The notion of mandala The origin of this international relationship can be traced back to a Tamil inscription that describes a settlement and trade system of a community complex in southern India before the Chola raid in 1025 CE. Records indicate a trading system at Lobu Tua in southern Aceh dated to 1088 CE (McKinnon 1994). Trade between the two regions continued despite political turbulence resulting from domestic or global affairs. Many scholars believe that the Indian Ocean Mandala was the most important factor shaping this international relationship. Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning a circle of space and time that connects through a circulation of beings, according to Bose (2006). Across shared Muslim cultures across the Indian Ocean (Pradines and Topan, 2023), the international norms of the Mandala governed not only the tangle of networks, ports, commodities, and agencies that characterized the systemic order of sovereignty, rivalry, and alliances with great powers, but also the fluid political ecosystem of the ocean. It guided the mobility, interactions, and sense of belonging of South Indians, Arabs, Chinese, Jews, and Europeans who became indigenous.
Fernand Braudel highlighted a similar notion of mandala in French as his book reveals, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the time of Philip II (1972). He coined the concept of the ‘longue durée’ to explain the spatial and temporal connections threaded into the cycle of economic and political circulatory processes that shaped inter-civilizational pluralism and inclusiveness. Complementary to Braudel’s, Acharya’s (2019) reflection on the origin of the global economy and international politics highlights the cycle of the circulation pattern between various empires. It contributed to a ‘civilizational state’ where ‘integrated norms and cultures designed the pluralism and unipolarity’ that shaped the global order across the Indian Ocean. Such multiplexity must have been due to the ‘open’ character of the surrounding sovereignties, as Manjeed S Pardesi (2022) has concluded. He showed that the “open” character contributed to shaping a “decentralized hegemony” of the centered world order system, referring to the case of Malacca’s international politics in the 15th century with world powers.
South Indian merchants emerged in the cyclical merchant network from Coromandel ports such as Portonovo, Nagore, Kayalpattinam, Nagapattinam, Kailakkaral, Chennai and Pulicat to regions such as Aceh, Malacca, Kedah, Perak, Penang, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka before returning from Coromandel ports (Nordin, 2005). These merchants were key players who possessed knowledge of the oceanic economic and political flow through ports and networks. They were known not only for their ability to run agencies and maintain cargo during long voyages – they were also multilingual, educated men and wealthy merchants who allowed their involvement in the non-hierarchical government political structure and controlled ports and networks in an almost autonomous leadership, as revealed by the interactions of South Indians such as the Nainar, Chuliah, Lappai, Marikan, Kelings, etc. They held many positions, from the position of Chief Minister of Port (Shahbandar), Ship Captain (Nakhoda), local rajah, to economic and political advisor to the sultan (Nordin, 2005).
In addition to the increase in appointments as ShahbandarIn addition to advising local sultans and rajahs and managing their commercial affairs, South Indian merchants were also recognized for their talent as lobbyists, expanding their duties to include those of diplomats, interpreters, letter writers, and porters. They could act in this capacity, at least in the multicentric sovereign perspective, where an autonomous ruler shaped the alliance.
An incident occurred around 1767-1768 concerning ships that were supposed to be carrying large amounts of cargo belonging to the British merchant companies Gowan Harrop and Baillie, in addition to the commercial goods of the Sultan of Aceh. A dispute arose with the supercargo owners and the matter was referred to the arbitration court of Pondicherry in India, a French colony. To resolve the dispute, the Sultan delegated Abu Bakar Lebby (Bayly, 1989) to seek advice from the Nawab Wolan Jir of the Carnatic, or Nawab Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah (1717-1795), who was influential enough to “calm the atmosphere” with the French authorities (Lee, 2006).
Abu Bakar Lebby was chosen because of his linguistic skills and political knowledge in the Aceh-Carnatic and Coromandel-French regions. In the geopolitical understanding of the Sultan and Lebby, the Nawab was the patron of the richest merchant network in Marikan, with extensive trade relations in Aceh-Indonesia, Malaysia and the Settlement Strait. The Nawab employed the Marakkayarese to provision and equip his ships in Porto Novo, which he used to bring alms and pilgrims to Mecca and Medina. Other notable figures include Shahbandar and the Sultan’s advisors Muhammad Kasim and Poh Salleh, who are mentioned in Thomas Forrest’s 1772 account. Two other merchants, Sahib Nadar Alam and Panton Abdullah, were given the responsibility of governing two villages in northern Sumatra by Sultan Jauhar al Alam Syah (1786-1823). The Sultan’s Nakhodas were Meera Labbai, Muhammad Musa, Mohammad Sultan, and Kasim. Lubbai Muhammad and Gullah Meidin are the names of the scribes and drafters of a treaty between Aceh and the great powers France and the United States (Reid, 2008).
Obert Voll (1994) argued that, historically, Islam is a world system capable of creating order within the complexity of social and political hierarchy. It regulated an open character of power behavior that encompassed its “intercivilizational political entities,” leading its sovereignty to establish an “imperial unification.” Indeed, he found that “no cultural, economic, or imperial system was hegemonic,” which provides a hypothesis about the peace and universal value of the oceanic interaction between Indonesia and the South Indians of India. Ma’bar and the Coromandel ports.
This argument supports the idea that Islamic culture was the norm that helped establish the oceanic maritime world order. The norms witnessed the inferior presence of a hierarchical international system established on the basis of skin colour supremacy and religious exclusivity, as revealed in the international relations between the South Indians and the Acehnese Indonesians in the eighteenth century, particularly with the evidence of non-Muslim enclaves and various political occupants. For example, a particular Hindu Purvan traded with Aceh in partnership with British merchants; Nathaniel Sabat, an Orthodox Catholic from Syria, was an interpreter and advisor to the Sultan. Non-Muslim British and French merchants acting as advisors were also not unusual (Lee, 2006). All of these Europeans found their way to the Indonesian islands by fleeing colonial India. Many periods show the presence of non-Muslim enclaves, such as the Chinese, Indians and Europeans in Aceh and Java, who were given the legitimacy of a self-determining order. In the case of the Hindus of South India, there was the Chetty enclave in Malacca, Pasai and Sulawesi (Subrahmanian, 1995).
The Indian Ocean mandala, multi-purpose bodies, and norms have been essential factors in the longevity of international relations between Indonesia and the South Indians. The Indian Ocean has connected maritime sovereignties and bodies mainly attached to Islamic entities. Common cultures and identities have shaped international norms, devoid of the international system centered on race and religion.
The references
Acharya, A. (2019). The Creation of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of International Relations on the Occasion of their CentenaryUnited Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Bose, S. (2006), One Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global EmpireLondon: Harvard University Press.
Bayly, S. (2003). Saint, Goddess and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900. Cambridge University Press.
Hing, LK (2006). Aceh at the Time of the Treaty of 1824. In Reid Anthony (ed.), The Veranda of Violence: The Background to the Aceh Problem (pp. 72-95). Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Pardesi. MS (2022), Decentering Hegemony and Open Orders: 15th-Century Melaka in a World of Orders, Global Studies QuarterlyVolume 2, number 4. Doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksac072
H. Nordin. (2005, December). Malay merchant network and the rise of Penang as a regional trading centre. Southeast Asian Studies43(3), 216-237.
V. Obert (1994). Islam as a special world system, World History JournalVol 5, No 2. pp. 213-226.
Pradines. S, Topan. F (2023)Muslim Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Diversity and Pluralism Past and Presentt, United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press.
Reid, A. (2008). The Merchant Prince and the Magical Mediators. Indonesia and the Malay World, 36(105), 253-267.
Further reading on electronic international relations
