From the Roman Empire to Southeast Asia: Eurasian Connections Between the First and Fifth centuries AD

Abstract

Traditionally, scholarship has focused its study on contact between the Roman world and the East by relying primarily on literary evidence written by the Roman authors. For this reason, regions that are given vague treatment in the extant written sources continue to be overlooked in modern scholarship, especially the case of the area of modern-day Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the Eastern region in general which included India and the land located across the Bay of Bengal was often seen not only as a place that consumed large resources such as gold and silver from the Roman economy, but also as a cause of moral decay destroying the well-being of the Roman society. This thesis aims to explore Rome’s long-distance connections with the East in a different light, by critically investigating a wider range of available evidence, with particular focus on the collation of archaeological finds from Southeast Asia. This includes examining detailed case-studies from Thailand and Vietnam, comparative analysis with relevant Indian contexts, and the critical re-appraisal of other sources of historical evidence. As one of the first dedicated explorations of the full extent of Southeast Asia’s role within the Eurasian world between the first and fifth centuries AD, the results of this study challenge the traditional view that the connection between the Roman world and the East simply stopped in India. In particular, the results underline Southeast Asia as an avid consumer of a steady trickle of Roman goods, whose quality and value ranged from valuable items such as gemstones and intaglios, to glass fragments, with a range of products likely travelling in the opposite direction to the Mediterranean. While a direct connection between the Roman world and Southeast Asia was possible, the easiest and most practical way for contact to have occurred is more likely to have been indirectly, via connections already well-established through the circulation of prestige objects such as body adornments, rare jungle products and precious minerals between Southeast Asia and its neighbouring regions of India and China – the same regions that also had differing levels of connection with the Roman Empire.