Salvaging Southeast Asian historical past: shipwrecks and Chinese language blue-and-white

The latest discovery and salvage of two wrecks in Singaporean waters, tentatively dated to the 14^th and 18^th centuries, exemplifies the potential of sunken ships to rework our understanding of the historic eras wherein they set sail. The primary of those, positioned about 100 metres to the north-west of Pedra Branca – a tiny, uninhabited island on the jap finish of the Singapore Strait – got here to gentle in 2015, when divers employed to clear the encompassing seas of scrap metallic discovered a submerged ceramic treasure trove. By likelihood, considered one of these divers recognised a hanging similarity with ceramics excavated across the identical time from Empress Place, the importance of which had attracted in depth media protection. The divers had been civic-minded sufficient at hand their finds to the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, which led an archaeological survey of the shipwreck web site in 2016. Underneath the steering of famend maritime archaeologist Michael Flecker, a second wreck was positioned and recognized because the Shah Munchah, an East India Firm vessel that sank in 1796 on its return from China to India. The cargoes of each ships had been recovered in a collection of diving expeditions accomplished earlier this yr.

This text relies on analysis first shared as a part of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s ‘Heritage and the Arts’ webinar collection.

Probably the most intriguing facet of those wrecks is the invention, in what stays of the older vessel, of essentially the most substantial cargo of Chinese language Yuan-dynasty (1271-1368) blue-and-white ceramics ever present in Southeast Asian waters. The amount of those items far exceeds earlier finds, whereas the similarity of celadon-glazed wares carried by the identical ship with examples discovered at Empress Place, dated to the late 14^th or early 15^th century, signifies that at the very least a part of the cargo could have been supposed for native circulation. It’s not solely the unprecedented amount, nonetheless, but in addition the astounding high quality of those blue-and-white wares that renders their discovery so exceptional and probably transformative for our understanding of the China Commerce in Southeast Asia.

There has lengthy been a persistent assumption amongst students of the China Commerce that the best reverence for Chinese language ceramics within the area, and their most receptive market, could possibly be discovered among the many indigenous communities of the Philippines and Indonesia. Unfamiliar with the supply of those items and the strategies of their manufacture, the argument goes, indigenous collectors had been unanimously captivated by the translucent fragility of porcelain and the inscrutable designs with which such wares had been adorned, concerning them not merely as practical commodities however highly effective talismans of cosmological significance. Imported ceramics subsequently grew to become a automobile for cementing alliances, easing the transition to ancestral realms, therapeutic dire non secular sicknesses, revealing prophesy, or mediating between human and different worlds. An implicit, and typically specific distinction has continuously been drawn between this context of use and that which prevailed in Europe and the Center East, the place a comparable tendency towards awestruck hypothesis has largely been neglected by students who emphasise the decorative makes use of of Chinese language ceramics within the home interiors of the rich.

An etching of Pedra Branca earlier than the constructing of Horsburgh Lighthouse, with darkish storm clouds within the background. C. 1820. Thomas Daniell (1749–1840) and William Daniell (1769–1837). (Public area)

A associated and equally persistent assumption is the declare that Southeast Asian consumers of Chinese language ceramics solely loved entry to low-quality wares, and that Chinese language kiln-owners and retailers regarded this market to the south as a “dumping floor for [their] coarsest merchandise,” as historian Robert Finlay phrased it in The Pilgrim Artwork: Cultures of Porcelain in World Historical past (2010). That is an assumption to which eminent ceramics historian John Man drew consideration in his sensible 2021 S.T. Lee Lecture, noting an inclination to imagine “that ceramics circulating in Southeast Asia had been of pedestrian high quality, [although] this was [certainly] not the case.” Whereas Finlay does concede in The Pilgrim Artwork, now thought-about by many to be important studying for college kids of the China Commerce, that rich port-city residents additionally purchased Chinese language wares, he maintains that “harbourmasters, administrative officers, and concrete businessmen” of the entrepot gathered these merchandise “as a business useful resource [to be traded with] peoples unfamiliar with structured governments and sophisticated economies,” little greater than “a bankable cultural asset.”

