A Two-Ocean Mediterranean

Wang Gungwu

A Two-Ocean Mediterranean

Wang Gungwu

Europeans know how important the Mediterranean Sea is in their history. In Asia, historians appreciate that Sea’s connection with the powerful civilizations that arose there. But some are likely also to highlight it as the location for millennia of trading and military actions that ended with the division between the Christian West and core Islamic lands. It was that stalemate between the two civilizations from the 7thto the 15thcentury that finally led the Europeans to turn to the Atlantic in search of a new route to India and China. After that, new groups of actors emerged to dominate the modernization narrative for the next fi ve centuries. The West steadily colonized large parts of Asia and brought their brand of imperialism everywhere. During that period, the Mediterranean syndrome of war and division took various shapes and underwent changes arising from relationships that became globalized in increasingly intense ways. Only recently, with the new wars in the Middle East, have we been reminded that the syndrome is alive both within and beyond its original home, and that it remains the seedbed of power struggles that the world faces today.

For Southeast Asia, the region’s historians have been inspired by Fernand Braudel’s study of the Mediterranean and some have been ready to compare the historical developments in the two regions. The work of Anthony Reid inthe 1980s on the “Age of Commerce, 1450-1680” in Southeast Asia led the way.Denys Lombard then took the subject further and organized an international symposium on “La Méditerranée asiatique” in 1997. Since then, we have also had Heather Sutherland’s careful analysis of the very concept of the Mediterranean itself.［1］For most historians, the conditions in Southeast Asia around the Java Sea and the South China Sea (shortened here as “Nanhai”)would make a very imperfect match for that Mediterranean. But the insights provided by Braudel’s approach were certainly enlightening and using it to elucidate these maritime areas of Asia has certainly been worthwhile. Thus,interest remains and closer comparisons have become thinkable today. This essay honours Anthony Reid for having drawn attention to similarities and differences in Southeast Asia, and seeking to explain some new developments that now hinge on this region. In particular, the relationships among the insular and continental states in the emerging regional structure around the Paci fi c Ocean that has been extended to the Indian Ocean have become more signi fi cant. If they are compared with the Mediterranean syndrome both past and present, there are features that deserve careful examination.

When we simply look at the map, the near-Mediterranean nature of the Nanhai, or Southern Sea, may seem obvious. But when we go beyond maps, the differences stand out. Around the lands of the Mediterranean coasts, for more than two millennia, there were complex struggles for dominance among various civilizations, religions and empires and these struggles dictated developments in every aspect of that region’s history. By contrast, for the littoral peoples of the Nanhai, the powerful empires from North China (the Qin dynasty and its successor the Han) had marched south from the great river valleys of the Huang Ho and the Yangzi during the 3rdand 2ndcenturies BC, and conquered the small kingdoms and tribal states of the Yue peoples. That empire then stopped at the coasts of modern South China and the Gulf of Tongking, and was content thereafter to control less than half these lands of the northern Nanhai.Thereafter, there were growing but limited trading and cultural contacts across the Nanhai. But the disparity between the imperial states in the north and the small port kingdoms scattered around the Nanhai coasts did not lead to any developments that could be compared to the centuries of intense activitiesaround and across the Mediterranean before and during this period.

It is, however, possible to point to some features that could be described as potentially Mediterranean or semi-Mediterranean, or if I may coin a word,semiterranean, but these features were to become apparent only later in the first millennium. I suggest that this word can be applied to the later half of the Tang dynasty (8th-9thcenturies), especially after the beginning of the 10thcentury when the southern Chinese of the Nan Han and Min kingdoms began in earnest to trade with the region.

For the next fi ve centuries (10th-14thcenturies), new trading relationships developed for all the littoral states of the South China Sea but they remained no more than semiterranean. It was not until the 16thcentury that the political and religious con fl icts of the Mediterranean Sea were extended in various directions and arrived in Southeast Asia. By the 18thcentury, these con fl icts led to some two centuries of colonial rule, followed in the latter half of the 20thcentury by decades of decolonization and the ongoing phenomenon of globalization.［2］The ramifications for the region are still present. In recent decades, seeking a degree of integration through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN), the region faces new challenges that include the larger Mediterranean syndrome encompassing both the Indian and Pacific oceans. The work of integration is still work in progress. If it fails, Southeast Asia may be drawn into power con fi gurations across both those oceans to its east and west that could resemble the historical division of the Mediterranean. This essay suggests why the analogy is thinkable today and why Southeast Asia as a contested region may have critical roles to play in such an extended transoceanic Mediterranean.

