Stranger King

It highlights the imposition of colonialism not as the result of the breaking of the spirit of local communities by brute force, or as reflecting an ignorant peasantry's acquiescence in the lies of its self-interested leaders, but as a people's rational and productive acceptance of an opportunity offered.

He argued that indigenous societies in a state of ‘Warre’ would tend to welcome the arrival of an impartial and strong Stranger King capable of resolving conflict, since his position outside and above the community would give him a unique authority.

Consistent with this theory, scholars such as Jim Fox and Leonard Andaya have emphasized parallels between (east) Indonesia and the Pacific world, while David Henley has applied the Stranger King concept on North Sulawesi.

[1] The Dutch East India Company and before them the Spanish provided a Stranger King solution to the central political dilemma of northern Sulawesi's fractious and litigious indigenous communities.

Henley in fact presents abundant indigenous (e.g., Bugis and Makasarese) chronicles and accounts collected by anthropologists that explain, and legitimize, the process of pre-colonial and later colonial state formation in similar terms, and not just in the Minahassa or Southeast Asia, but worldwide.

Within three years the nobles had come to realize that they had lost too much power under the British regime, and they intended once more to install a South Indian Stranger King named Dore Swami.