ofthe SAME TREE

the Minangkabau court. He claimed many of the attributes of the Pagaruyung
ruler and used his special role as a messenger to assemble the Minangkabau
in the rantau to evict the Dutch from Melaka. His efforts to form a Minangkabau
alliance with the ruler of Kuantan, a Minangkabau polity in upriver
Indragiri, proved unsuccessful. He therefore turned to Islam as a rallying force
to gain support from the Bugis and Makassar settlers living in Kelang. But the
threat ended abruptly with his assassination by a Bugis in 1678. 94 Although
the threat from Raja Ibrahim was short-lived, it was an important precursor
of future developments. It demonstrated that a Minangkabau ethnicity was
not sufficiently strong in the late seventeenth century to provide the basis for
a common cause, but it was being considered by Minangkabau leaders.
The Minangkabau on the Malay Peninsula continued to reaffirm their
Minangkabau ethnic identity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
by acknowledging the rulers of Pagaruyung as their overlord. When in
1758 the Sultan Johor decided to transfer to the Dutch his sovereign authority
over the Minangkabau settlements of Rembau, Sungai Ujong, Johol, and
Naning, the leaders of these four communities requested that the sultan seek
a lord from Pagaruyung to be their principal head. The communities therefore
received a royal representative from Pagaruyung, who assumed the title
of Yang Dipertuan Besar. Since Dutch approval was required, it was agreed
that the Yang Dipertuan Besar would produce his teromba (a “song of origin”
or genealogy) for the Dutch authorities at Melaka. The teromba was to
present in “a correct and unimpeachable manner the genealogical tree of the
house of Minangkabau, and his [the Yang Dipertuan Besar’s] own connection
therewith.” 95
In later years disputes over the succession to this newly created office
proved so disruptive to the tin trade that the Dutch governor in Melaka considered
seeking yet another Minangkabau prince from Pagaruyung to become
the next ruler. Whether such a request was ever made is not known, but a
paramount lord over these four areas, known collectively as Rembau, was
appointed in 1785. According to local oral tradition, a certain prince known
as Raja Melewar was actually brought from Pagaruyung to become ruler in
the late eighteenth century. 96 In 1828 a Raja Labu was sent from Pagaruyung
to govern in Rembau, and the links between Pagaruyung and the Minangkabau
settlements on the Malay Peninsula only ended with the demise of the
monarchy around 1833. 97
One of the most spectacular examples of these royal messengers was
Raja Kecil. The historical and legendary accounts of his life provide a glimpse
into the role of Pagaruyung in the ethnicization of the Minangkabau. On
4 December 1717, Raja Kecil first appears in the VOC letters as a messenger of
the ruler of Pagaruyung sent to avenge the assassination in 1699 of the Johor
Ethnicization of the Minangkabau 101