My interest in the region began with the broad concept of a “Malaysia”from the perspective of the “Malay” peoples of the archipelago, and that of the Dutch and British who sought to rule over them. I compared that concept with the term Nanyang (Southern Ocean) as understood by Chinese settlers and sojourners and used in Chinese documents. It led me to write about the trade that the Chinese conducted with the ports and kingdoms on the coasts of the South China Sea up to the 10thcentury.［3］For this trade, I used the term Nanhai(Southern Sea), an indeterminate term found in early Chinese writings. One of my conclusions was that, although the geographical features of this Nanhaireminded me of the Mediterranean Sea, the key ingredients in Mediterranean history could not be found there. I did not consider whether the term Nanyang was equivalent to the region we call Southeast Asia. Instead, I simply described what I thought were unique features of the region’s relationship with the various Chinese dynasties in the fi rst millennium CE.

Southeast Asia became the term of choice for the emerging region by the time I began to teach at the University of Malaya in 1957. At the new campus in Kuala Lumpur after Malayan independence, the demand was for writing and teaching national history to help build the new state. This history was to be freed from British imperial history and located in a yet to be shaped region in the new Asia. At the core, therefore, was the history of Southeast Asia. That was supplemented by courses on East and South Asian history on the one hand and world history on the other. In the latter, the emphasis was on the rise of the West and its impact on global developments since the 19thcentury. Southeast Asia thus became essential background to the construction of Malaya’s national history. Anthony Reid joined the university at the time and played a vital part to ensure that the region’s history would be well integrated into the core themes for historical teaching and research.

Since the 1960s, there have been numerous efforts at de fi ning Southeast Asia, justifying its integrity as a region and underlining its signi fi cance. There have also been doubts whether everyone is comfortable with Southeast Asia as a regional entity and whether that entity has a secure future. Understandably,the historians of each country tend to present the region’s history in their own way and give uneven weight to the major developments that affected the region as whole. Elsewhere, economic and security analysts regularly complain that,despite the establishment and enlargement of ASEAN in 1967, Southeast Asian governments still do not really think regionally and have not done enough to make the new regionalism effective. Many of them are sensitive to these criticisms but, in their belief that the region is of primary importance, continue to encourage work that would put Southeast Asian studies on the map.

This essay comes at Southeast Asia from another angle. It draws inspiration from Anthony Reid’s research that emphasizes the maritime core of the region when he identi fi ed the Age of Commerce and acknowledged thework of Fernand Braudel on the Mediterranean. Braudel’s seminal writings have influenced many others to re-look at Mediterranean-like conditions in the China Seas, the Java Sea, the Baltic, the Caribbean and even in less obvious maritime areas like the two halves of the Indian Ocean to the east and west of the Indian sub-continent. These inquiries have been both stimulating and productive. Tony Reid’s two volumes, The Lands Below the Winds and Expansion and Crisis, testify to the enormous impact that the Mediterranean paradigm has had.

I have written elsewhere about why the Mediterranean complex was not native to the China Seas.［4］It was never the geography of the Mediterranean Sea that interested me, but its history. I identified four ingredients of that history that are central to its distinctiveness, factors that propelled the kingdoms and empires that grew out of the Mediterranean to be enlarged far beyond its shores. The ingredients were: (1) The Mediterranean was a central place for multiple civilizations. (2) Its shores attracted intense migratory and commercial activities. (3) It spawned empires characterized by strong maritime power. (4) It sustained tenets of religion and ideology that have determined the nature of later political and economic changes.［5］

