Commodity and Market 51
The Idea of an “Asian Mediterranean”
Inspired by Braudel, the metaphor of an Asian Mediterranean has
proved appealing to historians of Southeast or East Asia. One prevalent
theme in this scholarship is to compare the South China Sea to Braudel’s
Mediterranean. Denys Lombard was certainly an enthusiastic promoter
who envisaged the South China Sea as a second Mediterranean, shown by
his organization of an international symposium in 1997 called “The Asian
Mediterranean”.^180
In different writings, the boundaries of “the Asian Mediterranean”
vary. In his work, βirst published in 1944 and revised in 1964, Georges
Cœdès suggests that, “there is a veritable Mediterranean formed by the
China Sea, the Gulf of Siam, and the Java Sea”,^181 generally known as the
Nanhai in Chinese texts. However, Lombard prefers a broader boundary,
one that incorporates into it the southeastern coast of China, Hainan and
Taiwan,^182 probably because the long development of maritime trade
in the South China Sea cannot be properly comprehended without the
inclusion of the China factor. In a recent publication, Francois Gipouloux
refers to “[the] corridor linking the basins of the Sea of Japan, the Yellow
Sea, the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea and the Celebes Sea” as the “Asian
Mediterranean”, in his attempt “to uncover the hidden links between
economics, geography, and international relations”.^183
Although terms such as “the Second Mediterranean” or “the Asian
Mediterranean” highlight the comparative aspects of the two maritime
civilizations, they might have also inadvertently set limits to a better
understanding of maritime East Asia and a proper appreciation of its
uniqueness. The fact that the people were producers of widely sought-
after commodities with the availability of large markets within the
region, combined with the mass participation of those seeking their
fortune from around the East Asian Seas, explains the long sustainability
of the East Asian shipping trade and its great impact on the economic life
of its population. In fact, as early as 1937, J.C. van Leur cautioned against
using the Mediterranean analogy in the Asian context. He argued that the
comparison obscured “a complete historical autonomy” of maritime Asia
- From the Mediterranean to the China Sea: Miscellaneous Notes, ed. Claude
Guillot, et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), pp. vii–viii. - G. Cœdès, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, p. 3.
- Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Notes on Circulation and Asymmetry in Two
Mediterraneans, c. 1400–1800”, in From the Mediterranean to the China Sea, ed.
Claude Guillot, et al., p. 35. - Francois Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean, pp. 1–2.