ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the origins and transmission of early European knowledge about ‘warrior women’ in the Malay world. Buttressed by classical ideas about Amazons, the region early became associated with female warriors and warrior queens. European reports generated by trade encounters in the early sixteenth century maintained that local rulers were guarded by corps of armed women. Although this would become a persistent theme in early modern writing about Southeast Asia, the armed palace guards were later dismissed as ‘travel lies’. Through the examples of Aceh and Mataram, the chapter discusses the empirical value of early European sources and by extension their role in the recovery of historical roles for women.