In my early work, I brushed aside the idea that the Nanhai littoral in ancient times, made up of China and various Indianized kingdoms and ports,was in any way comparable to the Mediterranean complex. After the tenth century, however, and progressively to the present, including the centuries that have been seen as the age of commerce, the process of becoming more semiterranean can be discerned. South China became economically more active after the end of the Tang dynasty. When that dynasty fell in 907, a number of independent southern kingdoms were established that took new initiatives in the Nanhai. It is possible to date the emergence of semiterranean conditions from that time. The powerful kingdoms and empires among the littoral states developed regular trade and tribute relationships, but were only tangentially engaged across what was geographically fragmented and one-sided space. They did not produce the forces and compulsions that drove the Mediterranean states and cultures to become an inseparable complex.［6］

In re-examining the history of the peoples and cultures who lived on theseshores, we can say that the Nanhai was potentially two smaller semiterranean zones, the South China and the Java Seas, that could, given a strong push,have produced Mediterranean characteristics. The Mongol imperial explosion from Eurasia that led to naval attacks on Java and Japan at the end of the 13thcentury, for example, could have produced such a push.［7］But it was not sustained and, in any case, failed to leave any lasting impact on the region. This was still true a century later when the Ming Emperor Yongle sent Zheng He in 1405 on the fi rst of his seven expeditions to the Indian Ocean. The geopolitical situation remained one-sided when, three decades later, the Ming court decided to disband its navy and effectively withdrew to defend its coastal boundaries.［8］For some, that series of imperial displays of overwhelming force may be seen as a preview of what was to come when, after 1498, European naval power began to be applied continuously to most of Asia. But I suggest that would be an anachronistic reading that could be misleading if pursued further. Nothing in the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties from the mid-15thcentury till the end of the 19thcould be depicted as having any push towards naval aggression.

What burst out from the Western Mediterranean, however, was a new kind of power that told a different story. It stimulated an increasingly global phenomenon based on the sustained use of aggressive maritime power. The story had begun with alternating power centres that spanned the Mediterranean coasts of the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa for millennia. There had developed patterns of change that produced the unending struggles between the Greco-Roman-Christian world and the Arab-Islamic ummah. The hinterlands of these two forces were united and divided in turn by that inland sea but, across the centuries, the Mediterranean complex did represent an extraordinary example of the balance of power. This was obviously different from the asymmetry found in the Nanhai where China’s power and wealth was overwhelming on the rare occasions when the Chinese state took an interest in maritime affairs. Instead, it was the exhilarating but diffuse Indian Ocean cultures that exerted more in fl uence on local populations over the centuries. From the sub-continent, they came to dominate the art and architecture, the languages and scripts, the gods, and rituals, the music and dance in most of the Nanhai. In time, the situation became one of a cultural andcommercial asymmetry that led the region’s peoples to lean towards the West.It also re fl ected an asymmetry that was to remain as long as China was focused on overland security threats in the north, and as long as no grouping of Nanhai states appeared that could challenge the power of China.

Thus it was semiterranean commerce, migration and political cultures that characterized the region. The Malay peoples moved around their island world more intensely and laid the foundations for polities that extended the range of Sri Vijaya and then the Majapahit and Malacca empires. Other migrations overland, by the Viet conquerors of Champa and the Thai rulers of Ayutthaya, pushed southwards, and Ayutthaya developed enough naval power to put pressure on Malacca. Limited numbers of Indian and Muslim merchants continued to come from the west, but the Chola invasions from India, for example, were not sustained. The Chinese, often together with Arabs, traded in larger numbers and, after the arrival of Europeans, the trading activities of the Chinese in particular expanded rapidly to all parts of the Malay Archipelago.［9］

Japanese and Korean traders and sailors joined their Chinese counterparts from time to time. Muslim merchants from the west also extended the trade they had with the Islamic kingdoms in fi rst Sumatra and Malacca and then in Java, Borneo, Sulawesi and beyond.［10］But the nature of their trade did not radically change until they had to deal with new institutions like the Dutch and English East India Companies. These long-distance trading companies had creatively evolved from the merchant guilds and city states that formed the original frontlines in the centuries of struggle between Christian monarchs and the Moors of the Mediterranean. They were increasingly well-organized and dif fi cult for local polities to defend against.

