Category Archives: Southeast Asia

by | 9 October 2026 · 7:52 am

Japan’s Bakuryo Decision Makers

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 178-180:

[Foreign Minister] Matsuoka … was wrongly convinced of a swift German victory over the Soviet Union (as were many others, including some in Britain and the United States), but he was now rightly worried about the risk of a severe Anglo-American retaliation should Japan decide to occupy even more of France’s colonial territory. That would unduly advertise Japan’s greater ambition in the region, sending up a flare in Washington. The question of whether to strike north (the Soviet Union) or go south became the focus of Tokyo’s policy deliberations in late June 1941. The institutional forces and mechanisms that enabled such a debate would have a lasting impact on Tokyo’s policy formulation in the following months.

Broadly, Japan’s strategic outline was set by the Imperial General Headquarters, the highest organ of the high command of the Army and Navy General Staffs. The general staffs initiated strategic proposals, but so did the Army and Navy Ministries, which were part of the cabinet. In both these ministries, ministers resided at the top of the institutional hierarchy, followed by vice ministers, chiefs of various bureaus (including military affairs, personnel, legal affairs, and supply and accounts), and then chiefs of sections (subgroups within the bureaus). The general staffs had a similar chain of command, with the chiefs of staff at the top, followed by vice chiefs of staff, chiefs of divisions (including operations, information, and mobilization), and, finally, various section chiefs. Strategic proposals were rarely formulated at the top levels; they were usually initiated at the bureau and section levels of the ministries and at the division and section levels of the general staffs. With many specialist groups trying to advance their interests, arriving at a new policy was a very complicated business.

…

This sort of painstaking institutional groundwork was carried out by middle-ranking military planners, most of whom did not even attend the liaison meetings of the top leaders. They were aptly called bakuryo, which literally means “officers behind the curtains.” In the olden days, the word baku (curtains) had a double meaning in explaining concentration of power. One was political, synonymous with the government, as in bakufu (shogunate), meaning “a regime behind the curtains.” The other was strategic, alluding to the makeshift curtains used in encampments during field combat to identify the headquarters, where strategies were secretly debated among the select few. In prewar Japan, bakuryo had come to assume both the political task of negotiating and liaising with different sources of power and the more practical task of planning strategies. Because of the pivotal role bakuryo would come to assume in directing Japan’s policy after July, the term evoked the image of war planners furtively creating bellicose policies in the name of assisting and advising their superiors.

In the early summer of 1941, Japan’s three most influential bakuryo, all about fifty years old, were the chief of the Army General Staff’s Operations Division, Tanaka Shin’ichi; the chief of the Army Ministry’s Military Affairs Bureau, Muto Akira; and the aforementioned chief of the Navy Ministry’s Naval Affairs Bureau, Oka Takazumi. Muto and Oka had the crucial role of working together to create an interservice agreement. Tanaka, on the other hand, often worked alone, driven by a hostile worldview that made him the doomsday oracle of the Army General Staff. His division was the most aggressive. Tanaka consistently promoted a hard-line stance in China. For him, total victory was the only option, and the willingness Japanese leaders had been showing of late to negotiate with the United States was a disgrace. Refraining from war equated to cowardly surrender and was worse than losing everything after having fought a proper war. Because of the strength of his convictions and his forceful personality, and even though he was only third in the chain of command, he would come to have a greater influence on policy than anyone else on the Army General Staff.

…

The navy, too, had its middle-ranking hawks. The primary example was Ishikawa Shingo, a section chief in the Navy Ministry’s Military Affairs Bureau, also in his midforties. In 1931, around the time of the Manchurian Incident, he wrote a controversial book, Japan’s Crisis, under a pseudonym (and without permission from the navy, grounds enough for dismissal from the service). In it, he warned that the United States had entertained ambitions to control the East since the middle of the previous century, and he urged Japan to embark on a “great national march to ensure its right to survival” in the face of impending American threats. He thought the conferences on naval reduction that had been held in Washington and London were part of a Western conspiracy to obstruct Japan’s rise to prominence. Like the army’s Ishiwara Kanji, who had conceived of the Manchurian takeover, Ishikawa greatly influenced younger officers with his polemical book, turning many in what had traditionally been the pro-British navy into Nazi sympathizers. His fanatical personality had long alarmed the top brass. Nicknamed Wild Shot, he had been consistently passed over for influential positions for much of his career. Now, in the fall of 1940, Oka, chief of the Naval Affairs Bureau and a strong advocate of Japan’s Axis alliance, appointed Ishikawa leader of its Arms Division, overriding objections from the Personnel Bureau.

