Description: Sea nomads have been part of the economic and political landscape of Southeast Asia for millennia. They have played many roles over the longue-durée: in certain periods proving central to the ability of land-based polities to generate wealth, by sourcing valuable maritime commodities, facilitating trade, forming a naval force to secure and protect vital sea lanes and providing crucial connectivity. They have existed in complex, codified relations with different sedentary populations, as pirates, guardians of the sea-lanes, merchants and explorers. Paradoxically, as modern states emerged, the sea-nomads became progressively marginalized and impoverished.
For many years, the sea nomads were assumed to be without history, and even without archaeology. This has proven far from the case, and recent archaeological findings allow us to more closely describe sea nomadism from the Pleistocene through the early Holocene up to the present. Integrating these findings with the latest in historical research, linguistics, ethnography and historical genetics allows us to better understand sea-nomad ways of life over a scale of millennia and to appreciate the diversity and flexibility of this sea-nomad world. This in turn enriches our understanding of nomadism and mobility as ways of life more generally, and of the sea not only as a landscape of resources, but as a home and spiritual landscape.Brief description:
Bérénice Bellina is an anthropological archaeologist implementing anthropology of techniques to study cultural exchanges, and in particular in relation to trade in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean.
Review Quotes:
"While it may be challenging for general readers, Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia is nevertheless an important work that could shift opinion on a group of Southeast Asian peoples who have often, and unjustly, become scapegoats for perceived ills in terrestrial communities. After all, it was the sea nomads who predicted and escaped the Asian tsunami that battered the coastlines of 14 countries on Dec. 26, 2004, killing more than 200,000 people on land, according to most estimates. Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia helps to highlight such diverse natural sensibility, locate its origins in time, language and history, and give it an academically sound base on which mainstream readers can gain a valuable understanding of this little-known group."
-- "Nikkei Asia"