Tinto Maps #26 - 15th of November 2024 - Indonesia

[Mef]

Regarding population distribution and rice/cotton

Estimating population in 1337 is an impossible task and you’ll never get the exact numbers right, but I think it’s a good idea to at least try and roughly set the distribution correctly.
Reid, in Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, lists the following figures:

Reid’s total population for Indonesia (Java, Sumatra, Bali, Lesser Sunda, Moluccas, Sulawesi, ⅔ of Borneo) in 1600 is 9.6 million. Maddison has Indonesia at 11.8 million in 1600 and 10.7 million in 1500. Wikipedia’s numbers are 7.75 million in 1500 and 9.5 million in 1700.
Reid’s population for the Philippines in 1600 is 950k, Maddison has them at 791k in 1600 and 500k in 1500.
Reid’s population for Malaysia in 1600 is ~723k, Maddison has it at 195k in 1600 and 168k in 1500.
Clearly the estimates here vary quite a bit.

Let’s summarize some statements that I believe aren’t really disputed:

• The highest population density by far can be found on Bali and Java. On the other hand, Borneo, Malaya, the Moluccas and the Philippines were sparsely populated.
• Climate matters: Regions with less favorable climate (Sumatran coast except for the north, Borneo, Sulawesi, Moluccas, Malaya, Philippines) struggled to support a high population. Cotton couldn’t be grown in these areas at all and rice production and consumption was low outside of Java and Bali (this explains the population density). So even though rare spices could be produced here, they necessarily had to be traded for basic goods like cloth or grain and the people weren't exactly rich.
• Population growth increased a lot towards the end of the game’s time period (and beyond), especially under Pax Nederlandica. Conversely, we can assume relatively low population numbers to start out in 1337.

I have extrapolated the estimates mentioned above and arrived at this table of estimated population distribution in 1337:

Java	2700k
Sumatra	1600k
Sulawesi	800k
Bali	490k
Lesser Sunda	400k
Moluccas	190k
Malaya (+Pattani, Satun)	167k
Borneo (East Malaysia)	167k
Borneo (Rest, incl. Brunei)	300k
Luzon and Visayas	550k
Mindanao and Sulu	100k

Some quotes on different islands here from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333079464_Inside_Out_the_Colonial_Displacement_of_Sumatra's_Population

Borneo:
“Borneo as a whole has been exceptionally sparsely populated even by Southeast Asian standards throughout recorded history. Its vast coastal, swamp, and deltaic regions were largely uncultivated until about a century ago, and many of the people who now populate these lowlands have come from outside the island - notably from South Sulawesi, South China, the southern Philippines, and Java”

Conclusions: It’s all jungle, plenty of wetland, no rice or wheat, low population.

Java:
“Central and East Java is not the model for Indonesia so much as the exception, in that there, ‘unlike neighbouring areas of Southeast Asia, there was […] a remarkable degree of ethnic homogeneity from an early period’. Lowland and deltaic irrigated rice agriculture was practised since the fourteenth century and probably earlier, eventually driving out the malaria-carrying Anopheles sundaicus from the cultivated regions.”

Conclusion: Central and East Java especially should have farmland and lots of rice cultivation.

Sumatra:
“The coasts of Sumatra, on the other hand, were inhospitable to early agriculture, with the single exception of the narrow northern littoral of Aceh, where since about the sixteenth century permanent ricefields were built to feed an urban and coastal population grown large in the age of commerce. The east coast south of the Asahan River was ringed with tidal peat swamps, and even behind these the permanence of rainfall (with no significant dry season), made shifting agriculture very difficult to practice. Cities such as Palembang and Jambi were fed almost entirely with rice from the headwaters of the rivers of which they controlled the outlet. The west coast had relatively little flat land, much of it also abandoned to swamps in the delta areas.[...]
By contrast the upland valleys occupied by (south to north) the Ranau, Komering, Rawas, Besemah, Rejang, Kerinci, Minangkabau, Mandailing, Angkola, Toba Batak, and KaroBatak were all reportedly heavily populated at the point at which they were first seen by Europeans in the nineteenth century.”
In 1830, roughly 90% of the population of West Sumatra lived in the highlands.
In the mid-19th century, roughly 80% of the population of North Sumatra lived in the highlands.

