By Nur Diyana

For centuries, Southeast Asia—comprising the vast archipelagic region of what includes present-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and parts of the Philippines—has been defined by its deep maritime connectivity. Long before the arrival of European powers, seafarers within and beyond the region, charted the waters of the Java Sea, the Straits of Malacca, and beyond, forging extensive networks of trade, diplomacy, and cultural exchange. The development of vessels that are not only seaworthy but are also capable of transporting large amounts of goods and even passengers is a key feature of this capacity (Manguin, 1993). The sophisticated and well-made early ships enabled many maritime pre-colonial Southeast Asian kingdoms to experience significant economic growth and facilitate the movement of people and ideas throughout the region.

This thriving maritime world also drew traders, diplomats, and explorers from afar, including Chinese envoys recorded in the Ming Shi Lu (Wade, 2005), Indian merchants (Miksic, 2013), Arab seafarers (Flecker, 2001), and travelers like Ma Huan (Yingyai Shenglan, Mills, 1970), reflecting Southeast Asia’s integration into wider transoceanic networks well before European colonial expansion. The region was hence not only a vibrant melting pot of cultures, where diverse peoples interacted and exchanged knowledge, it was also an important hub of global interconnectedness.

But remarkably, as Abu-Lughod (1989) observes, a region that once served as the crossroads of global maritime routes, has had so little voice in its own historical narrative. Despite her efforts to examine indigenous documents, she found that our early knowledge of the Nusantara comes almost exclusively from external reports.

One such voice emerges from an extraordinary 1880s manuscript written in Bugis Lontara script, interwoven with Malay, Arabic, and even English terms rendered in Jawi Malay — the Daeng Paduppa manuscript. The reading and examination of the text is still ongoing. While the name ‘Daeng Paduppa’ has not yet appeared explicitly within the document, our decision to refer to it as the ‘Daeng Paduppa text’ came from the book’s keeper consistently using this designation. This naming has been adopted for practical purposes. The provenance of the Daeng Paduppa manuscript, though partly obscured by time, offers insights into its historical and cultural significance. The manuscript is believed to have originated in the South Sulawesi region, a heartland of Bugis seafaring and intellectual activity in the nineteenth century. It appears to have remained in familial custody for several decades before narrowly escaping destruction in a house fire in the early 2000s — an event that underscored both the fragility of such historical materials and the urgency of their documentation. Thanks to the vigilance of community custodians and timely intervention, the manuscript was subsequently donated through Universitas Muslim Indonesia to NUS Libraries, where it was conserved, digitised, and made accessible to researchers. Its survival, while precarious, is a reminder of the deep wells of local knowledge still held outside formal archives — and the collaborative efforts needed to protect, understand, and honour them.

The manuscript functions more accurately as a “journal-log,” systematically recording travels, daily occurrences, and observations on maritime life and socio-cultural dynamics. This document challenges conventional historiography by offering a firsthand account from within Southeast Asia, reflecting the perspectives, concerns, and intellectual world of its author. Unlike the accounts of European traders, colonial officials, or foreign chroniclers, it serves as a testament to local agency in recording and interpreting maritime experiences during a time of profound upheaval.

Despite the challenges facing the traditional kingdoms of the region, the violence and instability of the late nineteenth century spurred individuals such as Raja Ali Haji of the Riau-Lingga Sultanate to reflect upon and record their community’s historical experiences, as seen in Tuhfat al-Nafis (Raja Ali Haji). Such works demonstrate the enduring power of literature and intellectual thought in preserving cultural memory and shaping identity during times of crisis. Viewed in this light, the Daeng Paduppa manuscript represents a similar yet distinctively Bugis mode of historical and experiential recording — deeply local, deeply personal, yet also resonant with broader regional traditions of knowledge-making.

While colonial intervention disrupted local systems of knowledge and movement in multiple ways, one of the most direct consequences was the loss of manuscripts and records. Some of this loss resulted from violent attacks on literary centres, such as the British assault on the Sultanate of Bone in June 1814, which led to the seizure of 34 manuscripts that were subsequently added to the British Library (Gallop 2020). Another significant loss occurred in 1824 when the Fame, carrying Stamford Raffles and his collection of artifacts, sank, taking with it five leather chests filled with texts in Malay, Javanese, Balinese, and Bugis (Hijjas 2022).

