‘Dead wrong’ to say Kedah was under Siamese rule, says professor

GEORGE TOWN: A claim that Kedah was once under Thailand, then known as Siam, and hence had no legitimate claim over Penang is dead wrong, a professor of Malay civilisation said today.

International Islamic University Malaysia’s Ahmad Murad Merican said Penang was once Kedah’s territory, a fact the British colonists themselves recognised.

“If the Siamese Kingdom had sovereignty and authority over Kedah, why did Francis Light and the British East India Company reach out to the sultan to occupy Penang?

“Why didn’t Light contact the Siamese king instead? The fact is Kedah was a recognised sovereign state, even by the British themselves,” he told FMT.

Murad, who is professor of social and intellectual history at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, was responding to a claim by the Penang Heritage Trust (PHT) on the issue.

Spokesman for PHT, Clement Liang, had said Kedah was a vassal state of the Siamese Kingdom, with the Siamese effectively ceding Penang and Province Wellesley to the British in a treaty in 1826.

Citing Thai textbooks and the national museum in Bangkok, Liang said “Koh Mak” (or Penang Island) was the first “country” lost to a foreign power.

He also said the 1826 Burney Treaty saw Kedah and three other states being recognised as Siamese territories, while Penang and Province Wellesley were under the British.

Murad said Liang was wrong to use Thai history narratives, adding that the Siamese and British had signed contentious treaties without involving the Malay Rulers in Kedah.

“Why would we rely on another country’s perspective of our history?

“It is treacherous and seditious for PHT to make such claims based on the history narrated by another country.”

The Kedah sultanate, Murad said, was the oldest in the world. In its heyday, it reigned over the land from Phuket to Beruas in Perak, with a single family succeeding the throne until today.

“Siam might have had some control over Kedah at certain times, but claiming that it had sovereignty over Kedah throughout is dead wrong.

“The Siamese were not good neighbours. They have been grabbing land from Malay polities through their narratives and treaties. They have always been an adversary to the Malays,” he said.

Describing them as “land robbers”, he said they would have grabbed the whole Malay peninsula if they had been given the opportunity.

Murad said the truth was Penang was illegally occupied, plundered and vandalised by the British, as it was a Malay settlement under the Kedah sultanate.

He said to date, there was no evidence of the so-called lease agreement between Light and the then Kedah sultan, Sultan Abdullah, when he first arrived on the island in 1786.

“That so-called agreement remains a myth.”

sos



This post has been edited by Srbn: Nov 1 2021, 08:10 AM

So why Kedah used to pay ufti to Siam?

Ahmad Murad Merican ...

ini anak murica ????

actually Melaka until Temasik (Singapore) was ruled by Siam what,..

dulu masa sekolah, selalu baca hantar bunga emas, no?

So that dia tak kena attack lor

y sultan Kedah so diam diam?

Some have even claimed that the British never colonised this part of the world, if I recall correctly. Heh.

This whole thing started with that fat idiot la

I hope next time people would vote wisely

No more PAS

Melaka pay Ufti to CCP. So Melaka belong to China?

why Kedah can use border pass to thailand but penang nid passport

a small insignificant island

that's poor logic, of course you'd look at materials from other countries to contrast local materials. you cant say 'why didnt the british consult siam on penang?' when they did talk to siam years later on the entirety of kedah.

the best he could say is that kedah was a sovereign kingdom that was a vassal of siam, and argue the significance of tribute. tribute can be a recognition of the other's sovereignty over you, simply protection money, or in the unique system of china, a form of government trade (chinese emperor re-gifted more than what they receive, so kingdoms sent tributes often because its profitable).

The word they used was 'tidak pernah dijajah'. This is semantics, because dijajah means conquered. And we were never conquered, per se. We were colonised.

Hence technically, you can see why they say 'tidak pernah dijajah'.

Professor but doesn't know the meaning of vassal state or vassalage. Ask him to go play more Civilization. Phoondeck.

Nampak muka dan bunyi nama dah tao professor kangkung.... stop reading at AMM

kalau tak bayar Ufti how?
like kalau cainis tak bayar tax how?

so in the end is under siam lo.

What is "colonised" in Malay?

In google translate, it just say dijajah also.

I don't think Malay makes a different between conquered, and colonized.

do u read write n understand english ?

Hmmm....

I too was under that impression. dijajah = colonized

Bangsa mamak maa...unlimited hikmat putaran alam semesta