Book Reviews

 SUTHERLAND, HEATHER, Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, c.1600-c.1906. National University of Singapore Press, Singapore [etc.] 2021. 560 pp. .Maps. £36.50.

For a long time, it has become a truism that maritime societies were of ‘people without history.’ Therefore, they can only be properly understood in terms of their relation with colonial context and states became the main unit of analytical interpretation. Shifting from this ‘regnant paradigm,’ in this book Sutherland draws emphasis on the Eastern Archipelagos’ maritime history to study myriad connections and exchange persisted between both indigenous and exogenous communities. Admittedly, the Eastern Archipelagos has been marginally conceived unimportant to more dominant units of analysis such as ‘state formation, the rise and fall of regimes, the transformative role of European trade’ which according to Sutherland had denied the role of ‘local agency.’

    Eastern Archipelagos is a region of vast complexity yet scholarships about it seemed scarce in comparison to any other region in Southeast Asia. Sutherland was not caught up in common traditional narrative in her elucidation of past discourses which in most cases tended to pivot primarily on politically rigid categories of nation-states. As she has noted elsewhere, boundaries are a ‘contingent device.’ They are fluid and could expand and shrink contingent upon inquiries. In this case, the contingent region of the Eastern Archipelagos consisted of the vast scattered islands, extending from the Philippines south to the east of Java Sea, and from the Borneo east coast to the far shores of west New Guinea. Those areas now mostly cover eastern Indonesia, barring the Philippines south and Borneo Malaysia. The spatial framework of this book predicated upon the underlying commonality shared within communities of this area wherein was propelled by either mutual or coerced allegations.  

    The book is divided into two parts which reflect the author’s in-depth comprehension of the subject and the way in which this analysis might be best presented. The first section, Foundation, aims to illuminate readers on the underlying frameworks of this region such as geographic, socio-economic, and polities. The introductory chapters enable us to contextualize motley communities as well as the types of interrelationships and exchanges that tied those societies. Contrary to what the majority normally presumes the Eastern Archipelagos in fact was never isolated and always part of a larger trading system. Thus, it brings us to the second part of the book, Glimpsed Histories which aims are to fully zoom in into politically fragmented societies around this water-centred community. On the discussion about the indigenous organizational polities, Sutherland was not only concerned with dominant socio-economic alliances such as Makassar and Maluku but also took time to comprehensively discuss the much smaller fragmented societies, like seafaring communities.

    Sutherland borrowed primarily the conceptual vocabulary of Fernand Braudel to sketch out narratives of this region which spans from the 1600s to the 1900s. The Longue durée narrative is imperative in part because we can discern continuity and change, the shared common pattern, and the intricate relationships between motley societies in a complex and nuanced sense. Above all, we would witness the way in which trade acts as a motor of keeping everything in constant motion and valuable indigenous commodities linked and propelled the communities into the transoceanic trading system.

    Sutherland consulted a wide variety of material resources, ranging from books and articles, published primary sources, colonial archives, and many more. Not using local sources should not be understood as a way of silencing local agencies but due more to the lack, if not, the absence of records of indigenous languages. And hence made the author turn to external records such as those of Arabs, Chinese, or Colonial origins. Such an act inevitably resulted in difficulties to retrieve the voice of the ‘local agency’. Nevertheless, the engagement with exogenous sources especially those of Chinese and Arab manuscripts and European travel accounts aided her immensely at sketching out the existing relationships and kinships and exchanges that took place between communities and beyond. Sutherland admitted it herself that the employment of “reading against the grain” is deemed insufficient to illuminate and ‘analyze events, personalities, and structures’ of the societies.

    Eastern Archipelagos was a vibrant and active set of communities. Before the onset of Western expansion, this zone of trade had already been in constant motion for centuries. Trade and politics were inherent categories that bound communities together. Known as a zone with fragmented political units, people knew where to look for protection. Outside actors tended to need settled ports in order to exchange material objects either from forests or the sea. In this case, the already powerful local communities emerged as travel hubs. The population was mainly concentrated in lowland settlements. Big transit hubs like Makassar, Maluku, and Nusa Tenggara were a recurrent theme of the book to which they were sketched in correspond to their development through centuries. It is hoped that zooming in on those dominant regions could in any sense render a more nuanced picture of this integrated region. The region is best understood through chronological narratives to glimpse continuity and change. We would then witness how trade and exchange emerged, thrived, and developed in each pertinent community over the span of three centuries.

    The notion and forms of identity and power relations are distinct and unique. The author puts emphasis on the way local communities and migrant settlers forged ties to each other and hence resulted in the renewed notion of social identity. The coastal leaders would employ unnecessary acts to legitimize their power over goods and commodities. Migrant communities settled and intermingled with indigenous societies thus shaping renewed hybrid identity. Sutherland understood this concept very well and sketched out how these communities redefined and position themselves in broader categories of social entities.

    Taken as a whole, this book is comprehensive in character. This book can be a good starting point for future scholars and historians who have a penchant for studying maritime history specifically on the eastern archipelagos. Prospective researchers might find this region as a muddled and unpromising unit of analysis, but thorough and attentive treads on specific local polities might help in tracing the connectedness and distinctiveness of the region.