Archival sources of Southeast Asian history in the national archives of India

Abstract

Trade and cultural contacts between India and Southeast Asia go well back into prehistoric past but not much has come down to posterity in the way of recorded activities until after the end of the 15th century when written records become fairly voluminous and as such significant. Portuguese pioneering exploit of rounding the Cape of Bona Esperanza, their establishment of factories and garrisons at strategic points all along the Malabar coast and the Malay peninsula - the focus of the whole network of Indian ocean trade - and the enormous profits from the spice trade which accrued to them, aroused in its wake a spirit of distant navigation and a desire to share in the commerce among the rising maritime powers of northern Europe. Thus while the Portuguese commercial empire in the eastern waters was paramount for another hundred years or so, it began to be challenged by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, followed closely by the English, the French and the Danes. It is the written record of these transactions available in India which forms the subject matter of this paper.