Daripada Peradaban Kepada Infrastruktur: Kesan Kuasa Perdagangan Barat Terhadap Tamadun Maritim Pahang, Abad ke-19 hingga ke-20/ From Civilisation to Infrastructure: The Impact of Western Commercial Powers on Pahang’s Maritime Civilisation, 19th to 20th Centuries

Maritime history of the Malay world has commonly been interpreted through entrepot ports, oceanic trade and sea-borne networks, while territories whose maritime character developed through interactions between inland areas, rivers, estuaries and coasts have received less attention. Pahang represents an important example of this form of maritime development. The Pahang River system, together with the Jelai, Tembeling, Semantan and Bera rivers, connected inland production zones with settlements, centres of authority and the coast. Gold mining before direct British intervention demonstrates that Pahang’s inland areas were already incorporated into exchange networks dependent on riverine mobility, while the Hukum Kanun Pahang (HKP) reveals an established structure of governance, law and commercial regulation. This study employs historical document analysis and thematic content analysis of local sources, Pahang-specific scholarship and comparative works on maritime history, Islamic law and colonialism. The findings show that British intervention after 1888 did not create the economic functions of rivers or resource-based activities, but reorganised authority, revenue administration, relations with capital and the functions of aquatic space. Rivers that had integrated mobility, economy, politics and social life increasingly acquired institutional importance for communication, administration and commodity transport. The phrase from civilisation to infrastructure therefore refers to a transformation in the hierarchy of functions and centres of authority rather than the wholesale replacement of a pre-colonial system. The river–estuary–coast framework adopted in this study situates inland areas within the maritime world and broadens our understanding of the diversity of aquatic civilisations in the Malay world.