Team 2 - Southeast Asia’s Global Economy. Climate and the Impact of Natural Hazards from the 10th to 21st Centuries

Professor James Warren's team is undertaking a broad investigation of the impacts of climate-related and other natural hazards (typhoons, floods, drought, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.) on the economy, society and history of the Philippines, from the 10th century to the present. This project aims to reconstruct spatial, temporal and social patterns in vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate variability and natural hazards in the Philippine Island World. The research will focus on economic, demographic and social trends (including food security) in conjunction with climatic and natural hazard events, and will examine in detail the sometimes catastrophic impacts on human institutions and cultural values. Qualitative and quantitative data will be collected from the largely untapped and accurate historical records, which will then be integrated with climate change and geophysical models to overcome the lack of reliable, sustained statistical records before the modern era. The hope is to combine these diverse data to clarify the complex and uncertain linkages and causality, both historical and current, between the Filipino people, their economy and the environment.

Slavery, Islam and the Making of the Sulu Zone, 1768-1898

The aim of Professor Warren’s other project is to undertake an investigation about slavery, Islam and the creation of trans-cultural identities in the Sulu Zone. This project explores institutions, sources, the structure of slavery and two worlds. The project will examine conditions of slavery from the moment of captivity to the moment of manumission through the eyes of the captives and masters. The project also hopes to reveal the paradoxes of the historically conditioned response to the trauma and difference caused by Muslim slavery in the Sulu Zone that has governed the thinking and social practice of the Philippine community and other nations.

Latest Team Publications

TEAM LEADER

James Warren, Murdoch University

Professor James Francis Warren has held positions at the ANU and Yale University in addition to being a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, and at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He is also a Fellow of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University and of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and is an Associate of the Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University. He has been awarded grants by the Social Science Research Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Australia Research Council and the United States Library of Congress. Professor Warren's major publications include, The North Borneo Chartered Company’s Administration of the Bajau 1878-1909 (1971); The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898 (1981); Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore,1880-1940 (1986); At the Edge of Southeast History (1987); Ah Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution and Singapore Society, 1870-1940 (1993); The Sulu Zone: The World Capitalist Economy and the Historical Imagination (1998); Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization, Maritime Raiding and the Birth of Ethnicity (2001); and Pirates, Prostitutes and Pullers: Explorations in the Ethno- and Social History of Southeast Asia (2008). In 2003, James Warren was awarded the Centenary Medal of Australia for service to Australian Society and the Humanities in the study of Ethnohistory. He teaches courses on Southeast Asian social history, on researching and writing history in a trans-disciplinary context and on colonialism, literature and social context.

COLLABORATORS

Li Tana, Australian National University

Dr. Li Tana obtained both a BA and an MA from Peking University before getting her PhD at Australia National University, where she is currently a Senior Fellow in the School of Culture, History and Language. Dr. Li is also the Director of the Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora. Some of her key publications include:

•  “Nguyen Cochichina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” SEAP, Cornell University, 1998. Two Vietnamese editions published in Hue (1995) and Hochiminh City (1997), and a Chinese edition published in Beijing (2000).
• Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750-1880, (Joint ed. with Nola Cooke), Rowman and Littlefield/Singapore University Press, 2004.

Alfons van der Kraan, University of New England, Australia

Alfons van der Kraan was born in the Netherlands and educated there, in Canada and in Australia. He completed his PhD at the Australian National University (1976), whereupon he specialized in the economic history of Southeast Asia. He has been a lecturer at Murdoch University in Perth and, more recently, at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. He has published widely on the economic history of Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. His publications include: Lombok: Conquest, Colonization and Underdevelopment, 1870-1940, Heinemann, 1980; Bali at War: A History of the Dutch-Balinese Conflict of 1846-49, Monash University, 1995; Contest for the Java Cotton Trade, 1811-40: An Episode in Anglo-Dutch Rivalry, The University of Hull; and Murder and Mayhem in Seventeenth-Century Cambodia: Anthony van Diemen vs. King Ramadhipati, Silkworm Books, 2009.

