Roundtable Discussion with Barbara Andaya (UH Manoa), Leonard Andaya (UH Manoa), and Peter Lape (University of Washington)

In a roundtable discussion on April 26, 2019 hosted by UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Barbara Watson Andaya (University of Hawaii-Manoa), Leonard Andaya University of Hawaii-Manoa), and Peter Lape (University of Washington) discussed their archeological and anthropological work with food in Indonesia in the Early Modern Period.

Economic and social transformations that accompanied the Early Modern Period (EMP) in 14th-19th century Southeast Asia took place in a dynamic natural environment that reflected and shaped its inhabitants. Most scholarship on Early Modern (EM) Southeast Asia attributes European expansion as a catalyst, and the limited environmental research undertaken offers coarse-grained sequences for the region during a substantial climatic upheaval. Rapidly expanded and intensified global exchange networks also characterized the Early Modern Period. Many of the materials and ideas that moved in these networks were related to food, including plants, animals, intoxicants, medicines, as well as farming, harvesting, cooking and eating cultural practices, many of which we have inherited today. In this roundtable discussion, three Indonesian specialists will talk about how the EMP formed the cuisine of contemporary Indonesia and beyond. They will also link the movement of foodstuffs in the larger discussions on ecological change.