Early Mapping of Southeast Asia: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers Who First Mapped the Regions between China and India

by Thomas Suárez

With dozens of rare color maps and other documents, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia follows the story of map-making, exploration and colonization in Asia from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

It documents the idea of Southeast Asia as a geographical and cosmological construct, from the earliest of times up until the down of the modern era. using maps, itineraries, sailing instructions, traveler's tales, religious texts and other contemporary sources, it examines the representation of Southeast Asia, both from the historical perspective of Western exploration and cartography, and also through the eyes of Asian neighbors.

Southeast Asia has always occupied a special place in the imaginations of East and West. This book recounts the fascinating story of how Southeast Asia was, quite literally, put on the map, both in cartographic terms and as a literary and imaginative concept.

Genres: History, Asia, Geography, Maps

280 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 1999

Reviews

[Damar Juniarto · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is a map? The book questions us. A map is a spatial representation of a place, thing, or concept, actual or imagined. No subject embedded to a map, so no restricted formula what to be on the map. It could be something real, something mystical, about your neighbor house, about heaven, et cetera.

The modern state nowadays map their region by stating the borders. But old/ancient kingdom first in the Southeast marks the center (the mandala) as the core of the kingdom. They will protect it as the center means the holiest part of their country.

We may know a lot of maps by now, but we must recognize every motive behind the map. The trade map that used by the India/Arabian pilot are different from the religious map. And the religious map are much different from the political map. For example, Indonesia was originally a creation of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (the Dutch East India Company) not of Dutch colonialism per se. But the Dutch use it as a legitimation of their colony and later the Indonesian people use the same map to claim the land as a symbol of their sovereignity.

But this book carefully says that there is a different between western mapmaking tradition and southeast mapmaking tradition which full of mystical ideas. Such as Banda people who believe that they live on the horn of an ox, that causes earthquake everytime it shake the head. Or Bali people who believe they live at the back of a turtle, Bedawang.

Early mapping of Southeast Asia at the beginning start with those European who travel to SE and they write down not only the map but also the society. For instance, the first Dutch expedition to Java (1596) reported that if the king of Banten send male messenger to request the presence of "any subject or stranger dwelling or being in his dominions," the person "may refuse to come; but if once he send a woman, he may not refuse nor make no excuse." When the Portugese traveler Mendes Pinto was in Banten in 1530, a woman of nearly sixty years of age arrived on a diplomatic mission. According to Pinto, she was paid the highest honors, and it was "a very ancient costum among the rulers of these kingdoms, ever since they began, for matters of great importance requiring peace and harmony to be handled through women".

Well written book.

[mahatmanto · Rating 4 out of 5]

ini buku penting untuk melacak bagaimana kawasan asia tenggara direpresentasikan secara visual.
membuat peta adalah operasionalisasi power/kuasa. karena siapa dulu yang bikin, apanya yang perlu dicantumkan, bagaimana cara menggambarkannya, dsb. itu jelas adalah permainan kekuasaan.
buku ini memerlihatkan bagaimana proses pemetaan kawasan tadi dari awalnya hingga yang paling mutahir.
tidak disinggung bagaimana orang-orang pedalaman jawa membangun peta mereka sendiri.
jadi, ini pandangan orang luar dari kawasan asia tenggara sendiri.