Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the Extended Eastern Indian Ocean and South China Sea

Abstract

This chapter addresses the high-volume seventeenth-century deerskin trade in Eastern Asia that accessed Japanese silver by meeting the increased demands of the Japanese samurai elite and an emerging urban class. Thai Ayutthaya, the major Southeast Asian supplier, and the Dutch Each India Company (VOC) employed varied methods to resource Khmer, Viet, and Formosan herds and localised hunting-preparing-of-hides human networks, thereby challenging traditional regional supply alignments and creating negative environmental/human impacts. This competitive trade was framed within the wider eastern Indian Ocean-South China Sea ‘borderless’ maritime network of the pre-imperial c.1500–1800 global age, when ‘open’ indigenous marketplaces transitioned to those dominated by European trading companies seeking control over high-profit Asian commodities.