3 - The International History of Temasek: Possibilities for Research Emerging from the Discovery of the Temasek Wreck

Summary

The state of scholarship on the pre-modern history of Singapore is rich. There has been a significant amount of research conducted, in particular, on the fourteenth century, or the Temasek period. These include almost four decades of archaeological excavations as well as a much longer tradition of textual analyses.

The discovery of the Temasek Wreck, a mid-fourteenth-century vessel that appears to have been on its way from South China to Southeast Asia when it foundered off what would eventually become the territorial waters of present-day Singapore, and which was possibly on its way to Temasek, appears at first glance to be a continuation of the research trajectory we are presently on. However, unlike the land-based excavation sites that continue to be opened, the discovery of this wreck, the first of its kind in Singapore waters, and in many ways the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, has the potential to expand our understanding of Singapore's pre-modern history in areas that scholars have hitherto not been able to embark upon.

This essay seeks to discuss the possibilities of new areas of research into the international history of Temasek, a late-thirteenth to early fifteenth-century port-polity centred on the north bank of the Singapore River. Specifically, it will explore the gaps in our current understanding of Temasek's international economy, its functions as a commercial port at the southern end of the Melaka Strait, its place in the larger Southeast Asian and Maritime East Asian world, and how data from the Temasek Wreck could potentially help to unlock these areas of research.

The State of Scholarship on the Pre-modern

International History of Temasek

Presently, historians have narrated Temasek as likely to have functioned as an international entrepôt serving as a trans-shipment hub for products coming from Southeast Asia, the Bay of Bengal littoral and South China Sea littoral. Historical texts and archaeological research indicate that a wide range of trade products, including Chinese ironware, ceramics and silks, flora material such as cotton, fauna products such as hornbill casques, and minerals such as tin and gold, were made available at Banzu—the main port of Temasek.