ABSTRACT
While Southeast Asia is viewed as one of the five global centres of agricultural revolution and plant/animal domestication (Sauer 1969), the genesis of population nodes and towns seems to have had a dual location – a product of agriculture (inland valleys and plains) and trade (coastal and riverine areas). Given the region’s advanced Austronesian sea-faring culture some 4,000 years ago, where sea-farers plied the Pacific and Indian Oceans (Bellwood 1985; Kumar 2012: 103–115), it seems likely the first nucleated settlements were coastal trading hubs. In short, development of trading centres came before agricultural nucleated hubs. This was the genesis of cities in the region. The Wallerstein view of the region as a periphery in his core-periphery historical dichotomy that was unable to innovate does not hold water when one looks at the creativity, entrepreneurship, risk-taking and innovations of the Austronesian sea-farers. They were not recipients of trading relations but rather the initiators of an economic geographical network that spanned from Malagasy to Easter Island (Kumar 2012; Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1989).
