Afterword: The Malay World, Besides Empire and Nation

This article examines a long fin de siècle when a Malay world – multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-layered in its forms of authority – was coming under pressure from new forms of empire and, over time, the rise of the nation-state. It reflects on recent scholarly understandings of the Malay world, as showcased in this special issue, in order to illuminate the end of the period in question. It takes a series of journeys – those of Mohamed Ibrahim Munshi in the western part of the Malay Peninsula in 1871 and 1872, and those of his patron, Maharajah Abu Baker, to the East and West – to show the layers of a ‘new’ Malay world, situated within the Indian Ocean and horizons beyond. It then examines the nature of the ‘worldliness’ of the Malay world, and its sites, at this time of transition to ask: in a world of multiple connections and networks, which had particular saliency? And to what extent a transnational lens might challenge traditional chronologies and narratives?