Malacca

Malacca stands at the mouth of a small river on the strait between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, where ships waited for the turn of the monsoon. Vessels from China, the Ryukyus, Java and the Moluccas came in on the northeast winds of December and January, and those bound for India, the Red Sea and East Africa left on the southwest monsoon. Four harbour masters each handled the merchants of one quarter of the ocean, from Gujarat to China, and tin ingots served the port as money.

Around 1400 Parameswara, a prince who had fled Palembang and Singapura, founded the town. The Ming took it under their protection: in 1405 the Yongle Emperor recognised him as king of Malacca, and Zhèng Hé made the port a depot for his fleets, with a stockade and storehouses ashore. In 1411 Parameswara sailed to China with 540 followers. His successors took the title of sultan as Islam took root at court, and in the later fifteenth century, with Tun Perak as bendahara to Muzaffar Shah and Mansur Shah, Malacca extended its rule along both shores of the strait.

On 24 August 1511 Afonso de Albuquerque took the city for Portugal, and the fortress of A Famosa rose from the stones of its mosques and tombs. Francis Xavier preached here in the 1540s, while Johor and Aceh besieged Portuguese Malacca again and again. The Dutch East India Company and Johor took it on 14 January 1641 after a five-month siege, and the Dutch governors ruled from the Stadthuys. The British occupied the town in 1795, during the French wars, and handed it back in 1818; the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 then ceded it to Britain.