Article

Portuguese history of Malacca

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Portuguese history of Malacca

E. Koek published this article in 1886 in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, presenting a continuous narrative of Portuguese Malacca from the first European contact in 1508 through the rise of Dutch and English maritime competition in the early seventeenth century. The text is a reprint of an 1823 article from the Malacca Observer newspaper, drawn principally from Manuel de Faria y Souza’s Asia Portugueza, with Koek supplying scholarly annotations that correct names, identify places, and cross-reference Portuguese primary sources such as Albuquerque’s Commentaries and De Barros’s Décadas.

Summary

The article traces the full arc of Portuguese Malacca as a colonial enterprise: from the founding legend of the city and its position in the pre-Cape spice trade, through Sequeira’s failed diplomatic mission and Albuquerque’s military conquest, to the decades of rebellion, siege, and administrative crisis that followed. The narrative is organised around the tension between Portuguese military superiority and the persistent inability to secure the loyalty of the native population. Rebellions by Pate Quitir, the assassination attempt by Tuan Maxiliz, the false accusations that led to the execution of the Bendara Abdela, and the repeated sieges by the King of Bintang and the King of Acheen all illustrate a pattern in which the Portuguese garrison, often reduced to a few hundred men, survived through a combination of fortification, naval power, and the rivalries among Malay and Javanese polities rather than through any stable political settlement.

Koek’s annotations are the article’s principal scholarly contribution. They correct the garbled transliterations of the 18th-century source (identifying “Pacam” as Pasei, “Bintang” as Bentan, “Hudia” as Ayutthaya), supply alternative dates where Faria y Souza conflicts with Castanheda or the Commentaries, and add geographical and linguistic identifications that ground the narrative in the physical landscape of the Straits. The article also extends beyond the conquest itself to include the Chinese conflict at Tamou (1521), the Dutch first arrival (1597) and their subsequent establishment in the Moluccas, and an English-Portuguese naval engagement off Diu, framing Malacca’s history within the broader competition among European powers for the spice trade.

Key Findings

  • Albuquerque sailed from Cochin on 2 May 1511 with 19 ships and 1,400 soldiers (800 Portuguese, 600 Malabars); the city fell within nine days of the initial landing on 24 July, and 3,000 of the 8,000 cannons Mahmud had relied upon were found in the city (pp. 122–126).
  • Sequeira’s 1508–1509 expedition left sixty Portuguese men in slavery at Malacca and suffered eight killed; Albuquerque’s first demand upon the Sultan was their restitution (pp. 120–123).
  • Pati Unus of Japara assembled a fleet of ninety sail and 12,000 men to recover Malacca; Ferdinand Perez defeated him with 350 Portuguese and native troops in seventeen vessels, after which the Javanese were “for ever banished from Malacca” (pp. 130–131).
  • The 1571 siege by the King of Acheen involved a fleet of nearly 100 sail carrying 7,000 soldiers; Tristan Vaz de Vega broke the blockade with ten vessels and 300 men, capturing or killing 700 of the enemy at the cost of five Portuguese lives (pp. 143–145).
  • The Dutch first appeared in the Indian seas in September 1597; their organised fleet of eight ships and 800 men under Jacob Cornelius van Neck sailed from Amsterdam on 13 May 1598 and returned to Holland on 20 April 1600 (pp. 146–148).
  • The 1518 siege by the King of Bintang fielded 1,500 men and 60 vessels against a garrison of only 200 (many sick); the Portuguese lost 18 men to the enemy’s 330 (p. 135).

Conclusion

Koek’s article presents Portuguese Malacca as a colony perpetually on the verge of collapse, sustained not by administrative competence but by the military improvisation of individual commanders and the fractious rivalries among its neighbours. The closing line—“How reversed is the order of things now!”—signals the author’s awareness that the narrative he has reprinted, though drawn from a Portuguese source, already belongs to a past in which Portuguese supremacy had been irrevocably displaced by Dutch and English commercial power.

Context

  • The text is a 19th-century reprint (1823, Malacca Observer) of an 18th-century Portuguese historiographical source (Faria y Souza’s Asia Portugueza), annotated by D. F. A. E. Koek, a colonial-era Straits scholar. The annotations draw on Albuquerque’s Commentaries, De Barros, Castanheda, and Antão Galvão, but the narrative voice remains that of the original Portuguese author.
  • The article’s historiographical value lies in Koek’s philological corrections and place-identifications, which make the 18th-century text usable for nineteenth-century Straits readers; it is not an independent archival study.

References