The rapid Islamization of the Malay world also brought new changes.The interactions between Hindu-Buddhist rulers and Islamic merchant enclaves eventually divided the Buddhist mainland from an increasingly Muslim Nusantara, something that could be compared with the divisions that characterized the Mediterranean, albeit on a lesser scale. The coming of the Europeans in the 16thcentury disrupted the early divisions by introducing Christianity, at least on the eastern periphery of Southeast Asia. Later, withthe advent of modern scientific and secular values, this European impact became even stronger. Most dramatically, this awakened political forces in Japan and added a modern and powerful naval dimension that was rooted in Asia. By the end of the 19thcentury, the combined power of Japan and the West challenged the ancient values and institutions of China and paved the way to new ideological and nationalist revolutions that totally transformed the region.

Although semiterranean Southeast Asia around the Nanhai after the 16thcentury was still unable to balance the power of China, the region had come alive. This vitality encouraged greater multilateral intercourse. The potential for Mediterranean development was there from the time the Portuguese and Spanish kings ousted their Moorish rivals fi rst in Europe and then challenged them in Asia. The way the Spanish led the way across the Atlantic and were confronted by the Dutch, British and the French could be described as extending the Mediterranean complex and turning the Paci fi c into something of a Spanish lake.［11］The fi rst change came from the Spanish push out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic and then into the Pacific. When others even better organized and more determined joined them, a new future began to take shape for the Nanhai. The key development hinged on a new power balance between the European powers and the Qing Empire, although the latter was slow to recognize the shift. It took two so-called Opium Wars in the 19thcentury to bring that message home to the Chinese, events that were to change the semiterranean nature that the region had so far experienced.

The Europeans then built new centres of countervailing power that linked a strategic network of ports. Out of these came the ring of Western empires that sought to extend their China trade and eventually cooperated among themselves in order to stand up to Qing dynastic power. Beginning from the 19thcentury, the British led the way to break the barriers that the Manchu regime had put up. Finally, strong countervailing power had arrived in the South China Sea. It is possible now to see that these were the first steps towards making local semiterranean conditions more comparable to those of the Mediterranean,conditions that British empire-builders had so carefully studied.

The maritime empires that emerged after 1800 ensured that interactions between powerful states on opposite coasts were no longer one-sided. TheQing Empire was counterbalanced by a concert of European powers and this was further strengthened by the power of the United States followed by the belated rise of the maritime Japanese empire. During that time, trade volumes throughout the region increased sharply. The one-sidedness that used to be in China’s favour was reversed as foreign imports and investments coming from the powers controlling Southeast Asia began to outstrip economic developments in China. Chinese exports increasingly included the out fl ow of human resources as Chinese labourers swelled the communities in every major port of the China Seas. By the end of the 19thcentury, the rapid decline in Chinese power and the collapse of the native Chinese economy had become so pronounced that many in China feared that the one-sided reversal would become permanent and result in the carving up of China into many parts. Fortunately, the Western powers saw Japanese ambitions as threatening to their dominance and decided to hold the Japanese back. Eventually, the Second World War provided them with the opportunity to intervene and restore the balance by helping China in a war that the Chinese could not have won alone. In so doing, that contributed further to create the Mediterranean conditions that local Southeast Asian polities had not been able to develop themselves.

When the Chinese Communist Party united China’s imperial territories and took the Soviet Union’s side in the Cold War, the ideological division of the world was distinctly modern but not all that different in nature from the religious divides that marked the Mediterranean complex. The new secular religions were new versions of the historic Mediterranean divides, but on a much larger global stage. Although the Cold War is now over and the new divides are more complicated, the prospect of continual division along religious or ideological lines remains. The shape of the division is still unclear. On the one hand, the extended role of Islam in the region is less predictable and, on the other, China confounded all expectations in the 1980s by reversing their revolutionary past and successfully building a new kind of state-sponsored capitalism within three decades. What that means for the secular but still ideological West has become a subject of intense concern. When China reemerges as a maritime power, Southeast Asia will certainly face further changes in the global struggle.

