List of Maps and Illustrations Glossary Preface Introduction 1. Child of a Drowned Parent 2. Nusantaria’s Defining Features and Early People 3. To Babylon and Back 4. Ghosts of Early Empires 5. Culture from India, Goods from China 6. Srivijaya: Vanished Great Mandala 7. Java Takes Centre Stage 8. Tamil Tigers of Trade 9. Champa: Master of the East Sea 10. Malagasy Genes and African Echoes 11. China Raises its Head 12. The Majapahit Good Life 13. Tremble and Obey: the Zheng He Voyages 14. Nails, Dowels and Improbable Ships 15. Malay Melaka’s Lasting Legacy 16. The Northern Outliers 17. Islam’s Great Leap East 18. Nusantaria: Holed near the Waterline 19. Barangays and Baybayin 20. Makassar, Bugis and Freedom of the Seas 21. Where Kings Reign but Priests Rule 22. The Sulu Factor: Trading, Raiding, Slaving 23. Nusantaria’s Existential Crisis 24. Labour, Capital, Kongsi: The Power of the Chinese 25. High Noon of Occupation 26. Empty Lands No Longer 27. Freedom, Fears and the Future Notes Bibliography Index
Unique history of Maritime Southeast Asia.
Philip Bowring is an Asia-based journalist. He was formerly the editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and has written for the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the South China Morning Post and the Guardian. He studied at Cambridge University and is an expert on maritime history and the history of Southeast Asia.
This fast-paced book by a respected journalist describes how the
islands and coastal territories of Southeast Asia have consistently
been a crucial element in world history … The book is a good
corrective to global histories that tend to study the world from a
European- or Sino-centered perspective … [It] brings forward a
lively story about how trade, religion, and culture crossed many
boundaries, including oceans, from earliest recorded history,
centrally involving the islands and coastal territories of
Southeast Asia. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division
undergraduates through faculty.
*CHOICE*
Bowring, in a remarkable display of taut writing, whisks us through
the archipelago’s geological eruption and mythic floods to the rise
and fall of multiple port states and emerging regional dynasties
and into the modern era of disruption, decay and dismemberment in
less than 300 pages. At the same time, he does a wonderful
demolition job on Beijing’s self-serving take on Asian history.
*South China Morning Post*
[Bowring] writes this rich and rambling history as in fact a
narrative of change and renewal … It is not easy to convince
policymakers that history might be the place to look for solutions,
yet we have nowhere else to turn to imagine what might yet be
possible.
*Literary Review*
Beautifully presented with numerous informative maps, excellent
illustrations and a very useful glossary, it is both a fascinating
read and a very valuable history of one of the world’s most
important regions.
*Baird Maritime*
A fascinating book ... packed with names, dates and events as
Asia's Great Archipelago is packed with islands—well over 30,000 on
anyone's count ... An important and timely book ... [For the
general reader] who is looking to better understand a complex and
pivotal region of the modern world, Empire of the Winds is a
must-read.
*Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society*
Rich in detail, and laced with vivid anecdotes ... Bowring notes
that Nusantaria is just as vulnerable to climate change as it was
after the Ice Age ... will the book's excellent maps of Nusantaria
have to be drawn again?
*The Correspondent*
This hardcover book is handsomely produced with a beautiful dust
jacket showing fine Nusantarian galleys in the Moluccas, recorded
during the Louis de Freycinet expedition of 1817–20. It’s a volume
that offers readers a deeper understanding of the vibrant maritime
peoples and events that unfolded literally on Australia’s tropical
northern doorstep, to better appreciate the complex development of
the human, political and economic region that we inhabit.
*New Mandela*
In contrast and happy opposition to the national frameworks that
nowadays limit most historical understandings of the diverse
islands and coastlines that make up Southeast Asia—or Nusantaria,
as he calls it, Bowring weaves a bright tapestry stretching across
the centuries and the oceans to capture our eyes and minds, and
remind us of the significance and richness of this often
misunderstood corner of the world.
*Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Institute (Malaysia)*
Philip Bowring has produced an absorbing and timely history of
maritime Southeast Asia. Ranging from prehistoric times to the
present, he deftly harnesses an impressive range of sources into a
compelling and fast-paced narrative. Bowring has important things
to say about how disparate elements – of geography, culture,
economic relations and political dynamics – have shaped a complex
region that has long been central to global history.
*Gareth Richards, Judge, Penang Book Prize 2019, founder of
Gerakbudaya Bookshop Penang and Hikayat*
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