Sailendra, and Majapahit, focused on Sumatra and Java; the kingdom of Siam; and also Aceh and Pasai in northern Sumatra, as well as the innumerable river valley sultanates that appeared and disappeared over the centuries in parts of archipelagic and peninsular Southeast Asia. In most of these cases the demands of the royal court for luxuries and its control of systems of taxation and tribute were instrumental in the organization of trade in the region. This organization, nevertheless, was not purely secular-commercial in nature but contained elements of the political and the religious (Sandhu and Wheatley 1983, 13–15). To a greater or lesser extent these polities, notably Srivijaya and Majapahit and of course Melaka, exerted political and commercial hegemony over parts of the straits region for varying periods in the precolonial era, as will be discussed later.

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PART TWO

The Role of the Straits of Malacca as a Trade Gateway

The Straits of Malacca, for the reasons outlined in part 1, have figured prominently in the development of regional, hemispheric, and, indeed, global trading systems over the past several millennia of recorded history. In this part of the book I examine these evolving trading systems, which are essentially spatial networks of ports and shipping routeways used by traders and controlled, to a greater or lesser extent, by political entities. Often this control was tentative and under constant challenge by rivals. The following description and analysis of the “gateway” function of the straits is built around a series of six maps that encapsulate both evolution and revolution in the monsoon trading systems from the time of Ptolemaic Egypt, when significant long-distance trade through the Straits of Malacca probably commenced, up until the first years of the twenty-first century. While ordered chronologically, the accompanying discussion is not historical narrative but rather focuses on spatial, political, and economic aspects of the systems concerned, applying the interdisciplinary concepts outlined earlier, to highlight the role and status of the straits as a primate trade portal. Goods moving through this portal comprised not only commodities produced in the hinterlands of local polities but also long-distance trade goods intended for exchange in entrepots there. An underlying theme in this section of the book is the notion that such long-distance trade has been preeminent in giving this waterway its distinctive character and primacy in the hemispheric transport networks.

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6 Asian-European Trading Systems in the Greco-Roman Era: The Beginnings of Monsoon Trade

The significant role of the Straits of Malacca in long-distance trade had its beginnings in four developments that occurred at a time, over two millennia ago, when Rome replaced Greece as the major maritime power in the Mediterranean. At that time the Romans also inherited Greek trade through Ptolemaic Egypt with points to the south and east. These four developments, which will be discussed at greater length below, are 1 the growing demand among the elites in the West for eastern luxuries such as Chinese silks and Indian spices, gems, and aromatics; 2 the closure of the overland routes to China and India by hostile nations whose lands lay astride these perilous routes; 3 the use by Western navigators of seasonally reversing (monsoonal) winds that permitted the alternative sea route to be greatly shortened using existing naval technologies; and 4 the later discovery that trade with China could be facilitated by using an intervening entrepot that halved the voyage and that was located where the seasonal reversal of monsoon winds could be used to greatest advantage. That emporium, as we have already indicated, was located in the Straits of Malacca. Mention of trading systems that brought products from the eastern seas and must have used the straits can be found in treatises and documents over two thousand years old. Even earlier references exist to trading voyages in the Indian Ocean, for example, linking Pharaonic Egypt with the lands of Punt (in the Horn of Africa) as early as

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70 A Trade Gateway

2400 bce and Mesopotamia with India around 2000 bce (Casson 1989, 11). Overland routes to India and China via the Silk Road were developed by the time of the Cretan and Hellenic civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean, but this route was extremely dangerous, time-consuming, and very costly, being subject to periodic closure or disruption through hostile actions by Scythians and other Central Asian tribes and later by the states of Parthia and Sasania (Begley and de Puma 1991, 3; Warmington 1974, 14). In the wake of the Asian conquests of Alexander the Great, Western interest in the products and peoples of the Orient intensified, and the hazards of the inland route made the opening of sea routes from the Mediterranean to the East highly desirable. Under the Greek-speaking Ptolemies, Egypt conducted a burgeoning trade through the Red Sea to the lands of Punt and the coastal entrepots of Asia Minor and India, although the latter trade was dominated by Nabataean Arab, Phoenician, and Hindi merchant-navigators who were not above turning pirate when the opportunity arose (Schoff 1912, 3; Warmington 1974, 11). Later, as shown in the writings of Strabo, Pliny the Elder, and others, the emerging economic power of Rome was partly fuelled by trade from the Orient. At the same time, trade between China and India, through the intervening states of Southeast Asia, was also expanding, again as revealed in Chinese texts (Wheatley 1961, 14–25; Hall 1985, 26–47). These original sources tend to be vague about details of the Southeast Asian realm, no doubt partly because the scholarly authors in Ptolemaic Egypt, Rome, or China were obliged to rely on information supplied by intermediaries who were intent on keeping to themselves the commercially valuable data about routes, ports, and shipping conditions in the Indian and Indonesian areas. The modern conflict over intellectual property and the public domain thus appears to have very ancient precedents. One of the most informative treatises of the Roman period (dated at around the middle of the first century ce: Casson 1989, 6) is the work referred to earlier that introduced the West to the Hippalos winds: the Periplus Maris Erythraei. This anonymous treatise, written in terse, businesslike Greek, is essentially a set of sailing directions and useful commercial notations for Greco-Egyptian merchants wishing to venture into the Red Sea–Indian Ocean (Erythraean Sea) trade routes. In this work are found references to a trade in “tortoise-shell from Chryse,” which recent interpreters identify with the Malay Peninsula (Casson 1989, 235–6; Wheatley 1961, 144–59; Schoff 1912,

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71 The Greco-Roman Era

Rome . R

R.

Tamluk

Barygaza (Broach)

Kanê

Bay of

Muziris

g R.

Axum

(Nanjing) Thinae

Yang tze

n ko

Aden Adulis Ocelis

es

Me

a Se

R.

Muscat

d Re

Nile

ng

Barbaricon

Berenicê

Koptos

Ga

Petra Leuke Kome

R.

Alexandria Myos Hormos

Ind us

Palmyra

Bengal

Socotra Nelkynda Taprobanê

Chrysê

Rhapta

Indian Ocean

Significant ports or markets

0

1000

2000 km

Monsoon trade routes 0

Map 5

1000 mi.

Monsoon trading systems in the Greco-Roman era, 100 bce–100 ce (Casson 1989, iv, 44, 212, 225; Wheatley 1961, 44, 125–6, 132)

227): the same area that was called by the Greeks the Chersonesus Aureus (the Golden Peninsula). It seems clear that around the reigns of Roman emperors from Caesar Augustus to Nero, when Rome was powerful and prosperous, a considerable quantity of trade goods was being carried through the Straits of Malacca to satisfy the demands of both Europe and Asia. Certainly, archaeological evidence suggests that Romans, Indians, and Chinese shared substantial commercial contacts at the time of the Roman Empire (Sidebotham 1991, 23). A representation of this trade system, gleaned from the detailed descriptions contained in the Periplus and other contemporary and more recent sources, is given in map 5. This map indicates that both coasting trade and more direct routing across the Indian Ocean were burgeoning at the time the Periplus was written. Much of this trade was in the hands of middlemen groups, notably Egyptian-Greek merchants, Nabataean and other

N

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72 A Trade Gateway

Asian Arabs, African Arabs (with some Ethiopians from AxumAdulis and Somalia), Syrians, Jews, and Indians. Although they provided the major stimulus and the ultimate military control over EastWest trade at the time of the Periplus, Romans themselves did not venture directly into the trading system of the Indian Ocean in large numbers and thus rarely had face-to-face dealings with Indian or Chinese merchants. A chronic trade imbalance appears to have characterized the exchanges between Rome and the Orient, as can be deduced from records and also from archaeological evidence (plentiful Roman gold and silver coins have been found in India, for example, compared with few traces of Roman trade goods, while Indian, Indonesian, and Chinese products in great abundance and variety reached imperial Rome). In exchange for the silks, ivory, spices, frankincense, myrrh, tortoiseshell, aromatic woods, and slaves from the East, it is clear that there were very few items produced in the West that were in great demand in India and China. Payment for Eastern luxuries in the form of Roman gold and silver coinage meant a drain on the imperial treasury that was a source of grave concern in the reigns of several Roman emperors. The trading system described by the Periplus involved transshipment and overland portaging of goods between Mediterranean entrepots and either Red Sea or Persian Gulf ports, depending on whether the Egyptian route or the Syrian route was chosen. Alexandria, annexed by the Romans in 30 bce, was the main Mediterranean entrepot on the Egyptian route to the Indian Ocean, from which trade items were transshipped to or from Nile river boats for the trip south to Koptos, thence overland by camel train to Myos Hormos (Mussel Harbour) or Leukos Limen (closest to the Nile) on the Red Sea coast. Further south, the entrepot of Berenice, founded by Ptolemy II and named after his mother (Sidebotham 1991, 21), became a favourite transshipment point around the time of Strabo, and camel trains moved goods from here to Syene (Aswan) on the Nile. Ships travelling up the Red Sea in Roman times rarely ventured north of Myos Hormos, at the entrance to the Gulf of Suez, because of the shoals, reefs, treacherous currents, and adverse winds. For most of the year, winds in the Gulf of Suez blow from the north, making navigation to such northern ports as Arsinoe-Clysma very difficult. Few sailors relished traversing this gulf, as northbound journeys involved continuous tacking against prevailing headwinds. Indeed, the entire length of the Red Sea, south to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb,

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73 The Greco-Roman Era

suffers adverse weather conditions and is treacherous to shipping. Countless vessels have foundered there. Thus, while transshipment at Berenice or Myos Hormos for overland portaging to the Nile was costly and slow, it was much preferred by merchants and mariners alike as an alternative to the hazardous waterways of the northern Red Sea. Since the goods being transported were almost universally high in value relative to their bulk, they could no doubt absorb the high costs of transshipment and portaging. A single entrepot on the eastern side of the Red Sea, Leuke Kome, played a significant part in the trade at the time of the Periplus, but it is not mentioned in that work. It may at various times have been an outport of the landlocked entrepot of Petra, capital of the Nabataean Arabs, or controlled by Rome (Sidebotham 1991, 21). That these ports on the Red Sea coast were mainly entrepots and lacked their own productive hinterlands is clearly demonstrated by the fact that even water supplies for these desolate transshipment points had to be hauled from distant wells by pack animals (Sidebotham 1991, 28). Some, for example Myos Hormos may, however, have added products from the Red Sea itself – products such as mussels, conch, and giant clam shells – to the overseas trade that was their undoubted raison d’etre. Further south, in what is now Eritrea, Adulis – outport for the Axumite kingdom in the Ethiopian highlands – contributed from its hinterland precious products such as ivory, rhinoceros horn, and tortoiseshell. Also included were African slaves and perhaps the narcotic herb Khat, or Miraa (Catha edulis). While Roman and Greek vessels plied the Red Sea as far as the Bab el-Mandeb in Ptolemaic and early Roman times, their trade ventures further afield, either along the African coast or across the northern Indian Ocean, were quite rare and tentative. This is evidenced by the writing of the Periplus itself, which, as we have seen, was designed as a guide for novice Greek adventurers setting out into these seas. By the time the unknown Egyptian-Greek author wrote this work, however, some Roman and Greek navigators were already reaching the west coast of India. Inexperience in using the blustery southwest monsoons – the Hippalos winds – for direct, open-ocean voyages ensured, however, that most Roman expeditions of that period were confined to coastal forays along the shores of Arabia and the Horn of Africa, an inhospitable territory the Periplus identifies as Azania. The southernmost port on the “nearside,” or African coast, was Rhapta, in the present location of Dar es Salaam (Casson 1989, 12). This territory was Arab-controlled at the time of the Periplus. There

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74 A Trade Gateway

is evidence from archaeological sites along this section of the coast that trade from Azanian ports existed not only with Arabia but with India (and, at a somewhat later period, with China as well, which would doubtless have involved voyages through the Straits of Malacca). Rhapta harbour, we are told by Ptolemy, was large enough to accommodate considerable numbers of vessels awaiting the turn of the monsoon winds that would carry them back to Arabia, Persia, India, and perhaps even Southeast Asia (Casson 1989, 143). It is significant that Rhapta and Calicut, India, lie along a great circle route, a line bisecting the Earth that consequently represents the shortest possible distance on the curved surface of the globe between the two regions in question. Aden, a major port on the route from the later Roman Empire to India and China, is identified in the Periplus as Eudaimon Arabia, and the description of this entrepot suggests that it was in a period of decline at that time. It was, nevertheless, along with other Arabian ports such as Mocha, Kane, and Ocelis, the island of Socotra, and ports on the African coast near Cape Guardafui, a main launching point for monsoon-assisted voyages to both northern and southern parts of India’s west coast. The earliest voyages by Greco-Roman vessels using the Hippalos winds were to northern ports along the coasts of Arabia and India. Most prominent among these Indian emporia on the north-west coast was Barygaza, or Broach, on the Nerbudda River in the Gulf of Cambay. This is thought to have been the main west coast emporium since around the middle of the second century bce (Casson 1989, 200). Regions in the immediate hinterland of this port, for example Kutch and Gujerat, were highly productive and included one of the world’s earliest-known large manufacturing agglomerations. But to this port also were brought cargoes from China, northeastern India, and Southeast Asia, with whom Gujerati merchants and financiers had established firm trading and cultural relationships. These relationships resulted, among other things, in the transmission by Gujerati traders and missionaries of the Hindu religion and culture to the Indochinese, Malay, and Indonesian regions and later contributed to the spread of Islam in some of these areas. Finished Chinese silk cloth was brought to Barygaza via the overland routes that terminated in this emporium, to be exchanged for such luxury items as Arabian frankincense, which was in very great demand in China ( Hall 1985, 31). Egyptian Greeks mingled with Arab, Persian, Gujerati, and other merchants and seafarers at the markets of Barygaza emporium,

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which could be reached after about two to three months’ sailing from Egyptian ports such as Berenice, provided the vessels put to sea in July and utilized the southwest monsoon. It was necessary in such cases to veer slightly to starboard of the prevailing wind direction in order to make the correct landfall. The success of Barygaza as an international emporium was due not only to its position at the terminus of major overland and sea routes but also to its status and reputation as a secure place for foreign merchants to conduct their business. Here traders were safe from the ravages of pirates or capricious and greedy rulers. They enjoyed secure storage and marketing facilities, as well as the freedom to barter unhindered with other merchants from many lands. Near the delta of the Indus river, further north, was another major emporium, Barbaricon, outport of the Scythian capital of Minnagara. This port was readily accessible from Eudaimon Arabia, Kane, or Cape Guardafui by steering almost directly in line with the following winds of the southwest monsoon. Inland from this port, however, was the country of the Parthians, who were on hostile terms with the Romans and who rendered trade at this port precarious at times. The increasing use of sail in place of galley oarsmen on Western vessels, the ability to build larger and stronger ships incorporating superior rudders, keels, and laterally braced masts, the acquisition of better knowledge of the nature and timing of the Hippalos winds and the shape of the coastline along the Arabian Sea, and increasing independence from Arab middlemen, all of these innovations gave later Greek and Roman crews the confidence to head directly across the Arabian Sea to southern India. Starting out late in the season (late July or August) when the tempestuous southwest monsoon had begun to moderate and with their sails set ever closer to the wind, these vessels were carried swiftly to the Malabar Coast. There they traded with the three main Tamil states, which were at that time the Kerala (Chera), Pandya, and Chola kingdoms (Warmington 1974, 57). The west coast segment between Barygaza and the Tamil kingdoms seems to have held little interest for traders from the Mediterranean, as evidenced by a dearth of information in the Periplus about ports and trade in this intermediate region. The depredations of pirates, for which this part of western India was infamous, may have discouraged legitimate commerce here also. From the Malabar coast Roman and Greek merchants purchased spices, especially pepper, in exchange for gold and silver coins. Roman currency was the mainstay of the Western traders, at least

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until Roman emperor Nero, alarmed by the outflow of gold specie from the empire, adulterated and debased the coinage being sent to India to pay for trade goods and Vespasian attempted to halt the outflow altogether (Hall 1985, 34–37). The main entrepot on the southern west coast was undoubtedly Muziris (Muchiri), located at the site of modern Cranganore, and Nelkynda (Nelcynda) was a second important port. Direct trade with Roman vessels made these pepper ports independent of Barygaza, which had formerly been the major destination port for cargoes from south India. To the east of Cape Cormorin, southernmost point in India, local vessels shuttled back and forth between the ports of the Coromandel Coast and the Malabar coast to Barygaza. This eastern area produced good-quality muslin cloth and boasted important pearl fisheries in the Palk Straits between Coromandel and Taprobane (Ceylon, or Sri Lanka). Western vessels did not venture regularly into the Bay of Bengal to trade directly with Chola, Andhra, and Orissa merchants, being content to purchase transshipped goods from these eastern areas at west coast emporia. The dangers from notorious Bengal cyclones (hurricanes) perhaps discouraged Western sailors, but so, too, did the knowledge that this extra voyage was really unnecessary, with Eastern goods being available from Indian middlemen at a tolerable mark-up in Malabar ports and at Barygaza. Hence the Periplus is rather brief and vague about these regions, relying obviously on second-hand information. There is some mention, however, of the considerable trade with China in ports in the Ganges and Coromandel regions, especially imports of Chinese silk. There is also a note on trade with Chryse in what is now Malaysia, which produced the finest-quality tortoiseshell – actually the shell of the hawksbill turtle – to be found in the eastern seas (Schoff 1911, 47–8; Casson 1989, 101–2). A port called Thinae, probably modern Nanjing, is mentioned as a major entrepot in the nation of This, generally accepted as a reference to China (Schoff 1911, 48–9, 261). Very large ships, the Malay jong or colandia (Warmington 1974, 66), ferried cargoes of Ceylonese cinnamon, Pegu tortoiseshell, and, no doubt, Chinese silks, cinnabar, and pottery transshipped at entrepots in Southeast Asia to India’s east and west coast emporia. What the Periplus does not mention is that these ships probably also used the monsoons to cross the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal, employing the northeast monsoon on the outward journey toward India and the southwest monsoon on the return portion.

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77 The Greco-Roman Era

At the time of the Roman Empire, the emporia in the straits area at which trade goods from China, Funan (a kingdom in what is now Cambodia), and the eastern archipelago were exchanged for those of India and the West were located in the Isthmus of Kra, or just to the north or south of this narrow “waist” in the Malay-Thai peninsula (Wheatley 1961, xix). It seems clear from available writings and archaeological evidence that Chinese vessels at this early date had not yet penetrated into the Indian Ocean. Instead, Chinese goods were mostly portaged overland by local middlemen from entrepots on the Gulf of Thailand to entrepots on the Andaman Sea coast of the Isthmus of Kra, there to continue their journey to India and the West (Wheatley 1961, 12) in vessels commanded by non-Chinese captains. A number of overland routes and entrepots existed in the isthmus, and different ports were favoured at various time periods, so that routes changed from time to time for reasons that are not clear. Several centuries later, the transisthmus portage routes appeared to decline, in favour of a sea route through the Singapore Straits to entrepots along the Malay side of the straits themselves. By that time, these waters were being routinely negotiated by Chinese vessels that used the monsoon circulation of the South China Sea to reach entrepots in the Malacca region and bring home to China the coveted luxuries and tribute from the Nanyang. The region of the Straits of Malacca seems to have been somewhat better known to Indian traders and writers in the first century ce, for, as noted earlier, they had names for a “golden island” (Suvarnadvipa: possibly Sumatra) and a “golden peninsula” (Yavadvipa: possibly the Malay Peninsula) in Southeast Asia (Hall 1985, 35). The gold from these two locations, brought to India initially by Malay trading vessels, was significant enough to Indian merchants that they almost certainly would have attempted to acquire accurate knowledge of these source areas for the precious metal and, later, to establish firm trading links with them using the monsoons. The monsoons were thus the basis for large-scale, long-distance trade between East and West. Their great value in speeding the passage of suitably constructed and equipped vessels across the Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and South China Sea was discovered in stages over several centuries both before and after the time of Christ. After the voyage of Hippalos, the winds that bear his name integrated the economies of Rome, Arabia, India, and, to some extent, China. An additional major step in this integration was the discovery,

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mentioned earlier, that the extra transport cost, peril, and time involved in direct trade with very distant source areas of luxuries and manufactures demanded in the West and the Orient could be obviated by setting up intervening entrepots. These might be either free emporia where traders could exchange goods without extortionate duties levied by some local potentate or else ports under the monopolistic control of Western nations themselves and protected by their naval power. The rise of the great emporium of Melaka (Malacca) at a critical location along the major trade routes and fortuitously also at a point where two monsoonal systems meet is part of that saga and will be addressed next.

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7 Monsoon Trade in the Early Fifteenth Century: The Empire of Melaka (Malacca) and Its Precursors

The Common, or Christian, Era ushered in the rapid development of states, kingdoms, and empires in the Southeast Asian realm and concomitant fluctuations in trading relationships within the region, as well as between Europe, Africa, the Persian Gulf, and India to the west and Indonesia, the Indochinese peninsula, China, Korea, Japan, and the Pacific rim to the east. The factors discussed above, notably advances in ship construction, navigation techniques, demand and supply patterns for trade goods – especially luxury items – and improved knowledge of monsoon wind patterns and cartography made open-ocean sailing somewhat less precarious and meant lower costs and a shorter duration for long-distance trade expeditions compared with overland routes. As a result, the narrow waterway between Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, sheltered from blustery monsoon winds and conveniently placed for the establishment of entrepots, increasingly saw the passage of trading vessels from near and far. The need for portaging across the Isthmus of Kra was lessened, and the overland routes fell into disuse. The long, slender, yet mountainous, isthmus extending the Asian mainland south of Myanmar-Thailand and the closely spaced islands of Indonesia and Papua–New Guinea continued to be a barrier constraining navigation between East and West, but as time went on, the barrier was less impenetrable. During the first five centuries of the Common Era, although the mountainous, forested interiors of the attenuated Malay-Thai peninsula

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and many of the islands of the Indonesian archipelago remained relatively unproductive and inhospitable, around the coasts – and especially in fertile river valleys and estuaries – numerous villages and towns emerged. Some of these grew in power and wealth to form small kingdoms and city states, especially after the third century ce (Kathirithamby-Wells and Villiers 1990, 6). Eventually, some of these estuarine states, partly through their favoured location as local gateways for hinterland trade and riverine transport, gained the status of regional empires. They dominated not only their vassals on navigable tributaries in their hinterlands but often, in the manner described in Bronson’s model mentioned earlier, “captured” the hinterlands of neighbouring states as well, forcing them into subservience. In this way, entrepots such as Kan-t’o li, in southeastern Sumatra, emerged as significant players in long-distance commerce, which, in turn, led to the importation of foreign culture along with exotic trade goods (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 35; Hall, 1985, 3). Religious artifacts of Indian provenance uncovered at Perak in the Malay peninsula have been dated as belonging to the fourth or fifth century ce, indicating that material and cultural exports from India (including Buddhism) had diffused into the straits region at an early period. Cambodian (Funanese) and Chinese trading contacts with Indonesia and the Malay peninsula probably occurred at roughly the same period (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 16–17). Thus, Southeast Asia itself began to develop the capacity for and an interest in long-distance commodity trade and other forms of cultural and economic interaction. By the year 600 ce Indian culture had spread its influence widely and strongly in more advanced parts of the realm, with Hindu as well as Buddhist religious beliefs, social manners and fashions, and architecture being adopted in various states and kingdoms adjacent to the Straits of Malacca. Some other major developments affecting the region in the period from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries of the Common Era included the invention and export of porcelain and, later, gunpowder from China, the emergence of the powerful Srivijaya and Sailendra kingdoms in Indonesia, the spread of Islam from Arabia to India and thence to Sumatra following the death of Mohammad, and the eclipse of earlier states by the Majapahit Empire. This Javanese state, which attacked the heartland of Srivijaya at Jambi in 1275 and hastened its decline, is considered by many to have ushered in a golden age of Indonesian culture and influence. Seaborne trade and naval power were the key to the success of all of these early polities.

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81 The Early Fifteenth Century

Since these evanescent trading kingdoms and thalassocracies were the precursors of the great trading empire of Melaka that arose after 1400 ce, the trading patterns associated with the more significant of them, specifically with Srivijaya, the Sailendra kingdoms, and Majapahit, will be examined in some detail below.

trade in the early malayoindonesian thalassocracies There is some debate regarding the extent to which the character of the early Malayo-Indonesian thalassocracies was the result of indigenous forces as opposed to foreign influences (Leong Sau Heng 1990, 17–38). Evidence such as the archaeological discoveries mentioned above suggests that growing contact with long-distance trading partners exposed these entities to powerful external influences that had a lasting impact. The demand for gold – the mainstay of trade financing in India and China – and the interdiction by hostile nations of traditional Roman and Siberian sources of the precious metal heightened international interest in the gold being won from deposits in Sumatra (the Chersonesus Aureus or the Suvarnadvipa). In consequence, Indian, Chinese, Arab, and other international traders converged on the straits region during the first millennium ce. Some distant trading partners, like the Cambodian kingdom of Funan, which declined in the sixth century following Khmer attacks from the north (Wolters 1967, 234), clearly did not leave a lasting legacy in the trading system, but others certainly did. Although both China and India – the two most dominant political powers in the East during the first millennium ce – were culturally and economically advanced, India appears to have been more influential in its dealings with the small states and kingdoms of Southeast Asia. Styles of urban and courtly life, architecture and fine arts, language and literature, and, above all, religious beliefs in parts of Southeast Asia still show strong evidence of Indian origins and appear to have been transplanted during the first millennium of contact, mainly through the offices of traders and merchants. Hindu influences held sway over parts of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Lombok, as a consequence of commercial and missionary activities and intermarriage. Buddhist beliefs and lifestyles from India and Sri Lanka gained ground in Siam (Thailand), Cambodia, Vietnam, and even China, although they became virtually extinct in their place of origin, India.

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82 A Trade Gateway

Powerful states then emerged in Southeast Asia, acting as vehicles for the further transmission of these imported influences. From their bases around Palembang and Jambi, southeastern Sumatra, a line of Hindu Rajahs built from their domination of seaborne commerce and regional ports the thalassocracy of Srivijaya, which was the main imperial power in the region during the second half of the first millennium of the Common Era (Wolters 1967, 208). This laid the foundations for later developments in this area by organizing and integrating the often squabbling petty kingdoms in the myriad river valleys of the peninsula and the larger islands bordering the Straits of Malacca. Srivijaya, at its peak between 670 and 1025 ce (Hall 1985, 79), adopted a promercantile (Mahayana) form of Buddhism and courted Chinese patronage while it vigorously suppressed piracy and lawlessness, thus engendering a climate in which long-distance trade could be attracted and would flourish in the straits area. Its main centre during its ascendancy – Palembang – is thought by some to have been a commercial entrepot, ship servicing centre, and sojourning base for vessels and their crews from China and India awaiting their respective favourable monsoons before returning to their home ports (Rhaman 1990, 61–82). Srivijaya ruled its productive hinterland from its position on the Musi river by subjugating other ports on neighbouring river estuaries and by controlling shipping in the Straits of Malacca, as well as all river traffic into the interior of southern Sumatra. Srivijaya thus exemplifies an early version of the ideal-typical model of transport expansion (the Taaffe-Morrill-Gould model) but has aspects of Hotelling’s and Vances’ models as well (figures 1–4). A daring and successful raid in 1025 ce by Chola naval forces from the Tamil region of southern India against the treasury at Palembang weakened the prestige and authority of Srivijaya, which subsequently moved its main base of operations north to Jambi (Hall 1985, 102). This move may also have been prompted by the fact that Palembang was too far south to be readily accessible by the growing stream of traders using the Straits of Malacca (Wolters 1965, 248). As Srivijaya’s power – based on its enforced monopoly over the middleman role in regional and long-distance trade – waned after centuries of relative stability, decentralization and fragmentation of its empire led to the rise of other powerful entities. In Sumatra and Java a dynasty of kings, the Sailendras (Kings of the Mountain), who had from time to time been affiliated with Srivijaya, continued to exert power but shifted their base of operations to Java, away from the

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straits region. It was from one of these rivals, Majapahit in eastern Java, that the fatal blow to the waning power of Srivijaya was struck in 1275 (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 30). Thereafter, the formerly powerful Sumatran kingdom degenerated into a pirate stronghold around Palembang that preyed on shipping in the straits (MeilinkRoelofsz 1962, 18). During the thirteenth century an emerging Thai empire also attempted to project its power into the straits area by raiding Jambi and taking over Tumasek (Singapore) Island (Hall 1985, 211). This incursion was opposed by the Javanese, who had organized maritime trade and rice production as the basis for their new thalassocracy centred on Majapahit. This maritime empire covered ports not only in Java but also in southern Sumatra, Kalimantan (Borneo), the Malay Peninsula, and parts of the Sulawesi-Banda-Maluku area. By the fourteenth century ce the straits area was in a state of flux, with strong rivalry occurring between the Thais from the Buddhist kingdom of Siam and the nominally Hindu Majapahit state. Both cast their imperial shadows over parts of the Malay Peninsula. Although Buddhism had gained a foothold in Java, it never became the dominant or enduring religion there, as it did in Siam (Thailand). In the Sumatran areas of Majapahit, Hindu-tinged secularism seems to have been the most powerful ideological force, making fertile ground for the inroads of Islam. The first Islamic state in this region emerged at Pasai in northern Sumatra about 1300 ce. Indeed, it was a prince from the port city of Palembang in Majapahit-dominated Sumatra, whose descendants and followers readily embraced Islam, who is credited with laying the foundations of the great precolonial trading empire of Melaka (also called Malacca in previous texts) at the turn of the fifteenth century (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 32).

the establishment of the melaka (malacca) trading system The trade system that focused on the entrepot of Melaka is shown in map 6, which depicts the system at its peak in the mid-fifteenth century. The exact date and historical circumstances surrounding the creation of this, the most famous entrepot in the Orient for a period of several centuries after 1400, are shrouded in uncertainty and invested with mythology. The actual date of its founding was most probably between 1390 and 1403, when the Chinese Admiral Yin Ch’ing, leading

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84 A Trade Gateway Venice Genoa Damascus Baghdad Alexandria

PERSIA Ormuz Gujerat

Bengal

Mecca

Canton (Guangzhou)

INDIA Aden

Arabian Sea

Socotra

N

Calicut Cochin

SIAM

Brunei

Empire of Melaka

Indian Ocean JAVA

Territory controlled by Melaka Monsoon trade routes

Map 6

0 0

1000

Maluku

Banda Is.

2000 km 1000 mi.

Monsoon trade in the era of the Islamic Empire of Melaka, early fifteenth century (Stone 1965, 21; Ryan 1976, 19)

a powerful fleet on an expedition to the Nanyang, paid a visit to a settlement at Melaka and recorded details of the port and its flamboyant leader (Stone 1965, 19). This leader is generally described as a Palembang-born prince banished from Sumatra in 1377 after an unsuccessful rebellion against his father-in-law, the Javanese King of Majapahit. The exiled leader’s title was Parameswara – translated as Prince Consort by Stone (1965, 19) and as the Great Exempt by the Andayas following Tome Pires (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 33). But other variants of the spelling and interpretation of this title exist, including Permicuri (Eredia 1930, 16). After a short sojourn in Tumasek (Singapore), at that time governed, according to some accounts, by a son-in-law of the King of Siam, Parameswara staged a coup, murdered the ruler, and took over the city. Siam, through its vassal states at Patani and Pahang, reacted swiftly, ousting Parameswara and his followers, who fled north along the west coast of Malaya, first to Muar

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85 The Early Fifteenth Century

and thence to the river Bertam. Finally, the fugitive prince and his band of sea-gypsy followers settled at the mouth of the Melaka river, where there was a small fishing village. Parameswara, who has assumed the stature of a legendary figure in later Malay writings, decided that this was a propitious place for a fortified port city. The legend of the founding of Melaka has been told many times and is the subject of the greatest of traditional Malayan literary works, the Sejara Melayu or Malay Annals. According to this legend, in a riverside grove of fruit-bearing Myrabolanum, or Melaka, trees (Phyllanthus pectinata), Parameswara’s hunting dogs were ignominiously routed by a tiny but feisty mousedeer or chevrotain (Tragulus javanicus), leading the prince to observe that a place where the puny can overcome the mighty is a good place for a fledgling settlement in a hostile region (Eredia 1930, 16; Hoyt 1993, 1–2). Interestingly, a very similar incident involving an aggressive mousedeer and a timorous hunting dog is also part of the myth of the founding of Pasai in northern Sumatra (Hall 1965, 214). Disentangling myth from authentic narrative is thus difficult in the case of the founding of Melaka. For example, in some more recent interpretations based on the writings of the sixteenth-century chronicler Tome Pires, Melaka was actually founded by Parameswara’s son and heir, identified as Iskander Shah (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 34). Since Pires was writing about 140 years after the actual event, his account of the founding must be treated with no less caution than the version contained in the Malay Annals. The various versions of Melaka’s founding do agree on a number of points. A series of events converted the little estuarine settlement from a fishing village with incidental agricultural and trading or piratical activities into a major international emporium. First, Parameswara (or Iskander Shah) apparently assuaged the anger of the Siamese king, probably by offering an annual tribute (reputedly forty taels of gold) and by pledges of fealty ( Stone 1965, 20). The settlement was thus able to take root without the threat of immediate annihilation from Siam. Second, the princely ruler of Melaka seems to have adopted more law-abiding habits than formerly, curbing the piratical tendencies of his followers and encouraging peaceful and orderly trade at his port and commercial orcharding in its hinterland. With piracy in the area checked and port and market facilities developed, the reputation of Melaka as a safe and profitable haven for merchant seamen from near and far was enhanced. Being located along one of the

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narrowest stretches of the straits, with a readily defensible site from which maritime power and control could be easily deployed, Melaka was in a position to unite the region, primarily on the basis of orderly, well-protected commerce but also – on occasion – by conquest (Cleary and Goh 2000, 89). A thalassocracy after the model of Srivijaya was thus built by Parameswara and his descendants. Third, shipping had already been drawn to the straits region by its physical and commercial advantages, usually calling at Pulau Besar, just to the south of Melaka, to barter before Parameswara (or Iskander Shah) set up his river port with its two rows of secure, capacious shops on the west bank of the Melaka River. A fourth factor, the fortuitous visit of the first Chinese fleet commanded by Admiral Yin Ch’ing so soon after the founding of Melaka was seized upon by the astute prince as a way of guaranteeing Melaka’s independence from an increasingly jealous and demanding Siam as well as from the Javanese. This visit was followed in 1409 by a second Chinese fleet under Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho), which cemented contacts between Melaka and the Middle Kingdom. By acknowledging his subservience to the Ming emperor Chu Ti and sending him envoys bearing gifts, the prince of Melaka received in return a promise of Chinese protection for his city state (referred to on an early fifteenth-century Chinese chart as Wu Pei Chih: Wheatley 1961, 92; Melaka Maritime Museum, Historical Exhibit), which, however, continued also to pay tribute to Siam until about 1418 (Stone 1965, 22). The emperor also conferred a more exalted title (King of Melaka) on the prince and sent handsome return gifts and Chinese settlers to form the nucleus of the large and important community that still to this day is called Bukit China. Chinese imperial protection and patronage, which undoubtedly forestalled Siamese attacks on Melaka, continued until about 1433, after which commercial contacts continued, but on a less formalized basis. A fifth factor was the conversion of Parameswara (in some accounts) or his heirs to Islam, which strengthened the trade connections of Melaka with Islamic Gujerat and Bengal in India and Pasai and other Islamic centres in the Indonesian archipelago. In the account offered both by Horace Stone (1965, 20) and by the Melaka Maritime Museum’s Historical Exhibit, in 1414 Parameswara married the daughter of the Islamic king of Pasai, where there was already an established trade centre, and his conversion to Islam at this time cemented a lucrative commercial relationship with Pasai. In this version the prince, after embracing the Mohammedan faith, assumed the Islamic title Iskander

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87 The Early Fifteenth Century

Shah. This is perhaps more credible than the version based on the writings of Pires, in which the son of Parameswara married the daughter of one of the celates (sea gypsies) in his retinue, but which does not reveal how or why he was persuaded to take the momentous step of converting to Islam (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 32–34). Meilink-Roelofsz (1962, 33) acknowledges the important influence of this change of faith from Hinduism to Islam on the fortunes of Melaka and its earliest ruler but side-steps the issue of that ruler’s identity and suggests that religious conversion among Melaka’s elites was initially just a matter of maintaining good commercial relations with Pasai, as well as with Java. The first clearly identified Muslim ruler of Melaka is, in any case, referred to in most texts as Iskander Shah, and he is recorded as having visited China personally in 1419. Whether, as suggested above, he was really Parameswara under a different title or, alternatively, his son, whom Eredia identifies as Xaquemdarxa (possibly a Portuguese rendering of Iskander Shah: Eredia 1930, 16), his legacy continued after his death in 1424 in the form of a trading system that linked widely scattered ports. These included places as far away as Genoa and Venice in Italy, the Muslim entrepots of Arabia and Gujerat, the Coromandel coast, Bengal, the Spice Islands of Indonesia, and the port of Canton (now Guangzhou) in China. For about a century of its earliest existence as an independent emporium, Melaka was ruled by Islamic sultans, who expanded its power and influence by conquest of nearby rivals as well as by alliances and trading accords. It survived several attacks by Siam and its vassal states, first overland from Pahang and then by sea. In 1456, off Batu Pahat in the southern peninsula, the forces of Melakan Sultan Muzaffar Shah (1446–58) overcame a vastly superior Siamese armada, strengthening Melaka’s position as a political, commercial, and military strongpoint. The territory ruled by the Melaka sultans eventually incorporated lands on the Sumatran as well as the Malayan coasts of the straits, which thus became a waterway completely controlled by the Islamic empire of Melaka. Thus, in the reign of Sultan Mansur Shah (1458–77) Sumatran port polities such as Siak, Kampar, Jambi, and Indragiri; the Riau and Karimun archipelagoes; and Malayan ports in Johor, Selangor, Pahang, Perak, and Kelantan became tributaries of Melaka. Recognizing the challenge to its commercial power posed by upstart Melaka, however, the powerful Bugis thalassocracy centred

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on Makassar (Ujungpandang) in Sulawesi sent a fleet to destroy it during the reign of Sultan Mansur Shah. Pulau Besar was the scene of a resounding Bugis defeat at the hands of a Melakan hero, Laksamanna (admiral) Hang Tua. Melakan naval forces were also engaged in frequent campaigns to stamp out the incessant piracy – which severely damaged legitimate trade – emanating mostly from northern Sumatra but also from the Malay celates who frequented the southern Straits (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 29–30). The fifth and most important factor in the rise of the Melaka emporium was the realization by traders from both China and India that the dictates of monsoonal wind reversals made the protected waters of the Straits of Malacca, with its safe entrepot on the Melaka river, an ideal half-way point for the meeting of two trade networks, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea systems. Once firmly established and prosperous on the basis of this long-distance trade, Melaka was able to meet and defeat a number of further challenges to its control of the straits, including several more from its old enemy Siam. Its ability to withstand these assaults was due to its strong fortifications and its well-organized military and navy, under the command of a series of powerful Laksamannas whose duties also included combatting piracy in the straits. Throughout the fifteenth century, pirates continued to harass shipping headed for Melaka, and a pirate base at Aru, near Deli in northern Sumatra, became powerful enough to threaten the entire trade at the emporium. During the rule of Melaka Sultan Allauddin (1477–88) the Aru pirate stronghold was attacked and destroyed by a fleet from Melaka following a major naval battle. But the threat had returned by the end of the fifteenth century (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 30). Successive sultans, or their subordinate rulers, such as bendaharas (prime ministers) built a substantial merchant fleet for Melaka by “buying and building junks” (Tome Pires, quoted in Stone 1965, 27). But they wisely refused to succumb to the temptation to insist that all goods carried through the straits be transported in their own ships or that foreign ships be forced to deal exclusively with Melaka, as subsequent colonial powers attempted to decree. As an emporium under Islamic rule, Melaka was frequented by traders from many lands whose different cultures and customs were respected, and indeed they formed separate communities in the city of Melaka under their own administrators or Shahbandars (Stone 1965, 33). A wide variety of local and foreign products were exchanged at the

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Melaka emporium, including local tin and damar resin, Javanese rice, Sumatran pepper, spices from Maluku, Flores sandalwood, Coromandel and Gujerati cotton cloth, and Chinese silks and porcelain. Significantly, food and other subsistence items for the large and wealthy city-state of Melaka came not from its own hinterland but were also mostly imported from distant forelands. Rice, a major staple of the inhabitants, for example, came not only from Java but also from Siam and Pegu throughout the Islamic period and after, while various other foodstuffs for the city’s consumption were brought to Melaka from as far away as Bengal and Borneo (MeilinkRoelofsz 1962, 72).

