Asian Sea Straits
Functions and History (c. 500 to 1700)

Roderich Ptak und Ralph Kauz (Hg.)

In September 2011 the Chinese Institute of Bonn University organised an internationalconference called Asian Sea Straits: Functions and History (c. 500 to 1700). One centralidea of the conference was that, besides filtering the image of seaborne trade and exchangethrough the looking glass of coastal dwellers, or by linking it to different types ofports and networks, polities and empires, one may also try to explain the past by goingback to the geographical »essentials« first, before undertaking further steps. The nature ofmajor sailing alleys and especially the role of narrow bottlenecks, or sea straits, belong to this geographical dimension which proves quite complex, indeed, once exposed to carefulexamination. Simply put, there was agreement in that the »straits theme« would meritfurther studies, especially methodological investigations.

The selection of studies presented in the this volume, as well as several papers read to themeeting which have already been published in the Journal of Asian History 46.2 (2012),are a modest step in that direction. Designed as a thematic issue like its JAH »counterpart«, the present volume of Orientierungen contains a further set of articles. This timethe geographical arrangement is very broad and comprises two »poles« – Western Asia and, once again, the Southeast Asian world.

(Themenheft 2013 der Zeitschrift ORIENTIERUNGEN: Zeitschrift zur Kultur Asiens, hrsg. von Berthold Damshäuser und Ralph Kauz, Universität Bonn)