Ishikawa, along with other like-minded associates, formed the First Naval Defense Policy Committee (the so-called First Committee), which would shape the navy’s prowar position on the eve of Pearl Harbor. He believed, like Tanaka, that war with the United States was something not to be avoided but to be faced heroically. In his thinking, Japan’s military occupation of French Indochina was about preparing for an inevitable war rather than a possible one. Ishikawa, in fact, favored a forceful military advance beyond Indochinese borders and advocated the conquest of British Malaya within 1941. Ishikawa would later boast, “I am the one who brought Japan to the war course.”

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by | 8 October 2026 · 9:13 am

Unwinnable War Inevitable, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 231-234:

On the morning of August 27, 1941, a group of graduate students at the Total War Research Institute [総力戦研究所, Sōryokusen Kenkyūjo] gathered at the official residence of the prime minister of Japan. The atmosphere was subdued, even gloomy, a mood made even more so by the on-and-off late-summer rain. In a grand chandelier-lit hall, the researchers, whose average age was a mere thirty-three, came face-to-face with the cabinet. From nine o’clock in the morning until six in the evening, and then again the following day, they presented a lengthy report. After careful consideration of an array of ministerial data, and having simulated various diplomatic and strategic situations over the previous six weeks, the group concluded that should Japan go to war with the United States and its allies, Japan would necessarily lose. If such a war occurred, Japan might very well prevail in a few initial battles, but it would then be forced into a prolonged war that would see its resources dwindle and eventually run out.

The researchers making the predictions had had approximately ten years of professional experience before joining the Total War Research Institute. The institute was opened in April 1941 and was loosely modeled on Britain’s Imperial Defence College, where officers and leaders were trained in an intensive one-year program. It was meant to be an elite educational institution that would prepare Japan’s future leaders, both military and civilian, for greatness.

The high aspirations of its founders were never realized. Each ministry sent its top candidate, so the students were the crème de la crème of Japan’s midcareer civil servants. But despite the institute’s prime location in central Tokyo, the building itself was enough to make the hearts of the newly arriving students sink. It was a two-story shanty that looked especially incongruous surrounded by the imposing redbrick buildings of the government district. Many recruits felt they had been dragged down to a lowly student existence.

The researchers liked the institute’s first dean, Lieutenant General Iimura Jo. An amiable man and a formidable linguist fluent in French and Russian, he had lectured at an army academy in Turkey and had translated many strategic documents into Japanese. His magnetic personality attracted some interesting people to give special talks at the institute, including one by Ozaki Hotsumi, [Richard] Sorge’s fellow spy. Still, most students were dissatisfied with the life that had been suddenly forced upon them. They had expected to do high-level research but were instead reduced to attending basic physical education and other unoriginal and often ill-prepared classes.

So a trip to Japan’s central region, starting on June 20, 1941, came as a much-needed breather. The group visited the navy’s flagship, the Nagato, at Ise Bay, where Yamamoto Isoroku was headquartered. Aboard the Nagato and another warship, the Hyuga, both equipped with the navy’s latest technologies, the researchers had special permission to observe maneuvers. Everything seemed to go beautifully. But the visitors were most impressed by the capacity of the ships to simulate torpedo attacks in total darkness with astonishing precision, guided by a lighting system embedded in the torpedo itself.

After the maneuvers, Yamamoto was eager to hear what the visitors thought of his fleet. He called on Higasa Hiroo, who’d come to the institute from the governor-general’s office in Korea. He responded with due deference: “I was impressed with your defense system against submarines, sir. The same goes for your bombing strategies. But I sensed a certain vulnerability to aerial attacks.”

Higasa was quite right. A lesser military man might have been irritated by the young civilian’s impertinence, but Yamamoto instead rewarded Higasa with a bottle of whiskey, by then a prized commodity in Japan. Yamamoto was pleased that Higasa had looked beyond the obvious and spoken frankly, something he felt Japan’s elites were generally incapable of. Yes, those impressive naval ships were not as unassailable as they appeared, and Yamamoto would have been the first to admit it.

