The Story of Malacca

Copyright © 2022 by Allein G. Moore.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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To the Malaccans who have shown me such kindness, despite my inadequacies in the Malay language, and embraced me as part of their community.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Seeding of Malaysia

Chapter 2 Why Malacca?

Chapter 3 The First Sultan and the Chinese Emperor

Chapter 4 The Foundations

Chapter 5 Expansion and Moral Decline

Chapter 6 Slavery

Chapter 7 Religion

Chapter 8 The Fall of Malacca

Chapter 9 Portuguese Rule, 1511 - 1640

Chapter 10 Dutch Rule, 1641 - 1825

Chapter 11 British Rule, 1825 - 1957

Chapter 12 The Legends and Myths

Chapter 13 They Call Malacca Home

Chapter 14 The People who Helped Make Malacca

Chapter 15 The Japanese Occupation

Chapter 16 Post-war and the Emergency

Chapter 17 Malacca’s Growing Pains

Chapter 18 Malls versus Malacca

Chapter 19 The Future as History

Bibliography

Sultans and Spices,

Guns and Greed,

Race and Religion:

The Story of Malacca

Introduction

Just a leaflet to give house guests. That’s how this book started. As a recently transplanted resident, I wanted to know more about my adopted city. However, the city guidebooks and online tourist websites gave but a sketchy idea of the history.

I spent almost forty years living and working in Singapore, a city state that transformed itself in that time into a modern, vibrant, and surprisingly livable metropolis. Both on business and pleasure, I travelled extensively around the region but Malacca,* this historic gem on the west coast of Malaysia, drew me back time and time again. I grew to love this untidy and seemingly unplanned city. It’s not in the scope of this book, but I must highlight how delightful are the Malaccans themselves. Thank goodness, they have not lost the small-town friendliness, which often disappears in larger cities. I have been grateful for their kindness and their surprising trust of a stranger many times since I moved here. I have also been helped with details given in this book from several Malaccans who have shared their memories or knowledge.

At the time of writing, it is exactly fifty years since the last book was published on this subject. A Short History of Malacca appeared in 1971 and claimed to be the first book ever written on the history of this city. I can find no trace of the author, Marcus Scott-Ross, who also wrote a tour guide of Malacca. Chopmen Enterprise, a tour company which published his book, has sadly shut down.

However, I am grateful to Mr. Scott-Ross’s writings for encouraging me to delve into some lesser-known areas. But a word of caution. Apart from this author, I consulted many sources and often found significant differences in historic detail. Faced with this, I have either chosen the version that seems to most likely be accurate or I have given the alternatives. For recent times, there is more material available, but these often seem very partisan. I have tried to be even-handed in my own presentation of events. Forgive me for any inaccuracies in the text or any interpretation with which you disagree. I also apologise if I have inadvertently plagiarised the words of another writer or infringed a copyright.

This does not pretend to be an extensive or even an authoritative history book. There are some excellent books covering early and modern periods in Malaysian history, and if this small volume encourages you to read further, that will please me. Neither is it a guidebook. I touch on sight-seeing spots only for their role in Malaccan history. The content expanded far beyond the leaflet I had planned as I explored the long and fascinating past of Malacca. The book covers the history right up to Malayan Emergency, which started after the Second World War, and touches on Malacca’s brief role in the final chapter of independence.

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Once I realised I had so much to include, I accepted my task was to ensure the content remained easily digested. I sent the manuscript to the publisher still wondering if I should have edited some parts or alternatively worrying that I had left significant bits out.

Malacca is the oldest city still surviving in the peninsula of Malaysia and has experienced many cultural influences over the years. If you are planning to visit, I hope after reading this history, you may enjoy more deeply the clues from the past that can be found all over the city. If you are a Malaccan, I want this book to instill pride in your hometown. It is a special place. And if you are someone in the administration, I want to remind you that you are but a brief player in Malacca’s long history, and you must do all in your power to preserve and enhance the legacy entrusted to you.

Before the fall of city, the Malacca Sultanate had expanded to cover Malayan Peninsula and ruled parts of what is now Indonesia and Thailand.

Copyright Artsthetic Studio

CHAPTER 1

The Seeding of Malaysia

Before we get into the history of this UNESCO Heritage city, let us look back to the story of the peninsula of Malaysia as a whole. It can be said that the history of Malacca is, in fact, the history of Malaya. For centuries, the peninsular was largely under the control of the king of Siam but it was under the Malaccan sultans that the kingdom expanded to embrace the whole of what is now Malaysia (and even included parts of Indonesia).

When Homo-sapiens moved beyond Africa, groups slowly spread across Asia and right down to Australia. At that time, we are told, the landmasses were not separated by water as today but connected, which explains how the Australian aborigines managed to get to that remote land mass. The first group arrived in the eastern archipelago around 60,000 years ago, followed by a second wave 3,500 years ago and yet a third, a mere 2,500 years ago. These three waves can be identified within the tribes of the current Orang Asli (original people) by archeologists, linguists, and geneticists. These are the true indigenous people of Malay Peninsula.

Stephen Oppenheimer, a geneticist from Oxford University, estimates that around ten thousand from the original African exodus moved down through Southeast Asia, leaving settlements that chart their course over thousands of years.

The earliest arrivals were the nomadic Negritos. The groups that followed were not nomadic but agriculturalists and worked in bronze to produce tools and weapons. Their forefathers can be traced back to China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The final group, the Proto Malays, originating in Yunnan, China, came through the Philippines, spreading down through Borneo and Java. The earlier settlers retreated into the jungles while the later waves settled alongside rivers or the coast. We can see this even today with the settlement of the groups. The agricultural Senoi in Central Malaya, the hunter-gathers Negritos to the north, while the Proto-Malay are found closer to coast or river locations. Through exposure, the Proto Malays eventually became what are termed the Deutro-Malays and can be considered the ancestors of the modern Malay.

