Recent advances in the history of southeast Asia in the 16th, 17th AND 18th centuries

Abstract

For the purposes of this paper, I have taken the term "recent" as applying to the period since 1955. In that year J. C. van Leur's Indonesian Trade and Society and B. Schrieke's Indonesian Socio- logical Studies were published.¹ The ideas of van Leur and Schrieke, particularly the former, must be the basis for any modern study of Southeast Asian history because they challenged the excessive attention hitherto paid to the role of the European in Asia. Van Leur who was influenced greatly by the writings of Max Weber, started from the hypothesis that "modern capitalism" in the sense of the exploitation of world markets by the use of mass-production, free labour and free capital did not begin to take shape until 1820. He argued therefore that the machinery of effective commercial exploitation was lacking in the administration of the Portuguese colonial government and the Dutch East India Company. The Portuguese in particular appeared to him as little better than piratical adventurers and petty traders whose sole contribution to the Southeast Asian scene was a limited military superiority. Van Leur was confirmed in this minimal view of the European impact prior to 1800 by the mass of information which he was able to collect concerning the social and commercial life of the north Javanese ports at the beginning of the 17th century. He suggested that the Javanese princes, nobles and state officials, in conjunction with an alien "bourgeoise patriciate" of Chinese, Gujerat or Bengali origin, formed a commercially active group which was as powerful capitalistically as the wealthy banking houses of contemporary Europe. The Asian equivalents of the Tuggers and Welsers of Augsburg were the governors, temenggongs, shahbandars and pengerans of Bantam, Tegal, Japara, Jambi and Banjarmasin. The trade which they financed was essentially a "peddling trade", in the sense that it involved the exchange of limited quantities of highly valuable merchandise. Rice was the only article of Indonesian commerce which Van Leur believed to be handled in bulk.