Chapter 10 Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia 389what is now Northeast Thailand, a dry, raised region without the alluvial fea-
tures that made hydraulics such key activities in other mandalas, the Siamese
state emerged. Even earlier, between 200 and 950 C.E. there were kingdoms
involved in trade with India and China known as Dvaravati. Both Chao Phrya
and the Khorat Plateau site reveal a preponderance of Buddhist themes, in con-
trast to the Hindu influences in Cambodia, Bali, and southern Vietnam: stupas,
bas reliefs with Buddhist scenes, and ordination halls. (We return to these Ther-
avada Buddhist states in the section “Theravada Buddhism and the Thai State.”)
The Period of Chinese and Islamic Influence, 1300–1750
The Hindu-Buddhist prince and peasant were the commonest social types
in Southeast Asia by the fourteenth century, and the mandala was the idealized
state. The principal exception was Vietnam, where from the Red River south
along the central coast there was a series of small chiefdoms or kingdoms not
properly called mandalas, as they were strongly influenced by Chinese concep-
tions of the state, with Confucian bureaucracies and Chinese-style rituals and
burials. Often enough, Vietnam was under direct control by China, particularly
in the north. However, movements of ideas and peoples after the fourteenth
century gave to the region two new cultural types: the Muslim trader and the
Confucian capitalist.
Chinese and Muslim traders came out of civilizations with radically
opposed views of the trading life. In Confucian China, merchants were viewed
as parasites living off the honest labor of others. Society needed traders to dis-
tribute production, and many did become wealthy, but they were always stig-
matized by the Confucian establishment. By contrast, in Islam commerce was
a gift of Allah, and his prophet, Muhammad, was actually a caravan trader.
Many statements from the Quran convey Allah’s approval of trade:
It is He who has made the sea subject [to you] that you might eat fish from
it and that you might extract from it ornaments to wear; and you see ships
ploughing in it that you might seek [profit] from his abundance and that
you may give thanks. (16:14)
The establishment of Muhammad’s state in Medina in 622 led to an aston-
ishing expansion of well-organized tribal armies motivated as much to control
the lucrative trade routes of Asia and North Africa as by the truth of Islam.
Only four years earlier, in 618, the illustrious Tang dynasty had been founded
in China. Trade soon brought the two civilizations into contact, certainly along
the ancient Silk Road, now once again open and thriving, but also via the
southern maritime route through the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
Arabian and Indian merchants sought China’s silks, ceramics, and porcelains;
in exchange they provided jade, ivory, frankincense, and Persian silk. Over the
next few centuries, as Arabian tribes conquered the Mid-East and North
Africa, leading to establishment of the Abbasid Empire (720–1258), Chinese
trade under Tang (618–906) and Song (960–1280) benefited from new shipping