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Greetings all, now we are going to look at Maritime Southeast Asia, or Nusantara.

Greater Moluccas
The Greater Moluccas (1) form an archipelago, separating the South China Sea from the Pacific Ocean proper.

The island of Taiwan is located just off the coast of Chinese Mainland. During the 14th century, however one ought to think of the island as the northernmost extension of the Greater Moluccas archipelago. Indeed, scholars consider Taiwan to have been the place of origin of all the Austronesian languages, present in maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific as well.
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A Taiwanese native
The island is known to be mountainous, and as such has had difficulty in establishing more complex forms of social organization and unification into larger polities. The island thus remains divided among a number of tribes.

The largest island of the Greater Moluccas is Luzon, and politically is dominated by the Tondo kingdom, which has managed to unify also the northern sections of the island. The Tondo kingdom has been in frequent trade with the south-eastern coast of China, and contact has resulted in the establishment of a Mingjian community in the port-city of Sapa (2). This community was founded by Chinese emigrants from Fujian during the Yuan period, who have also managed to gain a few local converts. The rural population follows a predominatly a polytheistic religion called Anitism, which has come to be influenced by Hinduism

To the south of Tondo, the kingdom of Ma-I remains on that small island over there, in the Visaya a group of small islands between the large island of Luzon in the north and Mindanao in the south, we have Madyas and Cebu competing for power.

The island of Mindanao is home to a number of polities, the most important being the Indianised Kingdom of Butuan, the lesser polities being Zamboanga and Danao, which are still animist. Butuan has adopted the writing system from Cebu.
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A map of the Sulu archipelago
The Sulu islands form a small monarchy, which has been in regular trade contact with the coastal cities of Champa. As a result of these trade routes the Sulu islands are among the first to adopt the Msadeqi religion in this part of the world during the late 14th century.

Borneo
The Sulu island chain leads us to Borneo, the third largest island in the world. The lush vegetation (the island is home to some of the world´s most ancient rainforests) has prevented a larger and more organized settlement of the interior, and over three quarters of all population in the 14th century on Borneo is within some 200 km from the coast.

The native peoples of the island are called the Dayak, and are largely found in the interior; while the Banjar and other coastal regions are populated predominantly by the Melayu people.

The local form of religion spread among the Dayak people is known as Kaharingan. Along the coasts, it is mainly a local form of Hinduism that is prevalent, while Brunei is home to an established Msadeqiyya community

Most of the coastal realms are in some form of vassalage to the Majapahit Empire having its capital on the island of Java – the southwestern parts of the island are under direct Majapahit administration, while the Kutai in the east, Negara Dipa (3) in the southeast, Melanau and Brunei are tributaries under the mandala system present in Southeast Asia. Berau, found in the northeast part of the island has stopped paying tribute in the second half of the century.

Lesser Moluccas
The Lesser Molucca islands include all the islands between Borneo and Papua, with the largest of them being Sulawesi or Celebes. The Lesser Moluccas are very important, as they are known as the Spice Islands with great worldwide demand for nutmeg, mace and cloves.

Sulawesi
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Sulawesi is truly an island with an odd shape
The island of Sulawesi has an irregular shape; with mountain ridges forming spines of the island´s many peninsulas. Therefore, it has been difficult to unite the island, and any emergent polities were prone to become thalassocracies, oriented more to the sea than to their neighbours across the forested jungle hills.

The name Sulawesi means literally iron island, implying a richness in iron ore.

So what we have on the island of Sulawesi are a handful of named polities: Luwu dominating the central plateau of the island, Makassar on the southwestern tip of the island paying tribute to Majapahit, Konawe located at the south-eastern tip and Butuan, technically not on the Sulawesi island proper but on an adjacent island, also paying tribute to Majapahit. Buton has taken great profit from its position

There are also a number of smaller polities on the island, being literally city-states
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The Mandala system, depicted in orange is by far the prevailing system of political organization in the region; sovereignty is a rather non-existent concept, and rather than establishing direct control, polities are happy to demand tribute from subdued states.
Lontara is the name of the writing system descended from Kawi used on the island of Sulawesi especially in the region of Makassar

Molucca Proper
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The nutmeg tree, the source of one of the most lucrative spices
The Moluccas proper consists of a number of very small islands, but is a very lucrative region, as it has a monopoly on the world´s supply of spices. Therefore, Majapahit has established a presence here on the island of Kadali; profit from the trade has increased the power of the chieftains on the islands such as Nunusaku or Halmahera (controlled by Jilolo chiefs). However the two truly dominant powers in the region are Ternate and Tidore. The bitter rivalry between Ternate and Tidore has sometimes been likened to Venice, Pisa and Genoa, with their wealth being legendary and envied across all of Nusantara.
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Tidore and Ternate speak Papuan languages, while practically all of Nusantara speaks some form of Austronesian
Unlike the majority of the Nusantaran islands, the northern Moluccas, including Ternate and Tidore, speak a Papuan language and not an Austronesian one

Papua
The island of Papua is the world´s second largest island, after the ice-covered Greenland, thus being the largest inhabitable island on the world.

The island itself has a shape of a bird, and its tips are known as the Bird´s Mouth in the west and the Bird´s Tail in the east. The spine of the bird reaches a height of over 4800 meters or 16 000 feet, making it higher than the Alps and housing even equatorial glaciers.
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Papuan tribesmen
The population of Papua is descended from an earlier wave of human migrations than the prevalent Austronesian populations of Nusantara. The Papuans have a darker skin colour (similar to the Australian Aborigenes) and do indeed practice agriculture, supplemented by hunting and gathering. The Papuan society can be still described as locked in the Neolithic period.

