How Kings Became Pirates: East India Company Courts in the Straits of Malacca

This article examines the role of East India Company (EIC) courts in the Straits Settlements in curtailing Malay sovereignty in the Straits of Malacca from the late eighteenth till the mid-nineteenth century. Scholars have thus far demonstrated that Malay conceptions of political sovereignty clashed with English views. However, differences in cultural conceptions were insufficient to ensure the steady decline of Malay kingship. After all, European merchants in the region who arrived before EIC dominance cultivated relationships with local ruling elites. It was in EIC legal courts that Malay rulers were discredited, as their genealogies were either not recognized or invalidated by new EIC treaties and agreements with other parties. Law was the arena in which kings were declared unlawful and/or piractical. However, the EIC courts in the Straits Settlements had limited jurisdictions since they did not have the support of Bengal EIC government till 1826. Neither was there an Admiralty Court before 1836 to try crimes that occurred on the high seas outside of Common Law jurisdiction. In order to mask its relative impotency, EIC courts attempted to assert authority over as many local inhabitants and vessels by granting them British legal identities, such that even Malay kings willingly entered the legal orbit of EIC courts. This phenomenon also suggests that EIC legal forums provided a promising, and perhaps, the only avenue for redress for imperial subjects whose personalized sovereignty had been superseded by the depersonalized collective of EIC institutions.