This region is often referred to as ‘maritime South East Asia’, with the more general term ‘South East Asia’ dating only to World War II. Although Japan used the term ‘Tonan Ajiya’ (‘South East Asia’ [lit. ‘East South Asia’]) from the late nineteenth century, in European languages its use did not become widespread until the 1950s, bringing together mainland states between China and India with the islands. The formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 added to the notion that mainland and maritime were one, yet in practice they have divergent interests and religion, now as in the past.
Europeans had long termed the islands the ‘Indian archipelago’ or ‘Insulindia’. Alternatively they referred to them as the ‘Malay archipelago’, neither term distinguishing between the Indonesian and Philippine island groups. The area corresponded roughly to ‘Nusantara’, a name dating to the thirteenth century and the Java-based Majapahit empire. Nusa is a Sanskrit-derived word meaning ‘island’.
‘Nusantara’ defined the region of islands and coasts over which Majapahit rule, tribute or mercantile influence extended. It covered most of what is now Indonesia, part of the Philippine archipelago, the central Vietnam coast and the Malay peninsula. Beyond its Javanese heart it did not rule directly but held sway over the many small mercantile states of the region. ‘Nusantara’ in Malay today has a narrower meaning: ‘archipelago’, specifically the Indonesian archipelago. So this book uses ‘Nusantaria’ to denote a broader zone, the single maritime region between the northern entrance to the Melaka and Luzon straits, and the Banda islands in the extreme east of the archipelago. While predominantly describing the wider Malay world, and touching too on Taiwan, Madagascar and the Marianas, Nusantaria links to the coastal Thai, Chinese, Tamil and other players in the history of the exchange of goods, people and ideas both within the region and with peoples to the west and north-east. It corresponds also to the use by the distinguished archaeologist of South East Asia, Wilhelm Solheim, of the term ‘Nusantao’ to define the mostly Austronesian-speaking peoples of the ancient trading networks of the islands and coasts (tao means people in many Austronesian languages).
The maritime zone is now mostly associated with its largest component, the South China Sea. But even that is a misnomer. The Chinese themselves used the term ‘Nanhai’ or ‘Nanyang’ (‘South Sea’ or ‘Southern Ocean’) for seas that included the South China Sea but could also refer to southern seas generally. Likewise, the Vietnamese used geographical location, calling it the ‘East Sea’ as it lay to their east. More recently and in response to Chinese claims to almost the whole sea, the Philippines has begun to refer to at least its adjacent water as the ‘West Philippine Sea’. The term ‘Philippine Sea’ had been used by early seventeenth-century European mapmakers. Indonesia refers to its portion as the Natuna Sea, after the island group of that name off the Borneo coast. This includes its archipelagic seas north of the islands, which fall within China’s extravagant claims to sea extending 1,600 kilometres from its mainland.
The name ‘South China Sea’ is a European invention of relatively recent date. When the Portuguese first got there in the sixteenth century they called it the ‘Cham Sea’, after the mercantile state which had long existed on the coast of what is now central Vietnam. Arabs at one time called the southern part of it the ‘Malay Sea’ or the ‘Spice Sea’ because it was close to the Spice Islands.5 The more northern part was known as the ‘Sanf Sea’, a reference to Champa.6 Others called it the ‘Luzon Sea’ after the main island of today’s Philippines. Westerners long referred to these seas as part of the Indian Seas. The name ‘Indonesia’ (‘Indian islands’) reflects this. ‘China Sea’ only came into western use around 1800. ‘South’ was added in the early twentieth century.
A few hundred years ago, before the territorial expansion of China to Taiwan and southwards by Vietnam, Nusantaria was almost entirely Malay – to use the term ‘Malay’ in its broad cultural and linguistic sense. Even today these generic Malays of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei own most of its coastline. They are peoples who have traded with and occasionally paid tribute to China, and have absorbed Chinese immigration but, at least until very recently, have been more influenced by ideas from India, the Arab and Persian worlds and Europe than by China.
To the Chinese, the whole region was the ‘Nanyang’, meaning ‘Southern Sea’, a region inhabited by darker-skinned people and thus often seen as inferior in a system that associated skin tone with social status. For many Indians it was an overseas extension of their Hindu-Buddhist culture. Even now the marks left by Indian religion, writing and art are more evident than those of China. As for the peoples who actually lived in this region, they mostly saw it in terms of individual entities, of spheres of political influence, religion and trade, which had long been linked through dynasties and rivalries.
The maritime zone now comprises two modern archipelagic states: all of the Philippines and most of Indonesia, Brunei and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo. To these island entities must be added the Malay peninsula, where Malays remain in charge, and, until quite recently, much of coastal Vietnam. These last two share similarities to the island states because their peoples are wedged between forest and water and so traditionally looked seaward.
Far Outliers 