Important in Papuan society is the pig, and prices for practically anything are counted in pigs.

Papua exhibits an intriguing diversity in tribes and languages, and tribal infighting is common. The larger settlements can be found in the highland zone, where the climate is cooler and offers protection from many tropical diseases

This exotic land of countless tribes has only sporadic contact with the outside world – if so, occasional merchants or pirates from Ternate make visits at the Bird´s Mouth, trading with the tribes located at the western coast.

Australia
The smallest continent of the world is Australia and since its settlement, the continent has developed in isolation. Much of the interior is arid and desert, and more hospitable areas can be found either in the southwestern tip, or along the eastern coast of the continent, as well as in the south. Of what we know, there have been occasional visits of the north-northwestern coast by mariners from Timur and the Lesser Sunda islands, with very infrequent trade. The Aborigenes are still in the Stone Age.

Lesser Sundas
The Lesser Sunda Islands form an island chain from the island of Timur in the east (literally meaning east in Malay them lingua franca of the Nusantara archipelago) to Bali in the west. From east to west, the islands are as follows: Wetar, Alor, Pantar, Lembata, Adonara, Flores, Sumbawa , Lombok and Bali in the northern chain and Timor, Roti and Sumba in the southern chain. As one travels from east to west, the society grows more complex – with Timur being an outer fringe of civilization and exporting sandalwood, slaves honey and wax, and Bali on the other hand being a highly civilized society almost undistinguishable culturally from neighbouring Java. Balinese is the sole writing system that has evolved here, on the island of Bali and has spread also to the neighbouring island of Lombok.

Almost all of the islands to speak an Austronesia language, with the exception of Alor and Pantar speaking a Papuan language; a few smaller Papuan languages can also be found in the eastern parts of Timur.

Politically, all the islands are tributaries of the Majapahit Empire under the mandala system; the major polities are Wehali on Timur, Sumba, Lombok and a handful of smaller states on the island of Flores; the island of Wetar in the east is the sole one to remain outside of Majapahit influence

The religion of the indigenous population of the Lesser Sunda islands is known as Marapu, and is essentially an animistic tradition.

Java
The island of Java remains the most densely populated island of Nusantara, with the eastern part dominated by Majapahit (and its tributary in the east, named Bilam, while the western half remains fully independent of all Majapahit influence and remains unified as the kingdom of Sunda.
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Statue of the Hindu god Talaga from Sunda
The indigenous form, Kebatinan, also known as Javanism is a syncretic religious practice, emergent from the fusion of local practices, Hinduism and Buddhism.

In Java, Javanese or Carakan has evolved to become the new writing system and is used to write the Javanese, Sundanese, Banyumasan and Madurese languages. In the western half of the island, another abugida, Sundanese, was developed by the Sundanese people living in the western third of the densely populated island.

For more on Majapahit society, see Chapter 98.

Sumatra
On Sumatra, the southern third of the island remains directly under Majapahit rule, while the the northern and eastern coast remain autonomous as tributaries (the local kingdoms of Riau, Aru and Pasai, from south to north. The western coast maintains its independence in the form of Pagaruyung kingdom.

The Kawi script in Sumatra has evolved into the Batak script in the north-central part of the island and Rencong script, which is being used in the southern part of the island.

What can be observed in Sumatra during the 14th century again is the gradual spread of Msadeqiyya, which was done mostly peacefully from neighbouring Pasai. The Aru Kingdom was among the first ones to have the majority population convert to Msadeqiyya, mainly in the urban centres, where the lower strata of the society are more than happy to do away with the caste system. Apart from Msadeqiyya, there still remains a significant Hindu community of Indian merchants as well the native religious system, called Pemena, surviving in the more isolated rural communities.
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Religions in the region. Notice that while Msadeqiyya has established itself along the northeast of Sumatra, Christianity can be found on the western coast. It has been discovered that earlier maps were wrong and the Buddhist traditions of Sumatra were neither Theravada nor Mahayana but belonging to fourth branch of Budddhism called Hinayana
Parallel to the spread of Msadeqiyya, Christianity has also arrived to the island. The very first Christian colonies on the island were communities of Mar Thoma Christians, from the Malabar Coast establishing themselves along the western coast of the island. Established at the port city of Barus, which has been elevated into a metropolitan bishopric, Christianity has gained a foothold in the Pagaruyung kingdom located on the western coast of the island.

Malay Peninsula
During the 14th century, the Malay Peninsula has come under the influence of the Majapahit, though it is ruled indirectly by local states. There exist four polities on the peninsula: Johor at the southern tip, Pahang inland and Chermin dominating the coastal northern regions. The fourth polity, Singapura, had its capital on the eponymous island, and controlled also parts of the Straits of Malacca.

Gradually, Msadeqiyya is spreading from the port of Kedah alongside the western coasts of the Malay Peninsula, rapidly displacing Hinayana Buddhism in the process.

Champa
While technically a part of peninsular Southeast Asia, culturally and linguistically, Champa has more in common with the island world of Nusantara than with the rest of the Peninsula. The region has experienced periodic suzerainty of Dai Viet, its northern neighbour, but generally speaking, the Cham confederation of city states remains largely intact and has been greatly engaged in maritime trade with Borneo, the Sulu islands and the Greater Moluccas. As a result, the Msadeqiyya religion spreads to places such as Sulu, Butuan and Brunei​