Conclusions: The majority of the ~1.6 million population should be tribes in the interior. Farmland and rice cultivation only in Aceh and the interior. Plenty of wetland jungle on the eastern coast. Currently there is farmland on the south-eastern coast. This is criminal!


Cotton: Should be removed from all locations that aren’t in North Sumatra, Java or Bali (and some can be added there). There were other fibers that were used in places that couldn’t grow cotton, such as Abacá and bark. But there was definitely lively cotton importing here as well.

Rice: Should be present in North and Interior Sumatra, Java, Bali and very sparsely in other places. Wheat is probably a similar case?

Comments on the existing population shown in the OP:

• Bali does not have enough population
• West Java has too much population and Java as a whole too much, but people like to go crazy on those estimates so who knows (keep in mind that, as Reid explains in a footnote in the picture above, some demographers have produced very high estimates based on more recent population numbers as they didn't consider the explosive population growth of the recent centuries to be realistic, but these growth rates are generally accepted, so Java's population probably wasn't that high before the 18th century)
• Sumatra's highland population seems vastly underestimated
• Malaya can be halved, South Borneo seems fine, North Borneo could maybe deserve some more people in trading centers

 

[Korsjan Rīkis]

No cloves as a raw material?

 

[Roger Corominas]

Honestly if you guys do go for the split of spices you can easily represent them by breaking up into 3 groups: Seed spices (fennel, coriander, cumin etc.) would be more common, bark spices (cinammon and cassia) spread them across southern India and Indonesia, and fruit spices (black pepper, long pepper, & cardamom) which would be rare and highly sought after.

Cloves & Saffron can be their own thing with a very high base price range (similar to cloves in EU4) and would be found in the far moluccas and Coromandel coast and drive gameplay for the spice trade routes.

Similarly Vanilla, Chile peppers and Cocoa can be their own thing and drive colonization of the new World.

That's actually a very interesting suggestion, let's see what we can do about it.

 

[AntarcticRanger]

Mana detected, Johan lied, game's gonna be an instant failure.

I honestly hope that "mana" is used in Aotearoan religion.

 

[Roger Corominas]

r/unexpectedbillwurtz​

...or was it expected?

If not here, where?

 

[Roger Corominas]

Semi-random question, but is "the Philippines" a tag you can acquire for uniting the Filipino islands, either as a native Filipino culture, or as a colonial nation?

Not currently

 

[Roger Corominas]

View attachment 1216597
Mana detected, Johan lied, game's gonna be an instant failure.

That's it, game ruined, let's stop all production.

 

[Roger Corominas]

Regarding population distribution and rice/cotton

Estimating population in 1337 is an impossible task and you’ll never get the exact numbers right, but I think it’s a good idea to at least try and roughly set the distribution correctly.
Reid, in Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, lists the following figures:
View attachment 1216593

Reid’s total population for Indonesia (Java, Sumatra, Bali, Lesser Sunda, Moluccas, Sulawesi, ⅔ of Borneo) in 1600 is 9.6 million. Maddison has Indonesia at 11.8 million in 1600 and 10.7 million in 1500. Wikipedia’s numbers are 7.75 million in 1500 and 9.5 million in 1700.
Reid’s population for the Philippines in 1600 is 950k, Maddison has them at 791k in 1600 and 500k in 1500.
Reid’s population for Malaysia in 1600 is ~723k, Maddison has it at 195k in 1600 and 168k in 1500.
Clearly the estimates here vary quite a bit.

Let’s summarize some statements that I believe aren’t really disputed:

• The highest population density by far can be found on Bali and Java. On the other hand, Borneo, Malaya, the Moluccas and the Philippines were sparsely populated.
• Climate matters: Regions with less favorable climate (Sumatran coast except for the north, Borneo, Sulawesi, Moluccas, Malaya, Philippines) struggled to support a high population. Cotton couldn’t be grown in these areas at all and rice production and consumption was low outside of Java and Bali (this explains the population density). So even though rare spices could be produced here, they necessarily had to be traded for goods like cloth or rice and the people weren't exactly rich.
• Population growth increased a lot towards the end of the game’s time period (and beyond), especially under Pax Nederlandica. Conversely, we can assume relatively low population numbers to start out in 1337.

