THE SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF MARITIME CITIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

The City in Early Modern Southeast Asia The issue of sources Writings on Southeast Asian cities: Defining the city Methodology: Urban type, hierarchy and structure Colonialism, War and S

FROM NEGARA TO KOTA: THE SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF

SOUTHEAST ASIAN MARITIME CITIES

SARAH MEI ISMAIL (B.A ARCH., HONS.) NUS

A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN HISTORY

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2006

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following people, without whom this thesis would not have been possible:

My supervisor and mentor, Associate Professor Timothy P Barnard Thanks for the guidance, the advice, the patience, and above all, the truly masterful kick in the pants, without which this thesis would not have been written

My mother, See Poh Choo, for instilling a love of reading and history in me, and for not asking if

I could get a job with a history degree

Head of Department Associate Professor Ian Gordon, for having enough faith in me to support this architecture graduate’s application to read for a masters in History

Deputy Head of Department Associate Professor Brian P Farrell, for insisting that I teach military history, sending this thesis into new and unexpected ground Thanks also for the practical aspects of early modern warfare; with the Field Marshal’s help, Melaka was conquered again

Dr Quek Ser Hwee, for the moral support and friendship through the years, and the laksa

Dr Anthony Reid, for the suggestions and the extremely kind loan of Dr Bulbeck’s Ph.D thesis

Dr David Bulbeck of Australian National University and Dr William Cummings of the University of South Florida, for sharing their love and knowledge of Makassar “I stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Dr Jan van der Putten, for the kind help in the various translations and vagaries of the Sejarah

Melayu

Dr Geoffrey Wade, for unnerving levels of interest

Kelly Lau, and the administrative staff of the History department For teaching me that history is written by historians, but history happens because of people like them

To the postgraduates of the History Department Without them, this thesis would have been completed much earlier, and it would have been the poorer for it Thanks for the memories, the late nights, the stimulating conversations and various things that thankfully, will never be part of official history

To my aunt, Zuraidah Ibrahim, for professional services rendered pro bono

To the rest of my family, for their unquestioning support of my decision to pursue further studies

To God, for making coffee and chocolate available to the world Such are the true building blocks

of a thesis

And finally, to Zakir Hussain, for the unwavering support, the helpful suggestions, the friendship And for the love and affection stuff

ix

1 The City in Early Modern Southeast Asia

The issue of sources

Writings on Southeast Asian cities: Defining the city

Methodology: Urban type, hierarchy and structure

Colonialism, War and Southeast Asian urbanism

2 Melaka: Between the winds

Historiographical overview and sources

Melaka: A historical overview

Melaka under the sultans

Melaka of the Portuguese

The two Melakas: Comparison

Melaka at War: Defense and the port cities

3 Makassar: Golden Cock of the East

Historiographical overview and sources

History: The rise and fall of Gowa

Makassar: City and polity

The city of Ujung Padang: Under Dutch rule

Influences on the urban form: Trade and war

4 Conclusion: A Tale of Two Cities

Continuity and Change: The urban form

Viewed from the ramparts: War and the city

Writ in Stone: Changes in material culture

The city between monsoons: Further areas for study

Summary

The development of urbanism in early Southeast Asia took a significantly different route from its counterparts in Europe and China Many European cities began as fortified townships

and the city wall was the sine qua non of the city, defining city limits in both the physical sense

and in the realm of meaning However, the great maritime cities of Southeast Asia from Melaka

to Aceh made no such distinction between city and country, with the city encompassing entire rural districts within its physical definition The early European explorers were thus faced with a

brand of urbanism different to their own; Southeast Asian negara stood counterpoint to European

city

However, the pre-colonial maritime centers experienced a considerable amount of change during the “Age of Commerce” (1400-1700) when international trade peaked The volume of trade in these cities, and the corresponding exchange of technology and ideas, shaped the growing port cities Increased wealth through trade also made new urban projects possible and desirable, with reasons ranging from increased stakes to prestige Also at play was the changed nature of warfare in the region after the 1511 Portuguese conquest of Melaka The new “modern” warfare, which emphasized conquest over spheres of influence required a new set of measures to defend port cities

