In the latter part of the nineteenth century catches of marine animals in Southeast Asia began to increase so that by the 1930s they were several times what they had been in 1850. In order to understand the rise in catches we must first step back and look at the political and economic transformation that took place at this time, for it was in the context of this transformation that catches increased.

The political and economic transformation

In 1850 Southeast Asia was made up of many dozens of states and statelets in which power tended to be decentralized. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the colonial powers — the British based in the Straits Settlements and Rangoon, the Dutch based in Batavia, the French from their foothold in Saigon, and first the Spanish and then the Americans based in Manila — and the Thai monarchy cantered on Bangkok extended their reach over more and more territory. In some places this was achieved by military force, as in the case of the incorporation of Aceh into the Netherlands Indies and much of Vietnam into French Indochina, while in others it was accomplished by treaty. However it was done, by 1910 virtually all of Southeast Asia was brought within the boundaries of one of these states. Even more importantly, these states were motivated by a desire to control the activities of the people within their boundaries and, increasingly, they acquired the means to exercise this control. This transformation did not happen immediately. In fact, one of the features of states in the late nineteenth century was their heavy reliance on the practice of leasing out, usually to Chinese businessmen, monopolies (“farms”) for the collection of certain taxes and the sale of goods such as opium; as far as fisheries is concerned, the most important of these farms was the farm which the Netherlands Indies government granted for the right to sell salt to the fish processors of Bagan Si Api Api in Sumatra. By 1920, however, governments had developed bureaucracies staffed by specialists in a great variety of fields that enabled them to impose their will far more than states had been able to do just a few decades earlier.