The researchers remained with the fleet until it reached Shibushi Bay in southern Japan. (Adjacent to this bay was Kinko Bay, which is shaped remarkably like Pearl Harbor.) It was then that the radio informed them of Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union. That, and the resultant decision to occupy southern Indochina, suddenly made the researchers’ work far more urgent.

Shortly after their return to Tokyo, the researchers were assigned a war game exercise. Each member was given a cabinet role to play in a hypothetical government of a hypothetical country (modeled on Japan). From their respective cabinet positions, they were to participate in a hypothetical war with a hypothetical enemy (the United States) and its allies. The exercise started on July 12; not so far away, Foreign Minister Matsuoka was attending his final liaison conference.

For this total war, the cabinet needed to develop policies covering all areas of military strategy, diplomacy, ideology, and economics. The guidelines presented to the researchers by their instructors noted that “the various plans need to correspond to the changes in both domestic and external situations anticipated in the coming two years.… Your policies need to be devised on a specific monthly basis or on a few-monthly basis.” The researchers were meant to simulate real-world developments as accurately as possible, consulting actual data brought in by various ministers from their home ministries. In the end, this war seemed to be more real than imaginary.

At the start of the war game, Japan was on the cusp of declaring war on the United States. The U.S. and British governments having placed embargos against it, Japan was now completely isolated economically. Therefore, it would have to go farther into Southeast Asia to procure resources by force.

The researchers were uneasy with the premise provided by their instructors. They felt that going into Southeast Asia—most likely the Dutch East Indies—made war with the West inevitable, without giving diplomacy a chance to prevent it. Most cabinet members projected that the country would probably be able to secure the Indonesian oil fields but that the enemy fleet stationed in the Philippines would soon launch an all-out attack on Japanese ships, making the transport of resources impossible and defeating the whole purpose of accessing Indonesian oil. As a result, Japan would be provoked into a larger-scale war with the United States, which the country could ill afford. Most ministers had determined even before the simulation started that such a war would be unwinnable and should not be waged.

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by | 4 October 2026 · 6:05 am

Tojo’s Pessimism, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 29-30, 35:

Tojo, in his selective explanation of the events leading to Pearl Harbor, insisted that the war Japan had just initiated was a “defensive” war. He faithfully echoed Japan’s deep-seated feelings of persecution, wounded national pride, and yearning for greater recognition, which together might be called, for the want of a better phrase, anti-Westernism. It was a sentimental speech, and it was notable for what was left unsaid.

There had been no clear-cut, overwhelming consensus among the Japanese leaders to take preemptive actions in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Many remained hopelessly uncertain and ambivalent about their decision. True, Tojo is famous for having said, “Occasionally, one must conjure up enough courage, close one’s eyes, and jump off the platform of the Kiyomizu,” and these words, referencing a Buddhist temple in Kyoto known for a veranda that juts out over a cliff, are often cited as a sign of his rash adventurism. But even Tojo, vilified as a military dictator who blindly pushed Japan into war, felt torn, especially in the two months preceding the attack. Throughout the course of the government’s final discussions over going to war, Tojo was acutely aware of the small possibility of Japanese victory. As a result, at the last minute, he tried to conciliate those who argued for immediate war. When he became prime minister on October 18, 1941, the first task he set himself was to attempt to resurrect diplomatic options with the United States.

Some leaders were misguidedly hopeful, but none were confident of Japan’s eventual victory. Tojo’s predecessor, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, a civilian politician, was prime minister on and off for nearly three of the four years immediately prior to Pearl Harbor. His flirtations with a totalitarian style of leadership did incalculable damage to Japan’s international standing and helped to maximize the military voice in the government. But at the same time, Konoe was unmistakably against a war with the West. According to his aide and son-in-law, Hosokawa Morisada, upon hearing the news of Japan’s entry into war, Konoe barely managed to say, “What on earth! I really feel a miserable defeat coming. This [favorable situation for Japan] will only last two or three months.”

…

One should not, of course, underestimate the enormous pressure these leaders faced on the eve of Pearl Harbor. They felt they had to choose between waging a reckless war and giving up all of Japan’s imperialistic conquests of many years in order to stave off war. They tended to ignore that such extreme choices grew directly out of their own recent decisions and actions. As they made more diplomatic missteps and committed themselves to an impracticable war, claiming all the while to be more prepared than they ever were, their range of policy options both at home and with the outside world narrowed considerably. It was as if Tokyo had gotten stuck in the thin end of a funnel. The war option, it must have seemed to those leaders, provided the quickest and surest way of breaking free of that constricting situation. That they didn’t think about what would happen afterward was a tragic act of negligence.

