Travel and Survival in the Colonial Malay World: Mobility, Region, and the World in Johor Elite Strategies, 1818–1914

Travel and travel narratives are not only important in the study of cross-cultural encounters but also central in the sociopolitical and historical imaginaries and structures of societies, especially in the case of the maritime Malay world. This study examines the place of travel in the strategies of Malay world elites in the context of colonial expansion. The travels and mobility of the elites from the Johor polity, which was divided as a result of the 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty and the indirect delineation of British and Dutch imperial spheres, highlighted not only their engagement with different conceptions of region, world, and modernity and their networks, but also how the history of colonialism in the Malay world region is inextricably linked to the making of the modern world-system and contesting circuits of modernity.