Beyond such violent interventions, even seemingly benign transactions—such as the purchase of manuscripts from willing sellers—had detrimental effects on indigenous textual traditions. Proudfoot (2003) argues that European collectors, rather than preserving these traditions, inadvertently undermined them by removing manuscripts from the social contexts that had sustained them. The extraction of these texts disrupted existing systems of access and transmission, accelerating the decline of indigenous manuscript cultures rather than preventing their disappearance. Furthermore, colonial-era collecting practices rarely document provenance, severing manuscripts from their original historical and cultural milieus—what Carey (1974) has termed their “cultural ecology”. Compounding this, institutions like the Bataviaasch Genootschap and British collectors often commissioned in-house scribes to produce clean copies, stripping these manuscripts of paratextual and codicological markers such as marginalia, commentaries, and illustrations. As a result, many colonial-era manuscripts exist as decontextualised texts, abstracted from the material conditions of their production, circulation, and use, with only the annotations of colonial scholars providing any interpretive frame (Hijjas 2022). 

These layers of disruption—ranging from violent confiscations to the subtle erasures of scribal intervention—have left many surviving manuscripts adrift from their original social, cultural, and intellectual moorings. As a result, their meanings risk being misinterpreted or diminished when viewed solely through colonial or institutional lenses. Therefore, there is a pressing need to re-contextualise such texts—to situate them once again within the worlds that produced and sustained them. This process not only restores interpretive depth but also affirms the agency and intellectual sovereignty of local voices. 

The journal-log’s multilingualism itself is revealing. The primary script, Bugis Lontara, signifies the author’s Bugis identity, while the presence of Jawi Malay and Arabic suggests an engagement with broader Islamic and Malay literary traditions. The inclusion of English, albeit written in Jawi, hints at colonial encounters and the realities of global commerce in the late 19th century. This linguistic layering reflects the hybridity of the Nusantara’s maritime communities, where multiple cultural and linguistic traditions intersected in daily life. The very presence of English terms—drawn from the Gregorian calendar and colonial administrative language—signals the deep entanglement of local lifeworlds with other systems. While these are English terms, their appearance in Jawi script within a largely Buginese journal-log reveals how local authors appropriated and localised foreign temporalities and vocabularies. Such multilingualism is not merely functional, but indicative of the region’s historical cosmopolitanism and its ability to absorb and reinterpret external influences. 

Beyond its textual richness, the journal-log contains striking visual elements that warrant closer examination. Among its illustrations are depictions of the putaran naga (coiling dragon) and rising naga, motifs that may carry cosmological, navigational, or protective significance. These illustrations, far from being mere embellishments, offer a glimpse into how the author conceptualised movement, power, and protection within the maritime world. 

Another notable illustrative feature of the journal-log is its inclusion of an Islamic calendar page, reflecting the ways in which timekeeping and religious observances structured everyday life. The synchronisation of Islamic dates suggests that religious frameworks played a role in the temporal organisation of seafaring activities, trade cycles, and community gatherings. The journal-log’s earliest recorded date—1301 Hijriah (1883)—provides a crucial temporal anchor, situating this text within a period of significant economic and political flux in the region. The late 19th century witnessed intensified colonial interventions, shifts in trade patterns (Ota 2013, Kobayashi 2013, Reid 1981), and transformations in local governance, all of which likely shaped the journal-log’s production and purpose. 

Ultimately, this manuscript is more than a personal record; it is a window into an indigenous knowledge system that defies the Eurocentric framing of maritime history. Its linguistic diversity, visual motifs, and temporal markers attest to the intellectual sophistication of Bugis and Nusantara maritime communities. By analysing this journal-log, we not only recover a lost voice from the past but also challenge the dominance of colonial and external narratives in Southeast Asian historiography. In doing so, we affirm the agency of indigenous knowledge producers and underscore the importance of centering local perspectives in reconstructing the region’s maritime heritage. 

The Daeng Paduppa manuscript is part of the Bugis-Makassar Repository held at NUS Libraries. This project is a collaboration between NUS Libraries and Universitas Muslim Indonesia, in partnership with lead researcher Dr Mohamed Effendy bin Abdul Hamid from the NUS Southeast Asian Studies Department. 

The writer would like to express her gratitude to Dr. Effendy for his insightful comments and feedback on this piece.

References

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