INTRODUCTION.

On the stage of Perak's modern history there have been many actors: the Malays, the Portuguese, the Achinese, the Dutch, the Bugis from Riau and Selangor, Siam and her vassal Kedah, and the British. To some small degree it was dynastic pride that made Acheh and the Bugis her aggressors, and Siam had hardly any other conscious motive. But at the back of all Perak history has been trade. Trade alone attracted the Europeans, an unassailable thirst for the purchase of tin and the sale of cloth. Of this thirst, as I have written elsewhere " the most evil symptom was monopoly, the confining of trade to one market, where the purchaser bought not at competitive prices but at prices fixed by the guns of his ships. As far back as we know, monopoly had been a feature of Eastern trade, Hindu, Parthian, Persian and Arab, and it was the desperate effort of the Gujeratis to maintain their monopoly that led to the clash between Malays and Portuguese at Malacca. It was the good fortune of England that the spirit abroad at the beginning of the XIXth century gave her no chance to establish monopolies and induced her to declare for free trade." Along with their struggle for monopoly, the powers also attempted to take toll of all shipping and compel it to resort to their ports. Long before the Portuguese, the great Sumatran state Srivijaya or old Palembang had derived large revenues from toll levied on sea-borne trade: as Chao Ju-Kua wrote in 1225 A.D., " If a merchant ship passes without entering, their boats go forth to make a combined attack and all are ready to die in the attempt; that is why this country is a great shipping centre."

From her foundation down to the time of British protection Perak suffered every sort of humiliation and defeat and domestic tragedy. The Portuguese built a fort at the mouth of her river in order to command a monopoly of her tin. Jealous of her dealings with the Portuguese, Acheh attacked Perak fifty years after the coming of her Malacca dynasty. It removed five thousand of her subjects and carried ruler after ruler into captivity, until royal descent on the male side was broken. It made treaties directly with the Dutch for the disposal of Perak's tin, and it sent Achinese officials to control the weighing-station at her estuary. For nearly a century the State was the vassal of Acheh. Moreover during half that century Perak was also plagued by the Dutch, who demanded her tin at a price concerted with Acheh, deducted a war indemnity from that price, erected a fort at the Dindings and blockaded the river-mouth. Long before the Dutch had gone, Perak was implicated in the Kedah wars between the Bugis and the Minangkabau followers of the famous Raja Kechil of Siak. The Bugis invaded her in 1728 and in 1742, later compelled her ruler to install a Bugis chief as Sultan of Selangor and then sent their most notable warrior, Raja Haji, to obtain the hand of a Perak princess for the new potentate. From 1804 till 1806 Perak was

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Page 2 A History of Perak.

" by right of powder and ball " subject to Selangor. In 1818 she was conquered by Kedah at the dictates of Siam. In 1822 she turned to Selangor to expel the Siamese, who three years later re-established their suzerainty. Down to 1826 when the British intervened, Perak was no more than a shuttle-cock between Selangor and Siam. In truth she was always a shuttle-cock: between Portugal and Acheh, between Acheh and the Dutch, between Minangkabaus and Bugis, between Selangor and Siam. And after the Kedah wars at the beginning of the eighteenth century nearly every decade of her history was disfigured by fratricidal struggles between princes of her own royal house.

The most bigoted Little Englander, the most convinced supporter of the rights and customs of small people, must admire the pax Britannica in Perak and bless the work of British protection in bringing out of centuries of great tribulation this rich and beautiful country and her ancient line. Beset by Selangor, threatened by Siam, Sultan 'Abdu'l-Malik Mansur Shah could yet write with truth in 1816, "I am the oldest of all the kings of these parts, such as the kings of Siak, Selangor, Riau, Kedah and Trengganu. I will not send tribute of Golden Flowers to Siam."