Notes on events in Palembang 1389–1511: the everlasting colony
R.W. McRoberts published “Notes on Events in Palembang 1389–1511: The Everlasting Colony” in 1986, examining the political trajectory of Palembang, Sumatra, across the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His central argument is that Palembang never achieved genuine independence during this period, remaining perpetually a vassal or colony of a greater power—first Majapahit, then Melaka, then Demak—and that the people of Palembang were “reagents rather than catalysts” in their own history (p. 83).
Summary
McRoberts challenges the conventional identification of the Palembang ruler who ascended in 1389 as a fully sovereign monarch. Drawing on the Sejarah Melayu, Chinese records, and Pires’ Suma Oriental, he argues that this ruler—known variously as Parameswara, Sri Tri Buana, or Mjcura—was a minor of perhaps thirteen to fifteen years on accession, likely controlled by his premier, Demang Lebar Daun. The title “Parameswara” (which Winstedt translated as “Prince Consort”) should be restricted to the period 1389–1391, before the ruler assumed sole authority and the regnal name “Mjcura.” McRoberts contends that the Sejarah Melayu’s hagiographic narrative of this period, including the “chloasma” motif and the marriage ceremony, masks what Wolters and Winstedt identified as an abhiseka ceremony in which the ruler assumed a divine right to rule as heir to Srivijaya—a public declaration of rebellion against Majapahit (pp. 73–76).
The article then traces the consequences of the failed 1391 rebellion. Majapahit reconquered Palembang and attacked the Chinese imperial mission that had arrived in response to Palembang’s appeal to the Ming court. In the resulting power vacuum, Chinese traders—first Chen Zu-i, then the Shi family—effectively governed Palembang as principal chiefs invested by the Ming, while the Ming continued to recognise Palembang as within Majapahit’s sphere. Melaka’s 1412 petition to the Yung-lo emperor to transfer Palembang to Melakan control was definitively refused. By the 1450s, Palembang had been absorbed into the larger state of Indragiri, which was brought into Melakan hegemony through a marriage alliance arranged by Mansur Shah circa 1463 (pp. 76–80).
The final section examines the circa 1501 civil war in Indragiri, in which Raja Nara Singa displaced his cousin Maharajah Isak. McRoberts offers multiple interpretations—political, dynastic, and religious—suggesting the conflict may represent a traditionalist restoration against Melakan Islamic cultural imperialism, possibly orchestrated by the Bendahara Tun Mutahir for his own power. The article closes by noting that by 1511 Palembang was under Demak control, and its population’s documented reluctance to fight for the Portuguese in 1512 suggests they had retained traditional religious and political loyalties rather than fully adopting Islam (pp. 80–83).
Key Findings
- In 1391, the Palembang ruler assumed the regnal name “Mjcura” and declared independence from Majapahit; the Majapahit reconquest was swift and also targeted the Chinese imperial mission then in the area (pp. 75–76).
- Chen Zu-i, a Cantonese, ruled Palembang as a de facto leader until 1407, when Zheng He had him arrested and executed in China; Shi Qin-ching was then appointed principal chief by the Yung-lo emperor (p. 77).
- In 1412, Melaka petitioned the Yung-lo emperor to transfer Palembang from Majapahit’s to Melaka’s sphere of influence; Zheng He delivered the emperor’s definitive refusal to both states in 1413 (p. 78).
- Pires recorded Palembang’s annual export trade as “ten or twelve junks” carrying rice, vegetables, slaves, cotton, rattans, gold, pitch, iron, wax, honey, wines, meats, garlic, onions, and benzoin, but noted the city was not involved in the deep-water spice trade (pp. 79–80).
- During Pate Unus’ 1512 campaign against the Portuguese, “the people of Palembang came to fight… very unwillingly (against Melaka), all those who came died” (p. 82).
- McRoberts dates Palembang’s effective independence to only the period 1392–1463, and even then it was recognised by the Ming as a subject of Majapahit (p. 82).
Conclusion
McRoberts concludes that Palembang’s “everlasting” colonial status—subordinate to Majapahit, then Melaka, then Demak—explains both the sparsity of information about the city in surviving records and the persistence of traditional Malay attitudes among its population. The people of Palembang were pragmatists who, after the failed 1391 bid for independence, accepted their subordinate position and adapted to successive overlords, retaining traditional religious and political loyalties that outlasted the formal imposition of Islam by Melakan cultural imperialism (p. 83).
Context
- The article draws on the Sejarah Melayu (Brown’s recension), Ma Huan’s Ying-yai sheng-lan (Mills translation), the Ming She, Pires’ Suma Oriental, and d’Albuquerque’s Commentaries, with particular attention to the first eighty-four folios of the Sejarah Melayu, which McRoberts argues “need to be examined with more care than has hitherto been accorded them” (p. 76).
- Historiographically, the article extends and complicates the work of Wolters (The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History, 1970) and Winstedt (A History of Malacca, 1962) by reinterpreting the 1389–1391 events as a constitutional compact between ruler and premier rather than a simple succession, and by situating Palembang’s political history within the broader dynamics of Ming-Majapahit-Melakan competition for regional hegemony.