Bugis

But if we actually go into the records and we actually dig a bit deeper, look not so far back into the early 1900s perhaps, we'll see that it's the same community, just some happened to become Christian and some happened to become Muslim, based on the context and political climate as well.

And so digging into both the DNA records of doing DNA testing, we'll find that so many people, whether you're colored Malay or even identifying as Afrikaner, have a significant portion of Southeast Asian, particularly Javanese DNA, and probably more so Bugis, right? Most of your Southeast Asian enslaved people came from the Sulawesi region, the Bugis people.

But also in the archives, you know, going to the slave records, I can picture in my mind right now the slave register of Jan Frederik Serurier that owned what is today 64 Wales Street.

And in his slave register, there's probably about two or three people there.

Malay culture is so diverse.

And I get really worried when I meet Malays in Peninsular Malaysia who cannot answer me when I ask them, you say that you're Malay, but what is your heritage? Are you Bugis or Javanese? Some people have no idea how to answer that question.

Some Malays have no idea how to answer that question in Peninsular Malaysia.

And that homogenization removes specificity, it removes nuance, it removes kind of just like your actual connection with culture because people don't even realize that they're conflating this political identity that has been handed to them as opposed to, you know, like, what are your grandparents' stories and how are you connected to ancestry?

He could never know enough of the monarch of whom he spoke with wonder and chivalrous respect, with a kind of affectionate awe.

Afterwards when we had learned that he was the son of a woman who had many years ago ruled a small Bugis state, we came to suspect that the memory of his mother, of whom he spoke with enthusiasm, mingled somehow in his mind with the image he tried to form for himself of the far-off Queen whom he called great, invincible, pious, and fortunate.

We had to invent details at last to satisfy his craving curiosity, and our loyalty must be pardoned, for we tried to make them fit for his august and resplendent ideal.

We talked.

He liked to talk with me because I had known some of these men.

He seemed to think that I could understand him, and with a fine confidence assumed that I, at least, could appreciate how much greater he was himself.

But he preferred to talk of his native country, a small Bugis state on the island of Celebes.

I had visited some time before, and he asked eagerly for news.