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8 The Portuguese Trading System in Monsoon Asia

Armed with knowledge about the riches of Southeast Asia acquired as early as 1504, the Portuguese first entered the Melaka River and visited its bustling entrepot in 1509 in the innocuous guise of a handful of merchant seafarers, landing from four small ships commanded by Lopes de Sequeira. Like many other traders before them, the first Portuguese visitors asked for and were initially given permission by its Islamic rulers to trade at this free and open emporium (taxes and duties on goods from the West were light, and none were demanded on food or on goods from points east of Melaka, only “gifts” to the market officials). The Portuguese, unfortunately, quickly showed themselves to be belligerent and covetous, insensitive to local customs, and hostile to both Sunni Islam and to the notion of free trade. Their hostility toward the Sunni religion was based on many years of struggle against the Moors, who had dominated Christian Portugal and parts of Spain for a century before being driven out of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. Just as Portugal was entering a period of prosperity, however, it found that its access to luxuries was hindered by intervening middleman monopolies. By the fourteenth century the earlier rapid spread of Islam throughout the Middle East and into Southeast Asia had cut off all of Christian Europe from direct contact with sources of the eastern luxuries, to which it had grown accustomed in the later years of the Roman Empire. While some pragmatic Christian city states, such as Venice and Genoa, had made a kind of

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91 The Portuguese Trading System

commercial treaty with the Muslim Arabs that gave them a European monopoly on eastern luxuries imported through Egypt and other Arab lands, the Portuguese and Spanish, with their implacable hatred for Islam, sought ways to bypass this monopolistic structure and establish their own trading systems with China and India. As a concomitant, they endeavoured, wherever possible, to wreak havoc on the commerce of their foes, the Moors, under which label they placed any and all Sunni Islamic peoples, whether or not they had been involved in hostile acts against Portugal or Spain. They sought alliances in the East that would allow them to undercut and destroy Sunni trade, and thus Hindu states in India and Indonesia, and even Shi-ite Persia, became Portuguese allies for a time (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 121). The Portuguese program of commercial expansion in both the Old and the New World was, thus, both aggressive and well coordinated at the national level. By reaching the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, Bartholomew Diaz had opened the way east for European navigators. Not long after Vasco da Gama’s pioneering voyage along the sea route to India via East Africa in 1497, Portuguese warships and merchantmen were busily conquering key ports and capturing trade in the Indian Ocean. Cochin and Calicut, on the Malabar Coast, fell into their hands in 1501, and Colombo (Sri Lanka) in 1505, thereafter to be ruled with an iron fist by the first viceroy, Almeida. Goa became a Portuguese possession in 1510 (Morse 1966, 1–2). Thus, within two decades of their first forays east of the Cape of Good Hope, the superiority of the cannon on the sturdy Portuguese carracks and nimble, manœuvrable caravelles and the zeal of the Lusitanian seamen, soldiers, and missionaries gave Portugal the elements of a global trading system that was to flourish for over a century. The only Asian power that might have challenged Portuguese incursions, China, had by this time turned inward, relinquishing any political interest in Southeast Asia under the xenophobic policies of the Manchu overlords. The Eastern Hemispheric portion of the Portuguese system, which was administered by viceroys on behalf of the Crown, comprised seven provinces. The first was the east coast of Africa, the second the Arabian Sea coast, the third Gujerat, the fourth the Malabar (west) coast of India, the fifth the Coromandel (east) coast as far as Bengal, the sixth the Malay Peninsula and the western Indonesian archipelago, and the seventh the Spice Islands, Macau (Macao), and Ceylon (Masselman 1963, 223). The port of Melaka, soon to be renowned in

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Europe as Malaca or Malaga, the pride of Portugal, was destined to be a lynchpin in the Far Eastern part of this system, but the main objectives were the spice trade from the Molucca and Banda (Northern and Southern Maluku) Islands and the supply of aromatic woods from the Flores Islands and Timor. The Gujerati merchants who were at Islamic Melaka when the first Portuguese ships arrived had already experienced Portuguese attacks and the seizure of their emporia in India, which had come under the control of Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515), second viceroy of India. The Arab trade along the coast of Africa had also fallen into Portuguese hands. Warnings about suspected Portuguese designs on Melaka were heeded by Raja Mahmud, the last of the Melaka sultans. He set a trap to liquidate the Portuguese, who, nevertheless, managed to escape back to Goa, stranding about twenty of their number onshore. If any pretext were needed for Albuquerque to take over Melaka, this incident provided it. A powerful incentive for the conquest already existed, of course, in the form of the realization by the Portuguese that this entrepot was a strategic point controlling the spice trade to India and Europe. In the words of Tome Pires, “Whoever is lord of Malaga has his hand on the throat of Venice” (Pires, quoted in Melaka Maritime Museum, Historical Exhibit). Albuquerque immediately began amassing an invasion force comprising nineteen warships and transports, eight hundred European mercenaries, and six hundred Indian Sepoys. Two years later, in 1511, he set about the task of forcing the surrender of Melaka (Hoyt 1993, 34). As Portuguese cannon were levelling much of his capital, the sultan and his family fled to the interior and, eventually, to Johor, there to begin an ongoing campaign to retake Melaka from the Portuguese. This campaign never succeeded, despite repeated attempts. Meanwhile, Albuquerque reorganized and rebuilt his captured entrepot, giving it all the trappings of a major administrative and defensive hub of a far-flung trade system. He authorized the construction of a massive fort – called A Famosa – at the mouth of the river, assembled shiploads of valuables looted from the conquered city, and set sail back to Goa. Unfortunately his flagship, Flor de la Mar, laden with a rich cargo of gold, spices, and other precious items plundered from Melaka, foundered in a storm at the treacherous northern end of the Straits of Malacca in December 1511. Under the Portuguese, newly rebuilt Malaca became a military bastion protecting their spice trade, which was centred on Ternate

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and Tidore in the Molucca (Maluku) Islands. The Muslim rulers of these two centres were bitter rivals, a fact cunningly exploited by the Portuguese, who sided with the Sultan of Ternate in return for the granting of a trade monopoly on cloves (Masselman 1963, 219). Amboina was chosen as another spice-loading centre in 1525. Aromatic sandalwood was extracted from the islands of Flores, Timor, and Sumba. Malaca was also an important staging post on the sea routes to the Portuguese trading factory at Macau on the south coast of China and to Jesuit missions in Japan. Other important entrepots and staging depots were located in India and Africa (map 7), notably at Goa, the seat of the viceroy and the major administrative and trade bulking centre of the entire hemispheric trading system; at Quelimane and Sofala in Mozambique; and at Malindi and Mombasa, in what is now Kenya. The Portuguese enthusiastically declared open season on all Muslim (“Moorish”) shipping in the Indian Ocean, whether Arab, Gujerati, Bengali, or Malay, plundering their cargoes and killing or enslaving their crews. Non-Muslim shipping from any quarter passing through the Straits of Malacca was obliged by Portuguese naval patrols to call at the fortified port of Malaca under the threat of punishments such as confiscation of cargoes. Exorbitant trade duties, the corruption of officials in the civil service at Malaca, looting of native vessels, and aggressive proselytizing by the Church among non-Christian peoples in the straits region drove many merchants to seek out other, more accommodating entrepots (Masselman 1963, 219). Shifting alliances among the Islamic “neighbours” of Portuguese Malaca, such as Achin (Aceh), in northern Sumatra, Johor, Japarra, in Java, and the kingdom of Minangkabau in southern Sumatra, which had smarted under the raids on their settlements and shipping by the Portuguese, kept up a constant harassment of the garrison at Malaca. Some, including Achin, grew powerful by offering a more profitable and congenial alternative entrepot that attracted many traders from the region. The Portuguese trading system in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea reached its zenith around 1650, embracing trading, provisioning, and defensive posts that anchored its operations in Africa, India, the East Indies, China, and Japan (map 7). An annual trading “shuttle” connected ports in the Orient, in the form of the Great Ship of Macau, which carried European and Indian merchandise east, collecting spices and aromatics at Malaca, exchanging all of these in

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Azores

Lisbon

Madeira NagasakiHirado

Ormuz Bengal Cape Verde Is.

Bassein

Macao

Goa

Bissau Cochin Colombo

Ternate

Malaga (Malacca)

Mombasa

Amboina

Bantam

Kilwa

Timor

St. Helena

Quelimane Sofala

Indian Ocean

N

Tristan Da Cunha

Cape of Good Hope Trading ports/ way-stations Trade routes

Map 7

0 0

1000

2000 km

1000 mi.

Monsoon trade in the Portuguese era, mid-sixteenth century (Bastin and Winks 1966, 33–4; Duché 1969, 53–4, 61–2)

Ming-ruled Macau for silks, which were in turn traded in Nagasaki, Japan, in exchange for lacquerware, swords, and other metalwares of fine manufacture. These were again exchanged at Macau for gold and porcelain, which fetched high prices on the return of the Great Ship to Goa (Duché 1969, 61). Events in Europe, rather than overwhelming opposition in the East, led to the eventual weakening and downfall of the Portuguese trading system and its stronghold in Malaca. Costs of defending an over-extended trading system and propping up a corrupt and inefficient government presided over by an extravagant royal court in Lisbon eroded the profits from trade and plunder in the Orient (Masselman 1963, 220–2). Private trading by Portuguese officials and

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ships’ captains further weakened an already shaky mercantile system (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962, 126). Later attempts to reorganize under less draconian policies came too late to save the system. Despite the fact that a few Portuguese strongholds in Asia, such as Macau and Goa, continued to defy all efforts at crushing them, the system as a whole was moribund by the late sixteenth century. In 1580, owing to a dynastic hiatus, the crown of Portugal passed to a Spanish king, Philip II. Soon after his annexation of Portugal, Philip ousted Dutch spice merchants from the previously open port of Lisbon, as a reprisal for the protestant rebellion in his provinces in the Netherlands. The struggle between the Protestant United Provinces of the Netherlands (which included the dynamic maritime provinces of Zeeland, Holland, Friesland, and Groningen) and the Spanish lasted sporadically from 1568 to 1648. During this period, the Dutch expanded their naval, fishing, and merchant fleets, and their ports such as Amsterdam became bustling entrepots, benefiting from the closure in 1585 of the rival port of Antwerp, due to the depredations of the Spanish under the Duke of Parma (Woodman 1997, 99). As their naval strength and commercial acumen increased, the Dutch merchants who were no longer dependent on their Portuguese middleman-suppliers took the bold step in 1594 of establishing their own trading system for acquiring spices directly from the East, just as the Portuguese had done a century earlier under somewhat different circumstances. Under the imperial rule of Madrid the sometimes sharp divisions between Portuguese and Spanish possessions in the Orient became blurred, while the European adversaries of Spain – including the Dutch and English – now viewed Portuguese shipping and trading factories as fair game. Attacks on the Portuguese mercantile system were facilitated by the acquisition of insider knowledge, such as that published in 1595–6 by Jan Van Linschoten, a former secretary to the Goan archbishop, who had made a close study of Portuguese Asia (Stone 1965, 48; Hoyt 1993, 43). English adventurers such as Drake, Cavendish, and Lancaster had for some years previously been attacking Spanish and Portuguese shipping and ports in the East and had made some tentative alliances with the rulers of small states in Southeast Asia, such as the Sultans of Ternate in the Moluccas (Maluku) and Achin (Aceh) in Sumatra. In 1599 Lancaster and others sought a royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I of England to set up a company trading to India and the Orient. Two years later, as we have seen, a

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Dutch joint-stock company – the world’s first – that was officially called the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (voc), was formed at the instigation of a high government official, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. He conceived it as a cooperative effort of all interested parties, and to ensure its success, it was granted a twenty-one-year trade monopoly east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Magellan Straits (Woodman 1997: 100). The voc brought to an end the cutthroat competition among numerous small companies in Zeeland and Holland that by the early seventeenth century had flooded the northern European markets with spices whose value consequently plummeted, ruining many merchants. With internal competition eliminated, the voc was then able to focus its full attention on attacking and usurping the trade of the Portuguese and Spanish and forcing out the fledgling English company from the Spice Islands (Stone 1965, 50–1).

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9 The Dutch Trading System and Holland’s Ascendancy in the Straits of Malacca

The period from 1580 to 1640 saw a gradual weakening in the monopoly power and wealth of Portuguese trade and domination in the East, with the decline of Portuguese fortunes in Europe, as well as the constant attrition of attacks on their shipping, trading factories, and military strongholds from Mombasa to Maluku. The Dutch United East India Company (voc), meanwhile, had very nearly succeeded in driving its Portuguese and English competitors out of most areas of the Spice Islands in the first two decades of the seventeenth century. In 1596 the Dutch had expelled the Portuguese from Bantam, in Western Java, thereby gaining a foothold in the Indies, while in 1605 they captured the main Portuguese fort and loading point in the Spice Islands at Amboina, also taking Tidore and Banda. In 1606 Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelieff defeated the Portuguese fleet in the Straits of Malacca but was thwarted in his attempts to seize Malaca town by the arrival of Portuguese reinforcements. By 1609 there were already seven Dutch forts and a growing number of trading factories in the Indies. In 1616 a Dutch force ousted English traders from Ay in the Banda Islands, and by 1619, under the leadership of the able but aggressive Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the voc was building its own trading centre and colonial headquarters in Batavia (now Jakarta), on the island of Java, in the face of opposition from local sultans and their English allies (Israel 1989, 105). In 1623 Dutch forces massacred English factors who had set up in competition with

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them at Amboina and captured English shipping in the region. This left only a handful of English factories in the Indies, such as at Bantam in western Java and Makassar in Sulawesi. Local rulers in Achin (Aceh) and Johor at first welcomed the Dutch as liberators from the hated Portuguese and concluded trading and military alliances with the voc (Hoyt 1993, 44). By 1635, therefore, the Straits of Malacca were essentially a Dutch possession, and the struggling Portuguese fortress city of Malaca was effectively blockaded. Although the Dutch trading system that had arisen was focused on Batavia and did not really need to use the Straits of Malacca for shipment of spices to Europe, this route was still valuable for indirect trade with China. The Chinese continued to tolerate the Portuguese presence at Macau but would permit no other European factories on its soil, repulsing several Dutch attempts to establish a foothold in the Pescadores and at Macau. For a time the Chinese did permit Dutch trading activities on Formosa (Taiwan), based on the fort of Zeelandia Castle at Anping (Morse 1966, 5). After thirty years of operating on Taiwan, however, the Dutch were expelled by the Chinese; hence, Malaca became an important entrepot for their commerce with Chinese merchants, many of whom still frequented the Malacca Straits entrepot, as well as Surat and Calicut in India. The straits were also on the most direct route for trade with Japan, where in 1641 the Dutch had established a factory at De-jima (Decima), a small island in Nagasaki Harbour. Here they enjoyed monopoly rights but operated under very tight restrictions imposed by the Japanese, who, in 1638, evicted the Dutch from their initial location at Hirado. The rebuffs suffered by the Dutch in their attempts to expand their trade with China and Japan made the Straits of Malacca more important in their grand strategy. The durable Portuguese fortress guarding Malaca, A Famosa, was still a formidable obstacle to complete Dutch supremacy in the straits, and the Hollanders resolved to capture it with the help of the Johor Sultanate. A five-month siege so weakened its defences that on 14 January 1641, after a final assault from the south across the silt-choked Sungei Leleh, the most powerful fortress in Southeast Asia – whose walls had repulsed numerous previous assaults – capitulated to the victorious Dutch-Johor forces. The surviving Portuguese and Eurasian defenders were permitted to leave for Goa which remained in Portuguese hands despite Dutch attacks. Although more than seven thousand of its inhabitants had been killed in the siege, many of Malaca’s Eurasians decided to stay

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Amsterdam Rotterdam Antwerp

Nagasaki Bengal Fort Zeelandia

Surat Cranganore

Pulicat

Cochin Elmina

Negapatnam Malacca

Colombo

Ternate Makassar Batavia

Tidore Amboina Fort Nassau

Mauritius

Cape Town

N Trading ports/ way-stations Trade routes

Map 8

0 0

1000

2000 km

1000 mi.

Dutch trade in the late seventeenth century: voc routes to the East Indies (Israel 1989, 182–3; Stone 1965, 49)

and participate in rebuilding the devastated city, soon to flourish again – for a time – as Dutch Malacca (or Malakka in some texts). Their descendants now form the community centred around Portuguese Square, on the south shore of the city. The Dutch trading system that gained power after 1641 and for a time covered most of the peninsula and archipelago is shown in map 8. Shortly after capturing Malacca, the Dutch also took the Portuguese entrepots of Galle in Ceylon and Cochin on the Malabar coast. During the mid-seventeenth century they established fortified trading ports or way-stations at the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius (abandoned in 1710 due to a plague of rats) and at various places along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India. They expanded their centres for trade at Batavia, at recently conquered Makassar

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(after 1666), and at several points in the Moluccas (Maluku) and Banda Islands. Curiously, Portuguese East Timor was not overrun. The captured fortress-port of Malacca, devastated and depopulated during the long siege, was duly refurbished and, indeed, greatly strengthened by the new Dutch administration. Some of the buildings they erected at that time still stand proudly in the centre of the modern city. Unlike previous mercantile empires in the Indian Ocean, the Dutch system was not purely a monsoon trading system: on the outward journey from Holland, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, Dutch East Indiamen bound for the Spice Islands mostly kept well south when crossing the Indian Ocean. Here the large, sturdy Dutch vessels were assisted, not by monsoons, but by the westerly winds known as the “roaring forties” (along the fortieth parallel of latitude: map 3). These reliable winds blew strongly and steadily at all seasons to speed the passage of the Indiamen due eastward before they turned north off the Western Australian coast to Batavia in Java, the main Dutch emporium. Ships using this route significantly reduced the time of their journey in comparison to those using the old route in the southwest monsoon belt and could complete their voyage at any season. They reached Batavia, on the northwest coast of Java, via the Sunda Strait rather than the Straits of Malacca, which became a route of secondary importance in the Dutch system, except for certain kinds of long-distance trade, for example in tin and gambier, and for local traffic. The Dutch, however, soon attempted to follow the same monopolistic practices as the Portuguese, antagonizing the local Malay merchants by forcing them to trade at Malacca and exacting high customs duties and taxes (Stone 1965, 56). They also tried unsuccessfully to get the Malays and Minangkabau, who had helped them overthrow the Portuguese, to return looted property and Christians taken as slaves. Within a few years hostilities had broken out between the Dutch at Malacca and their Malay neighbours over these matters. There were similar problems in the Spice Islands themselves as the Dutch attempted to stamp out by force the “illicit” local trade in spices through Banda, Makassar, and elsewhere (L. Andaya 1993, 164–5). Hindu traders who remained at Malacca after the departure of the Portuguese also found themselves targeted by the Dutch, who accused them of having collaborated with the Iberians. Hundreds of these highly successful merchants and traders consequently left

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Malacca, further reducing the commercial utility of the entrepot (Hoyt 1993, 47). Senior voc officials at Malacca were not prevented by their governing body in Holland from trading on their own account. Many became wealthy through this private trade, while the fortunes of the voc itself advanced at only a snail’s pace, notwithstanding Dutch insistence on a trade monopoly in the straits. Indeed, despite the fact that commerce elsewhere in the Indies was highly profitable for the voc – at least until around 1720 (Woodman 1997, 101) – some observers have concluded that the Dutch enterprise at Malacca, in purely economic terms at least, was a failure (Hoyt 1993, 52). While some of the reasons for this lack of commercial success can be ascribed to rigidities and flaws in the voc trading system, external forces are also partly to blame. Like the Portuguese before them, the Dutch discovered that relatively few types of European-made goods found a ready market among Eastern traders calling at Malacca. Thus, Dutch acquisition of the prized spices and aromatics necessitated the trading of gold and silver bullion and coinage (Glamann 1981, 287–8). Much of the coinage was, in fact, Spanish or Portuguese. The main product acquired by the voc from the straits area was pepper, which the company sold in the Netherlands markets in twice-yearly sales, blending different bales obtained from varied producing areas to achieve a product of uniform quality. During the seventeenth century more than half the value of homeward consignments comprised pepper ( 73). Also important were cloves, nutmeg, and mace, which the Dutch considered to be of vital importance to their mercantile system and which they assiduously and jealously monopolized in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Davies 1961, 54). The voc also attempted to monopolize the tin trade in the straits region and blockaded the tin-loading ports in Kedah and Perak to ensure that shipping using these ports paid a substantial duty in the form of a share of their tin cargoes (Stone 1965, 64–5). By a series of coercive treaties with local sultans, the Dutch further tightened their grip on the trade in tin, cloth, spices, and other produce, forcing their European rivals, as well as local trade competitors, such as the Bugis of Sulawesi, out of the most lucrative kinds of commerce and into the fringes of the trade area (Pelras 1996, 143). The Dutch tried to capitalize on their enforced monopoly over trade in Malacca and the East Indies by cutting the prices at which

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they acquired supplies of pepper and other spices and by introducing some debased coinage (with sometimes sharply reduced precious metal content: Glamann 1981, 68). This was counterproductive, however, because it intensified the efforts of rivals such as the English, Achinese, and Bugis to undermine the Dutch monopoly. Islamic Achin (Aceh), in particular, became a haven for those wishing to avoid Dutch Malacca and was an entrepot of choice for a wide variety of Arab, Indian, and European merchants. Hostilities between Achin and the Dutch intensified and continued sporadically until the twentieth century. Despite alliances concluded with other Malay potentates, the Hollanders were reluctant to assist militarily in their squabbles with neighbouring polities, and consequently they acquired a reputation in Asia as unreliable military allies, as well as unrelenting commercial monopolists. After about 1720, when the burgeoning costs of operating its far-flung colonial and trade system – exacerbated by a period of excessive dividend payouts – rendered the voc unprofitable, its fortunes in the East began to decline, and it was eventually wound up during the Napoleonic War. In the straits region, thanks to the heavy-handed treatment of Asian merchants by the Dutch and their insistence on monopoly control of trade, together with such factors as the silting up of the river port, the emporium of Dutch Malacca languished throughout the eighteenth century. Rapid siltation of the river and roadstead, a fate shared by many other ports in the region, was clearly a result of accelerated soil erosion and stream sedimentation from expanded alluvial tin mining and intensified cultivation in the interior of both the Malay peninsula and Sumatra. Some researchers believe that a change in sea level may also have been involved (Cleary and Goh 2000, 27). There is, however, a dearth of contemporaneous evidence from other areas of the world to substantiate this notion of significant eustatic changes only a few hundred years ago. Although Malacca would never again regenerate its former power as a trade capital, the southern Malay coast of the straits would later experience a partial resurgence of commerce under the British. The story of the rise of British power in the area at the expense of the Netherlands again involves factors taking place in Europe that decided the fate of Dutch possessions in the straits region.

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10 The British East India Company Trading System

On 31 December 1600 a company with the title The Governor and Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies commenced its activities under a royal monopoly of trade in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The charter granted by Elizabeth I for fifteen years in the first instance was renewed in 1609 by James I. Nevertheless, a rival English company arose in the late seventeenth century, only to be amalgamated with the Honourable East India Company of London in 1702, to avoid mutual ruination (Morse 1966, 6). Under Elizabeth’s charter the first English fleet sailed to the East in 1601, raided Portuguese shipping in the Straits of Malacca and seized their cargo. It established trading links with the sultanate of Achin (Aceh) in northern Sumatra and at Bantam in Java and returned with pepper and other spices to London in 1603. By 1615 English trading factories were established at seven locations in India, as well as in Siam (at Ayutthaya and Patani), Cambodia, Sumatra (Achin), Java (Bantam and Batavia), Borneo (Sukadana and Banjarmassin), Sulawesi (Makassar), the Banda Islands, and at Hirado in Japan (Chaudhuri 1965, frontispiece). None of these locations was exclusively English, however, nor was the English trade protected by fortifications until, in 1643, Fort St George was built at Madras. Indeed, in this period of rapid expansion and competition, English trading factories were often located side by side with either Dutch or, occasionally, Portuguese factories in a classical duopolistic pattern, as discussed in chapter 3 (Morse 1966, 7; Freeman and Dungey 1981, 252–70).

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duopolistic competition between english and dutch traders The Dutch and English East India companies existed in an uneasy truce for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While the English, following the ideas of Robert Walpole, developed a more relaxed attitude toward open competition in the trade, the Dutch were single-minded in their pursuit of a full trade monopoly. It was thus inevitable that open hostilities would occur from time to time in this process of duopolistic manœuvring among contiguous English and Dutch factories, as for example at Bantam, Batavia, and Amboina (Chaudhuri 1965, 60–1). While there were numerous clashes during that period, the massacre by the Dutch of English factors at Amboina was the most notorious example of this cutthroat competition (Furber 1976: 48–9). Lacking the military forces and the ruthless determination of the voc, English – later British – expansion of trade in India and indirect trade with China and the Spice Islands continued hesitantly in the face of opposition from the Dutch (and, increasingly, the French). In Europe, meanwhile, there had been a brief period of amicable relations between the English and those implacable enemies of the Dutch – the Portuguese and Spanish – during the time when the Catholic English monarch, Charles II, was married to a Portuguese princess. Later, however, a Protestant English government tended to be on fairly friendly terms with the Netherlands and in sympathy with their opposition to Spain. When Holland was overrun by French forces in 1795 and annexed to France, the British, who also opposed the French, were anxious to deny their rivals the valuable Dutch overseas possessions and sought to preempt a French take-over by invading and occupying those possessions themselves. Their occupation of Malacca in August 1795 pitted a strong British force of soldiers and marines, led by Major Brown and Captain Newcome, against two hundred Dutch defenders commanded by Abraham Couperus. William V, Prince of Orange, whom the French had driven into exile in Britain, appealed to the garrisons in the East Indies not to oppose the British take-over (Hoyt 1993, 58). After only a token resistance, therefore, the fortress of Malacca surrendered to the British. Although they were successful militarily, the British found that gaining a commercial foothold in the direct spice trade, as opposed to trading indirectly through emporia in British India, was no simple task. Using mostly chartered vessels – also called East Indiamen –

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that were generally large, powerfully armed, and specially built for the Eastern trade, the Honourable East India Company focused most of its attention on establishing a strong presence on India’s west coast, and it prospered at a time when the voc was in decline. An alliance of their government-in-exile with Britain, however, did not soften the unyielding opposition of the Dutch East India Company to any incursions by British traders into the Spice Islands. But the resolve of the Dutch to keep out the British was eventually weakened by the events in Europe and by the common enmity both held toward the French, who had moved in strength to take over the trade routes of the Indian Ocean. The establishment of British Penang (Pulau Pinang) had already begun to undermine entrepot trade at occupied Malacca when, in 1803, Britain was once again at war with France. In this war the ships of the British East India Company proved on several occasions to be excellent auxiliary warships. Indeed, with their flush decks and heavy cannon they resembled large frigates and had the advantages of speed, sea-worthiness, and manœuvrability. In numerous engagements with French warships they proved that they could acquit themselves very well. Indeed, in the Straits of Malacca in 1804, French admiral Linois ordered his war fleet to retreat rather than challenge a squadron of British East Indiamen under commodore Nathaniel Dance (Woodman 1997, 102). This probably saved the fledgling outpost of Georgetown from destruction. Rather than being returned to Holland, as scheduled under the short-lived Peace of Amiens in 1802, the port of Malacca had been wisely retained by Britain to forestall the French. The governor of Penang, jealous of the rivalry provided by Malacca even in its reduced state, decided to seize the opportunity to neutralize the old city and raze the fortress of A Famosa. Destruction of the fortress began in 1807 and, had it not been for the intervention of a young, far-sighted Britisher named Stamford Raffles, who was sojourning there, the whole of Malacca would have been demolished along with its fortifications (Newbold 1971, 126). To preempt a French take-over of the East Indies, a major British invasion force under the leadership of Lord Minto was amassed at Malacca in 1811 (Bassett 1971, 108–9). This force then moved through the straits and the Java Sea to occupy the Dutch settlements at Bantam, Batavia, and Amboina. The French were consequently checkmated in the East, at the same time losing most of their possessions in India, although they were able to retain their important base of

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Pondicherry. Meanwhile a major naval battle between the British and the French had been fought at Grand Port, south of Mauritius, in 1810, resulting in a resounding British victory. Thus, not only had the British relegated the Dutch to the status of a satellite power and swept the French from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic sea lanes after the Battles of the Nile and Trafalgar, but they had also cleared their competitors from most of the Indian Ocean by the time of Waterloo. From 1815 onward Britain remained unchallenged as a naval power in the Eastern seas until the mid–twentieth century. The Dutch, on the other hand, did not fully recover their former economic or military strength in the Indies for nearly a century after their sovereignty was restored by the magnanimous British in 1816. In that year, they received back their possessions in the Indonesian archipelago but were slow to reoccupy Malacca, which did not fly Dutch colours until 1818. Their tenure in this much-reduced entrepot was short lived, however, as in 1824 the Treaty of London saw an exchange of trading factories in Malaya (Dutch Malacca) and Sumatra (British Bencoolen). Several years earlier, as will be discussed in detail below, Singapore had been established by Stamford Raffles in a typically duopolistic, preemptive move designed to undercut Dutch trade once Malacca had been restored to Holland. By 1825, therefore, Britain had gained a foothold in the straits area at a time when Dutch power and fortunes were at a low ebb and when its own naval and commercial powers were in the ascendancy following the victory over Napoleon. Even before the events that had led to their temporary take-over of the Dutch East Indies, however, the British, through the East India Company, had been quietly expanding their trading system to bring it into direct competition with the Dutch in the source areas of pepper, nutmeg, cloves, camphor, and other valuable products of the Spice Islands. Bencoolen, on the inhospitable west coast of Sumatra, had been a British pepper port for some years but was never a great success. A major reason was that in terms of duopolistic competition, the British factory was too far from the nodal area of the spice market. To counter the controlling presence of the Dutch at the geostrategic centre of Malacca, a trading settlement had been established in 1786 (by Francis Light) on the island the British referred to as Prince of Wales Island or Penang (Pulau Pinang), at the northern entrance to the Straits of Malacca. This port then comprised an intervening opportunity for

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traders coming from the West. In contrast to the Dutch, who jealously guarded their monopoly of trade, the British at Penang set up an open emporium and encouraged merchants from every quarter to trade freely there. In 1819, against the opposition of some of his own superiors in the company, Thomas Stamford Raffles established another free emporium at Singapore under the very noses of the outraged Dutch in nearby Java and Malacca. Thus, in the space of a few years the British had neutralized the Dutch trade in the straits area through their choice of rival port locations, following closely the theoretical model of duopolistic competition discussed in chapter 3. The effect of the Treaty of London, however, was to end duopolistic competition in favour of what may be termed a partitioned monopoly, with exclusive spheres of influence for Holland in the Indies and for Britain in the Malay Peninsula (Bastin and Winks 1966, 133–6; Regnier 1991, 14–15).

patterns of british trade The pattern of trade routes and trading factories of the British East India Company at the height of its activities in the early nineteenth century is shown in map 9. This map shows that ships of the Honourable Company, like those of the Dutch before them, utilized the roaring forties in crossing the Indian Ocean toward the longitude of the Spice Islands after rounding the Cape of Good Hope (by then in British hands). The company’s direct routes to India, however, used the southwest monsoon and southeast trade winds on the outward journey and the northeast monsoons (and southeast trade winds in the Atlantic) on the return journey to London. Trade with India, the main objective of the company, was focused on the ports of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, the three main presidencies of the company’s commercial system. Trade with China centred on Whampoa (Guangzhou) in the era before the founding of Hong Kong. British vessels heading for China utilized several different principal routes through the archipelagic barrier of the Indies. These were the Sunda Straits, Pitt’s Passage, and the Straits of Malacca. In the latter region the entrepots of Penang, Malacca, and, after 1819, Singapore were briefly designated as a fourth company presidency, in view of their growing commercial importance.

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V

Liverpool

V

London Portsmouth

Azores Madeira

V

Gibraltar Ormuz Canton-Whampoa

V

Calcutta Bombay Aden Madras

V Penang

V

Bencoolen

V

Bantam St. Helena

V

V

V

V

Pitt's Passage

Singapore

V

V

V Cape Town

V V

N

V

Map 9

Trading ports/ way-stations

0

Trade routes

0

1000

2000 km

1000 mi.

British East India Company trade routes, early nineteenth century (Stone 1965, 75; Morse 1966, vol. 1, 24 (facing page))

Although the primary goal of the Honourable Company was the winning of profit from the trade for its shareholders in Britain, necessity often dictated that it had to operate as a political and military arm of Britain also. For this reason, as well as to protect its trade routes and factories from pirates or foreign state rivals, it maintained a substantial military and naval capacity and, as noted earlier, its trading vessels – Indiamen – were large and powerfully armed and functioned as an auxiliary battle fleet on occasions. Indeed, they played an important part alongside Royal Navy ships in many engagements against enemy fleets during two centuries of the company’s operations in the Indian Ocean.

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109 The British East India Company Trading System

The British East India Company’s fortunes, like those of other chartered companies of the time, went into a terminal decline in the nineteenth century. Causes of this decline included the high administrative costs of running a huge and widely scattered (and rather inefficient) bureaucracy and logistical system, changing market demand, costly wars and unforseen disasters, a trend in Britain away from the concept of charter monopolies and toward open and free trade, increased international competition, and more lucrative, less risky, alternative investment opportunities for potential investors (notably in burgeoning British factories). By 1834 the company was at such a low ebb that the decision was taken to withdraw from trade in the East. The administration of company entrepots in the straits area was taken over directly by the British government and organized as the colony of the Straits Settlements. The trade at Penang and Malacca declined in relative terms, although, as will be discussed later, that of the entrepot of Singapore increased dramatically. Malacca, in particular, virtually ceased operating as an entrepot by 1840 and was sustained only by the productivity of tin mines and agricultural estates in its hinterland, as well as by trading in a little Sumatran pepper and gold (Khoo Kay Kim 1972, 57). Several Asian wars in the mid-nineteenth century (the first and second opium wars) gave Britain a foothold on the Chinese mainland, and consequently Hong Kong became an important entrepot and loading centre for the Far Eastern trade. The British-controlled opium trade subsequently moved away from Penang and refocused on Singapore and Hong Kong. The Dutch, meanwhile, had regained some of their former hegemony over their territories of the East Indies. Encouraged by what appeared as benign indifference on the part of the British government during the 1830s and 1840s, they aggressively expanded their domain, to the chagrin of private British traders and other commercial interests in the straits area. The advent of steam navigation, which coincided with the decline of the British East India Company, reduced the importance of the monsoons as an influence on the development of trading systems but did not reduce the importance of the Straits of Malacca, which were still on the shortest route to Europe from China via the Cape of Good Hope or the Suez canal (opened in 1869). The reliance of steam vessels on coaling stations (and later, oil bunkering terminals) made the strategically located

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port of Singapore a major refuelling node in the steam shipping routes throughout the Eastern seas. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, therefore, trade and shipping through the Straits of Malacca were under the control of the British government, whose military strength and relatively benign attitude toward free trade, as well as its encouragement of both capital investment and labour migration to the area, brought a period of relative stability and prosperity to the region. Tin extraction lured thousands of Chinese coolies to the straits area, while additional thousands of their countrymen formed a merchant-trader class in ports such as Singapore and Penang. A number of Malay sultanates were persuaded to accept British resident advisers, who provided (at times heavy-handed) guidance on external policy, while other sultanates were as yet outside the ambit of indirect British rule. Rubber – and later oil palm – cultivation brought still more coolie labour to the region, this time mostly from southern India. The straits area in the early twentieth century thus took on the role of a rawmaterial supply area for manufacturing industries in Britain and Holland. As colonialism gave way to national independence in the mid-twentieth century, monopolistic or duopolistic patterns gave ground to almost atomistic competition in trade within the Eastern Hemisphere, although certain major players in this new trading pattern have remained in evidence. The rise of Japan as an industrial power of global importance and its reliance on imported energy to fuel its economic growth are worthy of examination in the context of a discussion of late twentieth century, early twenty-first century trading systems focused on the Straits of Malacca. This will be dealt with in the following chapter.

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11 Contemporary Trading Systems: Japan, Oil, and the Straits of Malacca

The trading system that emerged during the latter half of the twentieth century, that is, in the postcolonial phase of global development, is highly complex and continues to change both in terms of organizational structure and technological characteristics. Organization of transport network structures has featured a move away from national ownership of merchant fleets and associated infrastructure toward globally integrated corporate networks such as shipping conferences or mergers of regional lines. These conferences and other corporate networks subscribe, in theory at least, to the authority of the International Maritime Organization (imo) as well as to that of their “flag” nation, although for many shipping fleets the nation of registration is a flag of convenience rather than the owners’ country of citizenship. Fleets owned in Japan, the United States, and Hong Kong, for example, have more than 75 percent of their vessels registered under other nations’ flags. Such registration ploys often enable ship owners to avoid costly regulations regarding vessel construction and safety standards, responsibility for mishaps and pollution of the seas, certified competency of crews, and other safeguards against negligent ship operation. The global conference lines, consortia, or sea networks are linked to road and rail systems at the origin and destination ends of longdistance shipping routes, enabling goods to be delivered to clients with unprecedented flexibility and economy (Rimmer 1997, 84–6).

