First published in 1981, 'The Sulu Zone' has become a
classic in the field of Southeast Asian History. The book deals with a
fascinating geographical, cultural and historical 'border zone' centered on the
Sulu and Celebes Seas between 1768 and 1898, and its complex interactions with
China and the West. The author examines the social and cultural forces
generated within the Sulu Sultanate by the China trade, namely the advent of
organized, long distance maritime slave raiding and the assimilation of captives
on a hitherto unprecedented scale into a traditional Malayo-Muslim social
system.
How are entangled commodities, trajectories of tastes, and
patterns of consumption and desire that span continents linked to slavery and
slave raiding, the manipulation of diverse ethnic groups, the meaning and
constitution of 'culture,' and state formation? James Warren responds to this
question by reconstructing the social, economic, and political relationships of
diverse peoples in a multi-ethnic zone of which the Sulu Sultanate was the
centre, and by problematizing important categories like 'piracy,' 'slavery,'
'culture,' 'ethnicity,' and the 'state.' His work analyzes the dynamics of the
last autonomous Malayo-Muslim maritime state over a long historical period and
describes its stunning response to the world capitalist economy and the rapid
'forward movement' of colonialism and modernity. It also shows how the changing
world of global cultural flows and economic interactions caused by
cross-cultural trade and European dominance affected men and women who were
forest dwellers, highlanders, and slaves, people who worked in everyday jobs as
fishers, raiders, divers or traders. Often neglected by historians, the
responses of these members of society are a crucial part of the history of
Southeast Asia.