These changes may be depicted simply as the logical consequences of Great Power rivalries or as realist applications of balance of power strategies. But a deeper change becomes clear by employing the image of the Mediterranean complex. The Mediterranean Sea was the arena where several ancient civilizations contended for power. The sea evoked images of maritime trade and colonization and the waxing and waning of empires down the centuries.Then the Portuguese and the Spanish broke out of the Mediterranean impasse between the Christian and Muslim kingdoms and found new routes to India and China across the Atlantic and via the Indian and Paci fi c Oceans. The Europeans were tired of being at the mercy of Muslim merchants who dominated the routes to Asian markets. After 1492, and especially after 1498, they could finally compete directly with Muslim traders. The unbearable tensions that had confined them to the Mediterranean Sea for so long finally outgrew the limits of medieval technologies and religious divisions. That enterprise did not represent a rupture in European history but was the result of an expansion of a strong historical complex that had long connected the three linked continents of Africa, Asia and Europe, and now added the continent of the Americas.

Obviously there is no exact fi t today between the Nanhai and its oceanic extensions on both sides and the region around the Mediterranean. For example, although there have been more intense migratory and commercial activities that have brought the economies of China and Southeast Asia closer together, the strengths of the economies are still very uneven. While there are new maritime centres in the region, they are, with the exception of Japan, still economically dependent on powers much further away like the United States and its allies. It is possible to identify new versions of religions and ideologies that can shape the direction of future political and economic change. But the region by itself is still semiterranean because the hinterland of each of the countries is weaker than that of China, especially during the periods when the Chinese took an interest in building a credible navy.［12］The multiple civilizational developments that characterized the Mediterranean complex may now be present, but they have been introduced and still supported from elsewhere. Southeast Asian cultures that are now exposed to modern civilizational divisions still have to draw their strength from the Indian Oceanor the West. Couched in terms of the ancient con fl icts between Christian and Muslim or between Muslim and Hindu-Buddhist, that might appear familiar.But modern secular divisions like the political ideologies of the Cold War have also left deep impressions. And there are advanced technologies that have compressed beyond recognition the geopolitics of the whole world. It is thus possible to view the Nanhai as a frontline for older and newer maritime powers to face the rise of China. If the larger complex based primarily on the Paci fi c Ocean (and can now include the Indian Ocean) is compared with the idea of an enlarged Mediterranean, the deeply divisive experiences of that historic Mediterranean complex can become part of the entire’s future. That would envisage the formation of a maritime arc from at least Japan to Indonesia that can be backed by powerful hinterlands further away. Distance has become less of a factor as new technologies bring the world closer together. Whether we see all this in the end as a matter of compressing the world to be analogous to the Mediterranean complex, or of enlarging the Mediterranean complex to encompass future geopolitics, is not important. What is interesting is to recognize that the Mediterranean analogy is useful and that studying the long process of historical change between the China Seas and the two Oceans will give us different perspectives on the present and future.

The Nanhai that was divided during the Cold War resembled that between Christian Europe and Muslim Afro-Eurasia. After the Cold War, with globalization and the military technology now available, an extended divide that is based on efforts to balance greatly enhanced naval power is now evolving.On one side are powers that wish to contain China with multiple alliances;on the other, China and its hinterland are trying hard not to be isolated. It is already a more complicated set of power con fi gurations than any in the past.For example, in place of ideology, there are now divisions along religious lines where the borders are unclear. Faced with the extended role of Islam from the Indian Ocean to the eastern limits of Southeast Asia, such divisions will be hard to manage.

In China, Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms transformed the revolutionary agenda by initiating a capitalistic process that depends on strong state initiative and control. This is still evolving and it is too early to say how this will changethe distribution of political and economic power in the China Seas. But it is clear that China will never again neglect naval power. It is now determined to become a maritime power if only to ensure its sovereignty, protect its coastal territories and guarantee the sea-lanes that supply the resources essential to its continued economic growth.［13］The impact of such naval power on the nature of the China Seas and beyond is still not clear, but if there is an equivalent countervailing force, however distant across either if not both the Paci fi c and Indian Oceans, then the comparison between this extended complex and the Mediterranean syndrome will remain valid.

