Before Jakarta, there was Batavia, the 17th-century capital city of the Dutch East Indies, built with the skill of just a few hundred ethnic Chinese artisans who had settled as traders along the shore.
Kikuyu traders settled here decades ago.
In the 8th century ce Arab traders settled near the site of the modern port.
French traders settled the upper river, establishing towns like St . Louisand Prairie du Chien (now in Wisconsin), whose names survive to this day.
European missionaries and sandalwood traders settled on the fringes of islands from the 1840s, but their impact on the indigenous people was minimal.
Foreign traders settled on the island as early as the 9th century ce, and German merchant-colonists subsequently established the town of Visby.
Into many parts of Southeast Asia especially Burma, Thailand, and the coasts of Cambodia and Indonesia, where Indian traders settled and married into the families of local chieftains they brought with them a script and literature in the sophisticated Sanskrit language.
Even after the Arab conquest, Persian remained the language of local rulers, as Iranian administrators, mullahs and traders settled in the cities of Transoxania (which covered much of today's Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan), and is the basis of the language spoken by the Tajiks today.
Pidgins have been particularly associated with areas settled by European traders; examples have been Chinook Jargon, a lingua franca based on an American Indian language and English that was formerly used in Washington and Oregon, and Beach-la-mar, an English-based pidgin of parts of the South Seas.
During the 1st century ad, Indian influence began to spread through Southeast Asia in the wake of trade, both overland, through Burma and Thailand, and by sea traders settled at especially favourable spots along the inland roads and along the sea routes around the coasts and into the islands.
