Technical improvements were minimal during this period for the grea majority of fishermen, with the result tha catches in Burma actually declined throughout the high colonial period. Southeast Asia by the 1930s was a net importer of fish, primarily in the form of American tinned sardines everywhere, and Indian fish imported to Burma. Colonial experiments with trawling were half-hearted and too costly, but Japanese fishermen began trawling in Philippine waters successfully around 1900. By 1931, 70 Japanese diesel trawlers were registered with the Manila authorities, and supplied a good proportion of the Philippine market. Okinawans specializing in catching deep-water fusiliers (Caesionidae) also moved into Southeast Asia in the 1920s, using divers to position their large nets and chase the fish into it. By the 1930s these teams of motorized fishermen based in Southeast Asia accounted for about a third of the fish unloaded commercially in Singapore and a quarter in Batavia.
In short, the high colonial period witnessed a dismal failure of mechanization or planning in Southeast Asia's rich fisheries, partly because poverty kept fish too attract investment. The rural population probably consumed a little less fish on average during this period, and markedly le during the disastrous 1940s. In 1961 such naturally well-endowed countries as Indonesia Thailand, and Cambodia produced less than 10kg per capita of fish per year. The rural poor consumed a small fraction of this amount, mainly in the form of a tiny garnish of belacan.
The post-war conversion of Southeast Asian fishing fleets to motorized trawlers with synthetic nets and ice, or later refrigeration, began in the Philippines in the 1950s, Thailand with a great rush in the early 1960s, and the rest of the region progressively thereafter. Fish catches more than tripled to six million tons between 1960 and 1980, with Thailand in the lead, and the region became a major net exporter to Japan, Hong Kong, and beyond. Fish con sumption per capita roughly doubled in Indonesia between 1960 and 1996 and increased by more than that in Thailand. But from the 1980s the pressure on fish stocks was palpable, and increasing investment no longer gave com parable increase in yields. Each country in turn declared a 200-mile exclusion zone off its shores in 1977-80. Indonesia and Burma, having the weakest fishing fleets of their own in relation to their maritime zones, led the unequal struggle to exclude or license foreign trawlers. As fish stocks of many varieties plummeted, there was a massive shift into aquaculture, particularly of shrimps Consumption levels increased with prosperity more generally. But for the small independent fishermen who lined the region's coasts life had become increasingly hard and dangerous, as they were forced to travel ever further in search of the elusive catches.
STIMULANTS AND DRINKs
Water was main drink for pre-modern Southeast Asians, piped in bamboo from mountain streams in the highlands. Lowlands and cities were less tunate, getting whatever water they could from springs or wells, and letting river-water stand for weeks until de silted. Such water was perfumed with