ABSTRACT
This chapter sheds light on the Mergui Archipelago and Burma’s pearling histories, locating them at the interstices of the translocal and transregional dynamics that connected them to commercial interests operating within the Bay of Bengal and across insular Southeast Asia and coastal China. These included, especially from the early decades of the nineteenth century, the Straits Settlements and northern Australian pearling areas like the Torres Strait as they became embedded within the expanding circuits of pearling’s globalizing currents. Pearl harvesting was, however, also linked to regional marine product extraction, which included other maritime resources, such as trepang and tortoise shell, as the waters of the Bay of Bengal and insular Southeast Asia were exploited for their commercial potential from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
