Page 16 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

A SHORT HISTORY OF PATANI 7

the Straits of Malacca was subject to the depredations of states along
both coasts; a time when all trade was smuggling, and all suppression
of smuggling was piracy to one state or another. The Thai appear to
have been attempting to create a situation in which they could trade
with relative freedom; and, indeed, they seem to have been successful,
for Ayudhya immediately upon its foundation was known to Persian
traders.27 With established interests in the trade of the peninsula, they
would have — and did — resist the rise of Malacca at the beginning of
the fifteenth century, perhaps with the support of the trading and
political bloc they had constructed in the previous century.
Economically, Patani was involved in this system both in the long­
distance trade with China, carried on in Chinese junks, and in a more
localized trade with Siam and other Malay and Indonesian ports. Beyond
the full reach of Malacca’s power (“Malacca did not dare to take issue
against powerful Patani, which was inhabited by Malays but where
Siamese influence was strong” 28), Patani could function to circumvent
Portuguese Malacca’s predominant commercial influence in the sixteenth
century, serving as an entrepot to which pepper could be brought from
the surrounding region to be traded to Chinese merchants in return
for luxury textiles and porcelain.29 The Portuguese capture of Malacca
encouraged the trade of such ports as Patani, especially when Portuguese
exactions and extortion in Malacca made trade there increasingly un­
profitable.30 Indian textiles were brought to Patani to be exchanged for
pepper, gold, or foodstuffs; and both Chinese goods and Indian textiles
presumably were marketed by Malay merchants of Patani in Thailand
and through the Indonesian Archipelago, to the north coast ports of
Java and Sumatra, and to Makasar.31 Patani thus was part of a general
trading system which arose in reaction to Portuguese Malacca and
included such ports as Acheh in North Sumatra, Bantam in West Java,
and Makasar on Sulawesi.
The economic and political position of Patani can be glimpsed in
incidents of the latter half of the sixteenth century recorded in external
sources and echoed in local traditions. Patani’s trading position in the
earlier half of the century may have been assured by its political relation­
ship with Ayudhya. Patani could engage in conflict with her neighbours
— as she did with Johore, Pahang, and perhaps Kalantan in the 1530s
27 Wang, 1964, pp. 94—96; Syed Naguib, 1965, pp. 260—64.
28 Meilink-Roelofsz, 1962, p. 29.
28 Ibid, p. 76.
30 Ibid, pp. 169—70.
31 Ibid, pp. 163, 165, 258, 272, 289.