[Talk] A People’s History of the South China Sea

Readers in Singapore may be interested in this talk by Melissa Macauley happening at Nanyang Technological University on 22 August 2023.

Why are China and Southeast Asia conventionally understood to exist on separate continents? Geographically, meteorologically, culturally, and economically they have shared common historical experiences. Their interrelations have been mutually transformative over time. Travelers, scholars, seafarers, nationalists, political organizers, and religious leaders who resided along the shores of Asia’s “Water Frontier” perceived that they lived in an interconnected world that was not bound by national borders. There is a large literature on the “Global South,” but little attention has been paid to the “Asian South” as a category of historical analysis. My new work seeks to conceptualize the Asian South as a “middle ground” of expanding colonial frontiers (including the Chinese and Japanese frontiers) and emerging nation-states as well as a maritime economy that was integral to the emergence of the modern world. In this discussion, I will focus on the East Asian monsoon and the ways it affected social disputation.

Source: A People’s History of the South China Sea | School of Humanities | NTU Singapore