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Two Malay letters written by Sultan Muhammad Jiwa Muazzam Shah of Kedah to Captain Francis Light: with appendix

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Two Malay letters written by Sultan Muhammad Jiwa Muazzam Shah of Kedah to Captain Francis Light: with appendix

Russell Jones published this article in 1981, presenting two previously uncatalogued Malay letters written by Sultan Muhammad Jiwa Muazzam Shah of Kedah to Captain Francis Light, a British merchant operating in the Thai-controlled island of Ujung Salang in the early 1770s. The letters illuminate the personal and commercial relationship between the Kedah ruler and Light during a period of political instability, and they confirm that the Malay title Dewa Raja applied to Light was simply a translation of the Thai honourific P’ya Raja conferred upon him by the Siamese court.

Summary

Jones’s article is fundamentally an exercise in source identification, linguistic annotation, and historical contextualisation. The two principal documents—a longer letter (designated “A”) held at Cambridge University Library and a shorter one (designated “B”) in the SOAS Malay correspondence collection—were both written in neat Jawi script on thin, locally manufactured paper and bear the Sultan’s distinctive red-ochre seal. Jones transcribes both in full, provides English translations, and offers detailed philological notes on trade terminology (embalau, kesumba) and the semantic range of kebajikan in eighteenth-century Malay usage.

The historical problem the article addresses is the precise nature of Light’s position in the region between 1771 and 1773. After the failure of the proposed Kedah–East India Company alliance (negotiated through Edward Monckton in 1772), Light relocated to Ujung Salang, an island under Thai suzerainty, where he established himself as a merchant with the backing of the Siamese authorities. The letters reveal that the Sultan of Kedah maintained an affectionate, almost paternal correspondence with Light, addressing him as “our son,” while simultaneously expressing sharp displeasure with Monckton, whom he regarded as having acted to Kedah’s detriment. The commercial content of letter “A”—concerning the attempted sale of lac, safflower, and tin, and the Sultan’s inability to procure the large quantities of rice Light requested—paints a picture of a small-scale but active inter-island trade network in which Light operated as a middleman between Kedah and the Thai sphere.

Jones also situates the letters within the broader corpus of Malay correspondence at SOAS (MS 40320), noting that at least seven letters from this Sultan to Light survive in that collection, most dealing with routine commercial matters. The practice of transmitting supplementary or confidential information verbally through a messenger, alongside the written letter, is identified as a regular feature of diplomatic and commercial correspondence of the period.

Key Findings

  • Letter “A” (Cambridge University Library, MS Or. 2193[1]) measures 20.0 × 19.8 cm, contains 13 lines of Jawi script, and was acquired by the Library on 17 August 1976 from the Adab Bookshop, Durham (p. 24).
  • Letter “B” (SOAS MS 40320, file no. 8) is dated 24 Dhu’l-Hijjah 1186 AH, corresponding to Thursday 18 March 1773 AD, and measures 17.0 × 21.0 cm with 14 lines of writing (pp. 29–31).
  • The Sultan’s full name is confirmed as Muhammad Jiwa Zainal Adilin Muazzam Shah; the unusual element Zainal Adilin (“Adornment of the Just Ones”) is attested in the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa and in Anderson’s 1824 work, and its appearance under the Sultan’s seal in letter “A” is treated as virtually conclusive (p. 26).
  • The Malay title Dewa Raja applied to Light is demonstrated to be a direct translation of the Thai title P’ya Raja Capitan conferred by the King of Thailand, not a separate Kedah honour (p. 27).
  • Letter “A” concerns a cargo of embalau (lac, Laccifer lacca), kesumba (safflower, Carthamus tinctorius), and timah (tin) sent from Ujung Salang to Kedah, for which the Sultan could find no buyers at the quoted prices, and a request for rice measured in koyan (approximately 800 gantang) that could not be fulfilled due to local shortages (pp. 25, 28).
  • At least seven letters from Sultan Muhammad Jiwa to Light survive in the SOAS collection (MS 40320, files 8 and 9), most undated and devoted to everyday commercial business; one appears to record the Sultan bestowing an Indian woman with three children upon Light (p. 29).

Conclusion

Jones concludes that the letters collectively confirm the depth of personal affection the Sultan of Kedah felt for Francis Light, even as they document the ruler’s frustration with the East India Company’s representative Monckton. The documents also clarify Light’s precise status in the early 1770s: a British merchant operating under Thai protection at Ujung Salang, maintaining commercial and personal ties with Kedah, and addressed by the Kedah ruler in terms of familial intimacy that reflect both genuine regard and the formal conventions of a local sovereign’s correspondence with a foreign agent.

Context

  • Primary archival collections consulted: Cambridge University Library (MS Or. 2193) and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London (MS 40320, “Malayan Correspondence”; MS 12157A and 12157B, Thai documents relating to Light).
  • The article contributes to the historiography of early British commercial penetration in the northern Malay Peninsula by providing direct epistolary evidence of the Sultan of Kedah’s perspective on Light and Monckton, complementing the English-language sources (Clodd, Anderson, Bonney) that have traditionally dominated the narrative.

References