I have extrapolated the estimates mentioned above and arrived at this table of estimated population distribution in 1337:

Java	2700k
Sumatra	1600k
Sulawesi	800k
Bali	490k
Lesser Sunda	400k
Moluccas	190k
Malaya (+Pattani, Satun)	167k
Borneo (East Malaysia)	167k
Borneo (Rest)	300k
Luzon and Visayas	550k
Mindanao and Sulu	100k

Some quotes on different islands here from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333079464_Inside_Out_the_Colonial_Displacement_of_Sumatra's_Population

Borneo:
“Borneo as a whole has been exceptionally sparsely populated even by Southeast Asian standards throughout recorded history. Its vast coastal, swamp, and deltaic regions were largely uncultivated until about a century ago, and many of the people who now populate these lowlands have come from outside the island - notably from South Sulawesi, South China, the southern Philippines, and Java”

Conclusions: It’s all jungle, plenty of wetland, no rice, low population.

Java:
“Central and East Java is not the model for Indonesia so much as the exception, in that there, ‘unlike neighbouring areas of Southeast Asia, there was […] a remarkable degree of ethnic homogeneity from an early period’. Lowland and deltaic irrigated rice agriculture was practised since the fourteenth century and probably earlier, eventually driving out the malaria-carrying Anopheles sundaicus from the cultivated regions.”

Conclusion: Central and East Java especially should have farmland and lots of rice cultivation.

Sumatra:
“The coasts of Sumatra, on the other hand, were inhospitable to early agriculture, with the single exception of the narrow northern littoral of Aceh, where since about the sixteenth century permanent ricefields were built to feed an urban and coastal population grown large in the age of commerce. The east coast south of the Asahan River was ringed with tidal peat swamps, and even behind these the permanence of rainfall (with no significant dry season), made shifting agriculture very difficult to practice. Cities such as Palembang and Jambi were fed almost entirely with rice from the headwaters of the rivers of which they controlled the outlet. The west coast had relatively little flat land, much of it also abandoned to swamps in the delta areas.[...]
By contrast the upland valleys occupied by (south to north) the Ranau, Komering, Rawas, Besemah, Rejang, Kerinci, Minangkabau, Mandailing, Angkola, Toba Batak, and KaroBatak were all reportedly heavily populated at the point at which they were first seen by Europeans in the nineteenth century.”
In 1830, roughly 90% of the population of West Sumatra lived in the highlands.
In the mid-19th century, roughly 80% of the population of North Sumatra lived in the highlands.

Conclusions: The majority of the ~1.6 million population should be tribes in the interior. Farmland and rice cultivation only in Aceh and the interior. Plenty of wetland jungle on the eastern coast. Currently there is farmland on the south-eastern coast. This is criminal!


Cotton: Should be removed from all locations that aren’t in North Sumatra, Java or Bali (and some can be added there). There were other fibers that were used in places that couldn’t grow cotton, such as Abacá and bark. But there was definitely lively cotton importing here as well.

Rice: Should be present in North and Interior Sumatra, Java, Bali and possibly very sparsely in other places.

Comments on the existing population shown in the OP:

• Bali does not have enough population
• West Java has too much population, and Java as a whole maybe a bit too much but the estimates vary
• Sumatra's highland population seems underestimated
• Malaya can be halved, Borneo seems fine although I can't be bothered adding everything up right now so not sure

As you said, population estimates are impossible to get 100% right. We've tried to use the same estimates all over the world to get consistent values, but thank you for the feedback, we'll take into account during the review.

 

[Roger Corominas]

No cloves as a raw material?

They are inside the spices raw good

 

[51states]

Excellent map, still waiting for the Caribbean

 

[Atromb]

They are quite consistent with other similar areas, and a perfect fit geographically, but when we do the review it may change.

Are they? I mean looking at the map they seem to have twice or more provinces than the other areas in SE Asia, even in the mainland.

