Müller - Manufacturing Malayness

Indonesia and the Malay World
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Manufacturing Malayness
Martin Müller
To cite this article: Martin Müller (2014) Manufacturing Malayness, Indonesia and the Malay
World, 42:123, 170-196, DOI: 10.1080/13639811.2014.912409
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639811.2014.912409
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Download by: [Copenhagen University Library] Date: 30 August 2017, At: 07:50
Martin Müller
MANUFACTURING MALAYNESS
British debates on the Malay nation,
civilisation, race and language in the
early nineteenth century
Downloaded by [Copenhagen University Library] at 07:50 30 August 2017
This article examines the ways in which the notion of Malayness was conceptualised, articu-
lated, and debated in a set of foundational British discourses on this topic during the first
two decades of the nineteenth century. Using T.R. Trautmann’s concept of locational tech-
niques and D. Rowly-Conwy’s idea of competing referential frameworks, the article argues
that these conceptualisations have to be assessed within their contemporary colonial and
epistemic contexts. The differences in the ascribed importance of language, nation, race,
and civilisation in the definition of Malayness thus depended upon whether it was inscribed
into a framework composed of orientalist philology, Scottish Enlightenment theories of
stadial progress or a genealogically infused ethnology. Applying evidence procured from
the fields of textual philology, comparative philology, racial classification, antiquarianism,
and conjectural history, the scholar-administrators William Marsden, John Leyden, Stam-
ford Raffles, and John Crawfurd offered their discrepant versions of Malay origin,
history, and essence. These versions each embodied their own particular historical vision
that not merely prefigured the authoritative mode of approaching and assessing the
notion of Malayness, but it also prescribed the scope within which the imperial politics
could be framed and the colonial projects unrolled.
Keywords: Colonial discourses; British ideas on Malayness; science; history; and

ideology; early nineteenth century; colonial Southeast Asia
The traditions regarding their [the Malays’] early history are far less blended
with the marvellous ... if we find a mixture of mythological fable, this surely is
not in itself sufficient to invalidate what may otherwise be considered as matter
of fact.
(Jambulus, EUR K239/5: 135)
Indonesia and the Malay World, 2014

Vol. 42, No. 123, pp. 170–196, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639811.2014.912409
# 2014 Editors, Indonesia and the Malay World
MANUFACTURING MALAYNESS 171
The author of the above quote using the nom de plume Jambulus, was here explicitly
addressing the content of an article published in the Edinburgh Review in 1814. The
article had been critical of the historical value of the Malays’ own traditions and litera-
ture. In an 1815 manuscript addressed to Stamford Raffles and later privately circulated,
Jambulus thus set out to vindicate the use of the Malays’ own literary traditions as cred-
ible historical sources. Anticipating Raffles’ posthumous publication of John Leyden’s
translation of the Sejarah Melayu entitled Malay annals in 1821, Jambulus wrote:
To prove that the Malays are altogether a very different people to what they have
been represented by the reviewers, and that their traditions and historical notices
are not altogether so devoid of interest as they would have us to believe, would
require little more than the publication of a fair translation of some of their
most popular performances.

(Jambulus, EUR K239/5: 139 –40)
Whereas the identity of Jambulus remains unclear,1 the authorship of the article in the
Edinburgh Review, entitled ‘History and languages of the Indian islands’, can be attributed
to the Scottish scholar-administrator John Crawfurd (1783– 1868). Crawfurd had been
in the service of the East India Company since 1803 when he took up a position as an
assistant surgeon in India. In 1808 he was relocated to the settlement on Penang where
he acquired proficiency in Malay, and in 1811 he formed part of the retinue that
accompanied the Governor-General of India, Lord Minto, and Stamford Raffles in the
occupation of Java. Later he would prove his worth in the East Indian realm as a
gifted linguist, assiduous administrator, and skilled diplomat.
The article by Crawfurd contained a critical review of William Marsden’s A grammar
of the Malayan language (1812). It repeatedly questioned Marsden’s inclusion of the
natives’ own traditions in the discernment of the original abode of the Malay nation,
from whence this had subsequently spread its politico-cultural influence along great
stretches of the littoral of insular Southeast Asia. Crawfurd did not merely reject Mars-
den’s tracing of the original seat of the Malay nation to Minangkabau, he also challenged
the methodological procedure through which Marsden had reached this conclusion and
the different kinds of evidence upon which he founded his hypothesis. Crawfurd thus
contended that ‘the traditions of the Malays themselves are altogether undeserving of
notice’, given that, on their level of civilisation:
Their imbecility of reason and their ignorance as to matters of fact are equally
beyond the comprehension of any one accustomed only to European society.
1
Jambulus or Iambulos, was a Hellenistic merchant and traveller who authored the fabulous travel
account ‘Islands of the Sun’, or ‘The adventures of Iambulus in the Southern Ocean’, excerpts of
which have survived in Diordorus Siculus’ writings. Although by the 1800s recognised as what
J. Stagl (1995: 200) has labelled a ‘fictive traveller’, Jambulus’ text was nevertheless eagerly sca-
venged for information on ancient Greek knowledge of the Indian Ocean. F. Wilford referred to
him in his ‘An essay on the sacred islands of the West”, published in the 10th and 11th volumes
of Asiatick Researches in 1810 and 1811. This seems to imply that Jambulus was a rather well
known figure, at least amongst people interested in orientalist knowledge. For more on Jambulus’s
identity, see Müller 2013: 156.
172 INDONESIA AND THE MALAY WORLD
Such is the lubricity of their memory, or their incapacity for attention, that they
scarcely ever recount the most simple recurrence, without intermingling some fic-
titious and marvellous circumstance, which they speedily come most implicitly to
believe. To speak of native history of such a people, therefore, is obviously a
mere mockery; – and all the legends they have, are accordingly the most extrava-
gant and puerile fables.
(Crawfurd 1814: 158)
Instead, as we shall see, the Edinburgh Review article took recourse in an older theory
that traced the origin of the Malay nation to the coastal fringes of the Malay Peninsula
(Crawfurd 1814: 164). This little known intellectual clash between Jambulus and Craw-
furd is representative of many debates that preceded and followed it on how to produce,
present, and employ knowledge of the Southeast Asian peoples, their history and present
state. It is this aspect of colonial knowledge production that I endeavour to sketch here. I
will approach these themes through the prism of a set of British debates that took place
between c.1810 and c.1820; in particular I will examine the competing conceptual taxo-
nomies through which the debates were articulated and the colonial practices of which
they formed an integrated part. I will focus on how these early scholars of the Malay
world addressed the crucial question regarding the origin and essence of Malayness: this
question was deemed quintessential in the delineation of the history of Southeast Asia, not-
withstanding whether Malay primarily referred to nation, race, civilisation, or language.
The article examines which kinds of knowledge were deemed the most authoritative,
what types of historical evidence were ascribed the highest credibility, how these affected
the modes of argumentation, and lastly how these fitted into the competing larger inter-
pretive frameworks that, each in their respective manner, legitimated the imperial
project, carved out the field for the present politics and delineated its future trajectories.
Framing the notion of Malayness
Most recent studies that have addressed this aspect of early British colonial knowledge
production on Southeast Asia have inscribed it into a grander narrative in which the
history of the framing, reception, and appropriation of the notion of Malayness have
been traced from the arrival of the first Europeans in the region, throughout the colonial
period and the independence movements, and up to today’s nation states. This history
has been thoroughly studied by Anthony Milner (2011) and Anthony Reid (2001; 2010).
Both have brought attention to the crucial part played by these early British scholar-
administrators in developing the notion of Malayness,2 delineating its classificatory
scope, and unfolding its cultural potential (see Milner 2002; 2011; Reid 2001;
2010). Addressing the issue of Malayness, Milner stresses, ‘necessarily confronts ques-
tions about what we mean by “ethnicity”, “race”, “culture”, and “civilization” – and
2
Milner has advocated for a study of Malayness rather than a study of the Malay as an ethnic entity
given that the Malay is, and has always been, ‘an idea in motion’ and ‘open to contest’ (Milner 2011:
16– 17); it defies any fixed definition and as such it seems more profitable to examine the convoluted
paths of the idea of Malayness and its multiple roles in the formation of ethnic and national core cul-
tures, to use A. Reid’s terminology (Reid 2001: 296– 7).
when it is appropriate to use such concepts, and when not’ (Milner 2011: 17). These
notions were, as will be discussed, indeed introduced into the definition and discussion
of Malayness through these early British discourses in which they constituted the over-
arching key concepts. Since then, these discourses and their key concepts have exerted a
cogent influence upon Southeast Asia’s later political history, cultural formations, and
even upon the very structures of thought through which the region is approached and
which are foundational in the formation of cultural, ethnic, and national identities
(Shamsul 2001: 356).
Yet, it is a common feature of such narratives focussing on the longue durée devel-
opment of certain ideas and their accompanying terminology that they have an inherent
tendency to focus especially on what subsequently became of paramount interest. Such
an approach hence contains an inclination to prioritise aspects of continuity over
instances of conceptual disjuncture. It tends to exclude the importance of patterns

