Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary

History
Review
Reviewed Work(s): Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th-20th Centuries by
Frank Broeze
Review by: Paul Wheatley
Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter, 1991), pp. 543-544
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/204980
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REVIEWS 543

acter together in fewer than 200 pages of text is most a

A Social History of Economic Decline does not always attain

deindustrialization story, central to the monograph, coul

more attention, especially at the community level, in regard

spread and impact in Trenton. The structuralist analys

capitalism tends to dominate human actions; after the er
talism, the individuals seem like insignificant characte
naturalist drama. Relatedly, additional development of
experiences of Trentonians might have let this book re
novel and, at the least, increased its appeal to nonprofess
Cumbler's splendid work may not singlehandedly end
it is certainly an extraordinary book filled with creative
scriptions on how to do so. It is a truly original contri
understanding of a wide range of issues associated with

America.

Robert Fisher

University of Houston

Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th-2oth Centuries. Edited

by Frank Broeze (Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1989) 255 pp.

$32.00

This volume inaugurates a series of comparative studies in Asian history

and society which is "designed to meet the peculiar imperatives of

academic discourse on this continent" (vii). These sibylline commitments are not specified precisely, but the preface implies a strongly

comparative enterprise which, "Reflecting the composition of Australia's

Asia specialists, . . . will deal with modern history or contemporary

problems .. . [while] encouraging discourse across regional boundaries"
(vii). Brides of the Sea meets these desiderata by elaborating on a theme
that has already received considerable attention in recent years, principally because of the role of port cities as conduits through which European influence and values penetrated into the Asian continent.1
In these studies, historians and comparative urbanists, not unnaturally, have pursued divergent approaches. Whereas the former have
focused on the implications of port cities for an understanding of the
history of the continent, urbanists au sang pur have been more concerned

with the inner workings of such cities. Historians, for example, have
devoted a good deal of effort to explaining why, when traditionally the

I Representative of recent studies of this type are Dilip K. Basu (ed.), The Rise and
Growth of the Colonial Port Cities in Asia (Lanham, Md., I985); Sinnappah Arasaratnam,
Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650-1740 (New Delhi, I986);

Atiya Habeeb Kidwai, Gateway Cities of Asia: Calcutta, 1800-1981 (New Delhi, 1987);
K. Dharmasena, The Port of Colombo, 1860-1939 (Colombo, 1980); Rhoads Murphey,
China Meets the West: The Treaty Ports (New York, I975).

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544 PAUL WHEATLEY

largest Asian cities were associated with persistent inland

political power, by 1900 they were all ports. Urbanists, f
have directed their attention primarily toward the intern
port cities, while debating the justification for establishin
lytic category. The present volume is an attempt to acco
approaches within a unified conceptual framework.
The book comprises eight case studies, rounded out w
ductory orientation and concluding reflections on the sta
and its future. Four of the case studies deal with individu

assar, Shanghai, and Colombo twice), and four with

hierarchies (precolonial Southeast Asia, the Coromandel

and East Africa-this last included on the strength of its
to Asia). Of the eight chapters, one has a pre-European fo
to the period of the East India Companies, and five to t
era. Together they go a long way toward integrating por
urban history, or, as the editor phrases it, putting ports
cities (ii). It is ironic therefore, that the only statistically
bution raises the possibility of the demise of the port cit

in which it has existed in South Asia for more than two millennia as

shrinking maritime and port employment reduces port functions to a

subordinate status in increasingly comprehensive urban systems.
Not the least valuable feature of this book is the incorporation of
bibliographic references in the Notes at the end of each chapter. To the
works there listed, I would add Milone's doctoral dissertation on Batavia, unpublished but deserving recognition as a truly pioneering study
which touched on numerous themes discussed in the present volume;
Datoo's doctoral dissertation on the pre-colonial, East African seaport
systems, which complement those for the colonial and modern periods
in the work under review; and Melaka, by Sandhu et al., a reasonably
comprehensive account of an archetypical port city from its founding
to the present.2

Paul Wheatley
University of Chicago
2 Pauline Dublin Milone, "Queen City of the East: The Metamorphosis of a Colonial
Capital," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of California, Berkeley, I966); Bashir Ahmed Datoo,
published in part as Port Development in East Africa: Spatial Patterns from the Ninth to the

Sixteenth Centuries (Kampala, I975); Kernial Singh Sandhu et al., Melaka: The Transformation of a Malay Capital c. 1400-1980 (Petaling Jaya, 1983), 2 v.

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