Abstract
Deadline: 12/10/2002
Event:
The
Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore
Workshop
Event
Date & Location:
5/1 - 5/3/2003; the National University of Singapore
Website:
http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/Ming_Factor.htm
Information:
The arbitrary date 1500 was long
used as a shorthand for the beginning of the modern age
in Asia, primarily because the European arrival in Asian
waters was thought to have created a Vasco da Gama epoch.
The recent fascination with the Early Modern has sought
to dethrone both the date and the importance of the Portuguese
as harbingers of change. The question has come to be asked,
though not yet systematically addressed, whether modernity
did not come to Southeast Asia, in particular, in the 15th
Century. Did not the Zheng He voyages and early Ming expansionism
more generally have a greater impact than the few ships
of the Portuguese a century later? The murky beginnings
of Anthony Reid's Age of Commerce in the 15th Century had
been much less discussed than its end, until Sun Laichen's
dissertation pointed to technological changes which transformed
the states of northern Southeast Asia in the early fifteenth
century.
The
15th Century nevertheless remains an enigma, too late for
inscriptions, too early for indigenous texts or European
observations. Chinese sources were relatively abundant in
the first half of the century, but scarce thereafter. Hence
it has fallen between the cracks of earlier conferences,
despite its pivotal position. Early Southeast Asia was discussed
at SOAS in September 1973; Southeast Asia in the 9th to
14th centuries at the Australian National University in
1984, and Early Modern Southeast Asia in Lisbon in 1989
each with a subsequent book. This symposium will focus the
attention of a number of specialist scholars on the extraordinary
changes of the period, and how far common elements can be
sought in the strong showing of new states around a wide
swathe of Asia.
Yet
the modernities appearing in the crucible of intense interaction
with China were many: firearms, more intensive rice agriculture,
Tai and Viet ceramic exports, Korean and Ryukyu contacts
with Southeast Asia, the retreat of Champa, the apogee of
Viet and northern Tai statecraft, the birth of Malayo-Muslim
kingship in Melaka and the creation of a new Muslim Javanese
civilization on the north coast. Were these phenomena causally
linked to the early Ming expansionism by land and sea? Can
we de-centre the European narrative of modernity by exploring
some of the interactions and cultural borrowings that preceded
the European impact? Sun Laichen argues that we should locate
the start of early modernity in Asia, and points to Le Vietnam,
Ming China and Choson Korea as the first gunpowder empires
made possible by evolutionary military technology. On the
other hand, if there was a kind of crisis in the middle
of the fifteenth century (Atwell) which stopped the interactions,
should we see these spectacular developments as a false
start rather than the beginnings of a period?
These
are some of the issues this symposium will address. The
aim of the symposium is to bring together a range of scholars
pioneering new work on:
*
the Ming impact on Southeast Asian societies in this period,
and its relevance to periodization;
* the causation for the rise of new states in the period,
and the nature of these states;
* broader trends occurring throughout Southeast Asia including
the borderlands of southern China, eastern India, and Korea
and Ryukyu as instructive parallels to Southeast Asia;
* Asian or global systems, technological, demographic, economic
and disease regimes, where these have particular relevance
to Southeast Asia.
By
bringing together such a range of scholars, and notably
those who master Chinese sources on the one hand and the
great range of other sources (archaeological and literary)
on the other, this workshop will move forward our understanding
of historical dynamics.
Submission
Guidelines / Information:
Send submissions of titles of proposed papers, with
a 250-word abstract, by 10 December 2002 to:
Ms
Valerie Yeo,
Asia Research Institute
National University of Singapore
AS7, Level 4, 5 Arts Link
Singapore 117570
Email: ariyeov@nus.edu.sg
The
Committee will review the papers submitted and inform of
its decisions by 10 January 2003. Those selected for the
workshop will be funded for travel and accommodation in
Singapore.
Contact:
Ms Valerie Yeo,
Asia Research Institute
National University of Singapore
AS7, Level 4, 5 Arts Link
Singapore 117570
Email: ariyeov@nus.edu.sg
