Organizer, Chair and Discussant: John N. Miksic, National University of Singapore 

Anthony Reid in his Benjamin Batson Memorial Lecture entitled "Cosmopolis and Nation in Central Southeast Asia" used the plural, cosmopoleis, to refer to centers of communication and exchange in networks linking northern and southeastern Asia in premodern times. Hybridity and other forms of long-term social change were some of the major effects of the mixing of peoples and cultures which took place in various locations. To term these "cities" would be to blur the differences between pre-European and post-European contact periods. Reid juxtaposed the Asian cosmopolis and the European nation as two alternative socio-economic modes of organization. Participants in this panel will explore evidence which allow us to reconstruct the highly varied nature of the Asian Cosmopoleis and the nature of interaction between indigenous and foreign inhaabitants which took place in them and gave them their distinctive characteristics.

Unnecessary Goods - The Import of Foreign Ceramics into Closed Japan

Martha Chaiklin, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Today scholars debate not whether early modern Japan was closed, but rather just how much. Japanese and foreigners alike have suggested that early modern trade to Japan was a trade in luxuries, objects Japan could do just as well without. While in many cases this was true, it was not so for ceramics. Some of the oldest ceramics in the world have been excavated in Japan and a tradition with many local variations is vital even today. In the restrictive trading climate of early modern Japan, why then bother to import ceramics at all instead of items that could not be produced in Japan such as for example sheet glass or acid-resistant medicine bottles?

This paper will examine the kinds and quantites of ceramics that were imported to Japan through both Chinese and Dutch trade using primary trade documents in both Dutch and Japanese. It will explore the countries of origin, how they went from port to consumer and to what uses they were put, in order to understand why these `unnecessary objects` were brought to a `closed` to Japan.

John N. Miksic, National University of Singapore

Wang Dayuan’s Dao yi zhi lue, written in 1349, describes market conditions in Southeast Asian ports in the late Yuan Dynasty. This was a period of intense commercial activity and early overseas Chinese enterprise. Wang’s account is one of the earliest and most detailed records of the degree of diversity of taste in consumer goods in Southeast Asia. Far from an undifferentiated and unsophisticated market, Wang’s account shows that Chinese merchants had to tailor their wares to very specific markets. This paper will examine archaeological evidence from Singapore to try to uncover some of the basic factors (cultural, social, and economic) which might account for the wide degree of divergence between the different societies of Sumatra, Riau, and the Malay Peninsula in this period.

Geok Yian Goh, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Tarup amyomyo: probing the "China" of the Burmese chronicles.Studies of ancient Burma-China relations tend to emphasize warfare. An event commonly cited is the Mongol invasion of Pagan in the 13^th century, which led to the decline of the Burmese empire. Narathihapate (1257-87), king of Pagan, fled from the Mongols and earned himself the epithet in Burmese chronicles of "Taruppye," ("he who fled from the Chinese"). Tarup is a Burmese term referring to the Chinese now, but the connotation of the term has not always been the same. The identity of the people as well as the region and kingdom to whom the term applies has never been constant. Relations between Burma and China go back at least to the mid-11^th century, and were not always hostile. Besides the sending of embassies noted in the Chinese records, these two countries exchanged not only material goods but also intangible things such as religious ideas as well as persons. This paper will investigate Burmese perceptions of tarup or "China". Who or what was tarup? What was the nature of the relations between Burma and Tarup from the Burmese perspective? In what ways did these connections contribute to the multi-layered web of ideological communication network spanning the entire region from India and Sri Lanka throughout most of mainland Southeast Asia to China?

Edmund Edwards-McKinnon, Independent Scholar

In the 1930's, E.W. Van Orsoy de Flines, erstwhile curator of the Ceramic collection at the Netherlands Indies' Batavian Society for Arts and Knowledge Museum at what is now the National Museum in Jakarta, Indonesia, undertook a survey of ancient sites along the north coast of Java and compiled a major report on his discoveries. The report was published in Dutch, using terminology which is somewhat unfamiliar to modern ceramicists. Consequently, although de Flines published an illustrated catalogue of the ceramics held in the museum that was subsequently translated into English, much of his important pioneering work in the field of trade ceramics remains virtually unknown in the English-speaking world and has not been appreciated. De Flines' interpretations of his recoveries appear to have been largely accurate and he appears as an important pioneer in the sphere of trade ceramic studies. This paper presents the key points of the ceramic survey, now translated into English, and attempts to interpret the significance of the finds which are now being highlighted by recent offshore shipwreck discoveries in the Java Sea.