Macassan Sea Roads: the heritage of intercultural maritime routes connecting Australia to southeast Asia

This paper explores the idea of considering the extensive and interlocking maritime routes created through global trading networks over many centuries as cultural routes. These sea roads are extended contact zones carrying the imprint of long, dangerous and difficult journeys, a space where history has been enacted through conflict, possession, dispossession, exile and enforced migration. Our paper examines the case study of the Macassan trepang trading route as part of this long tradition of seaborne journeying to seek adventure and new resources in a wider world, through connections with different cultures and lands. These connections formed at the southernmost limits of the Indonesian archipelago with northern Australia still resonate today. There is increasing interest in recognising and protecting the tangible and intangible heritage of this Macassan sea route. Given its international and global context, the World Heritage category of cultural routes offers one opportunity to recognise and celebrate the intercultural heritage of this historic route in an international setting. The paper tests this case study against the defining features of the World Heritage category of cultural routes and raises the possibility of a World Heritage nomination of the Macassan trading route as a collaboration between Australia, Indonesia and China