It was indeed the starting point of what nowadays people know as maritime delimitation. Hamid highlights the need for maritime division in Chapter 7 when he discusses Spanish and Portuguese exploring the world (p. For example, the law governs the roles of each crew member of a vessel, which are analogous to the roles of government officials. One of its great achievements was the establishment of important laws called 'Undang-undang Laut Malaka' (the laws of the sea of Malacca) governing activities of navigation and trade (pp. Malacca at one stage became the first political force in the peninsula to match Siam's considerable strength (p. 87-8), since access and control over maritime route of navigation delimited one's powers and shaped international relations, as was evident when China supported Malacca as Malacca was trying to liberate from Siam's hegemony (p. One important lesson that Hamid presents is that relations between and among kingdoms, sultanates, dynasties was heavily influenced by their maritime interests (pp. This allowed the emergence of a new power, Majapahit in Java, which focused on the maritime economy (p. When discussing Sriwijaya, for example, Hamid does not only describe success stories but also draws important lessons from its decline, including its failure to maintain control over maritime trade routes and economy (p. Hamid clearly wants to show his readers lessons learned from great kingdoms prior to the modern Indonesia to be applied in the current context. He criticizes Indonesia's poor strategy in developing its sea power by establishing two major naval bases only in Java (Jakarta and Surabaya) to cover the entire Nusantara (p. 19), but, Hamid reminds us that such success stories have not continued in modern Indonesia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) License, Makassar, with its view of mare liberum, effectively utilized ocean trade routes to boost its economy
In viewing Indonesia as an archipelagic State, Hamid reemphasizes Denys Lombard's view that the ocean can be not just a separator but a connector, and here includes the Malacca Strait, the Sunda Strait, the Java Sea, the Sea of Makassar, and the Maluku Sea (pp. Hamid ends the book by rereading Mahan's view of maritime nations and what this suggests about the maritime history of Indonesia (Chapter 10). In Chapter 9, Hamid discussed Ternate and Tidore, two sultanates in Nusantara that Hamid terms as 'maritime sultanate'. These are two fundamental principles through which the contemporary laws of the sea have developed.
Following this, Hamid presents the principle of mare liberum (free sea, in which the ocean is free for any countries to navigate through and utilize) that was applied by the Makassar Kingdom (Chapter 8). By analysing the Portuguese and Spanish journeys to Nusantara (Chapter 7), Hamid also discusses the principle of mare clausum (closed sea, in which the ocean is controlled by certain powers/ countries). Hamid gives a detailed picture of Malacca Sultanate and its maritime zones in the Strait of Malacca, which was and still is one of the most important straits used for international navigation.
It is followed by a thorough analysis of the history of Sriwijaya (Chapter 4) and Majapahit (Chapter 5). Hamid continues discussing two most important activities between the first and thirteenth centuries, which are navigation and trading (Chapter 3). 'Naval power' operates within the territorial sea of a country (internal operations), while 'sea power' deals with external operations beyond national territory, along strategic navigational routes. Hamid's point is that while Indonesia is geographically a maritime nation, it is moving away from its maritime roots and identity.Īpparently, Hamid bases his view on Alfred Mahan's theory of maritime nations, which says that a country requires both 'naval power' and 'sea power' to be a great maritime nation (Chapter 2). 'Archipelagic' is meant to show the importance of ocean, while 'kepulauan' focuses on land (pulau, island). Hamid begins by revisiting the term 'archipelagic State', which has been inaccurately translated into 'negara kepulauan'.
Price: IDR 50,000 (paperback).Ībd Rahman Hamid argues that in order for Indonesia to revitalize itself as a maritime nation, understanding its maritime history is critical. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Ombak, 2013, xiii + 248 pp.