In a world dominated by economics-speak, and of accepting the world as it is, it becomes easy to ignore history and society, artisanal craft and all those little big things that make our world a fabulous and fascinating place. These were the thoughts that went through my mind while I was sat on a small island in an estuary on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, trying to regain my senses (and sense of balance) after a journey across the South China Sea during the last weeks of the monsoon season, about three months ago.
In this shaken state, I tossed around the information about reconsidering, and redesigning, global supply chains and maritime (trade) routes; from the Trumpian vision to remake the global political economy, to the idea of a land bridge across Thailand to avoid sailing around the Malaysian peninsula and then up through the Strait of Malacca towards India and across the Indian Ocean.
I parsed these thoughts with Indonesia’s ambition to establish itself as a maritime trade power, the deeper-lying history of shipbuilding, and of the old maritime trade route, the old Cinnamon Route from the Nusantara to Africa, Arabia and the world. This “route” disappeared from the conventional history of trade routes overland from the Mediterranean through Persia, Baghdad — alternatively through Khazar lands — to China and “the Far East”.
Let me start somewhere. Indonesia wants to become a global power in maritime trade. The Indonesian archipelago, the Nusantara, occupies a vitally important location in the nest of waterways that carry global trade. The country also has a large export base of oil and gas, minerals and agricultural produce, notably seaweed. This is, for the most part, what drives Indonesian ambitions to become a maritime power. Indonesia is fully aware, also, that much of the trade that sails across the South China Sea goes directly to the port of Singapore, which is bursting at its seams, as it were, on the way to the Indian Ocean and beyond.
Nusantaran waterways like the Sunda Strait, between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, are notoriously difficult to navigate because of strong tidal currents, sandbanks and oil platforms. The Sunda Strait is, anyway, too shallow to carry heavy container ships. The same difficulties are in the way of passages through waterways between other Indonesian islands such as Bali and Mataram, or eastward into the western reaches of the Pacific Ocean. This explains why the “easiest” maritime trade route westwards across the South China Sea remains passing through the port of Singapore, and then up along the Strait of Malacca between Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra — which has been the gateway to trade since at least the 7th century. The Indonesians have a vision, though. They want to become a global maritime power (again).
A brief global historical view
Not to put too fine a point on it, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) describes maritime trade as “the life blood of world trade”, and shipping remains the dominant mode of international transport for traded goods and “constitutes the backbone of global supply chains” accounting for “more than 80% of the volume of world trade”. Sailing across the oceans is all of that, and has been much more for millennia.
The parsimonious theories of maritime trade we are taught in economics courses readily direct attention to David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, with particular reference to trade between England and Portugal across the English Channel. History lessons tell us about European expansion and settlement in distant lands across the oceans. In geostrategy, international politics and military studies covering the postwar period, we have been taught (not incorrectly) about the immense power the US has on the oceans, and through Hollywood productions about seaborne gladiators, properly named “naval aviators” (with Tom Cruise in the starring role). The oceans are what made British, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese empires what they were, and the US the naval superpower that it is.
By the end of the last century, international shipping had become highly liberalised, with many restrictive policies disappearing or simply being ignored. Early European colonists of North America who arrived on the continent were seduced by the natural wealth noted down by early explorers. By 1784, in his history of the colonies, Englishman James Franklin wrote about European colonists arriving “by reason of the then profitable trade of furs and skins, and for the sake of the fishery [and] shipbuilding was one of the most considerable branches of business”, in England’s “new world”, the northeast coast of the US. Let’s bear that craft of shipbuilding in mind.
Having overseen economics curriculum development, and having taught economics and global political economy, we, myself included, often ignore history, as the urgencies of economics-speak and focusing on today would insist. Let’s turn briefly, then, to the Nusantara — those thousands of islands that stretch from Aceh in Sumatra to the Torasi estuary on the border of Papua New Guinea — and including Malaysia. Much of the Philippines is populated by people of Malay descent, but between their Spanish cultural heritage and US political umbilical ties, we can exclude the Philippines here. Singapore is an island in the Nusantara, but the British colonists and subsequent Chinese settlers have all but erased the Malay identity of Singapore.
Nevertheless, it is in this Southeast Asian region where trade, barter, and cultural and ethnic exchanges across waterways began to take shape as many as 100,000 years ago, and gained momentum during the Melanesian era. The Polynesians would, much later, develop cartographic skills and techniques that gave mariners new tools. Records of this were detailed in the study, “Oceanography,” edited by the marine scientist, Tessa Hill of the University of California, Davis.
