The Sea of Treasures: Oceanic Heterotopias and Miraculous Women in the English Play, Island Princess, and the Chinese Novel, Eunuch Sanbao

The Jacobean playwright John Fletcher’s tragicomedy Island Princess features the Molucca Islands, and the late Ming historical romance Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyages on the Indian Ocean 三寶太監西洋記 (1598) features Java—both in modern-day Indonesia—as the main geographical locus of their storytelling. The Molucca islands were where the Portuguese, Dutch, and English ruthlessly fought for monopoly of cloves and nutmegs in the sixteenth century. Java was a frequent destination of Admiral Zheng He’s (1371–1433) seven voyages to deal with emigrating Chinese merchants living in Java and Javanese monarchy.

Both Eunuch Sanbao and Island Princess employ a viewpoint from the land. The land is where European noblemen and Confucian scholar-officials reside, the sea is a zone of treasures to be conquered by voyagers, and a zone where slaves, heterodoxy, and the unknown prevail. But this paper will use the concept of oceanic heterotopia and utilize newly collected materials from the Molucca Islands and Java to discuss the possibility of interpreting the two artistic works with a viewpoint from the sea. The princess from Tidore is a skilled “mariner” navigating in the dangerous water of her life. The Javanese female warrior displays great bravery and survival skills in defending her country against the Ming fleets. These miraculous women, this paper argues, embody an oceanic heterotopia mediating between he land and the sea.