Place · Straits entrepot · Malaysia
Malacca (Melaka)
Also known as Melaka, Malaka, Straits of Malacca
The port on the narrowest point of the straits between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, founded about 1400 and for a century the meeting point of the two monsoon systems. Gujarati and Tamil merchants were the largest foreign communities in it, and it is where Indian cloth was exchanged for Southeast Asian spice.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 2.190, 102.250
Worth knowing
Tome Pires wrote that whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice. Albuquerque took it in 1511, the Dutch in 1641 and the British in 1824; the Indian merchant houses that had made it dispersed to Aceh, Johor and Bantam after 1511.
Connections (3)
- Trade routeMachilipatnam / Masulipatnam / Bandar
Malacca ran on Indian cloth. Coromandel painted cottons and Gujarati prints were what Southeast Asian spice growers would accept, which is why European companies bought textiles in India before they could buy pepper in the Indies. The Dutch built their entire Asian system on this triangle, and Masulipatnam's weavers worked to Javanese and Malay pattern preferences.
- Maritime routeSonargaon
Ibn Battuta sailed from Sonargaon for Java in 1346, which is the ordinary Bay of Bengal route: Bengal to the Straits with the north-east monsoon, back with the south-west. Bengal muslin and rice went east, Southeast Asian spice and Chinese porcelain came west, and Malacca was where the two monsoon systems handed cargo to each other.
- Maritime routeNagasaki
The Portuguese carreira ran Lisbon to Goa, Goa to Malacca, Malacca to Macau and Macau to Nagasaki, and each leg waited for a monsoon. Indian cloth bought Southeast Asian spice, Chinese silk bought Japanese silver, and Goa's archbishop had jurisdiction over the whole chain. Gonçalo Garcia travelled the eastern half of it as a merchant before he was crucified at the end of it.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Malacca Sultanate”. Tomé Pires, Suma Oriental (c. 1515); Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals).
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