that were never fructified into significant historical developments but which nonetheless
influenced contemporary thought and action. It occludes attention towards the radically
discrepant epistemologies in which the defining concepts of Malayness were originally
embedded and which ascribed them their contemporary meanings.
It is to this diachronic, teleological, and at times somewhat presentist narrative that
I here offer a historicising supplement by understanding these British scholar-adminis-
trators and their texts on their own intellectual terms. This article aims at unravelling
the rationale behind those discussions on Malayness that went beyond ‘mere descrip-
tion’, towards ‘proposing a formulation, a category – contributing to a developing aca-
demic structure of knowledge’ (Milner 2011: 119). These debates bridged the
Enlightenment’s taxonomical quest with romanticism’s search for the distant origin
and organic essence of the nation (Reid 2001: 302– 2; 2010: 91 –3), such as especially
epitomised in language when this was perceived as a living vestige incarnating an ancient
history (Errington 2008: 125).
This requires us to unthink both some foundational categories regarding Malayness
and the post hoc established scholarly disciplines. It is necessary to avoid a retrospective
reading of what the term ‘Malay’ entailed in these discourses, within their contempor-
ary contexts and when governed by their own modalities of thought. Furthermore, eth-
nography, history, oriental philology, etc. had yet to be rigidified into discrete and well
demarcated disciplines, each governed by their own corpus of theories, methodologies,
and a fixed field of knowledge. Instead, they composed a much more entangled field of
knowledge which enabled a seamless comparison of, for instance, philological, linguis-
tic, and racial evidence in the discussion of how authoritatively to access and assess
Southeast Asian history and the essence of Malayness.
This approach stresses the importance of being attentive towards the vagueness sur-
rounding the terminologies that were used at the time to designate the national (or
ethnic), racial, and civilisational entities. P. Stock (2011: 13) has recently emphasised
how late eighteenth and early nineteenth century discussions regarding human difference
involved ‘several recurring and interlocking debates about human “nature”, hereditary
qualities, climatic influence, and aesthetic judgements’. All this implied that the
notions of race, nation, and civilisation were more often than not epistemologically
intertwined and conceptually co-dependent, both in terms of definition and demar-
cation. Rhetorically, they were more often than not applied in a quite interchangeable
manner. This was most acutely exemplified through the manifold uses of the term
Malay: a name repeatedly vested with multiple meanings. At times, the term Malay
could thus refer to a purely linguistic entity, either denominating just one single language
or an entire language family, whereas at other times it was used to define and describe a
distinct Malay race, as it had been coined by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752– 1840)
(Bendyshe 1865: 275 – 6). In other contexts it was apparently the idea of a Malay civi-
lisation that was meant by the term, a peculiar civilisation that seemed to be constrained
to the coastal fringes of this part of the globe. Yet, it could also designate a Malay nation,
and hence refer to a state-like entity, characterised by possessing a unique ethnic com-
position (e.g. Milner 2011: 91; Reid 2010: 122 –7).
My theoretical approach draws upon the concept of locational technologies by
T. Trautmann (2006: 2 – 11; 2009a: 115 – 88) and the notion of competing referential
frameworks by D. Rowly-Conwy (2007: 1 – 20). I argue that these locational technol-
ogies and frameworks were foundational and can explain the discrepancies in the assess-
ment of different types of evidence used in the discernment of the origin and
dissemination of the Malay nation, civilisation, race, and language. Trautmann
(2009a: 173) emphasises three locational technologies: the mapping of physical space
in a spatial grid originally devised by Ptolemy; the Eusebian ordering of time which
facilitates the ‘integration of [all] national histories into the grid of world chronology’;
and lastly, the Mosaic ethnology in which all nations of the world are located within a
structure based on the trope of the segmentary Tree of Nations, and according to which
the various peoples were linked in terms of genealogical descent (Trautmann 2004: 37 –
52). To these a fourth locational project should be added, namely, that of the scale of
stadial civilisation, in particular as it was formulated within Scottish Enlightenment.
This latter interpretive framework became especially important to those who, with
regard to Southeast Asia, dismissed the applicability of the chronological approach
due to a supposed absence of credible written source material. In the absence of such
material, an event-based historical narrative seemed out of the question. Hence it had
to be replaced by other explanatory modes, such as the diffusionist, genealogical
model or the progressivist trope of stadial civilisation.
Rowly-Conwy’s central argument is that the reception and reframing of the concept
of prehistory in the British Isles was profoundly influenced by the different interpretive
frameworks which existed within the field of antiquarianism in England, Ireland, and Scot-
land. Irish antiquarians chiefly operated within the confines of the idea of ancient history
with an emphasis on textual philology and the chronologies that could be gleaned from
their rich traditional literature, whereas their Scottish peers tended to assess the past
within the Enlightenment model of stadial evolution. The English approach was shaped
in the mould of ethnology; like ancient history it privileged a rather short chronology,
and accorded more importance to the new science of comparative philology/linguistics
than to textual philology. Often it combined this with studies in comparative anatomy
and inscribed it all firmly into a genealogical model of migration and diffusion. I will
here argue that this interpretive model was, mutatis mutandis, mirrored in the British
approaches to Southeast Asia during the first half of the nineteenth century.
In this context, Crawfurd can be seen as firmly embedded within the Scottish tra-
dition. He was at the University of Edinburgh between 1800 and 1803 studying medi-
cine,3 and would have been exposed to the tenets of the Scottish brand of conjectural
3
The medical profession had been ‘chosen for him’ (Thompson 1870, III: 592).
history which emphasised the development of civil society through stadial progress.
Another characteristic was the focus upon a set of materialist foundations as constituting
the necessary (if not necessarily sufficient) condition for stadial progress and spatial
growth of civilisation.4 During these years, Crawfurd may have followed Dugald Stew-
art’s popular lectures on moral philosophy and conjectural history, and he was inculcated
with the approach and attitude to eastern peoples, civilisations, and languages that Jane
Rendall (1982) has dubbed Scottish orientalism.5
Both Raffles and his mentor, John Leyden, were more receptive towards the intrin-
sic value of the native written texts and what they saw as their authentic core of historical
content; as such they were rooted in an orientalist philological tradition that resembled
the idea of ancient history. Before becoming a renowned orientalist, Leyden had colla-
borated closely with Sir Walter Scott in his romanticist quest of collecting, editing, and
publishing ancient Scottish folklore that supposedly told the earliest story of this nation
and encapsulated the spirit of its people (Hooker and Hooker 2001). Raffles, however,
would also evince traits of an approach more grounded in ethnology; in this respect he
resembled William Marsden (1754 –1836). Marsden’s approach was fundamentally lin-
guistic in scope, and primarily relied on theories and methods derived from the nascent
discipline of comparative philology which he had been one of the first to consistently
cultivate in the British Isles.6 As the oldest of the British scholar-administrators in
this region, it was Marsden (1782) who first provided a consistent argument of the exist-
ence of the huge language family stretching from Easter Island to Madagascar that is
nowadays known as Austronesian,7 and which he in time dubbed ‘Polynesian’.8 Later,
James Cowles Prichard (1843) would introduce the term Malayo-Polynesian into the
English language in order to define, demarcate, and describe this language family and
the assumed associated racial entity and shared history.9
4
For a general treatment of the tenets and teachings of Scottish conjectural history and its impact upon
British society and empire, see e.g. Hopfl (1978); Meek (1976); Spadafora (1990: 253 –320); Pocock
(1999: 163 – 365; 2005: 157 – 226).
5
Rendall (1982: 44– 5) explicitly included Crawfurd in this group, and she later discussed him in
greater depth (1982: 50, 56 – 7, 59, 62, 63 – 4, and 69). For much more on Crawfurd as an orientalist
and as a conjectural historian, see Müller 2013.
6
Aarsleff’s (1983) seminal text on this topic, however, did not mention Marsden. On Marsden’s lin-
guistic analysis, see Trautmann (2006: 21– 34); Campbell and Poser (2008: 102 –4); and Marsden
1838.
7
The existence of these linguistic similarities had been noted in 1706 by Dutch philologist Adriaan
Reland who, according to Crawfurd (1820, II: 81), drew ‘no important or interesting conclusion
from this interesting fact’; contemporary with and independent of Marsden the Spanish Jesuit,
Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, had suggested a similar hypothesis (Yanguas 2000).
8
It was not until 1812 that Marsden provided a nomenclature for this language family discovered 30
years before. He then used the term Polynesia which he had borrowed from the East India Company
hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple, a personal friend (Fry 1970: 252). Marsden (1812: i) subdivided
Polynesia into Hither Polynesia, or ‘the Malayan Archipelago’, and Further Polynesia or the ‘vast
expense of South-sea islands’.
9
Prichard mentioned it the first time in (1843) in The natural history of man and reiterated it (Prichard
1836 – 1847) in the fifth volume of the third edition of Researches into the physical history of mankind. It
was probably borrowed from Franz Bopp’s Über die Verwnadtschaft der malayisch-polynesischen Sprachen
Contextualising the study of the Malay
England, and later Great Britain, had a history of involvement in Southeast Asia that
dated back to the early seventeenth century. Its more intensified interest in the
region, however, was of a more recent date. Apart from the small settlement at Ben-
coolen (Bengkulu) on the western coast of Sumatra, it can be said to have begun in
1786, when Francis Light leased the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah in the
name of the East India Company (EIC). It was to this island that a young Stamford
Raffles (1781 – 1826) arrived in 1805 as assistant secretary in a new administration.
Shortly after his arrival in Penang, Raffles met John Leyden (1775 –1811) who had
been ordered there from India on a short convalescence. Although Leyden’s stay on
the island was no more than a few months, it would prove to have a profound influence
upon Raffles’ mind and later career (Hooker and Hooker 2001: 6 – 12). It was this
encounter and the subsequent friendship that inaugurated Raffles’ career as a scholar-
administrator who – as an official ‘Agent of the Governor-General with the Malay
States’ and as an informed scholar – could speak authoritatively on all matters regarding
the Malays, and he would later write the first British scholarly work on Javanese society
and history.
The role played by British scholar-administrators has been well documented and
extensively discussed in the case of the colonial enterprise on the Indian subcontinent;
yet outside South Asian historiography, the analytical treatment of this crucial imperial
agent has been far less systematic.10 This does not imply that the scholar-administrators
were absent beyond this venue, or that their influence was insignificant. In the Southeast
Asian setting they played a crucial part in defining and filling out the intersected fields of
knowledge production and politics, most acutely exemplified by Raffles and Crawfurd.
Furthermore, they retrospectively came to be seen as the founders of the emergent
Southeast Asian area studies. Less acknowledged within this area studies, however,
are the ways in which this knowledge production formed an integrated part of a well
proven career-building technique, prevalent especially amongst well educated but
perhaps lesser well connected EIC employees, as Martha McLaren (2001) has demon-
strated to be the case for a set of prominent Scottish scholar-administrators (Thomas
Munro, John Malcolm and Mountstuart Elphinstone) on the Indian subcontinent. If
applicable to these men, then it would certainly be so to their fellow compatriot Craw-
furd, and it also played a pivotal part in Raffles’ career as an ambitious colonial admin-
istrator (Skott 2010: 156, 172). Raffles and Crawfurd thus repeatedly clashed in their
writings on Southeast Asia. They were inveterate competitors in branding themselves as
the foremost experts on this region and its history, and to a certain extent they strove to
obtain the same positions within the EIC administration (Quilty 1998: v). Hence – as
much as being emblematic of a confrontation between a romanticist paradigm with its
focus on a glorious past and a folklorist emphasis on native traditions on the one hand,
and a framework founded upon Scottish Enlightenment ideas on stadial progression of
mit den indisch-europäischen (1841), even though Prichard (1843: 327) referred explicitly to Wilhelm
von Humboldt’s magnum opus Über die Kawi-Spracheaud der Insel Java (3 vols, 1836 – 1839) as the
reference for his coinage of the concept of Malayo-Polynesian.
10
Ballantyne (2008) on the historiography on ‘colonial knowledge’ within- vs. outside of the South
Asian setting.
civilisation on the other – Raffles and Crawfurd’s ongoing competition on who could
provide the most authoritative narrative of Malay and Javanese history can also be inter-
preted as deliberate career-building strategies.
Neither should the strong ties that linked India and Southeast Asia during this time
be forgotten; rather than representing two discrete geographical units, India and
Southeast Asia were intimately connected on an institutional, personal and conceptual
level (Ballantyne 2002). Apart from Marsden and Raffles, most of the other scholar-
administrators (such as Leyden, Crawfurd, and Colin Mackenzie) had spent a consider-
able period of time in India before reaching Southeast Asia; the experience, back-
ground knowledge, and epistemological inclinations they brought with them
doubtlessly prefigured the ways in which Southeast Asia and its inhabitants were
approached, analysed, and assessed.11 This implied an emphasis on the notion of a
Greater India manifested through the linguistic vestiges of Sanskrit present in