All these factors served to spark a change in the rising maritime cities, Makassar being a prime example of a highly cosmopolitan center of commerce New urban forms, such as protective defensive city walls came up, this time in brick and influenced by European – usually Portuguese – technology, as well as that of the existing walled cities of mainland Southeast Asia

In some cases, earlier urban forms such as thick earthen walls, were recalled and revived Either way, these changes gave the port cities a new material prominence and militaristic intent that

contrasted with their traditionally ephemeral nature Negara was now becoming kota The Age of

Commerce was thus a time of rapid evolution in Southeast Asian port cities, where changing economic and military factors were reflected in the physical structure of the city

The city walls that emerged as urban symptoms of evolution were had the ability to be agents of change and affect the city’s functions Through a comparative study of urban structure and hierarchy during this post-1511 period, this study will examine how these new elements affected the functioning and form of the maritime cities, the society that shaped these cities, and were shaped by them in return This thesis will argue that the walls were a reflection of a shift in warfare trends that changed the perception in the city, and that these walls did not change the urban life, but instead were used to fossilize existing divisions within

Pre-1511 Melaka and Makassar will be considered, to discover the possible indigenous urban response to the altering military and international circumstances of the 1500-1600s, as well

as the changes in urban form experienced by both as they passed under European rule Both the indigenous and European-controlled city in the post-1511 period will be compared to discover possible differences in the urban development conducted by the new colonialists and by the indigenous rulers who rose to prominence in the high-stakes world of the Southeast Asian Age of Commerce

Overview of Somba Opu

Archaeological form of Benteng Somba Opu laid over the Dutch Sketch

List of Abbreviations and Symbols

JMBRAS = Journal of Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society

JSEAH = Journal of Southeast Asian History

JSEAS = Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

KITLV = Koninkliijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

MBRAS = Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society

VOC = Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie

Chapter One: The City in Early Modern Southeast Asia

“For the fort was the pride of Malacca and after its destruction the place lost its glory, like a woman bereaved of her husband, the lustre gone from her face But now by the will of Allah

it was no more, showing how ephemeral are the things of this world The old order is destroyed, a new world is created and all around us is change…”

-Munshi Abdullah, Hikayat Abdullah. 1When British colonel William Farquhar destroyed the Portuguese fort A Famosa in 1807,

the residents of Melaka mourned the loss of this mark of prestige that had protected them for so long For two hundred years, it had been the centerpiece of Portuguese and Dutch Melaka, and had been behind the port’s status as a powerful trade centre and its identification as a city The

destruction of the great fort marked the end of an age However, if the loss of A Famosa marked

the end of an old order, then its construction had been the beginning of another The fort had first risen amidst the ruins of old Melaka in 1511, and local feeling then was very different Hostility and suspicion were but a few of the sentiments with which Southeast Asians had initially viewed its construction

The great Portuguese fort of Melaka was the first of many such fortifications After 1511, the port cities of insular Southeast Asia began the construction of stone city walls, girding the great maritime centers that had once expanded freely over the land Cities such as Johor Lama, Banten, and Makassar began to invest in city fortifications and more elaborate defense systems, all of which were focused on the linchpin of the stone fortress This heralded a change in the urban structure of coastal cities, for the conception of the city in maritime Southeast Asia had never been before tied to the fort and to fortified city walls Before 1511, few cities possessed either of these, a circumstance that was reflected in the various indigenous terms for city that

1

A.H Hill, The Hikayat Abdullah, by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, trans by A.H Hill, (London: Oxford

University Press, 1969), p 63

seldom distinguished polity from city, let alone the city from the country The fort that had become nearly ubiquitous by the 1800s was virtually unknown in pre-modern insular Southeast Asia

This relatively new urban element that became so intertwined with the ports after 1511 played a part in the everyday functions of the city The fort, a major feature of the urbanscape, was a product of new concerns that necessitated the re-thinking of the city’s function towards its residents, and was a reflection of underlying changes However, it was not merely a symptom, but was also the stimulus of change in its own right, influencing the city in ways beyond that which it had been originally built

The significance of these fort walls therefore became more than the fact of their existence, due to their relationship with the cities that build them Cities are often the centres of cultural production, and changes that occurred rippled outward in the society that created them

