‘Sixteen Naked Indians’: First Contact between the British and the Orang Asli
Abstract
This paper examines a 1592 encounter between the British merchant galleon, the Edward Bonaventure, and a sixteen-man canoe on the coast of the Malay Peninsula. The locals are identified as indigenous Orang Asli of the Semang societal tradition. They were friendly and promised to supply the Edward with food. This fresh fruit may have relieved the British sailors of scurvy. On future voyages, the Captain of the Edward, James Lancaster, supplied his men with a daily ration of fruit juice, keeping them healthy. The advice to consume fruit then became part of the standard medical canon of the East India Company. The experience of the first voyage to the Far East may have contributed to this insight. However, this early meeting between the British and the Orang Asli has yet to be mentioned in the history books.
Summary
This article recovers a forgotten 1592 encounter between the British merchant galleon Edward Bonaventure, under Captain James Lancaster, and a group of indigenous people on the coast of the Malay Peninsula. The event is documented in the narrative of Lancaster’s lieutenant Edmund Barker, published by Richard Hakluyt in 1599, yet it has been entirely omitted from the historiography of Penang, Kedah, and the Orang Asli. Lim’s central argument is twofold: first, that the “sixteen naked Indians” who greeted the Edward were Semang Orang Asli rather than Malays, and second, that the encounter may have contributed to Lancaster’s later adoption of fruit juice as a scurvy preventive, which subsequently entered the East India Company’s standard medical canon.
The identification of the greeting party as Semang rests on a convergence of linguistic, ethnographic, and geographic evidence. Barker’s use of the term “Indian” (as distinct from “Moors,” which he applied to Malay Muslims encountered later in the voyage) indicates a non-Muslim group. The location—on the east bank of the South Channel of the Penang Strait, now Seberang Perai—falls within the documented historical range of coastal Semang groups, whose presence is corroborated by archaeological remains at Guar Kepah, place-names such as “Kubang Semang,” and references in the Kedah Annals to the “Semang Bakow.” The absence of houses, crops, or livestock at the campsite, the minimal clothing, the shyness of the locals, and the use of a large dug-out canoe all align with known Semang forager culture and distinguish them from the sailing-vessel-using Malays of the Straits.
The practical significance of the encounter lies in its timing. The Edward had been ravaged by scurvy, and the promise of fresh victuals from the Orang Asli came at a critical juncture. Lim argues that the seasonal fruit available at the end of Penang’s June–August fruiting period would have been rich in vitamin C, and that Lancaster’s subsequent voyages—where he instituted daily fruit juice rations—reflect knowledge gained in Southeast Asia. The East India Company’s 1617 medical text then codified this practice, recommending “the Lemmons, Limes, Tamarinds, Oranges, and other choice of good helps in the Indies.”
Key Findings
- The first recorded British–Orang Asli contact occurred on 31 August 1592, on the eastern shore of the South Channel of the Penang Strait (present-day Seberang Perai), when a sixteen-man canoe approached the Edward Bonaventure (p. 32).
- By the time Lancaster reached Penang in June 1592, 26 crew members had died of scurvy at the anchorage; only 33 men and one boy remained, of whom not past 22 were fit for labour (p. 5).
- The Edward Bonaventure was a 300-ton, three-masted galleon of the Levant Company, armed with 30 cannons and carrying a full complement of 70 men (p. 4).
- On Lancaster’s subsequent voyage he instituted a daily ration of lemon juice for his crew, and the East India Company’s 1617 medical canon recommended the consumption of citrus fruits and tamarinds as scurvy preventives (pp. 11–12).
- By the 1891 census of the Straits Settlements, only three individuals of “Semang” ethnicity were recorded in Penang—two on the island and one on the mainland—indicating effective extirpation of the group under British rule (p. 12).
- The encounter took place at the end of Penang’s June–August fruit season; seasonal fruits such as mangosteen contain approximately 66 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, sufficient to meet a man’s daily requirement in a single cupful (p. 11).
Conclusion
Lim’s definitive takeaway is that the 1592 encounter was erased from both colonial and post-colonial historiography, a silence he attributes to an Orientalist tendency to diminish the roles of Asians and ethnic minorities in the making of British imperial history. The Orang Asli of Penang, who had extended a friendly greeting and a promise of sustenance at a moment of crisis, were not only unacknowledged but effectively extirpated under the very colonial regime their assistance had helped sustain. The article thus serves as a corrective, restoring a small but consequential episode to the record and challenging the standard narrative that frames British arrival in Penang as a purely Anglo-Malay affair.
Context
- Primary sources: Edmund Barker’s narrative as published in Hakluyt (1599) and Foster’s 1940 Hakluyt Society edition; Franks’ 2006 biography of Lancaster; the Kedah Annals (Anderson 1824); and the 1891 Straits Settlements census (Merewether 1892).
- Historiographical contribution: The article challenges the standard Penang historiography (Cullin & Zehnder 1905; Milton 1999; Franks 2006; Noriah et al. 2006) which omits any mention of indigenous contact during the 1592 voyage, and intervenes in the broader debate over the erasure of Orang Asli from Malaysian national narratives (Shamsul 2001; Zawawi 1996; Santhiram 2021).