Southeast Asia during the Sixteenth
Century
During the 16th century, Spain and Portugal explored
the world's seas and opened world-wide oceanic trade
routes.
• Philip II of Spain, Dom Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand
Magellan, Christopher Columbus
• the continuing expansion of international commerce
and the consequent rise of new exchange centres.
• the island world - proliferation of trading centresgrowing
world demand for the region's products.
• the expanding market for fine spices encouraged
Javanese, Malay and Chinese traders to deal directly
with sources of supply in the eastern islands.
Ayutthaya had been able to take advantage of growing
maritime commerce as a result of administrative
reorganization under King Trailok (r. 1448-88). A new
ministry, the Mahatthai, was established to supervise civil
matters and to oversee foreign affairs and trade.
• In the early sixteenth century some Portuguese ranked
Ayutthaya with the most powerful continental empires in
Asia, and its prosperity was such that later Thai chroniclers
regarded this period as a golden age.
• the rise of small but thriving exchange centres gave a new
impulse towards the development of larger groupings,
especially in the Philippines and eastern Indonesia. In these
areas there had previously been little need or incentive to
move towards the formation of 'kingdoms', but a more
commercialized environment made increasingly obvious
the value of some form of economic and political
cooperation in order to strengthen links with wider trading
networks