The migrants who settled in Indonesia are called ‘Duano’ and today are greater in number than the ‘Orang Asli’ found in Malaysia.

While the Orang Asli today only make up 0.7 percent of the population of Malaysia, these early inhabitants flourished in the forests, which offered a wide variety of fruits and choice of game to hunt. Of course, in those days, tigers were more plentiful and so themselves may often have become prey! The settlements on the mouth of rivers like Sungai Malacca enjoyed plentiful seafood and would develop from fishing villages to small trading posts.

Life for these villagers remained largely tranquil for many, many years. But around two thousand years ago, they woke up one morning to see sails on the horizon. These were Indian traders who soon became familiar visitors to these coastal settlements as their ships voyaged around the Malay Peninsula and down the Indonesian archipelago. By the second century, a stable and regular trade had been built between these traders and several small established kingdoms or chiefdoms. It was through contact with these Indian traders that the influence of Indian culture began to be felt right across Southeast Asia. The Hindu and Buddhist religions swept through this part of Asia, replacing animism and shamanism, although neither fully died out.

Indian ideas influenced the local culture and even the architecture. The current Malay language is said to contain 40 per cent or more words of Sanskrit origin; for example, bahasa (language), raja (monarch), keluarga (family), and harga (price) to name but a few.

Long before Malacca became a major port, the state of Kedah, located further north on the peninsula had a flourishing community possibly dating back 2,535 years. Excavations in Bujang Valley (Lembah Bujang in Malay) revealed a sophisticated society. The historic site covers 224 square kilometres. There are at least thirty sites where ancient Hindu/Buddhist architectural structures have been found. Brick kilns and extensive iron smelting works have been uncovered as well as a jetty. These remains predate the Borobudur Temple complex in Java and are believed to be the oldest man-made structures in Southeast Asia. Shockingly, a land developer in 2013 demolished a 1,200-year-old Hindu temple, which was on private land and for which there was no protection under state laws. Currently, there is little information on these ancient people. There is even a theory that they were settlers from India and not local people. Whatever its origins, this settlement disappeared, and much was lost under palm oil plantations until recent years. Today archeologists are still carefully uncovering clues and interesting finds. Malaysia should be proud to be the home of the earliest known civilisation in Southeast Asia.

Kedah, because of its position at the beginning of Straits of Malacca and facing the Bay of Bengal, continued to offer traders an important port until Malacca replaced it in prominence.

While Malacca was still sleeping, the powerful Hindu Srivijaya empire was developing and by the seventh century stretched across Sumatra, down to most of Java, and right across the Malay Peninsula and up into what is now Southern Thailand. It traded with India and China and did business with merchants from the Middle East.

The Srivijaya empire was gradually weakened by attacks from the Indian Chola dynasty in eleventh century and was all but destroyed by the Javanese at the end of the thirteenth century. Very little physical evidence remains, and our knowledge of this highly developed kingdom comes mainly from Chinese, Arab, and Indian records.

Living in Palembang, Sumatra, one of the remaining outposts of the shrinking Srivijaya Empire, was a prince who, it is said, eventually established the Malacca Sultanate.

It was out of Java, not Sumatra, that the next powerful kingdom arose. This was the Hindu Majapahit empire, founded in 1293 and which, at its peak, stretched right down the Indonesian archipelago as far as East Timor and New Guinea, up the Malay Peninsula to Southern Thailand and even across to parts of the Philippines. The Chinese explorer Zheng He, who features prominently in Malaccan history, recorded several visits to this kingdom. This was, however, to be the last of the major Hindu empires in Southeast Asia, and by around 1527, it too faded away.

The Siamese Empire (now Thailand) was also at its peak during this period and had a strong footprint in the peninsula of Malaysia.

The king of Siam may not have even been aware of it, but there was a small riverside settlement on the west coast of Malaya that was part of his kingdom. It was called by the locals Ulu-hsu (Five Islets) after five islands in the vicinity. We know it now as Malacca.

CHAPTER 2

Why Malacca?

Had you sailed down the Straits of Malacca before the end of the fourteenth century you would have probably missed this small river mouth unless the Orang Laut (sea gypsies) who hung out there sailed out to greet you on a piracy mission!

What did this particular village offer that eventually led to it being one of the major trading ports in the world? Why did its geographical position make it so valuable?

Many of the great cities of the world owe their birth to a large river or deep harbour on a coast. But nature was not so helpful to Malacca. The river was small and sluggish, and the harbour entrance was prone to silting up. But this small settlement on the west coast of Malaya was geographically and strategically ideally placed halfway down the peninsula, facing a popular sea passage we now call the Straits of Malacca.

Importantly, in those days of sailing ships, the winds were ideal. The monsoon blew downwind from India and China from November to April, and then pushed the same ships northwards as the monsoon winds reversed from May to October. The waters were also generally calm.

There were merchant ships of many nations sailing back and forth through the narrow passage of the Straits of Malacca on route to China and the Spice Islands or returning to India and Arabia. The Malaccans could look across this busy highway to the coast of Sumatra.

Malacca became a convenient port in which to replenish supplies and take on fresh water. It was a bit like a refreshment stop on a motorway but for sailors instead of motorists.

Despite the tendency of silting up at the harbour entrance, there was a deep anchorage close inshore. Those who viewed the village with a military eye would also have been reassured that there was a hill overlooking the river entrance, which made an excellent lookout to spot enemy fleets approaching and offered a suitable location to build a secure fortress.

Malacca did not have any local products at that time to export, so it might have remained little more