modern Malay (Marsden 1798)12 and even more in the most ancient and refined
forms of Javanese (Errington 2008: 65 – 8). The scattered ruins of temples found in
central Java, with their obvious traces of Indian influence, furthermore became the
source of fervent antiquarian interest.13 However, it also worked at a deeper level
in the shape of providing the foundational master tropes that framed the ways in
which the countries, civilisations, and cultures inhabiting this region were conceptual-
ised by being authoritatively inscribed into their assumed adequate and authentic con-
texts. As epitomised by the dual presence of these oriental vestiges and the
autochthonous and ubiquitous Austronesian languages, Southeast Asia was geographically
as well as conceptually situated between land and sea. It represented an only vaguely
demarcated space tucked in between Asia and the Pacific and constituted a contested bat-
tleground where the contrasting knowledge regimes associated with orientalism and tro-
picality struggled for epistemic hegemony (Arnold 2005: 144–5). It was, in short, a
zone whose inhabitants were defined as much by their history as by their nature, and
where the principles of textual philology collided and coalesced with the notions of
the natural history of man.14
Compared to an Indian setting, the role of the scholar-administrator in
Southeast Asia seems to have differed markedly with regard to the level of
collaboration with native scholars or munshis. Not that such collaboration was entirely
absent though, as exemplified in the role played by Munshi Abdullah. Despite his insis-
tent reservations about the credibility of the Malay chronicles as sources to their own
11
As emphasised by Bernard S. Cohn (1996: 4 – 15) in his conceptualisation of a series of investigative
modalities that prefigured the imperial gaze upon its colonial subjects.
12
Marsden (1798: 227) interpreted Sanskrit influence on the Malay language and civilisation as being
‘such as the progress of civilization must soon have rendered necessary’. In this he differed from Sir
William Jones (Jones, Teignmouth and Elmers 1824, I: 139) who, in his eighth discourse to the
Asiatic Society (Originally delivered in 1791), had intimated a genealogical relationship between San-
skrit and the family of languages that Marsden had discovered 10 years earlier.
13
This aspect of the antiquarian interest in the Javanese past and its material vestiges has been the
object of much recent scholarly interest; see e.g. Ray (2007: 7 – 12); Tiffin (2008, 2009); Dı́az-
Andreu (2007: 215 – 22); Gomperts et al. (2012); Bloembergen and Eickhoff (2013).
14
For an analysis of the conceptualisation and naming of the Southeast Asian space in British discourses
between Marsden and Alfred Russel Wallace, see Müller (2013: 111 – 39).
history,15 Crawfurd too relied on named native assistants in his surveys of the Javanese
temples (Bloenbergen and Eickhoff 2013: 91), and he enjoyed close personal and pro-
fessional relationships with Javanese sages, as documented by Peter Carey (2008: 1–
437). With regard to Malay scholars, Crawfurd referred to the help he received from
‘the minister of Queda [Kedah], a man of very superior mind’ (Crawfurd 1820, II: 124).
Yet, despite such instances of collaboration, this did not imply that the British
scholar-administrators encountered anything in Southeast Asia that resembled what
they knew from the ‘north Indian ecumene’ (Bayly 1996: 180 –211); nor did they
engage in the kind of mutually respectful, albeit inherently asymmetrical collaboration
that Trautmann (2006; 2009b) studied in the case of colonial Madras. The scholar-
administrators were acutely aware of this difference; on Java this was stressed by
Colin Mackenzie (1916: xxvi –xxvii), and James Low (1849: 2) would later reiterate
a similar opinion concerning the Malay realm: ‘there are no Pundits as in India, ever
ready to lend their aid to the traveller over the toilsome path of archaeology’. Yet, as
stressed by Holger Warnk (2009: 8 – 9), the British scholar-administrators could not
possibly have carried out their research without the help they received from native scho-
lars and collaborators, and without whose assistance they would not have been able to
gain access to many Malay manuscripts and to translate and interpret these.
Tracing the Malayan seat of origin: Marsden
When Marsden published his first writings on the Malay language and on the Malay
inhabitants of Sumatra in the 1780s he was, as Crawfurd (1856: 271) emphasised,
‘the first literary and scientific Englishman who, with the advantages of local experience,
treated of the Malayan countries’.16 As a youth, Marsden had spent eight years as a clerk
at Bencoolen (1771 – 1779). When he returned to London he sought Sir Joseph Bank’s
patronage and later became a trusted member of Banks’s inner circle (Marsden 1838:
44 –6). During one of Banks’ famous breakfast sessions, the attendants discussed the
topic ‘of the languages of Eastern and South-sea Islands, to which Mr. Banks, during
his voyage in the Endeavour, had paid much attention’. Upon these matters Marsden
‘addressed to him [Banks] a short treatise (drawn up for the occasion), which some
time after appeared in Archæologia.’17 In this short article, Marsden (1782: 135) under-
took a linguistic comparison of a number of different languages,18 and this led him to
infer ‘that from Madagascar to eastward to the Marquesas, or nearly from the east
coast of Africa to the west coast of America, there is a manifest connection in many
words by which the inhabitants express their simple ideas, and between some of the
most distant, a striking affinity’. Although Marsden initially did not draw any ethnolo-
gical implications of this linguistic affinity he shortly afterwards did so. In 1783, when he
15
See Mss Eur Mack Private 85/1: 17–18; Crawfurd (1814: 158; 1820, II: 51, 378). In the latter text,
Crawfurd did concede that the Malay manuscripts possessed a certain historical value, not through their
content, but by virtue of what they revealed about the society in which they were concocted.
16
See also Hamilton (1810: 390); Marsden (1838: 139); Bastin (1965: 256); Boon (1990: 30 – 4);
Quilty (1998: 4, 9 – 10); Aljunied (2005: 17); Andaya (2008: 100).
17
Gascoigne (1994: 131 – 2, 164 – 7, 182 –3) and Marsden’s own account (1838: 44– 50).
18
The article was written 1780 and read before the Society of Antiquaries on 22 February 1781
(Marsden 1782).
published the first edition of his History of Sumatra, he explicitly stated that ‘this very
extensive familiarity of language indicates a common origin of the inhabitants, but the cir-
cumstances and progress of their separation are wrapped in the darkest veil of obscurity’
(Marsden 1783: 35). On the question regarding the origins of the Malay language in its
narrow definition, and of the nation who spoke it, Marsden (1783: 161) opined that
‘the Malay language, which is original in the peninsula of Malayo, and has from thence
extended itself throughout the eastern islands, so as to become the lingua franca of
that part of the globe’. Indeed, despite this attention towards tracing the seat of origin
of the Malay language and nation, Malayness seemed in his view (Marsden 1783: 36) basi-
cally to constitute a fluid and inclusive ethnic category that one could become a part of by
professing the Muslim faith, adopting the Malay language as one’s ‘proper language’ (as
opposed to merely using it as a lingua franca), and by claiming descent from the
kingdom of Minangkabau, notwithstanding where one’s actual abode may be situated.19
Leyden on the origin of the Malay language and nation
When Leyden returned to Calcutta from his furlough on Penang he did not leave South-
east Asia entirely behind him. It was thus during his stay at Penang that Leyden began the
English translation of Sejarah Melayu under the title Malay annals. He also completed the
draft to his dissertation ‘On the language and literature of the Indo-Chinese nations’
which was later read before the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1808 (Hooker and
Hooker 2001: 8, 26). These texts were part of a much grander, unfinished project, con-
sisting of ‘an ambitious comparative study of the structure and genealogy of languages in
India and Southeast Asia’ (Trautmann 2006: 91) that Leyden had embarked upon, but
was curtailed by his death on 28 August 1811, after having contracted a malignant fever
in the immediate aftermath of the conquest of Batavia. The only publication from
Leyden’s pen to reach the public before his death was a short dissertation entitled Com-
parative vocabulary of the Barma, Maláyu and Thái languages, printed in Serampore in 1810
(Leyden 1810). However, before these events that would lead to the British invasion of
