Description
Abstract
The land below winds was once governed by a multicentric international order. The trans-oceanic mercantile relations between merchants and diplomats from both regions continued throughout the extensive influential centres of networks, ports, commodities, and agencies that showed sovereignties’ characteristic of decentred hegemony. Numerous scholars argue that Indonesia’s Islandic geographies, its forest produces, and Buddhist/Hindu universal belief might naturally be the key factors that govern the maritime traffic mobility. But the multicentric international system was apparently more visible during the period of Muslim maritime encounters where their value of decentral race and belief system were further accommodated by the natural compass of the geographies. This situation had made the region ready for a multicentric international order in its economic and political exchanges as displayed through the relation between Islands in South India, Indonesia and Malaysia between the 15th to 19th centuries. Through consulting numerous primaries works such as European reports, and archival materials, this paper examines factors that trigger the rise of multicentric order during the Maritime age. It assesses the factors that motivate the centuries old cycle of contacts between the regions. It further identifies the waning process of the order. It is expected that the study will provide an additional narrative on the nature of characteristic and identities of international order in the land below the wind.
Keywords: Multicentric order, land below the winds, decentral Muslims, hegemony, power politics