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While long-distance passenger transportation is now almost completely monopolized by air carriers and while information flows have been revolutionized by digital telecommunications systems, shipping, more than any other form of transportation, has continued to provide the linkages for the carriage of bulk materials over long distances in the current system of global interdependence. In the period 1965–95, revolutions in bulk and containerized sea transport and mechanized, automated terminal operations have, without doubt, laid the foundation for the future smooth functioning and prosperity of the global system of bulk commodity shipping, as well as most general cargo flows. The advances in ship propulsion attendant on the use of fuel oil and (for certain classes of warships) nuclear power have permitted the construction of very large vessels with capabilities for long periods at sea without refuelling, as well as enormous cargo capacities and ease of operation with very small crews. The economic impetus for the construction of such gigantic vessels was the eight-year closure of the Suez canal to shipping, beginning with the Six Day War in the Mideast in 1967. That formerly strategic waterway was not cleared of rusting hulks, sunken wrecks, and high-explosive mines until 1975, when it was at last reopened to commercial shipping. The extended trade disruption caused by the closure of that choke-point and the associated upsurge in oil prices highlighted the vulnerability and inadequacy of the preexisting shipping systems. At that time, in view of the closure – for an unknown but possibly lengthy period – of the Suez canal, ship design was no longer constrained by the width and depth limits of that dysfunctional waterway. Thus, new oil tankers, which would be forced to reroute around the southern tip of Africa, could be constructed to utilize economies of large-scale operation. Vessels designated as very large crude carriers – vlccs – of over 200,000 deadweight tonnes were soon in operation. When the bottle-neck of the Suez canal was eventually reopened, engineers were obliged to widen and deepen the channel to accommodate the new vlccs. Such vessels included not only huge supertankers but also dry-bulk carriers and container vessels, as well as general cargo ships and the versatile ore-bulk-oil (obo) carriers. Power plants in most of these very large vessels are now usually turbocharged diesel engines, replacing less-efficient oil-fired steam turbines (Woodman 1997, 316). It has proven to be uneconomical for these massive vessels to call at numerous small ports for loading and unloading of cargoes: they are profitable only while they are at sea, not while they are

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waiting in port to load or unload, and they do not need frequent bunkering. So the tendency in world trade has been for many smaller ports to wither away while a few, strategically located, high-capacity entrepots or load centres with extensive hinterlands – and an ability to accommodate the largest vessels – have flourished. These may be termed primate ports, since their position and role in the international trade system is similar to primate cities in urban systems. The emerging patterns resemble the later stages of the model by Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould discussed in chapter 3. As an example of the overwhelming importance of these primate ports, Robinson (1997, 263) declares that out of the world’s total volume of container traffic in 1993 (58 million teus, or twenty foot equivalent units), over half (58 percent) was handled at just nine huge ports, and of these the three largest are in the East Asian region: the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, Singapore, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Together, these three handled 23 million teus, or between 250 and 300 million tonnes of container cargoes in 1993. Shipping companies owned by Asia-Pacific corporations have captured an increasing share of the global container traffic in the contemporary period. Thus, in the 1990s Taiwan’s Evergreen Group became the world’s topranking full container operator (Rimmer 1997, 87). Singapore has recently emerged as a major node in the contemporary global shipping networks. By some measures, it ranks first in the world in terms of overall shipping tonnage handled and particularly in terms of containerized cargoes (Cleary and Goh 2000, 136). Within 3,000 nautical miles (5,556 kilometres) of Singapore are a large proportion of Asia’s – and the world’s – manufacturing and energyproducing centres (Robinson 1997, 265), making it a natural focus in hemispheric transport. In 1993 the port of Singapore handled about 274 million tonnes of cargo, of which 123.5 million tonnes comprised petroleum and a further 150 million tonnes were dry-bulk and general cargo (Robinson 1997, 269). About 80 percent of the general cargo is containerized. Currently over 500 shipping lines, including 130 container lines and conferences, use the port of Singapore annually (Cleary and Goh 2000, 137). The South China Sea route between Singapore and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China is one of the most heavily travelled container routes in the world, with over five southbound and four northbound large container vessels (at least 500 teus each) plying this route each day (Robinson 1997, 27). The vast majority of container ships in the Asian realm, however, pass through the Straits of Malacca, many calling at

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Singapore and at the other major container terminal in the straits area, Port Kelang, near Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The Sumatran port of Belawan is also growing as a container port for the Indonesian side of the straits. Singapore, however, is overwhelmingly dominant in the container trade in this region. To the primacy of Singapore in the container traffic system is added its function as an oil-refining terminal and its role as a bunkering point for ships passing through the East Asian sea-lanes. Refined petroleum products produced in Singapore are distributed throughout the straits region and beyond in smaller, specially designed compartmented vessels that can carry at one and the same time a variety of refinery products, such as kerosene or jet engine fuel, petrochemicals, light lubricating oils, and heavy bunker oil. The contemporary sea traffic system in the Eastern Hemisphere is a complex mixture of transit trade and passenger traffic between the far-flung origin and destination ports of Europe, the Americas, the Persian Gulf, Australasia, Japan, and the emerging superpower of China, as well as import and export trade originating or terminating at local ports and load centres in the region. Naidu (1997, 37) estimates that local trade from peninsular Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand contributes about 10 percent of total traffic in the straits, with the other 90 percent being transit traffic. It is this overwhelmingly global nature of the role of the straits that gives a unique character to this waterway and validates the broad perspective and approach adopted in this book. A study of the routeways followed by the total traffic through the Straits of Malacca (about 280 to 300 vessels per day and growing at about 9 percent per annum: Ahmad 1997, 187–8) would be extremely complex, and it would be hampered by inadequately comprehensive data. Here I investigate the pattern of a part of the transit trade in perhaps the most significant of modern commodities to be transported through this region. This comprises crude oil and oil products, carried mostly in vlccs of about 200,000 deadweight tonnes capacity. Oil shipments from the Persian Gulf region to Japan totalled about 150 million tonnes in the early 1990s, while a further 45 million tonnes were added to the Japan-bound flow of petroleum from oilfields in southeast Asia itself (Robinson 1997, 269). Oil tanker traffic makes up between 30 and 40 percent of all transit shipping passing through the straits per year and represents about 80 percent of

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Yokohama Kobe Nagoya Kuwait Bahrein Qatar

Abu Dhabi

tr.

aS cc

la Ma

Arabian Sea

Singapore

Sunda Str.

Indian Ocean

Makassar Str.

Lombok Str.

N

Significant ports or markets

0

1000

2000 km

Trade routes 0

Map 10

1000 mi.

Crude oil shipping routes: Persian Gulf to Japan, late twentieth century (Hamzah 1997, 105)

Japan’s oil import tonnage from all sources (Hamzah 1997, 87). This pattern of late twentieth century oil flows is shown in map 10. As this map indicates, the major origin points for petroleum shipments are Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and other places in the Persian Gulf. Shipping must pass through the narrow Straits of Hormuz, which rivals the Straits of Malacca as a potential choke-point in the international oil tanker traffic pattern, before crossing the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. When tankers heading toward the major oil terminals at Yokohama, Japan, or to Taiwan, South Korea or coastal Chinese cities reach the archipelagic barrier of the Indonesian islands they have some choice of routing if they are of less than a critical size (about 200,000 to 250,000 deadweight tonnes). Most of these take the shortest sea route through the Straits of Malacca.

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Tanker traffic, thus, contributes about a third of the eighty five to ninely thousand large vessels passing through these straits annually and adds substantially more to the total tonnage carried. Vessels of 300,000 tonnes or over, when fully loaded, would not, however, pass the test of the 3.5 metre ukc (under-keel clearance) stipulated by international regulatory agreements for ships passing through the Malacca Straits, and thus they are usually routed through the Lombok-Makassar Straits or, occasionally, Selat Sunda. Although the numbers of vessels using these alternative routes are much lower, the huge average size of the vlccs and ore carriers involved means that total tonnage of shipping through the Sunda and especially the Lombok–Makassar Straits is quite large. As Singapore is itself one of the main oil refining and bunkering points in Asia, much of the tanker traffic passing through the Straits of Malacca and its alternative routes is destined for this terminus, again contributing significantly to the total of seventy to eighty thousand vessels calling at this port annually (Naidu 1997, 34).

oil flows through the straits of malacca During the twentieth century the role of the straits as a gateway to trade with the Orient has grown – with a few notable hiatuses such as the Second World War – to the point where, in the first years of the twenty-first century, an average of over one hundred thousand ships of all kinds and sizes use the straits annually. Transit traffic alone now amounts to more than two hundred vessels per day, much of it generated by the economies of the East Asian realm that have a combined gdp in the vicinity of u.s. $10 trillion. Large cargo carriers and tankers represent a significant proportion of this traffic, and oil tanker movements can be expected to increase to more than 40 percent of the total traffic in the coming decade. The oil carried by these tankers is mostly being shipped from the Persian Gulf states to Japan, and such traffic constitutes a recognizable trade system that may be isolated for study in much the same way that the earlier systems of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British have been selected for study in earlier chapters. The story of the rise of the crude-oil shipping system linking the Persian Gulf states and Japan is one with a relatively recent origin. Before the Second World War, Japan had no significant historical

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links with this region of southwestern Asia. One of the reasons Japan entered that war, however, was to secure sources of hydrocarbon energy for its expanding manufacturing industries. But its horizons did not extend in this regard beyond the oilfields of Indonesia and Burma (Myanmar), which it seized early in the Pacific war. Having subsequently lost the war and realizing the limitations of its domestic coal reserves, energy-deficient Japan began to look further afield for supplies of oil, leading it to become actively involved during the 1960s in resource development and exploitation in the Persian Gulf region through such companies as the Japanese Arabian Oil Company. The plentiful and cheap supplies of oil at that time helped spur rapid economic growth in Japan. The first global oil crisis of 1973 threw into stark relief the vulnerability of Japanese industry and its desperate need for secure systems of energy delivery. Of all the countries of the oecd, a number of whom faced Arab oil embargoes at that time, Japan had become the most dependent on Middle East oil in the postwar period. Indeed, oil contributed 80 percent of Japan’s total energy needs in 1973 (Ikuta 1986, 18). Although not itself facing an embargo, Japan was nevertheless caught by the rapid opec oil price rise that occurred during the 1970s and early 1980s, and its confidence in the security of its oil imports was severely shaken. Although Japan subsequently moved as rapidly as possible to reduce its vulnerability, its continued high dependency can be gauged by the fact that, as late as ten years after the first oil crisis, over 60 percent of Japan’s energy needs were still being supplied by the Persian Gulf states (Sharif 1986, x). A second global oil crisis in 1979 – 80 spurred a new Japanese approach to energy policy that had three basic objectives: to ensure security of oil supplies, to develop alternative energy sources, and to promote energy conservation and economy of use in Japanese industry and society. A major goal was the reduction of Japan’s dependence on oil to less than 40 percent of total energy needs by the year 2000 through the use of nuclear power and other alternative energy sources. Although it is as yet uncertain whether this target has been fully met, the rise in oil prices in 2000–2001 to over u.s. $27.00 per barrel, as a result of decisions by opec to cut production, has no doubt underscored the wisdom of the Japanese national energy policy. Achieving security of oil supplies for Japan involved initiating multipronged attacks on a complex logistical problem. The first of

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these initiatives has been to foster the idea of cooperation among the Arab oil producing states and Japan, so that maintaining a reliable flow of oil from producing fields is viewed as a matter of mutual benefit and shared interest for all concerned. This “long-term interdependence based on interlocking interests” (Sharif 1986, x) is not simply an economic agreement – although the Arab world accounts for about 10 percent of Japanese exports – but also involves mutual sociopolitical accords, since a stable climate of international relationships is a necessity for security of oil supplies as far as Japan is concerned. The second thrust in Japanese oil policy has been to try to dampen oil price changes, by arguing that massive price swings that send damaging ripple effects through Japanese industry cannot, in the long run, be in the best interests of oil producing states any more than for a major consumer like Japan. A third prong has been to build and maintain a strategic reserve in Japan itself, to guard against the potentially catastrophic situation during the first global oil crisis, when Japan had virtually no strategic oil reserves at all. A fourth prong has been to construct and sustain a reliable and costefficient sea delivery system for crude oil supplies to Japan, using economies of scale in tanker technology and cutting both costs and physical inefficiencies – and minimizing sociopolitical uncertainties – along the routeways between the Persian Gulf and Japanese oil terminals. The sheer scale of this logistical system can be gauged from the fact that in 1992 alone, 10,074 large oil tankers passed through the Straits of Malacca, most on their way to Japan, while additional fleets of tankers transported to the huge terminals in Yokohama and elsewhere millions more tonnes by alternative routes, especially through the Sunda and Lombok-Makassar Straits. In the same year Japan imported over 170 million tonnes of crude petroleum from the Arab Gulf States (Chia Lin Sien 1997, 103–122). As shown in map 10, the traditional shipping route via the Straits of Malacca remains the major component of the Japanese logistical system for oil delivery, at least in terms of shipping frequency, with a reported 72 percent of eastbound, loaded tankers plying this route (Morgan and Valencia 1983). The remaining 28 percent of loaded eastbound tankers comprise mostly vlccs that cannot meet the 3.5 metre ukc requirement for ships transiting the Straits of Malacca, which in any case has a minimum channel depth of 23 metres, very restricting for vessels exceeding about 230,000 deadweight tonnes.

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The latter vessels would need to utilize constricted high-tide “windows” for safe passage through critical points in the straits. Very large tankers, thus, mostly use the Lombok-Makassar Straits and the Celebes Sea route, which, however, adds an additional 6 or 7 percent to the cost of shipping a tanker load of 300,000 tonnes over and above the costs on the shorter Malacca route (Naidu 1997, 35). Although actual statistics are unavailable, it can be inferred that almost all unloaded, westbound tanker traffic uses the shorter route via the Straits of Malacca. In terms of volume (deadweight tonnage) rather than ship transit frequency, however, the division between the Straits of Malacca and the alternative tanker routes is more even – about 52 percent and 48 percent respectively (Chia Lin Sien 1997, 104). Only about 10 percent of tanker traffic passing through the Straits of Malacca actually calls at ports in the region itself, with Singapore, as noted earlier, being the most common regional port of call. This means that although the littoral states of Malaysia and Indonesia bear much of the risks inherent in the passage of large oil tankers through the straits, they derive little economic benefit from this transit traffic and are thus inclined to discourage such traffic through the straits, or, put another way, they are inclined to encourage the use of alternative routes such as Lombok-Makassar-Sulu. Being mindful of the added costs of the Lombok route, however, but still wishing to remain on very good terms with the littoral states, Japan has attempted to allay fears about oil spills and show its willingness to shoulder some of the burdens of cost and responsibility for the safety of its tanker traffic through the straits by supporting efforts at traffic separation schemes in the waterway and funding the purchase and maintenance of navigation aids and emergency equipment and services to deal with oil spills in the area (Chia Lin Sien 1997, 104; Cleary and Goh 2000, 134–5). The voyage of a tanker from an Arabian Gulf port to Yokohama in Japan would be about sixty-five hundred nautical miles in length using the Straits of Malacca but well over seventy-five hundred nautical miles using the Lombok-Makassar route. For a supertanker moving at a typical cruising speed of fifteen knots, this would add about three days to the journey (Chia Lin Sien 1997, 114). Most Japanese-owned tankers are purpose-built to use the Straits of Malacca and thus are generally not larger than about 230,000 deadweight tonnes. Economies of scale in crude oil transportation using tankers

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of this size are somewhat lower than for larger vessels, but the shorter route via the straits avoids the added line-haul costs mentioned earlier. Using somewhat smaller vessels that can negotiate the straits also avoids the opportunity cost, or demurrage, occasioned by an inability to quickly “turn around” a much larger vessel, which will take significantly longer to load and unload and must make a longer sea journey between given ports of origin and destination. Unless forced by political considerations to abandon the Malacca route, much tanker traffic can be expected to continue using this “shortcut” from the Persian Gulf to Japan. In the case of supertankers significantly larger than 300,000 deadweight tonnes, which must perforce take the Lombok-Makassar route, economies of scale probably now outweigh the added line haul and demurrage costs associated with this alternative route, and it can be expected to experience increased traffic by very large vessels in future. As more supertanker traffic shifts to the alternative routeways in the system linking the Persian Gulf with Japan, there is a feeling in some quarters that the centuries-old gateway of the Straits of Malacca may experience a decline. The idea that the region as a whole may therefore be safer from the threat of catastrophic oil spills or other shipping disruptions may not, however, prove realistic, since the alternative routes through Selat Sunda and the Lombok-Makassar Straits are less well charted and have navigation hazards of their own that make them, if anything, more risky that the well-charted and supervised Straits of Malacca. Thus the Sunda Strait has highly irregular bottom topography, is poorly charted and is not suitable for vessels with a draught of more than eighteen metres. At its narrowest this strait is barely twenty-four kilometres wide, and there are very strong tidal streams, especially in its northern entrance. Additional navigation hazards include the previously mentioned offshore oil drilling platforms that line the northwest coast of Java. The Lombok Strait, a superior route, is nevertheless divided at the south entrance into two parts by islands (Nusa Penida is the largest), with the western branch, Selat Badung, having a width of only about nine kilometres at its narrowest point. The western channel is thus rarely used by large vessels transiting the straits. To the east of Nusa Penida the channel is both quite wide and very deep but with very strong and unpredictable tidal currents. Tankers loading crude oil from the submarine pipeline at Ampenan, on the west coast of Lombok Island, anchor in the channel up to a kilometre offshore and can represent a navigation hazard to transit

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traffic, as can the cross-channel ferries and the recreational boating that is concentrated between Senggigi and the Gili Islands to the north. The Lombok Strait is connected via the eastern Java Sea with the Makassar Strait, separating Borneo and Sulawesi. This strait is about four hundred nautical miles in length and is divided into two channels by an island (Little Paternoster Island). The eastern channel, with a width of thirty-five kilometres at its narrowest point, is extremely deep and is used by even the largest supertankers. Vessels must give a wide berth to the shoals and sand spits that exist along the Kalimantan coast in the southwestern parts of the Makassar Straits. At the northern end of these straits, tankers bound for Yokohama and other Japanese terminals traverse the Celebes Sea and skirt the southern coasts of Mindanao, thence through the Sibutu Passage into the Sulu Sea and Mindoro Strait to the west of the Philippine island of Mindoro. Waterways here are deep, wide, and relatively free of navigation hazards. Although subject to monsoonal reversals, the prevailing winds in the Makassar Strait are northerly, and northeasterly in the Celebes Sea. Heavily laden supertankers headed northward often face strong headwinds that increase navigation costs and hazards. There is also a greater danger of political disruption to tanker traffic using the Lombok–Makassar–Celebes–Sulu Sea route, since some parts of this route traverse waters that are under conflicting claims by littoral states and in the past have been closed to international shipping on several occasions due to naval manœuvres by countries such as Indonesia (which closed both the Sunda and Lombok Straits in 1988 for periods of several days at a time). Piracy remains a constant threat in this area also. A nation as dependent on imported energy as Japan could not withstand disruption to its supply networks for any appreciable length of time, and the threat of such disruption is clearly a factor influencing Japanese diplomacy and energy policy.

trade flow patterns and conceptual models An understanding of the contemporary patterns of bulk commodity movements through the straits, such as oil flows to Japan, is enhanced by applying the concepts from political economy and geography outlined in part 1 of this book. Ideas of hemispheric influence projected from powers such as Japan and judicious encouragement

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of international institutions and regional agreements illuminate the context for long-distance, large-scale flows through the strategic choke-point that is the Strait of Malacca. Applying ideas of complementarity, transferability, intervening opportunity, and substitutability makes more intelligible the patterns not only of contemporary trade flows but also of those of past mercantile systems such as the British, Dutch, Portuguese, and pre-European networks. Vance’s model sketches the historical-geographic process of evolution of colonial trading and development patterns from the first exploratory forays to full-blown mercantilism and expansionism. The model of Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould and Bronson’s model connect the specific development patterns of local trade hinterlands and distant forelands and explain their evolution. Hotelling’s model explains the sequence of moves and countermoves of rival port polities, some of which became virtual “gatekeepers” controlling a critical nexus in the regional trade route network, as will be explained further in part 3 of this book.

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PART THREE

The Gate-Keepers

Flows of shipping and commodities through the Straits of Malacca have from ancient times been subject to control, taxation, and protection or interdiction by various political and military powers located in or near the straits. In some ways the activities of these “gate-keepers” supervising traffic and commerce through the straits have been positive, encouraging and facilitating trade and communication through this strategic portal. In other ways, however, the influences of the polities and potentates over the straits have been negative, restricting flows, monopolizing commerce, and even perpetrating acts of piracy on those attempting to navigate through the waterway. A small number of locations where these gatekeeping functions have occurred through time are noteworthy, and a consideration of their roles as entrepots, garrison ports, and seats of hegemonic power is needed in order to complete an understanding of the broader role of the Straits of Malacca in global, hemispheric, and local interaction. This task occupies the following chapters in part 3 of this book. The main gatekeepers were, at various times, the controlling powers at Melaka, Pulau Pinang, and Singapore. Others contested the regional hegemony of these powerful ports from time to time. Additional insights into the roles of the region’s influential entrepots in nurturing mainly local trade and development in the area is given in the form of a brief explanation of the hinterland patterns on both the eastern and western shores of the straits.

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12 Controlling Transit Trade: The Entrepot of Melaka

Although transit traffic has passed through the Straits of Malacca for millennia and local produce from the region has been important in sea trade, only since the rise of the empire of Melaka and its colonial successors have certain ports in the region taken on the roles of primate entrepots serving remote forelands. As outlined in chapter 3, these are ports whose main functions comprise the facilitation of trade in commodities that have origins and ultimate markets in areas far distant from the port itself, rather than being generated or consumed in its own locality or hinterland. Many factors are significant in making a port into a successful and flourishing emporium of this kind. First, there needs to be an atmosphere conducive to unfettered but orderly exchange, including security for merchants, their vessels, and their cargoes, as well as freedom from arbitrary actions by local authorities or interdiction by outsiders. Other factors include wellregulated and dependable systems of commercial finance, credit, and insurance; stable currencies; reliable and practical systems of weights and measures; adequate facilities for docking, refuelling, repair, and maintenance of ships, as well as accommodation and revictualling for crews from many cultures and regions; safe and suitable warehouse space for storage of cargoes awaiting transshipment; a convenient marketplace and a system for disseminating market information; and lastly, reliable stevedoring and harbour management and maintenance. Over the centuries, three main emporia – Melaka,

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Pinang and Singapore – have arisen in the straits area, although only one of these, Singapore, remains a primate entrepot at present. In the sections that follow, the characteristics of these centres that pertain specifically to their entrepot roles will be explored.

characteristics of the melaka (malacca) entrepot The partly mythical narrative of the founding of Melaka in or about 1395 by the exiled Parameswara of Palembang, Sumatra, has been described earlier. From its beginnings as a fishing village, previously notable mainly for its exports of pickled shad roes (Eredia 1930, 17), and with an anchorage that occasionally doubled as a pirate lair, this small settlement at the mouth of the Melaka River expanded rapidly, as we have seen. Under the guidance of intelligent and far-sighted sultans and bendaharas, it was transformed into a place where merchants from many distant locations to the west and east of the straits came with the monsoons to exchange valuable goods. It quickly proved to be a convenient location for the trading of Malukan and Bandan spices, as well as Sumatran pepper and gold, for Indian textiles and gemstones. Undoubtedly, its later success owes much to the fact that both the Chinese and the Gujeratis appear to have adopted it as a suitable place to negotiate the exchange of their respective products, and Western and Arab merchants followed suit. Here we are concerned with the characteristics of this port that made it an ideal entrepot, in other words, the key factors that are mentioned in the definition of an emporium outlined above and that embody the nodal/network concepts discussed in part 1 of this book. One of the earliest descriptions of the entrepot of Melaka was by a Chinese visitor (Muslim scholar Ma Huan, who sailed with Admiral Zheng He to the Nanyang and East Africa in 1409: Hoyt 1993, 150). Melaka, according to Ma Huan, was a well-established city surrounded by a palisade with four gates and watch-towers. Inside the walled town was a second fortification, a kind of citadel, within whose confines were the merchants’ godowns, the treasury and food storehouses. The Melaka river divided the town into two almost equal halves, the southern half being the site of the inner citadel and the ruler’s compound and the northern half, reached by a bridge some distance from the river mouth, containing the residences of many foreign merchants. The bridge and its approaches comprised

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the main venue for commerce of all kinds. Constructed on the bridge were about a score of market stalls: an easy location for small watercraft to reach with their loads of produce and also close to the docks where foreign sea-going vessels unloaded goods for transshipment. Melaka at this time was highly cosmopolitan, with traders from dozens of different countries intermingling in the market. Different national groups in Melaka came to be identified with particular trade specialities. The Gujeratis, Tamils, and Bengalis were mostly cloth merchants but dealt also in a variety of luxury goods from the West and India. Bugis and other island peoples from Sulawesi, the Bandas and Maluku were the spice and sandalwood traders. From Palembang and Jambi came Minangkabau traders bearing cargoes of pepper and a little gold. Javanese controlled the rice and other imported foodstuffs. Chinese traders dealt in silk, camphor, and porcelain. Like other foreign traders, the Chinese established their own residential quarter in the town, occupying the southeast of the port around a hill, still called Bukit China, where they constructed a well – Hang Li Poh’s Well, and later a temple (both of which still exist). Many intermarried with Malays and other ethnic groups, forming a distinctive culture (now often referred to as Baba-Nonya culture). Many generations of straits Chinese are buried in a large cemetery to the west of Bukit China. Many other groups found niches in the markets of Melaka, including Japanese, Arabs, Siamese, and Jews. Local Malays had a preferred place in the markets, offering tin, gold, sago, rattan, tortoiseshell, ivory, horn, and dried seafood. The markets in Melaka moved to a seasonal rhythm, dominated by the monsoons and the vessels these winds brought, alternately from West and East. The most intense trading activity occurred during the month of April, when a wind shift signalled the time of departure for Chinese junks on their return to their home ports and the imminent arrival of Gujerati, Bengali, and Arab traders on the same southwest monsoons. The warehouses of Melaka were emptied at this time of goods from India and the West that had previously been purchased by the departing Chinese and subsequently filled with Chinese goods awaiting the Arab and Indian vessels already heading for the Straits of Malacca from the Indian Ocean. In terms of organization, Melaka resembled many other petty Malay states in the fourteen through sixteenth centuries, but its rise to prominence is the result of astute policies and leadership by a

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succession of strong rulers. Parameswara and his descendants ruled as kings or sultans, presiding over a royal court that included the hereditary heir and an extended royal line of princes and princesses. Peaceful if not entirely cordial relations were maintained with powerful neighbours by strategic marriages or tribute payments. The sultans exercised almost complete power over all their subjects but delegated various functions of government to a viceroy (styled paduka raja: Stone 1965, 330) and a prime minister (bendahara). This powerful administrator acted as chief judge in civil and criminal cases and was the sultan’s financial advisor. Usually the bendahara was elected, rather than achieving this rank through heredity. He was aided in his administration by a treasurer, titled sri nara diraja, who was the head civil servant in the sultan’s government, and by the temenggong, an official combining the functions of chief magistrate and customs collector. The peace on both land and sea was kept by the laksamanna, or admiral. Foreign traders at the port were allotted their own accommodation and storage godowns and were under the authority of their own trading captains, or shahbandas, who also collected marketing levies and taxes and dealt with trade disputes involving their “subjects.” Four shabandas supervised the foreign traders in Malacca during the early years: one for the Gujerati, a second for Tamils, Bengali, and other merchants from the west of the straits, a third for traders from the Spice Islands, and a fourth for Chinese and Indochinese traders (Stone 1965, 33). As an insurance policy against surprise attack, the rulers of Melaka built a fortification that incorporated a small hill close to the mouth of the Sungei Melaka on the south bank, a good vantage point for observing shipping movements in the narrowest part of the straits. The area around the palisaded town was otherwise level and fairly healthy, being relatively free of the mosquito-ridden, tidal swamps and forested or mangrove-lined marshes common elsewhere on the west coast of Malaya. There were no troublesome sandbars or shoals to confound navigation around the mouth of the gently meandering Melaka river, which provided adequate anchorage and shelter for numerous trading vessels in the early days. There were, however, several small islands in the channel just to the south of Sungei Melaka, including Pulau Jawa, Panjang, Serimbun, Hanyut, and a larger island, Pulau Besar. Originally, a small, sluggish stream, Sungei Leleh, hindered development to the south of the town, but

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this was later filled in and built over. As time went on and the sultanate of Melaka became stronger commercially and militarily, it extended its hegemony over a long stretch of the straits and the coastal areas on both the Malayan and Sumatran sides (map 6). Although many merchants were attracted to the emporium because of its obvious advantages and thus needed no coercion, Sultan Iskander Shah ordered the construction of a fleet of armed praus for the dual purpose of warding off pirates and ensuring that shipping did not frequent any rival ports in the straits area but came faithfully to Melaka to trade. When the Portuguese seized Melaka in 1511, they immediately began to fortify the town with stronger walls and stone bastions enclosing a citadel capable of withstanding an assault by ships carrying the most powerful cannon at that time. The citadel was constructed out of laterite blocks and stone pilfered from the graveyards and buildings of old Melaka and took five months to complete (Hoyt 1993, 34–5). Plate 1 shows the walled town as it appeared in the early Portuguese era, with the Fortaleza (citadel) constructed right at the entrance of the river, on the south bank. In the modern city, landfill and silting of the river have extended the coastline some hundreds of metres out into the straits beyond the encompassing walls – now mostly demolished – of the redoubtable A Famosa. The contemporary river entrance and typical shipping that now frequents it are shown in plate 2. Eredia confirms that the Portuguese first constructed, on the exact site where the last sultan, Mohammed, had his palaces and treasury, a square stone and mortar tower that dominated the Fortaleza de Malaca. Each side of this tower was, according to Eredia, 10 fathoms (about 18 metres) long with a height of 40 fathoms (73 metres), and there was an adjoining stone circle on the east (i.e., to the rear of the tower in the left foreground of plate 1) enclosing a well so that “in times of disturbance or war, the people with their supplies could take refuge inside the circle of the protecting walls,” which were nearly 2.5 metres thick. The height of the citadel tower equalled that of a nearby hill, called St Paul’s Hill, on which now stands the ruin of a church (shown to the left of the southern Bastion of Santiago in plate 1) that was first built as a chapel, then enlarged by the Jesuit order between 1548 and 1596. According to Eredia (1930, 17) the Fortaleza was constructed right at the water’s edge,

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130 The Gate-Keepers where it could easily be reinforced in time of war … this tower constituted a starting point for the subsequent construction of the earth walls around the habitations of the Malaes [sic] about the hill … The system began at the point where the land juts into the sea on the west of the hill [the right foreground in plate 1]; nearby were built the Hospitals and the House of Mercy. Here two ramparts of stone and mortar ran off at right angles, each skirting the shore from their starting-point. Both ramparts ran in a straight line, the one northward for a distance of 130 fathoms [236 metres] to the corner by the river mouth and the bastion of S. Pedro in front of the fortress [fortaleza] … the other eastward for a distance of 75 fathoms [136 metres] to the inward curve of the shore and the gate and bastion of Santiago [the Gate of Santiago is the only part of the original, massive fort of A Famosa still standing] … Both these ramparts were constructed of stone and mortar: so too was another one which started from the bastion of San Pedro and the corner by the river mouth and extended for a distance of 150 fathoms [273 metres] from the gate of the customs house terrace, following the river in a northeasterly direction, as far as the acute angle constituted by the bastion of S. Domingoes [the left background of plate 1]. From this gateway here an earth rampart extended in a southeasterly direction for a distance of 100 fathoms [182 metres] as far as the obtuse angle constituted by the bastion of Madre de Deos. Then, from the gate of S. Antonio, for a further distance of 100 fathoms, another earth rampart extended in a south-easterly direction, past the bastion of the virgins, as far as the other gate and the bastion of Santiago.

The total circumference of the walls was, according to Eredia, 655 fathoms (1192 metres). On each wall were placed batteries of heavy cannon, seventy in all, which, together with about fifty guns of smaller calibre, were capable of repelling assaults from both the landward side and the straits or river. Only two of the four gates into the fortified town were in common use: the gate by the customs house terrace and the gate of S. Antonio. The walls enclosed the citadel tower, the palaces of the governor and the bishop, council halls, five churches, and two hospitals, as well as convents and other ecclesiastical buildings. Churches and religious structures were prominent because, under the Portuguese, Malaca became a focus of Catholic missionary activities in the Far East. St Francis Xavier, one of the most notable missionaries working in Asia, died here in 1553 and for a time was buried in the old Jesuit church on St Paul’s Hill before his remains were removed to Goa.

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From the gate at the customs house terrace a short path led to a large stone bridge, at that time close to the mouth of the river, which was guarded night and day. This bridge connected the fort of A Famosa to a bazaar and merchants’ quarters on the north bank of the river and to what Eredia refers to as “suburbs,” of which Upe, or Tranqueira, was the most important. It was partly fortified with a seaward bastion and earth ramparts protecting it from the Saletes (Celates, or local rural Malays). Cheli cloth merchants from the Coromandel were concentrated here. The Javanese rice market was also in this area, near where the numerous champeras, or small Javanese praus, docked or were beached to unload their cargoes of grain, fruit, and vegetables. A second suburb, Sabba, surrounded the rear of A Famosa and the gate of S. Domingoes. This comprised wooden shop houses built on stilts directly over the Melaka river along the south bank and was occupied by fishermen-traders who sold here their nightly catch from the straits as well as timber and charcoal from the interior. They also specialized in brewing nypeiras, or Nipa palm wine (Eredia 1930, 20). A third suburb, Yler, also adjacent to the fortress on the south side of the river, included the important Chinese merchant community of Bukit China. All told, in Eredia’s time (the early seventeenth century) the fort of A Famosa, together with its suburbs, had a Christian population of about seventy-four hundred, together with many more Chinese, Malays, Indonesians, Tamils, and other “infidels” or “pagans.” Spread around the town were Malay orchards and groves of palm and camphor trees, among which geese and poultry, cattle, and other livestock foraged. From points further south on the straits, boatloads of Minangkabau traders arrived at Malaca to trade betel nut. The monopolistic Portuguese trading system at Malaca, thus, was remarkably durable, notwithstanding the fact that its record of ruthless suppression of competitors, exorbitant taxation of merchants, religious harassment, corruption, and tyranny caused many traders to shun the port. Its survival is all the more remarkable given the fact that during about 130 years of Portuguese occupation, the fort of A Famosa was besieged – unsuccessfully – no fewer than twenty-four times, mostly by Johor Malays and Achinese. The emporium of Malaca was already in decline, however, when the Dutch began to attack Portuguese shipping in the Straits of Malacca. Cornelis Matelieff, as we have seen, won an early victory over a Portuguese fleet in the straits in 1606, while about thirty

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Iberian carracks laden with spices were captured or destroyed over the next two years. Dutch ships succeeded in blockading the Straits completely in the 1630s (Israel 1989, 101–2). After the devastating five-month siege in 1640–1, the Dutch forced the decimated garrison of the heavily damaged fort to surrender. Surprisingly, the vanquished Portuguese defenders were permitted to take their possessions with them and return to Goa unmolested. The population of Malaca and its suburbs had plummeted during the siege, and the departure of thousands of southern Indian traders (from the Coromandel coast) who had supported the Portuguese in return for trading privileges reduced the number after the Dutch take-over to about twenty-one hundred people. To the Dutch, the capture of Malaca must have been almost an afterthought, since, through their East India Company (the voc) they had already seized possession of the Spice Islands, neutralized Portuguese naval power in the straits region, and developed a major emporium at Batavia (now Jakarta). Anticipating that the Dutch might prove different from the detested Portuguese, local traders in the straits region initially returned to Malaca – now styled Dutch Malacca – but quickly realized that the newcomers’ monopolistic practices were as stultifying as those of the Iberians. Those members of the Asian trading community that refused to bow to the monopolistic terms of the Dutch soon left or were driven out. The town, and its surrounding productive hinterland, struggled to regain its former prosperity in the face of a welter of Dutch taxes, embargoes, penalties, and regulations. Much of the local trade passed to Muslim-ruled Achin (Aceh) at the northern tip of Sumatra. Trade with China was also reduced, partly as a result of internal political turmoil in China itself, partly by Dutch aggression toward China and its enslavement of Chinese peasants taken in raids on villages near Macau, and partly through their seizure of Chinese junks to be held hostage. The latter outrage was a futile attempt to browbeat the Chinese into expelling the Portuguese from Macau and permitting Dutch trading posts in the Pescadores (Bontekoe 1929, 80, 113–15; Davies 1961, 53, 60–5). Although the Dutch rebuilt A Famosa into an even more redoubtable fortress and added a moat along its eastern and southern walls, they were unable to rebuild the trade that once flourished along the Melaka river. The transit trade had mostly been diverted to more hospitable emporia, and the hinterland of Dutch Malacca remained unproductive, requiring much-needed foodstuffs to be imported

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from other regions of the Dutch East Indies. Since it was unprofitable as a trade emporium, while being costly to administer, Malacca became a quiet backwater, a pleasant place for voc factors and their families to spend a few years. Urban improvements carried out at this time were more cosmetic and bureaucratic than related to commerce. During this period the centre of Malacca acquired its distinctive architecture, with the construction of the Stadthuys and nearby Christchurch (built in 1753 and still in good repair). The relatively nonviolent British occupation of Malacca in 1795 continued this trend toward a reduced trading function in the old port. By that time the British East India Company already had a competing emporium in the straits area in its new settlement of Georgetown, on Pulau Pinang ( Penang), transferred by its founder Captain Francis Light to the Honourable Company in 1786. British occupation of Malacca and other Dutch possessions, as previously noted, was more in the nature of a preemptive move against possible French incursion into the straits region than a commercially motivated action. As we have seen, at the Peace of Amiens in 1801 Malacca was scheduled to be restored to the Dutch, but when the French occupied the Netherlands and hostilities with Napoleon were resumed in 1807, the British kept possession of Malacca. Given that Britain was on good terms with the Dutch government-in-exile at this time and that both were united against their common enemy, France, the renewed British occupation of Malacca was expected to be purely temporary. Recent history, however, had convinced some British strategists that it would be prudent to establish permanent strongholds in the Far East against the likelihood of future instability, while neutralizing or degrading the strong-points of potential adversaries wherever possible. It was with an eye to their own fortunes in this unsettled region, therefore, that the local governor and the East India Company administration in Penang, which had powers of direction over the occupying force at Malacca, took the fateful decision in 1807 to demolish the massive fortress of A Famosa and reduce the strategic and commercial value of the old emporium. Although crumbling and in need of repair, the three-hundred-year-old fortress with its 4.5-metrethick walls and bastions over 18 metres high was considered to be too dangerous an installation to be left standing once the British force withdrew, since it could conceivably fall into hostile hands. Thus, with what some considered indecent haste, British sappers set

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explosive charges under the walls and demolished the huge fort, except for the Gate of Santiago. As noted earlier, it, too, would have been destroyed but for the timely intervention of Thomas Stamford Raffles, who had been trying to recover his health in Malacca after falling ill at Penang. Raffles proposed that the Santiago gate be left as a harmless monument to the city’s turbulent past. It still remains as a major tourist attraction in the old-town area of modern Melaka. Malacca’s fortunes continued their slow decline after it served as the headquarters for Lord Minto’s 1811 campaign in the Dutch East Indies. After its brief restoration to the Dutch from 1818 to 1824, Malacca was considered only as a sleepy backwater by the British, who unenthusiastically accepted it back from the Dutch under the 1824 Treaty of London. This piece of colonial housekeeping, which was aimed at tidying up the patterns of jurisdiction in the region, left Britain in complete control of the Malayan side of the Straits of Malacca and Holland in command of the Sumatran side, as well as the Indonesian archipelago. Under the British East India Company’s rule, Malacca continued its somnolent dissipation, and in 1867 its administration passed to the British Colonial Office, an arm of the Imperial Government. As part of the British colony of the Straits Settlements, together with Penang, Province Wellesley, the Dindings, and Singapore, Malacca’s commercial importance was briefly revived by the tin exports from its hinterland. But its role as an emporium was eclipsed by the other two ports, and especially by Singapore. Malacca then became a relatively minor local port, with its glory days as a major international entrepot seemingly over forever

