The installation of the first Sultan of Selangor in 1766. ,
Barbara Watson Andaya (1974) examines the 1766 installation of Raja Lumu as the first Sultan of Selangor, a pivotal event in the transition of Selangor from a Bugis outpost under nominal Johor suzerainty to an independent Malay state. The article argues that this installation was a deliberate political act designed to sever Selangor’s ties with Riau and to establish Bugis legitimacy within the Malay political order by acquiring the essential appurtenances of kingship.
Summary
The article situates the installation within the broader power struggle between Daeng Kembuja, the Bugis Yamtuan Muda of Riau who had consolidated control over the Johor empire after the deaths of Sultan Sulaiman (1760) and his successors, and Raja Lumu, his cousin and the acknowledged heir to Selangor. By the mid-1760s, Raja Lumu was ready to assert his position as an independent ruler but lacked the essential symbols of sovereignty—a royal title, his own nobat, and a royal seal—that Malay political culture required to legitimise a claim to kingship. His decision to seek these from Perak rather than Johor was driven by pragmatic calculation: the Johor throne was occupied by a child under Daeng Kembuja’s regency, and the Perak ruler, Sultan Mahmud Syah, had recently adopted a more favourable attitude towards the Bugis after his predecessor’s consistent opposition.
Andaya’s central methodological contribution is the triangulation of three source traditions: the Dutch VOC correspondence (primarily letters between the Perak resident Hendrik Wiederholt and Governor Schippers at Melaka), the Misa Melayu (a Perak court chronicle by Raja Culan), and the Tuhfat al-Nafis (by the Bugis scholar Raja Ali Haji). Rather than treating the discrepancies between the Malay texts as problems to be resolved in favour of a single “objective reality,” Andaya reads each account within its own conceptual framework. The Misa Melayu presents the installation as a demonstration of Perak’s daulat and the gracious munificence of its ruler, while the Tuhfat al-Nafis reverses the positions to emphasise the prestige of Raja Ali’s Bugis ancestors, relocating the most significant phase of the ceremony to Selangor itself. The Dutch records, meanwhile, provide the chronological skeleton and reveal the diplomatic tensions—particularly Sultan Mahmud’s anxious negotiations with Wiederholt over whether to admit the Selangor party into the river—that the indigenous sources omit or reshape.
A further layer of analysis concerns why Perak specifically was the appropriate source of legitimisation. Andaya draws on Winstedt’s work to show that Perak’s rulers traced their descent through the Sultans of Melaka to the demi-god of Bukit Siguntang, giving them a genealogical prestige that the Bugis, as political outsiders, could not claim for themselves. By obtaining his title and regalia from the Perak court, Raja Lumu was effectively re-anchoring Selangor’s legitimacy in the old Melaka line rather than in the Bendahara-descended Johor, a move that the Datuk Engku Kelang’s initial refusal to acknowledge him until the Perak installation confirms was considered essential by contemporary Malay political actors.
Key Findings
- On 5 November 1766, six Selangor ships carrying Raja Lumu, his foremost nobles, and sixty court members entered the Perak River and were escorted to Kota Lumut, where the installation ceremony took place (p. 47).
- The title “Sultan Salehuddin” was first adopted at this installation; prior to 1766, Raja Lumu was referred to only as “Tengku Raja Selangor” or “Raja Selangor” in both Malay and Dutch records (pp. 53–54).
- A contract guaranteeing “lasting peace” and mutual assistance against third-party attack was sworn on the Koran and on the rulers’ keris; Sultan Mahmud bestowed a “kingly title” and “royal musical instruments which prior to this he could not use” (p. 48).
- Daeng Kembuja’s 1760 letter to the Dutch resident in Perak referred to himself as “Yang di Pertuan who governs the three places, Riau, Linggi and Selangor,” confirming his claim of overarching authority that Raja Lumu’s installation directly challenged (p. 53).
- The betrothal of Sultan Mahmud’s grandson to Raja Lumu’s daughter was arranged during the visit, a union that displeased the Raja Muda of Perak (p. 48).
- The Dutch garrison in Perak numbered between forty and sixty men, predominantly Eurasians or Malays recruited in Melaka, with almost constant illness, frequent death, and many desertions—insufficient to deter a determined Bugis force (p. 47, n. 29).
Conclusion
Andaya concludes that 1766 should be regarded as a definitive turning point in Selangor’s history. Although Daeng Kembuja’s hostility continued until his death in 1777, the installation of the first Sultan had firmly established Selangor’s position as an independent polity within the Malay world, and its sovereignty was never again questioned. The event’s significance is attested by the attention it receives across all three source traditions, each of which shaped the narrative to serve its own political and genealogical purposes.
Context
- Primary archival basis: VOC correspondence held in the Koloniaal Archief (KA series, particularly KA 3104, OB 1768), supplemented by the Misa Melayu (Raja Culan) and the Tuhfat al-Nafis (Raja Ali Haji), the latter of which Andaya identifies as drawing on the Hikayat Negeri Johor.
- Historiographical contribution: The article demonstrates a method for reading indigenous Malay and Bugis texts not as transparent windows onto “objective reality” but as products of specific political and genealogical agendas, using the Dutch documentary record as an independent chronological framework against which to test and interpret these agendas.