Le goût chinois pour les nids de salanganes et ses répercussions économiques en Indonésie (XVe/XVIe-XXIe s.)

Abstract

This article attempts to trace the historical development of the Chinese taste for bird’s nests and its impact on the Indonesian economy. The term yanwo or "swiftlet’s nest" appears apparently for the first time in a dietary compendium, the Yinshi xu zhi (Essential Knowledge for Eating and Drinking ; 1368), which stresses prevention rather than treatment. It seems that the nests were first collected in South China and eaten locally by commoners before being imported from the South Seas, especially from Champa and Insulinde during the 15th or early 16th century. In the 1590s this taste for bird’s nests was extensively shared by the elite and had spread to Northern provinces. The booming consumption of this delicacy during the following centuries resulted in a huge quest for swiftlet’s caves all over the Archipelago, and in the control of the bird’s nest trade, at first by Indonesian rulers and subsequently by the Dutch authorities. The big novelty in the bird’s nest production was a progressive shift from collecting cave and cliff nests to the practice of swiftlet farming. This swiftlet farming began in the late 1960s and developed tremendously since the 1980s in connection with political changes, and with an increasing demand from mainland China. Indonesia is now the biggest supplier of bird’s nests in the world.