Article

Barrretto de Resende’s account of Malacca

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Barrretto de Resende’s account of Malacca

W. George Maxwell published this article in 1911 in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol. 60), presenting a translation and commentary on the Malacca section of Pedro Barretto de Resende’s Livro do Estado da India Oriental (Sloane MS 197, British Museum), a manuscript written before 1638 that offers a detailed administrative and military portrait of Portuguese Malacca on the eve of its fall to the Dutch. Maxwell’s overarching contribution is to make accessible a previously unpublished primary source that documents the garrison, commerce, fortifications, and surrounding polities of Malacca in the 1630s, supplemented by an appendix translating Godinho de Eredia’s 1613 Declaracam de Malaca e India Meridional.

Summary

The manuscript, consisting of 412 folios, is divided into three parts covering Portuguese viceroys, fortress plans from the Cape of Good Hope to Chaul, and fortress plans from Goa to China. Maxwell identifies the Malacca section as the most valuable unpublished portion and provides a full translation with extensive philological and historical footnotes. He establishes that despite the manuscript’s stated date of 1646, internal evidence—Malacca still described as a Portuguese possession (it fell on 14 January 1641), the viceroy list ending at 1638, and the death of the cosmographer Berthelot in 1635 or 1638—places composition before 1638 (p. 2).

The translated account describes a garrison town of 250 married Portuguese men with 2,000 armed black captives, three convents (St. Paul, St. Dominic, St. Augustin), and a five-storey captain’s fort. The surrounding political landscape is mapped in detail: the King of Johore and Pahang as a Portuguese ally commanding 12,000 men; the Manangkabau vassals under a Portuguese-appointed Temenggong; the trade routes to Patani, Cambodia, Cochin-China, Macassar, and China; and the growing Dutch presence at Jambi, Andregy, and the Banda Islands. Maxwell’s footnotes identify place-names, explain Malay and Portuguese terminology, and cross-reference the account with Albuquerque’s Commentaries, Godinho de Eredia, Marsden, and Chinese sources (pp. 4–11).

The appendix translates two chapters of Godinho de Eredia’s 1613 work, providing a comparative baseline that shows the decline of Malacca’s commercial importance between 1613 and the 1630s. Eredia’s account of the city’s founding by Parameswara (Permicuri), the construction of Albuquerque’s stone fortress, the layout of walls and parishes, and the legend of the Queen Putri on Gunung Ledang are rendered in full (pp. 19–24).

Key Findings

  • The manuscript’s true date of composition is before 1638, established by the viceroy list terminating in that year, Malacca’s still-Portuguese status, and the death of chartmaker Petrus Berthelot (p. 2).
  • Malacca’s garrison comprised 250 married Portuguese men and 2,000 armed captives; the captain’s fort was five storeys high with walls twenty paces wide per side, and the town levied a one-per-cent duty for fortification works (p. 4).
  • The jalea fleet of three to five vessels cruised seasonally—May to Penang, September to Junk-Ceylon, December to the Singapore Straits—carrying 50+ sailors each, with the captain receiving 100 cruzados but soldiers receiving only food (p. 6).
  • Portuguese commercial abuses, particularly captains seizing native merchandise at below-market prices, were driving trade to rival ports such as Bulla and to the Dutch, who controlled the Banda Islands and had factories at Jambi and Andregy (pp. 9–10).
  • The Saletes (Orang Laut) of the Singapore Straits functioned as Dutch spies, reporting Portuguese fleet positions and causing most Portuguese shipping losses in the region (p. 10).
  • Godinho de Eredia’s 1613 account records 7,400 Christians across eight parishes within Malacca’s jurisdiction, a total wall length of 1,310 yards, and the excommunication of tigers by the first bishop Dom Georges de Santa Lucia, after which they ceased attacking the town (pp. 22–24).

Conclusion

Maxwell’s definitive takeaway is that Barretto de Resende’s manuscript, though never published in his own time, constitutes an indispensable administrative record of Portuguese Malacca at the moment of its terminal decline, documenting both the military infrastructure that sustained the fortress and the commercial and political failures—corrupt captaincies, Dutch encirclement, and the loss of native trading partners—that made its 1641 surrender inevitable.

Context

  • The Sloane MS 197 remains unpublished in full; six of its illustrations were previously reproduced in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of Albuquerque’s Commentaries (p. 3).
  • Maxwell was writing from Kedah and acknowledged his inability to obtain biographical information on de Resende, limiting the article to textual and cartographic analysis (p. 2).

References