ARI Working Paper Series

Hybridisation of language, dress, customs, food and material culture is indispensable as a means to understand the formation of identities in the ports of Central Southeast Asia (the Peninsula and adjacent parts of Sumatra, Java and modern central Thailand) before modern nationalist categories took hold. In the period between the last Srivijaya tribute mission to China (1309) and the beginning of authorised private trade between the Middle Kingdom and the south (1567) new Sino-Southeast Asian polities arose which set the pattern for subsequent Malay, Thai and Javanese maritime states.

During this period, Chinese were not legally permitted to leave the Empire except on official business, so the many Chinese traders in Southeast Asia had every reason to establish local roots and identities. Some of their new polities were encouraged, and others victimised, by the exceptional Ming state missions of Zheng He.