Bryan Hull - Lecture 1 - Se asian geography orientation

>> So let's orient ourselves. The focus of these three lectures is Southeast Asia, represented here in green, and its role in global trade during the Colonial period, and actually, we're going to pay the most attention to what is now modern-day Indonesia and Malaysia, this area right in here. So for hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of years, there's a general trade that happens from china, and we're always going to trade porcelain, but you get the idea. So it generally is going to go through Southeast Asia. There's going to be stops along the way, and then it's just going to keep going towards the Middle East and ultimately to Europe. And then there's going to be, of course, trade going the reverse route. Things that are grown or manufactured in South Asia, they come through the Malacca Strait, people may buy them around here, and then ultimately, they're going to go to China. So this is the general route, this way, that way, this way, that way, for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Now, you may have noticed that this area right in here, the Malacca Strait, is of key strategic importance, and each of the European powers felt as if they could control access in and out of this area, that they could control all the trade throughout Asia. So the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Brits, mostly, all are going to try their different attempts to control this area. The most important of these ports is Melaka. It was -- before the Europeans got there, it was an import and trading port. This is Penang. It's the second most important trading port and it's going to actually be built by the British. I also want you to pay attention to the fact that there are ports marked throughout this map, and by the time we get to the 17th and 18th century, the Europeans will have taken control of ports throughout Asia. And if you think about it, this is what would happen, like you would land, trade, exchange, refresh supplies, and then go for a little while longer, do the same, and so it's sort of like little spots along the way, that if you can control, then you can just keep going. So that's what the Europeans tried to do. And what they would do is, first, they would try to secure -- like let's take Colombo, for example. They would try to secure the port either through trade or just outright seizing the port through military conquest, then once they had it, they would build up the port, and then they would build a fort, and the fort was used as protection, and then they could stay there and sort of colonize that one little area and secure their economic interests in the area. So that happened throughout. I think that's all I want you to grasp about the overall concept. In the next lecture, we're going to talk about what was traded, and in the third lecture, we're going to talk about what were some of the trade policies that the Europeans tried to institute.