Article

Terengganu

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Terengganu

Terengganu, a sultanate on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, has been the subject of sustained scholarly attention in the Society’s literature from the late nineteenth century to the present, spanning natural history, political history, social structure, and administrative development. The state, with a coastline of 160 miles of golden sand [1, p. 71], has historically occupied a distinctive position among the Malay sultanates, claiming a superior dignity that was acknowledged by neighbouring rulers [2, pp. 26–27]. Its population in 1938 stood at 179,789, of whom 164,564 were Malay [3, p. 201], and its capital, Kuala Terengganu, possessed the largest urban Malay population in the Peninsula at approximately 25,000 in 1909 [4, p. 24]. The state’s economic base has been characterised by fishing, agriculture, and, from the late nineteenth century, tin mining, while its political history is marked by a long period of Siamese suzerainty, a brief but consequential episode of independent rule, and the subsequent imposition of British protection in 1909.

Scope and Historical Definition

The earliest Western natural history account of the Terengganu littoral in the Society’s records is W. Davison’s 1889 journal, which records a ten-day voyage with the Governor of the Straits Settlements along the east coast from Pulau Tioman to the Rumpin River [5, pp. 83–90]. Davison, then Secretary of the Raffles Library and Museum in Singapore, noted that Tringganu (his spelling) was a fishing and manufacturing town, its economy dominated by a fleet of over a hundred boats, each crewed by eight to ten men, and by the manufacture of sarongs and krisses [5, pp. 86–88]. The town also exhibited a segregated Chinese quarter and used a distinctive coinage of silver dollars and small circular tin coins, five hundred of which equated to one dollar [5, p. 89]. Davison’s account, though modest in scope, captures a coastline in transition: primary forest felled within miles of Pekan, new police stations being erected, and a pumice-stone beach suggesting recent volcanic activity [5, p. 90].

The political history of the sultanate is more fully documented from the eighteenth century onward. Barbara Watson Andaya’s 1976 source-critical study establishes that no indigenous Terengganu chronicle survives, and that the European archival material—Dutch VOC correspondence, English records from India House, a brief French visitors’ report, and scattered Portuguese references—conveys almost nothing about internal governance [6, p. 80]. The Tuhfat al-Nafis, long treated as the principal source for the period, is shown to be built on four source texts none of which originates from or represents the Terengganu court, and to systematically distort the character of Sultan Mansur Syah (r. 1741–1795) in order to legitimise the Bugis-descended community’s political position in Riau [6, pp. 80–106]. Andaya demonstrates that the Tuhfat’s author, Raja Ali Haji, adapted and amplified material from these sources to construct a consistently negative portrait of Sultan Mansur, inserting fabricated dialogue and implied guilt that have no basis in the underlying texts [6, pp. 96–98].

The French merchantman St. Jean Baptiste, commanded by Jean-François de Surville, put into Trengganu from 28 July to 1 August 1769, and four officers and the ship’s clerk each recorded the visit in their journals [7, p. 145]. John Dunmore’s 1973 translation of these accounts provides detailed observations on the port’s physical characteristics, the quality of its anchorage, and the commercial opportunities it offered [7, pp. 145–160]. The French sold four caskets of opium for 800 piastres and purchased buffaloes, bullocks, poultry, fruit, and vegetables, spending a total of 533 piastres and 150 Flemish knives [7, p. 151]. The accounts also record significant political intelligence: the Sultan was absent, leading a campaign in the north with 2,000 men and 300 boats, and had claimed that Malacca had been ceded to the Portuguese by his ancestors for only one hundred years, a term that had now expired [7, pp. 148]. The Sultan had rejected an English request for a trading post in the Ridang Islands, instead proposing that the English help him expel the Dutch from Malacca [7, pp. 149].

The Ruling Class and Social Structure

Shaharil Talib’s 1977 article provides the most detailed account of the social architecture of the Terengganu ruling class on the eve of formal British political control [2, pp. 25–47]. The ruling class comprised four distinct but interlocking elements: royalty (Kerabat Diraja), aristocracy (Kerabat Am), religious scholars (Ulama), and court favourites (Orang Keistimewaan) [2, pp. 22–23]. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the ruling class numbered about 1,000 males in a total population of approximately 100,000, and the 1911 Census recorded only 184 officials in the government [2, pp. 23–24].

