Tanah Air: Passing Through the Malay Archipelago

Ahmad Murad Merican
Paperback, 198 pages
9789839379686

This is a cultural history of the Malay Archipelago that narrates and re-tells ideas, episodes and places in the region. The collective experience of the rantau is brought to mind and recontextualized to make clear that the histories of Melaka, Kedah, Tanjong — and by extension Malay society and the Malay Archipelago — are integral to global history. This region is where civilizations and cultures meet; where its rivers, straits and seas give life to communities and societies, over centuries. The Alam Melayu, expressed through the Tanah Air, is never an ambiguous notion to its inhabitants. It is a cosmopolitan world with a historical, cultural and sociological reality.