2: From Margin to Center: Chinese Muslims in Early Modern Maritime Asia

The discovery of the Malay Annals in a ruined Chinese temple in Sumatra in the 1920s has inspired scholarly interests in finding the early Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia. The Annals indicates that the early Chinese settlers in Java were from the southwestern province of Yunnan. However, many researchers argue that the early Chinese settlers in Southeast Asia were very likely from the southeast coastal province of Fujian. This paper joins the conversation with a broader review of the early contacts before the Ming voyages (1405-1433), linking the encounters across the Indian Ocean and overland caravan routes with trade over the South China Sea. Through revisiting some special terms, such as Gulf merchants, trade diaspora, and trading community, it tackles our understanding of the seaports: to what extent do we see them as hinterland of the ocean or emporia of maritime trade? By comparing and contrasting trade institutions and diasporas’ practices, such as the Mongol Ortoy (merchant association) and Gulf merchants, it argues that Chinese Muslims, "merchants living among aliens," served as "cross-cultural brokers" at maritime emporia along the ocean coast and integrated them into an extended maritime community. The proposed research aims to bring Chinese Muslims from the margins to center of early modern maritime Asia, no matter the caravan merchants from Yunnan or refugees who fled from the Isbash unrest (1357-1366) in Fujian. By setting such large-scale transnational flows into a non-state-centered time frame, it hopes to juxtapose this lasting maritime legacy with Qing history.