All of the above occupied my thoughts while walking about the estuary shores on the east coast of the Malaysian peninsula — and later when I stood at the Borobudur Buddhist Temple, about 40km northwest of Yogyakarta in Central Java — where (across the region) the very old artisanal craft of shipbuilding is in a state of terminal decline. The oldest known picture of a traditional Indonesian ship, sometimes called perahu and other times proa, was carved in a stone panel of the Borobudur temple built in the late 8th century.
This age-old shipbuilding tradition is tucked away in a remote corner of history, probably because in our world of economics-speak, history, culture or the tradition and heritage of artisanal craft are often considered to be irrelevant in a world dominated by finance capitalism. More on this below.
Back to shipbuilding
Responding to the Indonesian government’s efforts to become a global maritime power, policymakers have identified vital skills gaps. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) echoed the Indonesian government’s concerns over the effect increasing globalisation has had, and will continue to have, through new technologies and changing patterns of work. Other problems are the outmigration of skilled workers and the links between an ageing population, the old shipbuilders, and a young population that would rather go online, and stay there. Ship-building, traditionally without the use of metal nails is going into steep decline.
The younger generation simply make themselves unavailable for training, or the back-breaking graft of building ships. We should, of course, factor in the highly mechanised and mass-produced, shipbuilding in South Korea and Japan, which nobody in East Asia can compete with — least of all artisanal crafts people in small coastal villages, who are loyal to the gotong royong tradition; working together for the common good). In the kampungs (villages) I visited in the region, it is not just the craft that is dying, but a cultural identity is being lost. Across the region the craft of ship/boat building has been a cultural symbol of maritime history of communities, and way of life since about the 15th century, and peaked during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Each fishing or cargo vessel represents the signature of the builder, the identity of the community, and the traditions of the local community. Most of the design and craft are based on the skills, experience and the visual inheritance of preceding generations — all of which draw on cultural heritage and tradition — and on spirituality. In this way the completed vessels become symbols of folklore and tradition, and are consecrated to ensure safe voyages, plentiful harvests and return. In the Malaysian state of Terengganu it is closely related to gotong royong.
There is faint hope, amid the headwinds of mechanised building, an ageing population and disinterested youth, that initiatives such as the Terengganu Traditional Boat Building Centre on Malaysia’s Pulau Duyong (Duyong Island), will preserve shipbuilding as a part of the region’s heritage through apprenticeships.
In Kuala Terengganu I visited several sites, villages such as Pulau Duyong, Pulau Ketam and Kampung Pulau Rusa, where boat-building holds together the local community along the estuary, and found these places to be hauntingly quiet. The only activity was of fishing folk sitting out the last days and weeks of the monsoon season, fixing their nets and maintaining their vessels. On Pulau Duyong, the shops were shuttered, knocking on the doors of the local arts and crafts shop got no response, and the only life at the Duyong Marina and Resort was the staff. I left the kampungs and islands with a bit of a heavy heart. The tradition of working together for the common good sits uncomfortably with global finance capitalism, and the excessive individualism of liberal capitalism.
Indonesia’s objective of becoming a global maritime power is certainly ambitious and it should readily fit into the redesign of global supply chains and complete liberalisation of maritime trade. But the traditions, and the cultural heritage that underpin gotong royong, or rewang (mutual co-operation, as it is known in Javanese society), sits far from the individual maximisation of capitalist orthodoxy. The participatory expectations of rewang is mandatory across Java. Anyone who does not participate, or fails to contribute to joint efforts to solve problems, has to provide a good reason, and evidence to prove why they did not participate. This is what struck me as most unique across Malaysia and Java. All of which brings me back to the “economics-speak” (if it does not make cents, it does not make sense) I referred to above.
The insistence of accepting the world as it is, is a type of status quo patriotism, the unfortunate belief that the world, as it is marked by and dominated by the beliefs and values, the political economy and polities of the European world, and the North Atlantic Community more broadly, is the best world that is possible, that it is necessarily good, and it has to be protected.
Underpinning this status quo is an elision of the ideas of Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith. Simply stated; free trade is good for the world, and free trade necessarily leads to peace. The results are mixed. Sure, there have been immense value brought to the world through trade, but trade has been going on for centuries before Smith. And, if we consider the booming trade of the second half of the past century, culminating in the decade of globalisation, the 1990s, it’s not difficult to see that there have very many conflicts in the world since the end of World War 2, when the original ideas of global free trade that defined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in the aftermath of that war.
I’m not sure if any or all of the above makes any sense. I would insist that only the discontinuous mind would see all of the above as discreet, unrelated and irrelevant. What is difficult to imagine is the continuation of artisanal shipbuilding in small villages along the waterways of Southeast Asia.
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