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13 The Founding of British Penang (Pulau Pinang)

Several factors explain the establishment in 1786 of a British entrepot and naval base at Pulau Pinang – originally named after the betel nut palms (pokok pinang) growing profusely on the island. Renamed Prince of Wales Island by the East India Company, during most of the British colonial period the hilly island in the northern straits was known simply (using the colonial spelling of its name) as Penang (MacMillan 1923, 276). The British East India Company had been searching for years to find just such a suitable base to protect and cultivate its lucrative exchange of Indian opium for Chinese tea. Other likely sites for a base were either too far from the direct trade route or within the sovereign territories of rulers who were unwilling to allow the British to build a permanent base. Also of significance was the continuing war with the French, who were contesting British and Dutch hegemony in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal at this time. France had a naval base at Port Louis, Mauritius, and had also obtained permission to refit vessels at Aceh in northern Sumatra. Thus the French were able to dominate the Bay of Bengal during the northeast monsoon season from their protected harbour in Mauritius. By contrast, the strong northeast winds prohibited British warships from finding a sheltered harbour along the company-controlled Coromandel coast of India at this season, forcing the British fleet to retreat to Bombay on the west coast. A suitable harbour on the east side of the Bay of Bengal, or in the Straits of Malacca, was thus

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urgently needed. A further factor was that, of all the indigenous rulers in the region, only the sultan of Kedah, in fear of invasion from Siam and vulnerable to attack from Selangor, seemed willing to entertain the idea of a British port – and British warships that could come to his defence – on an undeveloped island in his domain known as Pulau Pinang. The final factor was the presence in Kedah of an energetic British trader and former naval officer, Francis Light, who as early as 1771 saw the potential of Pulau Pinang and urged its acquisition by the Honourable Company, then governed by the far-sighted Warren Hastings. Light had helped the sultan of Kedah repel an attack in 1785 by Bugis forces, and the grateful sultan, to show his appreciation and his confidence in the British, held out the prospect of a base for the company on the island. Shortly before, Pulau Pinang been the target of a punitive raid by the sultan’s forces to eliminate pirate lairs that harassed local shipping. Thus it was ripe for development by the British. The company agreed to the terms proposed by the sultan of Kedah, which included an annual payment of six thousand Spanish dollars. Thus, in 1786 Light’s small force of three vessels and about 150 sailors, sepoys, and artillerymen landed on Prince of Wales Island and began construction of a settlement, docks, and a defensive palisade to guard against attacks by pirates or by the Dutch. As superintendent of the new British factory at Georgetown – named in honour of King George III – Light had chosen a site on a sheltered anchorage at latitude five degrees north, facing the coast of Kedah, which was only a few kilometres to the east of the forested, undeveloped, mountainous island. The anchorage, 24 metres deep, with a blue clay bottom, was accessible from both north and south through the narrow channel – in places only 3 kilometres wide – between the island and the mainland. The south channel to the east of the island, which cuts 34 kilometres off the 635 kilometre journey through the southern straits to Singapore, can still be used by vessels drawing less than 5 metres (MacMillan 1923, 288). To encourage rapid settlement, Light freely granted land to Europeans who wished to establish businesses or plantations on this island of 280 square kilometres. It is said that as an incentive to local Malays and Chinese to clear land on the island, Light ordered a cannon to be loaded with silver coins and fired into the forest, declaring that those who cleared the land and thus found the coins could keep both the coins and the land. This policy of granting land to those who cleared it was locally popular,

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as it followed Islamic tradition. Local Malay fishing villages already dotted its coasts, but other Malays, as well as Indian and Chinese cultivators, were now attracted to the island. Traders, whether European, Arab, Indian, Malay or Chinese, were drawn by the promise of British military and naval protection at the new entrepot and by the initial policy of declaring the port “free to all nations,” with negligible duties levied on trade goods. This gave Asian merchants a welcome alternative to the monopolistic and extortionate trade system at Dutch controlled Malacca, which, rather predictably, reacted to the establishment of Georgetown by strictly enforcing in its hinterland an embargo against trade with the British settlement. Dutch embargoes and a major fire in the bazaar of Georgetown in 1789 did not appreciably lessen its pace of development. By 1790 Superintendent Francis Light was able to report to the Bengal government, in whose presidency Prince of Wales Island fell, that the population had risen to several thousands (mostly Asians) and that one thousand hectares had been cleared for the production of rice, fruit, coconuts, pepper, gambier, and sugar cane. Light died in 1794, after almost single-handedly setting the new colony successfully on its feet. By 1804 the population was over twelve thousand, a large proportion of whom were Chinese (these included about twelve hundred Chinese slaves), and the port was crowded with ships and merchants exchanging British and Indian goods such as cloth, iron and steel manufactures, and opium and Chinese tea, silks, and porcelain for local produce such as tin, spices, rattan, gold dust, ivory, ebony, and pepper (Bastin and Winks 1966, 126; Stone 1965, 78). In consequence of the difficulty of controlling piracy emanating from southern Kedah, the company requested, and received from the Sultan in 1800, the cession of a strip of mainland 72 kilometres long and about 730 square kilometres in area opposite the new port. Once under British control this territory was renamed Province Wellesley, in honour of the officer – who was later to become the Duke of Wellington – commanding the Manila expeditionary force that assembled at Georgetown in 1797. Protection for the fledgling emporium, initially consisting of an armed vessel stationed at the port and a wooden palisade manned by a Sepoy garrison, was improved in 1805 by the construction at the northeastern extremity of the island of a moated fortress with four stone bastions. This was named Fort Cornwallis, after the Marquis Cornwallis, Governor General of India and friend of King George III, who had earlier lost the American colonies

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at the battle of Yorktown (plate 3). The moat was later suspected of harbouring mosquitoes that caused malaria outbreaks in Georgetown and was filled with earth in 1922. For the health and comfort of its European inhabitants a sanatorium – the first in Malaya – was built atop Penang Hill (now Bukit Bendera), immediately behind Georgetown. This resort was sufficiently elevated (820 metres) to have a much cooler and healthier climate than the coastal lowlands. Rice cultivation was soon expanding in Province Wellesley, and pepper plantations were beginning to yield significant crops, but plantations of other spices such as cloves, nutmeg and mace were slow to develop, partly because of changed land-tenure policies that forbade long-term grants or leases (Bastin and Winks 1966, 153). Short-term leases encouraged a form of shifting cultivation of quick-maturing crops such as pepper and gambier, which rapidly exhausted initial soil fertility and resulted in land being abandoned to secondary forest growth on much of the island. After 1820 the mostly Chinese cultivators of spices moved to Johor, close to the newly established rival port of Singapore. The potential value of Penang as a naval base for the British was, moreover, reduced by three factors that were discovered rather belatedly. First, because the forests in the interior did not yield suitable timber for masts or ship repairs, such materials would have to be imported. Second, despite the fact that Georgetown had an excellent harbour, adverse currents and winds at the northern end of the Straits of Malacca made for difficult navigation at certain seasons and a slow response time for navy efforts to deal with piratical attacks on shipping in the southern straits (such as occurred frequently around the island of Pangkor and the Dindings, on the coast of Perak). Third, Penang port revenues were never sufficient to cover the costs of maintaining a naval base, since the emporium did not attract a large enough share of the spice trade and was, in any case, based on free trade principles (featuring negligible duties and taxes). Thus, although Penang had fatally undercut the old entrepot of Malacca and was made a presidency of the Honourable Company in 1805, even when conditions were at their most favourable for expansion of trade at Georgetown – when Dutch competition was eliminated during the British occupation of Java and the Spice Islands – it never achieved the kind of rapid commercial growth later to be experienced at Singapore. When the Siamese subsequently attacked Kedah and Perlis and drove the sultan into exile on Penang, trade with the northern mainland was greatly curtailed.

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Indeed, Penang’s place as an entrepot was eclipsed almost from the first moment that the port of Singapore was established. Like Georgetown, Singapore – whose role as an emporium will be discussed in detail below – had an excellent harbour, but it had other favourable characteristics that its rival lacked: its location at the southern end of the Straits of Malacca put it much closer to the spice Islands, where the lucrative trade in cloves, mace, and nutmeg could be tapped more easily; it was at the junction of two strategic waterways (the Malacca and Singapore Straits); it commanded the most direct trade routes to China and Japan; and it was not already in the undisputed possession of any other major trading nation. Under the control of a maritime power like Britain, which subscribed to freetrade principles, it could look forward to attracting large numbers of both Asian and European merchants, some of whom it lured away from declining Malacca and stagnating Penang. Although Malacca and Singapore were incorporated along with Penang into the presidency of the Straits Settlements in 1826 – the year in which Britain recognized Siamese dominion over Kedah and Perlis – they lost their autonomy to Bengal again in 1830. Lumped together under a single colonial administration, the Straits Settlements and their dependencies continued to be riven from time to time by rivalries and jealousies. In 1830 Governor Fullerton, at Penang, wrote that Singapore had “annihilated” the already declining trade at Malacca and “bade fair to annihilate that of Penang also” (quoted in Bastin and Winks 1966, 155). The Penang Council – the local administrative body – suggested that the Honourable Company should institute duties and taxes on trade at Singapore as a way of ensuring a “level playing field” between the two rivals. The effect of this attempt was an outcry from merchants at Singapore and a decree from Britain that revenue-earning duties at Penang should also be discontinued, making all trade in the Straits Settlements absolutely free. This further reduced the trade and the economic fortunes of Penang, which gradually became a local collection centre for products from the northern straits, notably tin, tapioca, edible birds’ nests, beche-de-mer, rattan, gold dust, and pepper, that were exchanged there for metal manufactures, cloth goods, and other items from Britain, India, and China. In consequence of the strong Chinese presence in Georgetown’s merchant and financial-middleman class, Penang had retained an important commerce with China, and it became a financial centre for Malayan and Sumatran tin-mining ventures. The opium trade, however, which once was centred at the Penang emporium,

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shifted to the more conveniently located port of Singapore after 1830 (Bastin and Winks 1966, 157). For most of the British colonial period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Penang, like Malacca, lapsed into economic quiescence. Its fortunes were revived somewhat by the advent of steam navigation, which reduced the disadvantages of adverse currents and winds in the northern straits area, and by the establishment of the rubber industry, which was locally very important until the Great Depression in the 1930s. Georgetown fell like a ripe plum into the hands of the Japanese in the first few weeks of their entry into the Second World War, with almost all of its port infrastructure intact. The Japanese used it as a naval base for their Indian Ocean operations but disdained to use some of the outdated British installations, such as the lighthouse and signal station at Fort Cornwallis (plate 3): they built their own right alongside (both structures are still standing). In the last decades of the twentieth century, under an independent government keen to bring Malaysia into the ranks of the highly industrialized parts of the globe, Pulau Pinang has witnessed the development of an impressive electronics and microchip manufacturing industry. This is mostly clustered around the international airport on the southeastern side of the island, near the massive bridge connecting the island with Butterworth on the mainland. The island retains its cosmopolitan, multiethnic character, but the strong Chinese influence is epitomised by the numerous temples, particularly the huge complex at Ayer Itam. The fine sandy beaches along the northern coast from Georgetown west to Batu Feringgi have also attracted international hotel and resort developments, while a funicular railway now takes tourists and local vacationers to the top of Bukit Bendera, still graced by the old colonial guest house and sanatorium. In the interior, large groves of tropical fruit trees such as durian and rambutan combine with rubber, oil-palm, and nutmeg plantations. Transit shipping, however, mostly bypasses the port of Georgetown, which is no longer the emporium it was in its early days. Other regional Malaysian ports in the straits, such as Port Kelang, and the huge, bustling entrepot of Singapore, have long since eclipsed Pulau Pinang as a trading centre.

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14 The Rise of Singapore as a Global Entrepot

The founding of Singapore in the early nineteenth century was again a consequence of complex political and economic factors in both Europe and the Far East. In Europe the struggle between Britain and Napoleonic France, culminating in the decisive but costly victories of British naval forces at Trafalgar (1805) and land forces at Waterloo (1815), had convinced strategic thinkers in Britain of the value of rebuilding Dutch power as a bulwark against possible future French expansionism. This, as we have seen, entailed restoring to the conquered Dutch their overseas empire, which had been occupied by the British as a preemptive move against France. Java, which had been administered for the British by a young lieutenant governor in the Honourable Company named Thomas Stamford Raffles, was offered back to Holland in 1816. Raffles, who had previously distinguished himself as a strategic thinker in his own right – as evidenced by his gallant attempt to save Malacca from complete demolition by the British occupation forces – had formed a very negative impression of previous Dutch commercial and administrative practices in Java. He believed, moreover, that the ungrateful Dutch were intent on squeezing Britain out of the Far Eastern trade at the earliest opportunity, once they were back in charge. When Malacca was reoccupied by the Dutch in 1818, Raffles, who had been relegated a year earlier to the stagnating pepper port of Bencoolen (now Bengkulu) on the west coast of Sumatra, astutely foresaw that the Dutch would control

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the most central ports and the most productive hinterland areas and thus be able to preempt or cut off most of the trade to Penang from the east and south, crippling British commercial interests in this region. They would, in other words, have won the duopolistic contest for the Eastern trade. Without clear authority from his superiors in the company, Raffles seized the initiative to create a British foothold in the crucial southern straits (Collis 1966, 156), thereby trumping any further competitive moves in the straits area by the Dutch. The Honourable Company had, in fact, neglected to capitalize on an earlier opportunity to establish a factory in Singapore. In 1703 the reigning sultan of Johor presented to a company officer, Alexander Hamilton, the island of Singapore as a gift. Hamilton wrote to his superiors that “It [the island] could be of no use to a private person, tho’ a proper place for a company to settle a colony in, lying in the centre of trade, and being accommodated with good rivers and safe harbours, so conveniently situated so that all winds serve shipping both to go out and come in” (quoted in MacMillan 1923, 199). At that time, however, the Honourable Company shrank from confrontation with the Dutch, who were vigorously attempting to oust the English from the entire region. The Sultan’s gift was not taken up, and the British claim to Singapore, thus created, appeared to have been forgotten a century later. Raffles, supported by his colleague Major William Farquhar, at first used his considerable knowledge of local politics, languages, and cultures to persuade Malay and Bugis rulers not to abandon their ties so recently established with the British but now suddenly threatened by Dutch efforts to reassert their regional hegemony. Under the very noses of the Dutch, who were in the process of forcing a renewal of treaties with rulers in Johor and the Riau and Lingga Islands, Raffles and Farquhar took it upon themselves to install as sultan of Johor a half-brother (Raja Husein) of the heir recognized as the true sultan by the Dutch. The island of Singapore, identified by Raffles as the most suitable site for a British base, lay within the territory of Johor. During the dispute over the succession of the Johor sultanate it had been governed by the temenggong of Johor, who was loyal to Raja Husein and quite ready to accept British financial and military support. A treaty was duly signed by Raffles, the temenggong, and Sultan Raja Husein in 1819 granting the British East India Company the right to establish a trading factory at Singapore. Raffles lost no time in landing his little force of 340 sepoys, 100 sailors, and 12 cannon and building a settlement (Collis 1966, 146).

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The treaty with the sultan stipulated that the British would enjoy exclusive rights to construct factories at Singapore, prohibiting all other powers, whether European or American, from settlement in any part of the territory of Singapore-Johor. Raffles’ action not only enraged the Dutch, who realized they had been outmanœuvred, but also, as we have seen, alienated the governor of Penang, who recognized the damage this would cause to trade at Georgetown. Nevertheless, since he was unable to force the abandonment of Raffles’ creation, he was obliged to send a stronger contingent of sepoys to protect this newly established British factory. In 1820 the Honourable Company, governed at this point by men who were lukewarm, if not openly hostile, to these initiatives, grudgingly ratified Raffles’ treaty (Newbold 1971, 278). As in the case of Pulau Pinang, the security provided by the British military umbrella, British policies of open trading, and freedom from duties and taxes and the natural advantages of an excellent port in a strategic location at the junction of major trade routeways caused the infant settlement to mushroom into a bustling entrepot within a very short time. In less than a year its population numbered over five thousand mostly Chinese, while by 1822 there were ten thousand inhabitants of many nationalities living there (Newbold 1971, 279). Now bracketed by British entrepots, Dutch-controlled Malacca saw its transit trade shrivel almost to nothing. Nor could the Bugis port of Riau in the Dutch-controlled archipelago just to the south compete for the transit trade with its new and bettersituated rival. British, Chinese, and other merchants flocked to Singapore and fortunes began to be made there. The founder of Singapore, unfortunately, did not share in this bounty. Having made enemies within the Honourable Company by his bold and unauthorized actions that many considered insubordinate – actions that included promising to pay thousands of Spanish dollars in annual stipends to the Johor rulers without first securing the approval of the company – Raffles was forced by ill health to retire to England, where, denied a pension and facing massive debts, he died in 1826. The Dutch, in their 1823 negotiations with Britain over the future of the eastern empire, strenuously insisted that Singapore be handed over to them, and British political opinion seemed almost ready to accede to their proposal that Britain should limit its activities to India and leave the Dutch in monopoly control over the Malay and Indonesian regions. By that time, however, the commercial and strategic potential of Singapore was readily apparent, and business interests in Britain made clear their displeasure at the notion of simply handing

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over to the Dutch so successful an emporium as Singapore. Recognition of the strategic significance of this port as the guardian of trade routes through the southern straits and onward to the growing markets of China helped stiffen British resolve to hold on to their possessions in the Malay peninsula. Realizing that this would be a stumbling block to a general agreement, the Dutch foreign minister, Falck, eventually put forward the face-saving proposition of an exchange of two declining ports, one the British settlement at Fort Marlborough at Bencoolen, Sumatra, and the other the silted and obsolescent port of Malacca, only recently returned to the Dutch (Tarling 1969, 21). As we have seen, the legacy of the 1824 Treaty of London in which this exchange was ratified was to make the straits of Malacca and Singapore the dividing line between an exclusively British sphere of interest in the Malay region and Dutch possessions in Indonesia. This resulted in a kind of partitioned monopoly, as discussed in chapter 3, which made the future of Singapore as a British emporium secure and spurred its development even further. By 1824–25 the total value of exports and imports at Singapore had already risen to the equivalent of u.s.$13.5 million, more than twice that of Penang and fully eight times that of Malacca (Bastin and Winks 1966, 151). The success of the Singapore emporium was the consequence of several factors, but it can be argued that the overwhelming factor was its excellent location. Lying about one degree of latitude north of the equator, Keppel Harbour, around which the port city is built, is on the south side of an island 715 square kilometres in extent, its outer harbour opening directly onto the main passage, Singapore Strait, between the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca. On the north the island is separated from Peninsular Malaysia by a narrow channel – the Johor Strait – little more than a kilometre wide. The Sejara Melayu (the Malay Annals) record that the island, once called Singhapura, was the site of the first attempt at building a Malay city state under the leadership of Parameswara in the late fourteenth century. The name Singhapura is usually translated from the Sanscrit as Lion City. Its earlier name of Temasek was changed after Parameswara observed an animal thought to be a lion near the walled settlement he had taken over from its previous ruler, whom he had murdered. After he and his followers were evicted by forces directed by Siam, the settlement was abandoned, and the island was left as a forested and undeveloped haven for Celate pirates and fisherfolk until, five centuries later, Raffles took an interest in it.

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145 The Rise of Singapore

In 1832 Singapore inherited from British Penang the role of seat of government for the Straits Settlements. A first-hand picture of the flourishing emporium of Singapore as it appeared in the late 1830s is given by T.J. Newbold, who provides a detailed description of the commerce transacted in the port at that time (Newbold 1971). The hilly island that Newbold saw was mostly still clothed in forest, its climate much like that of Malacca but without such a marked monsoonal influence on rainfall, which at Singapore occurs at all seasons in the form of frequent tropical showers. The population of the settlement had increased by 1836–37 to almost thirty thousand. Although small in number, the European population was crucial in the developing entrepot, filling posts in administration of the port and in international commodity exchange, which characterized the trade at the port from the very beginning. As Newbold (1971, 352) observes, “Few of the European merchants at Singapore transact business on their own account, being mostly agents for European [business] houses. The ports principally traded with are those of London, Liverpool, Hamburgh, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bordeaux, Canton, Calcutta, Batavia, Bombay and Madras.” Entrepot trading, of course, generated a demand for ancillary skilled and unskilled labour of all kinds. Thus, each year large numbers of Chinese settlers arrived to take up jobs as artisans, labourers, farmers, and shopkeepers or, if they had the backing of capital, merchant traders. Bugis settlers were concentrated in maritime trade and commerce, Indians in petty enterprises of all kinds, and Malays in fishing, cutting timber, and building and manning boats. Like many pioneering settlements, Singapore had a strongly imbalanced malefemale ratio, with fewer than eight thousand females in the 1836 population. Raffles had sought to abolish the practices of slavery and debt-bondage common in the East, and thus slavery in Singapore was outlawed in 1823. However, the ready availability of energetic and cheap labour from China and India meant that the abolition of slavery had no negative effect on the labour supply or the rate of economic expansion in the colony. Newbold’s account quotes figures taken from the Singapore Free Press showing in great detail the nature, quantities, and value (in Spanish dollars) of the imports and exports of Singapore during the year ended 30 April 1836 (1971, 291–350). The picture he presents reflects clearly, by the wide range of products traded and the global reach of trading partners, the international nature of the fledgling emporium and the negligible amount of local produce from the

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island itself entering into its trading pattern. As Newbold observes, “Singapore is a free port … it produces but little as yet for exportation, and … is scarcely more than a mart, or entrepot for transhipment of the produce and merchandise of Asia, Europe and America: the imports, with the exception of those for local consumption, forming the exports” (352). The most important trading partner – in terms of dollar value of imports and exports – at that time was China, whose fleets of junks departed for Singapore on the northeast monsoon about January, arrived between twenty and forty days later, and returned on the southwest monsoon between April and October. They brought cargoes of tea, silk cloth, porcelain, and piece goods and articles of copper, and gold and silver, as well as large numbers of immigrants from southern culture areas such as the Hokkien, Hakkas, and Cantonese. Exports to China comprised British and Indian cloths of cotton and wool, opium, dried seafood, edible birds nests, cotton bales, tin, and pepper (Newbold 1971, 352–3). Next in importance was trade with India, notably the company presidencies of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay and with Ceylon. Imports from this region comprised mostly opium – by that time, in terms of value, a mainstay of Singapore’s total trade – as well as rice, Indian piece goods, cotton bales, jute cordage, ebony, and arrak (liquor). Exports to India and Ceylon included tin, gold dust, silks, china-ware, pepper, and other spices and Malayan and Chinese piece goods. From Britain came a wide variety of manufactured products, including the aforementioned woollen and cotton cloth and thread, iron, guns and gunpowder, casks of wine, and sundry metal manufactures. Exports to Britain included Malayan tin; Bornean antimony; Chinese tea, porcelain, and raw silk; and products from Siam, the Indonesian archipelago, and the Malay and Indochinese peninsulas, such as gold dust, rice, cassia (cinnamon), rattans, gambier, coffee, sugar, benzoin, tortoise and pearl shells, aromatic woods, and ivory (353). Data for trade with Java and Malaya show how Singapore had become a leading emporium for these regions also, overshadowing Batavia, Riau, Pulau Pinang, and Malacca. The reason for this local trade success in a region of competing centres was a matter not so much of the strategic location of Singapore but of the successful policy of free trade. As Mills (quoted in Bastin and Winks 1966, 155) remarks, “Singapore’s … trade would have been far smaller had it been burdened with the heavy dues and vexatious regulations which in 1819 were in force in every Dutch port. The Bugis of Celebes, the

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principal traders of the East Indian islands, would scarcely have sailed hundreds of miles out of their course for the privilege of paying heavy duties when so many Dutch ports lay at their very doors.” The Bugis, therefore, were following the well established principles of spatial interaction outlined in part 1 of this book. A detailed discussion of trade goods from local hinterlands in Indonesia and Malaya will be given in the chapter on regional trade below. While it may be argued that long-distance, transit trade has given the straits and the primate entrepots their unique character, the prolific trade in local produce of the archipelago and peninsula have long formed an important ingredient in their functions, and as a number of recent scholars have emphasized, should not be omitted from consideration (Cleary and Goh 2000, 2). The growth in transit trade in the early nineteenth century attracted new global competitors who had not previously taken part in the region’s commerce to ports such as Singapore. The United States of America, for example, began to make inroads into British and Dutch control of long-distance trade in Southeast Asia at this time, particularly the trade with the Indochinese peninsula (Newbold 1971, 356; Earl 1971, 13) and with the Spice Islands. Also rounding out the role of Singapore as an international emporium was its trade with colonies of Britain south of the equator, including Mauritius, The Cape, and New South Wales. In the decades after 1830 Singapore’s transit trade increased steadily as the Chinese markets were further opened up, partly as a result of the opium wars that saw the establishment of yet another successful British emporium on the island of Hong Kong. Government of the important Chinese communities in Singapore, meanwhile, was by indirect rule, through British-approved headmen who were chosen by the Chinese themselves (Bastin and Winks 1966, 175). Left largely to govern themselves by a lax British administration, Chinese secret societies developed in Singapore and crime and internecine conflict arose, culminating in the riots of 1851–54. Although there were seventy thousand Chinese in the port city in 1857, not a single European administrator at that time could speak Chinese, and there was a poor understanding of Chinese cultural structure and organization and of the role of the secret societies or triads. When Singapore and the other Straits Settlements were transferred from the administrative control of the East India company to the Colonial Office in 1867, the fortunes of the Honourable Company had reached a low ebb. Various critics, especially in Singapore, felt that

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Bengal, the seat of the company’s supreme government, was simply too remote to be able to give appropriate attention to affairs in faroff Singapore or Penang. This had been demonstrated, for instance, by the failure of the company to deal effectively with the pirates that infested the southern straits and that, at one stage, threatened to choke off completely the trade at the port (as will be discussed further below). Under colonial government rule, which fostered free trade, the suppression of piracy, and indirect rule in the Malayan region, the entrepot continued to forge ahead. By 1860 its population had reached eighty thousand most of whom were Chinese. The congested Singapore River was already inadequate for handling the volume of shipping, and the splendid anchorage of Keppel Harbour was developed at this time (plate 4). The rise of Singapore was not, however, without a few setbacks. The 1870s witnessed the departure of many Bugis traders to an expanding port in their own home region of Sulawesi (the venerable port of Makassar, now Ujungpandang: Cleary and Goh 2000, 108). During the First World War, moreover, British lines of communication and facilities for the defence of the eastern imperial possessions were stretched dangerously thin, leading His Majesty’s Government to relegate defence to colonial forces that were often ill-trained, poorly motivated and ill-equipped. In February 1915 the Indian Fifth Light Infantry (Bengali) Brigade mutinied and for a time appeared set to take over Singapore. Forces loyal to the British Crown eventually gained the upper hand, however, and the mutineers were defeated after some casualties were sustained. The vulnerability of this important node in Britain’s imperial network and the serious consequences that would attend its loss were, nevertheless, made painfully apparent. After the Great War the British Admiralty announced plans for an upgrading of port facilities at Singapore, to cost eleven million pounds sterling over ten years. As the crossroads of commerce between West and East, the port attracted its share of far-sighted literary observers and strategic thinkers, who waxed eloquent on its promise. A vivid example is MacMillan’s (1923) description of the port washed by the sheltered waters of the Straits of Malacca where typhoons are unknown and there is nothing more severe than an occasional and comparatively mild

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149 The Rise of Singapore ’sumatra’ to give anxiety to the skipper of the smallest seagoing craft … From the sea front the island presents a striking picture – narrow areas of sheer cliff, a rich red colour, with bases rising abruptly from a smooth sea crowned with jungle-like tangles of grass and brushwood. On the left, scattered indiscriminately up and down the sun-lit coast are perched pretty bungalows, dots of white on the green landscape, surrounded by dense foliage. The magnificent harbour is an enigma to the traveller. Close by the sea-shore hundreds of sampans are tossed lazily up and down; a little farther out are the great unwieldy Chinese junks, of patterns that have not changed since the time of Confucius; and in and out amongst the many steamers of all the maritime nations the picturesque Malay fishing smacks crawl on their leisurely vocation, affording a calm, sedate contrast to the fussy, jerky, noisy little steam launches that ever come and go between the shipping and the shore. (MacMillan 1923, 202)

Several transportation improvements gave Singapore greater access to the productive hinterland to the north of the Johor Straits. Double-tracking of the rail line up the peninsula and the completion of a causeway to the mainland improved the overland flow of goods to and from the port. The island also gained a more plentiful and stable supply of water, carried across the causeway by a pipeline from reservoirs in Johor. These developments, however, further reduced the ability of Pulau Pinang and Malacca to compete with Singapore, and both unsuccessfully opposed the causeway project. The Great Depression threw a shadow over the promising future of the port and, indeed, over the whole economy of the Malay Peninsula, which had become heavily dependent on rubber exports. Although the economy had begun to recover by the time of the start of the Second World War (1939) the great entrepot, although busy and commercially successful, remained vulnerable, despite complacent pronouncements to the contrary. All this time the port remained, as it had been since its founding over a century earlier, “chiefly not a producing centre, but an entrepot of trade for Malaya and the surrounding countries, with shipping its very life blood” (plate 4). In the early twentieth century a public body, the Singapore Harbour Board, had taken control of docking facilities formerly operated by a private company, the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company, the better to regulate and control lighterage, berthing, and stevedoring. A local shipping company, the Straits Steamship Company, dominated

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coastal and interisland shipping, while “ocean-going vessels of most of the great companies of the world find their way into the port” (MacMillan 1923, 214). Four years of Japanese war-time occupation, with attendant neglect and Allied attacks on its port facilities, caused a hiatus in the international entrepot functions of Singapore. The 1950s saw a period of recovery and movement toward independence, with a deliberate policy of fostering “break-bulk” operations: the manufacturing, refining, and processing of imported materials and the export of highvalue-added products fabricated or processed in the port. Oil refining, machinery assembly, and bunkering services to commercial shipping were a part of this policy of diversifying away from simpler entrepot functions. Virtually expelled from the Malaysian federation and taking the status of a fully-independent nation in 1965, Singapore has been a modern success story for those looking for examples of underdeveloped colonies that have succeeded in making the transition to highincome, modern states. In the 1990s, as a result of these policies of diversification and capitalization, the standard of living of the population of Singapore, currently at around three million, became the highest in Southeast Asia. Trade, manufacturing, tourism, financial services and regional and hemispheric investment have become mainstays of the economy into the twenty-first century. Indeed, Singapore has become the leading banking and finance centre in Southeast Asia, the gleaming skyscraper offices of the financial district reflected in the waters of the anchorage where Raffles first stepped ashore nearly two centuries ago (plate 5). Entrepot trade at the port is steadily increasing, with imports and exports in 1994 at around u.s.$100 billion each. This increase has involved both general cargo and container cargo, and Singapore has invested heavily in the expansion of its port facilities to accommodate the increases in shipping and cargo handling, in order to avoid the consequences of port congestion mentioned in part 1 of this book. In particular, the three main container terminals (Tanjong Pagar, Keppel, and Brani) have been expanded with a total of nineteen fully-equipped berths able to handle roll-on-roll-off and containerized cargoes. The terminal at Pasir Panjung handles noncontainerized general cargo, and cruise liner berthing is available nearby. Singapore’s crucial oil bunkering facilities are located on islands in the Singapore Straits, near to the main petroleum refineries at Pulau Bukom, which have a capacity of

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twenty-five million tonnes per year (Cleary and Goh 2000, 138). In the current era, Singapore’s trade with other countries of Asia dominates its entrepot functions, with more than half its total imports and exports flowing from and to this region. Notwithstanding the global economic slowdown and a local recession in 2000–2002, trading partners in the Pacific and the Americas have grown to overshadow European destinations that were formerly more important in the commerce of Singapore. Japan, the United States, and neighbouring Malaysia are the three most important individual countries as far as trade with Singapore is concerned.

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15 Changing Local Hinterlands and Products in the Straits Region: Sumatran Trade

While Singapore, Pulau Pinang, and Melaka have historically been the main entrepots in the straits area, trading in such products of distant regions as spices, textiles, aromatics, and metal manufactures, a number of other ports have played more restricted roles as outlets for the products of local hinterlands in the peninsula and the archipelago. During the early historical period, they developed into what have been termed port polities, that is, states whose power and wealth were an outgrowth of their exporting of products from their own productive hinterlands. Given that the Indonesian archipelago was more productive than the peninsula of Malaya in the early period, its ports, traders, and products will be examined first. The parts of Indonesia bordering on the Straits of Malacca are the main island of Sumatra and smaller peripheral islands such as the Karimun, Riau, and Lingga Islands. Over the centuries, certain ports in these islands waxed and waned in significance, but a number remained important over a long period of time. Significantly, these are almost all on eastward flowing rivers: Sumatra’s treacherous, surf-bound west coast has few adequate harbours. The ports that have remained significant over many years include Palembang, Jambi, Banda Aceh (in the north), and, in more recent times, Belawan. Likewise the types of products shipped from these ports have remained fairly constant over time, with a few notable exceptions such as oil and machinery.

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Important details about historic ports, traders, and products on the east coast of Sumatra can be drawn from two early works, William Marsden’s History of Sumatra, written in the late eighteenth century, and John Anderson’s Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra in 1823. In particular Marsden’s monumental work, recently reprinted, evinces fine and careful scholarship and continues to be a source of information about the natural and settlement history of this large, diverse, and fascinating island (Marsden 1996; Anderson 1971). These early sources are supplemented here by modern studies that add dimensions obtained in part from archaeology and the analysis of ancient texts. The Hindu period of settlement in Sumatra and Java probably began about the time of the early Roman empire. In the first several centuries ce trade with India brought Hindu merchants and influences to the archipelago, and they gradually infused local cultures with their religious and social practices. It is likely that the export of local produce to India, rather than transit trade such as that occurring at the same period across the Isthmus of Kra to Funan (Indochina) and China proper, explains the rise of early Sumatran port polities.

malayu, srivijaya and majapahit The early state of Malayu, located at the port of Jambi, was flourishing in the year 644 ce, when it sent a mission to the Middle Kingdom, duly recorded in Chinese writings (Suleiman 1980, 2). Indian cultural influences were already strong here when, about fifty years later, this port polity had been conquered by a fast-rising neighbour, the port of Palembang, where the empire of Srivijaya is thought by many to have had its earliest roots (Masselman 1963, 197). Palembang was a major outlet for Sumatran pepper, gold, slaves, and other valuable items ferried to India, but its rise to preeminence was accelerated after the discovery, by Chinese traders and others, that the Straits of Malacca constituted a suitable alternative route for trade with India that rendered unnecessary the costly portage across the Isthmus of Kra and payments to Funanese middlemen. Thus, as Funan began to decline, Palembang grew wealthy and powerful during the Srivijaya era around the seventh century ce. It set an unfortunate precedent in the straits area, to be imitated later by Malacca under the Portuguese and the Dutch, of forcing vessels passing through the straits to enter the port and trade there. It also expanded through conquest,

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capturing the hinterlands of neighbouring ports in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula (Suleiman 1980, 2) and even subduing states as far away as the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). As Kenneth Hall (1985, xiii) observes, Indian models of statecraft were used to integrate coastal ports and hinterlands under the control of Palembang and to separate producers in the hinterlands from the foreign merchants, making Srivijaya’s rulers themselves indispensable as middlemen and collector-distributors of trade goods. A centre of culture as well as commerce, Srivijaya was acknowledged as an important seat of Buddhist learning in the eight century. It appears, however, to have no longer been a functioning state by the end of the thirteenth century (since travellers through the area at that time, such as Marco Polo, did not mention it). Nevertheless the ports of Palembang and Jambi remained as viable settlements and maritime trade centres. In the fourteenth century its successor, the empire of Majapahit, stretched from northern Sumatra to Maluku, embracing Sumatran ports such as Palembang, Jambi, Kampar, Siak, Indragiri, and others. This, too, declined in the late fourteenth century, but did not collapse completely, retaining its Hindu character for several centuries thereafter, until the Portuguese era in the straits (Masselman 1963, 202). During the long decline of Majapahit, a struggle for control of the trading systems in the region occurred between the Siamese and the Javanese. In northern Sumatra the port polity of Pasai, an early centre of Islamic influence, arose as a trade outlet for local products and as an entrepot, but the emerging empire of Melaka took some ports and territories on Sumatra, such as Jambi, Kampar, and Bengkalis, and offshore the Karimun (Carimon) islands and Bintang, south of Singapore. Islam diffused through the archipelago in the early fifteenth century and, as we have seen, the timely conversion of the rulers of Melaka to this faith consolidated the position of that port and its Sumatran dependencies in trade with Islamicized ports of India, Arabia, and Mameluke Egypt. In many ways, the story of the spread of Islam in the straits area is the story of the growth of thalassocracies and port polities.

aceh, belawan, and palembang One of the earliest, as well as the most powerful and successful, of the Islamic port polities in the straits region was Achin (now Aceh), at the northern extremity of Sumatra. A marginal province of Bud-

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dhist Srivijaya around the seventh century, it was loosely affiliated with Hindu Majapahit until the sixteenth century, but on his visit to Achin in 1291, Marco Polo described it as a sultanate, with its inhabitants staunchly Muslim, “owing to contact with the Saracen merchants who constantly frequent them” (Reid 1969, 4). It was a centre for monsoon trade between Arabian and Asian realms over several centuries, reaching the peak of its political and commercial power around the early seventeenth century. Aceh developed manufacturing industries as well as trade and commerce, and is still noted for the crafting of intricate metalwork and jewellery. Through alliances with other Sumatran and Malayan polities, it extended its influence widely throughout the region. Its decline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was hastened by outbreaks of hostilities with neighbouring states and with the Dutch colonialists who attempted forcibly to wrest control of northern Sumatran production and trade from the Achinese and subjugate them under the yoke of the Batavian administration. This led to one of the most protracted and bitter conflicts in the region, the Aceh War, which went on sporadically from 1873 – when Banda Aceh fell to the initial Dutch assault – to 1942. After the period of Japanese occupation ended and the independence struggle gained momentum in Java in 1948, hostilities were resumed with the Batavia (Jakarta) administration and subsided only when Aceh was granted special district status within Indonesia in 1956. In 1998, however, separatist sentiments and political unrest again flared in Aceh, and a strong movement toward independence continues into the early twenty-first century. The modern port of Belawan, which serves the hinterland of Medan, the leading urban centre in northern Sumatra, has also become the most important entrepot in the Indonesian nation, even eclipsing the port of Jakarta. In past centuries it was part of the Deli region, a pepper-producing district with numerous river ports, such as Langkat (plate 6). It now handles about 65 percent of Indonesia’s maritime trade. The city reflects its cosmopolitan background as a crossroads of commerce over many centuries, with large Chinese, Arab, and Indian minorities, as well as indigenous Batak and Malay communities. Belawan is a major container terminal, indicating its significance as the premier port in Indonesia for general cargo. By contrast, modern Palembang, a large and bustling river port in southern Sumatra, is the island’s main oil export terminus but is unimportant as a general cargo terminal. Nevertheless, this port on the Musi river was significant centuries before the discovery of vast

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reservoirs of oil in southern Sumatra, being already a thriving entrepot during its heyday as the hub of the Srivijayan empire from the seventh to the eleventh century. Downstream from Palembang the tidal Musi branches into numerous distributaries in a vast swampy lowland, but upstream there is one of the most productive agricultural hinterland areas in Sumatra. A long-standing rivalry has existed between Palembang and Jambi, on the Hari (Batanghari) river to the north. The Jambi area also has had a long history of trade with other ports in the straits area and beyond and today is a major exporter of timber and rubber. A significant hindrance to shipping and commerce along the main rivers on the eastern coast of Sumatra, however, is the existence of tidal bores, or seiches, especially on such rivers as the Indragiri and Kampar, although not on the Hari. These true tidal waves, which are created by gravitational, and not seismic, forces, occur daily and are large enough to be dangerous to small vessels navigating many eastward-flowing rivers. They discourage shipping and, hence, development on the western side of the Straits of Malacca.

minangkabau and bugis ports: padang, riau, and lingga Further west, another region that has been important in trade and politics of the straits region is the matrilineal Islamic region of the Minangkabau people, whose ancestors also set up colonies centuries ago on the eastern, peninsular side of the straits in what is now the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan, adjacent to Melaka. The Minangkabau region is dependent on exports of coal, rubber, tea, and cinnamon. At one time these goods were carried via eastward-flowing rivers to ports such as Jambi, but more recently exports have been shipped out through Padang on the west coast, one of the few safe anchorages in western Sumatra. Two Indonesian archipelagoes at the southern end of the Straits of Malacca have been important in trade and commerce through this waterway for many centuries. These are the Riau and Lingga Islands, scattered to the south of Singapore along the east coast of Sumatra. In the Riau group, the largest island is Bintan, with its main town, Tanjungpinang, well connected by ferry and air services to the metropolitan areas of Java and Sumatra. This ancient town retains the character of a Malay fishing village, many of its buildings being

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constructed on stilts over the waters of Bintan Bay. Neighbouring Batam Island, however, has become a major industrial zone, capitalizing on its location only a twenty-minute ferry ride from Singapore and on its oil, gas, and related petrochemical industries. It is now a duty-free zone in which the Indonesian government is encouraging foreign investment, with the aim of creating a major exportprocessing platform. A southern island in the Riau group, Galang, has a notorious past, being an emporium in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for the trade in slaves and a haven for Malay Pirates. The Riau and Lingga Islands at the southern entrance to the straits were also noted for the fact that they were part of the trading network of the Bugis, or Buginese, who, as we have seen, were a highly successful and enterprising maritime culture that derived originally from southwest Sulawesi, where their settlements lined the Makassar Strait. Although originally a farming people, the Bugis developed their skills as navigators around the sixteenth century, and their trade with other parts of the archipelago, including Aceh in Sumatra, Johor on the Malay peninsula, and Demak in Java, intensified after the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese (Pelras 1996, 125). During the Dutch ascendancy in the Spice Islands the Bugis of South Sulawesi were forced by the Treaty of Bungaya in 1666 to cease trading for spices with Maluku, over which the Dutch proclaimed a trade monopoly. Consequently, the Bugis turned their attention westward and during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries concentrated on trade with the Malay world in gold, tin, cloth, opium, slaves, copra and trepang (sea cucumber). They jealously guarded their role as middlementraders in the network of trade routes they had built up throughout the archipelago. Their spirit of enterprise and adventurousness, together with an aggressiveness that marked their dealings with others involved in the trade – including Europeans – made these “sea rovers” feared throughout the Straits of Malacca and its environs (Winstedt 1962, quoted in Bastin and Winks 1966, 94–5). Their continuous efforts at undermining the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade of Maluku, with whom they continued surreptitious trade in the seventeenth century, led to conflicts and to a Bugis diaspora to new settlements in Kalimantan, Java, Riau-Lingga, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula, where they often became a powerful force in the local economy and society. Although renowned as legitimate, if aggressive, traders with an aristocratic manner, in times past some of them also had a reputation for indulging occasionally in piracy or

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slave-taking raids on coastal settlements where suitable opportunities presented themselves (Pelras 1996, 309–10). Some parts of the straits as far north as Kedah and Perlis were attacked from time to time by Bugis flotillas of praus or their large armed ketches, or sloops, known as pinisi. More recently built versions of these twomasted Bugis sailing vessels still ply the straits and archipelagic waterways of the region, conducting trade in a large variety of products and supplying remote, small-scale markets not accessible to larger merchant vessels (plate 7). Many contemporary port settlements along the straits – including the city of Singapore – have sizeable Buginese minorities whose specialty remains trade and commerce. In the first years of its settlement, Singapore attracted thousands of Bugis entrepreneurs along with Chinese and Malays, drawn by its free-trade policy, which was so different from the Dutch regime in Indonesia. Ambitious Bugis settlers, miners, merchants, and traders were instrumental in the early development of a number of Malay urban areas, including those in Johor, Perak, and Selangor, as well as the maritime trade of these centres (Khoo Kay Kim 1972, 13).

