Malay Peninsula

In Province Wellesley and Kedah Buddhist remains with the script of southern India c. A.D. 400 have been found. Clay tablets in the Nagari script of North India of the loth or perhaps 7th century A.D. were dug up in a Kedah cave. A granite statue of Devi, the wife of Shiva, and other Hindu remains were also dis covered recently in Kedah. In Malacca, a stone Makara (or fabulous sea-animal) of a type found in Java, may be a relic of Hindu days or a later import. A stone with a i A.th century Javanese inscription existed formerly at Singapore.

The most interesting Muslim relic is a stele from Trengganu, now in Raffles' museum, Singapore, erected by a Sri Paduka Tuan, bearing the oldest (14th century A.D.) Malay text in Arabic script known, and exhorting rulers, styled Mandalika, to uphold Islam. At Pengkalan Kempas, in Negri Sembilan, there are a Muslim tombstone of the 15th century and carved monoliths, one of which is of Sumatran type, resembling the gravestone of prince Aditiawarman at Kubor Raja (A.D. 1378). In Malacca are some Muslim, Portuguese and Dutch remains.

History.

As early as the 9th century A.D. Ibn Khordadzbeh and other Arab writers speak of the great Buddhist Palembang kingdom, Soi Vijaya, and references have perhaps been identified in their works to Kedah and Singapore. Lately in Trengganu a stone has been discovered showing that Islam reached the penin sula in the 14th century. Islam destroyed the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of Java and Sumatra. In 1292 Marco Polo found it in the little Sumatran port of Perlak. Ibn Batuta also visited Sumatra. Until the rise of Malacca the more frequent ports of call in the Straits of Malacca were in Sumatra.

The importance of the Malay peninsula consisted in its fitness to be the distributing centre of the spices brought from the Moluccas en route for India and Europc. As early as the 3rd century B.C. Megasthenes mentions spices brought to the Ganges from "the southern parts of India," and the trade was probably one of the most ancient in the world. So long as India held the monopoly of the clove, the Malay peninsula was ignored, the Hindus spread ing their influence through the archipelago and leaving traces thereof even to this day. Mohammedan traders from Coromandel and Malabar, following the routes which had been prepared for them by their forebears, broke down the Hindu monopoly and ousted the earlier exploiters so that by the beginning of the i6th century the spice trade was almost exclusively in their hands. These traders were also missionaries of their religion, as is every Muslim, and to them is due the conversion of the Malays from animism, tinctured by Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, to the Moham medan creed. The desire to obtain the monopoly of the spice trade has been a potent force in the fashioning of Asiatic history. The Moluccas were, from the first, the objective of the Portuguese, and no sooner had they found their way round the Cape of Good Hope and established themselves successively upon the coast of East Africa, in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Aden and the Malabar coast, than Malacca, then the chief trading centre of the Malayan archipelago, became the object of their desire.

The first Portuguese expedition sent to capture it was under Diogo Lopez de Siqueira and sailed from Portugal in 1508. At Cochin Siqueira took on board certain adherents of Alffonso d' Alboquerque who were in bad odour with his rival d'Almeida. among them being Magellan, the future circumnavigator of the world, and Francisco Serra°, the first European who ever lived in the Spice islands. Siqueira's expedition ended in failure, owing partly to the aggressive attitude of the Portuguese, partly to the justifiable suspicions of the Malays, and he was forced to destroy one of his vessels, leave a number of his men in captivity, and sail direct for Portugal. In 1510 a second expedition was sent from

Portugal under Diogo Mendez de Vasconcellos, but d'Alboquerque retained it at Cochin to aid him in the retaking of Goa, and it was not until 1511 that the great viceroy could spare time to turn his attention to the scene of Siqueira's failure. After futile negotia tions for the recovery of the Portuguese captives, an assault was delivered upon Malacca, and though the first attempt to take the city failed, a second assault some days later succeeded, and it passed for ever into European hands.

The Portuguese were satisfied with the possession of Malacca and did not seek to extend their empire in Malaya. Instead they used every endeavour to establish friendly relations with the rulers of neighbouring kingdoms, and before d'Alboquerque re turned to India he despatched embassies to China, Siam, and sev eral kingdoms of Sumatra, and sent a small fleet, with orders to assume a conciliatory attitude toward all natives, in search of the Moluccas. Very soon the spice trade had become a Portuguese monopoly, and Malacca was the headquarters of the trade. Magel lan's famous expedition had for its object not the barren feat of circumnavigation but the breaking down of this monopoly, with out violating the papal bull which gave to Spain the conquest of the West, to Portugal the possession of the East. In 1528 a French expedition sailed from Dieppe, penetrated as far as Achin in Sumatra, but returned without reaching the Malay peninsula. It was the first attempt made to defy the papal bull. In 1591, three years after the defeat of the Armada, Raymond and Lancaster rounded the Cape, and after cruising off Penang, decided to winter in Achin. They hid among the Pulau Sembilan near the mouth of the Perak river, and captured a large Portuguese vessel which was sailing from Malacca in company with two Burmese ships. In 1595 the first Dutch expedition sailed from the Texel, but it took a southerly course and confined its operations to Java and the neighbouring islands.

During this period Achin developed a determined enmity to the Portuguese, and more than one attempt was made to drive the strangers from Malacca. Eventually, in 1641, a joint attack was made by the Achinese and the Dutch, but the latter, not the people of the sturdy little Sumatran kingdom, be came the owners of the coveted port. Malacca was taken from the Dutch by the British in 1795; was restored to the latter in 1818; but in 1824 was exchanged for Benkulen and a few more un important places in Sumatra. The first British factory in the pen insula was established in the native state of Patani on the east coast in 1613, the place having been used by the Portuguese in the i6th century for a similar purpose ; but the enterprise came to an untimely end in 162o when Captain Jourdain, the first presi dent, was killed in a naval engagement in Patani Roads by the Dutch. Penang was purchased from Kedah in 1786, and Singapore from Johor in 1819. The Straits Settlements—Singanore, Malacca and Penang—were ruled from India until 1867, when they were erected into a Crown colony under the charge of the Colonial Office. In 1874 the Malay State of Perak was placed under British protection by a treaty entered into with its sultan; and this led to the inclusion in a British protectorate of the neighbouring States of Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang, which now form the Federated Malay States. By a treaty made between Great Britain and Siam in 19o2 the northern Malay States of the penin sula were admitted to lie within the Siamese sphere of influence, but by a treaty of 1909 Siam ceded her suzerain rights over the states of Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and Perlis to Britain.