This book attempts to reveal historical dynamism of transforming contemporary Maritime Asia and to identify key driving forces or agencies for the evolution and transformation of Maritime Asia in the context of global history studies. It seeks to accomplish these goals by connecting different experiences in Maritime Asia both historically from the late early-modern to the present and spatially covering both East and Southeast Asia. Focusing on interactions on and through oceans, seas, and islands, Maritime Asia can deal with any aspects of human society and the nature, including diplomacy, maritime trade, cultural exchange, identity and others. Its interest in supra-regional interactions and networks, migration and diaspora, combined with its microscopic concern with local and trans-border affairs, will surely contribute to the common task of contemporary social sciences and humanities, to relativize the conventional framework based on the nation-state. In this regard, research in Maritime Asia claims to be an integral part of global studies. Part I deals with long-distance trade and diplomatic relations during the late early modern era and its transition to the modern era, mainly in the nineteenth century. Part II focuses on the emergence of transregional and trans-oceanic Asian networks and the original institution-building efforts in the Asia-Pacific region in the twentieth century.

Maritime power has been a key defining parameter of economic vitality and geostrategic power of nations. This book explores how the first decade of the 21st century has witnessed the rise of China and India as confident economic powers pivoting on high growth rates, exponential expansion of science, technology and industrial growth.

Professor Shaffer tells the story of the fabled islands of Southeast Asia from 300 B.C., by which time their inhabitants had learned to sail the monsoon winds, to A.D. 1528, when Islam became dominant in the region. The story of Maritime Southeast Asia world during this period makes fascinating reading and is of immense significance in world history.

This volume advocates a trans-regional, and maritime-focused, approach to studying the genesis, development and circulation of Esoteric (or Tantric) Buddhism across Maritime Asia from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries ce. The book lays emphasis on the mobile networks of human agents (‘Masters’), textual sources (‘Texts’) and images (‘Icons’) through which Esoteric Buddhist traditions spread. Capitalising on recent research and making use of both disciplinary and area-focused perspectives, this book highlights the role played by Esoteric Buddhist maritime networks in shaping intra-Asian connectivity. In doing so, it reveals the limits of a historiography that is premised on land-based transmission of Buddhism from a South Asian ‘homeland’, and advances an alternative historical narrative that overturns the popular perception regarding Southeast Asia as a ‘periphery’ that passively received overseas influences. Thus, a strong point is made for the appreciation of the region as both a crossroads and rightful terminus of Buddhist cults, and for the re-evaluation of the creative and transformative force of Southeast Asian agents in the transmission of Esoteric Buddhism across mediaeval Asia.

This comprehensive history provides a fresh interpretation of Southeast Asia from 100 to 1500, when major social and economic developments foundational to modern societies took place on the mainland (Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) and the island world (Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines). Incorporating the latest archeological evidence and international scholarship, Kenneth R. Hall enlarges upon prior histories of early Southeast Asia that did not venture beyond 1400, extending the study of the region to the Portuguese seizure of Melaka in 1511. Written for a wide audience of non-specialists, the book will be essential reading for all those interested in Asian and world history.

This book is concerned with both the national security concerns of Asian maritime nations and the security of the Asian maritime commons. These are defined as the Pacific and Indian Oceans and associated seas, bays, and gulfs, with their included sea lines of communication (SLOCs). The most useful geographical designation for maritime Asia is the “Indo-Pacific.” Bernard Cole provides both a survey of the maritime strategies of the primary nations of the Indo-Pacific region and an evaluation of the domestic and international politics that drive those strategies. The United States, Canada, Russia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, China, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Iran, the smaller Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf states are all surveyed and analyzed. The United States, Japan, China, and India not surprisingly draw the most attention, given their large modern navies and distant strategic reach. The author concludes that the United States remains the dominant maritime power in this huge region, stretching from Canada to the Persian Gulf, despite its lack of a traditionally strong merchant marine. U.S. maritime power remains paramount, due primarily to its dominant navy. The Chinese naval modernization program deservedly receives a good deal of public attention, but Cole argues that on a day-to-day basis the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, as its navy is named, is the most powerful maritime force in Far Eastern waters, while the modernizing Indian Navy potentially dominates the Indian Ocean. In fact, a focus of this work is the exemplary description of all the region’s navies, with the author noting the naval arms race that is underway, particularly in the area of submarine acquisition. Cole is careful to couch this phenomenon in the regional concerns about Chinese naval expansion and the desire to ensure a continued, massive U.S. naval presence. The current naval developments in the region evince elements of a naval arms race, but lack the coherent maritime strategies to make naval developments dangerous to regional peace and security. Most telling will be whether United States power and focus remain on the region, while adjusting to continued Chinese maritime power in a way acceptable to both nations. No other current or recent work provides such a complete description of the Indo-Pacific region’s navies and maritime strategies, while analyzing the current and future impact of those forces.

This book brings something new in both dimension and detail to our understanding of Southeast Asia from the first to the fourteenth centuries. It puts Southeast Asia in the context of the international trade that stretched from Rome to China and draws upon a wide range of recent scholarship in history and the social sciences to redefine the role that this trade played in the evolution of the classical states of Southeast Asia. By examining the sources of Southeast Asia's classical era with the tools of modern economic history, the author shows that well-developed socioeconomic and political networks existed in Southeast Asia before significant foreign economic penetration took place. With the growth of interest in Southeast Asian commodities and the refocusing of the major East-West commercial routes through the region during the early centuries of the Christian era, internal conditions within Southeast Asia adjusted to accommodate increased external contacts. Hall takes the view that Southeast Asia's response to international trade was a reflection of preexisting patterns of trade and statecraft. In the forty years since Coede's monumental work The Indianized States of Southeast Asia was published, a great deal of archaeological and epigraphical work has been done and new interpretations advanced. By integrating new theoretical constructs, recent archaeological finds and interpretations, and his own informed reading and research, Kenneth R. Hall puts his historical narrative on a large canvas and treats areas not previously brought together for discussion along comparative lines. Like Coedes' work, his book will be important as a basic text for the teaching of early Southeast Asian history.