10383 Bunche Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CAQuestions regarding the nature of the relationship of nomadic peoples to settled populations and territorial states have attracted the attention of historians and anthropologists for many decades. In regard to Southeast Asia, scholars have typically viewed the relationship between mobile populations and agrarian states as mostly antagonistic and predatory. Yet, if we shift our focus to the coastal regions of island Southeast Asia, the enmity between mobile communities and territorial states is less evident. This talk will examine the relationship of the Sama Bajo—Southeast Asia’s largest group of “sea nomads”—to two of the most powerful states in the region, the kingdoms of Gowa-Talloq and Boné (South Sulawesi). An examination of a diverse range of Southeast Asian and European sources suggests that these semi-nomadic sea peoples did not avoid interaction with landed states, nor did they take to their boats as a means of evading state control. Far from avoidance, throughout the early modern period (c.1400-1800) the Sama Bajo actively sought alliances with powerful kingdoms and both parties benefited from their relationship.
Lance Nolde is Assistant Professor of History at California State University Los Angeles. He completed his Ph.D. in Southeast Asian History at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa (2014), and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, The Netherlands from 2014-2015. His research interests are in early modern Southeast Asian and world history, and on the social and cultural histories of maritime communities in particular. His current book project, provisionally entitled "Changing Tides," explores the history of the semi-nomadic Sama Bajo and their important position within the social, political, and economic networks that spanned maritime Southeast Asia between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Cost : Free and open to the public.
BarbaraGaerlan
310-206-9163
www.international.ucla.edu/cseas/
cseas@international.ucla.edu Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies
