LAUDDIN; MARSDEN, William (trans.)

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Memoirs of a Malayan Family, First edition, uncommon in commerce, of the first translation of the landmark biography Hikayat Nakhoda Muda. According to Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir, the father of modern Malay literature, the text was among the most important Malay works published in his lifetime. The ornamental subscriber's leaf names the third Marquess of Londonderry, who served under the future Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular War.Memoirs of a Malayan Family describes the changing fortunes of three generations of the same family and is centred on Nakhoda Muda, an influential pepper trader in the Sumatra region with close links to the sultan. The arrival of a British ship captained by Thomas Forrest causes antagonisms between Malays and the Dutch, who accuse Muda's family of selling pepper to the British - a charge which forces them to flee to seek the protection of the British resident. The text provides important insights into British-Dutch tensions in Java and Sumatra and the way local rulers and commercial elites adapted and responded to these conflicts.Lauddin (Muda's son) transcribed this account around 1788 for Butter Hunnings, the English factor in Lais (southern Sumatra). The manuscript was brought to England in 1791 and translated by William Marsden (1754-1836), an East India Company civil servant and a future first secretary to the admiralty, while he was engaged compiling a dictionary of the Malayan language. The manuscript is now found in the Marsden Collect

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