Ziquan Zhou (LSE) - 2024-25 Students
z.zhou73@lse.ac.uk

A Cultural and Environmental History: Local Production and Global Consumption of the Siamese Sappanwood, 15th to 20th Centuries

This project seeks to study the social history of Siamese sappanwood from an environmental, economic, and cultural historical perspective. It explores and contemplates the global connections between the environment, transportation, consumption, and modernization from a non-Eurocentric point of view.

Existing research extensively investigates the influence of trade and commodities on aspects like consumption, production, exchange, and technology. Numerous studies have explored various materials with higher mobility which demonstrates history of different locations, such as textiles, cocoa, coffee, and sugar , tracing their global mobility across Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Atlantic Ocean. Environmental history has also examined the connection between nature and commodities. However, the realm of color, intimately tied to culture and fashion, has remained relatively unexplored and is not frequently included in these studies.This project aims to bridge this gap by amalgamating the study of color with the examination of commodities and their environmental context. Furthermore, this project address the Eurocentric and East-Asiacentric biases in existing research by incorporating sources from Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. This approach, which explores the interplay between local production and global consumption, also allows for a reevaluation of the “global-micro” perspective, encompassing multiple locations and regions within the Indian Ocean World and East.

As a commodity, the Siamese sappanwood were favoured over sappanwood of other origins, and had occupied important European and East Asian markets for centuries. Historical documents in Chinese, Dutch and Japanese attest to sappanwood’s pivotal role as a commodity shipped from Siam to East Asian markets during the 15th to 19th centuries. This sought-after resource found its way into the courts and private dye houses of East Asia and Europe through extensive trading networks involving the VOC, Siamese royal merchants, Chinese traders, and diplomatic envoys. As a natural resource, sappanwood forests witnessed changes in global climate, and human interactions with one another and the environment. Functioning as a dyestuff, Siamese sappanwood was employed to create distinct hues, becoming intertwined with East Asian political culture where colors held a significant connection to social hierarchies.

This case study not only delves into the interplay between forestry in Southeast Asia and the cultural shaping of East Asia but also underscores the pivotal role played by Siamese traders within the expansive commercial network. While existing research often emphasizes the active participation of overseas Chinese and the VOC in trade networks spanning Europe and Asia, the extensive influence exerted by Siamese commoners, merchants, and the royal family on this network, particularly in terms of local production and global transportation, remains an underexplored area. Furthermore, there is ample room for uncovering the impact of Siamese products on consumer perceptions and trends in both European and Asian markets. By concentrating on this case, the project offers the opportunity to examine the convergence of environmental history, commercial history, and the history of fashion.

Principal Supervisor: Dr Ronald C. Po