Transcendentalist Intransigence: Why Rulers Rejected Monotheism in Early Modern Southeast Asia and Beyond ALAN STRATHERN Clare Hall, Cambridge Two rulers, one in Africa, one in Asia, are about to undergo the ceremony of baptism following first contact with the Portuguese maritime expansion—but they insist that the rite be conducted in secret. The African ruler is a regional governor (the Mani Soyo) of the Congo King Nzinga Nkuwu who has just con- verted in 1491. 1 The high king’s diplomatic exchanges with the sea captain Diogo Ca ˜o had not elicited any real sensation of vulnerability to Portuguese imperial designs, yet he had been happy to convert nonetheless. Now the Mani Soyo is about to follow suit, but he will not have any of his subordinates witnessing the ritual because he does not want them benefiting from the enhanced status and power that the ritual could bestow. In the highlands of Sri Lanka some fifty years later, the King of Kandy is equally intent on keeping his baptismal rites hidden from public view. But his reasons are strik- ingly different. He does this “lest his people should kill him.” 2 When news of the baptism did leak out rioting followed, and the king had to spread the story that it had all been a ploy to deceive the Portuguese. 3 In one part of the world, conversion to monotheism appears to raise the status of political elites, in another part it is as poison for their legitimacy. We can run this dividing line through early modern Southeast Asia too. In the archipelagic region most of the major centers, typically located on the coasts or up the major waterways by the early modern period, had converted to Islam by 1650 and begun extending their authority into the hinterland, while the Philippines rapidly converted to Christianity. 4 Contrast this with the mainland region of Acknowledgments: I am deeply grateful to Geoffrey Hawthorn and Peter Carey for reading and commenting on this paper, and to an anonymous CSSH reader for a helpful re-working of its structure. 1 MacGaffey 1994: 253–58; Thornton 1984. 2 According to a report of a letter by him: Sima ˜o de Coimbra to Joa ˜o III, Goa, 25 Nov. 1546, in Schurhammer and Voretzsch 1928: 421. 3 Schurhammer and Voretzsch 1928: 356–57. 4 The exception is Bali, which managed to retain a broadly Hinduized culture (see below). Comparative Studies in Society and History 2007;49(2):358 – 383. 0010-4175/07 $15.00 # 2007 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History DOI: 10.1017/S0010417507000527 358 of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417507000527 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Oxford, on 06 Apr 2018 at 06:32:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms