ABSTRACT
Although today the Orang Laut are viewed as a marginalized people living on the outer fringes of society, regarded with disdain and looked upon by the wider Malay and Indonesian society as a backward and unprogressive people, they were not always given such lowly status, as discussed in Chapter 2. Their current marginal status is one that has been culturally and politically constructed through shifts in political rule and their attending social ideologies. This chapter traces the story of historically changing commitments and actions of power holders in macro-polities and the stakes that they held in forging the rise and decline of the seafarers. It covers the time when the mariners were the favoured royal subjects and key players of the Srivijayan empire through to the nineteenth century when they were despised by the European colonialists as pirates to be suppressed. Through a historical survey of the role that the Orang Laut played in the Malay World, the political intrigues at the Malay court, the reasons for their initial loyalty and later wavering allegiance with the Malay rulers, the penetration of migrants with new skills, the introduction of new technologies and the superimposition of European powers, this chapter looks at the processes through which their marginality has been shaped.