Towards this definition of Chinese language ceramics in Southeast Asia as politically potent but aesthetically inferior commodities, these discovered within the cargo of the Pedra Branca wreck current proof for a parallel but continuously neglected marketplace for luxurious among the many area’s wealthier inhabitants. The blue-and-white wares found on this submerged cargo are a far cry from the coarse cast-offs that Finlay imagined as the one porcelain accessible within the area. Somewhat than an indictment of Finlay’s scholarly acumen, nonetheless, such contradictions are a marker of the restricted proof on which understandings of the China Commerce in Southeast Asia are based mostly, and of the abrupt shifts {that a} new discovery can set in movement.

In our seek for traces of this neglected marketplace for Chinese language ceramics, the various ships which have succumbed over the centuries to unpredictable climate or hidden reefs, coming to relaxation on the ocean flooring with their cargo and plenty of of their crew, provide a useful supply. Writing for New Mandala in 2018, crucial heritage research scholar Natali Pearson makes a compelling case for the worth of those wrecks:

Shipwrecks are unbelievable assets for students of the previous, offering a singular perception right into a single second in time … [O]ften described as time capsules … they encapsulate a lot details about the lifetime of the crew, the know-how used to assemble the vessel, and the distinctive make-up of [their] cargo … [Unlike] temples or mausoleums … purposely constructed within the current for the longer term, a shipwreck is the results of an unintended occasion [and] is subsequently … extra indicative of life because it ‘truly was’, quite than because the individuals of the previous wished us to see it.

Pearson acknowledges that shipwrecks have limitations as sources for understanding the distant previous, noting the “challenges of working with degraded natural supplies” and “discrepancies in dates and origins,” to not point out the issue encountered in merely having access to these supplies, that are all too usually dispersed by looting and personal sale. As an artefact of a singular collection of economic choices, the extent to which a wreck can be utilized as the premise for common hypothesis can also be constrained. But this could equally be a bonus—the possessions of these onboard, in addition to the cargo they had been paid to move, can present a microhistory from which broader patterns of market distribution and day by day life could be extrapolated.

On the flip of the twenty-first century, for instance, the excavation of the Belitung wreck close to the island of that title in Indonesian waters – additionally coordinated and initially reported by Flecker—prompted a vital revision of beforehand long-held assumptions. Just like the Pedra Branca wrecks, the Belitung wreck was found by native divers – searching this time for sea cucumbers quite than scrap metallic—who stumbled by likelihood throughout a cache of ceramics. Recognising the historic (and financial) worth of their discover, the divers bought the coordinates to Seabed Explorations GBR, a German salvage firm permitted to excavate and promote artefacts on the non-public market beneath Indonesian heritage laws in place from 1989 till a moratorium on business salvage in 2010, throughout which period a number of of essentially the most vital wrecks discovered within the area had been positioned and picked clear. However, within the case of the Belitung wreck, your complete assemblage remained intact and now resides within the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore.

This preservation has enabled students to check the wreck and its contents at leisure, resulting in a number of vital conclusions. By evaluating Chinese language cash discovered on the web site, a date engraved on one of many 50,000 Changsha ware ceramics that comprised the majority of the cargo, and radiocarbon testing of the ship’s timbers, for instance, archaeologists and artwork historians have dated the wreck to a remarkably exact four-year interval between 826 and 830. It’s the identification of the ship itself as an Arab dhow, nonetheless, that has confirmed most exceptional. Previous to this, it had usually been assumed that commerce in Southeast Asia right now was primarily regional, with small ships transporting items from harbour to harbour as wanted, not often venturing far. The Belitung wreck pressured a radical reappraisal of the buying and selling routes linking China, Southeast Asia, and the Center East. The amount and high quality of the cargo, in addition to the probability that it had been specifically commissioned by a rich patron as a single bulk order of idiosyncratic design, indicated that the size and complexity of this commerce had been a lot better than beforehand thought.