Using the analogy of the Mediterranean complex may not be reassuring to Southeast Asia. From beyond the China Seas, powers like the United States and its allies could employ the image of a maritime arc to support an integrated region and set it against possible future Chinese growth. If ASEAN is not integrated, it could be divided between states that link up the maritime arc and those that choose to maintain a positive relationship with a powerful China. That would lead to divisions that would closely resemble the way the Mediterranean is still divided today.

China has great need for a friendly maritime neighbourhood and is working hard for ASEAN integration as a defense against this region being used as a hostile group. If the region does become fully integrated, ASEAN would be empowered to play a pivotal role in keeping the peace for the larger region beyond the China Seas, including the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.If China can convince its neighbours that it is committed to nothing more than the peaceful restoration of its historically secure environment, ASEAN integration would be a valuable development for all concerned.

The nations of Southeast Asia want to maximize their security and ensure economic development under the most advantageous conditions they can get. They have through ASEAN sought to use the organization to persuade interested parties that this represents the most effective route to regional peace. If successful, they can seek to avoid reproducing the fiercely divisive nature of the Mediterranean complex. But they would not want to return to the asymmetrical semiterranean condition before the 19thcentury. They can do this only by becoming truly integrated and thus having the capacity to balance theinterests of China with those of powers that want to keep China out. Only in that way could they ensure that they will not be the instruments of future rival powers.

■Notes

[1] Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II. (Paris:Libraire Armand Colin, 1949); Claude Guillot, Denys Lombard and Roderich Ptak (eds.),From the Mediterranean to the China Sea: Miscellaneous Notes (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,1998); Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680. Vol. 1: The Lands Below the Winds; Vol. 2: Expansion and Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988 and 1993); and Heather Sutherland, “Southeast Asian History and the Mediterranean Analogy”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34, no. 1 (2003): 1-20.

[2] Although this development began with the Portuguese and Spanish monarchs at the end of the 15thcentury, it was not until the 19thcentury that the modern phase of globalization can be said to have started. See K.M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: a Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History, 1498-1945 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1953); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: California University Press, 1998).

[3] Wang Gungwu, “The Nanhai Trade: a study of the early history of Chinese trade in the South China Sea”, (M.A. Thesis, University of Malaya, 1956) published in Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Kuala Lumpur, Monograph Issue, Vol. 31, part 2(1958) (New paperback edition published by Eastern Universities Press in 2003).

[4] Wang Gungwu, “The China Seas: Becoming an Enlarged Mediterranean”, in The East Asian ‘Mediterranean’: Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce and Human Migration, edited by Angela Schottenhammer (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag, 2008), pp. 7-22.

[5] The four ingredients are drawn from a range of histories of the ancient Mediterranean,including the classical works of Herodotus’History аnd Thuсуdidеs’ Peloponnesian War; and modern studies by M.I. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926); and Max Cary, The Geographic Background of Greek and Roman History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949). On later periods, important writings include those by Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: an Introduction to History, translated by Franz Rosenthal (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); and the modern studies Henri Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, translated by Bernard Miall (New York: Barnes & Noble,1939); and Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951-1954).

[6] Paul Pelliot, “Deux itinéraires de Chine en Inde à la fi n du VIIIe siècle”, Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême Orient. Vol. IV (1904) : 215-363; 372-373; and George Coedes, Les États hindouises d’Indochine et d’Indonésie (Paris: E. De Bocard, 1948).

[7] J. J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1971); Tanaka Takeo田中健夫 (ed.), Kamakura Bakufu to Moko shurai鎌倉幕府と蒙古襲来(Tokyo: Gyosei, 1986); Yu Changsen, 喻常森 Yuandai haiwai maoyi. 元代海外貿易(Xi’an:Xibei daxue chubanshe, 1994); John Andrew Boyle, The Mongol World Empire, 1206-1370(London: Variorum Reprints, 1977).

[8] Ma Huan, Ying-yai sheng-lan. ‘The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores’. Translated by J. V.G. Mills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, for the Hakluyt Society, 1970). Also Roderich Ptak, China and the Asian Seas: Trade, Travel, and Visions of the Others (1400-1750)(Brook fi eld, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998); Edward L. Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming dynasty, 1405/1433 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2006).

