Siak and its Changing Strategies for Survival, c.1700–1870

Abstract

At a time when commercial power based on extensive territorial claims was proving to be increasingly less viable as in the case of Aceh and Johor, Siak set out to establish its influence along the entire length of the east Sumatran coast from Tamiang in the north to Kateman to the south of Kuantan (see Map 9.1). Siak’s eighteenth-century expansionism was the outcome of its adaptation to island Southeast Asia’s renewed importance to the spectacular growth of European trade with China. The new emphasis on mineral (primarily tin), forest and sea produce, in addition to pepper, placed a heavy reliance on indigenous state mechanisms for production. Siak among others such as Terengganu, Perak, Johor-Riau and Sulu shared in the new prosperity. The method by which it achieved this derived to a large extent from the adaptability of the basic institutions and strategies of the indigenous state. In fact, the internal dynamics of Siak during its peak period of growth calls for reassessing its negative portrayal as an unstable ‘pirate state’. These and some of its seemingly weak characteristics, namely the lack of administrative cohesion, the complexity of marriage alliances, institutional cleavages and the usurpation of indigenous lineages, may be seen as important traditional strategies which sustained the state within the mainstream of regional developments.