Java and his premature demise, Leyden had met Raffles once more and had facilitated
Raffles’ introduction into the learned society in Calcutta. This was in 1810 when
Raffles arrived in Calcutta to discuss and plan the invasion and future administration
of Java with Lord Minto but also found time to present a paper, ‘On the Maláyu
nation’,20 before the Asiatic Society (Hooker and Hooker 2001: 9; Wurtzburg 1984:
105). This was Raffles’ first public appearance as a scholar and he would in time
revive the ailing Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, and be instrumental in the com-
pilation of Javanese and Malay manuscripts and the survey on Java’s glorious ruins – a
quest that would result in the publication of his History of Java (Raffles 1817), the cul-
mination of ‘his all-conquering historical research to crown himself emperor of a mythi-
cal Javanese past’ (Hannigan 2012: 241).
In 1812, when Marsden published A grammar of the Malayan language he took great
pains in refuting the critique advanced by Leyden in ‘On the language and literature of
the Indo-Chinese nations’ (1811). The critique had been directed both at Marsden’s
19
Marsden (1783: 36) states that this region was settled by ‘a colony from the [Malay] peninsula’.
This latter emphasis was absent in a revised publication (Marsden 1811: 41).
20
This paper was later published (Raffles 1818).
general theory on language formation, with its primary focus on genealogy, and at his
specific hypothesis regarding the origin and dissemination of the Malay language. By reject-
ing Marsden’s general theory Leyden’s approach represented a reconfiguration of the fra-
mework in which the Malay language and the people who spoke it were inscribed.
Leyden (1811: 167) began by claiming that Marsden only ‘pointed out a few coinci-
dences, but has left the mass of the language totally unaccounted for’. Rather than being
the best known and most diffused specimen of the Hither Polynesian languages, Leyden
(1811: 168) held that Malay was essentially a hybrid language21 – a fairly recent product
of the mixture between different peoples and civilisations along the coastal fringes of the
Malacca strait. Despite agreeing with Marsden in identifying three main components
(native, Sanskrit and Arabic) in the Malay language (Leyden 1811: 168 –75; Marsden
1798: 228 – 30), Leyden’s assessment of the importance of these components diverged
from Marsden’s at its very core. According to Marsden’s methodology of the word list,
he ascribed a primacy to the native part, in which all the ‘simple ideas’ that defined the
core of any language could be amply expressed. The two other parts were perceived as
later additions; elements that merely polished an already existing language and rendered
it more sophisticated (Marsden 1798: 229).22 Leyden, however, approached the Malay
language from the opposite direction. He deduced the Sanskrit and Arabic components
which he perceived as constituting the fundamental parts of the language and what then
remained unaccounted for, by implication, formed the ‘part of the language, which in
comparison of the rest, may be termed native or original’ (Leyden 1811: 173). Instead
of finding it ‘expressive of the most simple class of our ideas’ (ibid.), Leyden deemed the
native part to be ‘in reality, more corrupted and mixed, than those parts which are con-
fessedly derived from a foreign source’ (ibid).
In Leyden’s view, history followed the pattern delineated by language and the
‘Malayan nation’ was hybridised too; it did not exist before the arrival of Indian and
Arab traders to the region. These traders brought with them the level of civilisation
and the religious creed that had come to define the Malay nation as an ethnic entity
endowed with its own identity, and which demarcated their polity from that of the
other peoples in the region. Malay, then, was an inherently polished language that
had originated in the crucible consisting of Indian civilisation, Arab religious zeal, and
a body of natives. Before this, the Malays were only Malays in the broad, racial sense
of the term. Repudiating both Marsden’s theory of Malay being part of the autochtho-
nous Polynesian language family and Sir William Jones’s surmise of its ultimate origin in
Sanskrit, Leyden (1811: 166, 168), instead adopted a quite narrow definition of Malay in
terms of classificatory scope and historical depth. This facilitated a closer relationship
between language and recorded history, both with regard to the causal relation
between the two and to their heuristic function as gateways to the past.
This is the circumstance which renders the investigation of the origin and relations
of the Malayu language a matter of difficulty, as it becomes necessary to examine the
history of the nation, as well as the structure and composition of the language itself.
21
See Reid (2010: 83– 7), for recent analysis that emphasises hybridity as crucial in formation of the
Malay ethnicity.
22
For more on the methodology of the ‘word list’ and Marsden’s use of it, see Aarsleff (1982: 84 –
100); Trautmann (2006: 21– 34); Campbell and Poser (2008: 102– 4).
Though used by a nation of comparatively late origin, at least with respect to the
principal features which it at present presents, the history of the nation is still
very obscure, rather, it may be presumed, from the want of investigation, than
from the want of materials for its illustration. The history of the origin and progress
of the Malayu tongue, of course partakes of this obscurity.
(Leyden 1811: 163 –4)
What is particularly striking here is the way in which language is historicised rather than
having a focus on a postulated original core that could be isolated and invoked as incarnating
the true ethnic identity. It was recent history, not a distant origin that determined the Malay
language and identity. This paved the way for a larger inclusion of written source materials of
European, Indian, and native provenance in the examination of the history of the Malay
language and people. Leyden was thus a pioneer in the British use of Malay manuscripts
as relatively reliable sources to their own history (Hooker and Hooker 2001: 29). He main-
tained that ‘though occasionally embellished by fiction, it is only from them that we can
obtain any outline of the Malay history, and of the progress of the nations’ (Leyden
1811: 180). The unconventionality of this approach was illustrated by the fact that
Raffles later found it necessary to emphasise this as the outcome of methodological delib-
erations rather than a result of a credulous mind. Leyden was, Raffles told us:
[A]ware, that, in these islands, as well as on the continent of India, the commence-
ment of authentic history was only to be dated from the introduction of Mahometan-
ism; but, in the wild traditions of the Malays, he thought he sometimes discovered a
glimmering of light, which might, perhaps, serve to illustrate an earlier period. These
glimmerings, he was accustomed to say, were very faint, but, in the absence of all
other lights, they were worth pursuing; they would, at all events, account for and
explain many of the peculiar institutions and customs of the people, and serve to
make his countrymen better acquainted with a race who appeared to him to
possess the greatest claims to their consideration and attention.
(Raffles 1821: vi)
This pursuit would result in the posthumous publication of Leyden’s Malay annals in
1821, with an introduction by Raffles. Based on one of the many manuscript versions of
the Sejarah Melayu, it narrated the story of the founding of Malacca, and it was the first
full translation of a Malay text into English.23 Being a gifted orientalist scholar and one of
23
An orientalist, later identified as Crawfurd (Skinner 1976: 204), annotated in his own manuscript
copy of this text about Leyden’s Malay annals that:
‘this translation is merely a free rendering of some of the principal incidents it [Sejarah Melayu]
contains, Ibrahim the Moonshee made a copy of the Salelata Salatin [Sulalat Us-Salatin] at
Malacca, and took it with him to Bengal, where he was in the service of Dr. Leyden.
Ibrahim read the book to the Doctor and explained the meaning to him, and he [i.e.
Leyden] wrote down what he seems to have considered as worthy of notice. This is the
account which Ibrahim gives me. It would indeed be tedious to translate all the prolixity
and repetitions of a Malayan author, but his translation is tolerably faithful. There is consider-
able variation in the Malayan copies’ (quoted in Low 1849: 20).
Leonard Andaya (2008: 251) explains this ‘variation in the Malayan copies’ by pointing to the fact that
‘in the Malay world a copyist’s task was to “improve” a text to accord with current social and political
the earliest Englishmen to collect Malay manuscripts, it is no surprise that Leyden

