Event

This presentation takes a macro-historical look at how diasporas, trade, and networks developed in the “adolescence” of Sino-Southeast Asian contact, in the time-period roughly covered by the thousand years between 600 and 1600 CE. We know very little about the “infancy” of these dealings, in the years before the T’ang. But by that dynasty, patterns of contact slowly began to develop on a more systemic basis, particularly with some of the coastal landscapes of Monsoon Asia, into and including the Indian Ocean. I examine the growth and eventual flourishing of these interactions, especially through the power of commercial networks focused on certain specific commodities, and try to situate them in the larger milieu of what is often called the maritime silk road. By focusing on export ceramics heading south, and marine biota heading north, we can learn much about how networks actually worked on the oceanic pathways of Asia. Southeast Asia was the pivot between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean: two vast “blue-water horizons”.

Eric Tagliacozzo is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University.