Book Reviews / JESHO 56 (2013) 309-344

319

Kenneth R. HALL, A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and

Societal Development, 100-1500. Lanham and Plymouth: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2011. xiv + 386 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7425-6760-3 (hbk.); 978-0-
7425-6761-0 (pbk.). $99.00 (hbk.) / $39.95 (pbk.).

It would be easy to assume that this volume is a mere update of Maritime

Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia (1985),1 penned by the
author Kenneth Hall. It is not. Instead, this book is an important contri-
bution to the field of Southeast Asian studies in the true tradition of area
studies as it has been envisaged over the course of the last four decades, in
which the outcomes of both the diverse research methodologies and
approaches of the various disciplines that characterize Southeast Asian
Studies, including archaeology, art history, philology, textual analysis, and
anthropology, on the one hand, and the frameworks of analysis on geo-
graphical and spatial studies on the other hand, may be synthesized to
produce a master narrative that encapsulates the region of Southeast Asia,
and how its various societies interacted with the external world and devel-
oped its indigenous social systems.
The book covers the pre-modern, or pre-European era of Southeast
Asian history, a periodization that supposedly alludes to the paradoxical
impression of indigenous developments that occurred over the course of
the longue durée without the intervention of external forces. In dividing the
book both geographically and chronologically, Hall in effect articulates a
narrative that demonstrates that there was a direct correlation between the
economic environment of Maritime Asia at large and the development of
the state in the various sub-regions of Southeast Asia during this early
period of history, and that the basis of these developments were hardly
static, but constantly changing as international and internal developments
interacted and maintained a dialogue that was bi-directional.
The book begins with the trans-regional picture, and then proceeds to
examine case studies along more-or-less ethnic and post-colonial nation-
state geographical lines. In this regard, the case study divisions are reminis-
cent of that established by the early twentieth century scholars of the École
Française tradition, in particular George Coedès’ volume entitled The

1)
  Kenneth R. Hall, Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia (Hono-
lulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1985).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341306
320 Book Reviews / JESHO 56 (2013) 309-344

Indianised State of Southeast Asia (1968).2 Perhaps the primary criticism

that may be leveled against the book under review here is that the envision-
ing of Southeast Asia is still embodied by the civilizational discourse of the
colonial and immediate post-colonial era.
This, however, does not detract from the fact that the book is an impor-
tant contribution to the field of Southeast Asian studies as well as global
history and international studies. To begin with, the coverage of the spatial
frameworks of analysis is comprehensive. The book begins by setting the
scene of international commerce and communications in the Indian Ocean
and South China Sea worlds, detailing the interactive dynamics between
the continental societies in China and the Indian subcontinent, and the
littoral and interstice societies of both these regions, as well as the land-
based societies of Java and Mainland Southeast Asia. The book also dis-
cusses the role of inland waterways and the major riverine systems in
integrating otherwise land-locked societies and spaces into the vibrant net-
works of maritime regions of Asia. The key concepts of world systems
theories, as developed by such scholars as Abu Janet Lughod, Kenneth
Hall, and Victor Lieberman, are then connected with the key Southeast
Asian spatial political-economic frameworks of analysis, including the
dendritic theory as originally formulated by Bennet Bronson, the temple
tax distributive economic structures articulated by Jan Wisseman-Christie,
David Chandler and Claude Jacques, and the port-of-trade concept by
Karl Polanyi. Kenneth Hall’s contribution, with this volume, is his attempt
to demonstrate the links between the larger international developments
and their impact on specific Southeast Asian societies. Where possible, the
links of cause and effect between the international and regional economy
and local institutions of trade and power, as the frameworks examined
becoming increasingly localized, are demonstrated. Nonetheless, the links
between the international and the local are, in some cases, not demonstra-
bly apparent or discussed in sufficient detail, such as may be said of the
case of Java in the second half of the first millennium AD. To that point, it
may be noted that the tentative conclusion drawn from reading the book
is that the social institutions of the various Southeast Asian geographical
sub-regions and ethnic groups were affected to different degrees by the
external changes.

  George Coedès, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (Honolulu: East-West Center
2)

Press, 1968).