As vital, active players in this urban theatre, forts were part of a larger historical process and through a study of their evolution, it becomes possible to understand changes that were occurring

in the greater world of island Southeast Asia The nature of changes in the urban structure and function, and in the society that the city housed in its form in early modern Southeast Asia is the concern of this thesis

Through a comparative study of urban structure and hierarchy during this post-1511 period, this study will examine how these new elements affected the functioning and form of the maritime cities and the society that shaped these cities, and were shaped by them in return Pre-

1511 Melaka and Makassar will be considered, to discover the possible indigenous urban response to the altering military and international circumstances of the 1500-1600s, as well as the changes in urban form experienced by both as they passed under European rule Both the indigenous and European-controlled city in the post-1511 period will be compared to discover possible differences in the urban development conducted by the new colonialists and by the

indigenous rulers who rose to prominence in the high-stakes world of the Southeast Asian – as Anthony Reid has coined it – “Age of Commerce”

The issue of sources

The reconstruction of the urban fabric necessary in this study is hindered by the same issues that have affected the studying of any aspect of pre-modern insular Southeast Asia – namely, the sources Southeast Asian indigenous historiography has been patchy for a variety of reasons, including a tendency towards orality as well as records scribed on perishable materials Surviving records also can be optative, bordering on the near mythic.2 Much of what has been gathered on pre-modern Southeast Asia through traditional sources come from records that have been kept by civilizations external to the region, bringing in the issue of correct translation, which has affected past studies of the city In addition, the translations have had the effect of replacing the indigenous term with a new term that brings with it additional sets of meanings never intended in the original, as well as ignoring, or erasing regional differences in meaning.3

Besides these difficulties, an additional problem lies in the limited range of sources Records from the subaltern, indigenous perspective that comprises quotidian city life are often scarce The archaeological record is also patchy, and is especially so for coastal Southeast Asia.4Archaeologist John Miksic has observed that the archaeological record in Southeast Asia has been heavily disturbed, due to the efforts of colonial historians, the construction of modern cities,

2

C.C Berg, “Javanese Historiography – A Synopsis of its Evolution”, Historians of Southeast Asia, ed

D.G.E Hall, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p 16

3

John N Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change: The Case of Sumatra”, Archipel, 37, (1989): 9, 12

4

John N Miksic, "Archaeological studies of style, information transfer and the transition from Classical to

Islamic periods in Java", JSEAS, 20, 1 (1989): 10; Bennett Bronson, “Exchange at the Upstream and

Downstream Ends”, Economic exchange and social interaction in Southeast Asia, ed Karl L Hutterer

(Ann Arbor : Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1977), p 47

and coastal erosion All this has resulted in the slow development of urban studies on the coastal cities of Southeast Asia. 5

A thin archaeological record and scattered, diverse sources in different languages are thus the major obstacles in any meaningful study of the urban forms in pre-modern Southeast Asia Although it is still possible to conduct such a study, an understanding of the limitations and pitfalls of the materials at hand must still be taken into account when analyzing them For instance, constructing an elaborate sociological theory of urban life in the pre-modern era would remain highly speculative, since such a theory would require a high volume of archaeological and archival evidence to support it.6

Writings on Southeast Asian cities: Defining the City

Much has been written about urban generation, and the rise of cities in Southeast Asia, by authors such as Paul Wheatley and Miksic Others like Richard O’Connor have chosen to focus

on the sociological aspect of urbanism, and the effects of urbanism on the indigenous lifestyle Work has been done on defining the city in indigenous terms, as well as establishing a typology

of cities based on case studies conducted within the region However, due to ongoing archaeological digs and archival issues, urban theory in Southeast Asia is somewhat fluid, subject

to re-writing with each new discovery

Related to the issue of translating the meaning of city, or urban settlement, in Southeast Asia is the most hotly debated question in global urban history studies: the precise definition of

“city” The reason for the depth of debate lies partly in the potential political implications of city occurrences in history Too often seen as a measure of technological progress or an image of greatness, the very existence of a city is often dependent on the agenda of the researcher

