Traditional Sumatran Trade - article ; n°1 ; vol.74, pg 423-467

John N.Miksic

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Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient - Année 1985 - Volume 74 - Numéro 1 - Pages 423-467
45 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: BULLETIN_DE_L-ECOLE_FRANCAISE_D-EXTREME-ORIENT
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1985
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

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John N. Miksic
Traditional Sumatran Trade
In: Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 74, 1985. pp. 423-467.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Miksic John N. Traditional Sumatran Trade. In: Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 74, 1985. pp. 423-467.
doi : 10.3406/befeo.1985.1677
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/befeo_0336-1519_1985_num_74_1_1677SUMATRAN TRADE TRADITIONAL
PAR
John N. MIKSIC
Résumé
A travers l'étude de sources archéologiques, historiques et anthropologiques, J. Miksic
analyse le développement des réseaux d'échange internes à l'île de Sumatra. Il distingue, en
se fondant sur l'étude de la topographie, des zones de peuplement, des axes de communication
et de l'interaction des zones économiques, trois grandes régions différenciées dès l'apparition
des premières sources historiques. Les régions du nord et du sud de Sumatra ont vu leur
réseaux se développer sous l'influence conjuguée de facteurs externes tout autant qu'internes:
le commerce inter-insulaire et international a eu son importance, mais le rôle des facteurs
indigènes au système sumatranais, négligé jusqu'ici, doit également y être pris en compte.
Les facteurs internes ont par contre joué un rôle prépondérant dans la région ouest. L'étude
est menée, en passant par l'âge colonial, jusqu'à la période suivant l'indépendance: elle
conclut à la survivance de modèles traditionnels jusqu'à l'essor récent d'une infrastructure
routière moderne ne tenant plus compte des axes de communication historiques.
Introduction
Indonesia's particuliar character as an island nation makes the country an object of unusual
interest to those who study the development of centralized political and economic institutions.
In concrete terms, this involves the search for processes which lead to increase in the amount
of goods, information, or people who flow through or at the direction of a small number of
points in space. The extraordinary attribute displayed by Indonesia is that transport and
communication between various regions must traverse stretches of open water. This has
raised the suspicion that the development of centralized institutions may have taken a
different course than in countries where overland routes have been the common form taken
by networks binding together disparate regions.
* The author acknowledges the generosity of the Asian Cultural Council and the Ford Foundation, who support
his work, and the assistance of Dr. Colin MacAndrews, who read and made extensive comments on earlier versions
of this paper. 424 John N. Miksic
Thus the preponderance of historical and geographical literature devoted to the study of
the development of political and economic institutions in the archipelago has concerned itself
with aspects of relations among the various islands, on one hand, and between the islands and
the Eurasian mainland, on the other. The networks of channels over which the same
commodities (people, things, ideas) moved between parts of the same island have been less
common objects of study.
From a historical viewpoint, or indeed any other perspective, a knowledge of several
matters would appear to be indispensable prerequisites to the understanding of the relation
ships between the ports, coasts, and hinterlands of the islands. These include: the existence of
inland routes which brought objects of marine commerce to the exporters; the processes
which led certain locations along these inland routes to become larger and to possess more
influence on events occuring within the system than others; the internal nature of these
centers of activity; and their relations with one another. These characteristics are most
distinctly developed on the largest, most densely populated islands of the Sunda region: Java
and Sumatra (Borneo or Kalimantan is larger than either but has a sparser population).
It has been common in literature on Indonesia to find Sumatra contrasted with Java.
Sumatran societies have often been described as outward-looking and open to influence from
abroad, concomitants of foreign trade's importance in their history. Java has been portrayed
as inward-looking, an attribute which can be correlated with an agrarian economy centered in
inland valleys. Java's development is commonly thought to have been largely autonomous. It
has been taken almost for granted that the Sumatran pattern of settlement and economy
during the traditional period preceding European contact were largely the result of Sumatrans'
responses to opportunities presented by a favourable location on international trade routes.
Without exposure to external contacts, it could be argued that Sumatran societies, particularly
those with coastal locations, would have been very different. If this were true, one would
expect historical analysis of Sumatran economy and population distribution to have been
sensitive to changes in external trading patterns. In this study we will attempt to discover what
were the pre-European patterns of economic exchange and population distribution in
Sumatra, and to discover whether internal or external factors exerted a greater influence in
shaping these patterns.
A . Geography and Ethnology .
The first component of the Sumatran situation to consider must be the geographical setting
and its division among various ethnic groups, for these factors form a relatively unchanging
stage upon which the historical action has taken place. It appears that whereas these basic
elements have not possessed the power to determine that certain sites on the islands will
always play the same roles as centres or subordinate regions, the environment has facilitated
certain developments in certain broad regions and made others more difficult, therefore less
likely to occur or to be perpetuated there.
Sumatra's landscape is relatively simple in that it consists of only three major elements,
three strips which run parallel to each other in a north-south direction along the 1,750-
kilometer length of the narrow (maximum width: about 400 kilometers) island. These are: a
very narrow western coastal lowland; a chain of nearly continuous mountains with average
elevations of 2,000 meters, and peaks up to 4,000 meters; and a broad eastern lowland which Sumatran Trade 425 Traditional
occupies 170,000 square kilometers, over one-third of the island's entire area of 440,000
square kilometers. l The traditional centres of population and culture are located in a series of
mountain valleys space along the highland zone, at elevations averaging 500 to 1,000 meters,
on soil of largely volcanic origin.2
1. The highlands.
The interior valleys form homelands of a number of ethnic groups. In the north, a cluster of
related peoples collectively termed the Batak live in the ancient volcanic caldera containing
Lake Toba, in the mountains and on the plateaus spreading outward from it. The mountains
are termed the Batak Tumor; they and the associated lowlands are divided between the
modern provinces of North Sumatra and Aceh.3
A low pass in the vicinity of Padang Sidempuan, Gunung Tua, and Portibi separates the
Batak Tumor from the main island chain, the Barisan Range. This topographic feature also
marks the boundary between two sets of mountain flora and fauna, northern and southern;
the northern flora contains more forest products of especial worth in the initial period of
Sumatran foreign trade, a point to which we shall return below. This pass has also formed an
important route for communication between east and west lowlands; footpaths which have
been used for centuries run along the mountain foothills, skirting the lowlands with their less
inviting terrain, converge at this region.4
The second important highland area forms the nuclear area of Minangkabau settlement.
Minangkabau tradition considers the three connected valleys lying around Mount Merapi to
have been the first to be inhabited when their ancestors descended from that mountain. Two
large lakes, Singkarak and Manin j au, occupy the bottoms of part of the valleys.
Futher south, the next group encountered are the Rejang who occupy the Lebong Graben
around the shores of Lake Tes and the outer slopes on either side of this rift valley. Somewhat
further south, at the foot of Mount Dempo, one reaches the Pasemah Plateau. The Pasemah
and related groups inhabit the southern highlands as far as the valley which contains Lake
Ranau.
Each of these groups inhabits a well-defined geographic region with broadly similar
climate, vegetation, and natural resources, and each group speaks a language belonging to
the Austronesian family. The mountain lakes probably attracted a human population at a
very early period of prehistory, with the natural resources which favor life at the stage of
hunting and gathering, but prehistoric archaeology has done relatively little to explore this
region. There is a high degree of variation in basic cultural traits which distinguishes each
group from its neighbors; this can either