We are only just beginning to develop a detailed understanding of the commercial networks unfolding across maritime Asia. Most scholarship has concentrated on European traders, beginning with the Portuguese and the Spanish in the early sixteenth century. But European merchants were but a small—though increasingly important—part of this maritime world. And as we learn more, we are discovering complex histories of enslavement and ecological change involving actors like the Sulu Sultanate. Here is an image of a sailing ship one might encounter in the Celebes Sea, the Java Sea and elsewhere. Outriggers reduced the need for deep keels with ballast, allowing these vessels to navigate the region’s many shallow waters. Importantly, over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, indigenous vessels increasingly adopted Western arms.