After half a millennium of power, the maritime empire fell to the rising Javanese Majapahit kingdom. Another sea-going empire, Majapahit controlled an even larger amount of territory at its imperial zenith in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Javanese combined access to the spice islands of the Moluccas with domination of the Straits of Malacca. These thalassocracies set the example of incredible wealth that would come from servicing the maritime Silk Roads between China and the Indian Ocean basin.
Following these precedents, the rise of Malacca was simply the newest phase of a centuries-old pattern. While specific details on the founding of the city remain murky and often the stuff of legend, we do know that prior to , Malacca was a small fishing village.
Malay, Portuguese, and Chinese sources hold that the displaced Malay nobleman Parameswara — was in search of a kingdom. Finding a small river that met a beach in the protected waters of strait— all at the foot of a nearby hill that allowed one to observe the coming and going of ships— Parameswara must have realized that the site would make an ideal port that could both service trade and project military power. If he strongarmed some ships into his port, once there they found reliable trading practices and security in a dangerous area.
Under the watchful but protective eyes of the fierce orang laut, merchants who came into Malacca found that the city offered safe and secure warehouse facilities. Ensuring smooth transactions, Parameswara established a system with clear rules on the percentage of incoming cargo that would be taxed.
Avoiding opportunities for graft and petty corruption, the local government had a hierarchy of officials with four harbormasters, each for an ethnically defined group of merchants such as Gujarati, Bengali, Malay, or East Asian.
An executive officer stood above them all to arbitrate interethnic disputes and ensure harmonious multicultural commerce. Serving as a marketplace for imports to be traded amongst foreigners, the city produced and consumed relatively little. Within a few years, the successful system made Malacca the most important trading center in Southeast Asia. With this prosperity, the young city grew. The Yongle Emperor — tasked Zheng He — with building and commanding hundreds of ships, some estimated to be over feet in length.
Maritime powers were encouraged to enter into the Confucian-based tribute-state relationship with the Middle Kingdom. Parameswara himself traveled to the Chinese capital to kowtow before the emperor in In return for his tribute and respect, the Malaccan ruler received honorary robes from the Chinese court, a symbol of prestige, and, more practically, assurances of Chinese military assistance should it be needed.
Furthermore, the Chinese court granted the city what we might call most-favored-nation status. While it is unclear if Parameswara converted to Islam, he adopted titles associated with the faith the Persian Iskandar Shah and the Arabic Sultan and intermarried with Muslim royal families.
This is not surprising, as increasing numbers of Indian, Persian, and Arab merchants began to arrive in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra and the Straits of Malacca. Muslims from South Asia, Arabia, or North Africa knew that they would be able to find places of worship, individuals familiar with Arabic, and communities governed by familiar trade practices and influenced by Islamic law codes.
As a tribute state, the city became familiar to Chinese who soon began to reside in the port. Muslim merchants from thousands of miles away settled in the city, adding to its ethnic diversity. Arabs prayed with Chinese. Armenians traded with Javanese. Indians and Japanese saw each other in the street. This perspective, with its emphasis on the Iberian construction of global connections, can obscure the fact that the original goal of Spanish expansion was not the unknown New World but rather the markets of East and Southeast Asia.
The Portuguese were more immediately successful in this quest. After the Treaty of Tordesillas, in which Portugal and Spain agreed to divide the world into two spheres of expansion, the smaller kingdom sent Vasco da Gama to India to build a trade empire on the far side of the world.
Unfortunately, the Portuguese had little to sell in Asia and quickly turned to more violent means of acquiring the spices, silks, and other riches of Indian Ocean ports. Alfonso de Albuquerque , a brilliantly ruthless strategist was the main architect of Portuguese Asian policy. Realizing that control of Malacca would give him a near-monopoly of Chinese goods and spices from the Moluccas, Albuquerque attacked the city in Coming out of the Crusades and feudalism, Islamophobia and the warrior culture were central to the Portuguese worldview.
But this conquistador also understood global patterns of trade and realized that if he seized Malacca, Portugal would gain an upper hand on a European commercial rival: the city of Venice.
Since the Venetians made tremendous profits selling eastern goods to the Iberians and as the merchant republic got along a little too well with their Muslim colleagues, a move in Southeast Asia would solve a Mediterranean political crisis. Albuquerque justified his assault on the port in a speech to his men:. Clearly, the commander saw the world as a sophisticated trading system but also as a bitter clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity. The merchants of Venice immediately understood the threat to their centuries-old trade with the East, which indeed went into an immediate and irreversible decline.
The Catholic invaders viewed Southeast Asian Muslims with the same hostility and contempt displayed in Iberia, killing or expelling them from the city. Mosques were torn down and churches raised in their place. Melaka Sultanate Palace — A wooden replica of an original 15th-century palace, this cultural museum is a unique structure with ornate wood carvings and features numerous dioramas portraying the palace atmosphere of the era. Rate This Place: Rated votes.
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