The Kerabat Diraja was defined by the Trengganu Constitution of 1917 through five categories of kinship to the ruling or deceased Sultan, establishing that once a person qualified, the status was permanent [2, pp. 22–23]. Sultan Zainal Abidin III (r. 1881–1918) maintained three formal marriages and a number of gundeks (concubines); the British agent J. L. Humphreys reported in 1918 that the Sultan had thirty-seven ex-wives in town [2, p. 29]. The royal house was closely linked to the royal families of Riau-Lingga and Singapore through intermarriage, and the Sultan maintained a superior posture in his relationship with neighbouring sultanates, keeping Johor at an arm’s length while cultivating a more cordial relationship with Pahang [2, pp. 26–27].

The Ulama formed a distinct element of considerable influence. Terengganu, at the turn of the century, was a religious centre of repute on the east coast [2, p. 37]. Three hereditary Ulama lineages may be distinguished: that of Syarif Abdul Malik (Tukku Pulau Manis), whose family traced its origins to Baghdad and Mekah; that of Sheikh Abdullah (Tukku Pulau Duyong), who held the office of Mufti until his death in 1889; and that of Sayyid Abdul Rahman (Tukku Sayyid Paluh), the most influential Ulama of the late period, who died on 6 September 1918 at the age of over 100, leaving more than 100 descendants [2, pp. 37–40]. The Sayyids of Paluh had a reputation for sanctity and were believed to possess semi-miraculous powers, their residence being an object of constant visits from people bringing gifts in redemption for their vows [2, p. 40].

The institution of debt slavery was widespread: approximately 6,000 debt slaves existed in Terengganu in 1917, and each Kerabat household held an average of five to ten domestic debt slaves [9, p. 24, n. 14]. The ruling class strongly opposed any attempt to abolish the institution, and its abolition in 1919 “roused considerable opposition among the ruling class” [4, p. 49].

Administrative Transformation under British Protection

The transfer of Siamese suzerainty under the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of March 1909 brought Terengganu under British protection, and the subsequent three decades witnessed a transformation that Chan Su-ming characterised as “just short of revolutionary” yet carefully calibrated to avoid the appearance of direct rule [3, pp. 159–198]. At the point of transfer, Terengganu was in a state that the 1918 Commission of Enquiry found deplorable: the Ruling House absorbed 31.5 per cent of total state expenditure and 24 per cent of total revenue, while costs of administration consumed 67 per cent of total expenditure, and the Sultan’s personal emolument alone was $6,000 per month [3, pp. 185–186].

The initial arrangement of a British Agent with no advisory powers proved wholly inadequate; it was only after the 1919 Agreement replaced the Agent with a full Adviser that meaningful reform became possible [3, pp. 183–198]. The 1919 Agreement immediately reduced the Sultan’s monthly allowance from $9,500 to $3,500, prompting his abdication within eighteen months [3, p. 187]. By 1938, Terengganu had 145 miles of road, compared with only 10 in 1915, and the new road linking Terengganu to Kelantan opened in 1932 [3, p. 194].

J. de V. Allen’s 1968 study offers a more nuanced assessment of the pre-British period, arguing that the “untrammeled Malay rule” of the independent era was far more stable, sophisticated, and less oppressive than earlier British accounts suggested [4, pp. 23–53]. Allen demonstrates, using the detailed diaries kept by successive British Agents, that Terengganu in 1909 was governed by a functioning if minimal legal system, a State Council in near-permanent session, and a network of district chiefs who, for the most part, neither oppressed nor terrorised their subjects [4, pp. 24–27]. State revenues amounted to only $100,000 per annum, drawn from revenue farms, tin export duty, port dues, and pepper plantation profits; there was no land tax, no quit-rent, and no direct taxation [4, pp. 23–24]. Only five death sentences were carried out during the twenty-seven years of Sultan Zainal Abidin’s reign [4, p. 25]. Allen attributes the subsequent decline not to any inherent inadequacy of indigenous governance but to the disruption caused by British intervention, which forced the Sultan to conciliate more parties than before and destabilised the delicate political machinery he had so carefully constructed [4, pp. 41–48].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Terengganu reveals a clear evolution in scholarly priorities. The earliest contributions, such as Davison’s 1889 journal, reflect the natural history collecting ethos of the late Victorian period, in which the Governor’s tour served as the occasion for both governance and knowledge-production [5, p. 90]. The 1900s and 1910s saw the publication of primary source materials, including Dunmore’s 1973 translation of the French accounts, which drew on the Marine section of the Archives Nationales, Paris, to supplement the better-known English and Dutch records of the region [7, p. 145].

