Malay history: Notes on the Negri Sembilan

Wilkinson, R. J. (Richard James)

Book

Malay history: Notes on the Negri Sembilan

Printed by J. E. Wallace at the F. M. S. Govt. Press • (5) • Published In 1911 • Pages: 51

By: Wilkinson, R. J. (Richard James).

Abstract
This paper, one of a series prepared under Wilkinson's general editorship for the information of British officials in Malaya, deals with the history of the Negri Sembilan, the Nine States of the Menangkabau Malays in the Peninsula. Its main focus is the untangling of the historical facts about the origin of the population and of the constitution of the Negri Sembilan from the confusion of the fictionalised traditional accounts. Documentation and trenchant historical criticism are used to make it clear that the formation of the constitution of these states and the introduction of the Adat Perpateh (the legal principle of Matrilineal succession of the Menangkabau Malays) is relatively recent in origin and that the basis of the constitution is in fact the granting of titular rights to local chiefs by the Malacca-Johor sultanates and not the traditional descent of certain families (the Waris or 'hiers') on the maternal side from aboriginal Sakai inhabitants of the soil. This disposes, to a considerable extent, of the problem of the ethnological history of the Negri Sambilan, its social organization and the derivation thereof (see 1:Winstedt).

Form and rules of government

Territorial hierarchy