ofthe SAME TREE

areas in Asia and the Middle East with which the Portuguese had contact.
Pires lists the various ports in the northeast coast of Sumatra from the north
to the south, with useful economic and some political information about each
of them. In more recent times the Portuguese historian Alves has combed
the Portuguese archives and reconstructed the history of Pasai. 10 In an earlier
study he describes the struggle for power in the Pasai court between the factions
representing the agricultural interior and the coastal trading ports. 11 An
equally noteworthy aspect in the history of the northeast coastal areas is the
close familial relationship among the elite. This would explain the not uncommon
occurrence of rulers of Pasai being chosen from neighboring polities. In
the history of the northeast coast, therefore, two significant themes can be
identified: the rivalry between the coast and interior, and the close relationship
of the elite families in the northeastern coastal polities. These themes
continue in Aceh, which absorbed Pasai in the early sixteenth century.
To speak of a “rivalry” between the coasts and the interior is only meaningful
in terms of which of the two would be regarded as the primary focus of
the kingdom. In practical terms there was close cooperation between the collectors
and producers in the interior and the middlemen and merchants on
the coast. In earlier centuries the coast was privileged because of the growth of
international trade beginning in the early centuries of the Common Era. It is
believed that Sriwijaya’s success in substituting Southeast Asian aromatics for
the frankincense and myrrh from the Hadramaut in the China trade sparked
a major economic boom. 12 Acquiring forest products required binding relationships
between the interior collectors and the coastal traders. Ideas of royal
power may have been elaborated and new oaths of allegiance developed in
order to provide economic arrangements with legitimation and spiritual
sanction. The relationship continued when demand for forest products began
to decline and was replaced in the fifteenth century by the new cash crop,
pepper. Labor for the clearing of land and for the planting and rearing of this
labor-intensive crop would have been obtained through similar arrangements
with the pepper-producing interior communities.
Unlike the relatively small hunting-gathering communities in the immediate
hinterland of southeast Sumatra who lived mainly in or near the rain
forests, the interior Batak populations of northern Sumatra were relatively
large in relation to the coastal communities. The strength of the interior was
always a major factor in northeastern Sumatran court politics, as is evident in
Alves’ account of the history of Pasai. When pepper replaced forest products
as the major export commodity, the interior became of even greater importance
to the coast. Pires noted that the Pasai ruler had to handle affairs with
the interior with some delicacy to assure a steady supply of pepper. 13 But it
was not until the late eighteenth century that the agricultural interior became
From Malayu to Aceh 111