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by | 2 October 2026 · 4:47 am

Japan Celebrates, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 20-21, 24:

In the early-morning hours of a frosty day, December 8, 1941, the Japanese nation woke to astonishing news. It was announced, shortly after seven, that Japan had “entered into a situation of war with the United States and Britain in the Western Pacific before dawn.” Though no specifics were given, by then the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, had been successfully attacked—the first wave of planes was dispatched at 1:30 a.m., Japanese time, and the surprise operation was completed by 5:30 a.m. When news of the attack arrived at 11:30 a.m., the nation was electrified. This was soon followed by Japan’s formal declaration of war on the Allies and the report of its further military successes in British Malaya and Hong Kong. (The Malayan operation actually preceded the Pacific offensive by almost two hours.) Throughout the day, the public broadcasting network, NHK, aired twelve special news reports in addition to six regularly scheduled ones for the millions of Japanese glued to their radios. On what, because of the time difference, had been December 7 in Hawaii, the air force division of the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk or damaged numerous ships, aircraft, and military facilities. About twenty-four hundred people were killed in the raid or died shortly afterward from their injuries. The devastating attack was carried out without a formal termination of diplomatic relations by Japan, let alone a declaration of war, a heavy, infamous legacy for the nation. But such tactical details did not interest ordinary Japanese citizens on December 8. The immediate public reaction was one of celebration.

When Japan sent planes to attack Pearl Harbor, it was mired in economic and political uncertainties. A sense of helplessness pervaded its population as the state took more and more control of public life. From the beginning of Japan’s war with China in mid-1937, its people were led to believe a swift, decisive victory was imminent. Despite all the announcements of Japanese victories in China, however, the Guomindang (a.k.a. Kuomintang, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party) leader Chiang Kai-shek was not about to give up. Similar to Napoleon’s army in Russia, the Japanese forces were drawn far too deep into harsh, unfamiliar terrain to carry out an effective operation. The jingoistic tone of Japan’s media coverage continued regardless, but people were privately beginning to question why the war had not ended. Though largely ignorant of the true state of Japanese diplomacy, they had been told that Nomura Kichisaburo, a navy admiral and former foreign minister, had been dispatched to Washington, D.C., in early 1941 to negotiate a peaceful solution to Japan’s international isolation. But no good news was forthcoming, and its absence made people fearful. Many knew the United States was upset over recent Japanese initiatives—such as allying with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and occupying first northern and then southern French Indochina—and seemed intent, unless a diplomatic settlement could be reached soon, on crippling Japan with economic sanctions.

…

But December 8, 1941, changed everything. The gloom of the national impasse that had arisen over the past couple of years turned almost instantly into euphoria as most Japanese cheered the successful attack. A man who was a second grader at the time of the attack, whose father owned a radio shop in Tokyo, recalled his surprise at the sight of a long line forming in front of his father’s store. People were waiting to get their radio sets repaired, in anticipation of more special government announcements. He never saw his father do so much business in one day before or after.

There was very little of the famous Japanese reserve. Strangers congratulated each other on the street. Others gathered at the public square outside the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo, falling to the ground and thanking the emperor for his divine guidance of their nation. Aboard an overcrowded train that evening, the diarist Kafu detachedly observed “a fellow making speeches in shrill voice,” apparently unable to contain his excitement over the day’s news. This outpouring of emotion stood in stark contrast to the many contrived victory celebrations orchestrated by the government over the previous few years in an effort to rouse support for its lingering war in China.

Men of letters were not immune to the Pearl Harbor spell. One of the most distinguished poets of twentieth-century Japan, Saito Mokichi, fifty-nine at the time, recorded in his diary: “The red blood of my old age is now bursting with life! … Hawaii has been attacked!” The thirty-six-year-old novelist Ito Sei wrote in his journal: “A fine deed. The Japanese tactic wonderfully resembles the one employed in the Russo-Japanese War.” Indeed, that war started with Japan’s surprise attack on Russian ships in Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, two days before Japan’s formal declaration of war. Japan won that war.

