The Orang Melayu and Orang Jawa in the ‘Lands Below the Winds’
بسم الله الر حمن الر حيم The Orang Melayu and Orang Jawa in the ‘Lands Below the Winds’: Notes on the Historical Imprints of the ‘Civic-Ethnic’ Distinction in Indonesia and Malaysia By Riwanto Tirtosudarmo 1. Introduction The ‘lands below the winds’ is a phrase found in Muhammad ibn Ibrahim’s book: The Ship of Sulaiman, which details the presence of Persian traders in the eastern Indian ocean region in the seventeenth century (published in Persian in 1688, translated into English by J. O’Kane and published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1972). Anthony Reid borrowed the phrase in the title of his book: Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680 (Volume one: The Lands Below the Winds, 1988). This phrase connotes a vast area known also as the Malay world that is now generally referred to as Southeast Asia. According to Bastin and Benda (1968: v), the collective concept of “Southeast Asia” was long familiar in Chine...