[9] W.P. Groeneveldt, Notes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca, Compiled from Chinese Sources, Batavia (1876, republished 1880 in Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, vol. 39); Henri Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica: Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l'Empire chinois, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1881-1885);Friedrich Hirth, China and the Roman Orient: Researches into Their Ancient and Mediaeval Relations as Represented in old Chinese Records (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1885); and Friedrich Hirth and W.W. Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua: his work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chi (Zhufan zhi) (St Petersburg:Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911). Also, Paul Wheatley, “Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in Sung Maritime Trade”, Journal of Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 32:2 (1959): 1-139; and Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula Before A.D. 1500 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1961).

[10] Lin Tien-wai林天蔚and Joseph Wong黃約瑟 (eds.), Gudai Zhong-Han-Ri guanxi yanjiu古代中韓日關係研究 [Studies on Relations between China, Korea, and Japan in Ancient Times] (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1987); Charlotte von Verschuer, Across the Perilous Sea: Japanese trade with China and Korea From the Seventh to the Sixteenth Centuries, Translated by Kristen Lee Hunter (Ithaca, New York: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006); and Wontack Hong, Korea and Japan in East Asian History: a Tripolar Approach to East Asian History (Seoul: Kudara International, 2006).

[11] O.H.K. Spate, The Spanish Lake, Volume 1 of The Pacific since Magellan (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1979). Chang T’ien-tse, Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644: a synthesis of Portuguese and Chinese Sources (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1933); K.N. Chaudhuri,Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Anthony Disney and Emily Booth(eds.), Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia (New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Uma Das Gupta (ed.), The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500-1800: Collected Essays of Ashin Das Gupta (New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

[12] Lo Jung-pang, “The Emergence of China as a Sea Power during the Late Sung and Early Yüan Periods”, Far Eastern Quarterly 14:4 (1955): 489-504;“The Decline of the Early Ming Navy”, Oriens Extremus 5:2 (1958):149-168; and“Maritime Commerce and its Relation to the Sung Navy”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 12:1 (1969): 57-101.

[13] James C. Hsiung, “Sea Power, Law of the Sea, and a Sino-Japanese East China Sea‘Resource War’”, in James C. Hsiung (ed.), China and Japan at Odds: Deciphering the Perpetual Conflict (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 133-154; Bruce Swanson,Eighth Voyage of the Dragon: a History of China’s Quest for Seapower (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982); Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power.(London: Frank Cass, 2002); Alexandra Chieh-Cheng Huang,“Chinese Maritime Modernization and its Security Implications: the Deng Xiaoping Era and Beyond”(Ph.D.Dissertation, George Washington University, 1994).

References

Boyle, John Andrew. The Mongol World Empire, 1206-1370. London: Variorum Reprints, 1977.

Braudel, Fernand. La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II. Paris: Libraire Armand Colin, 1949.

Cary, Max. The Geographic Background of Greek and Roman History. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1949.

Chang T’ien-tse. Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644: a synthesis of Portuguese and Chinese Sources. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1933.

Chaudhuri, K.N. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Coedes, George. Les états hindouises d’Indochine et d’Indonésie. Paris: E. De Bocard, 1948.

Cordier, Henri. Bibliotheca Sinica: Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l’ Empire chinois. 2 vols. Paris: E. Leroux, 1881-1885.

Disney, Anthony and Emily Booth (eds.). Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Dreyer, Edward L. Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty,1405/1433. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.

Frank, Andre Gunder. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age.Berkeley: California University Press, 1998.

Groeneveldt, W.P. Notes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca, compiled from Chinese Sources. Batavia: W. Bruining, 1876. Republished in Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, vol. 39 (1880).

Guillot, Claude, Denys Lombard and Roderich Ptak (eds.), From the Mediterranean to the China Sea: Miscellaneous Notes. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998.

Gupta, Uma Das (ed.). The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500-1800:Collected Essays of Ashin Das Gupta. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Hirth, Friedrich. China and the Roman Orient: Researches into their Ancient and Mediaeval Relations as represented in old Chinese Records. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh,1885.

Hirth, Friedrich and W.W. Rockhill. Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chi (Zhufan zhi). St Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911.