Even those Japanese who had previously disapproved of their country’s expansionism in Asia were excited by Japan’s war with the West. In an instant, the official claim, gradually adopted by the Japanese government over the preceding decade, of liberating Asia from Western encroachment gained legitimacy in their eyes. Until then, the innately self-contradictory nature of fighting an anti-imperialist war for Asia against fellow Asians in China had tormented them.

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by | 10 September 2026 · 4:59 am

Islam Penetrates Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 250-254:

Whether rulers adopted it out of genuine preference for its monotheistic belief and universalism, out of commercial or other temporal interest, or because of conquest, Islam spread from the top downwards. How long that took, and the depth to which it penetrated, depended on many factors. Even in Sumatra the progress of Islam was slow and fitful. Tomé Pires, writing in the early sixteenth century, recorded that most rulers in Sumatra were Muslims, but those in the west and interior were heathen and ‘some make a practice of eating their enemies when they capture them.’ In other words, not much had changed since Ibn Battuta’s visit 150 years earlier.

…

During that era the only place where Islam was on the retreat was in Spain and North Africa. But again that helped Islam in the east. The Spanish conquest of Arab Granada in 1492 and subsequent oppression of non-Christians propelled a Muslim exodus that reverberated as far east as Maluku. There, as in other places they visited two decades later, the Portuguese were surprised to find Spanish speakers.

The spread of Islam gradually eliminated Hindu and Buddhist worship from the whole archipelago except Bali. On the mainland, however, Islam never penetrated far inland, where it was up against a form of Buddhism which in practice gave strength to the kingdoms in what are now Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. Known as Theravada, this version of Buddhism originated from Sri Lanka and focused on the role of sangha, or monkhood, and the accumulation of merit through works. This fitted well with concepts of kingship, but also enabled the absorption of earlier concepts of spirits and minor deities. But more importantly, these states were more agrarian, mostly more populous and far less reliant on foreign trade, so less subject to the influence of foreign Muslim merchants.

The Sufi Influence

The Islam which spread through the archipelago varied according to its source and the strength of the existing belief systems. A relatively far greater number of Muslims arrived in the less populated, trade-oriented Sumatra and the peninsula than in Java, where conversion of traditional rulers was the key. The difference is reflected in many ways, such as the fact that Arabic-derived script, Jawi, was the norm in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula by the fifteenth century, whereas in Java Kawi continued to be widely used into the twentieth century. Both were then largely supplanted by Roman script.

An important factor in the spread of Islam, especially in Java, was that the dominant strain was Sunni Sufism. Sufism, found in both Sunni and Shia Islam, has at times been viewed as heretical by more legalistic Muslims but was strong among Indian Muslims from Gujarat and Bengal and in the Ottoman realm. Its emphasis on direct communication with God, its mysticism, its admiration for holy men and ascetics and its focus on individual teachers rather than rituals and laws helped acceptance. Under the overlay of Hindu-Buddhist features was an older belief system in which the spiritual and temporal were one. In this domain lived the spirits of nature, who needed to be respected. Sufi mysticism could accommodate this.

…

Singing, dancing, drumming and recitation of phrases were a means of embracing the divine spirit, which merged well with existing traditions. Sufism also often recognized the importance of ancestral links to past teachers, so focus on the lineage of rulers was accepted. At the populist level none of this may have mattered greatly, but at least it left room for gradualism. In many cases, Islamization amounted to little more than circumcision and the end of eating pork. The more conversions were obtained by local people rather than by Muslims from overseas, the less likely they were to be overly strict, or indeed to be well acquainted with the Qur’an and Hadith.

…

Essentially, Java’s Muslim rulers were pragmatists who could readily tolerate the old practices alongside nominal acceptance of the new. Such syncretism was to reach its apogee in the seventeenth century when Muslim Mataram, under Sultan Agung (1613–45) briefly came to rule most of Java. The exceptions and last bastions of Hinduism on Java were Banten [in the extreme west] and Balambangan in the extreme east. Formally and avowedly Muslim, Mataram combined many of the features of pre-Islamic customs and beliefs, had its own unique calendar and maintained its own very elegant version of the Kawi writing system. Although Muslim, the Mataram sultans were suspicious both of the ambitions of ulamas and of the trading cities with their wealth and foreign-inspired religious orthodoxy.

