Marie-Sybille de Vienne’s The Chinese in Maritime Southeast Asia: Trade and Merchant Communities in 17th-century Insulindia follows the paradigm of the Annales School to construct a comprehensive structural portrait of a geographical region shaped by long-term exchange systems operating over the longue durée. Within this framework, the first section presents a geographical analysis of the major exchange networks spanning the entire region extending along the coasts from Japan to Sumatra on the north–south axis, and from Aceh to the Lesser Sunda Islands on the west–east axis (Section I, Chapter 2). The second major part measures the scale and intensity of maritime commerce carried out by, and involving, Chinese merchants operating within these regional circuits (Sections II and III). The third part examines the dynamism of Chinese commerce against the background of bullion arbitrage, the flexible contractual arrangements that facilitated capital mobilization and risk dispersion, and the efficiency and reliability of Chinese financial networks (Section IV). The final section is a case study that examines the emergence of a Chinese bourgeoisie in seventeenth-century Batavia, exploring their changing status within the Dutch colonial environment and their transformation in response to fluctuations in the economic climate (Section V). The conclusion extends this case study by addressing the development of the Batavian Chinese community and the latent structural conflicts between the Dutch administrative authorities and the sharp rise in Chinese immigration after 1684. The book thus stands as a classic demonstration of Braudelian historiography applied to the maritime world of the region under study.

Although the overall framework of the book clearly embodies the core ideas inspired by Fernand Braudel, its subject matter also responds to and extends established scholarly traditions in Southeast Asian historical studies. The author points to pre–World War II Dutch historians, especially J. C. van Leur, who initiated efforts to reassess the exaggerated emphasis on European agency in colonial historiography. After the war, M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz. continued this line of inquiry by reconstructing a less Eurocentric account of early modern Southeast Asia than had been typical before the war. These two scholars’ approach emphasized the socio-economic fabric that transcended the political and administrative divisions later imposed by European colonial authorities, making it compatible with the Annales School’s concept of histoire totale. The author situates her work within a broader scholarly lineage that includes Anthony Reid, Roderich Ptak, Denys Lombard, Johan Miksic, and Heather Sutherland—figures who were particularly influential from the 1990s through the 2010s in establishing a more empirically grounded and globally recognized field of Southeast Asian history. The original French edition of the book, published in 2008, made a significant contribution as a pioneering study by drawing extensively on Dutch archival sources that had previously been underutilized, thereby opening new avenues for research.

The strength of this work lies in its exhaustive exploitation of published Dutch sources. The author systematically extracts empirical, quantitative data—such as the numbers and movements of different types of vessels—from the daily diary of Castle Batavia, a record originally intended as a routine administrative log for retrospective reference by officials of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). This method allows the author to trace commodities, provisions, and personnel in a more consistent and comprehensive manner than most other contemporary sources allow. Because the author’s analytical questions often diverge from the perspectives of the Dutch officials who produced these records, this process resembles an interrogation of the sources rather than a simple recoding or reinterpretation. In this way, the book substantially contributes to reconstructing the broader regional picture.

For example, between 1621 and 1685, 310 Chinese vessels entered Batavia from the China Sea, compared to fewer than seventy Dutch ships (106): an empirical demonstration of the true contours of maritime trade in the region. De Vienne further shows that of the 101 Chinese vessels that called at Javanese ports other than Batavia, fifty-six put in at Banten (118): clear evidence of prosperous indigenous ports that earlier colonial narratives largely overlooked. In examining currency inflation, the author notes that between 1640 and 1700 the Chinese tael appreciated by approximately 15 percent, the Surat rupee by 30 percent, and the Japanese gold koban by about 40 percent (156–157). This divergence helps explain why Chinese traders actively drained koban from Banten to further their aim of undercutting Dutch commercial competitors on Java. The concrete economic struggles between the VOC and the Chinese trading elite in Java also appear in the seemingly routine and fragmentary entries of the daily diary of Castle Batavia.

Beyond tracing monetary flows, the author treats cash crops as another key medium of circulation within the Javanese regional economy. By analyzing fluctuations in crop prices, the study assesses the development of commercial cultivation across different production zones. Comparing the purchase and resale prices of rice from major producing areas to consumer markets in the Moluccas and Batavia, the author infers that rice cultivation on Java deteriorated over the course of the seventeenth century, contributing to tensions between Mataram and Batavia in the period 1657–1661. Sultan Ageng of Banten responded by investing in new irrigation works to expand food production and compete with both Mataram and Batavia. When these policies failed, and rising demand for rice turned the grain into a strategic resource, the VOC intervened violently to secure supplies. Under these conditions, Chinese traders were effectively excluded from participation in the rice trade (169–170). By contrast, because the VOC’s trading circuits extended far beyond the reach of Chinese shipping—particularly toward Persia and the western Indian Ocean—and faced little competition in that sphere, the Company encouraged Chinese merchants to invest in sugar production on Java. Despite a gradual decline in sugar prices, Chinese, as producers and traders, emerged as the dominant ethnic group in the sector by the end of the century (171).

