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Playing along the Perak River: Readings of an Eighteenth-Century Malay State

Perak: An IntroductionAmong an old bundle of notes1) compiled by the British officer W. E. Maxwell2) on the royal families of Perak, Barbara Andaya-an Australian historian researching on the eighteenth-century Malay state of Perak-discovered a Malay map dated 1876. She included this map in the introductory pages of her doctoral dissertation, later published as a book titled Perak: The Abode of Grace (1979). If one were to categorize this work, it would not be inaccurate to call it a history of Perak. To be more specific, it is a history of the Malay state of Perak in the eighteenth century. If one were to read about the state at present, it would usually be described in terms of its primary resource-tin, the mineral that mythically gave the state its name (perak in Malay means "silver," referring to the color of the alluvial tin deposits abundant in the state) and its constantly changing political situation following the victory of the opposition coalition in March 2008 and the subsequent takeover by the ruling government of Malaysia.A precursor of Andaya's work in Perak history is R. O. Winstedt and R. J. Wilkinson's A History of Perak (1974), which includes three articles by Maxwell: two on historical manuscripts and one on "Shamanism in Perak." Central to both histories-Andaya's and the Europeans'-is the presence of trade, as events with regard to Perak history are explained in terms of the concentration and movement of capital, complex networks of kinship and power, and multifaceted relations between factions competing for control of Perak's resources. These factions included the British, the Dutch, the Achinese, the Bugis, the Perak Malays, and the Siamese. The centrality of the presence of trade in histories is indicative of a modern understanding of the English word "history" as being laden with dates, timelines, important agents-usually those in power-and the overarching presence of trade as the main catalyst of events. Something Niall Ferguson systematically points out in The Ascent of Money (2008), that "financial history is the essential back story behind all history," is iterated by Winstedt and Wilkinson in the introduction of their book: ". . . at the back of all Perak history has been trade" (1974, 1). The sections on Perak in national histories have, unsurprisingly, followed this tradition, and as a result Perak is popularly known in Malaysian history for two events: the signing of the Pangkor Treaty of 1874, which allowed the British to act as royal advisers to the Malay sultans, effectively starting the British Malaya period of Malaysian history; and the murder of J. W. W. Birch, a British resident, by Seputum, a slave of the royal chief Dato Maharajalela.With the prominence of trade and printed sources in historiography, it is easy to overlook the cognitive, linguistic, and cultural nuances in the paradigm that underlie native historical source materials, such as the 1876 Malay map and Misa Melayu, the eighteenth-century Malay text about the sultanate of Perak in that century. I contend that the historical approach to these source materials must be balanced with complementary and supplementary information, as well as other modes of comprehension gained from alternative readings that illuminate aspects beyond historical considerations.Unframing Cartographic, Historical, and Literary Myths of/on the PeninsulaStrange Maps, an anthology of rare maps, compiles and discusses nonconventional cartographic curiosities, including maps with nonexistent waterways or water bodies such as an eighteenth-century map showing the mythical Northwest Passage3)-a fictional aquatic route from the Gulf of California to the St. Lawrence River near Quebec-and a 1639 map depicting California as an island (Jacobs 2009). The map in Fig. 3 shows a similar mixture of fact and myth: both the Perak and Kelantan Rivers (whose estuaries are located in the southwest and northeast of the peninsula respectively) geographically exist as separate rivers instead of the single continuous flow represented as a canal running through the Malay Peninsula. …