Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Chinese in Maritime Southeast Asia: Trade and Merchant Communities in 17th-Century Insulindia

The Chinese in Maritime Southeast Asia: Trade and Merchant Communities in 17th-Century Insulindia

De Vienne, Marie-Sybille

Hardcover

General Political ScienceGeneral World HistorySoutheast Asian History

ISBN10: 9813252804
ISBN13: 9789813252806
Publisher: National University of Singapore Press
Published: Sep 1 2025
Pages: 384
Weight: 1.58
Height: 1.02 Width: 7.01 Depth: 9.92
Language: English
An in-depth exploration of the Dutch East-India Company and what its history reveals about the Chinese community in the Dutch East Indies.

Connections between Asian and European markets increased dramatically in the seventeenth century, indicating a turning point in the global history of trade. The Dutch East-India Company (or VOC) was central to this process; however, counter to the VOC's aims, the winners of the game in maritime Southeast Asia were often Chinese merchants. As this book shows, at the time, these merchants were the only economic agents capable of trading both in major Southeast Asian commercial hubs and developing exchanges with China and Japan. The Chinese operated with a flexibility of means and a fluidity of management that allowed them to react rapidly and quickly gain returns on investment. In Batavia, as in other Southeast Asian emporiums, the increasingly numerous and diverse Chinese elites assumed direct responsibility for the management of their community; this made them the most important non-European free community in the city during the second half of the seventeenth century.

The Chinese in Maritime Southeast Asia tells this remarkable story through an examination of the VOC's abundant sources, which record relations between the Chinese minority and the Dutch rulers who relied upon them.

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Southeast Asian History

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