should be the first to undertake this translation; it simply appeared more rational to
do so within his romanticist and folklorist framework than, for instance, it was for
Marsden with his focus on origin and genealogical descent – let alone than it would
be within Crawfurd’s civilisational framework of stadial progress.
Raffles’ discourses on the Malay nation and race
In the article read to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1810, Raffles argued that the
‘Malayan Group’, roughly equivalent to Marsden’s Hither Polynesia or Malayan Archi-
pelago, was peopled by both Malays and ‘nations radically distinct from the Malays, who
speak languages entirely different, and use various written characters, original and
peculiar to each’ (Raffles 1818: 102 –3). Raffles perceived the Malay nation as,
unlike most other nations, being composed of a cluster of communities hugging the
shorelines of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and many of the smaller islands
in the region. The only exception was Minangkabau, situated on the alluvial plains in
the Sumatran highlands. Yet, everywhere else the inland was inhabited by ‘nations radi-
cally distinct from the Malays’, and whose roots of civilisation appeared to be of a differ-
ent origin. The main queries within Raffles’ framework seemed to be: how did the
Malays distinguish themselves from the other native nations, and what did bind them
as one nation when it was not a continuous territory as was the expected norm? Con-
tinuing in the same vein as Marsden and Leyden, Raffles ascribed the linguistic criterion
a paramount role in establishing the boundaries of demarcation between the different
groups of peoples, or nations, including the Malays.24
In opposition to Marsden – but apparently without recognising that Marsden in this
context had used the term ‘Malay’ to refer to the Austronesian languages in their
entirety from Madagascar to Easter Island, rather than Malay in the narrower (national)
sense – Raffles emphasised the linguistic coherence between all the Malay-speaking
communities. Instead of seeing the various dialects of Malay as having ‘experienced
such changes, with respect to the purposes of intercourse, that they may be classed
into several languages differing considerably from each other’,25 Raffles stated:
I cannot but consider the Malayu nation as one people, speaking one language, though
spread over so wide a space, and preserving their character and customs in all the mar-
itime states lying between the Sulu seas, and the Southern Ocean, and bounded long-
itudinally by Sumatra, and the western side of Papua, or New Guinea.
(Raffles 1818: 103)
realities. It often resulted in the expunging and inserting of information to support the genealogical
claims of powerful families’.
24
Although Raffles (1818: 107 – 8) also recognises a clear racial divide on the Malayan peninsula
between the coastal Malays and a ‘race of Caffries, who are occasionally found near the mountains’;
the latter, named the ‘Samang’, were described as being wool-haired. In an 1806 private letter to
Marsden he wrote at length about this ‘woolly-haired race’ of ‘Caffries’ (Raffles 1835, I: 18 – 20).
See also Manickham (2009).
25
Raffles here refers to what Marsden had written in 1796 (Marsden 1798: 227 – 8).
Thus, despite their scattered spatial distribution, all the Malays spoke essentially the
same language and belonged to the same people; in sum, they constituted one nation.
While such linguistic affinity may have been perceived as necessary in defining a nation,
Raffles did not seem to suggest that it was sufficient; instead he emphasised the importance
of a corpus of shared laws and institutions. Despite local differences, Raffles, nonetheless,
maintained that all ‘the Malay states possess several codes of laws, denominated Undang
Undang, or Institutions’ (Raffles 1818: 104); these were characterised by ‘a general accord-
ance; and, where they differ, it is seldom beyond what situation, superior advantages, and
authority, have naturally dictated’ (Raffles 1818: 103). Despite being politically composed
of many different state formations, the Malays still constituted one, coherent nation with a
shared origin and common historical heritage. In accounting for their origin Raffles con-
curred with Leyden in ‘that they did not exist as a separate and distinct nation until the
arrival of the Arabians in the Eastern Seas’ (Raffles 1818: 127). In a letter addressed to
Marsden dated 1 January 1815 Raffles (1835, I: 258) would later explain the existence
of the many different states existing within the widely scattered Malay nation as caused
by ‘their generally wandering and predatory life [which] induces them to follow the
fortune of a favourite chief and to form themselves into a variety of separate clans’.
This habitual inclination could thus account for both their wide geographical dispersion
and their political segmentation, whereas their recent origin and the continued interaction
would tend to impede, or at least delay, the linguistic and cultural segmentation that
Marsden had seemingly stressed within his genealogical framework.
The same motives seemed to be at play in the Introduction that Raffles wrote for
Leyden’s Malay annals. Anthony Reid argues that the mere choice of title, ‘Malay
annals’, rather than its original title which was ‘The Rule of all Rajahs’ shifted the emphasis
from primarily presenting a dynastic chronicle to narrating the history of a people. This
notion of a people with a distinct, shared history equated that of a nation. It was
through such, almost imperceptible discursive slippages, that the focus would later
rather effortlessly evolve into the history of a race. (Reid 2001: 303; Raffles 1821: v).
On the question regarding race, Raffles endeavoured to placate both Leyden and his
metropolitan correspondent, Marsden. In the annual discourse before the members of the
Batavian Society on 11 September 1815, Raffles discussed the origins of the Malays in the
broader meaning of the term. He began by agreeing with the position maintained by Marsden:
[T]hat the Malayan [language] is a branch or dialect of the widely extended language
prevailing through the islands of the Archipelago, to which it gives name, as well
as those of the South Sea, appears to be well established, and confirmed as our
information advances.
(Raffles 1816: 72 –3)
After this de facto rejection of Leyden’s refutation of Marsden’s Polynesian hypothesis,