 

[hewanmelata]

I think you made error for West Sumatra region.
Siguntur is like a small regional kingdom(a duchy if you will) that existed alongside Pagaruyung, the successor of Dharmasraya.
Which actually basically the same, Dhamasraya was named Dhamasraya because the capital was located in Dhamasraya, while Pagaruyung was called so because, you guess it, the capital was relocated to Pagaruyung.

And the dynasty should be named Mauli.

Mauli - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(I know it's wikipedia but it's cited some real world inscription)

As a Minangkabau myself, it feels super weird to use them to represent the homeland of Rendang, it's like putting Welsh in place of England for Great Britain.
if you show this to most Minangkabau history nerds, their first respond will probably be "the f is Siguntur?"

edit note:
I think you guys did a good job overall, and I hope the research team have enough of sleep and drink a lot of water.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

I hope Aeta people and other negrito ethnicities will have their own character models rather than looking like generic southeast Asians. Excited for Oceania, you cooked hard here

 

[tsr-aph]

To color them they have to control the majority of locations surrounding the wasteland, in this case they don't.

I realise that there will never be a satisfying solution to this, but I would like to suggest that perhaps instead of locations, it should be perimeter, just to avoid edge cases where you have lots of locations with a small shared perimeter being assigned to a nation, or like we have here a few locations with a large amount of shared perimeter not being assigned.

 

[Paulatim]

Honestly if you guys do go for the split of spices you can easily represent them by breaking up into 3 groups: Seed spices (fennel, coriander, cumin etc.) would be more common, bark spices (cinammon and cassia) spread them across southern India and Indonesia, and fruit spices (black pepper, long pepper, & cardamom) which would be rare and highly sought after.

Cloves & Saffron can be their own thing with a very high base price range (similar to cloves in EU4) and the cloves would be found in the far moluccas and Coromandel coast and drive gameplay for the spice trade routes.

Similarly Vanilla, Chile peppers and Cocoa can be their own thing and drive colonization of the new World.

EDIT: Saffron could be in a very few locations of persia, kashmir valley, andalusia and so on...

Wouldn't a geographical split work better? Also different cultures use different spices, mostly because of geographical availability.

Saffron comes from the iranian/anatolian plateaus.

 

[Paulatim]

That's actually a very interesting suggestion, let's see what we can do about it.

Isn't geographical splitting much better? To drive geographical exploration, stay geographical...

 

[Jjjace55]

Off topic but whenever you cover New England I am going to yap so much about the tribes of Connecticut it better be accurate (also allow Mohegan to seperate from Pequot)

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

I hope you add an event of Islamization for this region, might be the most succesful Islamization in the game's time frame. Some content, maybe a situation?

 

[Roger Corominas]

I think you made error for West Sumatra region.
Siguntur is like a small regional kingdom(a duchy if you will) that existed alongside Pagaruyung, the successor of Dharmasraya.
Which actually basically the same, Dhamasraya was named Dhamasraya because the capital was located in Dhamasraya, while Pagaruyung was called so because, you guess it, the capital was relocated to Pagaruyung.

And the dynasty should be named Mauli.

Mauli - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(I know it's wikipedia but it's cited some real world inscription)

As a Minangkabau myself, it feels super weird to use them to represent the homeland of Rendang, it's like putting Welsh in place of England for Great Britain.
if you show this to most Minangkabau history nerds, their first respond will probably be "the f is Siguntur?"

edit note:
I think you guys did a good job overall, and I hope the research team have enough of sleep and drink a lot of water.

Dharmasraya is present as the Melayu kingdom, with indeed Mauli as their dynasty. Siguntur is another polity.

 

[Flower_Marlin]

Wouldn't a geographical split work better? Also different cultures use different spices, mostly because of geographical availability.

Saffron comes from the iranian/anatolian plateaus.

I mean sure but how would be break them apart? A bit of abstraction is necessary for gameplay we can't have one trade good for each of the 10 or so main spices. You could just do "exotic spices" and put all the spices from India and Indonesia in it but it's just too... broad. Some of these spices are way too expensive compared to others even today.