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16 Local Trade Hinterlands and Products on the Malay Coast of the Straits

In this chapter the focus is on local Malaysian hinterlands and their products. In the distant past mainly agricultural produce and minerals were dominant here, but in recent years the focus has shifted to oil, gas, and petrochemicals, machinery, automobiles, appliances, and electronic components. These are mostly produced by hightechnology plants in the urban centres forming industrial hinterlands for the ports along the eastern (Malaysian) side of the straits. In the contemporary period, the main port in peninsular Malaysia is Kelang (Klang), which has grown from a sleepy nineteenth-century kampong (plate 8) to overshadow other ports that date from the British colonial period or earlier, such as Georgetown, Port Weld, Port Dickson, Port Swettenham, and Melaka.

kelang: malaysia’s leading container port A major outport for the large and rapidly growing industrial area centred on Kuala Lumpur, forty kilometres to the east, Port Kelang was established with its own port authority in 1963, taking over from the nearby, but now obsolescent, colonial facility at Port Swettenham. Kelang has since become Malaysia’s principal container terminal and the leading oil-refining centre in the country, with a capacity over thirty million tonnes. Its highly mechanized facilities, privatized in

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the 1980s, were handling annual volumes of over four hundred thousand teus of roll-on-roll-off and other container traffic by the early 1990s, representing two-thirds of the nation’s total container shipments (Abdullah 1992, 349–64). Nine new berths have recently been added, making a total of sixteen berths for handling bulk commodities, principally crude oil and fractionated refinery products but also liquefied petroleum gas, timber, palm oil and rubber (Cleary and Goh 2000, 138). Kelang is accessible by vessels of sixty thousand deadweight tonnes and with draughts of up to thirteen metres, and is connected to both rail and road-haulage facilities that include a highcapacity, limited-access toll road running north to Bangkok and to extensive storage areas. The port does not, however, appear set to rival the entrepot of Singapore. In fact, only about 10 percent of cargo handled at Kelang is transshipment cargo, the type that dominates traffic at entrepots such as Hong Kong or Singapore. The rest originates in or is destined for local Malaysian hinterland markets.

secondary malaysian ports Apart from Kelang, container cargo in Malaysia is mainly handled at the expanding hi-tech manufacturing complex of Pinang (connected by a road bridge, 13.5 kilometres in length, to the mainland at Butterworth, where there is a container terminal), as well as at Kuantan and Johor Baru (Pasir Gudang). Pinang has recently developed significant cross-straits trade with ports in northern Sumatra, and its industrial output from its export-processing zone generates some waterborne commerce. It also has facilities for oil tankers, but of modest capacity. Pasir Gudang, near Johor Bahru, across the causeway from Singapore island, has recently developed port functions that are complementary to those of its larger neighbour, notably container berths and facilities for handling hazardous chemical and petroleum products (Cleary and Goh 2000, 138). Other ports and load centres on the west coast of Malaysia handle relatively minor quantities of primary exports produced in their hinterlands or else are related to industrial development in nearby urban areas. The island of Langkawi, at the far northern end of the straits, produces and exports marble and cement, as well as textiles and rubber, although it is developing a reputation as a tourist centre and duty-free zone. Other islands in the central straits, such as Pangkor, are also attempting to attract tourism, and the straits in general have become a popular venue for cruise lines. Despite rapid economic diversification in

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recent years, however, a number of Malaysian ports and urban centres owe their original development to three main raw material exports that were once synonymous with the Malayan economy: tin, rubber, and palm oil.

malaysian exports Tin Areas on both sides of the straits as far north as Thailand and Myanmar and south through the western Indonesian archipelago were noted as sources of tin as early as the first millennium ce. The principal ores of this metal, black tin oxide, or cassiterite, occur as veins in the mainly granitic rocks of the region’s uplands or else as alluvial surface lenses or pockets in eroded limestone that underlies many of the surrounding valleys and coastlands. Phuket, Thailand (known to generations of European seafarers as Junk Ceylon), was one of the first major Asian producers of the metal. During the Melaka sultanate, in which tin ingots were for a time used as currency, and in the Portuguese and Dutch periods, the focal point for the production of tin shifted to the western Malay peninsula. The Larut, Kinta, and Kelang valleys and the Seremban area became major tin workings in the nineteenth century, and the export of tin from river ports at Larut and Kuala Lumpur comprised an early source of revenue for the states in this region. These river ports began to silt up, however, as the clearing of forest in the tin fields and unwise mining methods fed huge quantities of mine tailings and dredge slurry during the frequent rainstorms into the narrow west-flowing streams, including the Melaka River. As older river ports thereby became useless for commercial shipping, the British constructed new ports on the Malayan mainland for the export of tin and other regional produce: for example, Port Weld, for the output of the Larut tin field; Port Swettenham (now superseded by Port Kelang) for the Kuala Lumpur fields; and Port Dickson for tin from the Seremban fields. To bring tin from the interior to these ports, feeder rail lines were constructed into the interior and later (in 1903) connected by a trunk line running north-south along the western lowlands, where the major tin deposits occurred. Large tin-smelting works were built in Province Wellesley and in Singapore after 1900. Tin continued to be a mainstay of the Malayan economy until the second half of the twentieth century, when a combination of changing world demand and price

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conditions, exhaustion of more accessible, large-scale deposits, foreign competition, and an emphasis in modern Malaysia on manufacturing and other forms of economic activity all led to its relative decline. Although Malaysia remains a leading world producer of the metal, during the 1980s its production of tin fell to less than half of early postwar levels, and many mines, dredges, and alluvial workings closed. Some tin dredging has continued over a long period on the Sumatran side of the straits, however, especially in alluvial outwash deposits on and around the islands of Singkep, Bangka, and Belitung. Rubber Para rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) has been produced in Malaya and elsewhere in southeast Asia since the last decade of the nineteenth century, but official records of commercial exports of rubber from Malaya date only from 1905 (Swettenham 1906, 350). By 1930 rubber was the main agricultural export of British Malaya, and plantations of rubber trees, in large estates or smallholdings, covered about 65 percent of the cultivated area of the peninsula, most of it along the western lowlands bordering the Straits of Malacca. During the Great Depression, restrictions and regulations on production were introduced, but after the Second World War, estate and smallholder plantings increased dramatically. Despite this, by 1953 Malaya was supplying only 22 percent of global rubber production, as against 40 percent in 1924 (Bastin and Winks 1966, 388). At the beginning of the twenty-first century the importance of rubber as an export earner has declined further, being challenged by palm oil cultivation as a top agricultural export. Indeed, many former rubber plantations are being cleared and replanted with oil palms. Malaysia, however, still accounts for about a third of the world’s natural rubber production. Palm Oil From its beginnings as a plantation crop in Malaya in 1917, palm oil has increased in importance until Malaysia has become the world’s leading producer, with over 55 percent of global production. Like rubber and tin production, large scale cultivation of the oil palm (Elais guineensis) is mostly concentrated in the western lowlands of

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peninsular Malaysia, where oil-processing facilities are also concentrated. In recent years, as noted above, the relatively high profitability of palm oil relative to rubber has meant that palm plantations are even displacing rubber from areas previously devoted to that crop. Timber and Agricultural Produce The eastern Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak have also contributed significantly to Malaysia’s exports of valuable timber in recent decades, although concerns about environmental deterioration and over-harvesting have put curbs on the future potential of the timber industry in the region. In the straits area, smaller ports such as Melaka are now loading points for mangrove and bamboo poles for export to other Asian and to Middle Eastern centres, where such woods are used in house construction and furnishings (plate 2). Rice, coconut oil and copra, vegetables, fruit, tea, tobacco, and cut flowers are also exported through the ports and airports in the straits region. While these may be locally important to the rural economy in various parts of Malaysia and Sumatra, in terms of volume or bulk they are relatively minor commodities in the overall trade picture.

new industries: petroleum production and hi-tech manufacturing The confederation of peninsular Malaysia with the territories of British North Borneo in 1963 has resulted in the creation of a major oil and gas industry in Malaysia that now constitutes one of the country’s most valuable export earners. Oil from fields in Sabah and Sarawak and from offshore fields in Terengganu, West Malaysia, have been exploited since the 1970s and yield an annual production of over six hundred thousand barrels per day. Evidence of Malaysia’s current oil wealth can be seen in the straits region in the form of the many buildings and installations of Petronas, the national petroleum corporation; in ports such as Kelang; and in the metropolis of Kuala Lumpur itself. The Petronas Towers, dominating the skyline of Kuala Lumpur, have for a time enjoyed the status of the world’s tallest buildings. Natural gas is being piped from Terengganu to points as far south as Singapore. Kelang, as noted above, is a major oil refining

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and exporting load centre with an annual through-put of over thirty million tonnes of crude petroleum and refinery products. For much of its economic history in the modern period, manufacturing in Malaysia was confined mostly to initial processing of rubber and palm oil and beneficiation, or smelting, of tin ores. In recent decades, however, the manufacturing picture has changed as the country pursues its goal of joining the world leaders in high value added manufacturing by the year 2020, usually expressed as the 2020 Vision. In the straits region, automobile and appliance assembly, as well as electronics manufacture, have increased in importance to the point where these are now leading industrial sectors, providing about a quarter of all employment and an even larger proportion of the gdp. Malaysia has become one of the world’s largest exporters of semiconductor components, computer hardware, and telecommunications equipment, much of it manufactured on Pulau Pinang, where many leading multinational firms have established branch plants. The slowing of demand for these products in the United States and elsewhere in 2001 has dampened the bright outlook for this industrial sector, but this is probably only a temporary setback. Malaysia is also one of the leaders in exports of refrigeration and air conditioning machinery, rubber and latex manufactures, and colour television sets. In the 1990s electrical and electronic products contributed over 30 percent of Malaysian exports, with manufactures as a whole contributing around 60 percent. Exports of agricultural raw materials, in contrast, declined in relative terms to less than a third of all exports, compared to more than half a mere two decades earlier. Malaysia is also clearly challenging its neighbour Singapore in the realm of transport services and communications, with a huge and costly new international airport now opened outside Kuala Lumpur that rivals Singapore’s excellent airport at Changi. Malaysian Airlines have, however, recently experienced difficulties, due partly to very rapid expansion in the 1990s and to a combination of the Asian financial crisis and fierce competition from regional rivals – such as Singapore Airlines – for a somewhat reduced volume of business and tourist travel. As regards surface shipping, it is unlikely that entrepot trade and financial/insurance services would, in the foreseeable future, desert Singapore for Kuala Lumpur and its main outport, Kelang, which have neither the prime location nor the commercial capacity of their bustling neighbour.

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PART FOUR

Running the Gauntlet: The Straits of Malacca as a Trade and Shipping Bottleneck

As numerous ships’ logs and sailors’ diaries attest, the Straits of Malacca have been dreaded by countless mariners over the centuries. Harrowing accounts of the perils faced in this treacherous passage abound in travellers’ journals, and with good reason it is frequently excoriated as one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world. The hazards are both natural and humancreated. Shifting sandbars and shoals, submerged rocks, unpredictable currents, the sudden, fierce squalls that are encountered in the straits, not to mention unmarked wrecks that can tear the bottom out of passing ships, all provide an atmosphere of peril. But to this must be added the risk of attack by pirates, coercion by those striving to assert control over trade, the maritime traffic congestion and concomitant risk of collision, the occasional large-scale conflicts that have engulfed the region, and, recently, terrorist threats. As an ominous reminder of the potentially disastrous consequences of a blockage in the straits, the closure of the Suez Canal during Mideast hostilities in the early 1970s provides a sobering object lesson. Actual and potential hazards to trade and navigation have indeed made the straits a place to be feared, but one that could hardly be avoided given the imperative of commerce and the drive for profit from the trade between East and West. In this part of the book the physical hazards to shipping and the human-created impediments to trade are discussed in the light of the transport network concepts outlined in part 1, and the nature of the straits as a shipping gauntlet is thereby illuminated.

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17 Natural Hazards and Navigation in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore

Over the centuries, the Straits of Malacca and Singapore have exacted a physical toll on shipping and trade moving through the waterway between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Despite the losses of lives, ships, and cargo, however, this waterway has generally been adopted as the preferred alternative over the other points of transit through the barrier archipelago of the Indies, such as Selat Sunda and the Bali-Lombok Straits-Celebes Sea route. The Sunda Strait, as mentioned earlier, is very deep at its western end, but as it narrows its bottom becomes shallow and irregular, from about twenty metres off the southern Sumatran coast and the Sunda Shelf entering the Java Sea, to over sixty metres towards its eastern sections. It is beset by navigation hazards, including tidal flows that are very strong, with associated rip tides and eddies, but that vary with the time of day and the season. There is also currently a sandbank at a depth of thirteen to thirty-six metres extending over ten kilometres southwest from Pulau Sangian (Chia Lin Sien 1997, 106). During periods of low visibility, the numerous oil drilling platforms off the west coast of Java make the northern entrance to the Sunda Straits more perilous. Nothing before or since, of course, has rivalled the hazard to shipping in the Sunda Strait occasioned by the explosion on 26 August 1883 of the island volcano Krakatau, remnants of which still break the surface of that strait (Reclus 1891, 4: 87–90). Although this limitation on the passage of ships has only arisen in

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the current era of supertankers and very large bulk carriers, Selat Sunda is indeed unsuitable for ships of over eighteen metres draught, an even more stringent depth limitation than the twenty-three-metre depth limit in the Straits of Malacca (Chia Lin Sien 1997, 107). A more significant current alternative to the Straits of Malacca are the Straits of Lombok and Makassar, which are most important for very deep draught vessels and for all shipping plying the SingaporeAustralia sea routes. The southern part of Lombok Strait, as noted earlier, is divided into two channels by an island, Nusa Penida, with the wider eastern channel being very deep and suitable for the very largest supertankers now in service. Tidal rips and strong currents in these straits are complex and ever-changing but normally pose no significant danger to modern shipping. Vessels using this gap in the island arc on voyages between the Indian Ocean and the eastern seas continue northward through the seven-hundred-kilometre-long Makassar Strait between the east coast of Borneo and Sulawesi. Again, this strait is divided into two main channels by islands, with the eastern channel being very deep, although only about thirty-five kilometres wide at its narrowest point. Its southern part is the most dangerous, with numerous islands, reefs, and sandbanks, as well as the Borneo Bank, which protrudes some distance into the strait. Since the above-mentioned alternative straits add extra distance and, thus, cost to voyages between Europe and Asia, the Straits of Malacca and Singapore are definitely the preferred route for most shipping today, as in the historic past. Shipping through this favoured gateway, however, has always run the gauntlet of both physical and human-caused hazards. To the present, fortunately, the Straits of Malacca have never suffered the ultimate catastrophe of complete closure to shipping, such as occurred to another trade choke-point – the Suez Canal – during the hostilities between Israel and Egypt in the period from 1967 to 1975. That episode provides an object lesson in the kind of severe economic disruption to an entire region’s trade and communication that can result from the blockage of a strategic waterway, whether from natural or human agency. The Suez canal became part of the war zone in the Arab-Israeli conflict of June 1967 known as the Six Day War, in which the canal was mined and a number of vessels sunk. Fourteen merchant ships from noncombatant nations were trapped in the area of the canal known as the Bitter Lakes and another one in Lake Timsah, remaining marooned there for over seven years until the wreckage was cleared, explosive devices were removed, and the canal reopened to international shipping in

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June 1975. During the period when the Suez canal was closed, the average duration of a voyage from European ports to the Persian Gulf increased from eighteen days (pre-1967) to twenty-eight days (Haws 1975, 230–1). As mentioned earlier, a direct result of the closure of the canal was that ship design changed to take account of greater navigational challenges and economies of scale mandated by the longer voyages around the Cape of Good Hope. It is perhaps ironic that those changes, which led to very large supertankers and bulk carriers of over three hundred thousand tonnes, have had ramifications for shipping through the Straits of Malacca, where such large vessels now operate close to the limits of safe navigation in that narrow, shallow waterway. I begin this section of the book with an examination of the physical constraints and drawbacks to shipping through the choke-point of the Straits of Malacca. Obviously, over time the impacts of these hazards have changed with improvements in ship construction and navigation technology. Some hazards have become less important since the advent of steam propulsion, while others have increased in relative significance. The hazards to be discussed here include uncharted rocks, shoals, and reefs, treacherously narrow and shallow fairways close to coasts and islands, strong and unpredictable currents and winds, tidal bores, violent squalls (sumatras), shifting sandwaves, and occasional low visibility hampering navigation.

hazards during the age of sail Perhaps the best way of illuminating the dangers and difficulties of shipping in the straits during the age of sail would be to discuss the actual journal of a sea voyage through this waterway. The example chosen is the Journal of a Voyage through the Straits of Malacca on an Expedition to the Molucca Islands, by Captain Walter Caulfield Lennon, who was principal engineer and secretary to the 1798 British expedition. The text of his journal account was published in 1881 in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. What follows is an excerpt of relevant descriptions of the voyage that give an idea of the hazards encountered on a fairly typical sailing voyage. The context of the voyage was the military action, mentioned earlier, by the British navy and East India Company forces to take over the Dutch colonies in the eastern seas after the fall of Holland to Napoleonic armies in the last years of the eighteenth century. The relevant portion of the journal begins with Lennon’s embarkation

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aboard hms Suffolk in Madras harbour, India, on 14 October 1795. On that very day, news reached Madras of the British capture of the Dutch fortifications at Malacca, and the occasion was celebrated with the firing of a royal salute by His Majesty’s ships. On 15 October the Suffolk, in company with the Centurion, the Arniston (an East Indiaman), the Surprise (a galley), and the Mary (a transport) weighed anchor and set sail eastward across the Bay of Bengal, heading for the northern entrance to the Straits of Malacca. The small fleet sighted the Nicobar Islands on 2 November and the northern coast of Sumatra on 11 November. The journal entry for that day chronicles the first of the problems encountered by navigators approaching the straits from the north late in the season: a very strong current bearing out of the straits toward the northwest, “so much so that, though for the last four days we have been working eastward, with intervals of favourable winds, we have lost longitude by the chronometer since the 8th. We now find a strong North-Westerly current out of the Straits, very hard rain with violent squalls attended with thunder and lightning” (Lennon 1881, 52–3). In the following days conditions improved enough for the squadron to sight Penang Island late on the thirteenth, and the next day they “crossed over the long flat shoal which lays [sic] off the North part of the island, on which we had only 4 and 1/2 fathoms water” (53). Leaving Penang on the twenty-fourth on board another vessel, the Orpheus, which had joined the expedition, Lennon writes that “we sailed through the southern passage (exiting from the port of Georgetown) in which we had rather more water than on the flat to the Northward, but the channel is more intricate.” But then he added, with obvious relief, “though perfectly safe with a leading wind” (58). The care and caution with which navigators had to proceed on the next leg of the voyage is apparent from the entries for 25–30 November that indicate frequent changes of course, the need to avoid shoals and islands, the reliance on good visibility in order to proceed, and the need to anchor for the night or when visibility was poor. The difficulty of gaining access to the harbour mouth at the onceprosperous port of Malacca, freshly in British hands, is clear from the entry on 30 November: “Our wind very faint and the tide against us for a great part of the day: we did not anchor in Malacca road until 5 o’clock in the evening.”

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171 Natural Hazards and Navigation

Unfavourable currents and winds continued to dog the expedition after it left Malacca on 6 January 1796, to continue its voyage eastward: “passed the Water Islands with a light air, but the tide towards night making against us we brought to near Mt. Formosa. 7th – wind against us but the tide in favour, passed Pulo Pisang and anchored in sight of the Carrimons [Karimun Islands]. 8th.- taking advantage of the tides because the winds were by no means favourable, got to near One-tree Island. This is a very dangerous shoal and reef, extending full three miles in nearly an East and West direction and, at high water, only a few of the rocks above water, and a single tree from which it derives its name” (70 – 71). On 9 January, with the wind still set against them, the ships of the squadron picked their way among the islands at the southern end of the straits, prompting Lennon to comment with admiration that “the working of the different ships through these narrow channels was extremely beautiful,” but nevertheless this was slow going, especially for the transports. Lack of reliable charts and identified landmarks was also a problem: “These straits are by no means well laid down, as it is impossible to know the different islands and headlands from any chart of them yet published … the tides here are very irregular, but in general, in North-East monsoons, are observed to flow eighteen hours and ebb six. The flood on the Eastern side of the Strait, I am told, is from the Eastward, and I am told these circumstances are reversed in the opposite monsoon” (71). The fleet reached the Straits of Singapore on 11 January, anchoring off Little Karimun Island while waiting for the remainder of the squadron, the Centurion, Hobart, and Swift, to join them from Malacca. The late arrivals brought news of a casualty claimed by the Straits of Malacca: the Shah Munshy, bound for Bombay, foundered on the rocks off Pedra Branca (now Horsburgh Light) on 8 January. Departing the Singapore Straits on 17 January, Lennon lamented, “the loss of this fine ship is the consequence of the want of proper survey of these straits, with proper remarks on the tides and currents.” (71).

hazards of the modern era Over two hundred years after this expedition sailed through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, navigational hazards remain as critical as ever. Deeper draught vessels must proceed cautiously

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through narrow and shallow parts of the straits, since “channels are further constricted by sandbanks and controlling depths are liable to change” (Hamzah 1997, 5). Tidal heights are critical where deepdraught vessels are concerned, especially at shallow parts of the straits such as at One Fathom Bank, opposite Port Kelang, at Cape Rachado, and near the Fair Channel Bank. Along rivers flowing into the straits, primarily on the Sumatran side, flat, low coastal plains result in very gentle gradients and consequently sluggish stream flow, allowing tidal influences to penetrate far upstream. Although uncommon on the Malaysian side, along some Sumatran rivers tidal bores can interfere with navigation and even upset small boats. These have been noted as severe hazards to small vessels in such northeast-trending rivers as the Indragiri, Rokan, and Kampar. Anderson (1971, 200) remarks that “The navigation of some of these rivers is rendered very difficult and unsafe to any vessels except those of the country, peculiarly constructed for the purpose … [the strong tidal bore] carries everything before it, and overwhelms small vessels that may not be prepared to encounter it.” Combined with these marine hazards are weather conditions that include winds that blow strongly and constantly for certain parts of the year, in association with the northeast and southwest monsoons, but that are weak and variable at other times between the periods of monsoonal influence. Thus, between late November and March the strong northeast monsoon predominates, but then follows a period of five to seven weeks in April and May in which sailing vessels may be becalmed in the straits from time to time or experience variable wind directions and speeds. Often air movements take the form of land and sea breezes associated with the differential heating and cooling of land and water between day and night. From June to September or early October the weaker southwest monsoon takes control in the northern portion of the straits, while in the southern portion at this time winds are light and from a southerly direction. Violent squalls, as before noted, are common in the straits at certain times of the year. Some windstorms are caused by convection, for instance afternoon squalls with sudden wind gusts over sixty kilometres per hour that occur throughout the straits from November to February. In the southern straits, however, especially from May to August, distinctive line squalls form in association with bands of heavy cumulonimbus thunderheads often over three hundred kilometres long. In some ways they resemble cold-front systems, except that they do not form at the boundaries of different airmasses but

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rather within a particular airmass (Ooi Jin Bee 1976, 43). They almost always form during the hours of darkness or early morning, and can carry wind gusts over eighty kilometres per hour accompanied by torrential rain. Over the centuries they have been a sufficient danger to sailors in these waters that they have gained a fearsome reputation and, as noted earlier, have been given their own regional name – sumatras. Writing in 1798 about the hazards posed by these squalls, for example, John Stavorinus describes “sudden whirlwinds, which come upon us almost every day … they often rushed on us so unexpectedly, that we had scarce sufficient time to take in our sails; they were usually succeeded by dead calms, which lasted the remainder of the day” (1798, 164). Squalls of all kinds are most frequent in the straits around Malacca, which records an annual average of about 180 squalls, of which about half are sumatras (Ooi Jin Bee 1976, 41).

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18 Piracy in the Straits of Malacca and Surrounding Seas

The Straits of Malacca have been notorious throughout recorded history for the predatory activities of pirates and raiders, mostly local Malays but also Sulu peoples, Dyaks, Bugis, Chinese, Thais and, occasionally, Europeans. A combination of geographic, economic, and political factors has made the Straits of Malacca and Singapore almost irresistible to pirates and buccaneers down through the centuries. These factors include the unavoidable spatial concentration of commercial shipping in these waters – mostly of slow and vulnerable merchant vessels laden with rich cargoes – together with the constricted, shallow and treacherous ship passage through the straits that reduces vessel speed and manœuvrability and has thus made evasion difficult and ambush easy. The favourable environment for piracy also includes the innumerable potential hide-outs for brigands among the maze of tidal inlets, estuaries, and islands that line the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. For many local Malay Celates and members of other indigenous communities of the area who were born to the hard and dreary life of the fisherman and smallholder, the life of a pirate was, in times past, often seen as a passport to adventure, riches, and prestige, rather than as a criminal occupation. In certain periods, however, buccaneers from further afield figured prominently in sagas of piratical raids in the straits and helped give the region a reputation that made merchants and legitimate seafarers tremble at the very thought of traversing the straits.

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Piracy probably existed throughout the Eastern Hemisphere and especially in the sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf to China for almost as long as trade has taken place. Predatory raids on the commerce between Europe and Asia are thought to extend back in time to at least 900 bce. At the height of Roman commercial expansion, for example, the emperor Trajan dispatched a punitive expedition against pirates that infested the Persian Gulf. These were ravaging the trading vessels bringing the luxuries craved by the patricians, notably frankincense, spices, silks, gold and silverware, ivory, teak, and copper from India and the Orient (Mitchell 1976, 24). Although specific accounts of piracy in the Far Eastern seas are not available for the period before 1000 ce, it is most probable that the already substantial trade by states in the Persian Gulf region – for example, the Omani Arabs – with Canton (Guangzhou) and with their own posts in Java, Sumatra, Siam, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia were subjected to piratical raids. Early references to piracy in the area of the Straits of Malacca include the following entry in a fourteenth century treatise by a Chinese writer (Lung-Ya-Men) which mentions the Dragon-teeth Strait, thought to be the part of the Singapore Strait between the south coast of Singapore and Blakang Mati: “the inhabitants [of this area] are addicted to piracy … when [Chinese] junks sail to the Western [Indian] Ocean the local barbarians allow them to pass unmolested but when on their return the junks reach Chi-li-men [the Karimun Islands, at the junction of the Malacca and Singapore Straits] the sailors prepare their armour and padded screens as a protection against arrows for, of a certainty, some two or three hundred pirate praus will put out to attack them for several days. Sometimes [the junks] are fortunate enough to escape with a favourable wind; otherwise the crews are butchered and the merchandise made off with in quick time” (quoted in Wheatley 1961, 82). Although communities of pirates, or “sea gypsies,” as they were sometimes called, lived outside the borders of the old city of Singhapura (now Singapore), it is probable that, as Wheatley says, “not a little indirect profit may have found its way into the town from the buccaneering activities of the Sea Gypsies,” against whom the townsfolk may have been obliged to construct fortifications as “a protection as much from these turbulent neighbours as from foreign raiders” (Wheatley 1961, 85). The Chinese, who traded widely in the Nanyang, were thus well acquainted with the nests of pirates that infested the many straits

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and islands along the trade routes to India. The coasts of Sumatra and Malaya were notorious for the predations of sea-gypsies. So, too, were the islands around Singapore and the coast of Borneo, with its numerous piratical communities that the Chinese called Mau-su. Beyond were yet more pirate strongholds, such as Sulawesi, Maluku, and the dreaded Sulu Islands, which were the headquarters of the Illanun and the Balanini – the fiercest pirates of all (Mills 1966, 225– 6; Bastin and Winks 1966, 15). Surprise attacks were just another inescapable hazard of the voyage in the minds of the obviously stoical Chinese merchant seamen. The Chinese traveller, Fah Hsein, writing of his adventures on a voyage from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to Java, notes in a matter-of-fact way that “In this [Indian] ocean, there are many pirates who, coming on you suddenly, destroy everything” (Wheatley 1961, 38). Since it was unlikely that pirates at this time would have roamed the open ocean looking for victims, it must be assumed that the reference by Fah Hsein is to the numerous settlements of Malay and Sumatran fishermen-turned-pirates that dotted the myriad estuaries, swamps, and coastal islands along the Straits of Malacca. The complicated topography along the straits, featuring numerous rivers and creeks accessible only to small boats such as the ubiquitous Malay prau (or prahu) gave rise to the formation of petty states, tiny kingdoms, and sultanates. Sometimes a large part of the wealth of these polities came from piratical raids on passing traders. During parts of their early histories even larger, more established centres with legitimate commercial and agricultural functions, like Melaka and Perak on the Malay west coast and Palembang in Sumatra, not only condoned but actually participated in acts of piracy on shipping or raids on other settlements. Far from being the occupation of a few outlaws, therefore, piracy was often the part-time calling of many merchants, nobles, and even rulers of small Malay states ( Mills 1966, 222–3). Particularly along certain sections of the Straits of Malacca there were places that were infamous at various times as pirate hideouts and ambush points, notably – on the Malay side – the Prai River, opposite Pulau Pinang (plate 9), the Larut River, Pangkor and the Dindings, the Selangor Coast, and Singapore itself. On the Sumatran side, sea gypsies frequented numerous inlets from Indragiri as far north as Aru and Aceh, the Karimun Islands, the Riau-Lingga Archipelago, and the notorious pirate market for captured slaves and booty on the island of Galang, to the south of the Singapore Strait

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N

Prai River

Xi Jiang lacca Strait of Ma

Irra wad d

ng Meko

y

177 Piracy

Macao

SUMATRA

Kuala Batu Karimun Is.

Indragiri

Mindanao Tampassuk

0 25 km

Balanini

see inset

Sulu Archipelago Tantoli

N

0

MALAYA

ya Chao Phra

Siam

Pangkor/ Dindings

Galang Is. Riau Is. Lingga Is.

25 mi.

Su ra

at

m

Borneo Celebes

Maluku

Java Malay

Chinese

Illanun (Lanun)

Sea Dyaks

Balanini

Map 11

0 0

500 km 500 mi.

Asian pirate strongholds in the early nineteenth century (Miller 1970, 32–6, 45–50, 116–28; Gosse 1954, 284-94)

(Mills 1966, 227). Map 11 indicates the major strongholds of various nineteenth-century pirate groups. During the period when the Portuguese and later the Dutch monopolized legitimate trade through the straits, even English buccaneers preyed on the rich cargoes of spices, precious metals, and aromatic woods being transported back to Europe through the narrow passage. One of the most famous privateers of all, Sir Francis Drake, carried the English flag through the straits in his circumnavigation of the world in 1579 (Wright 1908, 1). In 1591, also during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, James Lancaster, commander of the Edward Bonaventure, conducted a successful piratical raid on Portuguese shipping in the straits, using Pulau Pinang as a base. It was he who, returning to England in 1592 with a valuable cargo of pepper

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178 Running the Gauntlet

and full of enthusiasm over the prospects for trade and plunder in the straits area, persuaded Elizabeth to grant a charter to a new company – the East India Company – of whom Lancaster became the first governor general. In 1601 he returned again to the straits area, concluded a trade treaty with Aceh – always a deadly enemy of the Portuguese – and captured another large Portuguese vessel. The nineteenth century, however, must be acknowledged as the great century for piracy in the Straits of Malacca and surrounding seas. During this century the spice trade with the East Indies reached its peak, trade between Europe and China was burgeoning, Japan was opened to Western commerce, European competition was strong but less mutually destructive than before, and industrial demand for new products such as rubber and tin was growing. And so the increased volume and value of trade through the straits made a tempting target for pirates. Until the advent of British naval power in the straits area and later Dutch hegemony over the Indonesian archipelago, efforts to counter the depredations of pirates were sporadic and ineffectual. Far from vanquishing piracy, the Portuguese, Dutch (before about 1825), and, in the Philippines, the Spanish may have inadvertently increased its incidence. Mills (1966, 223) comments that these European powers, through their draconian measures to stamp out all local competition and garner a complete trade monopoly, largely destroyed the indigenous mercantile system or drove it to restructure on the basis of smaller vessels and mostly local trade. In the trade hinterlands of Malacca and the other monopoly ports this action impoverished local merchants and rulers alike, and engendered in the Malay upper classes both a thirst for revenge, a sense of legitimacy in their attacks on the shipping of their tormentors, and a taste for the adventure and the profit that accompanied the life of a pirate. At times Malay pirates made alliances of convenience with European renegades and privateers, with whose help they successfully plundered Chinese and, occasionally, other European vessels. Even the British, with their great naval strength, were for a time virtually powerless to halt attacks by pirates on vessels attempting to trade at British factories in the straits area. Trade at British Penang was beset from the outset by Malay pirates who lurked along the coast of Kedah opposite Georgetown, only a few dozen kilometres away. Indeed, one of the initial reasons for the granting by the Sultan of Kedah of the right to British settlement on Pulau Pinang was the

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agreement by the East India Company, through Francis Light, to station an armed vessel in the straits to guard the Kedah coast against further depredations by Bugis raiders newly expelled (1785) from Pinang itself by the Sultan’s army (MacMillan 1923, 190). Clearly, the military efforts of the British at Prince of Wales Island (Pulau Pinang) were inadequate at this time, as piracy continued unabated. Not until 1800 was some respite obtained by merchants at Georgetown, when a treaty with the Sultan of Kedah gave the British, as we have seen, a strip of the mainland opposite Pinang – called Province Wellesley – that included the Prai river, which formerly harboured a major pirate stronghold (plate 9). Once this had been destroyed by the British, they at last enjoyed almost complete control of the approaches to Prince of Wales Island, and thereafter the trade at their island entrepot of Georgetown increased. After Thomas Stamford Raffles had established the British port of Singapore, pirates operating from the nearby Karimun, Riau, and Lingga Islands were known to chase merchant ships right to the entrance of Singapore’s Keppel Harbour and to attack vessels with virtual impunity as soon as they left the port (Mills 1966, 229, 236). Dealing with these attacks proved costly and difficult, as will be illustrated below. The piratical forays by groups such as the Illanun and Balanini took place with both seasonal and spatial regularity. This was partly occasioned by the monsoonal wind systems, whose seasonal fluctuations affected merchant shipping – and thus the concentrations of potential victims and their ease of capture – but also facilitated the operations of the pirate galleys and praus, which functioned most effectively with light winds and calm seas. Pirate flotillas from Mindanao and the Sulu Islands would follow a well-defined circuit on their annual cruises along the shipping routes of the archipelago and the straits, using their knowledge and experience of spatial and temporal pattens of trade to intercept vessels laden with rich cargoes at places and times most favourable for a successful attack. Thus, during the first half of the nineteenth century, every August, September, and October the “pirates’ wind” brought Illanun galleys by the dozens to the Straits of Malacca, where they waylaid small trading vessels travelling to and from Singapore and even ventured in large numbers as far north as Pinang, Kedah, and Rangoon (Yangon) (Mills 1966, 225). In 1820, for example, a British trade commissioner reported that trade from the Sumatran coast of the straits was being jeopardized because

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“there are annually fleets of pirate prahus [praus], which come up from Rhio and Lingin [Riau and Lingga], and lie in wait for the defenceless prahus, plundering them of all they possess and murdering or carrying away as slaves all on board … the island of Pankour, near the Dindings [is] the favourite resort of pirates in these straits … During the prevalence of the strong northwest winds, in October and November, the prahus from Delli, Langkat, and other ports to the northward, are generally driven down to the Sambilang [Sembilan] islands, and are obliged to coast along the Perak shore to this place … trading prahus … dare not venture near these islands, unless compelled by stress of weather” (Anderson 1971, 194–5). In the 1824 articles of the treaty between the British and the Dutch regarding the partition of the trade in the Indies, piracy in the surrounding seas and straits was recognized as a sufficiently serious problem that countermeasures were a formal part of the treaty agreement. Article 5 stipulates that: “Their Brittanic and Netherland Majesties … engage to concur effectively in repressing piracy in those seas: they will not grant either asylum or protection to vessels engaged in piracy, and they will in no case permit the ships or merchandise captured by such vessels to be introduced, deposited, or sold in any of their possessions (quoted in Keppel 1968, 272). Despite the above agreement, Malay and Illanun piracy in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore continued and reached its peak in the decade 1826–36. The Malays and Illanun were bitter rivals and there were clashes between their fleets in the straits, but it appears that there was enough booty to satisfy the crews of hundreds of piratical praus from all groups that cruised the straits in wait for vulnerable indigenous, Chinese, or European traders. The connivance and, in some cases, direct participation of local rulers in the piracy at this time was common knowledge. Documents of the period make frequent reference to this. For example, in the Straits Settlements Records, (no. 184, April 1829) a communication from a Mr Fullerton to the governor of British Penang makes the comment that “of the connection of the Sultan of Johore, residing under our protection at Singapore, and his relatives, the chiefs of Rhio and Lingen [sic] with the pirates to the eastwards there is little doubt, and there is some reason to believe that the ex-Raja of Quedah, residing under our protection at this island [Penang] if he does not directly countenance the piratical proceedings of his relatives, does not use any means seriously to discourage them” (quoted in Wright 1908, 41).

