ofthe SAME TREE

identity. The root word “rantau” generally means “reaches of a river” or “shoreline.”
In Minangkabau usage it has come to mean “abroad,” wherever Minangkabau
came to settle outside the darek, or heartland of the Minangkabau in
the interior highlands. 40 Overpopulation, conflicts, new economic opportunities,
and the emphasis on precedence in determining social hierarchy were
all contributory factors in the movements of people. 41 Political and economic
events in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago between the sixteenth and nineteenth
centuries contributed further to the phenomenon of voluntary and
forced movements of people. For the Minangkabau, the dominant type of
merantau up to the early nineteenth century was village segmentation caused
by overpopulation and shortage of agricultural land. 42 It has been argued that
the institution of the merantau is essential to the survival of matrilineality
because it serves to release excess population and thereby preserve matrilineal
principles in the inheritance of land in the darek. 43 In the rantau, however,
matrilineal practices are weakened through contact with patrilineal societies
and the absence of crucial elements that support matriliny.
Movements of people between communities and the adoption of new
identities are commonplace. Among the Minangkabau, there are kampueng
(villages) with names such as Malayu (Malay) and Mandailing (a Batak district),
which reflect an earlier in-migration of Malay and Batak and their
absorption into Minangkabau society. 44 Until the seventeenth century, the
area of Rau and Lubuk-Sikaping to the north of the Minangkabau heartland
was inhabited almost exclusively by Batak, but in later centuries they were
either displaced by Minangkabau or absorbed into Minangkabau society. 45
The flow in the opposite direction was particularly evident between the seventeenth
and nineteenth centuries as the Minangkabau moved down the rivers
to the east coast and settled among the downriver populations. 46
Intermarriage between Minangkabau men and local women in the rantau
resulted in the children adopting the adat or customary laws of their mothers,
thus modifying Minangkabau traditions. Even when Minangkabau women
married their own people in the rantau, the absence of close male relatives
made it difficult to implement matrilineal practices. 47 It has been argued that
the inability of Minangkabau families on the Malay Peninsula to replicate the
elements necessary to maintain a matrilineal structure led to greater emphasis
on region and ethnicity, rather than matrilineality, as the basis of their identity.
48 But it is difficult to generalize about the rantau phenomenon because
of its complexity and variability due to adaptation to local conditions. 49 What
is evident, however, is that the rantau, in keeping with the dynamism of borderlands,
was the site of ethnic re-evaluation and movements in and out of
ethnicities based on comparative advantage. Such decisions were often more
90 Chapter 3