In October of 2019, I was invited to deliver a  talk to the Malay Heritage Centre Exhibition Public Lecture Series in Singapura. The title of my lecture was “Indigenous Perspectives from the Malay Archipelago: Malay descriptions of the West before 1876.”  The year 1876 marks the appearance of the newspaper Jawi Peranakkan, arguably the use of the printing press in printing Malay periodicals in the peninsular, including Singapura.

That talk was derived from my book Revisiting Atas Angin: A Review of the Malay Imagination of Rum, Ferringhi and the Penjajah (2019). The book, I was told, partly inspired the exhibition Seekor Singa, Seorang Putera & Sebingkai Cermin: Reflecting & Refracting Singapura, presenting multiple perspectives and insights into the history of Singapura. It traces the city-state’s maritime and cultural significance before the coming of the West. The exhibition challenges our inherited notions with the showcasing of Malay narratives and indigenous sources on Singapura and the rantau.

My lecture dealt with the occasional texts, mainly Malay manuscripts and some early printed works, unencumbered by the production and reproduction of narratives reflecting the modern era.  

I began with the Ferringhi. We know Batu Ferringhi. The “Ferringhi’ (sometimes “Ferringi”, “Ferringghi”) is perhaps the most known (archaic) moniker of the Western Other in Malay consciousness.  The other is “Orang Putih.”  The Batu Ferringhi in Pulau Pinang can be translated to mean “foreigner’s rock”. Not many take the name seriously. I had imagined how the Malays in Kedah (Pulau Pinang included before it was robbed by the country trader Francis Light, literally separating it from Kedah), like the Malays in Melaka earlier or at the same time, had likened the foreigner a Ferringhi (meaning foreigner or outsider). It depicts an early encounter between East and West.

Early Portuguese fleets, carrying hundreds of Portuguese who had little prior interaction with non-Christians, were perceived as the “Franks” by the larger non-European Asian population, especially in the immediate geopolitical and cultural proximity of Turkey, the Arab World and Iran. The Muslims who first encountered the Portuguese brought the idea of the “Franks” as the people who had attacked the holy places during the Crusades.

The Farsi “Farang” or “Farangi”, from the Farsi meaning European, was derived from the “Franks”  It refers to the identity of the Franks (hence Frankish), once the major (West) Germanic tribe ruling Western Europe.” It is from the old French word franc, meaning “Frank,” meaning Europeans. Some attributed Farang to the Arabic “afranj”. Hence, we hear of the “Faranj”, “Franji”, “Paranki”, “Parangiar”, and, of course, “Ferringhi”. The Farang also has a place in contemporary Thai intellectual and popular thought. (The late Thai anthropologist) Pattana Kitiarsa in a paper titled “Farang as Siamese Occidentalism” (2005) re-read and re-interpreted Thai historical and cultural constructions of the Farang.

While there is the “us-them” distinction, there was no presumption of moral or cultural superiority involved in the Malay categorisation of the Ferringgi as the Other. One of my earliest memories on narrations of Malay encounters with the West was the term “Benggali Putih” (White Bengalis) in a primary school history textbook from a chapter on the Portuguese in Melaka, and later in the hikayat Sejarah Melayu.

The Malays have made classifications on other peoples throughout history. We know this from early modern Portuguese records and of descriptions by the Malays from classical texts and epics. Malay perception of the Portuguese in the 16th century gives an idea of the first direct impact of these “Franks” in Southeast Asia.

Historian Anthony Reid in his book Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia (1999) describes the mission of Diego Lopez de Sequeira arriving in Melaka in September 1509. The account from the Sejarah Melayu pictured the Portuguese arrival as: “Then there came a Feringgi ship from Goa, and it came to trade in Melaka. The Feringgi saw that the city of Melaka was magnificent, and its port was exceedingly crowded. The people crowded round to see what the Feringgi looked like, and they were all surprised at their appearance.” The Melaka Malays likened the Portuguese to the Bengalis rather than Arabs where the latter “had to be respected on religious grounds, however much laughed at privately, but Bengalis were more numerous and more resented in Melaka.”

Portuguese chronicler Tomé Pires (1515) observed that when the Malays wanted to insult a man, they call him a Bengali, “alleged to be sharp-witted but treacherous”. Generally Malay accounts of the arrival of the Feringgi are morally neutral. To the Melaka Malays, or the various Malays in the Malay Archipelago then, the Europeans represented just another element — and were always welcome. We find in indigenous and colonial sources that foreign merchants were acknowledged and honored figures in the diplomatic practice of the region.

And language was not a problem, for the lingua franca was always Bahasa Melayu. Malay classical texts have a way of describing the geographical and cultural location, hence self-identity — that of by reference to the term atas angin (above the wind) and bawah angin (below the wind). The former refers to the Indo-Persian world, the Arab world, Rome (usually
described as Rum) and all points West. The latter refers to the Malays and other peoples of the East — most obvious are the Chinese and the Japanese. Indeed, the Malays initially perceived the Europeans as a kind of people from atas angin who were distinguished by pale skin and round eyes and displayed effectiveness with their shipboard cannon, armour and firearms.

The description by local Malay rulers of early encounters with the Ferringgis can also be described as the first Malay “ethnography” of the Europeans. And not always flattering at that. As we find in Italian explorer Antonio Pigafetta (1524), when Magellan’s men reached the Philippines, a Muslim merchant in the port of Cebu explained to its raja that “these were the same Feringgi who had conquered Calicut and Melaka”.

Despite accounts in Sejarah Melayu, Hikayat Hang Tuah, Hikayat Tanah Hitu among the many Malay classical text across the Malay archipelago, the conception of the Ferringi is unlike that of the Thai Farang. The Ferringi, conceived as the “unproblematic Other”, was everywhere in the Malay archipelago.

Hence, the presence of the Europeans in the Malay Archipelago was not unusual before the period of colonial rule. The inhabitants of the Tanah Air are used to see  the Orang Putih. And such presence was either in actual encounters or in classical narratives described as within the mythical and metaphysical realms.  The Malay world has been exposed to other worlds and civilizations long before the Europeans arrived.

The Malay familiarity with the Feringghi is reflected in popular thought referring to the Portuguese and Belanda – the Malay word for Dutch – through a host of oral and written traditions.  One is manifested through “Seperti Belanda Minta Tanah” (Like the Dutch requesting for land). The Dutch did approach Perak and Selangor. And the people from the atas angin finally made what is now Indonesia as part of their domain.

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