Boundaries and Beyond: China's Maritime Southeast in Late Imperial Times by Ng Chin Keong (review)

This is an important book for scholars of World History, China Studies and Southeast Asia. Ng Chin Keong's depth of knowledge about Chinese and Southeast Asian history as well as his extensive knowledge about transnational processes in the context of world historical process makes this book really stand out. It provides readers a very nuanced appreciation of China's historical links with Southeast Asia and beyond, and how it understood the world beneath its borders. This is the true value of the book to this reader; China's political, economic and military resurgence and projection of power have great implications to Southeast Asia and this book is critical in providing valuable historical context to under-discussed historical processes needed to understand these phenomena in the context of today's times. Hence Ng Chin Keong's work is not only useful, but necessary.

The book is a collection of 14 selected essays on maritime China in late imperial times written from the 1970s to 2013. Though rather disparate, it is given a 'frame of unity' with the 'Boundaries and Beyond' as a title. The work strives to examine the origins, change and the factors that have led to the transformation of China's maritime Southeast and the connections it had with Southeast Asia and the world. What is impressed upon the reader is the perspective that, historically, China was not inward looking at all. It explores this aspect with various examples that really made the work a pleasure to read.

The book's structure attempts to unify the articles along a historical synchronicity; while not exactly seamless, this does give the reader a sense that the author is trying to unify his ideas as best as he can. Hence, providing the context early on is important and this is done in Part One: Maritime East Asia in Historical Perspective, where he gives not just historical context and methodology, but also explains the rationale for the work: to connect the disparate production of knowledge about the historical trade and maritime connections from the Indian Ocean, Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia into a Braudellian inspired framework termed the 'Asian Mediterranean'.

This is followed by attempts to explain the Asian Mediterranean from various perspectives but centring the discussion ultimately from China's development of its maritime frontiers, shifting boundaries, cultures and peoples which have been greatly influenced by internal and external factors. The collage of articles in Part Two: Between 'Us' and 'Them' shows China's interactions with the outside world, especially with the West, and the complexities involved. Particularly intriguing is Chapter 6, Information and Knowledge: Qing China's Perceptions of the Maritime World in the 18^th Century, which discusses the Qing Shilu (records of the Qing Dynasty) understanding of Nanyang (South Seas) and the Da Xing (The West) which really rejects the notion that 'eighteenth-century China was not curious about the outside world and rejected all things foreign' (p. 204).

However, the most important part of the book to this reader is Part Three: Pushing the Traditional Boundaries, especially Chapter 7, The Changing Landscape in Rural South Fujian in Late-Ming times: A Story of the 'Little People' (1) and Chapter 8: Gentry Merchants and Peasant Peddlers in Offshore Trading Activities 1522–66: A Story of the 'Little People' (2). Both chapters are crucial to this reader as they explain the local cultural, climatic, geographic, social, economic and political dynamics of rural South Fujian in the creation of the Fujianese merchant class and migrants who were the agents of cross-cultural exchange and historical interaction between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. How early Fujianese traders and merchants interacted with Southeast Asians and connected the two regions through peaceful trade is food for thought when one thinks about present-day developments, especially how China is engaging the Southeast Asian region today politically i.e. from 'the Big People'.

However, more could be...