Introduction: Symbolic Knowledge and Authority in Complex Societies

Abstract

This book is about the complex societies of Island Southeast Asia that converted to Islam between about 1300 and 1600 CE. For the most part, the members of these societies employ technologies, speak languages, perform rituals, and recount narratives that derive from a common Austronesian heritage. In a previous book, I explained how these shared forms of knowledge led to the development of a regional political economy in which a series of coastal kingdoms were loosely integrated through the long-distance exchange of material goods, royal spouses, and symbolic knowledge (Gibson 2005). In this book, I explore the way this regional system was transformed as it was integrated into a still wider system between 1300 and 1600 CE. Conversion to Islam played a key role in this process as it provided a cosmopolitan symbolic code that enabled Southeast Asians to marry, to trade, and to ally with fellow Muslims around the Indian Ocean. I also explore the implications of Island Southeast Asia’s encounter with the predatory trading practices of Western Europe, an encounter that dates to the Portuguese conquest of Melaka in 1512.