An early common approach in Western schools of urbanism was the use of formalist definitions involving the selection of a characteristic, or a set of characteristics, that would denote urban status, such as Kingsley Davis’s stipulation of a minimum population of 100,000.7 This approach has been heavily criticised for its forced and arbitrary definition of a city which does not acknowledge the differing cultural and ecological contexts that produce similarly diverse city types These traditional urban theories of classical and pre-modern cities tend to be based on studies of medieval, Mediterranean and Southwest Asian cities, resulting in monothetic,

“Western” models rather than “Southeast Asian”.8 As a result, urban sociologist Max Weber and urban historian Spiro Kostof emphasised the defensive perimeter or walls as the prerequisite for a city.9 Even the etymology of the word for city reveals intrinsic bias – tun in English, gorod in Russian, cheng in Chinese – originally referred to a walled enclosure.10

This fixation on a single characteristic – in this case, the circumference wall - as the determinant of urbanism has affected the analysis of early urban sites in coastal Southeast Asia While the coastal cities had internal walls – such as those around the palace compound, and the individual compounds of prominent personages, it seldom possessed an all-encompassing city wall that defined city limits.11 Admiral Beaulieu, a European visitor to Aceh in 1621 remarked that the lack of a surrounding defensive circuit, or a wall, affected him to the point that he considered Aceh a village rather than a city.12

The functionalist approach, which Wheatley champions, involves identifying a settlement

as being urban based on the social institutions it contains, whether physical or otherwise Wheatley’s chief essential factor is the existence of social institutions that co-ordinate economic

7

Kingsley Davis, “The Urbanization of the Human Population” in The City Reader, ed Richard T LeGates

and Frederic Stout (London: Routledge, 2000), p 5

8

Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p 15; “Heterogenetic cities”, p 106

9

Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped,(London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), pp 38-40; Mogens Herman Hansen,

“The Concepts of City-State and City-state culture”, in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures,

ed by Mogens Herman Hansen (Copenhagen: C.A Reitzels Forlag, 2000), p 12

10

Henri Pirenne, “City origins” in The City Reader, p 39

11

Anthony Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states of the 15th and 16th century” in A

Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, p 422

12

Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p 15

exchange, regardless of whether the institution is mosque or church, run by religious or state authorities.13 However, the emphasis on the economic role ignores the possibility that the city might serve different functions even within the same region, supported by the varying definitions and terms used in Southeast Asia to signify a city within that cultural context John Miksic also notes that so little is known of the structure and daily function of the coastal trade cities of insular Southeast Asia, that it would problematic to form inferences about the typical urban behaviour.14There still remains the need for any localized study to design an urban theory relevant to the region, with a suitable definition of urbanisation and the city, rather than force the indigenous cities into a preconceived universalist urban theory that could result from a formalist or functionalists approach

Due to the limitations of a global urban theory, settlement pattern studies, a method of archaeological study that gained momentum in the 1970s, has been brought forward as a viable approach to analyzing Southeast Asian urban sites Settlement pattern studies involve the in-depth collection of archaeological data from sampled sites, in the expectation of building a foundation

on which inferences into the site function and sociological framework can be derived It incorporates the contextual situation of artifacts, and maps out their physical relationship to each other as well as the site.15

The use of settlement pattern analysis allows the creation of an indigenous, relevant definition of the city The site is seen in the context of the regional settlement pattern, and if it appears to be a higher tier site, meaning with at least one tier of settlements under it, it could be considered an urban site.16 The underlying assumption is that a settlement of a distinctly different size would be differentiated from the lesser settlements in other ways, whether in terms

locally-of culture, function or physical structure In short, it would have to be different simply because

there would have to be an underlying factor whose symptoms included but would not be restricted to, a difference in size As such, because it would be different from the merely residential/agrarian village-level settlements, it could be considered urban

Settlement pattern analysis in Southeast Asia, however, is still somewhat at the gathering stage Regional-level settlement pattern analysis still remains somewhat hypothetical, with theories being drawn up in a heuristic spirit, subject to further development on discovery of further evidence Despite its admitted drawbacks, settlement pattern analysis would seem to be the most relatively objective method in which to draw up a needed indigenous definition of urbanism.17 Miksic suggests simply accepting conventionally acknowledged cities to be cities, erring on the liberal side in adding new settlements to the list of cities, and then proceed to move

data-on to categorise and analyse them.18

For the purposes of this study, commonly recognised cities have been used, and effort has been made to distinguish the settlement from the polity The city will be defined in each case, based on what was commonly considered to be the city from contemporary perspective, as well as several requirements drawn from the basis of this study – namely, it should contain a relatively densely populated area, possess various economic and cultural functions, and have at least one tier of settlements under it

