Tag: Trade Routes
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Batavia and the VOC
For over 300 years, the Dutch shaped Indonesia’s history, economy, and society. From the first Dutch ships arriving in the late 1500s to Indonesian independence in 1949, colonialism transformed the archipelago in ways still visible today—in Jakarta’s skyline, its economy, and even its social fabric. But the Dutch might never have reached Indonesia—let alone built…
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Malacca, Merchants & Multiculturalism
Situated on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, on the strait that still bears its name, the port of Malacca was once one of the most critical nodes in the early modern global economy. Known today as Melaka in local language (Bahasa Melayu), the city’s historical significance rivals that of Venice, Cairo, and Canton—similar…
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Understanding Data: A Window into History and Climate
Let us go back by a century, and imagine ourselves to be one of the crew onboard a ship sailing vast global seas. Surrounded by the blue ocean and open sky, part of your daily routine would be to jot down weather observations in a logbook – a notebook filled with careful notes about what…
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Maritime Trade in the Strait of Malacca and Sumatra
The Malay Archipelago has historically been a significant region for maritime trade and diasporic settlement. It encompasses a vast area of Southeast Asia, from the Philippines in the northeast, south to the Celebes Islands, Moluccas and New Guinea and west to Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. This project focuses in on the region of the Strait…