ABSTRACT
COMMERCE 1. The Rise of Western Commerce SINCE the time when Europeans were first lured to the East Indies by the opportunities for profitable trade in spices-
'Close sailing from Bengola, or the Isles Of Ternate and Tidore whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs'-
the trans-ocean commerce of the region has remained predominantly in their hands and has comprised one of their chief fields of economic activity. It would be beyond the scope of this book to provide a detailed commercial history. An outline of the growth of trade, however, has been given in Chapter I, and the types of firms responsible for its conduct at different periods have been described in Chapter II. We shall now deal mainly with the trading methods and the commercial relations that have existed in recent times, and we shall direct our attention especially to the changes brought about by the Second World War. The trade that concerns us is not merely trans-ocean trade between East Indian ports and Europe and America. Our study requires also a treatment of the intra-regional trade with which the former has been closely linked through the entrepot of Singapore.