Raffles continued with what appeared to be a concession to Leyden by attempting to re-
establish an essential link between the Indo-Chinese and the population of the Malay Archi-
pelago.26 This time, however, he did not refer to language but invoked a racial criterion:
26
Leyden (1811: 158) bestowed the label ‘Indo-Chinese’ on all the ‘inhabitants of the regions which
lie between India and China, and the greater parts of the islanders of the eastern sea’. Despite exhi-
biting ‘a diversity of national characteristics’ and possessing ‘various degrees of civilization’, Leyden
[A]nd, if we except the Papuas and the scattered tribes having curled hair, we find
the general description given of the persons of the Siamese and the ruder population
of the adjacent countries which have not admitted any considerable admixture from
the Chinese, to come very near to the inhabitants of the Archipelago, who may in
fact be said to differ only in being of a smaller size, and in as far as foreign coloniza-
tion and intercourse may have changed them.
(Raffles 1816: 73)
Thus, by subtle alterations in the rhetorical invocations of language, civilisation, nation,

and race, Raffles managed to shift almost seamlessly between the divergent views held
by the two foremost British authorities in this field.
Marsden on the origin of the Malay nation and language
Apart from establishing the existence of an Austronesian language family, Marsden

(1798) had also been the first, in the article published in Asiatick Researches in 1796,27
to prove the profound influence of the Indian languages (especially of Sanskrit) on the
Malay language and the framing of its accompanying civilisation (Marsden 1812:
xxii– xxxiii). Yet Marsden’s genealogical approach had imbued him with a methodologi-
cal predisposition to prioritise the questions regarding origin over those concerning the
processes of cultural hybridisation and the accompanying growth of civilisation, notwith-
standing the importance which he had also allotted to these (Marsden 1812: viii – xxii).
Central to his research was hence the tracing of a seat of origin. Although Malay
functioned as a lingua franca in most of the Archipelago, and in spite of the fact that
the Malays populated a substantial part of its coastal fringes, both the language and
the people necessarily had to have originated somewhere and at specific moment in
time. Within such an essentialist approach, language and nation appeared to be two
sides of the same coin. Meanwhile the use of the Malay language as a means of
cross-cultural communication, i.e. as a lingua franca, seemed to entail a notion of a
larger sphere of Malay civilisation that stretched beyond these narrower national
boundaries.
Marsden dismissed all speculations about tracing an ultimate origin of the indigen-
ous part of the Malay language when this was interpreted in the broadest ‘Polynesian’
sense of the term:
But whatever pretensions any particular spot may have to precedence in this
respect, the so wide dissemination of a language common to all, bespeaks a high
degree of antiquity, and gives a claim to originality as far as we can venture to
apply that term, which signifies no more than the state beyond which we have
not the means, either historically or by fair inference, of tracing the origin. In
this restricted sense it is that we are justified in considering the main portion of
the Malayan as original or indigenous; its affinity to any continental tongue not
(ibid.) stressed that they all had a common origin, and the differences between the various nations
could be accounted for by their different historical trajectories.
27
See Marsden (1838: 87); Kejariwal (1988: 79 – 80); Carroll (2011: 270).
having yet been shewn; and least of all we can suppose it connected with the mono-
syllabic or Indo-Chinese, with which it has been classed.
(Marsden 1812: xx – xxi)
With this last assertion Marsden refuted Leyden’s core theory – the idea of the
existence of an Indo-Chinese group of mainly mono-syllabic languages to which,
however, all the polysyllabic languages of the Archipelago, including Malay, also per-
tained (Leyden 1811: 161 – 3). With regard to the origin of the people who were
denominated as Malays and the language that they spoke (in the narrow sense of the
term), Marsden proved less reluctant in offering his opinion on their origin.
Having described the [Malayan] language as confined in general to the seacoasts of
those countries where it is spoken, and consequently as that of settlers or traders,

we are naturally led to inquire in what particular country it is indigenous, and from
whence it has extended itself throughout the archipelago. Many difficulties will be
found to attend the solution of this question, partly occasioned by the bias of
received opinions, grounded on the plausible opinions of those who have written
on the subject, and partly from the want of discriminating between the country
from whence the language may be presumed to have originally proceeded, and
that country from whence, at a subsequent period, numerous colonies and commer-
cial adventurers issuing, widely diffused it amongst the islands.
(Marsden 1812: iv)
In the two first editions of his History of Sumatra Marsden (1783: 161; 1784: 159)
had, without further argumentation, been inclined to locate the original abode of the
Malay nation somewhere on the peninsula with which it shared its name. But by his
third, thoroughly updated edition of 1811 Marsden had abandoned this interpretation
(Skott 2010: 161 –2).
It has hitherto been considered as an obvious truth, and admitted without examination,
that wherever they [i.e. the Malays] are found upon the numerous islands forming this
archipelago, they, or their ancestors, must have migrated from the country named by
the Europeans (and by them alone) the Malayan peninsula or peninsula of Malacca, of
which the indigenous and proper inhabitants were understood to be Malays . . . It will,
however, appear from the authorities I shall produce, amounting as nearly to positive
evidence as the nature of the subject will admit, that the present possessors of the
coasts of the peninsula were, on the contrary, in the first instance adventurers from
Sumatra, who, in the twelfth century, formed an establishment there.
(Marsden 1811: 325–6)
The decisive evidence offered by Marsden in support of this changed interpretation

was initially found in two Malay narratives.28 In this context Marsden (1811: 327) added
28
These were the ‘Sulalat assalatin or Penurun-an segala raja-raja’ (Sejarah Melayu) and the ‘Taju assa-
latin or Makuta segala raja-raja’ (Marsden 1811: 326). Marsden cited Leyden’s article as well as
earlier references by the Dutch late 17th- and early 18th-century orientalists Petrus van der der
Worm and Francois Valentyn as the principal sources for his revised perception. Christina Skott
that ‘I trust it will not be thought that the mixture of a portion of mythological fable in
accounts of this nature invalidates what might otherwise have credit as a historical fact.’
However, this was followed by a reservation intimating that ‘the utmost, indeed, we can
pretend to ascertain is, what the natives themselves believe to have been their ancient
history’ (ibid.). As further proof he then added racial evidence by pointing to the fact
that the peninsula also contained a group of ‘indigenous inhabitants, gradually driven
by them [the Malays] to the woods and mountains in the interior’ (Marsden 1811:
326). This argument was pursued to further extent the following year; he now empha-
sised how ‘subsequent investigation has taught us that in the peninsula itself the Malays
were only settlers, and that the interior districts, like those of the islands in general, are
inhabited by distinct races of men’ (Marsden 1812: iv – v). Marsden was here invoking
the so-called displacement narrative, according to which there existed a clear racial
divide between what was in those days known as the dark-skinned, woolly-haired
tribes, who were assumed to be autochthonous to the region, and the later arrived
brown-complexioned, lank-haired and more civilised Malay race who gradually
had forced these more primitive tribes to take refuge in the most inaccessible parts
of the country (Douglas and Ballard 2008: 157 –201; Manickam 2009; Skott 2014 in
this issue).
Marsden (1811: 327) identified ‘the original country inhabited by the Malay race’29
as ‘the kingdom of Palembang’ in southeast Sumatra, drawing on information contained
in the abovementioned two Malay manuscripts. The following year he would situate the
homeland in the highlands of Minangkabau which Leyden (1811: 165) had previously
dismissed as the original seat of the Malay nation since the dialect of this site was con-
sidered not of pure Malay provenance. Marsden (1812: vii) provided the following
reasons for deducing the Minangkabau area as the original location of Malay nation
and language:
(1) The esteem in which this region was held by all Malays and how ‘its ruins is
the object of superstitious veneration’ of the kind associated with ancient
abodes;
(2) It seems to be the only part of the island where no other ethnicities but Malays were
known to have existed;
(3) Malay appears to be the only language spoken there;
(4) This is further corroborated by the absence of any native traditions pointing to this
region ‘having ever been inhabited by any other race.’
(5) This negative evidence was then contrasted with positive evidence in favour of the
Minangkabau tradition and adduced from ‘the authority of native historians’, as con-
tained in the Malay manuscripts.
This led him to the almost inevitable conclusion that: ‘From such a Malayan country
rather that from any maritime establishments, which always bear the stamp of coloniza-
tion, we might be justified in presuming the Malays of other parts to have proceeded in
the first instance’ (Marsden 1812: vii).
(2010: 161 – 2) has convincingly shown how Marsden’s correspondence with Raffles was instrumental
in this process.
29
Here Marsden’s use of the term ‘race’ was obviously to be equated with the notion of ‘nation’.
Crawfurd’s discourse on the Malays: a maritime

