Abstract
In many accounts of technology, regardless of the geographic setting, the focus rests upon the transition from some conception of the ‘early modern’ to ‘modern’, with these two terms taking on different referents, contingent upon the specific setting and periodisation. The term techne, with its root word implying ‘craft’ or a knowledge of craft, has been used in the English language since the seventeenth century, preceding the more familiar usage of its frequent companion, ‘science’, with this term associated with the early nineteenth century. Together, the two terms suggest a move from existing arts, crafts and skill sets (water management, agriculture and implements of war) to those made with a greater command of empirical techniques and accompanying theoretical models, a description that in the past would have conjured up some broad notion of the Scientific Revolution. The use of modal verbs here, however, suggests a new set of emerging trends within the scholarship, particularly for those regions outside of Western Europe and North America, which were the focus of much of the previous scholarship.
Suzanne Moon’s Technology in Southeast Asia engages vigorously with these debates, sometimes explicitly and in other places less formally, by offering a volume-length introduction to the subject, one clearly aimed as a survey for undergraduates and graduate students new to the region and its historical engagement with diverse forms of knowledge practice. In offering a longue duree approach, Moon consciously rejects simplistic formulations of the modern as linked almost exclusively to technologies from the sixteenth century onwards, instead offering a much broader narrative, one in which the application of knowledge to one’s surrounding environment links with basic acts of survival, including the cultivation of rice and the creation of spaces better suited for human settlement. In this context, of course, Moon’s gesture rejects Europeans as the sole arbiters of technology, and as she points out, the period of colonial rule for this region was relatively brief, especially when considered against the background of the entire history of the region.
Characterising Southeast Asia: The Region, Its Geography
Along with this temporal intervention, Moon also makes clear that her geography may differ from some versions of Southeast Asia, or certainly as it is understood by some groups of area studies specialists. In this context, Southeast Asia is often defined in terms of the nations of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), suggesting a post-colonial formation with relatively recent origins. Although she discusses the distinction between land-based Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) and the corresponding set of island formations, Moon also includes Yunnan (Southwest China) in her scheme, offering an accompanying set of cultural and geographic reasons for doing so. First, the inclusion of China, or at least an adjoining part of it, emphasises the historical ties between China and these locations, whether in terms of their linguistic commonalities, cultural factors or a diversity of human populations. Further, these ties suggest a mutuality in terms of migration, with flows travelling within a relationship of reciprocity.
More importantly, the control of the region by China dates only to the Ming (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries), meaning that to a scholar such as Moon, motivated by the long-term view, its earlier formations and forms of identity hold considerable interest. If Yunnan might today be labelled as part of East Asia, particularly due to its inclusion within China, there are powerful reasons for placing it within Southeast Asia at earlier points, particularly when it took the form of Nanzhao, spanning roughly the eighth and ninth centuries. Frequently in conflict with Tang China, Nanzhao’s interactions with the northern parts of Southeast Asia grant it a status that still calls for scholarly inquiry. Again, Moon’s intent here lies not with interrogating present-day Chinese historiography, but rather with offering a periodisation and regional picture that can defamiliarise the stable notion of a set of ‘clear’ or legible nation-states, and similarly, explicitly marked borders shaping their relations.
With much of this material crafted to offset embedded assumptions about the modern, Moon undertakes her survey, with colonial actors here first appearing in the form of the VOC (Dutch East India Company), followed by various state actors. With this set-up, these actors, often representing the foreground in many accounts of the region’s history, appear in the latter third of the book, and then only briefly. Although often left implicit, Moon’s work thus stands against standard colonial accounts and, more broadly, as a contrast to those works in the history of technology that prioritise the conflicts of the colonial and high imperial eras to define technology. Examples here might include the work of Michael Adas, Daniel Headrick and others in this vein, a late twentieth-century intervention in which technology became a marker of certain perceptions concerning civility and development. For Moon, the challenge here is not contesting these works, which in fact is not her intent, but rather offering a different type of narrative rooted in the region and its longitudinal concerns.
