The Chinese in Maritime Southeast Asia: Trade and Merchant Communities in 17th-century Insulindia
$48.00 SGD
Forthcoming May 2025
Marie-Sybille de Vienne
The 17th century represents a turning point in the global history of trade, as connections between Asian and European markets increased dramatically at this time. The Dutch East-India Company (or VOC) was central to this process, but— counter to the VOC’s aims—the winners of the game in maritime Southeast Asia were often Chinese merchants, the only economic agents capable at the time of both trading in major Southeast Asian commercial hubs and developing exchanges with China and Japan. The Chinese operated with a flexibility of means and a fluidity of management that allowed them to react rapidly and quickly gain returns on investment. In Batavia, as in other Southeast Asian emporiums, the increasingly numerous and diverse Chinese elites assumed direct responsibility for the management of their community, making them the most important non-European free community—in wealth as in number—in the city during the second half of the 17th century.
Translated from the French, and adapted and updated, this book tells this remarkable story through an examination of the VOC’s abundant sources, which record relations between the Chinese minority and the Dutch rulers who relied upon them.
Marie-Sybille de Vienne is a professor at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations, INALCO, Paris, in the Faculty of Southeast Asian Studies.
Publication Year: 2025
368 pp, 254 x 178mm
52 b/w images, 2 maps, 38 graphs, 39 tables
Paperback
ISBN: 978-981-325-280-6