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Orang Laut |
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.1
The Malay term orang laut literally means the sea people. They wander in their boats upon the sea.2 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 Sultanate of Johor. They patrolled the adjacent sea areas, repelling real pirates, directing traders to their employers' ports, and maintaining those ports' dominance in the area.3 Eda Green wrote in 1909, "The Lanuns, supposed to have come from the Philippines, are Mohammedans and are dying out; they were one of the most aggressive tribes in their wild piracy, raiding not only the coasts, but stealing away the children of the Dusuns and Ida'an."4
In the story "The Disturber of Traffic" by Rudyard Kipling, a character Fenwick misrenders it as "Orange-Lord", and the narrator character corrects him to "Orang-Laut".
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