John Leyden’s Translation of the ‘Malay Annals’

Abstract

Scottish involvement in the British empire has been attributed to political anxiety at home and commercial freedom abroad. Central to this premise has been the influence of the Scottish enlightenment in illuminating the path forward for Scottish merchants and mercenaries. An exception pertained to the Scottish planners of the British East India Company’s invasion of Java in 1811. Tasked to liberate the East Indies from the Franco-Dutch power, they sought to replace a commercial empire with an independent Malay commonwealth. The means, besides arms and legislation, included an intellectual initiative by John Leyden to recover the native consciousness of the people of the Malay Archipelago and spark their belief in Malay nationhood. It involved a linguistic scheme to revive Malay speech by combining the region’s literary forms, modes and media into a single historical text in the Malay language. The enterprise was, I argue, founded on the Scottish belief that human volition was innate to the native character.