Temasik as an international and regional trading post in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: a reconstruction based on recent archaeological data
Derek Heng Thiam Soon’s 1999 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society reconstructs the economic role of Temasik (present-day Singapore) as a trading port during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, arguing that its significance has been systematically underestimated by scholars who relied on fifteenth-century records shaped by the Ming tributary trade system rather than on contemporaneous thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources and archaeological evidence.
Summary
The central historiographical problem the article addresses is the apparent paradox of a settlement mentioned in multiple fourteenth-century court records (Chinese, Javanese, Vietnamese) yet conspicuously absent from fifteenth-century navigational texts. Heng resolves this by demonstrating that the shift to the Ming tributary system after 1400 fundamentally altered the trade landscape: a single designated entrepôt (Malacca) absorbed the function of smaller ports, rendering them invisible in subsequent records. During the earlier period of active private Chinese maritime trade (twelfth to fourteenth centuries), multiple smaller ports flourished by specialising in specific export commodities, and Temasik was one such node.
Drawing on the Tao-i Chih Luo, the Ling-wai Dai-da, the Chu-fan-zhi, and the Nagarakatagama, Heng establishes that Temasik’s main settlement, Pan-Tzu (Fort Canning Hill), was known internationally for hornbill casques of exceptional quality and a distinctive type of lakawood designated for construction timber—commodities unavailable at other ports in the Malay Peninsula. He then extends the analysis to the regional level, using archaeological data from Fort Canning Hill and the Riau Archipelago (Midai, Bintan) to demonstrate that Temasik functioned as the sole source of foreign goods for the coastal Orang Laut settlements of the archipelago, which lacked any land-based hinterland and depended entirely on maritime exchange.
The article’s methodological contribution lies in its integration of textual and material evidence to challenge the prevailing view (associated with O. W. Wolters) that Temasik was a minor or inconsequential settlement. Heng argues that the importance of regional access points to international trade traffic was as significant a driver of a port’s flourishing as its role in the broader international context, and that these two roles were interdependent.
Key Findings
- The Vietnamese annals of 1330 record that a kingdom called Sach-ma-tich (Temasik) dispatched Malay envoys to the Vietnamese court, and Yuan Dynasty records note a mission to Long Ya Men in 1330 to procure tamed elephants for the Mongol court (pp. 114–115).
- The Nagarakatagama (composed 1365) lists Temasik among Majapahit’s vassals, and the Tao-i Chih Luo records that Pan-Tzu exported hornbill casques of very fine quality, lakawood of the construction-timber type (distinguished by the Chinese suffix mu), and cotton of moderate quality—commodities unique to this port in the region (pp. 115, 117).
- Archaeological excavations at Fort Canning Hill and the north bank of the Singapore River, combined with survey finds from the Riau Islands of Midai and Bintan, reveal that Chinese green celadon wares, white wares, coarse stoneware, glass vessels, and glass beads shared similar decorative styles, forms, and chemical compositions across both locations, indicating a direct commercial link (pp. 119–120).
- Temasik-period sites are scattered over an area of approximately 54,000 square metres on the north bank of the Singapore River basin, excluding Fort Canning Hill itself, which is accepted as the probable palace precinct (p. 122).
- The coastal settlements of the Riau Archipelago were predominantly or entirely inhabited by Orang Laut sea nomads; on Midai Island, only the coastal circumference (approximately 14 km) has yielded fourteenth-century ceramics, with no evidence of inland habitation or cultivation (p. 120).
- By analogy with early Malacca, whose population numbered approximately 2,000 before its formal recognition as China’s chief entrepôt in 1409, Heng suggests that Pan-Tzu’s population and settlement size were comparable or larger (p. 122).
Conclusion
Heng concludes that Temasik’s raison d’être was its dual function as both the export centre for specific indigenous forest products of the southern Malay Peninsula and the sole import and distribution point for foreign commodities serving the Riau Archipelago’s coastal populations. Its existence and importance were the direct product of this subregional economic network, and its subsequent disappearance from the historical record after the fourteenth century was a consequence of the Ming tributary system’s consolidation of trade through a single entrepôt, not evidence of its prior insignificance.
Context
- The article draws on archaeological data from excavations at Fort Canning Hill (Miksic, 1984) and survey results from the Riau Islands (Midai, Bintan) published in the mid-1990s, representing the first systematic attempt to link Singapore’s Temasik-period material culture with that of the surrounding archipelago.
- Historiographically, the piece positions itself against the scepticism of O. W. Wolters and the geographical determinism of Paul Wheatley, offering a synthesis that elevates regional trade networks to a level of analytical importance equal to international trade routes in explaining the rise and fall of Malay trading polities.