Hostname: page-component-76dd75c94c-lntk7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T09:51:32.536Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regional influences, economic adaptation and cultural articulation: Diversity and cosmopolitanism in fourteenth-century Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Derek Heng
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Studies on the international history of fourteenth-century Singapore have been hitherto limited to external trade conducted by local inhabitants, and material consumption patterns that this trade enabled them to develop. Broader regional cultural influences have been postulated though not clearly demonstrated, given scant textual records and limited material culture remains. This article seeks to examine the external influences, adaptation and assimilation in the production and consumption of fourteenth-century Singapore. In particular, it looks at three aspects of Singapore's pre-colonial existence — modes of economic production, patterns of consumption of international products, and the articulation of high culture vis-à-vis external entities. By examining available archaeological, epigraphic, art historical and cartographic data from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries, this article postulates how distinct consumption patterns may have developed among different riverside populations living north of the Singapore River. This study also questions the common view that Singapore developed as a cosmopolitan port-city only after the advent of British colonialism, demonstrating that its diversity and openness was likely a feature centuries before.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 476 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For a brief overview of the historiography and research on pre-colonial Singapore history, see Guan, Kwa Chong, Heng, Derek, Borschberg, Peter and Yong, Tan Tai, Seven hundred years: A history of Singapore (Singapore: National Library Board, 2019), pp. 1–17Google Scholar.

2 Brown, C.C., Malay annals (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2009 [1953])Google Scholar; Jiqing, Su, Daoyi zhilue xiaoju [Treatise on the island barbarians] (Bejing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991)Google Scholar.

3 Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the historical geography of the Malay Peninsula before A.D. 1500 (Westport: Greenwood, 1961), pp. 84–5.

4 For an overview of the archaeological research on Singapore, see John N. Miksic, Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300–1800 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013); Lim Tse Siang, ‘14th century Singapore: The Temasek paradigm’ (MA diss., National University of Singapore, 2012); Lim Chen Sian, ‘Preliminary report on the archaeological investigations at the National Gallery Singapore’, Nalanda–Sriwijaya Centre Archaeology Unit, Archaeology Report Series No. 5 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies [ISEAS], 2017).

5 On the correlation between items of different levels of economic accessibility and subgroups within a social organisation, see Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age economics (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 168–258.

6 Derek Heng, Sino-Malay trade and diplomacy from the tenth through the fourteenth century (Singapore: ISEAS, 2012), pp. 149–90.

7 Kwa et al., Seven hundred years, pp. 35–6.

8 Heng, Sino-Malay trade and diplomacy, p. 223, tables B.1 and B.2; Lim, 14th century Singapore, pp. 65, 66, tables 3, 4; John N. Miksic, ‘Beyond the grave: Excavations north of the Kramat Iskandar Shah, 1988’, Heritage 10 (1989): 38–9, table 1.

9 John N. Miksic and C.T. Yap, ‘Fine-bodied white earthenwares of South East Asia: Some X-ray florescence tests’, Asian Perspectives 31, 1 (1992): 57–76; Omar Chen, ‘An investigation into the occurrence of earthenware artefacts at the Parliament House Complex site’ (MA thesis, National University of Singapore, 2001).

10 Derek Heng, ‘Economic exchanges and linkages between the Malay region and the hinterland of China's coastal ports during the 10th to 14th centuries’, in Early Singapore, 1300s–1819: Evidence in maps, texts and artefacts, ed. John N. Miksic and Cheryl-Ann Low (Singapore: Singapore History Museum, 2004), pp. 73–85.

11 Michael Flecker, ‘A 9th century Arab or Indian shipwreck in Indonesian waters’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 29, 2 (2000): 199–217; Abu Ridho and E. Edwards McKinnon, The Pulau Buaya wreck: Finds from the Song period (Jakarta: Ceramic Society of Indonesia, 1998); Roxanna M. Brown and Sten Sjostrand, Turiang: A fourteenth-century shipwreck in Southeast Asian waters (Pasadena, CA: Pacific Asia Museum, 2000).

12 Sharon Wai-Yee Wong, ‘A case report on the function(s) of the “mercury jar”: Fort Canning, Singapore, in the 14th century’, Archaeological Research in Asia 7 (2016): 10–17; Alasdair Chi, ‘A framework for the study of ‘mercury jars’ and other stoneware from the Temasek period of Singapore, alongside 12th–14th century stoneware from Kota Cina, Sumatra’ (M.Sc. diss., University of Oxford, 2017); Heng, Sino-Malay trade and diplomacy, pp. 186–90.

13 Bennet Bronson and Jan Wisseman, ‘Palembang as Srivijaya: The lateness of early cities in Southern Southeast Asia’, Asian Perspectives 19 (1976): 220–39; Paul Wheatley, Nagara and commandery: Origins of the Southeast Asian urban traditions (Chicago: University of Chicago, Dept. of Geography, 1983); Pierre-Yves Manguin, ‘City-states and city-state cultures in pre-15th century Southeast Asia’, in A comparative study of thirty city-state cultures: An investigation, ed. Mogens Herman Hansen (Copenhagen: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2000), pp. 409–514; Kenneth R. Hall, Maritime trade and state development in early Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1986), p. 19.