Wanting past Southeast Asian waters, the Sinan wreck positioned within the islands of South Korea’s Sinan County in 1975 gives a paradigmatic case-study for the extent to which such discoveries can’t solely set in movement new chains of thought but in addition ossify current assumptions, even within the face of mounting opposite proof. This wreck stays the usual level of reference for students who assert that blue-and-white ceramics weren’t produced in China till the mid-14^th century, regardless of the following discovery of earlier items in Chinese language kiln websites and different wrecks—together with the Belitung wreck. The entire absence of such wares within the salvaged cargo of this vessel, the argument goes, presents incontrovertible proof for his or her non-existence. But many factors could possibly be raised to counter this declare. Above all, just like the Belitung wreck, this cargo could possibly be a single bulk fee manufactured to go well with the tastes of a rich consumer, and so can’t be taken as a consultant pattern of the vary of ceramics accessible on the time of buy and transport. Even when supposed for wider distribution, the kind of wares chosen for commerce possible mirror the tastes of a single market.

However, regardless of these counterclaims and the invention of blue-and-white ceramics that predate the Sinan wreck, many students nonetheless repeat the traditional narrative. This origin story stays central to the established mythology of worldwide ceramic innovation, whereby the import of Tune-dynasty celadon-glazed wares to the Center East is alleged to have sparked an change of uncooked supplies and design decisions that culminated within the invention of blue-and-white. The urtext for this narrative could be traced to 2 sources printed inside a number of years of the Sinan discovery: Margaret Medley’s discipline-defining The Chinese language Potter: A Sensible Historical past of Chinese language Ceramics (1976) and an article penned for Hong Kong-based journal Orientations by artwork historian Duncan Macintosh in 1973. Collectively, these have been canonised as a largely unimpeachable triumvirate to which nearly all subsequent students should pay their respects. The authority of this scholarly lineage and the sweeping narrative to which it has given rise, nonetheless, obscures the far more advanced networks of change inside which blue-and-white circulated, inspiring an enormously numerous vary of responses throughout totally different areas, cultures, nations, and even social teams.

If we take the Pedra Branca wreck as a case-study for bigger patterns of commerce, we will fairly argue that the standard of blue-and-white onboard suggests an area marketplace for Chinese language ceramics that rivalled the Islamic and European courts which dominate research of the China Commerce. Within the absence of a surviving intact assortment, we will solely guess at its extent and character, however this needn’t be an insurmountable impediment to our reconstruction of the previous. We can’t understand how such wares had been regarded and obtained by these for whom they had been supposed, but we should take into account them as extra than simply specimens in a typology of Chinese language ceramic growth or as export commodities that signify considered one of many levels within the growth of a world business community. We should see them as a substitute as supplies for the expression of a number of types of identification of their contexts of use and appreciation, even when these can now solely be partially reconstructed.

We also needs to dispense eventually with the persistent perception that Southeast Asians solely had entry to the decrease finish of the market: the blue-and-white porcelain discovered within the Pedra Branca wreck consists of a number of high-quality items that might not have seemed misplaced within the cosmopolitan courts of Europe and the Center East. Towards a prevailing emphasis on these courts, this salvaged cargo attracts consideration to the pivotal position performed by Southeast Asian retailers and shoppers within the circulation of Chinese language ceramics. With out surviving examples or intact collections of safe provenance, nonetheless, to reconstruct this position we should flip as a substitute to varied traces that these lengthy since dispersed wares have left behind: literary references, creative impressions, areas for the storage and show of treasured possessions, and proof of appropriation or adaptation in native ceramic traditions. The masterful analysis that John Man shared in his S.T. Lee Lecture is a mannequin case-study for this strategy, drawing on manuscript illustrations and literary proof in addition to archaeological finds to flesh out our understanding of the place of Chinese language porcelain in Sultanate and Mughal India. It is just with recourse to such techniques of salvage and conjecture that we will hope to know the parallel complexity of Southeast Asian responses to blue-and-white.