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pirate ships and markets Malay pirate navies in the early nineteenth century often comprised hundreds of praus rowed by slaves and manned by well-armed and accoutred warriors who did not shrink from attacking much larger vessels, even those armed with cannon and with their own protective force of marines. The typical Malay pirate prau was a slim-hulled, open vessel, perhaps twenty or thirty metres in length, powered by double banks of oars – similar to the Mediterranean biremes of earlier epochs – with about eighteen oars to a side. These were manned by galley slaves, often two to each oar. Apart from the crew there was a fighting force of perhaps fifty men stationed on platforms running along each side of the prau. Dressed in gaudy armour, these warriors hurled showers of spears and arrows as they drew within range of their victims, and each had a kris for close combat once a trading vessel was boarded. Heavier offensive and defensive armament on the praus varied, but usually there were stockades fore and aft armed with swivel guns and locally made leles of small calibre. Many praus also had light cannons of Western manufacture mounted in the forward stockade and other small-calibre guns along the sides of the vessel. When wind conditions were favourable the praus could hoist their sail, and thus these craft were very swift and nimble. When attacking larger trading ships or junks they would operate in flotillas that often came from several neighbouring pirate settlements, manœuvring to avoid exposure to the main guns of their quarry (if indeed it was armed at all) while raking its decks with grape shot and arrows. When its defences were sufficiently reduced they would swarm aboard and either butcher or enslave the crew, remove cargo and anything else of value into the praus, and scuttle the ship. Captives were sold at slave markets such as Galang in the Riau Islands. The profits were divided according to well-regulated agreements between the pirates themselves and the nobles or merchants who financed the expedition. On the island of Sumatra, in the early nineteenth century a pirate bazaar flourished for more than twenty years at Kuala Batu, at which goods and slaves from raids on shipping in the straits were traded under the auspices of Raja Raga,”The Prince of Pirates,” who boasted of capturing more than forty European vessels and killing their crews, personally beheading the ships’ captains (Gosse 1954, 285–6). Published reports by Western visitors to this bazaar mentioned stocks of European women’s underclothing, defaced bibles, and even European

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concubines for sale, and these reports helped galvanize antipirate activities that began to have an effect in the early 1820s. Attacks by Raga on Western shipping, whether English, Dutch, Spanish, or American, were indiscriminate and vicious. Although his base was in the Celebes (Sulawesi) and the Makassar Straits area, his praus ranged widely over the entire archipelago, attacking the Dutch settlements around Batavia and harassing British trade in the Straits of Malacca. Contemporary accounts of his exploits elevated him to the status of an almost legendary figure (Earl 1971, 40–2). Inevitably, his murderous career brought down retribution in the form of naval patrols dedicated to hunting him down and destroying his extensive system of clandestine markets and sanctuaries. In 1831, for example, at Kuala Batu in Sumatra, the American schooner Friendship, loading a cargo of pepper, was attacked by Raga’s pirates and most of the crew were slaughtered. This outrage and other attacks on American vessels that had begun to trade in this region prompted a well-planned and successful punitive expedition in which the u.s. frigate Potomac, in a surprise attack on Kuala Batu, used its guns and a landing party of marines to level the pirate bazaar and destroy Raga’s fleets of praus (Mitchell 1976, 178; Gosse 1954, 287–8). But such tenacious retaliation was rare in the early nineteenth century, and legitimate merchants operating in the straits area were highly critical of governmental incapacity to deal with the problem of pirate predations, which, by 1830, had almost completely choked off the indigenous trade at the ports of Singapore and Malacca. George Earl, a contemporary observer writing in 1837, describes the ravages wrought by Lanun (Illanun) and Dyak marauders on small settlements at the very entrance to the port of Singapore, in which entire communities were dragged away to be sold in slave markets (Earl 1971, 312–13).

combatting piracy in the straits of malacca Although larger and better armed, Chinese junks became the main prey of the Malay, Illanun and Balanini pirates in the straits area who relied on the advantages of numerical superiority and the speed and manœuvrability of their praus and galleys. By 1832 the situation at Singapore had become so desperate that Chinese merchants banded

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together to finance and equip a flotilla of four armed junks that were sent out to attack the pirates and to escort trading vessels in the straits. This move seems to have, at last, embarrassed the British government into taking action. It was decided that British men-ofwar would be despatched to hunt down the myriad swift and elusive praus. But this proved to be no easy task. Having been goaded into action in the face of ever-bolder attacks by pirate hordes, the British colonial administration commissioned the building at Malacca of two gunboats armed with twenty-fourpounder guns. These, however, proved ineffectual, as the Malay crews hired by the British lacked training in naval strategy and tended to avoid direct confrontation with piratical praus manned by their countrymen. Both the ruthless attacks and the loud complaints of the merchant victims continued. In 1835 an urgent petition by European merchants directly to the king and governor general brought a measure of escalation in the government response to piracy. A British navy sloop (hms Wolf) was despatched to the East with orders to combat piracy. Arriving in March 1836, this warship, with a British crew, also achieved only limited success against Malay pirates in the straits, although its arrival, signalling a new determination by the British, marked the turning of the tide in the war against the marauding sea gypsies. The main problem that had hindered the effectiveness of sailing vessels like the Wolf , however, was that they were dependent on winds and at the mercy of strong currents in the straits, whereas the pirate vessels usually had multiple rows of oars manned by seasoned oarsmen and could easily escape by moving against the wind or by simply outdistancing the warship in calm weather conditions. Although more heavily armed than the usual pirate galley or prau, in the early nineteenth century the tall ships of the British and Dutch were conspicuous and unmanœuvrable and had a much deeper draught; thus, they could not follow the agile, shallow-draught praus into the maze of shoals and tidal estuaries lining the straits. The fact that the British and Dutch finally gained the upper hand against the pirates is due more than anything else to the introduction in the 1830s of steam propulsion, which freed armed European vessels and traders alike from their dependence on sail and enabled them to counter the main advantage (manœuvrability and speed in any wind conditions) enjoyed by the oar-powered pirate galleys. The Dutch had the first steam-powered vessel in the region – the Van der

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Capellan (Wright 1908, 42), but in 1837 the British steam sloop Diana was despatched to cruise the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. She quickly sowed enormous devastation among the pirate flotillas, which had never previously encountered a steam-powered vessel and which, in some cases, hastened toward her in the mistaken belief that the ship was on fire and thus was an easy target. By the time they realized their mistake the hapless pirates’ fate was sealed by the speedy Diana. As more steam gunboats arrived in the area, the British and Dutch belatedly began to push the brigands back into more inaccessible parts of the surrounding straits and archipelagic seas. But pirate attacks, though less frequent, still took a steady toll on merchant shipping, especially on Chinese junks, which still lacked steam power. In 1843 Sir Henry Keppel began a sweep of the archipelago in the warship hms Dido, aiming to eradicate the nests of pirates whose praus ranged throughout the region but retreated under British naval attack to strongholds in Borneo, such as those on the Sakarran and Sarebas Rivers (Keppel 1968). Campaigns in 1843 and 1844 destroyed fortifications and fleets of the Sarebas and Sakarran pirates but did not completely eliminate the problem. In 1849, a force led by James Brooke finally broke the power of the Dyak pirates of Borneo with a massed attack on their stronghold at Batang Maru, on the Sarebas river, not far from the present site of the city of Kuching. The British steam gunboat Nemesis spearheaded this assault, which caused fearful destruction among the dyak praus in what was a very unequal struggle (Mitchell 1976, 178; Gosse 1954, 290–1). Around the mid-nineteenth century Chinese brigands, many of whom had migrated as coolie labourers to the burgeoning tin mines and settlements of Perak and Selangor, also joined in piratical raids on their fellow countrymen and others. Their methods and strategies, however, differed somewhat from the earlier Malay and Illanun pirates, involving more stealth and surprise than reckless bravado. At times Chinese joined forces with Malays and others in these attacks, and Chinese merchants were sometimes complicit both as financiers of raids and as knowing “fences” for the stolen cargoes. An example of such a piratical incident by Chinese brigands in the Straits of Malacca, and the response by the British authorities was recorded in the British Parliamentary Papers in 1872 (Malay States Correspondence, 1872–5, c465, l31). A Chinese junk owned by Pinang

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merchants, with forty-nine passengers and crew and laden with a cargo of rice, coconut oil, dried fish, assorted merchandise, and a substantial amount of silver coinage (three thousand dollars) disappeared after leaving Georgetown on a short voyage to Kedah. It was rumoured that some passengers who had joined the vessel just before it weighed anchor were pirates who overpowered and murdered the entire crew and fellow passengers (thirty-four men, women, and children). Some days later the vessel was sighted heading south through the Straits of Malacca, and acting governor Anson despatched the (unarmed) colonial steamer Pluto, with a contingent of local police and reinforcements picked up at Malacca, to search for it along the central Malay coast. By pure accident the boats of the Pluto surprised the hijacked junk at anchor in the Selangor River and arrested six Chinese pirates who were still on board, including the original helmsman of the junk, who had agreed to pilot the vessel for the hijackers in return for his life. He now promptly identified the others as pirates, as well as three more Chinese captured in the town. Stolen goods from the junk were found in several local Chinese-owned shops. Recovery of these goods and apprehension of the chief pirate was, however, thwarted by a local Malay potentate, Rajah Mahmood, with the backing of a force of local Malays and Bugis despatched by the powerful Rajah Mahdie, who commanded two forts overlooking the river entrance. The Pluto, with the recovered junk in tow and nine pirates in chains, beat a hasty retreat under fire from Rajah Mahdie’s forts. A punitive expedition was immediately mounted, comprising the police force from the Pluto, reinforced by marines and sailors from the British warship Rinaldo. This time the British suffered casualties, but nevertheless the Rinaldo was able to silence the guns of the forts. Several days later, with all available reinforcements from Pinang, the British returned and “spent the day in utterly destroying this nest of pirates. The town of Salangore [sic] is completely burned down, the forts demolished, the guns spiked and broken up.” In addition, the British found and destroyed “five piratical prows … three with two 24-pounders and one small gun each. All had arms, viz. spears, muskets, pistols &c. They measured from 80 to 100 tons apiece” (Malay States Correspondence, 1872, 10). In commenting on this punitive action an editor of a local newspaper (Penang Argus, editorial, 1 July 1871) voiced a complaint that

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was by now common in the northern straits settlement: “Singapore, as a matter of course, enjoys the presence in its roadstead of two or more gun-boats, while Penang is seldom blessed with the sight of a man-of-war. It is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs.”

modern piracy: a renewed threat Although cases of piracy around the Straits of Malacca declined dramatically in the early twentieth century, the threat to shipping has never really been eliminated. In the 1930s there were outbreaks of Chinese piracy targeting ships running between Shanghai and Singapore. The role of Chinese secret societies in piratical outbreaks in the straits after the second world war has been documented, for example, in the incidents at Batu Muang in 1946–47 (Miller 1970, 182– 3). In 1962–63 there were more piratical incidents around North Borneo and in the Straits of Malacca (Miller 1970, 12). In the last decade of the twentieth century and, indeed, in the first years of the twenty-first century piracy in the Indonesian archipelago and the borders of the Straits of Malacca has once again been on the increase (as it also has increased along the coasts of West Africa, Latin America, China, the Adriatic Sea, and the Gulf of Thailand: Goodspeed 1999, a11). In 2000 at least seventy-five ships were attacked in waters bordering Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Attacks in the Straits of Malacca comprised over 40 percent of these. As recently as June 2001 a fully laden Malaysian tanker, the Selayang, was seized by pirates shortly after leaving Port Dickson in the southern straits (Economist 2001d, 35). In response to increasing concerns of both users and coastal states along the Straits of Malacca about the frequent incidents of piracy in the region, a special working group of the International Maritime Organization was convened in 1993 to address the difficult problem of policing what is, in effect, an international waterway. Fully loaded tankers, containerships, and bulk carriers in transit through the straits had become favourite targets for modern pirates, for a number of reasons. First, their straight sides are easy to scale while they are proceeding slowly through narrow and shallow waterways (Chia Lin Sien 1997, 117). Second, their crews are virtually defenceless: under international maritime law, merchant crews are not permitted to carry weapons. Even large container vessels, moreover, have small crews (usually about ten to twenty crew members) who are helpless

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against a sudden attack from gangs of modern pirates armed with automatic weapons and operating fast outboard boats. Third, pirates can quickly escape with their booty into any of a myriad of sheltered inlets or mangrove-lined bays, especially at the southern entrance to the straits, around Pulau Bintan and the Phillip Channel. Here, in the recent past, pirates have avoided arrest simply by crossing over the international boundaries separating the legal jurisdictions of Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. This has been reduced somewhat by the coordination of efforts among the navies and police coast guard forces of Singapore and Indonesia, following an agreement in 1992 that has resulted in cooperative antipiracy patrols by a joint Maritime Operation Planning Team (Cleary and Goh 2000, 136). Also, the Comité Maritime International (cmi), a consortium of national maritime law associations, recently produced a draft law dealing with modern piracy, but this relies on ratification by national governments in order to be effective (Economist 2001d, 35). The attacks on shipping still continue, meanwhile, and in some cases off-duty military personnel in the region are suspected of engaging in acts of piracy, which can indeed be very lucrative: masters’ safes on many ships contain valuables, and cargoes of electronic and other high value-added goods are readily disposed of in black market transactions in many parts of Asia and elsewhere. A disturbing new trend in the latest wave of piratical incidents has been an unprecedented use of heavy weapons and deadly violence against the hapless crews of the vessels attacked. Not infrequently, entire ships’ crews are murdered (Economist 2001d, 35). “Modern buccaneers, armed with machine guns and rocket-launchers instead of cutlasses, claimed the lives of 67 sailors [in 1998] … firearms were used in 45 of the 198 attacks on commercial shipping recorded [in that year] …Of all the world’s waters, the most dangerous are the island studded seas off Indonesia and the Philippines, with the South China Sea and the heavily travelled Strait of Malacca being the most pirate infested” (International Maritime Bureau, Annual Report 1998, quoted in Goodspeed 1999, a11). The imb Piracy Reporting Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has recorded in the past several years at least fifteen cases of ships that simply vanished with their crews and entire cargoes. A new trend is for organized crime groups in Asia to reuse hijacked ships equipped with false identities and bogus documentation in order to steal more cargoes from unsuspecting shippers. An example is the hijacked

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Japanese-owned cargo vessel Tenyu, which disappeared in the Straits of Malacca in September 1998, en route to South Korea with a cargo of fifteen hundred tonnes of aluminum ingots and a crew of two South Koreans and thirteen Chinese. In late December the ship was discovered in the eastern Chinese port of Zhangjagang with a new name and an Indonesian crew (Goodspeed 1999, a11). The fate of its original crew is unknown. Governments of nations in or near waters where these attacks still take place appear at times to be indifferent, perhaps because foreign vessels and cargoes are usually involved, the attacks generally occur on the high seas, and in any event pirates are very difficult to apprehend and convict unless caught red-handed. Piracy, therefore, remains a threat, although not as great as in the past, when the straits were a dangerous gauntlet for legitimate commerce and pirate predations at times almost choked off trade and shipping completely. But there have been other recent dangers facing shipping in this region. Military conflicts have embroiled the area’s waterways several times in the past century, notably the action of raiders in the First World War, the Japanese onslaught and control of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore in the Second World War, the Malayan Emergency, and the confrontation between an aggressive Indonesian regime and newly independent Malaysia in the mid-1960s. These conflicts will be examined in the next chapter.

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19 Twentieth-Century Military Conflicts in the Straits Area

The fact that the Straits of Malacca comprise a strategic gateway for global shipping and offer an obvious choke-point for any military power desirous of controlling or constricting the movement of shipping in the region has meant that the waterway and surrounding seas have, from time to time, been the scene of military conflicts and even large-scale naval engagements. The British, in concert with the Dutch, inherited the role of peacekeeper in the straits area at the turn of the twentieth century. They jointly maintained sufficient naval and military forces in the region to ensure that peaceful commerce through the straits could continue without disruptions such as the depredations of pirates that were rampant a few decades earlier. But during the British and Dutch colonial tenure of Malaya and the East Indies there were two major periods when full-scale warfare came to the region – the First and Second World Wars. At the close of the colonial period, several further outbreaks of military confrontation and conflict also occurred (the Malayan Emergency, the confrontation with Indonesia, and the general period of regional tension during the Cold War). The potential for military disruption of the valuable trade from the Eastern seas was well recognized by the British and by the Malay rulers themselves long before the actual outbreak of global hostilities in 1914. Indeed, the indigenous Malay rulers took the unprecedented step of financing the construction of a British dreadnought, the

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Malaya, one of the most powerful capital ships of the era. As a unit of the British Fifth Battle Squadron based at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, the Malaya played a valuable part in naval engagements in European waters but not, however, in the Far East. On numerous occasions the need to expand and strengthen British naval facilities at Singapore and Pinang and to station permanent naval squadrons in the area to protect the shipping routes to China and Japan were voiced in various publications (Wright 1908). Hong Kong became the main base of British naval forces in the Far East, with Singapore playing a secondary role. Japan, on friendly terms with the British at this time, was also gaining strength as a naval power in the northern Pacific, relieving Britain of some responsibility for patrolling the sea lanes in that area. The first real military challenge to British naval supremacy in the straits occurred in the early months of the 1914–18 war, when German warships and armed merchant cruisers, called “raiders” by the Allies, disrupted shipping in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea from German bases at Tsingtao, in China, and Dar es Salaam, in German Tanganyika. One particularly destructive and elusive German raider was the light cruiser Emden, which sailed into the Straits of Malacca from the Indian Ocean on 27 October 1914 and actually raided shipping in the port of Georgetown, Pinang. In this daring attack on 28 October it sank several merchantmen and gunboats. Among its victims were the Russian light cruiser Zhemtchug and the French destroyer Mousquet (Hoyt 1966, 131–5). It was subsequently caught and destroyed on 9 November by the Australian light cruiser Sydney during an attempted attack on the telegraph station at Cocos (Keeling) Island. Apart from such isolated incidents, with the main theatres of the war very far from this region and with Japan and the United States as allies of Britain, naval engagements were relatively few in the Eastern seas. Britain’s supply lines through the straits were thus relatively secure for most of the First World War, with only the brief mutiny of Indian infantry at Singapore, mentioned earlier, to disturb the general quiescence. Between the two world wars, the British made sporadic efforts to improve the defences at Singapore, designating it as the main naval station in the British Far East. As the threat of war again loomed in the late 1930s, air and ground defences in Malaya were also beefed up, leading to a complacent belief that the area was militarily impregnable. Most of the military expenditures had been made in constructing installations and facilities, however, not in expanding numbers and

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capacities of combat forces or craft. The weaknesses in the defences of this region were soon made apparent. The Second World War in the Eastern theatre again began with German attacks on British merchant shipping in the Indian Ocean. The pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee sank British shipping around the southern coasts of Africa before being destroyed by a British cruiser squadron at the battle of the River Plate in December 1939. In an engagement on 19 November 1941 with the second Australian cruiser to carry the name hmas Sydney, the German raider Kormoran was sunk, but not before dealing a mortal blow to the Australian vessel. The Kormoran, which preyed on British shipping in the northern Indian Ocean, had been disguised as the Dutch merchant vessel Straat Malakka, luring the Sydney within range of her hidden guns and torpedo tubes. After a close-fought battle the German crew abandoned their burning vessel, and some were saved. The Australian cruiser was lost with all hands (Miller 1995). The fear that Japan would soon enter the war on the Axis side led to a decision to strengthen the British Far Eastern forces with two capital ships, the new thirty-five-thousand-ton battleship Prince of Wales, still bearing the scars of its recent engagement with the German battleship Bismark, and an aging battlecruiser, Repulse. The fleet aircraft carrier Indomitable, earmarked for the Singapore naval force, was damaged on the voyage and turned back. A smaller aircraft carrier, Hermes, and several county-class heavy cruisers were also stationed at Trincomalee in Ceylon. The Dutch, meanwhile, maintained a small force of cruisers and destroyers at Batavia to protect their colonial interests and the sea lanes in the East Indies. Coinciding with its surprise attack on the u.s. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the Japanese launched an invasion of Malaya (8 December local time), landing on the east coast at Kota Bharu and at Patani and Singora in southern Thailand. Meeting with little effective resistance, the main force crossed the isthmus to capture Georgetown on Pulau Pinang on 16 December, as well as other ports and transport facilities along the better-developed west coast. Overconfidence, indecision, inadequate air cover, a complete lack of tanks and armoured vehicles, poor communications, and ineptness among the Allied military leadership in the region aided the Japanese in their rapid destruction or capture of air, ground, and naval facilities and forces. Among the earliest British losses were the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, the nucleus of Naval Force z . On a desperate sortie from Singapore to attack the invasion forces with three escorting

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destroyers but without the aircover belatedly requested from raf stations in Malaya, the only two British capital ships east of Suez were overwhelmed and sunk on 10 December by fifty-two torpedo planes and thirty-four bombers of the Japanese Twenty-second Air Flotilla, flying from land bases in Saigon. The obsolete Brewster Buffalo fighters, eventually summoned from Sembawang, near the now almost defenceless port of Singapore, arrived at the scene of battle after the victorious Japanese aircraft had finished their work and departed. British losses in the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse comprised 840 officers and men. The remaining serviceable destroyers rescued 1,924 survivors from the doomed vessels. This successful aerial attack on battle-ready capital ships manœuvring at sea with destroyer escorts spelled the end of the battleship era in naval warfare. Naval airpower predominated in the Pacific theatre of the war from this point onward. Japanese air attacks on raf airfields, port installations, troop concentrations, and cities in Malaya intensified in late December, by which time the invaders had cleared all defenders from the northern isthmus and were pursuing them down the coastlands along the Straits of Malacca. Apart from a few retaliatory strikes by British amphibious forces in the straits, such as a successful raid using fast landing craft that attacked Japanese rear positions on 27 December, the initiative was almost entirely on the side of the Japanese. Although the numbers of troops on the opposing sides appeared roughly equal at the outset of the conflict, the Japanese were battle hardened, supported by tank brigades, accustomed to living off the land, imbued with high morale, well-trained in jungle warfare, and superbly led. They bested the disorganized, ill-conditioned, poorly equipped, and exhausted British-led forces at almost every turn. Hastily organized reinforcements of British ground and air forces arrived by convoy in Singapore in the second week of January 1942 to stiffen the opposition to the seemingly invincible Japanese. Outnumbered and outclassed by Japanese Zero fighters, the fifty British Hurricane aircraft and four Dutch fighter squadrons sent from Batavia (Jakarta) were ineffectual in trying to slow the onslaught of five Japanese infantry divisions and several armoured brigades protected by overwhelming air and naval forces. Within a few weeks most of the remaining Allied aircraft in Malaya had been destroyed, either in unequal air battles or parked on the vulnerable airfields. As the Japanese ground forces repeatedly broke through British defensive positions, there was a

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constant danger that the confused and disorderly southward retreat by the defenders would turn into a rout. Having achieved complete air and naval superiority in the region by mid-January and aided by poor coordination and low morale among the British-led ground forces in Malaya, the Japanese were able to sweep down the Malay peninsula in only a few weeks, capturing ports, airfields, and railway facilities along the straits virtually intact from the retreating defenders, who abandoned most of their heavy weaponry as they retreated toward the island of Singapore. The naval base at Port Swettenham was hastily evacuated on 9 January, the few remaining serviceable gunboats barely escaping south to Batu Pahat. On 11 January the Malayan capital, Kuala Lumpur, fell, followed by the port of Malacca (Melaka) on 18 January. Outflanking manœuvres by the Japanese infantry, who with only light equipment could move through rough terrain quickly, unhinged every defensive position the British attempted to establish in their five-hundred-kilometre retreat. Both trackless, mountainous rainforest to the east and coastal mangrove and nipa swamps to the west were used to good effect by the resourceful Japanese to harass the flanks of the retreating British-led forces. Using a flotilla of forty small boats brought overland from the invasion points at Singora and Patani, together with small local vessels captured at Pulau Pinang, the Japanese assembled a highly mobile, battalion-sized force on the Malayan west coast that effectively outflanked the British-led troops, who had counted on using the many small streams emptying into the Straits of Malacca as defensive lines to delay the enemy advance. Japanese military control and use of the straits, obtained virtually by default, enabled them to employ a version of the “island hopping” strategy so effectively employed by the u.s. navy and marines later in the war. The retreating British, Australian, and Indian forces, to their consternation, encountered parties of Japanese soldiers waiting in ambush in their rear who had landed from their borrowed flotilla at selected points along the Straits of Malacca (Bastin and Winks 1966, 301, 304). This strategy enabled the invaders to seize without damage major ports like Port Swettenham, which was then able to land supplies for the Japanese troops as early as 10 January (Dunnigan and Nofi 1995, 516). With scarcely a pause in their southward momentum, the Japanese broke through the remaining defensive lines at Johor in southern Malaya on 27 January, forcing the defenders to retreat across the

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causeway to Singapore Island. On 31 January, when the last British forces had crossed the causeway, it was blown up. The final assault by the Japanese on the island bastion was not long in coming. Without encountering effective resistance, Japanese forces crossed the Straits of Johor on 8 February 1942, taking the supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore from the rear. The fact that this island almost completely lacked any defences against landward attack came as a shock to many. As Winston Churchill later commented, “the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered into my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom” (Churchill 1951, 43; Matanle 1989, 115). The guns of the fortress were virtually useless against an assault from the north by ground forces, since most of the ammunition comprised armourpiercing shells for use against warships rather than high-explosive antipersonnel rounds, and the gun emplacements were designed primarily for repelling an attack from the Singapore Straits. Fort Canning, in the heart of Singapore town, which contained a small reservoir, military stores, and command and communications facilities, had been built at a time – the mid–nineteenth century – of British complacency about its global military and naval superiority and was utterly incapable of withstanding a determined ground assault. Apart from Fort Canning, there were no other redoubts positioned to cover the northern approaches to the city and harbour. Vital facilities such as major reservoirs, supply depots, and power stations were open and vulnerable. The hastily improvised defences around Singapore were woefully inadequate and crumbled at once before the Japanese, who sensed that a huge victory was within their grasp. By 14 February the invaders were within a kilometre of the harbour installations, and the British began a desperate attempt to demolish them, in order to render the great port and fortress useless to the Japanese. With their water supplies, food, and ammunition stores and with large numbers of their troops captured or destroyed, the British capitulated on 15 February 1942, giving the Japanese mastery over the entire Malayan peninsula for the remainder of the war. It was one of the most ignominious defeats in British military history. Its dominance of Singapore – renamed Syonan (Brilliant South) – also gave Japan control over the international maritime routes through the straits and provided a gateway for attacks on British shipping and port installations in the Indian Ocean. The Japanese

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wartime prime minister Tojo, on a visit to Syonan in 1943, outlined a strategy in which the former British stronghold, with its strategic location, would become a major communication centre that would act as the lynchpin of a new Grand East Asia. In the meantime, however, the city began to suffer extreme shortages of food and materiel from the first months of the Japanese occupation (Regnier 1991, 22). Changi, which is now the site of the international airport at the eastern end of Singapore Island, became a prison for captured Allied service personnel that was notorious for the harsh and abusive treatment of prisoners. Japanese naval and land-based aircrews, buoyed by victories over both the u.s. at Pearl Harbour and the Prince of Wales and Repulse off Singapore, began attacking British naval forces in the Indian Ocean early in 1942. Invasion of the oil-rich islands of the Dutch East Indies followed swiftly. The oilfields of Balikpapan, Dutch Borneo, were seized on 24 January, but not without Japanese losses inflicted by a flotilla of aging u.s. destroyers. Dutch Sumatra, with its oilfields near Palembang, was invaded on 14 February, and on 27 February transports carrying the Japanese Sixteenth Army arrived off Java, whose airfields had been devastated by repeated air raids. Japanese naval forces covering the invasion, supported by landbased aircraft, decimated the defending Allied force of cruisers and destroyers – the abda (American, British, Dutch, Australian) squadron – which sortied from Surabaya in an attempt to intercept the Japanese troop transports. American p40 fighter aircraft being rushed to the area in the aging u.s. aircraft carrier Langley and an accompanying freighter arrived too late to help the abda force, and most elements were quickly destroyed (Haws 1975, 206). Control of the air and superior night-fighting skills gave the Japanese the advantage in the ensuing Battle of the Java Sea, which saw the loss of two Allied cruisers – the Dutch De Ruyter (flagship of the abda commander, Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman) and Java – together with four destroyers, as well as extensive damage to the British heavy cruiser Exeter. Disorganized and low on ammunition, the Allies disengaged and thus failed in their attempt to prevent the seaborne invasion of Java. On 28 February 1942 the last battleworthy remnants of Allied naval forces in the region, led by the u.s. heavy cruiser Houston and the Australian light cruiser Perth, encountered a Japanese troop convoy and its escort of cruisers and destroyers in the Sunda Strait – the only

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viable escape route for Allied shipping since the closing of the Straits of Malacca. The Allied force was destroyed, but not before sinking or damaging more than a half-dozen Japanese vessels (Miller 1995, 225). With sea lanes to and from the vital oilfields of Sumatra and Borneo (two major strategic targets of its thrust into Southeast Asia) firmly in its grasp, Japan then used its control of the straits to move its powerful First Air Fleet to the Indian Ocean, destroying Allied shipping in the Bay of Bengal and occupying Port Blair in the Andaman Islands on 23 March. It also used the captured British and Dutch ports in the straits area to move part of its invasion force to Burma (Myanmar). The plan was to seize the Yenangyuang oil fields and to cut the Burma Road along which Britain and the United States were supplying war materiel to General Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Chinese force, which was opposing Japanese armies in southwest China. A larger strategic objective was to weaken the British hold on India by inflicting military defeats that would cause a loss of British prestige and give pro-Japanese Indian nationalists, led by Chandra Bose, the opportunity for a successful uprising. Indeed, the Japanese nearly succeeded, penetrating to Imphal, in eastern India, before their invasion force was eventually halted. From their recently captured air bases in the East Indies, meanwhile, Japanese air fleets virtually razed Port Darwin in northern Australia, the only remaining significant Allied port in the Southeast Asian realm, bombing it sixty-four times between 19 February 1942 and 12 November 1943. Allied naval and merchant shipping in Darwin harbour sustained heavy damage during this period. British bases in Trincomalee and Colombo, Ceylon, were also severely damaged in early April 1942 by powerful Japanese naval air forces launched from a task force of five carriers that was protected by four fast battleships. Planes from this Indian Ocean task force sank the British aircraft carrier Hermes and the heavy cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire. Its fighting strength decimated, the British Far Eastern Fleet retired westward to ports in British East Africa and took no further major offensive actions in the region until much later in the war. The Japanese had thus swept the western Pacific and northern Indian Oceans of Allied shipping in the space of little more than four months since attacking Pearl Harbour. On 18 April 1942, a seemingly unrelated event thousands of kilometres away in the North Pacific – Jimmy Doolittle’s carrier-launched and utterly unexpected bombing raid on Tokyo – had far-reaching

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consequences for the progress of the war in Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the waters around Australia. This attack by twinengined medium bombers on the Japanese capital, previously thought to be beyond the reach of all enemy aircraft, seriously embarrassed the Japanese high command. It reacted by immediately recalling the Indian Ocean fleet for the defence of the home islands and by postponing a planned invasion of Australia, in order to concentrate on sweeping u.s. forces from the Central Pacific by invading Midway Island (Haws 1975, 207). Aided by code-breakers who deciphered the Japanese plan of battle from intercepted messages, a u.s. carrier force destroyed the cream of the Japanese naval air arm at the Battle of Midway on 4–6 June 1942. At one stroke the balance of power shifted against Japan, whose naval forces never again took the offensive in any major operations in Southeast Asia or the Indian Ocean but were thereafter fully engaged in attempted consolidation and, subsequently, rearguard actions in the Pacific. For virtually the rest of the war the Straits of Singapore and Malacca became internal waterways for the movement of resources and munitions in the Japanese East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, with the main theatres of battle moving east, to New Guinea and the Pacific Island Territories and north to Burma, the Philippines, and China. Secure in its military and naval domination of the straits region, Japan began dismantling captured British fortifications and transportation facilities in Malaya for use in other combat areas. Thus, eight-inch guns that had formerly been part of British coastal batteries in Malaya and Singapore were used by the Japanese against invading u.s. marines at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati) later in the war (Dunnigan and Nofi 1995, 285), and sections of railway track from Malaya, such as from the partially dismantled east-coast line, were used in constructing the infamous Burma railway. Compliant Siam (Thailand), which made only a token protest for a few days after the first Japanese landings, became a willing Japanese ally under a quisling government and was rewarded with five Malayan states ceded by the Japanese. Similarly, a group of Indonesian nationalist politicians led by Sukarno (later the first president of Indonesia) and Hatta collaborated with the occupying Japanese, who offered the prospect of political independence for Indonesia. Apart from some limited Allied guerrilla activities in highland Malaya and parts of Indonesia, therefore, there was no serious challenge to the Japanese in the oil-rich region. For most of the war years Allied

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attacks in the straits area amounted to little more than harassment, for example, the raids by British and Australian commando groups on shipping in Syonan (Singapore) harbour in September 1942 and again in September 1943. There were also sporadic efforts at minelaying and occasional naval bombardments and air raids on shipping and facilities at the Japanese naval bases at Pulau Pinang, Syonan, Padang (where a German u-boat base had been established with Japanese approval), and Port Swettenham (now Port Kelang). The last naval engagement of the Second World War involving only surface ships took place in the Straits of Malacca on 17 May 1945, when the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro was sunk by six British destroyers. The surrender of Japan on 15 September 1945 obviated the need for military reconquest of Malaya or Sumatra, and the straits were reopened to international commercial shipping after the handover to the British and Dutch at the end of the war.

postwar conflicts in the straits Local ethnic hostilities and regional political tensions had become inflamed during the Japanese occupation and were heightened by the subsequent attempts by the British and Dutch to reestablish colonial domination in the straits area. Strong nationalist sentiments were stirring, especially in Indonesia, where independence was wrested from Holland in 1950 with un help. In Malaya, meanwhile, a Chinese-led Communist insurgency, directed earlier against the Japanese but now turned upon the British, led to the declaration of The Emergency, a program of British military countermeasures in the decade after the war. The campaign against the Communists focused mainly on the rubber-growing and forested areas of the interior, rather than on cities or coastal communities along the straits. The danger of a Communist takeover of Malaya and Singapore was, however, a constant threat during The Emergency throughout the 1950s, and there were riots by leftist groups in 1956. The British developed a long-term strategy in which Singapore, with its reestablished naval base and its autonomous status granted in 1959, would join with the other Straits Settlements and with the Federated Malay States (independent since August 1957) in a political union that would preserve British strategic interests while providing a stable, democratic form of government. The rulers of Malaya insisted that the Borneo territories of Sarawak and Sabah be included in the future

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Malaysian Federation to provide a balance between non-Chinese and Chinese ethnic constituents in the new state. For a brief time after the creation of Malaysia in September 1963, Chinese-dominated Singapore was indeed included in the Malaysian Federation. During those few years, however, ethnic rioting broke out in Singapore (Malays and Chinese clashed on 21 July and again on 2 September 1964, allegedly fomented by Indonesian agitators). In 1965 the fledgling state of Malaysia, which feared the political domination that threatened to emerge from Chinese numerical superiority in the expanded federation, forced the withdrawal of Singapore, which peacefully declared independence on 9 August 1965. In the period of political and ethnic turmoil leading to independence of Singapore the economic fortunes of the straits region suffered (Freeman 1999, 33). At the time of its creation, Malaysia had a population of about ten million: one tenth that of its neighbour, Indonesia, which achieved independence from Holland over a decade earlier and which had harboured strongly expansionist and nationalistic aspirations. Indonesia had entertained hopes of adding the British territories in North Borneo (Sabah, Sarawak, and oil-rich Brunei) to its own realm following its success in wresting West Irian from the Dutch. The inclusion of Sarawak and Sabah in the newly independent nation of Malaysia frustrated this expansionist aim, leading Indonesia to formulate a Crush Malaysia campaign. In this program of harassment, subversion, commercial boycott, and military confrontation with tiny Malaysia, the Indonesians used the Straits of Malacca, its numerous small islands, and the adjacent, undefended coastlands of the Malay Peninsula as a means of infiltration of saboteurs and commandos and for interdiction of Malaysian commerce. One arm of this confrontation program involved an increase in hijackings of small coastal-trading vessels from Singapore and coastal Malaysian ports. It quickly became apparent to many observers that these attacks were not old-style piracy but elements of an orchestrated campaign sponsored by the Indonesian government to disrupt legitimate trade and to intimidate quasi-illegal traders into cooperating with subversive elements bent on sabotage and destabilisation in Malaysia (Hyde 1965, 95–6). Small boats from Malaysian ports that were hijacked in the straits or that were engaged in legitimate trade at Sumatran ports were used by the Indonesians to land saboteurs in Johor and Melaka, or their owners were pressured into ferrying

