The study of historical international affairs in the Indian Oceans would not be complete without including the factors of pluralism in commerce and politics. In the age of seafaring, not only the Chinese and Arabs but also the South Indians from Malabar and the Coromandel ports were among the most notable trading communities that engineered maritime Indian Ocean. Positioning themselves in the middle path between the local sovereignty and the global world, their roles rose from being mere traders to political and economic advisers. Some records even present them as kings, believed to be the result of generational circulatory relations and kinship intermarriage with royal circles.   

Driven by many factors, including the impact of famine and the colonial political economic system in India and Malacca, a new wave of South Indian traders and refugees sailed to Indonesia and Malaysia in the 1650s. Half of Sumatra (now in Indonesia), Kedah and Perak (now in Malaysia), were under the governance of queens of Aceh Darussalam Sultanate when the maritime world witnessed the struggle of South Indian merchant communities under capitalist commerce and political turmoil between the former and their colonial masters. Having said so, the queen’s strategic partnership with the South Indians and colonial Dutch powers played an important role in dealing with the subsequent survival of the communities. Before 1500, South Indian Hindus and Muslim merchants’ commercial enclaves known as the Chetties existed in Malacca. Due to the Portuguese invasion in 1511, the merchants diverted their trade from Malacca to Pasai in Aceh. The trade continued to survive and reached a climax in the 1650s, where the tin trade was among those that flourished the most. The lucrative commodity of tin became the source of power interest and conflict in centuries to follow. The tin trading circulated from Malacca-Aceh-Pegu and Tenasserim.   

The South Indians’ main commodity was cloth or textile exchanged for tin and spices, and sometimes for elephants too. Many South Indians became advisers to the local sovereigns displayed by the case of Muhammad Kasim of Aceh, Mir Jamal of Kedah and Siddi Lebe of Perak. They were among many diverse circulatory South Indian trading figures that benefitted from spices and tin trading. Their ability to voyage for long distances, knowledge of commodity maintenance, and low fixed prices intensified the power rivalry situation involving the western capitalist colonisers for many centuries onwards. 

This article looks briefly into the state of South Indian mercantilism through a mercantile dispute in the region that was governed by a female sovereign of Aceh. Through the event of the Perak Massacre in 1651, It is expected that this blog article shows the state of strategic international partnership between the queen and her South Indian merchants against the colonial capitalist hegemony. 

The Queens, the Indians, and the Perak Massacre 

As mentioned earlier, the earliest record of Dutch encounters in Indonesia was in 1599 through the case of a dispute involving two Dutch merchant brothers, Frederick and Cornelis de Houtman, and Aceh Darussalam Sultanate of Sumatra Island. Assumed to be driven by commercial fraud, violence took the life of both the Acehnese people, Cornelis de Houtman and crew. His brother, Frederick spent a two-year house-jail sentence where he completed one of the earliest Malay-Dutch dictionaries. To redeem peace, the Sultanate apparently became the first political entity in Asia that recognised Holland’s sovereignty as a kingdom in 1601 where it sent two official peace emissaries to the Netherlands.  

Despite the sovereign exchanges of peace, commerce with the newly established imperial trading companies named Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) often continued in disputes, suspensions and reconciliations. When Aceh was governed by a woman named Sultanah Safiatuddin (1612-1675), Perak, Pahang and Kedah were among the top Dutch trading spots. Numerous confrontations occurred on different occasions. One of the most memorable cases was the Perak Massacre that occurred in 1651 where the despoiling of a Dutch factory and the murder of its servant came to the centre of royal attention and international negotiation. Within the 12 years of effort to settle the case, the Perak Massacre was proof of the early symptoms of capitalist colonialism as proven by the Dutch’s aim to gain a monopoly on tin trade.  

In the process, the Dutch used the treaties as a trap to drain the Sultanate of its tin trade profit where the former demanded a tin monopoly from Sultanah Safiatuddin. and he called for a result, the New Treaty of 1655 was forged where it compelled Aceh to provide a new lodge for the Dutch and half of Perak’s tin at a fixed price, while the trade blockade in Aceh and Perak remained under the Dutch. The tin monopoly was not granted as the sultanate defended its multipolar commercial regulation, where the priority of the trading partnership was inclusive, as long as submission to the rule of the Sultanate had been made. Furthermore, the Dutch procurement of half the tin of Perak was hindered by the powerful Temenggong (regent) of Perak who was connected by close paternity to Aceh Council. He denied the Dutch requests of a tin monopoly for the reason that the Dutch’s debt that were due for payment. With this situation came another treaty signed in 1659. By this time the Sultanate investigation into the matter resulted in the reshuffling of the governing hierarchy in the region, including the sudden appointment of an old Sultanah Aminah Todijn as regent of Perak in 1654. Despite the numerous signed treaties, the Dutch failed to gain the monopoly. It was not until 1663 that the Dutch took the decision to close its factories in Aceh, Perak, and Ligor as the result of disappointment. 

The 12 years of the Perak massacre disputes had brought South Indians, the Malabarese, and traders from the Coromandel ports closer to Aceh. The treaty held between Aceh and the Dutch concerning the Perak tin monopoly triggered the Queen to station her Malabarese and Coromandel Indian trading partners only in Aceh where she had granted them mercantile passes long before the massacre. From Aceh, the tin was brought to India and through the Red Sea and China. The Malabarese and Coromandel traders were forbidden to trade directly in Perak,  and instead by the order of the queen the tin was procured strategically before supplying it for the Indian traders who were in closer geographical proximity.

After the death of Sultanah Safituddin, Aceh continued to be governed by three other queens. It was under these queens, that increasing numbers of South Indian merchants known locally as the Chuliah grew higher in royal rank and their offspring conversed and scribed in Acehnese, Malay, and Arabic. Thomas Forrest noted in his account published in 1792, that by the end of the 18^th century, the Chuliahs were dominant in numbers in the court of the Aceh, being economic and political advisers as in the case of Muhammad Kasim from Malabar and Poh Salleh. 

References  

Title Image: 'Malacca under Dutch occupation' Source: Wikipedia

Sherbanu Khan, Sovereign women in a Muslim Kingdom: the Sultanahs of Aceh 1641-1699, Singapore: NUS PRESS, 2017.  

Sinappah Arasaratnam, The Coromandel-Southeast Asia Trade 1650-1740: Challenges and Response of a Commercial System, Journal of Asian History, 1984, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1984), pp. 113-13. 

Barbara Watson Andaya, Perak the Abode of Grace, a Study of the eighteenth-century Malay State, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979.