From Tortoise Shell to Grouper: Marine Resource Exploitation and the Making of Maritime Creole in Wallacea [招待講演]
長津 一史
International Workshop: World History for Current Issues: Environmental Issues, Globalization, and Conflicts 2013年10月 口頭発表(招待・特別) Hongo Campus, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo Global History Collaborative
My research is concerned with the marine resource exploitation and its significance in the making process of “maritime creoles” in Wallacean Sea. In Insular Southeast Asia, sea-oriented peoples of varied origins have occasionally emerged or formed a maritime creole. The Malay are a well-known sea-oriented ethnic group of which ancestors are of highly hybrid in nature. The Balangigi who were once recorded as pirates in the western literature may also be such a creole group. The proposed research pays special attention to the Sama-Bajau as the maritime creole.
Through the analyse, it aims at understanding 1) patterns of their marine resource exploitation, 2) structures of the fishing and trading networks of the marine products and 3) socio-ecological characteristics at a certain maritime environment where the maritime folk have maintained and reconstructed highly hybrid natures in relation to the formation of their community and identity.
With an approximate population of 1,100,000, many of the Sama-Bajau live along coasts and on islands. Their settlements are dispersed widely over the southern Philippines, coasts of Sabah, Malaysia, and eastern Indonesia. They constitute one of the most distinctive maritime folks in Insular Southeast Asia. It is in my understanding less significant to seek their “true” origin from the historical essentialists’ viewpoint, as the Sama-Bajau and the neighbouring communities are supposed to have constantly converted their ethnic identification from non-Sama-Bajau into Sama-Bajau, or vice versa. Their marine resource exploitation and network formation are considered to be a key to understanding the making process of the Sama-Bajau as a maritime creole.
The discussion will focus on the use and trade of sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricate and Chelonia mydas), tropical trepang (Holothuriidae spp.) or live groupers (Plectropomus leopardus and others), which have been exported exclusively to the Chinese markets. The Sama-Bajau have long and most intensively been involved in the fishing of these products in Southeast Asia.
The study pays particular attention to the cases of the Sama-Bajau in Kangean islands, East Jawa and the other parts of eastern Indonesia, although it partially refers to the cases of the Sama-Bajau in Sulu Archipelago, the Philippines and Sabah, Malaysia. The Kangean islands are situated at the nodal point of major sea routes, i.e. Jawa Sea, Makassar Straits and Flores Sea. The study is mainly based on the statistical and spatial data, such as censuses or GIS, and the fieldworks which I have conducted among the Sama-Bajau villages since 1995.