The history of these traders is often hampered by lack of sources, but the more we learn of this trade, the more often we find traces of their activities, sometimes furtive and sometimes grand. And finally, the growth of this intra-Asian trade had led to the emergence of direct interconnections where the fate of one nation's economy impinges on another. It may be argued that actually I have been talking about just a few parts of these countries, that in stressing the coastal peripheries I have neglected the hinterland heartlands, particularly in the case of China. But, as recent events in that vast country have indicated, the path to industrialization has come most successfully from the coastal zones that so predominated in the pre-modern East Asian maritime trade. Surely, I am sure you will agree, this is no coincidence.