The fertile Minangkabai highlands became the habitat of the Austronesian-speaking communities which arrived here first in Sumatera and started irrigated rice cultures. The first European visitors, like Raffles, were amazed about the high population density.
About the history of Sumatera Barat before 1400, little is known, however mines in the highlands were already exporting gold since fairly early times, which gave the island the name
Svarnadvipa ('Golden Island'). The western coast knows a big number of dangerous reefs, this caused that merchandize was carried along the Indragiri River to the harbours along the eastern coast. Near Indrapura, in the southern part of the province, a small bronze head of Buddha was found, is is not shown in the museum of Padang, but furthermore very little objects from the ancient times were found. We have to accept that these highlands were only the border areas of the civilizations of the eastern coast, Srivijaya and Melayyu, which got their wealth from overseas trade.
Origins from overseas
Legends from the islamic period tell about the Minangkabau that they descended from Sri Maharajo Dirajo ('The Glorious King of the Kings'), a descendant of Alexander the Great, whos ship sailed to Sumatera, and was stuck on Gunung Merapi, which, at that time, rose from the ocean floor. When the water level dropped, he and his people settles in Pariangan ('Stay of the Ancestors'), a village in the Tanahdatar Valley, on the southern slope of the vulcano. From here they spread over the nearby valleys of Agam and Limapuluh Kota ('Five Fortresses').
Another popular legend tells about the treathening attack by a big army from Jawa. The much smaller Minangkabau settles the whole issue by organising a buffalo-fight, instead of a war. The Jawanese agreed and appeared with a giant animal from Jawa. The Minang only brought a small calf for the fight. The Jawanese didn't know that the valf didn't have anything to eat for days and that a knife was attached to it's mouth. The calf smelled the belly of the big animal and cut it right away. The Jawanese retreated, and the Minangkabau claim that their name came from that event,
minang ('overwin'), and
kabau ('buffalo').
The Jawanese indeed attacked Sumatera several times in the late 13th and 14th century: centuries old walls of soil with names like Kota Jawa ('Jawanese Fortress'), are witnesses of their presence. The story of the calf is rather unplausible, and the name Minangkabau probably originates from
pinang kabhu, an expression which means 'original house'.
Conversion to islam
Only in the 14th century, the first written history appears, when a Jawanese-Sumateran ruler, Adityavarman, left behind inscriptions in stone around Tanahdatar. His government seems to have little influence, and after his death (his last inscription was from 1374), little is known about his successors.
The important conversion to the islam which started about this time, can be dated back to the geowing trading contacts with India and some influence from Aceh. In the 16th century, massive amounts of gold were exported from Western Sumatera. Portuguese sources reported that islamic traders from Gujarat (Northwestern India), stopped in Pariaman along the western coast to trade fabrics for gold. At the end of the 16th century, the Acehnese sultanate demanded sovereignty over Pariaman, and the next sixty years, trade from Mthe Minangkabau areas was prohibited; Western Sumateran products were able to be trades through the harbour of Banda Aceh.
During the 16th and 17th century Sumatera became a very important area for the export of pepper, which attracted traders from India, China and Portugal (and later on from Holland and England too). The Dutch got rule over Padang in 1663, and founded a reinforced trading post along the banks of the river Batang Arau, which is now the office of the governor of Western Sumatera. A Portuguese representative which was sent to the Minang royal court, came home with the first description of the highlands in 1683. A group of three leaders ruled over one of the three Minang valleys, and their power stretched over the neighboring Batak and Rejang.
At the end of the 18th century the coastal areas came under English rule twice, the first time during the Anglo-Dutch war of 1781-1784. However Padang was given back to the Dutch later on, the Brittish kept on selling pepper and gold from Pariaman. This caused Bukit Tinggi and the surrounding Agam to get more wealthy than the royal court in Tanahdatar. Padang went to the English again between 1795 and 1819, during the Napoleontic wars, when the eastern posessions of the Dutch were trusted with the British.
The Paderi-wars
The centralised Minangkabau rule lasted until the end of the 18th century. The power was bases on rule over the mines, but against 1780, there was no more gold. New sources of income, like coffee, salt, gambir and textile, were in the hands of islamic traders, which started a growing islamic reform movement because of it's commercial activities.
The refomers were guided by the Paderi, straight-forward teachers in religion which didn't accept the bad practice of islamic laws, as well as the Minangkabau adat which allowed women to play an very important role. Most worldleaders, the royal family included, were slaughtered because they didn't want to obey to the orders of the Paderi.
Violence broke out in the village of Pandai Sikat in Agam in 1803 (nowadays a peacefull centre of traditional weavery and woodcarvings), when a Paderi reformist, frustrated by his efforts to abolish chickenfights, gambling, use of opium and drinking of palm-wine, burned the city council. The ideas of the Paderi were heard by the more poor villages on the slopes of the valleys where there was much less food, and towards 1821, the hills of Agam were mostly controlled by them. The Limapuluh Kota-area converted too, probably without much resistance. In Tanahdatar, heavy resistance was given, but both parties lost.
Towards the time of the visit of Raffles in 1818, the royal court in Pagarruyung was destroyed three times. The religious writer of the Paderi even spread towards the area of the Tapanuli (southern Batak), which accepted islam with the knife on their throat.
After the end of the French rule the Dutch returned to Padang, where they discovered that trade in the highlands had suffered heavily from the violence. Fear that the Paderi would harm their position, the Dutch signed a treaty with the nephew of Raja Alam of Pagarruyung, which escaped from fights and now lived in padang, in 1821. He gave the Tanahdatar Valley to the Dutch, and on the location of the current Bukit Tinggi a fortress was built, 'Fort de Kock'.
The Dutch used this fortress, assisted by the local population, to spread their rule over a big part of the Tanahdatar Valley and Agam, Pandai Sikat included. The Paderi however, gave heavy resistance and brought the extensions to a halt in 1823. While th war lasted, the Dutch stopped trade and miliotary pressure rose.
In 1831, new fights broke out and this time the Dutch were more successfull. The war ended in 1837, when the city of Bonjol, named after the most powerfull Paderi leader, imam Bonjol, wat eventually captured. The power was finally broken, and the highlands were under tight Dutch rule.
Battle for independence
In the 19th century, arguments over the right form of islam and the pass of changes in the traditional Minangkabau culture continued. West Sumaterans also played an importsant role in the modernistic muslem movement from the start of the 20th century, especially in their battle for better education, schools for women included. In the 1920, many Minangkabau got frustrated over the lack of good jobs, and in 1926 an armoured revolt broke out, started by communists. Many participants of thi revolt were arrested and brough to the feared Dutch prison-camp 'Boven-Digoel', New Guinee.
After the Second World War Padang was the centre of riots between Britisch soldiers and young Indonesian revolutionairies. During the revolution Bukit Tinggi even was the capital of Indonesia for a short time. On 27 July 1947 the Dutch started razzia's on Jawa and arrested several nationalist leaders. Shortly before is arrestation, Soekarno telegraphed his Minister of Finance in Bukit Tinggi and named him head of an emergency government. International pressure forced the Dutch to release the republican leaders, and on 1 January 1950 Sumatera Barat became a province of the just independent Republik Indonesia.