ARC LINKAGE PROJECT (2011-13)

Professor Warren's Australia Research Council Linkage Project undertakes the first broad investigation of the impacts of climate-related and other natural hazards (typhoons, floods, drought, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions) on the economy, society and history of Southeast Asia from the 10th century to the present. The project has close ties to the MCRI project and aims to reconstruct spatial, temporal and social patterns in vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate variability and natural hazards. The research will focus on economic, demographic and social trends, including food security, across SE Asia in association with climatic and natural hazard events, and will examine closely the sometimes catastrophic effects on human institutions and cultural values. In particular the team will collect qualitative and quantitative data from the largely untapped, extensive and accurate historical records, and integrate these data with climate change and geophysical models to overcome the lack of reliable sustained statistical records before the modern era. The team will combine these diverse data to clarify the complex and uncertain linkages and causality, both historical and current, between SE Asian people, their economy and environment.

The project’s scope is uniquely broad and multidisciplinary, comprising collaborations between historians, archaeologists, seismologists and others to analyze the development of SE Asia’s vast & sophisticated economic system within the context of human-environment interactions, over a scale and time period which has been inadequately investigated. The project breaks new ground in the location and use of resources, and an interdisciplinary approach to problem and method. It will advance the knowledge base of discipline(s), provide a radically new history of the region, and a new basis for understanding complex interaction between human and natural forces.

ARC Collaborators

Jeremy Green, Maritime Museum Western Australia

Jeremy was instrumental in the initiation of the field of maritime archaeology in Australia. Following his pioneering excavations on the Dutch wreck Batavia in the early 1970s, he established the Department of Maritime Archaeology at the Western Australian Museum and has helped lead the department since that time. He has been involved in research in over 15 countries, and has developed training programmes, including UNESCO Regional Workshops to advance underwater cultural heritage in countries, such as China and Sri Lanka. Since 1994, Jeremy has been head of the Australian National Centre for Excellence in Maritime Archaeology. Jeremy’s career includes a long span of field and academic experience around the world. From 1967, he worked at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology at Oxford University on the development of an underwater metal detector, a proton magnetometer, and underwater photogrammetry. These techniques were investigated in field conditions in England and the Mediterranean. After joining the Western Australian Museum in 1971, Jeremy developed programmes involving pre-settlement, post-settlement and wreck inspection. In 1973, he founded the Maritime Archaeological Association of Western Australia (MAAWA). He also helped to found the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology (AIMA), was made foundation President, and has been Editor of its Bulletin since 1977. Jeremy holds numerous positions and awards, including membership of the Council for Nautical Archaeology, UK, Fellowship of the Institute of Archaeology, and Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Research Associate of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. He was Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University of Technology and James Cook University and is Advisory Editor of the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. Jeremy is a recipient of the Keith Muckelroy Prize for Achievement in the Field of Maritime Archaeology and the Rys Jones Medal for 2007, the highest award offered by the Australian Archaeological Association, in recognition of his pioneering work in the development of maritime archaeology in Australia.

Alistair Paterson, University of Western Australia

Professor Alistair Paterson is an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia. His research and teaching covers culture contact, historical archaeology in maritime and terrestrial settings in the Indian and Southern Oceans, European colonization, historical rock art, and archaeological and historical methodology. Much of his work is located in northern Western Australia, including regional studies of Australia's Northwest, the uses of coast and offshore islands in colonial and pre-colonial settings (in collaboration with the Western Australian Museum), and early colonial settlements across the state. He is the author of A Millennium of Cultural Contact (Left Coast, 2011), The Lost Legions: Culture Contact in Colonial Australia (Alta Mira, 2008) and editor with Jane Balme of Archaeology in Practice: A Student Guide to Archaeological Analyses (Blackwell Publishing, 2006). He is past President of the Australian Archaeological Association (2005-2007), and has been involved with editing for, and publishing in, key archaeology journals including Archaeology in Oceania, Australasian Historical Archaeology, Internet Archaeology and Australian Archaeology.

