近世スマトラの内陸民族世界の形成における移住者の役割 : 「土着先住民」の創出

Abstract

On the eve of the early modern era, Sumatra became one of the most prosperous commercial areas in Southeast Asia on the basis of the export of precious forest and mineral products and pepper. Pasai, Minangkabau, and south Indian merchants developed commercial networks between ports and their hinterlands. When Aceh emerged as a powerful port polity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the influence of these merchants was overshadowed by the power of Aceh, which at that time placed major Sumatran ports, except that of south Sumatra, under its firm control. However, Aceh itself was dependent on the hinterlands from which commercial products and foodstuffs were supplied to coastal entrepots. Some of the itinerant merchants involved in this supply network chose to settle in inner agricultural regions. In order to legitimate their immigration to these inner regions, these people attempted to construct an ethnic identity by claiming that both they themselves and the local indigenous peoples were descended from a common ancestor who had originally lived in Sumatra, and whose descendants had subsequently spread throughout Sumatra. The Gayo, Batak and Minangkabau ethnic identities were reformed around their respective sacred places where, according to legend, their ancestors had lived. Although these Sumatran peoples are often described as Proto-Malays or Deutero-Malays who emigrated to Sumatra very early (ca.2000 B.C), it is highly probable that the ethnic identities of Gayo, Batak and Minangkabau were reshaped in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Previous studies of immigrants in Southeast Asia have tended to focus mainly on their role in the introduction of foreign culture to a native Sumatran world. It is necessary in addition, however, to examine the other important role of these immigrants in the creation of the "indigenous" world.