During this period, Malayness and Islam increasingly developed as identity traits of Malay people. Buginese people from Celebes even spread out the Malay network, not only in Southeast Asia but also towards the north coast of Australia. By the beginning of the 16th century the centrality of the Malay network began to fan out with trading centers in almost all regions in Southeast Asia.
During the course of history, the dynamics of maritime and inland cultures in the Indonesian archipelago were characterized by economic, political, and cultural competition and conflicts between the ‘‘Javanese world’’ (inland culture) and the ‘‘Malay world’’ (maritime culture). In the meantime, the role of Java in shaping the identity of the Java world, therefore, can be easily understood historically. Before the presence of Westerners some elements of the Javanese culture had spread out to the regions around the Java Sea. This was in line with the expansion of political influence of the Javanese kingdoms before the domination of Western colonialism. It seems that this political process tended to be a process of political integration rather than of political centralization.