The Shipping Industry in Southeast Asia in the Early First Millennium CE: Operations and Networks

This paper lays out out the operation of the shipping industry in Southeast Asia in the early first millennium CE. The term “shipping industry” signals the importance of a high level of cooperative endeavor and capital investment, both to build the ships and to operate them profitably. Most narratives of Asian maritime trade focus on the second millennium CE, when trade was dominated by outsiders: first the Arabs, then the Chinese, and eventually the Europeans. Yet prior to the eighth century, shipping based in Southeast Asia dominated maritime exchange in the South China Sea. By focusing on the earlier period we can better assess the agency and impact of Southeast Asians themselves in the development of maritime networks: the construction, size, and operation of the ships; methods of navigation; the operation of the shipping business; the likely role of rulers in the trade; and its central nodes and route networks. The presentation will show that Southeast Asian maritime shipping was vigorous and well-developed long before the rise of the Tang Empire in East Asia in the seventh century, the ceramics revolution of the late eighth and ninth centuries, and the subsequent impacts of Middle Eastern and Chinese shipping.