Borrowing. The distribution of this item is consistent with the hypothesis, first suggested to me by James T. Collins, that the pre-European spice trade of Indonesia was mediated by Brunei Malays in a commercial arc that linked Brunei (and peninsular Malay ports) with the southern Philippines and northern Moluccas. The maintenance of such contacts on a regular basis would have required sailing along the western and northern coasts of Sabah, through the Sulu Archipelago to southern Mindanao, and from there to Sangir-Talaud and northern Sulawesi before reaching the northern Moluccas. Given this interpretation the otherwise puzzling occurrence of apparent Philippine loanwords in Buli of southern Halmahera can be placed within a coherent historical context. There can be little doubt that the same network served the propagation of Islam.

Although some form of spice trade between eastern and western Indonesia (and points beyond) probably predated the arrival of Islam in island Southeast Asia by many centuries, there is little evidence for large-scale trade contacts with eastern Indonesia during the Indianization of western Indonesia (e.g. the Sriwijaya period). On present evidence, then, it appears most likely that a regular and systematic linkage of Moluccan clove and nutmeg suppliers with Bruneian or other Malay distributors developed in concert with the diffusion of Islam into Borneo, the southern Philippines and the northern Moluccas during the 14th and 15th centuries. If so, the Brunei of Pigafetta, with its lavish displays of wealth and rank, must have been a relatively nouveau-riche Islamic elaboration upon an older Indianized state in which the supporting trade base had only recently undergone a fundamental shift from a western Indonesian to an eastern Indonesian emphasis.