The Research
Professor James Warren, Principal Investigator based at the Asia Research Centre.
This research project will investigate the four major historical issues of significant contemporary resonance in the ‘Indian Ocean World’ (IOW), a geographical zone running from China to Africa:
• origins and development of Chinese maritime trade in the IOW
• rise, expansion and influence of Islam in the region
• Africa-IOW economic relations
• impact of human-environmental dynamics on IOW economic and social activity
The project will be undertaken by an interdisciplinary research team, drawn chiefly from history and the geographical sciences, whose members have a proven record in international research collaboration, grant management, and student training. Specialists in Geographic Information Science (GIScience) and other advanced computer tools will apply cutting-edge technology to further the analysis and graphic presentation of research data on the above themes.
The project's core hypotheses are twofold: (i) that the current role of China, Africa and Islam in the IOW can only be understood through studying historical development within the context of the rise and development of an IOW global economy; and (ii) that the environment has critically shaped these forces in the region.
The project has the potential to fundamentally alter the ways in which history and the social sciences are researched, disseminated and understood. Professor Warren’s involvement in the project will be primarily restricted to the fourth issue, namely to lead a team to investigate how the environment and the impact of climate on human affairs and human history has critically shaped these forces in the eastern region of the IOW. The members of the team include Professor Anthony Reid (ANU); Dr. Li Tana (ANU); Dr. Alfons van der Kraan (University of New England), and three maritime archeologists from the West Australian Maritime Museum.
Southeast Asia's global economy, climate and the impact of natural hazards from the 10th to 21st centuries
An Australian Research Council Linkage Project, 2011-2013
This Australia Research Council Linkage Project undertakes the first broad investigation of the impacts of climate-related and other natural hazards (typhoons, floods, drought, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions) on the economy, society and history of Southeast Asia from the 10th century to the present. The project aims to reconstruct spatial, temporal and social patterns in vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate variability and natural hazards. The research will focus on economic, demographic and social trends, including food security, across SE Asia in association with climatic and natural hazard events, and will examine closely the sometimes catastrophic effects on human institutions and cultural values. In particular the team will collect qualitative and quantitative data from the largely untapped, extensive and accurate historical records, and integrate these data with climate change and geophysical models to overcome the lack of reliable sustained statistical records before the modern era. The team will combine these diverse data to clarify the complex and uncertain linkages and causality, both historical and current, between SE Asian people, their economy and environment
The project’s scope is uniquely broad and multidisciplinary, comprising collaborations between historians, archaeologists, seismologists and others to analyze the development of SE Asia’s vast & sophisticated economic system within the context of human-environment interactions, over a scale and time period which has been inadequately investigated. The project breaks new ground in the location and use of resources, and an interdisciplinary approach to problem and method. It will advance the knowledge base of discipline(s), provide a radically new history of the region, and a new basis for understanding complex interaction between human and natural forces.
This ARC Linkage Project represents a crucial Australian step of the global collaboration led by Professor Gwyn Campbell. It will initiate very important research on the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam and establish the systems for converging research on critical trade contacts in the Indian Ocean world such as Madagascar. Critically, it will create synergies and mutual benefits by bringing to the project as an industry partner a world renowned source of maritime archaeological expertise and public outreach that is actually located on the edge of the Indian Ocean, the Western Australian Maritime Museum.