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extremists to training camps in the Riau Islands (97). Both Malays and Chinese were targeted in this program of hijackings and infiltration. Then followed military landings by Indonesian regulars and trained volunteers in Malaysia from the sea and by airdrop in late 1964. The first seaborne landing party came ashore on the coast of Johor near Pontian on 17 August 1964 (108), but was caught in the act of landing and forced to surrender by Malaysian security forces. On 2 September another attempt at military incursion was made, this time an airdrop from Hercules transports of the Indonesian Airforce near Lasbis, also in Johor (109). The military campaign against Malaysia failed to achieve the success of the earlier incursions into Dutch New Guinea (West Irian) and failed also to ignite support from the nonaligned movement of Third World countries that had (politically and diplomatically) helped push the Dutch out of West Irian. Charged by Malaysia with “blatant aggression” and threatened with a retaliatory strike against Sumatran air and naval bases by the British, Indonesia was put on the diplomatic, as well as the military, defensive, and it curbed its armed aggression, apart from occasional small raids across the Straits of Malacca. After September 1964 an uneasy quiescence descended on the straits region, marked by much-reduced trade across the waterway. The period of overt confrontation ended abruptly in 1966, soon after the failed communist coup in Indonesia that led to the removal of President Sukarno and began the thirty-two-year rule of the anticommunist general-turned-dictator, Suharto. At the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, however, tiny East Timor, having declared its independence from Portugal, was quickly overwhelmed by the Indonesian military and for several decades became a province of its expansion-minded neighbour. During this later period of relative stability in the straits region, Great Britain withdrew militarily from east of Suez, closing military bases and facilities, including those in the once-mighty bastion of Singapore. Cold War tensions and a belief by u.s. military strategists in the domino theory of Marxist expansion, however, gave rise to strategic alliances such as seato (South East Asia Treaty Organization) with several noncommunist nations in the region. Wars and insurrections in Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s continued to underscore the importance of the Straits of Malacca as a passage for naval vessels

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by countries such as the United States and its importance as a gateway for flows of strategic necessities such as oil. The latter commodity has been of vital importance to Japan, by now a democratic, economically resurgent, peaceful country but one that is no less dependent on imported energy and raw materials than when it went to war to secure overseas supplies of oil, food and industrial raw materials on 7 December 1941. At the beginning of the new millennium, however, there have been renewed signs of political unrest in several areas bordering the straits. After the Suharto regime lost power in Indonesia in 1998, central control of the far-flung regions of this fractious nation became less effective and separatist movements more active. In the vicinity of the Straits of Malacca, the current unrest in the northern Sumatran province of Aceh is perhaps most noteworthy. The long history of Achinese independence and political-commercial strength, which was broken only in the twentieth century by Dutch colonialists after a bitter struggle, has doubtless not been forgotten by the peoples of northern Sumatra. It remains to be seen whether further unrest in Aceh and in the borderlands between Myanmar and Thailand to the north of the Straits of Malacca will have an effect on the future of this waterway. Other potentially destabilizing situations in the region include the simmering disputes over the Spratly and Paracel Islands and other features in the South China Sea that could affect the security of shipping and trade in the straits. Indonesia and Malaysia are two of the six nations in the region that are involved in territorial, boundary, or related disputes. An outbreak of overt hostilities in the South China Sea, which would almost inevitably involve mainland China against one or more of Taiwan, Vietnam, or the Philippines (and would possibly also involve the United States) could escalate to the point where shipping and commerce may be seriously disrupted and could spill over into the straits area itself. Less ominous, but nevertheless destabilizing, disagreements between various Southeast Asian neighbours, such as Malaysia and Indonesia in the Celebes Sea, Indonesia and Vietnam in the Natuna Island area, and Singapore and Malaysia over Pulau Pisang and Horsburgh Light, could also affect commerce in the local sea-lanes (Prescott 1985, 226–8). Singapore, which depends heavily on the maintenance of unfettered seaborne trade in the region, has encouraged

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attempts within asean (the Association of South East Asian Nations) to ensure neutrality of the littoral states and security of regional sea-lanes (Vertzberger 1982, 10). An agreement in 1981 between Indonesia and Malaysia established a principle (subsequently incorporated in article 47, subsection 6 of the unclos Convention of 1982) affirming that any declaration by a nation regarding jurisdiction over archipelagic waters did not preclude normal communications between discrete territories of its neighbours separated by such waters. Thus, commerce between West and East Malaysia shall remain unhindered by Indonesia’s intervening jurisdiction over the Anambas, Natuna, and Burguran Selatan Islands. This declaration of jurisdiction by Indonesia was promulgated previously as the Wawasan nusantara, or archipelagic principle (Prescott 1985, 42). Other recent attempts have been made to improve future security in the straits region. Agreements that will allow an augmented u.s. naval presence in the South China Sea were reached in the late 1990s with countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Singapore has begun construction of a new naval base capable of accommodating u.s. Navy aircraft carriers and other large warships, although its past efforts at maintaining security in the region have stressed diplomatic, rather than military, measures. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, however, Singapore has tightened security at its port, reacting to an alleged al-Qaeda plot to attack Western shipping in Singapore Harbour patterned after the suicide bombing of uss Cole in Aden. India maintains a naval base at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, close to the northern entrance of the Straits of Malacca; but, notwithstanding the possibility of further hostilities between India and Pakistan, this poses little threat of disruption to shipping in the region. For its part, the United States, although capable of exercising military influence with its large blue-water fleet in the Pacific, has declared that it has no strategic interests in Southeast Asia other than ensuring that sealanes remain open and that shipping is free and unhindered. The United States, however, has been slow to ratify the unclos convention that embodies the agreements among littoral states and maritime powers regarding traffic control and freedom of access to the Straits of Malacca (Morell 1992, 2).

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20 Traffic Congestion, Hazardous Cargoes, and Pollution in the Straits in the Contemporary Period

In the current post-Cold War era of burgeoning, peaceful commerce and trade in Southeast Asia, it is perhaps ironic that the Straits of Malacca have become more hazardous to shipping and trade than ever before, for reasons unrelated to military conflict, piracy, international terrorism, or violent weather (although the possibility of these remains as a threat to shipping in the region). The very success of commercial interaction through the straits and the rapid development of the economies of the littoral states until the Asian “economic meltdown” of 1997–98 have caused the current problem of extreme shipping congestion through the narrow waterways. But the increase in numbers and tonnage of ships carrying dangerous cargoes in the straits is not, by itself, the whole of the problem. It is compounded by uncertainty, confusion, and disagreement among maritime nations whose ships use this waterway and the governments of the littoral states flanking the straits, notably Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The confusion is not so much about the perceived existence of a problem arising from shipping congestion, which is readily acknowledged by almost all those concerned. Rather, the problem is one of clouded jurisdiction over the waterway and disagreements regarding responsibility for such matters as the safety of shipping, provision of navigational services, policing of regulations, response to emergencies, and clean-up duties after collisions, spills, and pollution events in the straits. The following

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quotation puts the current situation in a nutshell: “The physical characteristics of the Straits are such that it is extremely sensitive to the hazards of both land- and ship-sourced pollution. The narrow fairways are dangerous to navigation; vigilance and caution must always be observed when transiting the Straits of Malacca. Yet there is a tendency for the many users of the Straits to take things for granted” (Hamzah 1997, 1).

increasing congestion The Straits of Malacca currently comprise one of the three busiest international waterways in the world, after the Straits of Dover and, by some measures, the Straits of Gibraltar (Yaacob 1997, 15), although others now put the Straits of Malacca firmly in second place (Cleary and Goh 2000, 132). For over a decade, the volume of shipping in the straits has been growing at about 9 percent per annum (Ahmad 1997, 187). In the mid-1990s, traffic counts taken at the One Fathom Bank (map 2) indicated that over thirty-three thousand vessels per year transited the straits, excluding coastal shipping or local traffic between the littoral states of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. If such local traffic were to be included, the total traffic using the Straits of Malacca and Singapore would, in the mid-1990s, have probably exceeded one hundred thousand vessels (Marlow 1997, 166). At peak shipping periods, over two hundred large to very large vessels transit the waterway each day, including container ships, dry-bulk freighters, oil tankers, and warships (Hamzah 1997, 7, and table 9.1, 188). As noted earlier, of the international ships using the straits, about 30 percent are oil tankers, representing about 72 percent of eastbound (i.e., fully loaded) tankers plying international sea routes in the region. The remaining 28 percent, mostly over 250,000 deadweight tonnes, are forced to use the longer but less congested route via the deeper Lombok-Makassar Straits, since the Straits of Malacca are too shallow to allow safe passage for such large vessels (4). As the new millennium begins, there is a critical choice facing shipping interests: either they can continue to accept the high risks of loss or damage to their vessels, crews, and cargoes in the congested straits, or they must consider contributing more money to upgrade the navigational safety, traffic regulation, and emergency response infrastructure that the littoral states have deployed along the Straits of Malacca, and they must ensure that standards of vessel maintenance

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and operation are tightened. Alternatively, they may decide to opt for the greater line-haul costs of rerouting vessels through the lesscongested Lombok-Makassar route and be prepared to assist with the costs of upgrading standards of charting, traffic control, and emergency response in that area. Congestion is extreme at the southern part of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore Strait, notably in the narrow, five-hundred-kilometre stretch running south from the dangerous shoals of the North and South Sands near the mouth of the Kelang River, to Cape Rachado and Raleigh Shoal south of Port Dickson, and thence to Horsburgh Light at the eastern end of the Singapore Strait. Along this stretch the channel narrows to less than fifteen kilometres in places and the shipping lanes hug the eastern shore. All transit shipping tends to steer clear of the Sumatran side of the straits south of about Cape Senebui, giving a wide berth to Rupat, Bengkalis, and Rangsang Islands. The many permanent sandbanks, islets, shoals, and submerged wrecks (over fifty wrecks being unmarked), together with shifting sandwaves and river-mouth bars, make this part of the waterway a particularly high-risk area. Rendering transit through the straits even more hazardous are the myriad small fishing vessels encountered in the waterway, as well as the cross-strait traffic between Sumatran ports such as Belawan and Dumai and the ports of Malaysia and Singapore. As a measure of the congestion in the area, in 1992 over 81,300 vessels of seventy-five deadweight tonnes or greater were registered as entering Singapore’s Keppel Harbour (Hamzah 1997, 7), while by 1997 shipping arrivals tallied at Singapore had risen to over 130,000 (Cleary and Goh 2000, 133) . Large vessels transiting the straits take considerable distance and time to make even simple manœuvres, and the onus is generally on smaller vessels to give their larger brethren a wide berth; but most of these smaller vessels are not equipped with modern navigation aids such as radar and depth finding sonar, and there is in any case very little room for manœuvring in the narrow and congested waterway. Navigational errors or misjudgments risk either collision or grounding of large and expensive vessels, often with dangerous cargoes that jeopardize both human safety and the environment of the straits littoral areas. Since the 1960s the size and, concomitantly, the draught of commercial vessels have been steadily increasing until by the 1980s vessels exceeding two hundred thousand deadweight tonnes were

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commonplace. Such vessels are at or near the controlling draught depths of the straits, and getting them safely through the shallower parts of the channel, for example at One Fathom Bank, off Cape Rachado and around the Fair Channel Bank (where depths may be less than 25 metres at low tide), involves careful timing to permit passage of the largest vessels during the relatively tight tidal windows, that is, during times when there is a full tide at the points in question. The spring tidal range in this critical portion of the straits varies from about 3.7 metres at One Fathom Bank to about 1.6 metres near Horsburgh Light. The tidal ebb and flow in the straits exacerbates the effect of the prevailing northwest current, so that spring currents can vary from about 1.5 knots in the main Malacca shipping lanes to over 6 knots in more restricted channels of the Singapore Straits (Hamzah 1997, 5–6). These strong currents give rise to the formation of transverse underwater dunes called sandwaves, which can rise as much as 7 metres above the seabed and shift with the changing currents and the prevailing weather conditions, causing a potential hazard to shipping. Two other environmental conditions have combined with shipping congestion to increase the hazards in recent years. The first of these is the dense smoke haze from dry-season forest and peat fires in Sumatra that has blanketed the straits area from Melaka to beyond Pulau Pinang, particularly in 1996 through 1998. In the latter year El Nino–related drought greatly exacerbated the annual forest burning by loggers, land companies, and peasant farmers practising slashand-burn agriculture in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Visibility at some periods was reduced to less than a kilometre. The second condition is the incidence of sumatras – the violent squalls that are a characteristic of weather conditions in the straits. High winds and seas, combined with reduced visibility in these squalls, have played havoc with the increased number of small craft operating in the waterway and made conditions difficult even for large vessels equipped with modern navigation aids.

collisions and sinkings Since large vessels may be transiting these shallow and narrow passages in both easterly and westerly directions simultaneously, the risk of head-on collisions, especially if large vessels have to change course to avoid cross-channel traffic, is very great. Between 1977 and

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1993 there were twenty-five collisions in Malaysian waters in the Straits of Malacca and seventy-one “incidents” of all kinds, including groundings, explosions, piracy, and loss due to severe weather (Hamzah 1997, 126, and tables 9.3 and 9.4, 190). Of these, the most commonly occurring incidents were collisions and groundings (54 percent of all incidents). General cargo vessels were most commonly involved (32 percent of all incidents ) followed by tankers (17 percent). Quite apart from the loss and damage to ships and their cargoes, these incidents frequently resulted in loss of lives. In 1993 alone over two hundred people lost their lives in shipping incidents in the straits (188–9). In the Singapore Straits there were an average of 4.7 marine casualties (i.e., incidents of ship loss or damage) per annum in the five years to 1990 and twice this many in the early 1990s. Indonesian statistics for the Malacca and Singapore Straits area for 1981–1992 show a total of 126 marine incidents, including 13 collisions (Marlow 1997, 166). The potential for catastrophic loss of life from shipping disasters in the straits was graphically illustrated by the sinking of the cruise ship Sun Vista near Pangkor Island in May 1999. The newly refurbished, Singapore-owned cruise liner, with 472 passengers and 632 crew aboard, was about sixty nautical miles south of Pulau Pinang on its return to Singapore from Phuket, Thailand, when a fire broke out in the engine room, pumping thick smoke into the passenger cabins through the air-conditioning system. The crew were unable to control the raging fire, which was so intense that the steel hull of the vessel began to melt and rupture. More than 1,100 passengers and crew were forced to abandon ship and watch as the vessel rapidly sank stern first into the shipping channel. It was fortunate that the eighteen lifeboats and four life rafts were sufficient to accommodate all on board, that the transfer of passengers to lifeboats was completed before darkness fell, and that the weather at the time of sinking was calm, since rescue vessels took several hours to reach the scene. Some passengers waited even longer in their life rafts before eventually being rescued. Had the sinking occurred during a sumatra the loss of life could have been heavy, but in actuality there were no casualties from this incident. The sunken vessel nevertheless contributes yet another potential navigation hazard and source of pollution in the straits. This major emergency, however, was but one of the many calamities that befall shipping in the straits almost every year. For example,

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in the five-year period from 1989 to 1993, 347 distress calls from ships in the straits, generated by a variety of emergency situations, were received by the Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre in Port Kelang, which operates search and rescue services, and numbers appear to be steadily increasing. Also, from 1975 to 1993 there were 54 reported oil spills from ships in the Straits.

oil spills and pollution On average, during the five years from 1988 to 1993 the Malaysian government, through its Marine Department, expended over three hundred thousand u.s. dollars per year on combatting oil spills; most of these spills were ship-sourced discharges in the area of the Straits of Malacca. There have been at least 34 serious spills since 1975 and numerous smaller incidents. Major accidental oil discharges have involved groundings or collisions of large foreign tankers, such as the Showa Maru (1975), Diego Silang (1976), Nagasaki Spirit (1992) and Maersk Navigator (1993). The first two vessels spilled a total of about seventeen thousand tonnes of oil into the confined spaces of the Straits of Singapore and Malacca (Vertzberger 1982, 5), while the Nagasaki Spirit alone leaked around thirteen thousand tonnes of oil (Hamzah 1997, 128; Dow 1997, 88). The effects of an oil spill equal to that from the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, would be an environmental and economic catastrophe for the littoral states of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, which could not possibly (even with the best available technology) react quickly enough to prevent oil from reaching their coasts. Such a major spill would undoubtedly devastate the marine ecology of the narrow waterway, including coastal mangrove forests and tidal swamps that are a crucial breeding ground for marine life. Fisheries in the straits are already under stress from “normal” pollution caused by discharges of oil residue from vessels as they transit the straits: a tanker of two hundred thousand tonnes discharging water ballast in order to clear shallow parts of the seaway may release several thousand litres of such oil residues while transiting the straits (Cleary and Goh 2000, 58). A major oil spill would completely destroy the fishing industry in the straits, which employs nearly half of the eighty-five thousand full-time fishermen in Malaysia, involves over sixteen thousand fishing vessels, and produces annual fish landings of nearly half a million tonnes, or about 57 percent of the fish catch for Peninsular

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Malaysia (Hamzah 1997, 9). On the Sumatran side of the straits, fishing is also a very important economic activity (Vertzberger 1982, 17). The tourist industry on the Malaysian west coast from Melaka to Pinang and perhaps to Langkawi would also be crippled by a catastrophic spill that would destroy coral reefs, smother wildlife, and ruin beaches. The effect on port cities and other communities along the Malaysian and Sumatran coasts would, therefore, be incalculable. Unfortunately, the increasing congestion in the straits and the prevalence of large, fully-laden tankers among the two hundred or more ships transiting each day makes the prospect of an actual mishap similar to the Exxon Valdez disaster very likely. In addition to accidental oil spills, however, there are other sources of pollution hazards in the straits. These include offshore tin mining and oil or gas prospecting and surreptitious, deliberate discharges as passing vessels pump out their bilges and clean their tanks. Beaches all too frequently become fouled with lumps of floating tar, to the chagrin of tourists and residents alike. Land-sourced pollution from cities, towns, and industries adds to the problem of environmental deterioration and degradation of marine resources. Rivers debouching into the straits from West Malaysia also contribute their share of pollution. Recent studies indicate that only 27 percent of the 116 West Malaysian rivers surveyed were free of serious pollution, the rest being classed as “biologically dead” or “dying” (Bello 1998, 107). Some rivers, such as the Juru in Pulau Pinang, were so polluted by toxic wastes from the Perai Industrial Estate that the livelihoods of all villagers downstream and on nearby coasts were jeopardized (Cleary and Goh 2000, 58). Toxins and high coliform bacteria counts commonly render tourist beaches along the straits unfit for use at some points, and floating plastic fouls the propellers of fishing boats and pleasure craft. The risks associated with the passage of vessels carrying toxic cargoes through the straits must also be considered. In 1993, for example, both Singapore and Indonesia objected to the transit of a Japanese ship carrying plutonium, reportedly because of a danger of collision or piracy, while Malaysia actually threatened to block the ship’s passage through the waterway, since it posed a grave danger to national security (Van Dyke 1997, 321). The vessel did not proceed through the straits, but was diverted via the Australian south and east coasts.

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PART FIVE

The Future

The past and present roles of the Straits of Malacca as a gateway for hemispheric trade and commerce, a zone of peril for seafarers, and a costly choke-point for shipping interests have been outlined in the foregoing chapters. The prospects for expanded development of commerce around the Pacific rim in an era of globalization, however, possibly foreshadow new roles and challenges for the waterway and the nations served by it. The portents of these are becoming clearer as the new regionalism and the processes of globalization unfold in the first decade of the twenty-first century, in which there is every prospect of continuing change. Projecting into the future the patterns and trends revealed so far and adding some remarks concerning potential solutions to problems that threaten the smooth functioning of this trade gateway are the main objectives addressed in the fifth and concluding part of this book. It ends with some reflections on interdisciplinary approaches to the complex subject of analysing the roles of a waterway that now rivals the busiest in the world.

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21 Twenty-first-Century Trade and Globalization: The Asia-Pacific region

Ideas and abstractions from chapters 3 and 4 are helpful in understanding the context of recent changes in the role of the Straits of Malacca and in forecasting future developments in this region. Concepts such as exchange complementarity and transferability of traded commodities, as well as intervening opportunities for trade in global, hemispheric, and local-regional milieux remain important. But the realities of political and economic change due to globalization, AsiaPacific regionalism, and evolving state functions are bringing about new patterns of interaction that have implications for the future roles of the straits. This chapter will consider the broader politicaleconomic and geographic changes in the region, as a backdrop to a more detailed discussion of transportation developments in chapter 22. The theme of the following discussion will be that, notwithstanding the recent crisis in the regional economy of Southeast Asia occasioned by the 1997–98 financial melt-down, the tendency for the processes of globalization to increase the economic power and significance of Asian newly industrializing economics (nies) in the global export trade can be expected to continue. This, in turn, will advance the self-conscious development of a regional identity that is coextensive with the members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (asean). Global economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (wto) and the International Monetary Fund (imf), which have had strong influences on states in the region

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during and after the financial crisis of 1997–98, can also be expected to continue as important ingredients in the globalization process as it affects the development of the countries in the straits area. These broader influences on the Asia-Pacific region will be outlined below. But regional political changes, notably an increase in instability in the neighbourhood of the straits, are impinging on these globalizing forces and may be lessening their expansionary effect on the region. Following the discussion of integrative processes such as foreign direct investment (fdi), a brief summary of the recent development of political and economic events as they affect both globalization and the advancement of the Asia Pacific as a region will then be given. This will provide a backdrop to a discussion of specific trade and communication changes in the straits region.

globalization and asia-pacific regionalisation: investment and trade Almost thirty years of steady growth made the six established market economies of asean (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Brunei) the world’s fastest growing regional economy in the mid-1990s, in stark contrast to their socialist neighbours (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar), which continued to be ranked among the world’s poorest nations (Lim 1995, 238). The Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 disrupted this growth, but in most of the countries of asean, with the notable exception of Indonesia, recovery appeared to be well under way as the new century began. Although Taiwan and Singapore subsequently entered a recessionary period in 2001 and the global economy encountered an economic downturn, the flows of fdi into the four nies of Southeast Asia that are immediately adjacent to the straits (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines) were strong and followed patterns that had held sway throughout the 1990s. These flows came mostly from Japan and the Asian Tigers of South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. The decade of the 1990s, indeed, had witnessed enormous expansion of fdi into the region: Malaysia, for example, experienced almost a five-fold increase in fdi (from an average of about u.s.$1.1 billion in 1985–90 to $5.3 billion in 1996, just prior to the Asian financial crisis). fdi in Thailand more than doubled in the same period (from an average of u.s.$1 billion in 1985–90 to $2.4 billion in 1996). For Indonesia,

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the inflow of FDI was even more dramatic: from an annual average of about a half billion u.s. dollars in 1985–90 to almost u.s.$8 billion in 1996 (Olds et al. 1999, 4, table 1.1). A variety of both “new” high-technology, computer, and telecommunications-equipment manufacturing firms and “old” Fordist or production-line electrical, appliance, textile, and automotive firms were lured to the asean region by its attractive mix of locational incentives. These comparative advantages, which stimulated an increase in regional productivity, included highly motivated and skilled, yet compliant, workers; low average wages; “businessfriendly” governments vying with each other to attract multinational companies; relaxed environmental, health, and social legislation; and growing regional markets. In addition, the relative political stability (at that time) and impressive rates of growth over several decades meant that for most of the pre-1997 period there were few other regions in the global economy that presented as attractive a picture to investors. It is, however, true that after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s Eastern Europe began to challenge Asia for fdi, as did parts of Latin America after their own financial difficulties were brought under control. Japan continued to provide most of the foreign investment that fuelled a preponderance of the industrial expansion in Southeast Asia during this period. In 1990, for example, Japanese investment in Asia totalled u.s.$8 billion, between two and three times the level of u.s. fdi (Mittelman 1999, 40). In spite of an overall reduction in Japan’s fdi from 1989 to 1994, its investment in the asean countries increased during this period by nearly 18 percent (Higgott 1999, 95). In Japan and in the asean countries benefiting from its infusions of fdi, there was a consensus that selective intervention by governments was both appropriate and necessary to enhance the attractiveness of local economies to foreign investment and, thereby, to give greater comparative advantage to the local manufacturing firms that improved their competitive edge in the global export markets. This “skilful state management” of open economies, indeed, was proudly championed by Asian political economists as a key characteristic of the “Asian way” toward rapid development and as a mark of distinctiveness from Western or socialist economic strategies (Lim 1995, 240; Stubbs 1998, 72). The results of this Asian development initiative were impressive: even at the beginning of the 1990s Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong accounted for almost half the world’s exports of manufactures (Pettman 1999, 195).

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Institutionalized cooperation among the region’s economies took a step closer to the advanced European Union model in 1989 when the governments of the United States, Canada, Japan, China, and the asean countries established the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping (apec) to explore closer economic and political linkages. While the potential exists for massive future intra-apec trade and investment, the recent history of this organization has featured rather cautious expansion. Intra-apec trade grew from about 56 percent of the Asia-Pacific total in 1970 to 65 percent in 1990 (Drysdale and Garnaut 1993, 183–6; Mittelman 1999, 31). To the present, therefore, apec has not emerged as a strong impetus for regional or global integration in manufacturing, certainly not as powerful as either nafta or the eu. Globalization in trade, as distinct from production, has also made great strides over the past decade, at first under the trade-liberalizing measures of the gatt (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and later under its successor, the wto (the World Trade Organization). Under the frameworks of trade-enhancing and liberalizing arrangements promoted by these global institutions, eight of the leading Asian nies (specifically, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Mainland China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand) increased their share of world manufactured exports from 1.5 percent in 1963 to 20 percent in 1995 (Dicken and Yeung 1999, 109). These industrializing countries of the Asia Pacific also increased their imports of manufactured goods and other necessities as their standards of living increased. Over the two decades prior to the mid1990s, these countries nearly doubled their share of global gdp and also almost doubled their share of global imports (to about 17 percent of the world total in 1994). Following on the success of Export Processing Zones (epzs) established in number of asean countries, several experimented with more ambitious transnational ventures such as the growth triangle of Singapore-Johor (Malaysia)-Batam (Indonesia). This triangle is in reality an industrial agglomeration: its firms are functionally, as well as spatially, concentrated (all three industrial areas are very close together), but yet it involves three different nation-states that have agreed to cooperate in order for the economies of industrial agglomeration to be realized. Impetus and investment financing for the growth triangle came largely from Singapore, as part of its strategy of concentrating its own efforts on more hi-tech activities, yet benefiting

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from close association with neighbouring sources of cheaper industrial labour and needed resources. Batam received investments not just from Singapore but also from within Indonesia, which had set up oil refining and petrochemical industries in this strategically located region close to the Singapore Straits. The Batamindo Industrial Park on Batam has attracted much recent investment to the island, whose annual exports had grown to over u.s.$3 billion by 1996 (Cleary and Goh 2000, 150). The asean countries also expanded their involvement in trade in primary produce up until the mid-1990s. Over 90 percent of the world’s exports of palm oil, tropical timbers, tin, and rubber originated from asean countries in this period. These same countries also imported significant quantities of seafood, tropical fruit and vegetables, and coffee and cocoa in the same period (Lim 1995, 2407). Caught up in the Asian meltdown in 1997, however, the trade and expansion of the Pacific Rim nies and the emerging economies of asean suffered. Suspicions that the Western countries, in concert with multinationals and the imf, were orchestrating wto policy directions in a manner detrimental to many less-developed countries helped bring about the failure of the Seattle wto Millennium Round conference in January 2000. At this conference, an alliance of lessdeveloped countries, labour organizations, and environmental groups were arrayed against the Western-led, neoliberal trade delegations, and the meeting ended in disarray. This reactionary, antiglobal sentiment accorded well with the viewpoints of Malaysia’s prime minister, Dr Mahathir, who has maintained the need for Asian countries to counter the overweening influences in global commerce of nafta and the eu and of Western cultural and economic hegemony (Mahathir and Ishihara 1995, 159). Indeed, numerous observers have concluded in recent years that the process of globalization, far from homogenizing and standardizing the myriad societies and cultures around the world, has actually had the opposite effect (Stallings 1995, 2–3). As Mittelman (1999, 34) asserts, globalization is “combining with local conditions in distinctive ways, accentuating differences, and spurring a variety of social movements seeking protection from disruptive and polarizing effects of economic liberalism.” Economic liberalism – or neoliberalism – is, of course, the driving ideology behind globalization. It stresses the importance of politically unconstrained, international commerce and investment, export-oriented manufacturing, large-scale agricultural

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production, the use of advanced technology, and reliance on market forces to mediate supplies and prices in global and local markets for both commodities and finance. Neoliberalism seeks to minimize the regulatory role of governments in matters relating to production, labour, and investment. The variant of economic liberalism that developed in the Asia Pacific realm over several recent decades did not, in most cases, involve a laissez-faire attitude by governments toward economic growth but was bound up with regional geopolitics and largely fuelled by Japanese private sector fdi fostered by the Japanese and other Asian governments (Mittelman 1999, 39). It needs to be pointed out, however, that neocolonial linkages have persisted in the flows of fdi in this region. Continued large-scale British and Dutch investments in mining, plantations, and the petroleum industries in Malaysia and Indonesia and by the United States in the Philippines have meant that for a period these countries had larger fdi flows into their former Asian colonies than did Japan (Lim 1995, 247). Japanese fdi flows rebounded in the mid-1990s as the region’s expansion continued unabated. The 1997 financial reversal that rippled through the main economies of East and Southeast Asia, however, severely curbed – but did not completely eliminate – the remarkable investment and productivity surge that had led many in Asia to believe that the Asian Way was superior to Western development initiatives and ideas. The financial crisis, although of relatively brief duration in most asean countries, was nevertheless pervasive. It arose from a banking-policy debacle in Japan, where years of imprudent and illconceived loans, many of them in real estate and other poorly secured businesses in overheated Korean and Southeast Asian markets, together with a failure of the Japanese government’s financial regulatory apparatus, threatened the nation’s entire banking system with collapse. There was, at the same time, a general slowdown in global demand for many of the high-technology products (e.g., electronic and telecommunications equipment) manufactured in Southeast Asia, a slowdown that still continued in 2002. As the financial reversal and the economic slowdown became apparent to investors from outside the region, a flight of foreign capital commenced. For example, Indonesia, which enjoyed fdi levels between u.s.$ 4 billion and u.s.$6 billion during the period 1995–7, suffered net disinvestments in 1999 and 2000 of about $3 billion and $4 billion respectively (Economist 2001b, 28). Some countries most affected by this reversal

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of investor confidence, including Thailand and Indonesia, reacted by devaluing their currency (in the above cases, by over 30 percent against the u.s. dollar), while Malaysia, in the face of a 20 percent devaluation, instituted exchange controls to protect its currency from what it considered to be speculative attacks (imf 1998). Political instability accompanied a general loss of faith in the ability of some governments in the region to manage the crisis. In Indonesia the autocratic General Suharto was forced from power, and the existing political structures were replaced, first by the ailing and ineffective Abdurrahman Wahid and then in mid-2001 by Megawati Sukarnoputri, who still faces regional unrest and economic turmoil. In Thailand, elections in 1997 and 2001 achieved much the same political result – defeat of the ruling administration – while in Malaysia, consolidation of the position of the prime minister, Dr Mahathir, was obtained only after the former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who held differing opinions from his leader on ways of resolving the crisis, was arrested and jailed. In the Philippines, a wave of popular unrest forced the removal in 2001 of the elected president, Joseph Estrada, and his replacement by former vice-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

contemporary political change and instability in the asia pacific Thus, in the face of general progress in globalization in the Western hemisphere, the period of political instability that accompanied the Asian Meltdown in the late 1990s seems set to continue as a dominant feature of the political landscape of the straits area – and of the broader East Asian region – into the first decade of the twenty-first century. This instability not only has engulfed the political leadership of several countries but has threatened the general fabric of civil society. One of the countries most affected by this general sociopolitical unrest and one that is closest to the straits region (hence comprising a destabilizing factor that could disrupt traffic through the Straits) is Indonesia, which had been experiencing social turmoil well before the fall of Suharto. Following hard on the heels of the financial crisis that helped precipitate the present climate of unrest, the current Indonesian government has been preoccupied with several distinctly different political problems involving separatist movements and interethnic conflicts that threaten to tear the nation asunder. The most dramatic of these

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220 The Future

upheavals – the recent struggle of East Timor for independence – resulted in the restoration of the rights of self-determination and democracy for the people in this former Portuguese colony. (It had been peremptorily annexed by its expansionist neighbour – to almost universal condemnation – several decades earlier.) The scars left on both the Timorese, who had suffered years of repression, and also on many Indonesians who have not accepted Timor’s right to independence, have yet to heal. Somewhat similar scenarios to the one now concluded in Timor are being played out in Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra, and in West Irian, the former Dutch colonial territory occupying the western half of the island of New Guinea. Aceh, as we have seen, had been an independent sultanate for centuries and did not meekly accept annexation by the Dutch, against whom its fervently Islamic and nationalistic militias waged one of the longest insurgencies in history. To many Achinese, the central government in Java was simply the colonial successor to the Dutch, and the struggle by separatist groups to regain Aceh’s former independence is continuing. In West New Guinea, renamed West Irian by the Indonesians after they won it from the recalcitrant Dutch, a situation is developing that is reminiscent of that in Aceh. Many indigenous Melanesians in this territory have never accepted the negative outcome of the referendum on sovereignty, held – at the insistence of the UN – a decade after annexation by Indonesia, and after its program of resettlement of non-Melanesian outsiders in the territory. Many of these immigrants from parts of western Indonesia who voted in that referendum are, however, just as insistent that the territory will remain within Indonesia in perpetuity. Interethnic conflicts in Maluku, Aru, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, and Lombok have flared in recent years and are continuing sporadically. These conflicts have often pitted Islamic communities against Christian and other non-Islamic (including ethnic Chinese) minorities. Sectarian violence in Maluku, for example, has recently involved extremist organizations such as the Laskar Jihad, which has targeted Christians who have occupied parts of these islands for centuries. In some recent cases, conflicts have also arisen between indigenous farmers and government-sponsored and funded immigrant groups from Java and Madura who have colonized outer islands of Indonesia under the government resettlement program, Operasion Transmigrasi. In early 2001, for instance, local militants attacked communities

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of Maduran settlers in southern Kalimantan, forcing many of them to flee as refugees to Java or back to overcrowded Madura. The Indonesian military and police forces have often been accused of tacitly aiding rather than quelling acts of violence, as in the instance of militia groups that, with backing from army factions, terrorized East Timor in the period before its independence. Among the effects of these instances of political unrest have been fears among neighbouring countries that a new wave of boat people might soon be heading across the straits to Malaysia and Singapore and even further afield to Australia. Malaysia and the Philippines worry that lawlessness might stimulate further acts of piracy and kidnapping – already at alarming levels in Indonesian waters – along their vulnerable shores. In the southern islands of the Philippines, for example, rebel groups have become bolder in recent years, even raiding resorts in East Malaysia to kidnap international tourists and local residents for ransom and to draw world attention to their separatist cause. The United States, which believes this group is linked with the al-Qaeda network blamed for the attack on 11 September 2001, has joined with the Philippines in military counterterrorism operations in the region. A further effect of Indonesian instability has been a notable reticence among the foreign banking and investment circles to continue the high level of capital investment in Indonesia witnessed during the earlier Suharto years. But instability in other parts of the Southeast Asian realm is adding to this climate of hesitancy among investors and entrepreneurs who had previously helped this region to become one of the fastest-growing trading regions in Asia. The Spratly Islands, claimed in whole or in part by no fewer than five neighbouring countries (China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Philippines) remain a potential regional flashpoint. Relations between China and asean have been somewhat strained as a result. The Paracel Islands are the subject of rival claims by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Karen and Shan insurgency in Myanmar, close to the northern Straits of Malacca, continues to smoulder, fuelled in part by the heroin trade from the Golden Triangle. Military actions by the Burmese army against the insurgents in 2001 resulted in a serious border incident with Thailand. On the other hand, there have also been moves toward greater political integration and improved democracy in the wider region, moves that hold out hope of more positive regional development in

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222 The Future

the longer term. asean is wishing to expand and incorporate some former socialist states and in the case of the Indonesian handling of the East Timor issue, has for the first time shifted somewhat from its previous position of eschewing criticism of member states over their internal human rights policies. There have been suggestions that the inclusion of Myanmar in asean may be a stimulus to improved democracy and human rights in that pariah state also. As the effect of the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s recedes and provided the global downturn of 2001–2 is of brief duration, this new spirit of regional cooperation may hold the promise of a brighter future for even the most disaffected and strife-ridden corners of the Southeast Asian realm.

progress toward long-term regional integration One of the lessons learned in East Asia following the 1972 American military withdrawal from Vietnam was that the region could no longer rely on the hegemonic power of the United States to provide a protective umbrella, so that closer cooperation among the nonMarxist nations of the Asia Pacific region themselves was prudent if their security was to be assured. The diminution of u.s. and other Western development grants and soft loans after the 1960s also led countries of Southeast Asia, previously following a path toward import replacement industrialization, to see the advantages of promoting export-led growth. This new strategy was based on Asianfinanced, cost-effective, and highly competitive industries capable of breaking into global markets for labour-intensive goods – using the plentiful, low-wage labour that was one of the region’s major comparative advantages. In the critical decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, as a result of the changed industrial strategy, countries of Southeast Asia followed Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan toward increased prosperity (Stallings 1995, 15). Conscious political efforts at region-building that began with a loose political association of noncommunist nations during the Cold War to form asean have resulted in the expansion and strengthening of this regional association, now representing a total population of over 350 million people. asean is expected to expand further in future years, and its population will certainly climb to well over 450 million by 2025. This regional grouping, however, has so far not approached anywhere

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near the degree of close political or economic integration represented by the formation of the European Union or even the North American Free Trade Area (nafta), both of which also continue to plan for further expansion – or metamorphosis – in the twenty-first century.

