‘’We Are Comfortable Riding the Waves’ Landscape and the Formation of a Border State in Eighteenth-Century Island Southeast Asia

Abstract

In 1820 a British civil servant named Robert Ibbetson traveled to eastern Sumatra. He was not impressed with what he saw. In his report to the British authorities Ibbetson described the region as ‘a number of petty principalities lying along the seashore and bordered inland by various tribes, while poverty misrule and piracy contend for mastery and serve to nullify the natural advantages of the country and its numerous resources.’¹ Within this contempt for the form of rule among the various communities in the region Ibbetson did point out an important factor influencing British interest in the area, as well as the .difficulties in controlling it: the natural landscape. ‘Eastern Sumatra/ stretching from Palembang to modern-day Medan, is a geographic region within which the polity known as Siak (after its major river) emerged in the eighteenth century to dominate the entire area. While boundaries fluctuated continually eastward Siak included the coastal areas bordering the Melaka Straits as well as the offshore seas and islands; to the west it ended at an elevation of 100 m above sea level, which in such a swampy low-lying region was some 200 km inland. It was a region where authority did not seem to follow either European, or Malay, understandings of power. It was a borderland region in which the natural landscape influenced state formation. It may have appeared to a European observer to suffer from poverty, misrule, and piracy, but its natural advantages and resources led to trade that supported the creation of a state located between the waters that united the Malay World and the highlands of Minangkabau gold, coffee, and rice in the interior of Sumatra.²