Lampung

The Lampung are the indigenous Austronesian people of the southern tip of Sumatra, around Tulang Bawang River and the bay that bears their name. Chinese annals record their country of Po-huang sending embassies as early as the fifth century, and from the late seventh century the coast came under the Buddhist Srivijaya empire.

In 1337 the highlanders and river villagers lived under small chiefdoms tracing descent from the legendary Sekala Brak kingdom, dividing in time into the coastal Saibatin and interior Pepadun custom groups. They spoke Lampung and wove the famed ship-cloth textiles and tapis skirts.

The pepper of their country then drew outside conquest: from the mid-sixteenth century the Banten Sultanate under Maulana Hasanuddin brought the southern and eastern coasts under its rule and monopolized the pepper trade by the seventeenth century, until the Dutch annexed the Lampung districts in 1752.