Methodology: urban type, hierarchy and structure

John N Miksic, “14th Century Singapore: A port of trade” Early Singapore 1300s-1819: Evidence in

Maps, Text and Artefacts, ed J.N Miksic, Cheryl-Ann Low Mei Gek, (Singapore: Singapore History

Musuem, 2004), p 41

cosmographical representations of Hindu-Buddhist belief, such as Angkor Wat, Pagan and Sukhothai Usually found in mainland Southeast Asia, or on the ecologically similar island of Java, they were highly agrarian states The other type of city identified were the trading coastal cities, unplanned and organic, generally found at river estuaries, near the coastline or close enough to the river mouth so as to command some influence in the surrounding sea lanes, such as Srivijaya, Melaka and Aceh The purest form of the latter was the market city, similar to Karl Polyanyi’s port city concept, divorced from the surroundings and solely devoted to trade.19 Both the coastal market city and the inland ceremonial city were said have diminished under European rule, resulting in the superimposition of a third type, the colonial city

The criteria used for the categorization can vary, depending on the focus of the urban study, but eventually result in rather similar divisions that seem to support the idea of an inland/coastal dichotomy T G McGee, J Kathirithamby-Wells and J Villiers, although using different criteria, emerged with similar inland agrarian sacred cities versus coastal maritime market cities.20 Spiro Kostof’s study of urban form also divides the cases into the planned or

created city – the ville créée, with geometric lines and planned by the governing body – and the organic city – the ville spontanée, left to be developed by persons that act individually, with

irregular lines and curves, again demonstrating a divide that supports the existence of two distinct urban types.21

These two urban types have also been more frequently classified as heterogenetic and orthogenetic cities, a concept introduced by Robert Redfield and Milton B Singer in 1965, and based on the differing cultural roles of cities Orthogenetic cities are preservers, refiners of traditional culture and are generally associated with political power Heterogenetic cities tend to

19

Robert B Revere, “’No Man’s Coast’: Ports of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Trade and Market

in the Early Empires, ed Karl Polanyi, Conrad M Arensberg and Harry W Pearson, (Glencoe: The

Falcon’s Wing Press, 1957) p 54

be market cities, with commerce as the main activity, and are producers of new modes of thought that may be in contradiction or competition with traditional culture.22 The orthogenetic city, thought to be the primary city, is the cultural and ceremonial centre for the country, supported by

a homogenous population The heterogenetic city is a second-stage city, and acts as the service station for the country, as an intermediary between civilizations, and is the entry point for the entry of foreign peoples and ideas, resulting in a heterogeneous demography.23

Although there are issues with the original concept, applying the heterogenetic/orthogenetic framework to Southeast Asian cities has its benefits Culturally and ecologically flexible, permissive of variation, and suited to the patchy records of the region, the idea of heterogenetic/orthogenetic has been adapted and applied extensively to the mainland and coastal cities respectively by various researchers, including Miksic in his numerous works on Southeast Asian archaeology.24

However, the main issue with any classification system lies primarily in the risk of overgeneralization, and in the case of the above mentioned cases and the proposed orthogenetic/heterogenetic dichotomy, their failure lies in being unable to account for cities that straddle categories, as was the case in the sacred city of Majapahit that also engaged in trade to the extent that it became a premier commerce centre.25 However, it is possible to use the heterogenetic/orthogenetic categorization as a sliding scale rather than as a mutually exclusive classification, allowing more variation than Redfield had perhaps originally envisioned In addition, the flexibility of this approach allows for cities to shift from one end to the other over time Although Redfield’s original theorization that the end product of orthogenetic urbanism must be the heterogenetic city is problematic, there is at least the implicit understanding that cities can and do change over time

In recent years, the tenability of this concept of these city types, even as a heuristic device, has come under fire.26 Luc Nagtegaal has sharply criticised most of the existing typologies, rightly pointing out that certain proposed city models in current usage were initially based on cultural/religious assumptions in other fields of studies that have since been dismissed

or rendered obsolete The concept of the ceremonial centre relies on the devaraja theory, where

the king was a sacred being who expressed cosmological order in his city However, this has been proven to be a somewhat idealised version of reality, to the point that city maps were found to have been altered to fit the indigenous portrayal of a perfect centre.27 Other findings continue to suggest that the dichotomy of the sacred orthogenetic city and the market heterogenetic city, or between the indigenous city and the colonial city, or indeed any urban model may be markedly less distinct than proposed

However, the perception of there being two broad urban types, or at least cities that can

be positioned somewhere between these two extremes has persisted and continued to frame urban studies of pre-modern Southeast Asia More recent studies have in general been careful to qualify their assignations of urban type with appropriate acknowledgement of independent variations, and often avoid the direct labelling of the urban centres under analysis Nevertheless the sense of difference remains and the idea of the inland city versus the coastal city underpins these studies for want of a better conceptual framework

Urban Hierarchy and Structure

Inter-city relations, or the urban hierarchy, is also considered important in any urban study of the region No city is an island, even in insular Southeast Asia, and to understand the forces that shape it, they have to be studied in context A dominant city, high in the urban hierarchy, could wield cultural/political influence over the lesser tributary cities, commanding or

26

Luc Nagtegaal, “The pre-modern city in Indonesia and its fall from grace with the gods”, Economic and

Social History in the Netherlands, 5 (1993): 56

27

Ibid., p 42

inspiring them to duplicate its features, organizational structure and institutions, as the latter sought to gain political legitimacy in a language dictated by the former.28 Urbanism and its symbols linked a city to the dominant city, as well as indicate its position in the urban hierarchy, lesser cities having less prominent symbols.29 Urban hierarchy, due to its links with economic and cultural hierarchy, could and did influence the city form For Southeast Asia, the dichotomy

of inland/coastal is often invoked, such as in Bronson’s economic theory of “upstream” and

“downstream” city relationships.30

Insular Southeast Asia by and large did not have wide-spanning empires that wielded the same cultural dominance and institutionalized political control that, for example, had been found

in the Roman Empire Reid describes the region as having a state culture, with multiple states sharing a common culture and language, with no one city-state having the ability to completely dominate another beyond a tributary system, and all possessing a degree of self-government, if not autonomy.31 A traditional European empire emphasized control of territory However, in Southeast Asia’s city-state culture, it was the maintenance of a network of inter-city relationships that denoted the nature of empire, with certain cities occupying the dominant position in the relationships that formed the urban hierarchy.32

city-The implications of the city-state cultural concept on the urban hierarchy indicated that urban status was extremely fluid Cultural influence could be a bilateral process, rather than the simple radial model of culture emanating from a dominant city This resulted in the entire region sharing a common urban culture that was nevertheless unique to the region.33 Although there were “first amongst equals”, such as sixteenth-century Gowa, there was no city-state that could be

rightly called dominant in the urban hierarchy, at least not for an appreciable period of time It should be noted that this seeming equality may be only applicable for the coastal or island city-states; as the inland cities seemed to have a cultural/spiritual dominance that operated on a different dynamic

The urban structure of the Southeast Asian city has also been the focus of considerable debate, partly due to the differing definitions of which portions were actually urban, as well as the sparse archaeological evidence However, enough has been found to suggest that the coastal, usually heterogenetic cities of insular Southeast Asia differed greatly in their urban form from the orthogenetic cities of the mainland Southeast Asia

Mainland cities were generally planned cities, with a grid layout and a firmly demarcated city limit They were centres of cultural production that acted as beacons to the faithful by being material anchors of their faith.34 Found in fertile mainland Southeast Asia and the rich plains of Java, they were thus somewhat more permanent than their coastal counterparts, since agricultural economies are less mobile than trade economies Their physical form seemed to respond to this same sense of permanence, with visible anchors to the area around them in the form of large streets that created strong lines in the four directions, creating a sense of centre to the city with an axis that lead from the heavens to the city centre, and on the horizontal plane, spread out in the four directions of the mandala Clifford Geertz referred to them as exemplary centres, which expressed cosmological order, and, through the actions of the king to maintain the order in his capital, served to keep harmony with the macrocosm.35

