ABSTRACT
The Malay-Indonesian archipelago is a geographically fragmented area open to outside contact. In the period under study its maritime trade formed part of the Indian Ocean trading world having vital linkages with south China. Historians of Asia’s sea trade have generally looked upon Indonesia as a transit area, a passage to be crossed to reach south China from the west. This was a place where long-distance voyages were broken and ships were changed. Yet looked at from within, Indonesia was a trading world in its own right. Wolters 1 has shown that long before the all-sea route to China came into its own around fifth century AD, traders from India and Sri Lanka used to visit Indonesia to look for local products like gold and medicinal herbs and not to catch up with the China trade. They were in turn followed by Arabs and Persians. It is true that when the Chinese began to turn to the trade of the southern seas they were more interested in west Asian products coming through southeast Asia than in goods produced in the region itself. Eventually China too began to import Indonesian products like camphor and sandalwood, pepper and spices. Thus apart from being a link in the trans-Asian trade Indonesia had a foreign trade of her own. Together with this international trade there was a thriving inter-island trade within the archipelago. To study the development of the maritime trade of Indonesia one has to bear in mind the three levels of Indonesian trading activity and try to grasp the connection between them.
