Socio-Political Structure, Membership and Mobility in the Pre-Modern Malay Coastal Port-Polity, 13th - 15th Century

• In Event: Coastal and Maritime Dynamics of Southeast Asia, 5th - 19th Century

Abstract

The Malacca Straits is located within a natural confluence between the Indian Sub-Continent, Northeast Asia, and Southeast Asia. Consequently, the region’s societies have, throughout history, been subjected to the economic, cultural and social influences of the larger Asian bastions. Additionally, the absence of an agrarian economy has also resulted in the absence of a significant indigenous population base. Instead, the region’s demographics have historically included foreign groups that operated in Maritime Asia at various periods of time, and who saw it advantageous to sojourn and settle amongst the Malacca Straits societies.

Given the high level of mobility in the region, the fluidity of cultural influences from beyond the region, and the unpredictability of the international economy, it is interesting to note that the coastal societies of the region did develop a structure that determined and enforced belonging and membership within such a context. More importantly, this structure appears to have existed for at least the whole of the second millennium AD, until as recently as the early twentieth century. This accorded endurance in the face of constant change in the environment and external world.

The present paper will reconstruct the key aspects of this socio-political structure, examining in particular the nature and articulation of membership within the context of Temasik, a fourteenth century coastal port polity. These include the evolving nature of the political hierarchy, the position of non-indigenous people in the social structure, and social hybridization.

Author

• Derek Heng, Yale-NUS College