The Cambridge University Expedition of 1899–1900, whose personal accounts were published in 1953, provided the only contemporary, multi-disciplinary account of the north-eastern states from the field, predating the administrative reorganisation that followed the 1909 Anglo-Siamese Treaty [8, pp. 1–174]. W. W. Skeat’s observations range across burial customs, wedding and circumcision ceremonies, spirit-halls and trance performances, and the folklore of vampires, giants, and cave-princesses, giving the volume the character of a field ethnography rather than a retrospective synthesis [8, pp. 5–6].

The post-war period saw a shift toward administrative and social history. Chan Su-ming’s 1965 article represents an early systematic treatment of the Unfederated Malay States’ administrative development under British protection, filling a gap in the literature that had previously focused predominantly on the Federated States [3, pp. 159–198]. Allen’s 1968 study, based almost entirely on the Colonial Office file series CO 273, represents the first systematic constitutional study of Terengganu using primary administrative sources, directly challenging the dominant narrative inherited from W. A. Graham, Hugh Clifford, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica [4, pp. 23–53]. Andaya’s 1976 article established a methodological framework for evaluating the Tuhfat al-Nafis as a source for non-Bugis actors in the Malay world, demonstrating that its pro-Bugis orientation extends beyond general sympathies to active fabrication and selective omission [6, pp. 80–106]. Talib’s 1977 article extends J. M. Gullick’s model of West Coast Malay ruling classes to the East Coast, adapting his three-part division into a four-part framework that gives independent analytical weight to the Ulama and Orang Keistimewaan as distinct social categories [2, pp. 25–47].

More recent contributions, such as Noel Rees’s 1990 “Tall Tales,” offer a ground-level, sensory account of rural Terengganu social life, wildlife, and the residual presence of the British advisory system in the 1940s and 1950s [1, pp. 77–84]. Rees’s vignettes—kite-flying competitions with strings exceeding half a mile in length, the communal auction system for turtle eggs, and a tiger encounter in which a family of four consumed an entire cow in a single night—provide a counterpoint to the formal administrative records and capture the rhythms of a society in which the boundary between the human and the wild was far more permeable than in the author’s native England [1, pp. 69–75].

MBRAS Sources

Description and travel

History

References

  1. N. Rees (1990). Tall tales from Trengganu. I JMBRAS 63(1): 77–84.
  2. Shaharil Talib (L.R. Robert) (1977). The Trengganu ruling class in the late nineteenth century JMBRAS 50(2): 25–47.
  3. Chan Su-ming (1965). Kelantan and Trengganu, 1909–1939 JMBRAS 38(1): 159–198. Read on JSTOR
  4. J. de V. Allen (1968). The ancien regime in Trengganu, 1909–1919 JMBRAS 41(1): 23–53. Read on JSTOR
  5. W. Davison (1889). Journal of a trip to Pahang etc. with H.E. the Governor, August 17th to 27th, 1889 JSBRAS 20: 83–90.
  6. B.W. Andaya (1976). An examination of the sources concerning the reign of Sultan Mansur Syah of Trengganu (1741–1795) with special reference to the Tuhfat-al-Nafis JMBRAS 49(2): 80–106.
  7. J. Dunmore (1973). French visitors to Trengganu in the 18th century, . Dunmore JMBRAS 46(1): 145–160.
  8. C.A. Gibson-Hill et al. (1953). The Cambridge University Expedition to parts of the Malay Peninsula, 1899–1900: personal accounts. W.W. Skeat and F.F. Laidlaw. {Introd. C.A. Gibson-Hill JMBRAS 26(4): 1–174. Read on JSTOR