This monograph marks the culmination of a research project lasting forty years. In the early 19th century, Naning, now part of Melaka, was a quasi-autonomous region whose leader’s claim to a tax exemption led to military action on the part of the British when they took over control of Melaka under the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824. Jonathan Cave’s exhaustive research incorporates a unique variety of facts and source materials, and provides a granular local history of a unique historical entity.

The Author

J.E.M. Cave was born in July 1913. He studied Modern History at Brasenose College, Ocford and took an Honours degree in 1934. After four years as a Senior History Master, he volunteered to serve in the Royal Armoured Corps and took part in the famous ‘Normandy Landing’ on ‘D-Day’. He continued to serve in Northwest Europe and was awarded the Military Cross. Cave joined the Malayan Civil Service in March 1946. In 1949, when he was holding the post of Collector of Land Revenue Malacca, he was sent to Oxford to attend a ‘Devonshire Course’ arranged by the Colonial Office. He had proposed as his subject of study ‘Adat Naning’ – the ‘Customs and Traditions of Naning’. After the course, Cave went back to Malaya as Collector of Land Revenue Malacca from 1950 to 1953. Cave awarded the O.B.E. shortly before leaving the MCS in 1959. After 1959, Cave qualified as a solicitor and joined a country practice whose staple was convenyancing with land use, management and legislation probate and inheritance and family law. Eventual retirement afforded him leisure to pursue further research at the India Office Library and elsewhere and to travel to Malaysia again on two separate occasions, revisiting Alor Gajah and Naning each time after a prolonged absence.

Contents

List of Dato’ Penghulu Naning Sri Raja Merah

Book One: The History

1. Early Times and the Malacca Sultanate
2. The Portuguese Era
3. The Dutch East India Company
4. The Establishment of British Rule
5. Land and Revenue Questions
6. The Question of Jurisdiction
7. The War
8. The Post-War Settlement
9. The English East India Company’s Administration
10. The India Office
11. The Early Year under the Colonial Office
12. The Winds of Change
13. The Reforming Legislation
14. The District Administration
15. ‘Prosperity and Peace in this Fertile Corner’
16. Depression, Restriction, War, Emergency and Independence

Book Two: The Custom

1. The Literary Approach
2. Village Authority: the Family, Clan and its Inheritance
3. Marriage and Marital Possessions
4. Dissolution of Marriage
5. Clan Membership and Adoption
6. The Hierarchy, its Jurisdiction and the Gap between Customary and Statute Law
7. The Naning Community

Book Three: The New Independence

1. Political Currents
2. The Custome and Change

Envoy
Appendices
References
Sources and Authorities
Index