Anthony Reid, Australian National University

Anthony Reid is a Southeast Asian historian, once again based at the Australian National University after serving as founding Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA (1999-2002) and of the Asia Research Institute at NUS, Singapore (2002-7). Long interested in Braudelian concepts of histoire totale and the longue durée, he has recently been researching environmental history, particularly with reference to the tectonic subduction zones of the ring of fire. He was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2002, and was made a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2008. His books include The Contest for North Sumatra: Aceh, the Netherlands and Britain, 1858-98 (1969); The Indonesian National Revolution (1974); The Blood of the People: Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra (1979); Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce (2 vols., 1988-93); An Indonesian Frontier: Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra (2004); Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and political identity in Southeast Asia (2010); To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century (2011); Mapping the Acehnese Past (co-edited with Michael Feener and Patrick Daly, 2011); and From the Ground Up: Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction in Post-Tsunami Aceh (co-edited with Michael Feener and Patrick Daly, 2012).

Wendy Van Duivenvoorde, Flinders University

Wendy van Duivenvoorde is a lecturer in maritime archaeology at Flinders University and an adjunct lecturer in archaeology at the University of Western Australia. She obtained her PhD from Texas A&M University's Nautical Archaeology Program in 2008. From 2006 to 2011, she worked as a curator at the Western Australian Maritime Museum and directed the Dutch shipwreck research programme of its department of maritime archaeology. Her current research focuses on Dutch ships and seafaring in the Indian Ocean, and more specifically on ship communication in the early seventeenth century. She has studied inscriptions on postal stones and assessed the archaeological remains of an early Dutch "post office" in this region of the world. Native to the Netherlands, she was the recipient of several grants and scholarships for her comprehensive study of the archaeological hull remains of VOC ship Batavia and similar-type vessels. Her expertise in shipbuilding technology and seafaring led to her recently commenced study of maritime traditions and traditional boatbuilding practices in Madagascar.

STUDENTS

Charlotte Minh Ha Pham, PhD Candidate, Murdoch University, Western Australia Maritime Museum

Charlotte has an MA in Conservation of ceramics (E.N.S.A.V. La Cambre, Brussels), a MA in Maritime Archaeology (Univ. of Southampton) and with the support of the EFEO worked in Vietnam for the past two years and a half.

From a maritime perspective, she wants to look at the history of Champa (central Vietnam) where the sea is not a boundary but an arena of exchange. Based on historical documents and ethnographic data, she aims at using boat building traditions as an alternate source of data. This holistic approach will help to set boat construction, use and role in its proper social, political, economic and cultural contexts and will also promote the maritime perspective to the cross-cultural diversity and exchanges in central Vietnam. Through this project she hopes to contribute to the preservation of maritime cultural heritage and ultimately hopes that her work will forge a small stepping stone for the promotion of new methodologies and approaches in the academic development of maritime archaeology in Vietnam.

Katie Dyt, PhD Candidate, Australian National University

Katie Dyt is a historian with an interest in the environment and religious and cultural practices in Vietnam. Her MA thesis, Against the Stream: Buddhism, Marxism and Gender in the Narrative of a Vietnamese Nun explores the interactions between Buddhist and Marxist discourses and the shifting gendered meanings assigned to nuns within Vietnamese society since the mid-twentieth century. It was awarded the Monash University Faculty of Arts Best Masters Thesis and a Vice Chancellor’s Commendation for Masters Thesis Excellence. Her current PhD research at the ANU, funded by a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship for Doctoral Study, explores cultural understandings of the environment during the Nguyen Dynasty (1802-1945). Drawing on accounts of environmental phenomena and natural disasters in Vietnamese court chronicles and French missionary reports, the research aims to provide insights into the workings of the Nguyen court and to shed light on interpretations of the natural world during a significant period of cultural change and political transformation.