“IN STRANGER TIDES”: INTER-CULTURAL CONTACTS, CONTRACTS AND LEGALITIES IN EARLY MODERN MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA (1700-1850)

In a description of a series of “small” voices, political vignettes and “micro-histories”, this thesis offers an introductory foray to the quotidian rites and rituals of commerce that marked the inter-cultural contacts in early modern Southeast Asia and attempts to reconstruct a history of international diplomacy from below. Even though maritime history of Southeast Asia has been a rich terrain of study, legal texts, and social rites of commerce that aided the expansion of maritime trade in early modern South-east Asia has been a neglected site of enquiry. In a survey of sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth century trading practices, this thesis demonstrates how bonds of ethnicity, mercenary intimacies and conversion were buttressed by written maritime laws and normative injunctions. The first section of the thesis thus describes the codification and the expansion of the Malay maritime code Undang-Undang Laut and Undang Undang Melaka and the laws of Amanna Gappa. The second section of this thesis proceeds to describe the activities of the Shah-Bandars in the region while the third section studies a series of gift giving rituals. How the centuries of inter-cultural commercial negotiations produced a fluid yet mutually intelligible, composite “juridical field” of textual replications, legal repertoires, repetitive diplomatic gestures and conducts remain the moot point of this thesis. Going beyond the binary of “pure” gifts and commercial contracts, this thesis argues how traditional “non-market” forms of exchange especially gift-giving, “status” driven rituals, treaty-making, trading laws, writing and contracting intersected to form hybrid assemblages which forms an under-studied episode in the genealogy of modern contract regimes and nineteenth century international legal regimes. In short, this thesis excavates the makings of what roughly could be called a cultural ledger of commerce in early modern insular Southeast Asia.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A., History

Level thesis:degree_level

Master of Arts

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

Cornell University

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• chakraborty, rukmini

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Travers, Thomas Robert
• Tagliacozzo, Eric

• Diplomatic History
• Early Modern
• Maritime law
• South-east Asia

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7298/r59s-7184

Dc Identifier Other

ProQuest Submission ID: 11202
ProQuest Publication ID: 28540183

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/110385