Introduction: Reconstructing Intra-Southeast Asian Trade, c.1780–1870: Evidence of Regional Integration under the Regime of Colonial Free Trade

This special focus provides a set of statistical knowledge on intra-Southeast Asian trade from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, to better understand the ways in which Southeast Asia became integrated into both long-distance trade and intra-Asian trade. In so doing, it explores aspects of how and why some of the traditional trading networks of the region survived the Western impact and came to play a vital role in the process of regional integration.In 1985 Kaoru Sugihara suggested that there was a growth of intra-Asian trade in the period 1880-1913, under the impact of the Industrial Revolution in England and the subsequent diffusion of industrialization in Europe and the United States. Unlike other parts of the non-European world, he argued, the rate of growth of intra-Asian trade during this period was faster than that of long-distance trade between the West and Asia. Over the last quarter of a century, relationships between long-distance trade-which is the trade between the West (United Kingdom, industrial Europe, and the United States) and Asia-and intra-Asian trade-which is the trade between India, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and other Asian countries-have been vigorously explored; and trends in Asian regional integration, reflected in intra-regional trade, migration, and remittances, have been highlighted. Among the major observations is that during the high colonial era, from 1870 to 1914, Southeast Asia experienced the highest rate of export growth among Asian regions through its incorporation into both world and regional economies at almost equal speeds (Sugihara 1985; 1996; 2005).However, there has been little statistical work on Southeast Asian trade before 1870, to understand how the region responded to the Western impact as compared to other Asian regions, especially after the demise of the Dutch East India Company's monopoly at the end of the eighteenth century. Difficulties with data, due to territorial changes and the lack of data on local and regional commerce conducted by Asian merchants, prevented progress toward a fuller understanding. It is only during the last 15 years or so that leading scholars have begun to pay attention to this period and empirical research has been assembled, with the spirit of revising the traditional picture that the period was economically static, if not in decline or disintegration, and that little could have been changed or transformed in the way of local and regional commerce. Anthony Reid and others have argued that the period between the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of dynamic commercial expansion, questioning the view that there was no expansion comparable to those in the earlier age of commerce (c.1450-1680) and the colonial high noon (c.1870-1940) took place. In particular, the years between about 1760 and 1850 saw a distinct commercial expansion in the region, which was stimulated by a remarkable growth in Chinese junks and migration from southern China, an increase in local Malay shipping, and the impact of British private traders. During this period, Reid argues, Southeast Asia appears to have experienced an even greater increase in shipping and exports than during the high colonial period (Reid 1997; 2004).Meanwhile, Sugihara argues that there was a growth in intra-Asian trade during the first half of the nineteenth century, partially revising his earlier assumption that regional trade started to respond to the Western impact in earnest in the late nineteenth century, and that the nature of this early nineteenth century expansion was substantially a trade in necessities such as rice and cotton cloth for ordinary people, similar in character to intra-Asian trade at a later stage, rather than a trade induced by country traders and the opium triangle. He notes that Penang and Singapore were key contributors to the growth of multilateral trade patterns in and around Southeast Asia, integrating both traditional trade and the impact of long-distance trade into a coherent whole (Sugihara 2009). …

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