For much of Java, Sultan Agung’s rule was crucial for embedding old systems within the new and for creating a lasting culture which remains at the heart of the modern state and the essentially theist principles expressed in the Indonesian constitution. Elsewhere too, old and new went side by side, with Hindu epics being modified and appearing in both Javanese in Kawi script and in Malay in Jawi. Thus today in Indonesia it is possible to say that ‘Islam is our religion, kakawin [the Javanese rhythmic narrative verse which mixes Hindu mythology and Javanese settings] our culture.’

The sultanate also aligned itself with the pre-Hindu legend of the goddess of the sea, Nyai Roro Kidul. Belief in the powers of this lady from the Indian Ocean, sometimes portrayed as a mermaid, is still strong in popular culture of the southern Javanese and Sundanese. Other legends mixing Hindu and earlier beliefs also live on.

Well, I’ve approached the publisher’s warning limit for copying from the Kindle version of this book, so this will have to be my last post from this work. The next chapter, titled “Nusantaria: Holed Near the Waterline,” is about the arrival of the Portuguese, so this is a good break point.

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by | 9 September 2026 · 5:34 am

Widespread Literacy in Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 294-296:

As elsewhere in the maritime zone, Chinese and Europeans alike were surprised at the prominent economic role of women, particularly in trade. But even more remarked was widespread literacy, of women in particular, albeit their literacy was used only for transient or practical purposes, for messages and personal letters rather than the reading and writing of literature. Spanish priest Pedro Chirino, writing in 1604, noted: ‘So accustomed are all these islanders to writing and reading that there is scarcely a man, still less a woman, who cannot read and write.’ Similarly, de Morga wrote, of the Tagals at least: ‘Almost all the inhabitants, both men and women, write in this language, and there are very few of them who do not write it very well.’

The legacy of the Indian cultural influence which had come via Srivijaya and Java had left behind scripts which were in widespread use when the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century but gradually died out over the next 300 years. Although they varied according to location, all were derived from Kawi, hence arrived from Java, Sumatra or possibly Champa.

The spread and usage of Kawi-derived scripts across Nusantaria is one of the lesser-known facts of the era before Islam and European dominance brought about the supremacy of Arabic then Roman scripts. The diversity of Kawi-derived scripts was such that Bali and Madura scripts both differed from each other and from Javanese, even if largely stylistically, and Sunda had its own script. So too did the Minangkabau of Sumatra and the Bataks, the latter writing on bark rolls. Makassar and the Bugis also had their own [Lontara], as did Palawan, whose Tagbanwa script resembled Tagalog Baybayin, and Mindoro, whose related script was known as Mangyan [or Buhid, or Hanunoo]. There is debate over whether Baybayin was the result of Bugis influence – with which its script shares some unique features – or from Sumatra or elsewhere. But the essential point is that basic literacy in a local script was common throughout the archipelago.

The arrival of paper to replace palm leaves and other traditional media, and the coming of printing, undermined the position of the traditional scripts. An additional source of weakness was that they were used mainly for transient purposes such as brief letters rather than for recording laws or literature. There were important exceptions to this, notably Javanese poems and epics, and Makassarese annals. Spanish priests made some effort to translate Christian doctrines into Tagalog using Baybayin, and elsewhere some Muslim texts were written in local languages using their scripts. But the weight of religious orthodoxy and then of administrative demands, plus the commercial use of Malay written in Jawi, proved too much. The result was that Nusantaria, which in 1500 had perhaps been the most literate place in the world, at least if central Luzon is a guide, lost what could have been a singular advantage for a future era when mass literacy became a necessity for economic progress.

Nor was pre-Hispanic Luzon unique. Elsewhere, old writing systems survived for centuries. There is evidence of high levels of basic literacy in Bali, and the same may have applied to much of Java and parts of Sumatra. As late as the 1930s a survey found that the most literate province in the Dutch East Indies was Lampung in south Sumatra, where schools were few. Male literacy was 45 per cent, female 33 per cent, but the literacy was mostly in the local Lampung script, not Roman or Jawi. It was particularly used in the exchanges of poetic verses between courting couples – just as described by Alcina in the Visayas. Literacy was higher among older people, indicating that the knowledge was handed down through families, not formally taught, and was by then slowly dying.

