MERCHANT PRINCES AND MAGIC MEDIATORS

Abstract

This paper distinguishes two types of association between strangeness and power, both of which were salient in Sumatra and the western Archipelago more generally. In the port-states, power and trade were thoroughly integrated. Foreign traders who played a role in their politics might be called ‘stranger-orang kaya’, the orang kaya being the class of merchant-aristocrats who dominated the port-states of the region in the 16th to 18th centuries. In the stateless highlands, the power associated with distant kings was essentially religio-magical, in common with the role of symbolic kingship in these highlands. The outsiders who benefited from this effect might be called ‘magical mediators’. The highlanders frequently wanted to utilise the cosmic powers of such figures, but never to be effectively ruled by them. Europeans were frequently among those who became stranger-orang kaya, and in the 19th century also sometimes magical mediators. The paper examines several Sumatran cases of both, noting that the options for Europeans to play such roles narrowed as the colonial system hardened.

Notes

¹The better-known Raffles text of the chronicle, the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals translated in C.C. Brown (1952): 12–28 omits this last detail.

²See also Baker (2003) and Reid (2006).

³The better-known Raffles text of the chronicle has a shorter version of the story, naming the prince who went to Aceh ‘Shah Palembang’ without stating that he began the line of Aceh kings (Brown 1952: 110).

⁴ Honesty requires me to include a report from the area which might seem to support a more classic interpretation of the European ‘stranger-king’. The Malay river-statelets of the coast of essentially Batak territory near the British settlement of Natal were reported in the 1760s ‘to be rather managed than ruled. They find the English useful as moderators between their own contending factions, which often have recourse to arms, even upon points of ceremonious precedence, and are reasoned into accommodation by our Resident going among them unattended’ (Marsden 1966: 374). The context suggests that among Batak the English were acting much like the Malay port-rulers before them, using the charisma from their trade-wealth to mediate in disputes, without thereby being invited in any sense to become true kings.

⁵This seems to be the same person referred to as Carlos de Silva by Lee (1970: 75, 77); I cannot tell which name is correct.

⁶Raja Uti (sometimes Raja Biak Biak) was believed to be one of the sons or grandsons of Si Raja Batak who did not (like the others) have descendents who gave rise to the different Batak margas, but mysteriously fled to Barus or Aceh, where he appeared to represent the Batak connection with coastal power. In 1994 a monument to Raja Uti was erected in Barus, after an enterprising medium in Pangururang claimed to have been told in trance by his spirit that that was where he was buried.