Abstract
World history is shaped by events that took place on land and on the oceans. The Maritime Silk Road emphasizes that the oceans also have an essential role in shaping world civilization. As a concept, the Maritime Silk Road can be studied using various approaches, from geography to history, archaeology and others. The Maritime Silk Road has been explored with great promise in recent years by several Indonesian researchers engaging with the concept of the Spice Road. Indeed, this book’s discussion shares similarities with works drawing on the Spice Road concept, examining the impacts and networks formed by maritime trade and shipping activities on an international scale.
The book comprises nine chapters, which are divided into three sections. It begins with a theoretically informed introductory chapter that explicates the framework underpinning the remaining collection of studies in the following chapters. The editors explain that this book offers a terrestrial counterpart to the Silk Road concept. In recent years, it has been actively mobilized by China. The ocean became another vital part of world civilization, which did not only involve China or Rome with land trade routes, but, more broadly, also involved various nations from other parts of the world.
The first section, ‘Global Connectivities’, discusses the transcontinental connections of commercial and cultural exchanges, linking distant parts of the world such as Asia, Europe and Africa. This relationship is formed against geographical factors in the shipping area, which has the ocean as its main component. Specifically, in Chapter 1, Eivind Heldaas Seland looks at spatiality in early Indian Ocean exchange. He discusses the Maritime Silk Road from the point of view of its spatial, social and historical contexts. Hyunhee Park, in Chapter 2, considers the maritime domain with regard to openness and flexibility in border issues to understand maritime trade's spatial configuration. According to Park, maritime connections are formed by understanding the geography of the sea through maritime-activity actors. This understanding impacts the openness of spaces for the sharing of information about shipping, ports and trading products. Meanwhile, in Chapter 3, James W. Lankton writes on the glass exchange in maritime trade since the late Bronze Age to examine the maritime trade network.
The second section explores ‘Regional Nodes’ in the Maritime Silk Road. The Maritime Silk Road is a heterogeneous environment connected by regional nodes with cultural and social specificities. Jun Kimura, in Chapter 4, discusses one form of heterogeneity in examining shipwrecks in the Maritime Silk Road area. Kimura’s maritime archaeological research on shipwrecks in South East Asia and East Asia proves that maritime trade impacted the mass production of ships to support trading activities in the Middle Ages. In Chapter 5, Ariane de Saxcé conducts a cultural exchange analysis based on archaeological data from western artefacts in the South Asia region. Using a social network approach, Saxcé finds that regional network nodes have an impact on cultural exchanges in the Indian Ocean between the East and the West that have been formed for a long time. In the following chapter, Shadreck Chirikure discusses the existence of the southern African region in the Maritime Silk Road. Trade on the Maritime Silk Road, which is synonymous with the Indian Ocean or the Asian region, is inseparable from southern Africa's involvement. In this context, southern Africa had agency in selecting what and what not to incorporate. This area is not just on the periphery of Asia as the centre of the Maritime Silk Road.
The final section contains three chapters with the theme ‘Localities’. In this context, a locality is defined as the involvement of local communities in globalization as the impact of shipping and trade on the Maritime Silk Road. Indigenous people not only receive goods and ideas from migrants but also play an active role in shaping maritime civilization. The three chapters in this section use an archaeological approach, with two focusing on ceramic artefacts scattered in the South East Asian region, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia. The discovery of Chinese ceramics in several areas in South East Asia is proof that these people have long interacted with Chinese traders. John N. Miksic's analysis, in Chapter 7, finds these ceramics to be part of sociocultural evolution and urbanization in ports and associated areas. Furthermore, in Chapter 8, Derek Heng's analysis of ceramics from the beginning of the second millennium
The Maritime Silk Road provides a new perspective to see the Maritime Silk Road in a broader light. The chapters in this book discuss the concept of the Maritime Silk Road and its impact on various fields, such as social, cultural, political and economic history. The archaeological approach used by some authors makes a significant contribution to seeing history that transcends the historiography. However, the book could have been more complete if it had included chapters using other approaches, such as philology, epigraphy, linguistics or ethnography. The historical heritage along the Maritime Silk Road consists of both a tangible and an intangible heritage, therefore various approaches are needed to examine it comprehensively. Multiple approaches would have strengthened this book as a standard for researchers of all disciplines, from historians to anthropologists, philologists and archaeologists, to conduct research along these lines. Apart from this minor deficiency, this book is very worthy of being a reference and basis for researchers or maritime historians who wish to conduct studies on the Maritime Silk Road from its inception to its effects.