Symmetry in the urban form gave it an intended monumentalism, and girded by one or more rings of fortified city wall, it was also a reflection of the realities of the defense strategy and warfare in the region An agricultural-based economy was bound to its territory, as was any city that had pretensions to religious significance, with the result that retention of location was a factor

in defense considerations It was also able to commandeer the resources required for a massive urban investment such as a permanent defensive city circuit

The coastal, heterogenetic city of insular Southeast Asia tended towards a more organic approach, with the city form responding to the coastline or river coast If the mainland orthogenetic city looked towards the sky and centered on that central axis, the coastal,

heterogenetic city always looked towards the sea, the source of its wealth and often its raison

d’etre The city form stretched out in a linear fashion along the coastline, maximizing its usable

harbour front, an example of which can be seen in Makassar Its governing axis was in the horizontal plane, leading from the palace compound to the waters,

The feature of the coastal, heterogenetic cities that has occasioned the most comment is perhaps the feature that it lacked at that point in pre-colonial Southeast Asia: that of a permanent,

defensive city wall As mentioned earlier, the city wall was the sine qua non of the Western

fortified town, to the point where Max Weber, Mogens Hansen, Henri Pirenne and others used it

in their definitions of a city While the coastal cities had internal walls – such as those around the palace compound, and the compounds of the nobles and wealthy merchants – it seldom possessed

an all-encompassing city wall that was used to define the city limits.36 If there was a wall, it would usually be a wooden palisade, sometimes permanent, but usually hastily erected when the city was threatened This reflected the guerrilla realties of warfare in the island world, coupled with scarce manpower compared to the mainland, which will be discussed more completely later

well, that of negeri; Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states”, p 422

urban conceptualisation of both Mahameru, or Saguntang Maha Meru, was the central mountain

of the cosmos that was surrounded by rings of lesser mountains and continents, and which figured heavily in Malay creation myths.37 Although the prominence of a representational Mount Meru was greater in the planned Hindu-Buddhist cities of the mainland kings, such as Mandalay and Angkor Wat, the use of a hill or high ground as a urban focal point nevertheless occurred in the island maritime kingdoms as well The cosmological demands for the macrocosm and Mount Meru to be reflected in the microcosm of the city had its grounding in a far more prosaic reason – that of control and defense Although the practical extent of this belief has been debated,38 it nevertheless holds some influence, on both cosmological and defense grounds, as can be seen in the Melaka founding myth

The institutions and characteristics within were also somewhat similar Both usually

possessed a palace compound, known alternately as the desa (place of the ruler) or the kadatuan

in Sumatra, the kraton of Yogyakarta and the pura of fourteenth century Java.39 The buildings were usually of wood and built off the ground, while tomb markers, if present, would be of stone There was usually a square of some sort, and a population divided into wards based on their ethnic groups The mainland city possessed temples, and the coastal city naturally had a port, although it usually had a somewhat less impressive temple as well.40

Overall, urban theory in Southeast Asia has covered various aspects of urbanism, from hierarchy to generation to actual structure However, although there has been work done to analyse the urban structure over regions, mostly by Miksic and Reid, its evolution over time has been left mostly unstudied Any study over time has been restricted to early periods of urban generation, rather than the latter times within established cities

37

Joseph H Schwartzberg, “Cosmography in Southeast Asia”, The History of Cartography, Vol 2 Book 2:

Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed J.B Harley and David Woodward,

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p 702

Peter J.M Nas, “The Early Indonesian Town: Rise and decline of the City-state and its capital”, The

Indonesian city, ed Peter J.M Nas (Leiden: KITLV, 1986), p 33.