The author also examines the price differentials of pepper between its major production zones in Insulindia (Java and Sumatra) and its markets in China. Prices in China were not only at least double those in Insulindia, but also rose continuously, going up by approximately 80 percent between 1620 and 1685. This sustained margin helps explain why Chinese merchants repeatedly returned to the emporia of Banten and Batavia throughout the seventeenth century (182–183). Conversely, Insulindia’s strong demand for zinc (tutenag) ensured profit for Chinese traders in the opposite direction. Between 1668 and 1700, the purchase price of zinc in China fell by roughly one-third, while its selling price in Insulindia increased by about 20 percent (193–194). These bidirectional commodity flows along the north–south axis provide an empirical foundation for the book’s interpretation of a longue durée structural pattern in regional exchange.

As noted above, the theoretical framework highlights two principal exchange systems, structured along a west–east and a north–south axis. The author’s analysis of commodity flows largely conforms to this model; she identifies Western merchants as the dominant actors on the west–east axis, while Chinese traders played a more prominent role along the north–south axis. For much of the seventeenth century, when the Ming–Qing transition was plunging the mainland into political turmoil, the Zheng clan controlled the Chinese coast. Although the author devotes considerable attention to outlining Zheng activities within this corridor, she does not fully analyze their broader impact on the structure of north–south exchange patterns (Chapter 2). A similar inconsistency appears in Chapter 8, where the author abruptly “broadens the analysis” to include traffic between the Insulindian world and the Philippines, the Indochinese peninsula, and the China Sea. While this section offers a concise and illuminating account of Chinese junks operating under Zheng patronage and their interactions with Japanese shipping—particularly routes linking Nagasaki and Manila—it does not clearly situate these dynamics within the book’s north–south analytical framework.

Despite the strength of the empirical findings, the discussion would have benefitted from a more explicit assessment of how these episodes reshaped the position of Chinese traders in the Insulindian world and what structural elements those traders introduced or transformed within the exchange system along this axis. The author gives little attention to the significance of Japanese and Mexican silver exports—routed through Nagasaki and Manila—for the Chinese market and the broader impact of those exports on regional maritime trade. Nor does she address the transit trade conducted by Chinese and Japanese merchants operating within this corridor. Given the extensive historiography on these dynamics, the last omission is particularly striking.

Although the author states that Sections I–IV serve primarily as preparation for analyzing “the function of a specific Chinese community, that of Batavia … as a focal point of Chinese commercial networks in Insulindia after the VOC’s capture of Malacca in January 1641” (8), the findings presented in these sections are themselves substantial and of independent value. It may therefore be more appropriate to treat Section V as a case study situated within the wider landscape of Chinese communities across the Insulindian world. This section examines a range of demographic and socio-economic dimensions, including population size and gender ratios; Chinese participation in public tax farming; biographical trajectories of leading elites; the distribution of Chinese involvement across different sectors of business; autonomous organizations among the Batavian commercial elite; and the legal status of that commercial elite within a multiethnic society under Dutch colonial rule. On the basis of this empirical evidence, de Vienne argues that the expansion of credit by earlier Chinese settlers “led to the emergence of a Chinese bourgeoisie three decades after the founding of Batavia,” around the 1650s (237). Thereafter, from the late 1670s onward, increasing numbers of Mardijkers—Portuguese-speaking mestizos of various backgrounds—took over roles as innkeepers and tax farmers, gradually displacing Chinese entrepreneurs from these sectors and push them toward agricultural expansion (Chapter 12).

As a pioneering work that engages with an extensive body of published Dutch sources and distills a wealth of empirical evidence through sustained and rigorous analysis, the book under review merits considerable scholarly recognition. Nevertheless, the author’s reliance on published materials alone inevitably constrains the scope of interpretation at a broader, systemic level. When fragmentary cases do not provide a sufficient basis for constructing a consistent dataset, occasional misreadings and misattributions appear. For example, the Dutch expression “one ton of gold” refers to a monetary value of 100,000 guilders rather than a literal weight of gold (137, 148), while the florin functions primarily as an accounting unit and does not necessarily denote a specific circulating coin (154). In addition, some source references do not fully correspond to the passages cited in the text. For example, on page 149 the author writes that Chinese merchants exported 76,900 guilders of gold to Nagasaki according to the diary of Batavia of 1645 (footnote 65), without giving the page number. The footnote should have cited page 161, which shows that the merchants exported 76,886 guilders of gold to Taiwan. Although such weaknesses may not matter to a general readership, scholars should keep in mind that not every single number in this book is flawless.

In sum, I welcome the publication in English of this pioneering and now classic contribution to the history of the Southeast Asian overseas Chinese. The book presents to a wider readership a Braudelian analytical paradigm and provides a solid scholarly foundation for more reflective engagement with questions of regional self-portraits. To students and newcomers to Southeast Asian studies, it offers a broad and inclusive referential framework for further inquiry and investigation—particularly valuable at a time when almost all the archives of the Dutch East India Company have been digitized and made accessible to researchers worldwide.