COMMENT | Historians Richard Olaf Winstedt, Richard James, Edward Hall, and Sabri Zain are very useful in understanding how Negeri Sembilan entered the modern era at the end of the 19th century.

For a revisionist version of the same, where the proverbial baby is often thrown out with the bathwater, read if you must, historians post-1971.

That out of the way, here is a quick look at the role of the undangs in Negeri Sembilan history.

In 1775, the leading penghulus of the Minangkabau settlers in Malaya led an extraordinary mission to Pagaruyung, Sumatra, their ancestral homeland, to invite a royal to rule over them.

As a side note, the root of the word penghulu is hulu, meaning head. Interestingly, the president of the Philippines is Pangulo ng Pilipinas in Tagalog.

In the Malay peninsula...