Trade and Civilization in Early Modern Times

By Patricia Rueb

The topic addressed here, the greater Bay-of-Bengal area, is actually a double one. The historiography of the Bay of Bengal and its adjacent regions will be the focus of examination but the analysis will also attempt to profile its lacunae and bias, thereby illustrating the need for a new approach to the academic study of the period prior to that of modern colonia- lism.

Geographico-historical unity
My starting point will be the recognition of the basic unity, geographically and historically, of the Bay of Bengal. The inner circle of this "Braudelian inland sea" consists of Bengal, Coromandel, Ceylon, Sumatra, the principalities on the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and Burma, comprising the coastal areas as well as their hinterlands. Yet the Bay of Bengal was not a discrete entity, sufficient into itself. Its networks extended in various directions. The north coast of Java (including Banten), for instance, was closely linked to the Bay of Bengal in a trading relationship which was also reflected in traditi- ons. In the period 1600-1850 the basic unity of the Bay of Bengal was strengthened by the ebb and flow of trade: a trend which ran parallel to a decrease in the Gujarati and Indian west coast trade in general in this part of the Indian Ocean. These two and a half centuries witnessed an intensification of trading links within the Bay of Bengal. Although Europeans certainly played a role in this development, they were the followers rather than initiators. The intensification of the intraregional contacts and exchanges around the Bay of Bengal was very much orthogenic.

The break-up of the coherence
The break-up of this zone started in the nineteenth century with the inroads of modern colonialism and the consequent realignment into English, French, and Dutch colonies (leaving only Siam apart as a mainland buffer state). Academic studies of the region - and not least the humanities - embedded as they were in the policies of the metropolitan governments in the main followed the same realignment. Postwar developments - decolonization and the emergence of international organizations (the United Nations and related agencies) - have required strategic and manageable categories. Most drastically of all, the Bay of Bengal and its adjacent countries were broken up in South Asia and Southeast Asia, with research on the countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal being split up accordingly. Furthermore, the rise of national states within the borders drawn by the nineteenth-century colonial powers led Southeast Asia to be divided ever more strictly. The region was virtually fragmented into the mainland states, the Peninsula, the (Indonesian) Archipelago, and the Philippines, a division recalling the colonial realignment rather than geographico- historical logic and leading to a greater impairment of the perception of the original basic unity of the countries around the Bay of Bengal. This break-up has generated distinct national policies and, hence, created different scholarly approaches which compartmentalize the region. This was exacerbated since the study of each compartment often has a "stronghold" in the various European research centres. Present political developments in Asia reflect a trend towards internationalization, rather than compartmentalization. Southeast Asian governments, in particular, are cooperating in the development of regional economic (ASEAN) institutions. If scholarship wishes to remain in contact with the subject of its investigation - both in the areas concerned and in the research centres elsewhere - it should not ignore this trend.

The current grouping of area studies, or rather their division, is reflected in research, but it is a divergence which ceases to be meaningful viewed from the historical perspective. In fact, it impedes the perception of the basic interconnectedness of this large area. The Bay of Bengal obviously constitutes a spatial unity. With regard to traditions and culture, it is common knowledge that the countries adjacent to it share an Indianizing past and, to a large extent, an Indo-Persian legacy. But when they are deprived of their historical unifying identity, there is little incentive to investigate phenomena which have long-term and significant repercussions. Thus, for instance, Christine Dobbins' lucid study on the nineteenth-century Padri (Islamic revivalism) movement in the Minangkabau, would gain a new dimension if the Islamic inspiration which sustained the Padri claims, were placed in its wider context. From the centre of pilgrimage which fed the inspiration, via the trade routes to the Sumatran highlands, as much as the transformation of the ideas to suit local conditions, is a long road indeed. But it a road with signposts which can be charted. Questions related to the Islamization of hinterlands, for instance, and to the Arab (Hadhramauti) mercantile communities in the Indonesian Archipelago, would be well-served by a line of approach which connects trade to Islamic traditions.

A fair number of the scholars (predominantly philologists), trained in colonial times, did not stop short at the political boundaries in the Bay of Bengal. Among them Coedès is still the shining light with regard to depth, breadth, and perceptiveness. His oeuvre covers most of the area which shared the Sanskritic heritage. The achievements of Winstedt in the field of Classical Malay literature are of equal stature. And one hardly needs to emphasize the monumental scholarship of Snouck Hurgronje. The next generation included scholars like Drewes, Schrieke, and Van Leur, who were just as "boundless", each in his own way. In and outside philology it was the common Indic background which generated multiple debates related to the spread of traditions outside India proper. Dealing with push or pull factors, and homogeneity as against regional diversity, the dialogue reflected political developments which were in gestation from the late nineteenth century onwards. Nonetheless the remoteness of the phenomena debated kept them aloof from the political agendas, with the exemption of the Islamic stratum. Islam itself also forged the unity of the Bay of Bengal.
The nineteenth-century (originally Saudi) Wahhabi movement in India politicized all Islam-related subjects, and from the Mutiny (1857) onwards the colonial powers considered Islam an imminent threat, hence a matter of state. This had an impact on scholarship, as evidenced, for instance, Snouck Hurgronje's classic study of Islamic Aceh at the time of the Aceh War. Snouck Hurgronje was the most prominent Islamicist of his time, but also the most criticized. Though fully aware of the shared Islamic traditions, he chose to advocate Islamic regionalism, thereby disconnecting the major centres of Islamic learning, as well as the refined courts of the Islamic rulers, from the "fanatical" Muslims in the periphery of the world of Islam. The Indo-Muslim world around the Bay of Bengal has remained atomized politically, and scholarly ever since.

