Marriage Institutions and the Formation of Cross-Cultural Knowledge Networks in Early Modern Southeast Asia

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the ways in which Europeans encountered indigenous knowledge in Asia and the Americas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and reconstructs the social factors that enabled productive cross-cultural knowledge encounters within a particular temporal and cultural context. By focusing on the tacit nature of medical knowledge and on the structure of the networks that enabled cross-cultural brokerage I develop a framework that explains why knowledge exchange occurred in some situations and not in others. In particular, I argue that a unique marriage institution that emerged in the Dutch-controlled regions of the Indonesian archipelago during the second half of the seventeenth-century fostered European access to indigenous botanical knowledge by reshaping the patterns of relationships that linked European, mestiza, and indigenous cultures. Women in Southeast Asia were the important medical practitioners within their local communities. By fostering and formalizing relationships with Asian and mestiza women this marriage institution both created direct ties with local experts while also integrating European men in to a community who relied primarily on local botanical cures for their medical care and who could broker relationships with local practitioners.