Hong, Wontack. Korea and Japan in East Asian History: a Tripolar Approach to East Asian History. Seoul: Kudara International, 2006.

Hsiung, James C. “Sea Power, Law of the Sea, and a Sino-Japanese East China Sea‘Resource War’”. In China and Japan at Odds: Deciphering the Perpetual Con fl ict, edited by James C. Hsiung, pp. 133-154. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Huang, Alexandra Chieh-Cheng. “Chinese Maritime Modernization and its Security Implications: the Deng Xiaoping Era and Beyond”. Ph.D.Dissertation, George Washington University, 1994.

Kane, Thomas M. Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power. London: Frank Cass, 2002.

Khaldun, Ibn. The Muqaddimah: an Introduction to History, translated by Franz Rosenthal. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

Lin Tien-wai林天蔚and Joseph Wong 黃約瑟 (eds.). Gudai Zhong-Han-Ri guanxi yanjiu古代中韓日關係研究 [Studies on Relations between China, Korea,and Japan in Ancient Times]. Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1987.

Lo, Jung-pang. “The Emergence of China as a Sea Power during the Late Sung and Early Yüan Periods”. Far Eastern Quarterly, 14:4, (1955), pp. 489-504;

Lo, Jung-pang. “The Decline of the Early Ming Navy”. Oriens Extremus 5, no.2, (1958): 149-168;

Lo, Jung-pang. “Maritime Commerce and its Relation to the Sung Navy”.Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 12, no. 1 (1969): 57-101.

Ma Huan. Ying-yai sheng-lan. ‘The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores’. Translated by J. V. G. Mills. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, for the Hakluyt Society,1970.

Panikkar, K.M. Asia and Western Dominance: a Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History, 1498-1945. London: Allen & Unwin, 1953.

Pelliot, Paul. “Deux itinéraires de Chine en Inde à la fi n du VIIIe siècle”,Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême Orient Vol. IV (1904): 215-363; 372-373.

Pirenne, Henri. Mahomet et Charlemagne, translated by Bernard Miall. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1939.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Ptak, Roderich. China and the Asian Seas: Trade, Travel, and Visions of the Others(1400-1750). Brook fi eld, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998.

Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680. Vol. 1: The Lands below the winds; Vol. 2: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988 and 1993.

Rostovtzeff, M.I. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1926.

Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951-1954.

Saunders, J. J. The History of the Mongol Conquests. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1971.

Spate, O.H.K. The Spanish Lake, Volume 1 of The Pacific since Magellan.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979.

Sutherland, Heather. “Southeast Asian History and the Mediterranean Analogy”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies vol. 34, no. 1 (2003): 1-20.

Swanson, Bruce. Eighth Voyage of the Dragon: a History of China’s Quest for Seapower. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982.

Tanaka Takeo田中健夫 (ed.). Kamakura Bakufu to Moko shurai鎌倉幕府と蒙古襲来. Tokyo: Gyosei, 1986.

Verschuer, Charlotte von. Across the Perilous Sea: Japanese trade with China and Korea from the seventh to the sixteenth Centuries. Translated by Kristen Lee Hunter.Ithaca, New York: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006.

Wang Gungwu, “The China Seas: Becoming an Enlarged Mediterranean”.In The East Asian ‘Mediterranean’: Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce and Human Migration, edited by Angela Schottenhammer, pp. 7-22. Wiesbaden:Harrossowitz Verlag, 2008.

Wang Gungwu. “The Nanhai Trade: a study of the early history ofChinese trade in the South China Sea”. M.A. Thesis, University of Malaya,1956, published in Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Kuala Lumpur, Monograph Issue, Vol. 31, part 2 (1958) (New paperback edition published by Eastern Universities Press in 2003).

Wheatley, Paul. “Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in Sung Maritime Trade”. Journal of Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 32:2(1959): 1-139.

Wheatley, Paul. The Golden Khersonese: studies in the historical geography of the Malay Peninsula before A.D. 1500. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1961.

Wong, R. Bin. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Yu Changsen 喻常森 . Yuandai haiwai maoyi 元代海外貿易 . Xi’an: Xibei daxue chubanshe, 1994.