The South China Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

the strong trading links between Southeast Asia and places to the west throughout the rest of the first millennium. Aromatic woods, resins, gold, spices and sometimes slaves were all in high demand. The evidence is not clear-cut but it seems that commerce with Indian kingdoms was more significant than with China for most of Southeast Asia in this period. There was a particular slump in trade with China at the end of the sixth century. However, once the Tang Dynasty had taken power in China in 618 and unified the lowlands for the first time in 200 years, the South China Sea trade seems to have takenoff again. Conditions were ripe for the emergence of other mandalas to take advantage of it. This was the era of the great ‘Indianised’ civilisations: Champa, Srivijaya and Angkor: the builders of the monuments which so excited European colonists and continue to fascinate us today.
    While Champa was still engaging in occasional acts of piracy, a more reliable trading partner emerged much further to the south, on the southeastern coast of Sumatra. For a long time, almost all that was known about Srivijaya came from Chinese descriptions. Even its location was a mystery. It wasn't until 1993 that the French archaeologist Pierre-Yves Manguin was able to confirm earlier suspicions that Srivijaya was located along the banks of the Musi River in what is now the Indonesian city of Palembang. Sadly, it seems that most of the remains of one of the most important Southeast Asian civilisations now lie beneath the PIHC fertiliser factory. The company used to be called PT Pupuk Sriwijaya but even that vestigial trace of the ancient city has gone, just like the ruins the company unknowingly obliterated in the 1960s.
    Srivijaya was a classic mandala – the dominant power among a group of trading settlements along the main east–west trade route. From its base it controlled access through both the Straits of Malacca to the north and the Sunda Strait to the south. By 683 it could command a military force around 20,000 strong – many of whom were probably nomadic Nusantao who could both trade and fight on behalf of the ruler. 6 East–west maritime trade was practically impossible without Srivijaya's consent. It was such a significant power that in 683 the Chinese Tang court sent its first embassy to what it called the Nanyang – island Southeast Asia – in order to seal the relationship between the two. 7 Srivijaya became, in effect, the Tang Dynasty's gatekeeper in the region.
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    Sea cucumbers, trepang in Indonesian, have been exported from Southeast Asia to China as both a delicacy and a medicine for at least 2,000 years. So it was fitting that a trepang diver should literally stumble on a find that radically changed our understanding of the history of trade in the South China Sea. In August 1998, while pursuing the slithering creatures across the seabed nearly 2 kilometres off the northern coast of the Indonesianisland of Belitung, the diver found a strange mound. It turned out to be an Arab dhow laden with more than 55,000 pieces of Chinese pottery – a cargo that would eventually sell for $32 million, though neither he nor his country would see much of that. Markings on the pottery would reveal that the ship had sunk in 826 CE in the middle of the Tang Dynasty, making this the earliest concrete evidence of direct sea trade between the Arab world and China.
    Evidence is what all historians seek and, in contrast to China with its centuries of written records, Southeast Asia lacks it. Few documents survive, waterside settlements have been swept away and a combination of tropical climate and voracious insects has disposed of most of the rest. The great lost cities bear useful inscriptions but there are still gaping holes in the historical record. The best chances of filling them lie in the discovery of physical artifacts. The smallest details, from the molecular composition of shells to the techniques used in building boats,