The old Sultanate of Patani, nested today within the national boundaries of Thailand, was once the most populous and vibrant of Malay coastal city-states, enjoying a long florescence in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as one of the notable trading stations in the Peninsula. Blessed with a safe and secure harbour and strategically located on the trans-peninsular network of trade, it attracted a great ethnic diversity to its marketplace, reaching a veritable apogee under a succession of female rulers before domestic factionalism and external conflict precipitated its decline.
The present volume by Daniel Perret and Jorge Santos Alves covering Patani during its ascendancy aims to do several things at once: to bring several original European texts to a wider English readership and, drawing on the research expertise of its authors, to provide a bibliographic survey of research on Patani since 1839, offer a ‘first real synthesis on Patani's place in the Luso-Asian networks’, and throw light on its domestic issues for the period under review. This is declared early on in the introductory essay, which details the selection of sources and wastes no time by delving into a historiographical review of Patani (pp. 24–35). The two subsequent chapters fulfil this promise: Alves’ ‘Patani and the Luso-Asian Networks (1516–1642)’, and Perret's ‘The Sultanate of Patani: Sixteenth–Seventeenth Centuries Domestic Issues’ are then rounded out by a collection of 31 sources, mainly Iberian and Dutch materials translated into English, the latter of which are occasionally juxtaposed with further translations in French and German. A glossary and index bring the volume to its close.
How should we understand the book—is it a sourcebook, a collection of extended essays, or a historiographical guide? Let us begin with the sources, which are largely excerpted passages relating to Patani from published and unpublished materials, ranging from a paragraph to several pages. The litmus test for any such assemblage is whether it serves as a useful reference for students and scholars; this it passes more than ably. Besides providing new materials, which is always appreciated, in bringing these references together in one place, the book renders a laborious search across books almost superfluous. Another advantage is to see the sources presented both in their original language(s) and in English, which satisfies both the general reader searching for contextual and historical information and the specialist more concerned with issues of linguistic interpretation. The meticulous glossary will almost certainly be well thumbed. It should also be noted that although Patani is its focus, the sources will almost certainly be useful for researchers working on other aspects of Southern Thailand's regional history, especially the nearby polities of Singora, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Patthalung, and Kedah, while also stimulating greater explorations of Chinese overseas trade and Luso-Malay interactions.
As for the two essays following the introduction, not only can they stand alone as contributions in their own right, they are also instructive in the way the sources help us clarify the history of Patani. Alves’ essay illuminates Portuguese Melaka's interactions with Patani as it moved from unstable footing to the normalisation of trade and relations, before cooling off towards 1640. A western triangular balance of power (between Johor, Aceh, and Portuguese Melaka), had earlier been studied by Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto (trans. Roopanjali Roy, The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka, 1575–1619, 2012), so a focus on its eastern frontiers, where another triangulation can be discerned with Patani and Siam, is much welcomed. Alves’ work underscores the value of Iberian sources for clarifying the theatre of diplomacy and politics in the Malay world as well as the role Patani played as a springboard and incubator of Luso-insertion into Chinese trading networks. Perret's essay on the other hand, takes a different approach to the sources, using them to focus on the Sultanate's spatial features, organisation of government and social relations. Perret does an admirable job clarifying some biographical issues concerning the reign of the four queens and the positions of the dignitaries in the kingdom which are often a subject of some confusion. In addition, he also pinpoints the diversity for which Patani is famed, in particular in language, religion, and gendered practices, mainly through a careful reading of Dutch observations.
With such scope and ambition, there is some overlap and the book lacks the coherence that characterises a traditional monograph. I am inclined however to take this as a positive, since negotiating collaboration is often tricky; furthermore, it is the interaction of all three that counts as a strength, the essays complement the bibliographical survey, while also drawing from the sources therein, making for a novel and necessary contribution to the field. Another underrated aspect is that the book is freely accessible online. This is very commendable, since an e-publication is able to reach a far wider audience than is possible with just a physical volume. It is this facility that will encourage further exploration of Patani's past.
A regrettable aspect, however, is the book's time scale, which ends sometime in 1642. This marker was almost certainly because of the sources used: the Portuguese are ousted from Melaka, and after a golden period of female rule, Patani becomes less attractive as a destination for foreign traders as it falls into domestic disorder and becomes embroiled in a conflict with Siam. However, since the Sultanate continued, according to the testament of both Dutch and Iberian sources, the authors leave almost half a century undealt with, beside one or two cursory references, which present us with a rather one-sided picture of Patani's past. Sources on Patani during this period of turmoil into the subsequent century would have been most helpful.
As for the translations, while the Dutch ones read well, the Iberian translations are slightly clunky by comparison, erring on the side of literal exactitude than free rendition. This results in some awkwardness. To take an egregious example, a sentence like ‘And betrothed to the king our Lord [the trading voyages] left them [the Portuguese private traders] with the lost hope and they do move to flee Your Majesty to Coromandel, Bengal, Pegu, and Patani, […]’ (p. 133), even in context, can be confusing, requiring several re-readings to get at its meaning.
In addition, several small inaccuracies and omissions exist: contrary to the authors’ assertion, an abridged English translation of Asia Portuguesa was indeed made, being published in 1695 by a certain John Stevens (although not covering the extract included in the volume), and while publications with lesser references to Patani have been taken into account, neither Patrick Jory's edited collection Ghosts of the Past in Southern Thailand: Essays on the History and Historiography of Patani (2013) (though some of the articles had been cited) nor Francis Bradley's Forging Islamic Power and Place: The Legacy of Shaykh Daud bin ‘Abd Allah al-Fatani in Mecca and Southeast Asia (2015), two major books covering Patani's history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have been referenced in the introduction. In this vein, it is also felt that much of the bibliographical essay could have been critically synthesised rather than just providing a simple summary of the research work at hand. A more robust conclusion to its introduction could perhaps have rounded off its findings more critically and suggested new directions and approaches for the study of Patani's past.
Finally, one wonders whether Patani through Foreign Eyes should have included more East Asian source materials, only briefly referenced, since the importance of Chinese merchants and trade is emphasised often in the other sources and essays; observations by Asian traders would surely complement this study and soften its European gaze. Geoff Wade's chapter ‘The Patani Region in Chinese Texts of the 6th to the 19th Centuries’ (2013) and extracts from Yoneo Ishii's The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia: Translations from the Tosen Fusetsu-gaki (1998) spring readily to mind and might have been considered.
Nevertheless, these are minor quibbles for what is a most laudable contribution to the field. The book is a welcome addition to any Southeast Asian scholars’ digital/physical shelf and makes the study of Patani's history more fruitful and accessible than ever before.
