Page 29 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

20 HIKAYAT PATANI
likely that more than Siamese force and the sack of Songkhla brought
the Patani-Songkhla war at least temporarily to an end at this time:
Raja Kuning could not have lived and reigned much longer than 1688.
It would appear to have been her whom Peter Floris saw in 1612—13
and termed Raja Ungu’s “little daughter”;110 or else one must accept,
for lack of better evidence, the word of the HP that she was only 12 years
old when she married Qkphaya Deca, which would suggest that she was
bom about 1610.111

THE KALANTAN DYNASTY
The history of Patani from the time of the last queen of the Inland
Dynasty to the Thai invasion of 1785 is scarcely treated in any outside
source. The English mariner Alexander Hamilton visited Patani ca. 1718
but had little to say about the state, which by this time had become
much less important as a trading centre on the peninsula than it had
been earlier. As Hamilton explained, Patani
was formerly the greatest Port for Trade in all those Seas, but the
Inhabitants being too potent to be afraid of the King’s Laws, they
became so insolent, that Merchants were obliged to remove their Com­
merce to Countries of more Security. It was the staple Port for Surat
Shipping, and from Goa, Malabar and Chormondel they had a good
Trade, and so they had from China, Tunquin, Cambodia and Siam; but
the Merchants finding no Restraint on Robbers and Murderers, were
obliged to give their Trade a Turn into another Chanel, which was a
great Advantage to Batavia, Siam and Malacca, where they were kindly
used, and in those Ports it has continued ever since.112

One might seek in Hamilton’s explanation some elements of a more
general economic argument for the causes of Patani’s decline by the
eighteenth century. It is possible that firm Dutch naval preponderance
in the Straits of Malacca, the virtual closure of the Japanese market, a
decline in the demand for the products of the Malay Peninsula, or a
levelling off of the volume of local trade, may have contributed to its
decline. But local political factors surely were important.
One must take seriously the account of political events during the
reign of the Kalantan Dynasty in Patani which is presented in the HP,
for this was a period of which the authors of the manuscript apparently
had considerable personal knowledge.113 The story is long and involved,
110 Moreland, 1934, p. 63.
111 HP text, p. 51.
112 Hamilton, 1930, p. 84.
113 See below, Chapters III and VI, section 23—25, 28.