The ‘Land Below the Wind’: Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines

The countries in the southern part of Nanyang, what are now Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines had hardly any contact at all with China until the latter half of the 19th century when there occurred major immigration from both China and India. They were too remote, too difficult to reach; with the exception of the Malay sultanates to the far south of Thailand, at the bottom end of the Isthmus of Kra, all were separated by many miles of treacherous sea. There was thus virtually no connection at all, perhaps long ago a chance encounter with the few Chinese whose adventurous ancestors had set sail for Nanyang from the coastal provinces of China all those years ago. Some of the settlements they founded were south of what became the tribute-bearing states at Luzon in the northern Philippines, on the western coast of Malaya at Malacca, on the southern tip of Sumatra, on the northern coast of Java. Numbering on average at the most only a few hundred people, these early Han dynasty settlers kept to themselves and hardly mixed at all with the local population. A steady two-way trade developed, conducted entirely by large sailing junks, between these various parts of the region and southern China. Over time, the settlements grew, more were founded, trade increased. By the time of the Ming dynasty, say about 1,500 years later, some had become regular ports of call for the various Chinese voyages of exploration on the way west, to the Indian ocean and beyond.