civilisation?
Questions regarding the original homeland of the Malays would resurface in some of the
reviews of Marsden’s publications from 1811 and 1812, and especially one review that
appeared in the Edinburgh Review and authored by John Crawfurd (1814) contained a
lengthy discussion of Marsden (1812). Before he was recognised as an authority on
Southeast Asia, Crawfurd’s article seems, however, to have been heavily shortened in
the editing by someone in Edinburgh before being published. In 1814 Crawfurd was
engaged in diplomatic assignments and administrative tasks on Java, where he wrote
the drafts of these articles. A draft of ‘History and languages of the Indian islands’
still exists in the archives,30 and this allows for comparison with the published
version that was probably edited by the renowned orientalist Alexander Hamilton.31
The discrepancy between the published and the draft version was particularly striking
in those parts that deal with the origin of the Malay language and nation.
Reid (2001: 304) has remarked that both Marsden and Crawfurd found the appella-
tion the Malay Peninsula puzzling ‘since they wanted to see a single origin-place for the
“the Malay race”, and were equally convinced that it was to be found not in the Peninsula
but in Minangkabau’. However, neither Marsden nor Crawfurd arrived at this con-
clusion initially. Although Crawfurd (1820, II: 371 – 372) would claim that ‘the
country of Menangkabau in Sumatra is, however, beyond dispute, the parent country
of the Malay race’, both the draft and the 1814 publication on the ‘History and languages
of the Indian islands’, offered two other entirely different interpretations. The published
version concluded that there are ‘many grounds for believing that that the Peninsula of
Malacca was the cradle of that extraordinary people [the Malays]’ (Crawfurd 1814:
164). Even though Crawfurd (perhaps abetted by Hamilton) expressed a reservation
towards the historical credibility of the content of the Malay narratives, the article
nevertheless professed ‘to be of opinion, that the old and generally received notion of
the Peninsula being the cradle of the Malay tribes, is supported by evidence, at least
as strong as the contrary conclusion of Mr. Marsden’ (Crawfurd 1814: 158). Apart
from a detailed refutation of Marsden’s arguments in favour of locating the origin of
the Malay nation and language in Minangkabau (Crawfurd 1814: 158 – 66), the article
also questioned ‘Mr. Marsden’s definition of the term Malayu’ (Crawfurd 1814:
160). It claimed that Marsden conflated the existence of a term with the positive
content of a concept.
That the scattered tribes of various and distant countries, possessing separate
governments, and distinct interests, should not, though speaking one language,
be recognized among themselves by one name, will not appear extraordinary. In
fact, we know, that under such circumstances, each tribe assumes a different
30
The draft version is in the Mackenzie Private Collection; European Miscellanies (Mss Eur Mack
Private 85/1: 1 – 75).
31
According to the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824 – 1900 I (Houghton 1965 – 1988: 452)
the article was authored by either Alexander Hamilton or possibly by John Crawfurd, whereas
Rendall (62) identifies Crawfurd as the author. Rendall’s assessment seems definitely to be accurate
with regard to the draft of the article in the Indian Office Records. See also Müller (2013: 338).
appellation. But the more civilized people in their neighbourhood will infallibly give
one name to the whole swarm of savages.
Sharing the same appellation did not necessarily imply that the people thus denomi-
nated shared the same history and culture, and hence belonged to the same nation.
According to Crawfurd (and Hamilton), Malay instead seemed to be a generic term,
originally bestowed by the sedentary Javanese upon all the marauding, and in their
view, savage tribes who roamed their shores. In short, Malayness was originally nega-
tively defined as it referred to all the intrusive, surrounding savages who possessed
none of those marks of civilisation of which the Javanese prided themselves. As such
it was neither race nor nation, but the idea of an absent civilisation that had framed
the notion of Malayness. What is questioned here is the very essence of Marsden’s expla-
native mode and the narrative it facilitated; that is, how the Malay nation went from
being originally land-based to subsequently epitomise a maritime way of life, scattered
along the littoral of the entire Archipelago.
We cannot, for example, help considering it as most improbable that an inland people,
attached to the soil, and acquainted with agriculture, as the people of Menangkabau
evidently were, should, in a country where there was still abundance of unoccupied
land, at once change their habits, and undertake a foreign and maritime migration.
Unless it could be positively proved, such a narrative based on a supposedly retrograde

dynamic in terms of civilisation would appear unconvincing. In the civilisation-orientated
view exhibited in this article, the burden of explanation unequivocally fell upon the
account that deviated from the naturalised perception of the progress of civilisation
inherent in the idea of conjectural history.
This insistence of the Malay Peninsula being the original seat of the Malays was less
pronounced in the draft version which concentrated more on the apparently maritime
origin of the Malay civilisation. It accounted in detail the particular process through
which such a maritime civilisation could emerge and in time reach a relatively high
level without being reliant upon agriculture, as the stadial theory of progress normally
prescribed.32 The explanation of this process contained in the draft thus deserves attention
given that it provides an exemplary discourse of how such a unique instance of a maritime
civilisation could be explained through the universalist principles of conjectural history,
with its notions of a standard pattern of civilisational progress through a set of fixed stages.
In a country thus situated it will not be difficult to conjecture what mode of exist-
ence would be most natural to its first inhabitants. The hungry savage would choose
32
As stressed by Pocock (1999: 315), there were several competing stadial theories during the
Enlightenment. In this context Crawfurd’s stadial theory followed A dam Smith’s four-stage theory,
according to which the prevailing modes of subsistence economy constituted the defining criteria;
the four stages were those of the hunter-gatherer, the pastoralist, the agrarian, and finally the age
of trade. See e.g. Meek (1976: 5 – 36); Spadafora (1990: 255 – 84); Müller (2013: 76 – 91) on the
use of stadial theories in Crawfurd’s discourses.
those situations and that manner of life in which he could most easily procure the
means of satisfying the first and most urgent calls of nature. To his seas and rivers he
would naturally have recourse for that supply which his forests denied him, and con-
sequently his first stage of civil existence would be that of the fisherman and not of
the hunter.
The supply of food procured in that manner is generally more ample and per-
manent than by means of the chase, and indicates superior comfort and improve-
ment. When however by the natural progress of things the numbers of such a
society increased, the rude art which sufficed to procure subsistence for a few
would become inadequate. The ingenuity of its members would be exercised to
augment the supply of food, and not the plough but the net, the canoe hollowed
from the trunk of a tree, ultimately the oar, the sail and the more improved
vessel would be first inventions of mankind. The pursuits of the fisherman are
akin to those of the mariner, and the skill and intrepidity at first necessary to
procure a subsistence would ultimately be the parents of that enterprise which
would urge the savage to attempt the ocean and visit foreign countries. Such
appears to us to have been the probable origin of the Malay tribes, and such an
account agrees with all we know of them, while it explains many otherwise inex-
plicable circumstances in their history and manners.
But when the population began still further to press upon the means of subsis-
tence, the habits they had formed, the vicinity of many countries similar to their
own, and which to men little connected with the soil would hardly appear
foreign land naturally induce them to emigrate. The habits already formed, an
ignorance of the pursuits of agriculture and perhaps the natural sterility of the
soil would deter them from attempting to procure from the soil the necessary
supply of food. Men who do not till the soil readily undertake such migrations
and are indeed little attached to any country. They soon acquire a roving and pred-
atory disposition which delights in war and enterprise. Such is the known character of
the Malays. It bears in this respect a striking resemblance to that of the Nations of the
North of Europe when similarly situated, . . . is it that in the most distant and dis-
similar climates the manners of mankind under similar circumstances assume nearly
the same character and appearance.
By adverting to the causes and circumstances now stated it will be no difficult
matter to account for the present appearance of the Malay tribes, scattered in small
communities over the coasts of the East insular regions, yet preserving notwith-
standing their distance an extraordinary uniformity of manners. Had, we may
presume, any of the lands in which they settled been of great fertility, or had
their migrations been repressed by a scarcity of new lands or rather perhaps new
fishing grounds and rivers, their civil polity would in all probability have
assumed a different character and instead of a people split into a number of petty
communities the Malays would in all likelihood have been under a single head.
(Mss Eur Mack Private 85/1: 29 – 31; my italics)
Thus, without recourse to an assumed shared national origin, and discarding the
content of the Malay manuscripts and traditions as unreliable, Crawfurd offered a
‘rational’ explanation of the manner in which the Malayan societies could most likely
have acquired their specific characteristics. The cultural aspects and political structures
were thus explained by Crawfurd as being naturally derived from their materialist basis,
and they were inscribed in a discourse governed by a rigidly mechanistic logic which
emphasised the universal over the unique. By refuting the primordialist notion of a
Malay nation33 and the existence of an original homeland – and the implied downplaying
of the genealogical approach in favour of a framework focusing on the stadial progression
of civilisation – Crawfurd’s approach ultimately implied a revised gaze and new agendas
with which the Southeast Asian peoples and societies were contemplated. Instead of
merely looking back into history for the seat from whence a given nation originated
and then tracing its history, this inherently conservative scheme was now challenged
by a liberal-imperialist paradigm; progress substituted origin as the key trope in constru-
ing the historical narrative, and this instigated the shift from lineage to civilisation as the
main theme.34 Civilisation replaced nation as the main component in the shaping of the
Malay culture and the history of the region, whereas language, race, and geography (but
not native literature) remained the key sources from whence the historical evidence was
extracted and framed.
An orthodox view on the Malay nation and civilisation
My examination of these early British discourses on Malayness ends with the appearance
of Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago (1820). Its three volumes have been lauded
as the first to approach and analyse insular Southeast Asia in its entirety, and it estab-
lished the term the Indian Archipelago as a household name for the region. In short,
it carved out, what J. Bastin (1965: 266) called ‘an intelligible field of historical
study’ (see also Harrison 1961: 245). Although Crawfurd continued to employ a frame-
work founded on Scottish Enlightenment theories of stadial progress, his views on the
origin of the Malay nation had changed substantially since 1814. Still focusing more on
the progress of civilisation than on genealogical descent, the latter aspect had, nonethe-
less, become more important in Crawfurd’s narrative, and even the Malays’ own nar-
ratives were tentatively included as evidence.35 By now Crawfurd had, by and large,
adopted Marsden’s version on the origin of the Malay nation, or race as he called it
here. Yet, rather than merely copying Marsden’s narrative, Crawfurd continued to
embed his account on the origin and dissemination of the Malays within a framework
that focused on the stadial evolution of civilisation, and he still used a methodology
grounded in conjectural history. But why had Crawfurd by now substituted the idea
of a purely maritime Malay civilisation with the conviction that Minangkabau was the
original home of the Malay nation? In Crawfurd’s own words:
Menangkabao, contrary to all other Malay states, is an inland country . . . We are at

