Slavery in the Malay world

The Colonial Era · Treatise · 17 min read

The People Taken from the Forest

The history of Orang Asli enslaved through slave raids — a history that should not survive only in place names, whetstones, and other people's footnotes

The history of the Orang Asli of the Peninsula is not only one of archaeology, linguistics, and classification. Around the nineteenth century, oral histories and colonial records from communities such as the Semai, Sakai/Senoi, Btsisi'/Mah Meri, and Mantra/Temuan all carry the memory of abduction, killing, and enslavement. The evidence points not to "the Malay people as a whole," but to specific armed groups, local chiefs, intermediaries, and slave-trade networks.