Abstract This article is an analysis of two early modern legal codes from archipelagic Southeast Asia: the Undang Undang Melaka and Undang Amanna Gappa. Even though legal history of the Indian Ocean region has made some significant strides in recent decades, the early modern legal regimes of archipelagic Southeast Asia have not yet received much attention in existing scholarship of the Indian Ocean world. By analysis of the legal codes of the region and their many iterations, this article attempts to interpret how these laws aimed to achieve a tenuous balance between shore-based political authorities and the floating worlds of the seafarers and argues how these laws, decrees from insular Southeast Asia, form an understudied episode in the genealogy of early modern international maritime law. Through my discussion of early modern legal codes from this region, I also briefly demonstrate how a study of these laws elucidates understudied facets of oceanic migration in the region, especially the constitution of trading diaspora and moral economies of sail and trade.
Rahul Chakraborty (Sat,) studied this question.
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