14 Armando Cortesão, The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1944), p. 238.

15 Muriel Charras, ‘Feeding an ancient harbour-city: Sago and rice in the Palembang hinterland’, Bulletin de l’École Française d'Extrême Orient (BEFEO) 102 (2016): 97–123; R.D. Hill, Rice in Malaya: A study in historical geography (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012).

16 Derek Heng, ‘Temasik as an international and regional trading port in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS) 72, 1 (1999): 122.

17 Built in 1869 as Government House, the Istana (palace, in Malay) was originally the residence of the British governor. When Singapore gained internal self-rule in 1959, the building was renamed and housed Singapore's then head of state, the Yang di-Pertuan Negara. Since independence in 1965, the Istana has been the official residence of the president.

18 Wheatley, Nagara and commandery, pp. 199–230; Karen M. Mudar, ‘How many Dvaravati kingdoms? Locational analysis of first millennium A.D. moated settlements in central Thailand’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 18 (1999): 1–28; Janice Stargardt, Satingpra I, the environmental and economic archaeology of South Thailand (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, International Series 158, 1983).

19 For cultivation studies, refer to Akom Sowana, Rajendra P. Shrestha, Preeda Parkpian and Soparth Pongquan, ‘Influence of coastal land use on soil heavy-metal contamination in Pattani Bay, Thailand’, Journal of Coastal Research 27, 2 (2011): 252–62; I. Roslan, J. Shamshuddin, C.I. Fauziah and A.R. Anuar, ‘Fertility and suitability of the spodosols formed on sandy beach ridges interspersed with swales in the Kelantan-Terengganu plains of Malaysia for kenaf production’, Malaysian Journal of Soil Science 15 (2011): 1–24.

20 M.I. Bird, L.K. Fifield, T.S. Teh, C.H. Chang, N. Shirlaw, K. Lambeck, ‘An inflection in the rate of early mid-Holocene eustatic sea-level rise: A new sea-level curve from Singapore’, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 71 (2007): 523–36.

21 S. Paramananthan, ‘A comparative study of the mineralogy of rice soils of the Kedah and Kelantan coastal plains of peninsular Malaysia’, Geological Society Malaysia Bulletin 23 (Aug. 1989): 41–57.

22 Su, Daoyi zhiliue, p. 196.

23 Lucien M. Hanks, Rice and man: Agricultural ecology in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1972), p. 48, table 4.2.

24 Muriel Charras, ‘Feeding an ancient habour-city: Sago and rice in the Palembang hinterland’, BEFEO 102 (2016): 97–123.

25 Berenice Bellina et al., ‘The early development of coastal polities in the upper Thai-Malay peninsula’, in Before Siam: Essays in art and archaeology, ed. Nicolas Revire and Stephen Murphy (Bangkok: River Books; Siam Society, 2014), pp. 72–4; Heddy Surachman et al., ‘Structures, features and stratigraphies of the Si Pamutung excavations’, in History of Padang Lawas I: The site of Si Pamutung (9th century–13th century AD), ed. Daniel Perret and Heddy Surachman (Paris: Cahiers d'Archipel, 2014), pp. 80–82.

26 Wheatley, Golden Khersonese, pp. 120–22.

27 Ibid., p. 121.

28 S.J. Allen, Trade, transportation and tributaries: Exchange, agriculture, and settlement distribution in early historic-period Kedah, Malaysia (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1988); Michel Jacq-Hergoualc'h, The Malay Peninsula: Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road (100 BC–1300 AD) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 308–10.

29 J.G. de Casparis, Indonesian paleography (Leiden: Brill, 1975), p. 45.

30 John Miksic, Archaeological research on the ‘Forbidden Hill’ of Singapore: Excavations at Fort Canning, 1984 (Singapore: National Museum, 1985), p. 13.

31 Richard O. Winstedt, ‘Gold ornaments dug up at Fort Canning, Singapore’, JMBRAS 42, 1 (1969): 49–52.

32 Kwa et al., Seven hundred years, p. 43.

33 Su, Daoyi zhilue, p. 213.

34 Miksic, Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, p. 23.

35 Clark, Hugh R., Community, trade and networks: Southern Fujian province from the third to the thirteenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heng, Derek, ‘Shipping, customs procedures and the foreign community: The Pingzhou ketan on three aspects of Guangzhou's maritime economy in the late eleventh century AD’, Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 38 (2008): 1–38Google Scholar; Ptak, Roderich, ‘China's medieval fanfang — a model for Macau under the Ming?’, AHAM 2 (2001): 47–71Google Scholar; Christopher, A.J., ‘The quest for a census of the British Empire c.1840–1940’, Journal of Historical Geography 34, 2 (2008): 268–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hirschman, Charles, ‘The meaning and measurement of ethnicity in Malaysia: An analysis of census classifications’, Journal of Asian Studies 46, 3 (1987): 555–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Balsas, Carlos J. L., ‘Measuring the livability of an urban centre: An exploratory study of key performance indicators’, Planning Practice and Research 19, 1 (2004): 101–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Southworth, Michael, ‘Measuring the liveable city’, Built Environment 29, 4 (2003): 343–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.