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by | 8 September 2026 · 6:03 am

Rise of Brunei Sultanate

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 247-248:

The end of the Melaka sultanate was by no means the end of its influence on Islam and the Malay world. Melaka had inherited the language and culture of Srivijaya and hence of trading centres around the archipelago which had been part of the Srivijayan and Javanese systems. Melaka added the ingredient of Islam. For many Malay and Muslim seemed inseparable. Johor inherited the Melaka sultanate, and a family connection to the Melaka dynasty helped the development of the Perak sultanate. Though never a trading hub, Perak modelled itself on Melaka and became increasingly important as a source of tin and forest products. Malay Patani, with its family links to the Melaka sultanate, grew in importance as a trade rival to Siam, looking more to the north-east, to China, than to the south.

Exiles from Melaka were instrumental in spreading Islam. Johor played a leading role in the conversion of the Brunei ruler which took place shortly before the visit in 1521 of Ferdinand Magellan, who was much impressed by the wealth of the Brunei court and the size of Borneo island. (The name is a derivation of ‘Brunei’. The Indonesian name ‘Kalimantan’ derives from Sanskrit and means ‘burning hot island’.)

‘Boni’, as Brunei was known to the Chinese, was a relatively late addition to the Chinese links. It had only first been officially noted in 971 with a mission which advised that it was 30 sailing days away from Champa and 45 from Srivijaya. They brought camphor, turtle shells and documents with unknown characters written on a glossy material which they rolled up. The envoys described some aspects of their country: their use of longbows and brass armour, finger rings for marriage, water buffaloes for ploughing, coconut liquor to drink, and rice, fish, fowls and goats to eat.

Regular trade with China did not develop until much later, spurred by a mission in 1405. Brunei was well placed for trade links with Champa, Luzon and the eastern islands, as well as with Java and Sumatra, and expanded its influence along the Borneo coast. Islam, to which its ruler converted in the mid fifteenth century, strengthened Brunei’s trading role and it expanded its hegemony to include the Sulu archipelago and Luzon’s two trading settlements on Manila bay. The southern one was called ‘Seludong’ by Malays, though to local Tagalogs it was known as ‘Maynila’, after a flowering mangrove. Thus for 60 years, between the Portuguese capture of Melaka and Spain taking Manila in 1571, Malay Islam expanded its reach partly thanks to the loss of Melaka.

Brunei for a long time was the only Islamized part of Borneo. Farther east, Islam advanced with trade. Ternate in the Malukus, centre of the clove trade, was an early convert. By then, however, Christianity was hard on its heels in the Spice Islands, thanks to the Portuguese sending priests. Among the first was one of the founders of the Jesuit order, Francis Xavier, who visited Ambon and other islands before moving on to China and Japan. But on all sides trade and power interests could lead to religious compromises. Thus Muslim Ternate allowed the Portuguese to build a fort even while it was trying to Christianize other islands.

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by | 6 September 2026 · 5:53 am

First European Views of the Marianas

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 242:

The first Spaniards reaching the remote Marianas islands noted how tall and fit they were, and recent examination of remains suggests they had a life expectancy of 44 years, much higher than in Europe at the time. The islands had been settled some 3,000 earlier, from either Luzon or Sulawesi, and had typical Austronesian characteristics such as a matrilineal system, weaving skills and megaliths known as latte stones, and a language, Chamorro, roughly comprehensible to Ferdinand Magellan’s Malay interpreter. Magellan (in Portuguese ‘Fernão Magalhães’, in Spanish ‘Fernando Magallanes’) was so impressed with their sailing skills that he called them the ‘Islas de Velas Latinas’ (‘Isles of the Lateen Sails’) after their small but remarkably agile sailing craft. The late sixteenth century Spanish document known as the Boxer Codex noted that their lateen sails were made of waxen palm leaves of many colours and designs. The boats could sail very fast whatever the wind strength and direction. The people were described as ‘thickset with large and stout limbs […] larger than we are’. They had a ‘pleasant appearance’ apart from filed teeth and widespread yaws – a disfiguring but not fatal skin disease common in the tropics. However, less appreciative Spaniards called them the ‘Islas Ladrones’ (‘Robber Islands’) on account of their sense of communal possession, a name which lingered long after they were renamed Marianas in 1668 after Mariana, widow of Spain’s King Philip IV. They are now divided as Guam, the largest, which is an unincorporated US territory, and the Northern Marianas, a US-dependent Commonwealth.

