Before the Europeans came
For this book Philip Bowring has methodically organized thousands of scholarly documents and historical anecdotes covering a vast stretch of time and an exceptionally complex geographical area. The great challenge involved in writing a history of this tropical region is that so little primary source material has survived the passage of time. Structures of wood, fabrics, and documents on parchment or paper rarely survived more than a few generations in the humid tropical climate or the periodic wars and piratical raiding which plagued the emerging city states. Only a few great stone monuments remain such as Angkor Wat, Borobudur, and Prambanan as landmarks of the major centers of civilization which once thrived around them with populations of hundreds of thousands and political
“Nusantaria” is a distinct cultural region which developed its own maritime technology, trade routes and civilization considerably more than a thousand years before European powers overran the region in the early 16th century.
Bowring has uncovered other important sources of historical information in the official Chinese histories of the Tang (7th century), Sung, and later dynasties when the Chinese became more active in the region. Buddhism was spreading rapidly through the archipelagoes and to trading ports along the Thai and Vietnamese coasts coming mainly from India and Sri Lanka. Chinese monks were actually coming south to study in Buddhist centers in Srivijaya. At the time, the Nusantarian ocean-going ships were larger than the those of the Chinese and could make a trip from Guangzhou in southern China to Sumatra in less than three weeks.
Over the last few years, marine archeology has also been a very important source of information for Southeast Asian historians as many wrecks of trading vessels have been found in Philippine back and forth from China and Southeast Asia to India and beyond. Some centuries later, the center of power moved southeast to Java near what is now modern Surabaya. The wealthy and cosmopolitan empire of Majapahit dominated Nusantaria during the 15th century with its control of maritime trade and a rich source of agricultural