first struck with the improbability of an inland people undertaking a maritime
33
For an insightful discussion of primordialism as an analytical concept and an ontological entity as
well as the associated notions of linguism, ethnicity, etc. in South and Southeast Asian contexts,
see Pollock (2006: 497 – 524).
34
See Knapman (2006) for more on the notion of liberal imperialism as preached, if not always prac-
tised, by the British in a Southeast Asian context.
35
Although this was not entirely without reservations (see Crawfurd 1820, II: 372, 375).
emigration; but their emigration, it will perhaps appear, on a closer examination,

may really be ascribed to this peculiarity of situation. The country which the primi-
tive Malayan race inhabits is described as a great and fertile plain, well cultivated,
and having a frequent and ready communication with the sea, by the largest rivers
within the bounds of the Archipelago. The probability, then, is, that a long period of
tranquillity, secured by the supremacy which the people of the Menangkabao
acquired over the whole island, occasioned a rapid and unusual start in civilization
and population, – that the best lands became scarce, – and that, in consequence,
the swarm which founded Singahpura in the Peninsula, was thrown off.
(Crawfurd 1820, II: 372)
Crawfurd (1820, II: 376) then echoed Marsden and claimed that: ‘it was from the
colony [on the Malayan peninsula], and not the parent stock, that the Malayan name and
nation were so widely disseminated over the Archipelago’. Although he here ascribed a
for him rather unusual credibility to the historical content of the Malay chronicles,
Crawfurd unlike Marsden, continued to rely on an explanative mode that focused on
the allegedly necessary material foundations for the origin and growth of civilisation;
it was still upon these that his narrative of progress was firmly based. Albeit Crawfurd
continued to apply the same argumentative logic and kinds of evidence as six years
before, he had by now reached the opposite conclusion: that Malayness had not
arisen as a product of a maritime civilisation, but that it originated as a nation in
inland Minangkabau. What, then, had happened in the meantime? The available empiri-
cal data had apparently not changed, but Crawfurd’s use of this data as historical evi-
dence clearly had though he did not disclose any reasons for this change. The only
reference in History of the Indian archipelago to his earlier idea of a maritime origin of
Malay civilisation was vague, indirect and formed as a counterfactual hypothesis.
Had the original tribe consisted of mere fishermen and navigators, their numbers
would not have increased so as to give rise to so striking an event in history [i.e.
the wide dissemination of the Malays throughout the Archipelago].
(Crawfurd 1820, II: 373)
Through an invocation of hypothesised demographic data Crawfurd now refuted the

possibility of the origin and growth of a maritime Malay civilisation. He reverted to the
standard narrative within conjectural history where civilisation grew out of intensified
agriculture which could also sustain long distance trade and a more sophisticated
form of state formation. This oscillation illustrates the methodological opportunism
and interpretive licence that characterise the discourses in which Crawfurd and the
other scholar-administrators coined their conceptual taxonomies, expressed their
ideas, and founded their arguments.
Conclusion
This article has introduced all the main actors and the major approaches that would
influence British discourses on Malayness in the years to come. The geographical and
thematic scopes of the study of Malayness, its origin(s) and history have been delineated,
the contours of the conceptual span of Malayness laid out, and its contextual plasticity
illustrated. These discussions by Marsden, Leyden, Raffles, and Crawfurd on Malayness
provided a set of foundational, interpretive templates that the subsequent colonial and
scientific debates through the nineteenth century would invoke, reject, and revise.
As shown, the meaning of the term Malay depended on the larger discourse in
which it was embedded, and on the context in which it was articulated. It could
hence either refer to the entire population of the region – addressing the problems
regarding their origin, nation, race, and civilisation – or it could deal with these ques-
tions within a markedly narrower framework that was demarcated by the extension of
what was perceived as a Malay nation. At the same time its meaning could also be the-
matically restricted so that it referred to purely linguistic features, but it could also pri-
marily allude to aspects of civilisation. Yet, more often than not the elements of race,
nation, civilisation, and language intersected in subtle and complex patterns – as parts
of the same entangled web of semantic co-dependency.
What I have tried to illustrate through these diverging definitions and uses of the
notion of Malayness is, as emphasised by Joseph Errington (2008: 68), how ‘micro-
scopic, recondite linguistic details could figure in broader questions about human diver-
sity, and telescopic views of alien, colonized peoples’. Despite what appears to be only of
marginal importance within the erudite fields of history, philology, or antiquarianism,
the differences in the definition and uses of Malayness which have been examined
here epitomise a set of competing approaches to and assessments of Southeast Asian
societies. As such, these apparently minuscule deviations in the applied terminology
were representative of much larger issues that address not only the meaning of Malay-
ness, but also the essential compositions of human society and the core patterns of the
historical trajectories that had led to the present state of affairs. The interpretation of the
past was inexorably linked to the delineation of the future, and the discourses that have
been discussed here all embodied their own distinctive historical visions. These visions
prefigured the assessment of Malayness and prescribed the scope in which the imperial
politics in this region could be framed and the colonial projects unfolded.
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Author biography
Martin Müller obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Email: martin.muller@EUI.eu.

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Indonesia and the Malay World

ISSN: 1363-9811 (Print) 1469-8382 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cimw20

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Keywords: Colonial discourses; British ideas on Malayness; science; history; and

Indonesia and the Malay World, 2014

most popular performances.

Framing the notion of Malayness

instances of conceptual disjuncture. It tends to exclude the importance of patterns

Contextualising the study of the Malay

Greater India manifested through the linguistic vestiges of Sanskrit present in

Tracing the Malayan seat of origin: Marsden

kingdom of Minangkabau, notwithstanding where one’s actual abode may be situated.19

Leyden on the origin of the Malay language and nation

the earliest Englishmen to collect Malay manuscripts, it is no surprise that Leyden

Raffles’ discourses on the Malay nation and race

After this de facto rejection of Leyden’s refutation of Marsden’s Polynesian hypothesis,

Thus, by subtle alterations in the rhetorical invocations of language, civilisation, nation,

Marsden on the origin of the Malay nation and language

Apart from establishing the existence of an Austronesian language family, Marsden

those countries where it is spoken, and consequently as that of settlers or traders,

The decisive evidence offered by Marsden in support of this changed interpretation

Crawfurd’s discourse on the Malays: a maritime

Unless it could be positively proved, such a narrative based on a supposedly retrograde

An orthodox view on the Malay nation and civilisation

Menangkabao, contrary to all other Malay states, is an inland country . . . We are at

emigration; but their emigration, it will perhaps appear, on a closer examination,

Through an invocation of hypothesised demographic data Crawfurd now refuted the

historiography. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press: 252 – 71.

Hamilton, A. 1810. Review of Asiatic Researches; or Transactions of the Society instituted

Institute, Florence, Italy.

Thompson, T. 1870. A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen. Originally edited by Robert

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