EARLIER this month I shared my experience of initiating the digitization of what has been labelled as the Light Letters kept at the Archives and Special Collection Division of the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London (SOAS).

The title of my lecture is “Mengenali Surat-surat Light: Mencerita Semula Sejarah Kepulauan Melayu” (Engaging the Light Letters: Re-narrating the history of the Malay Archipelago).

The project began in 2011. Then I had proposed four initiatives for greater and equal access to the largest collection of Malay letters in the world, comprising some 1200 pieces of correspondence that took place in the Malay Archipelago between 1768 and 1794.

These were (1) Digitization of the letters (2) Transliteration (from Jawi to Rumi/Arabic to Romanized script) (3) Creation of a portal, and (4) Translation of the letters to English.

It took seven years of negotiation for the rights to the images of the Letters. Finally in September of 2018, a Memorandum of Agreement was signed between Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and SOAS. I was then at USM’s Centre for Policy Research and International Studies.

The saga of getting access, in locating the digital images in the region of their origin is one story of how colonialism operates. This can be described as ethnocide and epistemicide, the latter referring to silencing and oppressing a corpus of knowledge. For more than 200 years, the Malay Letters were hidden, and “denied” to scholars and historians from Malaysia and the region.

There was, from the one perspective, a sense of “ownership”, thus closing that window between 1768 and 1794 on the dynamics of the region. With the digitized images with USM, it is now available to the public, scholars and historians. On a related note, in 2011, while at SOAS, I was asked if I was interested in its purchase by Malaysian institutions or individuals.

My response was for SOAS to keep the originals, the digitized images are good enough. The problem in keeping the original artifact is another story.

Open access to the letters creates an inclusive environment bringing in different – erstwhile supressed and marginalized perspectives on the history and historiography of the Malay Archipelago. Much of what has been narrated on the Tanah Air and especially on states and societies are seen from Eurocentric eyes. Its dynamism has so far been viewed in insular and isolated terms.

Much earlier, some two decades ago, I was told that the Light Letters were mainly comprised of trade and commercial transactions from Malay rulers, the nobility and other members of Malay society. But they were much more than what we knew earlier.

What is predominantly significant is the layer of dynamism in diplomacy and international relations, economic systems and the social order existent in the Malay Archipelago. The Letters render a window on Western intervention, and encounters in the region.

Collectively, the Letters lend the representation of the Malay expression, response, and cosmopolitanism. It locates the Malay Archipelago as integral to global history.

The Malay Letters collection kept as manuscript comprises some 1,200 letters arranged and bound in 11 volumes. It is in Bahasa Melayu using the Jawi script. Portions of the letters, in various sizes and length, contain Arabic, Farsi, and a smattering of Thai words.

The label “Francis Light Letters” has been used by SOAS. Earlier, the collection was kept at King’s College. Originally the letters were categorized under the Marsden Collection, attributed to Orientalist, historian and scholar of Malay language and grammar, William Marsden (1754-1836).

He is known for his works The History of Sumatra (London, 1783) and the Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language (1812). The Letters were bought by Marsden from an auction in London in early 1800. When Marsden died, his widow bequeathed the Letters to King’s College. They were kept at the SOAS Archives and Special Collections Library as MS 40320. These can be classified into

• Letters sent to Light
• Letter sent to Scott, Light’s business partner
• Notes, drafts and copies of letters sent by Light
• Letters from the rajas and dignitaries
• Letters between the Malay states and with the Siamese-Burmese region
• Malay letters with European figures
• Other documents – bills, receipts, petitions and contracts

Specifically, the collections comprise correspondence from Kedah, Selangor, Perak, Terengganu, Kelantan, Acheh, Asahan, Batu Bahara, Siak, Palembang and Pontianak. There are also letters from the saudagar raja (crown agents). The artifact opens up a variety of areas and themes to be studied. Among them would be:-

• The geopolitics of the Malay Archipelago before imperialism
• Economic system of the Malay states and polities before 1800
• Diplomacy and foreign relations
• Philology and writing systems
• Trade and commerce
• Cosmology and the Malay world view
• Social and daily life in the Malay Archipelago
• The formation of negeris (states) and polities in the Malay peninsula and the rest of the Archipelago
• Life of the rajas and Malay dignitaries
• Activities of Malay women
• Malay discourse with the west
• Kedah and the Malay polities as global history

Malay manuscripts and letters are indispensable sources of history. The placing of the Letters at USM has broad implications for scholarship and further research during that period before the establishment of colonial rule in the Malay Archipelago. The Letters provide a new source for the writing and reinterpretation of the history of Pulau Pinang, the nation and the rantau.

They serve to enrich the existing narratives on an array of problems on the history and historiography of Malaysia, the Pulau Pinang in relation to Kedah and the East India Company (EIC) and of the Malay Archipelago as a whole.

The “return” of the Letters to its origins is integral to the process of decolonization. The Light Letters Digital Collection at USM offers a pertinent platform at decolonizing library collections by empowering librarians themselves to critically examine the colonial legacy, and in turn devising strategies to promote inclusivity and representation, as custodians of endogenous voices in history.

Among others, these have uncovered the “unlawful, defective and disputed” occupation of Pulau Pinang, in how Kedah was robbed off her island. In the larger context, we find a shared, collective and connected history in the Malay Archipelago.

A state-centric approach to studying the Letters would only distort the reality of the period. The USM Archives would do well to continue the discourse indefinitely under the present name “Syarahan Warkah-warkah Kepulauan Melayu 1768-1794.”