Malay Peninsula

The Malay Peninsula is mentioned throughout The Achehnese as the principal comparative region for the institutions of Acheh. Snouck Hurgronje repeatedly sets the customs of the Malays of the Peninsula — together with those of Java, the Straits Settlements and the East Indian Archipelago — beside those of the Achehnese, in order to bring out both the kinship and the divergence between them. The Peninsula is, in this comparative method, the country of the Malays proper, as distinct from the Achehnese on the one hand and the Javanese on the other.

The meunasah and its absence

The most instructive contrast between Acheh and the Peninsula is in respect of the meunasah — the village chapel which, in Acheh, serves at once as the nightly resting-place of all the grown youths of the gampong, a rest-house for strangers, a house of prayer, and a place of assemblage on special occasions. Among the Malays of the Peninsula, the translator observes, such nocturnal separation of the men is “practically unknown.” The manasah, as the Malays call it, is to be found in some Malay kampongs, but by no means in all; it is, however, devoted entirely to religious uses, and is not — like the Achehnese meunasah — a sort of “club” or common lodging-house as well as a chapel. The bale or public meeting-house is also a common feature of the Malay kampong.

Words and customs shared with the Peninsula

A number of Achehnese words and customs are noted in The Achehnese as having their parallels in the Peninsula. The Tamil word tandil — originally meaning a collector of moneys, but among the Malays denoting the headman of a gang of coolies or of the crew of a boat — is in common use throughout the Malay Peninsula and the Straits Settlements; it survives as an hereditary title of certain chiefs in the highland districts of the West Coast of Acheh. The word mukim itself — for the minor subdivision of a district, corresponding almost exactly to the English “parish” — has been adopted by the English Government in Penang and Province Wellesley for administrative purposes. The Malay word sawah for rice-fields is in use in the southern parts of the Peninsula (Johor, Malacca) and in Java; in Penang, Province Wellesley and Kedah, the word is ladang. The Malay babu-kabu or k’chabu (for the tree whose pods contain a substance resembling cotton) is identical with the Achehnese; the mangrove wood known in the Peninsula as api-api is the kind most generally employed for fuel in Acheh.

Butchers, bathing and pregnancy

Many details of domestic and religious life are noted as common to Acheh and the Peninsula. In the Malay Peninsula the butcher is usually the imam of the mosque or a lebei; as recompense, he is entitled to the hide of the slaughtered animal, just as the Achehnese butcher receives the keredan or neck of every animal he kills. Among the Malays of Penang and Province Wellesley, the Mandi Safar or “bathing of Safar” is one of the most popular of festivals, and its method of observance is “almost identical” with that of the Achehnese. Very similar superstitions prevail among the Malays of the Peninsula in respect of pregnant women, who must always carry a knife or other iron implement when they walk abroad, and must let no one walk behind them; it is also regarded as pantang to break the burning brands in the oven, for to do so would be to endanger the child.

Calendar and fast

The Mohammedans of the Peninsula follow the ruya doctrine for fixing the beginning of the fasting month, whereas the Achehnese follow the method of calculation. The ruya is “universally adopted among the Malays of the Straits Settlements”; in this respect the Peninsula is grouped with Yogyakarta and Batavia, and contrasted with Acheh. During the fasting month, the same may be said of the Malays of the Peninsula as of the Achehnese: those who have fixed employment work most unwillingly, while those who are beholden to no master do not work at all; in more populous places, especially in the large towns, the rule is relaxed.

Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — Malay Peninsula

The Malay Peninsula (Dutch Maleische schiereiland, also Malaksche schiereiland) is the long tongue of land projecting from the Asian mainland between the straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, on which stand the British settlements of Pulo Pinang, Malacca and (after 1819) Singapore. In P. H. van der Kemp’s Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, the peninsula figures as the British counterpart to the Dutch sphere on Sumatra in the treaty of 17 March 1824, and as such it forms the geographical pivot of the entire Anglo-Dutch settlement of 1824.

The counterpart to Sumatra

The arrangement of the 1824 treaty rested upon a clean division: Sumatra (called by the British “Java minor”) was to fall within the Dutch sphere of influence, and the Malay Peninsula within the British. Article 9 of the draft convention, as the Dutch plenipotentiaries Falck and Fagel explained in their toelichtende missive of 1 February 1824, provided “that no British office shall be established on that island [Sumatra], nor any treaty under British authority concluded with any of the native Princes, Chiefs or States settled thereon.” The Dutch negotiators added the significant gloss that, since the whole of Sumatra was now placed under Dutch influence, the Netherlands would “probably find occasion to proceed to the establishment of some new office or other thereon,” even as it “speaks for itself that England in this respect can act at its discretion on the Malay Peninsula.”

Elout’s nota of 12 February 1824

Minister Elout, in his nota of 12 February 1824 on the draft convention, formulated the same principle from the Dutch side: it was “necessary,” he warned, “that a stipulation be drawn up by which all interference of the English with Sumatra shall be excluded, just as the Dutch [interference] with the Malacca peninsula.” The symmetry was, in his view, the foundation of the treaty: each power was to have its own sphere, and neither was to intrude on the other’s. The peninsula thus stands in Van der Kemp’s narrative as the British mirror-image of the Sumatran sphere the Dutch struggled to maintain against British encroachment.

Fullerton’s later reading

By the late 1820s the symmetry had been disturbed in British eyes. Governor Fullerton of Penang, in his minutes of 1827-1828, invoked the treaty of 1824 as if it entitled the British to communicate freely with the native chiefs of Sumatra’s East Coast. In the minute of 16 March 1828 he observed that the Netherlands Government would “avail themselves of the exclusive right which they conceive vested in them by the Treaty of 1824 of forming political relations with the Chiefs of Sumatra, to the full extent of their means,” and proposed addressing letters to all the chiefs of the East Coast with whom the British carried on trade. The treaty was recalled, he protested, “whereby England wholly abstains from interference on Sumatra, and the Netherlands promises the same with respect to Malakka.” The Malay Peninsula thus remained, throughout the paper war of the late 1820s, the silent British counterpart against which every Dutch claim on Sumatra was measured.

Source

The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159–239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

tags	place, foreign, region, comparative, peninsula
aliases	the Peninsula, Malaya, Malay Peninsula, Tanah Melayu, Maleische schiereiland, Malakka schiereiland, Malaksche schiereiland, Malacca Peninsula

Explorer