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22 Emerging Roles of the Straits in Global and Regional Commerce

Global waterborne commerce continues to increase steadily into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which monitors the growth in merchant fleets, confirms that the total world tonnage grew slightly in 1999, following a decade in which merchant fleets expanded and modernized. Significantly – from the point of view of merchant shipping in and around the Straits of Malacca – Asian countries have increased their ownership of cargo shipping, from 108.5 million deadweight tonnes in 1998 to 112.2 million deadweight tonnes in 1999 (unctad, quoted in Economist 2001a, 108). The Asian fleets comprise a high proportion of new vessels, nearly half under four years old. Japan, second only to Greece in the size of its merchant fleet, owned over 90 million deadweight tonnes as of January 2000, but 81.4 percent of this tonnage was registered under foreign flags. Mainland China had about 40 million deadweight tonnes, and Hong Kong about 32 million deadweight tonnes, making these the world’s fifth and sixth largest merchant fleets. South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore each had over 20 million deadweight tonnes at the turn of the century, somewhat more than the once mighty British merchant marine. Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines are further down the list of ship-owning nations, but their tonnages are greater than those of such developed countries as Spain and Australia. In general, with the notable exception of Japan, the merchant fleets of Asian

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225 Emerging Roles in Global and Regional Commerce

countries sail under their own national flags more than do the ships of Western countries, who often use flags of convenience to register their merchant vessels. The figures on growing Asian cargo fleets suggest that the countries of the Western Pacific rim are emerging as a major force in international maritime trade, both in container shipping and bulk transport. An increasing proportion of this trade is within the Pacific rim area itself, with obvious implications for the gateway role – and problems of congestion – in the Straits of Malacca and its alternatives. The very real problems discussed in part 4 that make the straits waterway a gauntlet for the increased shipping tonnages funnelled through it are compounded by disagreements and uncertainties about future efforts at regulation, the maintenance of jurisdiction and authority, and enforcement and about the cost of providing services. Many of the main users of the straits are not littoral states but trading nations that may be thousands of kilometres away – for example, Japan, the United States, and the European Union. These maritime trading powers expect to be able to use strategic waterways such as the Straits of Malacca into the foreseeable future without let or hindrance, to be assured of safe passage for their merchant ships and, when occasion warrants, for their naval vessels, and to be free of any toll charges for using the waterway. On the other hand, with the close of the Cold War and the rise of asean as a regional organization, there is a growing consensus among Southeast Asian countries that they deserve a stronger voice in running the region’s waterways and trading systems (Rumley et al. 1996, 326). Thus, in the littoral states of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore (and to a lesser extent Thailand) there is an understandable wish to exert sovereignty over territorial waters, to protect and nurture important marine and coastal resources and facilities, and to ensure safe use of territorial waters for their own future trading, fishing, and passenger-transit needs. In the narrow straits there is no question of claiming a two-hundredmile limit on territorial waters, as has been done by many other nations, and any future attempt to exert control over foreign vessels transiting only a scant few kilometres from their shores would be resisted as an infringement on freedom of navigation by global and regional maritime powers such as the United States and Japan. In 1982, after decades of international discussion, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea – unclos – was codified, but delays in ratification meant that it did not come into force until

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226 The Future

1994 (Cleary and Goh 2000, 146). An important clause is the Transit Passage Regime for globally strategic waterways such as the Straits of Malacca, Gibraltar, Hormuz, and Bab al Mandeb. Thus, article 38(2) of unclos states that “Transit passage means the exercise … of the freedom of navigation and overflight [through a territorial sea] solely for the purpose of continuous and expeditious transit of the strait between one part of the high seas … [and another; this] does not preclude passage through the strait for the purpose of entering or returning from a state bordering the strait, subject to the conditions of entry to that state.” This Transit Passage Regime applies to straits less than ten kilometres wide that were formerly under the 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, for example Singapore and Sunda Straits (Lee Yong Leng 1980). It also applies in the territorial sea of straits in which navigational facilities and characteristics are superior to those in the high seas portions of the strait or any EEZ (exclusive economic zone) that may be designated in the strait. Article 39 (1:c) enjoins ships and aircraft that are exercising their right of passage to “refrain from any activities other than those incident to their normal modes of continuous and expeditious transit unless rendered necessary by force majeure or by distress.” Thus, as the Transit Passage Regime lays down, coastal states cannot impede or suspend the right of innocent passage of foreign vessels – even warships or submerged submarines – levy charges on those vessels, require prior notification of their entry into the straits, or set any conditions on the type or equipment of vessels in transit through the straits. Coastal states may not, in other words, act in a literal sense as gate-keepers on the straits. On the other hand, unclos does require transiting vessels, inter alia, to respect the sovereignty of the coastal states by refraining from any damaging activity in territorial waters, to respect applicable sea-lanes and traffic separation schemes that have been implemented with the approval of the International Maritime Organization, and to comply with accepted international rules, regulations, and procedures for safety at sea (Prescott 1985, 40).

potential conflicts over jurisdiction and responsibility Inability to gain international acceptance of full sovereignty in their constricted territorial waters has been a source of friction between the coastal states and the maritime powers (Vertzberger 1982, 3).

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unclos accepted as standard a twelve-nautical-mile seaward limit of territorial waters, which in theory should give the coastal states full authority over all aspects of navigation in these waters, while allowing rights of innocent passage to foreign vessels (under unclos 1982, articles 18 and 19). At the same time that many other nations have extended their territorial seas to two hundred nautical miles without being challenged, the coastal states find that in the southern Straits of Malacca they do not enjoy even a twelve-nautical-mile limit, as in some places the straits narrow to only about nine nautical miles (as between Pulau Kukup and Karimun Island, giving Indonesia and Malaysia less than five nautical miles of jurisdiction each). Within even these reduced limits allowable traffic regulation by coastal states is restricted under unclos (article 41) to simple safety regulations, such as traffic separation schemes and designation of sea-lanes, and even these must be approved by the International Maritime Organization (Hamzah 1997, 133). It is thus apparent that while Indonesia and Malaysia (and to a lesser extent Singapore) would have wished for greater control over their adjoining parts of the straits, unclos, reflecting the contrary wishes of powerful maritime nations, did not provide the desired level of jurisdiction (Cleary and Goh 2000, 147). In the southern straits, Indonesia and Malaysia ratified an agreement in 1969 defining their continental shelf boundaries, which were set as the line at the centre drawn from baselines of both countries (Prescott 1985, 217). Indonesia and Singapore ratified a territorial sea boundary in 1974. A potential source of friction between Singapore and Malaysia, however, has been the conflicting claims to Horsburgh Shoal and the islands of Pulau Pisang and Pulau Batu Puteh at either end of the Singapore Strait. Singapore maintains navigation beacons on these features, which, however, lie within the territorial waters claimed by Malaysia (Prescott 1985, 226). In the wider northern straits, however, by agreements signed in 1969 and 1970 among the coastal states of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, the seaward territorial boundaries have been established at 174 nautical miles from their respective coastal base-lines. In view of the extreme risks of pollution and damage to their own shipping interests and as a service to international navigation, the littoral states have taken the bold step of instituting traffic separation schemes – involving dual lanes – in several tracts of the straits, notably off the One Fathom Bank and the northwest approaches to Singapore Strait and eastward through Phillip Passage past Batam Island to

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228 The Future

Horsburgh Light. Elsewhere in the straits, ships’ captains are not obliged to follow designated lanes but may set their own courses. Through the International Maritime Organization (Resolution a.375 (x) of November 1981), however, rules have been set and approved by unclos regarding minimum under-keel clearance (ukc) of deepdraught vessels using the straits (set at 3.5 metres) and also maximum speed of vessels (twelve knots: Yaacob 1997, 18–19). As a result of these internationally approved regulations, very large vessels such as supertankers exceeding 250,000 deadweight tonnes will in future almost certainly avoid the Straits of Malacca and instead use the Lombok-Makassar Straits. The establishment, monitoring, and maintenance of facilities connected with these navigation safety measures are together a costly undertaking for the coastal states, as is the cost of responding to emergencies and clean-up of spills in the straits. Maritime users of the waterway appear unwilling to acknowledge that they should contribute to these safety operations, leaving any costs now and in the future to be borne mostly by the coastal states. The one exception among the international maritime powers using the straits is Japan, which has provided technical cooperation and contributed to a revolving fund aimed at improving safety in the straits (Ono 1997, 241). The revolving fund comprising originally about u.s.$3 million, was set up by the Japanese shipping industry in 1981, with administration rotating among Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore (Yaacob 1997, 20). Japan is, of course, one of the main users of the Straits of Malacca, a key segment on the shortest sea route from its home ports to its main source of oil and liquefied natural gas in the Persian Gulf. By using this shorter route Japan enjoys transportation savings estimated at about u.s.$11 billion annually, since using the route through the Lombok and Makassar Straits and the Sulu Sea would raise the cost of transportation to Japan by over 6 percent (Naidu 1997, 35). Moreover, several Japanese vessels have been involved in collisions and major oil spills in recent years, so that expenditures by the Japanese shipping industry to promote future safety in the straits and prevent any occurrence that might cause closure of this vital waterway may be seen as a wise investment. In addition, initiatives have been taken among countries in the Asia Pacific realm to institute inspections of vessels in port to ensure that they are safe and do not pose a threat to the environment of the

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maritime states. Such inspections, for example in Vancouver in 1997, have resulted in identification of substandard vessels, some of which have since been taken out of service. But there is still a problem in that most maritime powers object to the notion that they should be forced to contribute to the costs of maintaining the navigational facilities in the straits or to clean-ups of pollution in these waters far from their own shores. Under unclos, moreover, vessels registered in these far-off countries may not be charged for anything other than direct services rendered – and cleaning up oil spilled either accidentally or deliberately by these vessels does not appear to fall under the category of direct services rendered, nor does maintenance of navigational safety equipment in the straits. The steadily increasing shipping congestion in the Straits of Malacca, with its attendant risks of mishap translating into higher insurance rates and operating costs, has stimulated a search for alternative transportation modes that do not involve the added cost of longer sea journeys around the Malacca Straits bottleneck. One such proposal is actually a revival of a centuries-old idea: a short-cut across the narrow Isthmus of Kra in southern Thailand. Rather than the very expensive and technically daunting proposition of cutting a shipping canal across the isthmus, however, the contemporary solution to the problem features the idea of an oil pipeline and a rail link to handle container traffic, together with the creation of artificial deep-water ports at both ends of the cross-isthmus link. Japan, which depends heavily on Middle Eastern oil, is reported to have considered investing in such a development in the past. Such a project would be expensive but would save every loaded 250,000 deadweight tonne supertanker bound from the Persian Gulf to Japan a journey of more than eighteen hundred kilometres through the Lombok Channel. The costs and technical problems of such a pipeline would, by some estimates, be much less than those that were involved in constructing the oil pipeline across Alaska several decades ago (Vertzberger 1982, 21). Such a development would undoubtedly have political, strategic, and economic repercussions for the whole straits area and may well be opposed by Thailand’s neighbours, who would stand to lose some trade and income opportunities. At present, however, there appears to be no slackening of the traffic congestion through the straits or of the threat to safety of shipping and the environment occasioned by accidental or deliberate incidents involving international commercial shipping in this strategic but

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dangerous waterway. No practical alternative to the use of the straits for most shipping in the region seems likely in the short term. The early twenty-first century will also witness new developments in hemispheric trade between Europe and Asia. With greater European integration in the 1990s this dynamic economic region has generated strong demands for trade with the East, which itself may move toward closer economic union in the coming decades (Eva 1996, 76–7; Murphy 1996, 32–3). Ports in other regions may, however, challenge existing Southeast Asian entrepots for a share of this growing East-West trade. The port of Dubai in the Persian Gulf, which has had ambitions of becoming the modern successor to historic Malacca as a major emporium and transshipment point in the trade between East and West and claims to be the world’s tenth busiest port (Economist 1999, 61), has recently been challenged by two new terminals constructed at Aden and Salalah in Yemen and Oman, respectively. The competition among these major container terminals threatens to take the form of a trade war, as each attempts to garner traffic by undercutting the port charges of its rivals (Economist 1999, 61). Meanwhile, as the countries of East and Southeast Asia continue their halting recovery from the financial crisis of 1997–98 and the global economic slow-down of 2001–2, competition to attract transnational investment into export-processing zones continues, with ramifications for shipping in the straits area. This region contains several locations on both the Indonesian and Malaysian sides at which the clear intention is to add more manufacturing and processing complexes, using the concept of the export-processing zone (Barke and O’Hare 1991, 142). In Malaysia these zones are categorized into free industrial zones (fizs) and free commercial zones (fczs). fizs flourish in the states of Johor, Melaka, Perak, Pinang, and Selangor, focussing on export-oriented industries that enjoy relaxed customs regulations covering imported material and equipment. fczs are located in Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, and Labuan. The accessibility of the straits area to global sea-routes linking East and West is a decided locational advantage for such developments, which can be expected to expand in the coming decades.

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Conclusion

This study has examined the factors that have made the Straits of Malacca a vitally important focal point in global commerce over many centuries. It has approached this complex subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, utilizing concepts from geography, economic anthropology, and political economy, to help illuminate the underlying reasons for the long-standing – and continuing – strategic and commercial significance of this perilous waterway. First, physical-geographic and economic-political factors have conspired to make the straits both a gateway and a choke-point in trade and communications between East and West. A combination of the huge archipelagic barrier across the route from the Indian Ocean to the China Sea, the even greater difficulties of overland routes such as the disused silk road across the most inhospitable parts of Asia, and the huge profits to be made from the trade in exotic produce impelled merchant navigators to negotiate this passage: there was simply a dearth of practical alternatives that did not also involve lengthy detours and even more perilous shipping channels. Lowering the friction of distance that impeded long-distance trade, therefore, was a prime motive for selecting this route. To this advantageous element must be added the funnel-shaped, northwestsoutheast alignment of the straits, whose beckoning entrances and protected – if sometimes treacherous – waters led weary sailors to a safe anchorage at the very meeting point of the seasonally reversing monsoon winds: Melaka, an almost unique location for the control of hemispheric trade.

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232 Conclusion

This trade would not have occurred, of course, had it not been for the strong mutual demands for luxuries, as well as staple goods, among the rising economic powers in both the West and the Orient. Initially, it was the discovery of a suitable degree of complementarity in the production of such goods and the precious metals needed for payment of trade debts that engendered the opportunity for such long-distance commerce. This complementarity still continues in a modified form, but additional motives for interaction, such as the demand for supplies of petroleum to fuel modern industry, production of important commodities in the straits area itself, and the convenience of shipping containerized cargo through this waterway have augmented the strategic importance of the straits area. Control of trade through the Straits of Malacca has been a theme running through chronicles of mercantile activity in this region over the centuries. Such control required that a strong-point be constructed at a location where avoidance or evasion by passing ships would be impossible. This matter of control has been a bone of contention among competing trading powers – and competing settlements who were candidates for this right of undisputed control – for many years. Sites in the western Indonesian archipelago and the Malay-Thai peninsula have competed for this monopolistic right, but it has been elusive. The moves and countermoves characteristic of duopolistic competition among trading powers – first Portugal and the Sunni Islamic world, then Portugal and Holland, later Britain and Holland – helped keep the area politically unstable during the long colonial period. For a time a system of shared or partitioned monopoly over major items of long-distance trade was worked out between the British and Dutch. As the era of sail passed and was replaced by steam propulsion, so too did the importance of the monsoons and the locational advantages of Melaka. The growing complexity and capacity of hemispheric trade networks conferred greater importance on a new nodal location at the southern end of the straits. Thus, as far as the struggle for the best location for a controlling entrepot is concerned, Singapore appears to have won that very important contest. But the manœuvring for jurisdiction and control over shipping in the straits continues to the present, with Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore playing somewhat the same roles as Britain and Holland in the previous era of partitioned jurisdiction. Besides the role of the straits as a gateway linking the numerous economies to the east and west, however, as this book has shown, the straits are also a choke-point fraught with navigational hazards

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233 Conclusion

that have taken a huge toll in lost lives, cargoes, and vessels, even to the present. The triple threat of natural dangers in a narrow, treacherous waterway, interdiction or piracy, and traffic congestion have made the straits an area to be feared by sailors to this very day. Nevertheless, rapid economic, technological, and political development in the new millennium can be expected to continue in the region, altering the way in which the straits play their role. The rising Eastern economies faltered just before the turn of the twenty-first century, and some experienced recession soon afterward, but this appears to be only a temporary setback – a correction, as economists are fond of saying – to continued long-term growth, which seems set to resume its former pace, led by an awakening economic giant: mainland China. In the face of an expected upsurge in waterborne commerce in the region, the challenges of overcoming load limits and problems of traffic congestion that threaten to overwhelm the capacity of the straits will doubtless stimulate the eventual creation of a new system of controls and regulatory agreements and more effective schemes for vessel separation and collision avoidance. Such a new system, whose nature and implementation will require approval by global mercantile interests, will need to be rather like current systems of air traffic control at major airports around the globe. In the meantime piracy, hijacking, and international terrorism remain added threats in the area, again demanding international cooperation. unclos provided a forum for such cooperative ventures, but what is required is wholehearted support from major powers such as the United States, Japan, and China. These countries have not always been ready in the past to compromise their own self-interest in the name of the common good – and in the interests of stability in the region. It often seems that major changes for the better, such as cooperative agreements to improve transportation safety and protect the environment, happen only after some large-scale tragedy or environmental disaster belatedly underscores the wisdom of such actions. The potential for disaster represented by congested shipping carrying dangerous cargoes in the ecologically fragile and constricted waters of the Straits of Malacca needs to be fully realized and acted upon by nations that are genuinely committed to achieving solutions to navigational problems. This must occur before such a disaster happens, not afterwards. It would indeed be a tragedy if this area, renowned through the centuries as a great gateway for global trade, should become notorious as the scene of a global-scale ecological disaster.

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234 Conclusion

Complex problems such as enhancing global trade and development require study from a broad perspective, and their solutions dictate involvement and agreement among many stake-holders. Interdependence and complementary efforts based on thoughtful analysis of alternative strategies, which in turn are founded on comprehensive and accurate data, comprise a blueprint for success in the management of an important shipping gateway such as the Straits of Malacca. Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of such issues have the benefits of providing the degree of comprehensiveness that enables broad insights to be gained into the increasingly complex problems that face societies in the twenty-first century. The potential disadvantages of interdisciplinary approaches, however, are that they often rely on highly specialized, reductionist studies as their building blocks, and these studies may not fit well into a broader edifice comprising similarly specialized and discrete analyses from diverse disciplines. There is also the danger that gaps may be left in studies that are intended to be fully comprehensive or that interdisciplinary approaches might degenerate into overviews that are indeed broad but also superficial and misleading. The remedy for this problem is to ensure critical appraisal of interdisciplinary studies by a wide variety of researchers with specialized backgrounds, not to abandon the notion of broad, interdisciplinary approaches altogether. I would argue, as do Cleary and Goh (2000, 1), that there is an intrinsic unity in a feature such as the Straits of Malacca, but to understand that unity it must be examined from diverse perspectives: as a gateway to trade that involves geographic, historical, economic, political, and anthropological perspectives and as a gauntlet to shipping that involves physiographic, climatological, hydrological, and technological considerations. The study of change – the historical perspective – enlivens the interdisciplinary approach and gives it a sense of context and continuance. Certainly, this study has stressed the themes of change and evolution in the roles and the growing significance of the straits. Indeed, in the current era of globalization and Asian regional resurgence, it will not be a surprise if, in a few short years, the Straits of Malacca surpass the Straits of Dover to become the world’s busiest and most important seaway.

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239 Bibliography Hettne, B. 1999. “Globalization and the New Regionalism: The Second Great Transformation.” In Globalism and the New Regionalism. Vol. 1, edited by B. Hettne, A. Inotai, and O. Sunkel. New York: St Martin’s Press. Hettne, B., A. Inotai, and O. Sunkel, eds. 1999. Globalism and the New Regionalism. New York: St Martin’s Press. Higgott, R. 1998. “The International Political Economy of Regionalism: The Asia-Pacific and Europe Compared,” in Regionalism and Global Economic Integration, edited by W.D. Coleman and G.R.D. Underhill. London and New York: Routledge. – 1999. “The Political Economy of Globalization in East Asia: The Salience of ’Region Building.’” In Globalization and the Asia-Pacific, edited by C. Olds, P. Dicken, P. Kelly, L. Kong, and H. W. Yeung. London and New York: Routledge. Hotelling, H. 1929. “Stability in Competition.” The Economic Journal 39: 41–57. Hoyt, E.P. 1966. The Last Cruise of the Emden. New York: Macmillan. Hoyt, S.H. 1993. Old Malacca. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Hveem, H. 1999. “Political Regionalism: Master or Servant of Economic Internationalization?” In Globalism and the New Regionalism. Vol. 1, edited by B. Hettne, A. Inotai, and O. Sunkel. New York: St Martin’s Press. Hyde, D. 1965. Confrontation in the East: A Background Book. Chester Springs, pa: Dufour Editions. Ikuta, T. 1986. “Energy Policy in Japan: Security of Oil Supply.” In The Arab Gulf States and Japan, edited by W. Sharif. London: Croom-Helm. Israel, J.I. 1989. Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740. Oxford: Clarendon. International Monetary Fund (imf). 1998. World Economic Outlook. May. Washington, dc: imf. Kansky, K. 1963. The Structure of Transportation Networks. Department of Geography, Research Paper 84. Chicago: University of Chicago. Kathirithamby-Wells, J., and J. Villiers, eds. 1990. The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Keppel, H. 1968. The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido for the Suppression of Piracy. Vol. 2, 3d ed. London: Frank Cass. Khoo Kay Kim. 1972. The Western Malay States, 1850–1873. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Lasserre, P., and Schutte, H. 1995. Strategies for Asia-Pacific. New York: New York University Press. Le Clair, E., and H. Schneider, eds. 1968. Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Lee Yong Long. 1980. Southeast Asia and the Law of the Sea: Some Preliminary Observations on the Political Geography of Southeast Asian Seas. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Lennon, W.C. 1881. “Excerpts from an Account of a Voyage to the Molucca Islands, 1798.” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 7: 51–74.

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240 Bibliography Leong Sau Heng. 1990. “Collecting Centres, Feeder Points in Entrepots in the Malay Peninsula, 1000 b.c.–a.d. 1400.” In The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise, edited by J. Kathirithamby-Wells and J. Villiers. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Lim, L.Y.C. 1995. “Southeast Asia: Success through International Openness.” In Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development, edited by B. Stallings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lowe, J.C., and S. Moryadas. 1975. The Geography of Movement. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. MacMillan, A. 1923. Seaports of the Far East: Historical and Descriptive Commercial and Industrial Facts, Figures and Resources. London: Collingridge. Mahathir, M., and Ishihara, S. 1995. The Voice of Asia. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Malay States Correspondence. 1872a. c465, l31. Cambridge: Royal Commonwealth Society – 1872b. Papers re Recent Proceedings at Selangore Consequent upon the Seizure by Pirates of a Junk Owned by Chinese Merchants at Penang, c466, 1–46. Cambridge: Royal Commonwealth Society. Malinowski, B. 1932. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Manguin, P-Y. 1993. “The Vanishing Jong: Insular Southeast Asian Fleets in Trade and War (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries).” In Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era: Trade, Power and Belief, edited by A. Reid. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Marlow, P.B. 1997. “Financing Straits Management: Inherent Problems.” In The Straits of Malacca: International Cooperation in Trade, Funding and Navigational Safety, edited by A. Hamzah. Petaling Jaya: Maritime Institute of Malaysia and Pelanduk Publications. Marsden, W. 1966. The History of Sumatra. 3d ed. Oxford in Asia Historical Reprints. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Masselman, G. 1963. The Cradle of Colonialism. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press. Matanle, I. 1989. World War II. Surrey, England: Bramley Books. Meilink-Roelofsz, M. 1962. Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Miller, H. 1970. Pirates of the Far East. London: Hale. Miller, N. 1995. War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II. New York: Scribner. Mills, L.A. 1966. British Malaya, 1824–67. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, D. 1976. Pirates. London: Thames and Hudson. Mittelman, J.H. 1999. “Rethinking the ’New Regionalism’ in the Context of Globalization.” In Globalism and the New Regionalism. Vol. 1, edited by B. Hettne, A. Inotai, and O. Sunkel. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan Press.

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241 Bibliography Morell, J.B. 1992. The Law of the Sea: An Historical Analysis of the 1982 Treaty and Its Rejection by the United States. Jefferson, nc: McFarland. Morgan, J.R., and M.J. Valencia, eds. 1983. Atlas of Marine Policy in Southeast Asian Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morse, H.B. 1966. The Chronicle of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834. Vol. I. Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen. Murphy, A.B. 1996. “The Prospects for Regional Integration in Pacific Asia.” In Global Geopolitical Change and the Asia-Pacific: A Regional Perspective, edited by D. Rumley, T. Chiba, et al. Aldershot, England: Avebury. Naidu, G. 1997. “The Straits of Malacca in the Malaysian Economy.” In The Straits of Malacca: International Cooperation in Trade, Funding and Navigational Safety, edited by A. Hamzah. Petaling Jaya: Maritime Institute of Malaysia and Pelanduk Publications. Newbold, T.J. 1971. British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Nieman, M. 2000. A Spatial Approach to Regionalisms in the Global Economy. New York: St Martin’s Press. Ohlin, B. 1933. Interregional and International Trade. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press. Olds, K., P. Dicken, P. Kelly, L. Kong, and H.W. Yeung. 1999. Globalization and the Asia-Pacific. New York and London: Routledge. Ono, A. 1997. “Japan’s Contribution to Safety and Pollution Mitigation in the Straits of Malacca.” In The Straits of Malacca: International Cooperation in Trade, Funding and Navigational Safety, edited by A. Hamzah. Petaling Jaya: Maritime Institute of Malaysia and Pelanduk Publications. Ooi Jin Bee. 1976. Peninsular Malaysia. 2d ed. London: Longman. Parry, J.H. 1971. Trade and Dominion: The European Overseas Empires in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Praeger. Pelras, C. 1996. The Bugis. Oxford: Blackwell. Penang Argus. 1871. Editorial, 1 July. Pettman, R. 1999. “Globalism and Regionalism: The Costs of Dichotomy.” In Globalism and the New Regionalism. Vol. 1, edited by B. Hettne, A. Inotai, and O. Sunkel. New York: St Martin’s Press. Pires, T. 1944. Suma Oriental. Trans. A. Cortesao. London: Hakluyt Society. Polanyi, K., C.M. Arensberg, and H.W. Pearson, eds. Trade and Markets in the Early Empires. Glencoe, il: The Free Press. Potter, R., T. Binns, J. Elliott, and D. Smith. 1999. Geographies of Development. Harlow, England: Addison Wesley Longman. Prescott, J.V.R. 1985. The Maritime Political Boundaries of the World. London and New York: Methuen. Ray, A.J., and D.B. Freeman. 1978. Give Us Good Measure. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Reclus, E. 1891. The Universal Geography, Vol. 14: Australasia, trans. A.H. Keane. London: J.S. Virtue.

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244 Bibliography Wallerstein, E. 1971. “The State and Social Transformation.” Politics and Society 1 (May): 364. Warmington, E.H. 1974. The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India. 2d ed. London: Curzon. Webster, P. 1987. “The Elementary Monsoon.” In Monsoons, edited by J.S. Fein and P.L. Stephens. New York: Wiley. Wheatley, P. 1961. The Golden Khersonese. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Winstedt, R. 1962. Malaya and Its History. 6th ed. London: Hutchinson. Winters, A. 1999. “Regionalism vs. Multilateralism.” In Market Integration, Regionalism and the Global Economy, edited by R. Baldwin, D. Cohen, A. Sapir, and A. Venables. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolters, O.W. 1967. Early Indonesian Commerce: A Study of the Origins of Sri Vijaya. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wood, A. 1999. “Openness and Wage Inequality in Developing Countries: The Latin American Challenge to East Asian Conventional Wisdom.” In Market Integration, Regionalism and the Global Economy, edited by R.E. Baldwin, D. Cohen, A. Sapir, and A. Venables. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woodman, R. 1997. The History of the Ship. London: Conway Maritime Press. Wright, A., ed. 1908. Twentieth Century Impressions of British Malaya: Its History, People, Commerce, Industries and Resources. London: Lloyds. Yaacob, W.A.B.W. 1997. “Regional Co-operation and the Straits of Malacca.” In The Straits of Malacca: International Cooperation in Trade, Funding and Navigational Safety, edited by A. Hamzah. Petaling Jaya: Maritime Institute of Malaysia and Pelanduk Publications.

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Index

Aceh: historic, 59, 64, 95–8, 135, 154–5; modern, 201, 220 A Famosa, 92, 98, 105, 129–33. See also Fortaleza de Malaca Albuquerque, Afonso de, 92 al-Qaeda. See terrorism Ambon (Amboina), 57; Dutch massacre of English at, 97–8, 104–5 Arabs, 12–13, 23, 55, 91, 117–18 archipelago: Indonesian, 3, 107, 167, 186, 200, 231 aromatic woods and resins, 58–9 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (apec), 216 Asia Pacific region: geographic character,

3; instability in, 219– 22; integration in, 222–3; trade, 213–18 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (asean), 213–17, 222 Australia, 3, 19, 196–7, 224 Banda islands, 56–8 Batam, 7, 105, 217 Batavia, 97, 100, 105, 155 Bay of Bengal, 6, 22 Belawan port facilities, 155, 205 bottleneck: trade and shipping, 5, 43, 165. See also gauntlets; hazards of navigation British: antipiracy campaigns, 182–6; colonialism, 110, 148; East India Company, 62, 95, 103–10, 132–4, 142–3; in Malacca,

133–4; in Napoleonic war, 106, 141, 169–70; in Second World War, 191–8; trade, 103–10, 137, 146, 232 Bronson’s model, 37, 80, 122 Bugis: ports, 156–8; trade and warfare, xxviii, 24, 87–8, 136, 145–6, 157 Cambodia. See Funan caravelle, 23, 91 carrack, 25, 91, 132 Celates, 87, 88, 131, 144, 174 Changi, 7 chartered companies, 60–1, 109 Chinese: colonialperiod trade and piracy, 145–7, 174–6; early contacts, 11–14;

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246 Index modern influences, 114, 221; ship construction, 24–5; trade, 56, 64–5, 76, 80–7, 91, 126 Christianity and trade, 54–5, 61, 90–1 cinnamon, 58, 76, 146. See also spice trade climate. See monsoons cloves, 56–7. See also spice trade colandia (ships), 13, 76 commodity flow concepts, 32–5, 41–4 competition (trade), 6, 33 duopoly, 37–40, 103–4, 106, 110, 142, 232 Dutch: conquests, 97– 8, 132–3; in Malacca, 132–3; monopoly trade, 57–8; relations with Asian traders, 100–2, 132, 157; relations with British and Portuguese, 97–8, 104–7, 131–3, 141–4, 232; in Second World War, 195–6; shipping, 100 Dutch East India Company, 62–3, 96–102, 105 Dyaks, 182 East Indiamen (ships): British, 25, 108, 170; Dutch, 100 East Indies. See Indonesia

economic-geographic concepts, 32–44, 121 entrepot trade: concepts, 13, 42; at Melaka, 83, 125–6; at Pulau Pinang (Penang), 135–40; at Singapore, 141–51 Eredia, E., 84–5, 87, 129–31 European colonization, 40–1 European influences on trade: contemporary, 216; historical, 56, 60–4, 94 European Union (eu), 50 exchange concepts, 28–31 export processing zones (epzs), 216–17 financial crises, 219 foreign direct investment (fdi), 214–15, 218 Fortaleza de Malaca, xxv, 129–31. See also A Famosa free trade: British policies, 40, 137, 146; European Union, 50; North American Free Trade Area, 50, 223 French, 104–5, 135 Funan, 77, 80, 153 Galang, 176–7 galleon, 25 galleys, 24, 183. See also piracy

gambier, 58, 100 gateway concept, 42–3, 123, 231 gauntlets to shipping and trade, 123, 165–8, 205–6, 225, 231. See also hazards of navigation geographic concepts and models, 5, 32–44, 231 Georgetown, 105, 136–40, 178–9, 185. See also Pulau Pinang globalization, 48–52, 214–19, 234 Goa, Portuguese, 61, 91, 93–5, 98, 130–2 gold, 59, 72, 75–6, 81, 85 Golden Chersonese, 54 great circle route, 74 Great Ship of Macau, 93–4 Greco-Roman era, 13, 56, 69–78 growth triangle (Singapore-JohorBatam), 52, 216–17 Gujerati traders, 74, 91 hazardous cargoes, 203, 208–9 hazards of navigation, 22, 167–73, 203–9 hemispheric trade, 4, 230. See also longdistance trade, transit trade Hindu influences, 74, 81, 83, 153 hinterland capture, 80

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247 Index Hippalos winds, 12–13, 70. See also monsoons Holland, 63, 95–7, 101, 141, 169–70, 198. See also Dutch Hong Kong, 222, 224 Horsburgh Shoal, 8, 227 Hotelling’s model, 38–9, 122 imperialism, 40–1 India: ports, 5; commerce with Malabar coast of, 12, 55, 58, 75, 91; Coromandel coast of, 22, 91, 135 Indonesia: geographic character, 7; in modern conflicts, 198–200; in precolonial period, 81–3; trade relationships, 203 interdisciplinary approaches, xviii, 234 International Maritime Organization (imo), 111, 186, 228 International Monetary Fund (imf), 217 Intertropical Convergence Zone (itcz), 16–19 Iskander Shah, 87, 129 Islamic influences: on culture, 80; on trade, 87, 90–1, 154 Isthmus of Kra, 14, 79, 229

Jakarta, 155 Japanese: contemporary influences, 216, 218, 228; early trade contacts, 93–4, 98; investments, 214–15, 218; postwar oil imports, 114–21; in Second World War, 116–17, 140, 150, 191–8 Java, 39, 81, 195 Johor, 142–3; causeway, 149. See also growth triangle jong (junks), 11, 24, 64, 76, 88, 182–3 Karimun Islands, 7 Kelang port facilities, xxviii, 114, 140, 159– 60 Keppel Harbour, xxvi, 144, 148. See also Port Keppel Kuala Lumpur, 114, 161, 187 lateen sails, 12, 23 Light, Colonel Francis, 136 Lombok-MakassarSulu shipping route, 4–6, 116, 119–121, 168, 204 Lombok Strait, xxviii, 4, 120–1, 168, 204, 228–9 long-distance trade, xvi, 5, 60, 125. See also hemispheric trade, transit trade mace, 57–8

Majapahit, 59, 83, 153–4 Makassar, 88 Malacca town: British control, 104, 170–1; Dutch control, 98–9, 106; Portuguese control, 92–3. See also Melaka Malaya (battleship), 189–90 Malaya: in British colonial period, 161–2; Japanese invasion of, 191–4 Malay Annals, 85, 144 Malay Peninsula, 5, 14, 70, 80, 191–4 Malay piracy, 174–8, 180 Malaysia: development, 140; geographic character of, 7; relations with Indonesia, 198–202; trade, 114, 159–64 Malayu, 153 Maluku (Molucca islands), 56–7, 83, 93, 220 manufacturing, 163–4, 217–18; composition of regional exports, 215–16 Melaka: before European colonization, 59, 83–9, 126–9; gateway role of, 125–34, 231; in modern period, 21; river, xxv, 86, 88, 128; tree, 85. See also Malacca town

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248 Index mercantilism, 31 Minangkabau, 59, 100, 127, 131, 156–7 modern theory of trade, 31 monopoly trading, 6, 13, 33, 91–3, 101–2, 104; in Dutch trade, 157, 178; in Portuguese trade, 61, 93, 131 monsoons, 15, 107; northeast monsoon, 20–1, 76; southwest monsoon, 18–21, 76. See also Hippalos winds monsoon trade, 22–3 navigation: aids, 14, 205; hazards, 5, 138, 203–9; skills, 5, 171 neoliberal policies, 217–18 Netherlands, 101. See also Holland networks (transportation), 41–2, 111 newly industrializing economies (nies), 213 North American Free Trade Area (nafta), 50, 223 nutmeg, 57–8. See also mace oil: crises, 116–18; fields, 195–6; and Japanese industry, 115, 118; pollution, 111, 208–9; and shipping, 114, 116, 150; trade, 114–21 opium, 58, 109, 137

Palembang, 82–3, 153, 155–6, 176 palm oil, 162–3 Parameswara, 84–7, 126, 144 Penang, 105, 109–10, 135–40, 180. See also Pulau Pinang pepper, 55–6, 75, 153 Periplus, 12–13, 70–6 Persian Gulf, 5, 12, 115–16, 175 piracy: contemporary, 186–8, 221; historic, 88, 174–86 Pires, Tome, 84–5, 87–8, 92 political economy: concepts of, 5, 45–52, 231 portaging, 14, 72–3, 229 Port Kelang, 114, 159–60 Port Keppel, 144, 179, 205. See also Keppel Harbour; Singapore port polities, 39, 87 Portuguese: conquests, 91, 129; forts, 92, 97–8; Macau, 129; Malaca, 129–32; traders, 38, 60–1; trading system and monopolistic practices, 56, 60 praus (boats), 129, 176, 183 Prince Henry the Navigator, 15 Prince of Wales (battleship), 191–2

Prince of Wales Island, 136–7, 179. See also Penang Pulau Pinang, 21, 123, 135, 160. See also Penang Raffles, Thomas Stamford, 105–7, 134, 141–2 raiders, German (ships), 190–1 regionalism, 50–2, 213–14 Riau and Lingga Islands, 142, 152, 156–7, 176–7, 180 rice, 89 roaring forties (winds), 18, 100 rubber, 162 Sailendra kings, 80, 82–3 sailing vessels, 12–15 sandalwood, 58 shipping: channels, 170, 186; contemporary volumes and tonnages, 205–6, 224–5; design, 5, 10–13, 23–7, 112–13; hazards, 167–73, 203–9, 229–30; pirate attacks on, 174–88; routes and networks, 4, 113 Siam, 86–7, 88, 103, 144, 197. See also Thailand silk road, 13–14, 70 Singapore: contemporary facilities, 113,

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249 Index 148; early development, 84, 107, 139; Japanese capture, 150, 194–5, 198; locational advantages, 123; postwar development, 150–1, 216–17, 224 Singapore Strait, 6, 7–8, 171 Southeast Asia: economies of, 47, 213 southeast trade winds, 17–18, 107 Spanish, 38, 95 spice trade, 23, 54–8 Srilanka, 58, 76, 154 Srivijaya, 59, 80–3, 153–4 steamships, 13, 112, 183–4 Straits of Malacca, 23; geographic character, 3–7; sinkings, collisions, and pollution in, 206–9; as a trade gateway, xv, 1, 67, 114, 69–122, 232; as a trade impediment, 1, 167–73, 174–88, 203–9, 232–3; traffic congestion in, 203–8; as a zone of conflict, xvii, 186–8, 189–202 Straits Settlements: British colony of, 109, 134, 139, 147, 198 Suez Canal, xvii, 1, 109, 112, 168–9 Sumatra: historic, 1, 39, 58–9, 81, 88, 141,

152–5; modern, 152, 172 sumatras (squalls), 21–2, 149, 206 Sunda Strait, 4, 8–9, 116, 120, 168 Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould’s model, 36, 82, 113, 122 Ternate, 57 terrorism, xvii, 202, 221, 233 Thailand: geographic character, 7; political relations, 221, 229; trade, 114, 161, 229. See also Siam thalassocracies, 60, 65, 81–3, 86 Tidore, 57 Timor, 6, 58, 220, 222 tin, 58–9, 101, 134, 161–2 trade: modern theory of, 31; networks, 41–2; transit, xv, 43, 125, 147 trading: British system of, 103–10; contemporary systems, 111– 22; Dutch system, 97–102; precolonial systems, 69–89; Portuguese system, 90–6 traffic congestion, 203–6. See also hazards Traffic Separation Schemes, 119, 227–8 Transit Passage Regime, 226 Treaty of London, 144, 180

Treaty of Tordesillas, 38 typhoons (tropical cyclones), 17, 22 United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (unclos), 6, 202, 225–6 United States of America: antipiracy and antiterrorist roles, 182, 221; foreign direct investment, 215; in the Second World War, 191, 193, 195–7; trade contacts, 47, 202 Vance’s model, 35–6, 122 Vereenigde OostIndische Compagnie (voc), 62–3, 96–102, 105 World Trade Organization (wto), 213, 216–17 Zheng He, Admiral, 86, 126

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