Technology and Forms of Adaptation: Outline and Structure
Moon offers a narrative covering the complex sets of transitions from nomadic ways of life to settlement and, from here, to questions of dealing with localising technologies from within the region, with China serving here as the major example. In this respect, the major portion of the text focuses on Southeast Asian actors and their concerns: learning how to survive, managing water resources and developing sufficient sources of food to permit enduring communities. This last word offers a major focus of the text, as Moon is careful to avoid the political language of a later period, instead offering an array of terms, including ‘kingdoms, sultanates, empires, and population centers’ (p. 10), thereby suggesting a wide range of cultural, religious and political formations. Her primary aim in these first two chapters lies with issues of settlement and exchange, that is, with the issues underlying the formation of communities and, equally, the interactions of groups with those surrounding them, and facing similar challenges.
In the following section, comprising Chapters 3–5, Moon takes up individual cases studies covering roughly the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries, with an emphasis on technological dynamism. Chapter 3 covers textiles and their production, with the context formed by the creation of market niches where Indian cloth production failed to dominate. In turn, Chapter 4 takes up shipbuilding and mining, and here, the technical factors are heavily impacted by the presence of China and its models of practice, representing one of the key external influences on the region. Finally, Chapter 5 examines new agricultural techniques, again anticipating a future issue, in this case, the rise of export-oriented agriculture under various forms of European colonialism. In these cases, whether individually or collectively, Moon places the region in the context of the regional and world markets, trying to carve out a Southeast Asian account of a particular set of technologies while recognising the role of incoming and shaping influences.
The final two chapters (Chapters 6 and 7), focusing on war and instruments used in its conduct, takes technology to address what Moon refers to as ‘cultures of conflict’, here meaning largely within the region. As with preceding sections, there is a focus on the use of technologies borrowed from without, in this case guns, especially as European actors began to make their presence felt. In keeping with the volume’s larger themes, however, the focus here rests on technological integration, and specifically, the incorporation of guns and new weapons with existing means of conducting warfare and resolving conflict. The themes also relate to migration and human circulation, as patterns of conflict helped to shape the dominant routes by which people might negotiate the region. In all three of the major sections, the focus rests on the formation of the region and its concerns, giving centrality of agency to those residing in it and driving the region’s activities.
If there are criticisms to be made, these are mostly minor, primarily framed in terms of asking for more explicit marking of the volume’s major themes and arguments. The surrounding context of East and South Asia makes its presence felt, although India figures far less prominently than China. In Moon’s Chapters 8 and 9, she concludes with cases moving to the era of high imperialism, and the reader will recognise these themes in her examples, drawn largely from agricultural transformations made under colonial conditions and similar forms of external pressure: Here we meet agriculture as industrial production, especially sugar and rubber. For Moon, the emphasis here lies with the term ‘intensification’, the ramping up or transformation of existing forms of practice, rather than the following the intentions of newly arriving actors. Although she explicitly challenges the ‘tools of empire’ thesis (p. 123), her explanation is careful not to get overwhelmed by its accompanying historiography. This is an admirable form of restraint, but still, specific examples could provide students with more context, especially those unfamiliar with the larger debates and the relevant historiography.
In terms of the volume’s challenges to the modern and the foreign, Moon concludes with twin gestures in Chapter 8. First, she acknowledges the many technologies (photography, film and radio) common to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and obviously worthy of attention. For these, she cites the need for brevity, especially within the chosen genre of a survey. Second, and more significantly, she cites the discursive emphasis on the external as a source of novelty, but not as a form of innovation, but rather as a sign of ‘imperial weakness’ (pp. 148–149). Ultimately, her emphasis rests with ‘reconfiguration, negotiation, and struggle’ (p. 148), affirming the ability of the region’s actors to grapple with any challenges emerging from outside the region. As with other newer forms of literature concerning ‘non-Western’ or area studies approaches to technology, the emphasis rests on multiple points of origin and an explicit challenge to any reliance on novelty or the modern as the primary sources of knowledge and practice.
Although intended for Southeast Asianists and East Asianists as the primary audience, this volume should hold appeal for other regional specialists (Africa, Asia-Pacific and South America), especially as increasing numbers of STS scholars offer comparative courses, and seek to work across national borders, lines of periodisation, and types of actors (state, non-state, colonial, post-colonial and developmental).