It is the aim of this paper to highlight the role of the Malay merchants and traders which was an important group of merchants that had been plying in the Malay waters. Who were these traders and where they came from and the commodities they carried and the various types of ships they travelled will be discussed in the paper. The study will also look at the importance and the role of these merchants in early Penang.
Malay traders from the Straits mostly traveled with smaller size ships but they served most of the ports along the Sumatran east coast and also native ports along the Malay peninsula. There were also Malay traders that arrived from the archipelago servicing the native ports in the Straits and also the port of Melaka and Penang. The Malays mostly from Sumatra and the archipelago travelled in a variety of ships of which the most popular were the balo, banting, kakap, pencalang and pencacap [Knaap 1966: 30-34]. Besides the Malays the Bugis, mostly from Riau and Selangor, used the padowakang, and pancalang.
The majority of Malay traders came from Sumatra and the Malay peninsula. The most common items brought by them were forest products rattans and food items, such as sago, rice, paddy, tin and gold. Most traders tended to bring only one particular product on their journey to Melaka and Penang but returned to Sumatra with a variety of Indian cloth and other sought after goods, such as salt, and Java tobacco. Bugis traders mostly came from Riau and Selangor but later in the 1790s the majority of them came from Selangor, Trengganu, and Trantan (a port on the east coast of Sumatra). A regular route covered Riau, Melaka, Selangor and Penang. The majority of the Bugis traders, who came from Riau, Selangor, Trengganu or Trantan, brought Bugis cloth or came without any goods but bought various types of Indian cloth in Melaka and Penang.
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Thus the total number of incoming ships for the years 1786 to 87 and 1799 to 1802 is very high. From 85 ships and Malay prahus in 1786 the number rose to 3,569 in 1802. In just a decade Penang was able to attract more than 2000 ships and Malay prahus to its port. The number of incoming traders also shows a great achievement for Penang as, within a relatively short period, it was able to spread its trading network over quite a wide area.
Regular accounts of the number of incoming ships to Penang only show incoming vessels of 50 to 500 tons (25 to 250 lasten) which belonged to Europeans and Asian trad- ers. The largest ships to arrive at Penang were those of the English traders, with each ship averaging 275 lasten or 550 tons in weight. This was followed by the American, Danish, and Portuguese traders whose ships were only slightly smaller at an average of 250 lasten (500 tons) while Asian traders mostly from the Coromandel coast, China and the archipelago arrived in vessels weighing an average of 113 lasten (226 tons).
Hussin, Nordin. “Networks of Malay Merchants and the Rise of Penang as a Regional Trading Centre.” Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3, December 2005. 215-237. Print.