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Filed under labor, language, Micronesia, migration, Philippines, Portugal, Southeast Asia, Spain, U.S.

by | 5 September 2026 · 6:13 am

Flowering of Malay Law and Literature

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 224:

Melaka did not just become a renowned commercial centre. It also saw the flowering of Malay law, governance and literature. Long after the sultanate had ceased to exist, it remained the embodiment of all that was noble in the Malay world. This was the product both of its own Palembang-Melayu origins and of the multi-ethnic character of a city where Tamils, Gujaratis, Chinese, Javanese, Arabs, Persians, Ryukyans, Buginese and others could all be found. ‘In the port of Melaka alone very often 84 languages have been found spoken […] In the archipelago which begins at Singapore and Karimun up to the Malukus there are 40 known languages.’ Traders from Egypt, Persia and Arabia, and others such as Turks and Armenians were also there. They could not reach Melaka in a single monsoon but came via Gujarat with trade goods ranging from arms to pearls and including opium from Jeddah and Aden.

At its height prior to the Portuguese conquest, it had four syahbandars, or trade superintendents. The syahbandars were responsible for managing markets and warehouses and checking weights and coinage. There was one for (mostly Muslim) Gujaratis, the biggest group, one for Tamils and Bengalis, one for the archipelago including Java, Luzon and Maluku, and one for China, Champa and the Ryukyus. The syahbandar trader groups show that trade with India and points west was extensive while the Chinese role by the early sixteenth century, following official restrictions on trade by the Ming, was relatively modest. Disputes between trading communities were settled by the ruler. The reputation for good governance further increased Melaka’s role. No one did more for Melaka than Sultan Mansur (reigned 1459–77). In 1468 he wrote to the King of the Ryukyus, which were almost equally trade-dependent: ‘We have learned that to master the blue oceans people must engage in commerce even if their countries are barren […] Life has never been so affluent in previous generations as it is today.’ Likewise, in 1515 the Portuguese ruler of Melaka would write to his king: ‘Melaka has nothing of its own and everything of the world.’

Melaka gave birth to the Sulalat al-Salatin (Genealogies of the Sultans), which became the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), a semi-historical work which aimed to entertain and inspire new generations with edifying stories of past monarchs, their trials and achievements. It traced the Melaka kings back to Alexander (Iskandar) the Great, via India and a sacred hill in Palembang. The dynasty, according to the Sejarah, prospered and long resisted Javanese domination, but was eventually driven out by treachery, forcing its move to Temasek, which it renamed ‘Singapura’, and eventually to Melaka.

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Filed under China, economics, education, Japan, language, migration, nationalism, religion, Southeast Asia

by | 4 September 2026 · 5:50 am

Large Javanese Junks in Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 214:

The commercial merit of large Javanese junks was immediately apparent to the Portuguese. Assuming stable ratios of length to beam to depth, a 30-metre junk would have had a tonnage of about 150 tonnes, while one with 1,000 tonnes would have a length of about 55 metres. For their first commercial voyages after seizing Melaka, the Portuguese collaborated with an important Hindu businessman who had two junks of around 200 tons burthen, each with a crew of about 80. Another witness was the Portuguese adventurer and writer Duarte Barbosa, who was based in Kerala, spoke the local language, Malayalam, and sailed much of the Indian Ocean. He wrote around 1518:

There also come hither many ships from Java, which have four masts, very different from ours and of very thick wood. When these ships become old they fit them with new planks and in this manner they carry three or four plankings, one above the other; the sails are of woven osiers and the ropes of the same.
They carry much rice, meat of cow, sheep, pig and deer dried and salted, many chicken, garlic and onions. They also bring hither many weapons for sale, that is to say, lances, daggers and swords worked with inlaid metal and of very good steel.
They bring likewise a yellow dye which they call cazumba and gold which is produced in Java. They bring their wives and children on these ships and there are some mariners who never leave the ship to go onshore […] These ships also fetch pepper from Sumatra, silk and benzoin and fine gold and from other islands they fetch camphor and aloes wood and they also navigate to Tenasserim, Pegu, Bengal, Calicut, Coromendel, Malabar, Cambay and Aden with all kinds of goods.

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Filed under economics, migration, Portugal, South Asia, Southeast Asia