Orang_laut

Villages of Orang Laut in Riau Islands.

The Orang laut are a group of Malay people living in the Riau Islands of Indonesia. More broadly, the term encompasses the numerous tribes and status groups inhabiting the islands and estuaries in the Riau-Lingga Archipelagos, the Pulau Tujuh Islands, the Batam Archipelago, and the coasts and offshore islands of eastern Sumatra and southern Malay Peninsula.""The Malay Peninsula and Archipelago 1511–1722" The Encyclopedia of World History 2001;

The Malay term orang laut literally means the sea people. They wander in their boats upon the sea.Adriaan J. Barnouw (1946). "Cross Currents of Culture in Indonesia". The Far Eastern Quarterly 5 (2): 143–151.  Other Malay terms for the orang laut were Lanun, Celates or Orang Selat (straits people).

Historically, the orang laut were principally pirates, but they also played important roles in Srivijaya, the Sultanate of Malacca, and the Johor. They patrolled the adjacent sea areas, repelling real pirates, directing traders to their employers\' ports, and maintaining those ports\' dominance in the area.Mary Somers Heidhues. Southeast Asia: A Concise History. London: Hudson and Thames, 2000. Page 27

In one of Rudyard Kipling\'s stories the word is misrendered "Orange Lord".

See also

• Piracy in the Strait of Malacca

References

External links

• Pirates of the East
• Where the spirits roam
• Riau in Transition

 This article about an ethnic group in Asia is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia