Lampung

Lampung occupies the southern end of Sumatra, looking across the Sunda Strait towards Java. Its forests and river valleys became a major source of pepper for Banten, the powerful port on the opposite shore. The spice linked cultivators in Lampung to merchants from across the seas and made the region a prize for rival authorities.

Banten's rulers issued charters regulating pepper cultivation and trade. One charter of 1691 also set out civil and criminal rules for the people under its authority. In 1682 Sultan Haji granted the Dutch East India Company control of Lampung's spice trade in return for support in a struggle for Banten's throne. Monopoly claims were difficult to enforce: in the eighteenth century merchants from Palembang, Britain and China offered cultivators alternative buyers, drawing Lampung more deeply into wider commercial networks.