Another segmentation can be observed in the less clearly definable, but nonetheless indisputedly widespread, Chinese presence in the Bay of Bengal. Its overall consequence is concealed because of area specialization. Furthermore, Europe's maritime orientation - and its well-organized and accessible source material - biases historic analysis. While nobody can deny an overseas Chinese expansion which has received due scholarly attention, the overland connection between China and the Bay of Bengal is in the main the domain of Buddhologists and art historians. Data on the impact of inland linkages tend to be overlooked by historians. Against the integrated background of interaction - maritime, as well as overland - analyses which deal with flows of trade, volume, and participation of the various "nations" concerned, are in urgent need of a reappraisal. The same applies to any region which found it self outside the regular range of the European trading companies. Eighteenth-century Arakan, Siam, and Aceh are all examples of such blind spots. Problems of both evidence and methodology have often discouraged their investigation, but this not lessen their importance.

Since the early twentieth century much painstaking work has been done in archaeology, epigraphy, and critical text edition, thereby rendering a considerable body of primary sources accessible to scholarship. Researchers, moreover, have contributed in all sorts of ways to a wider knowledge of segments of the Bay of Bengal in historic times, not least because the creation of new perspectives, especially from the socio-economic angle. Van Leurs' Weberian approach to trade and civilization, or rather its "rediscovery" in the fifties, introduced different, more integrative types of research. More recently, environmental history has offered yet another viewpoint. Though still in its infancy, it is also promising because the environment is essentially long-term as well as spatially comprehensive.

History from within
There has been a growing awareness in academia that exogenous, Western concepts, such as "modernity" and "the centralized state", should be avoided when investigating pre-modern Asian kingdoms. The same applies to the impact of precious metals within the framework of the world economy. The alleged "hoarding" and "conspicuous consumption" of the Oriental princes stress an Asian "otherness" and thereby create more problems than they can solve. Views from "within", which are far more convincing, have found distinguished patrons like Denys Lombard, director of the École Française d'Extrême-Orient in Paris, and Om Prakash of Delhi University. The usefulness of the Braudelian longue durée in its temporal and spatial aspects, as regards the Bay-of-Bengal area, and the larger Indian Ocean area, is obvious, but so far, few scholars have undertaken a large-scale synthesis. At present André Wink is investigating the making of the Indo-Islamic world. Naturally, his study encompasses South and Southeast Asia. The significance of his integrative view which restores the basic unity of the Indian Ocean world is obvious. Indubitably inherent in this historico-geographical scope are problems due to the widely divergent nature of the evidence. While it cannot be denied that the interface of various disciplines is rewarding, at the same time it is fraught with obstacles. In a recent essay in Itinerario (19,3 [1995]) Jos Gommans has raised a number of pertinent questions related to the Bay of Bengal as a whole and as regards its role in the surrounding world. They address such problems as the periodization of expansion and contraction of trade, and their correlations in the sphere of religion and tradition. Naturally Gommans' hypotheses are tentative, and his is fully aware of it. Nonetheless, he advocates new strategies as regards the scope of and the approach to the Bay of Bengal. If the long-term interaction and interdependencies of the areas around the Bay of Bengal are to be assessed in breath and depth, a great deal of research needs to be done. By adding new data and by holding a critical reappraisal of the existing information, an overall picture of trade and civilization will emerge. This, in turn, may well lead to promising new avenues in research, as well as to a better understanding of present-day developments.

To bridge the existing gap between the dispersed scholarly traditions and the historical unity of the area as a whole, there is an obvious solution: integrated research. This can only be achieved by the adoption of new attitudes which result in effective cooperation - not just a "paper" one - of the various specialists concerned with South and Southeast Asia. Integrated research will require a joint effort of indologists, islamicists, philologists, historians, and social scientists. This, then, will be a demanding, long-term objective which may only be fully realized by the coming generation of scholars.

Patricia Rueb is a Leiden-trained, free-lance researcher. Her field of study is pre-modern Sumatra, in particular Aceh.

New Course in Bay of Bengal Studies

In December 1995 a group of Leiden-based historians took the initiative of embarking upon a new course to approach the academic study of the larger Bay-of-Bengal area in the early modern period. The Research Centre CNWS will back this approach. New research strategies will be developed by focusing on such matters as long-term interdependencies. The intended approach will be interdisciplinary as well as inter-regional, and thereby bestrides the former colonial and present political boundaries.