Nineteenth century Kelantan: a Malay tributary state

Abstract

It is the intention of this easy to explore some of the forms of social relations of production between those who control the state apparatus and thus the instruments of power and those who produce and operate in the agricultural, mining and trading sectors. Sociologically there existed historically specific structured relations between men who participated in processes of social production. It is only by probing in this direction that it is possible to reconstruct the concrete historical reality of Kelantan state and society from diverse sources ranging from Malay Hikayat, cerita and sejarah to Chinese, Thai, Dutch and British records. These sources contain invaluable material on aspects of the state and society but in themselves they do not shed much light directly on the social relations of production which form the structure of society, the real foundations on which arises a superstructure of laws, politics, literature, art and so forth.