Abstract
Forget images of Southeast Asia’s irrigated rice fields and densely populated villages: Eastern Indonesia was different.1 Tiny settlements were scattered over a multitude of often inhospitable archipelagos with rugged coastlines, few good anchorages and limited fresh water. Sulawesi (the Celebes), Kalimantan (Borneo) and Papua (New Guinea) were the largest islands; Dutch and later Indonesian control of the two last was partial.2 The main archipelagos were those of Maluku (the Moluccas, or Spice Islands) and Nusa Tenggara (the Lesser Sundas: Bali and Lombok in the west, Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores and Timor). West Papua and the nearby Raja Ampat, Aru and Kei islands formed an ecological transition zone between Southeast Asia and Melanesia.3 The interiors were generally heavily forested and infertile, although much of eastern Nusa Tenggara was dry and subject to seasonal famine. Over most of the region, shifting subsistence cultivators produced root crops, maize and hill rice. Intensive rice farming was limited to west and northeast Sulawesi, parts of Timor and Sumba, and Southeast Kalimantan as well as the fertile and relatively densely settled Bali and Lombok (Map 3.1).
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Notes
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Sutherland, H. (2015). On the Edge of Asia: Maritime Trade in East Indonesia, Early Seventeenth to Mid-twentieth Century. In: Bosma, U., Webster, A. (eds) Commodities, Ports and Asian Maritime Trade Since 1750. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463920_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463920_3
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