Colonialism, War and Southeast Asian urbanism

The city, as the arguably most prominent product of a civilization, is naturally also a manifestation of its material culture The material culture of a people is influenced by a variety of factors, such as local events and the development of local beliefs, as well as the ways it can affect people As such, the city, in both its physical form and cultural role, can be affected by events that occur to the civilization or region as a whole, and also be used to effect changes

Colonialism, and the advent of the Europeans has frequently considered to be the event,

or rather, historical process that has had the most effect on Southeast Asian history Although it has been said that the actual change effected has been overstated, it is nonetheless accepted that the entry of the Europeans in larger numbers than previously experienced had its consequences The effect may have remained at the fundamentally superficial level of the “thin and flaking glaze”, which has been said of Indian and Chinese influences as well However, there was a change, and a corresponding response in the material culture and urban form

Urban studies on the effects of colonialism by and large regard the colonial city as a completely new urban type, imposed on the indigenous country To some extent they were; European conquerors generally built the city in the image of their own home, or used the

opportunity of the tabula rasa presented before them to experiment The new city was different in

that it had not been founded to serve the needs of the immediate region, but rather that of the away imperial power There were also the indigenous cities that were conquered and adapted for use The combination of pre-existing indigenous urban structures and colonial urban forms and institutions led to what some writers have considered the hybrid city, such as McGee’s referring

far-to these conquered cities as possessing European transplants.41

41

McGee, The Southeast Asian City, p 49

In both cases, the approach to that period of urban history seems somewhat Eurocentric,

or rather, too focused on the direct European-indigenous interaction.42 The emphasis is on direct European impact on Southeast Asian cities, with the result that cities that did not directly experience European rule and urban re-design are effectively sidelined before their colonisation

by a European force While this could be considered a product of a lack of sources, the emphasis

in urban history on the changes within the European-dominated region of Southeast Asia obscures any development in the urban forms of the regions that either never came under direct European hegemony, or had failed to achieve prominence in the colonial era The Europeans are depicted as the dominant or even the only cultural force in the region, with Southeast Asian cities viewed as the hapless recipients of culture, mere repositories of European ideas of urbanism There seems to have been little effort to discover the indigenous Southeast Asian response to the entry of the Europeans Very little has been written on the development of the urban form in indigenous cities, free of European control in the pre-modern period of the sixteenth and seventeenth century

The period of urban history experienced by autonomous, indigenous cities between the entry of Europeans and complete European hegemony in the region has been covered to some extent However, focus is usually on the city-state and its people, and urban form is described as part of the circumstances at the period rather than discussed in its own right Reid perhaps comes the closest to discussing the change in the urban form at that period of time, noting the changes that the indigenous cities made in response to the new European threat.43 However, the focus is

on the general urban status of the cities, rather than focusing on the actual structure, or its role as

a tool in the changing currents of maritime Southeast Asia

War and the Southeast Asian City

As mentioned earlier, port cities seldom possessed permanent walls, meant for the overall defense of the city This lack of a defensive wall was reflective of the style of warfare between the coastal cities at the period, with raids rather than conquests, reflective of the commonly-held understanding that it was not economic for one trade city to conquer and occupy another.44Defenders would put up a token defence, but when faced with a decisively stronger enemy, strategic retreat secure in the expectation of the enemy’s eventual departure, was preferred Thus given the relative value of manpower over material resource, rulers were more likely to retreat than defend

Normally, the purpose of defending a city would also be to defend a favourable location However, the rulers of insular Southeast Asia, with their highly mobile trade cities, had no such impulse In fact, the city of Inderagiri shifted location of its own accord after suffering an attack from the Acehnese.45 Manpower, not location, was the goal of the attackers, and correspondingly,

of the defenders as well With that in mind, it made little or no sense to invest in a permanent defensive structure The inhabitants were not technologically incapable of building city walls of brick or stone, as the rulers had intimate contact with the orthogenetic cities of the mainland, as well as the great fortified cities of the Middle East and China – they simply had no reason to do

so Makassar, for instance, built brick tombs long before the first of its great constellation of forts.46

Although the tenability of the idea of strategic withdrawal as a popular insular Southeast Asian response to aggression has been questioned by Michael Charney, this form of warfare was evident the case of Melaka.47 Portuguese accounts mention that Sultan Mahmud remained in the

Francis David Bulbeck, A Tale of Two Kingdoms: The Historical Archaeology of Gowa and Tallok,

South Sulawesi, Indonesia (PhD Thesis: Australian National University, 1992), p 126

47

Michael W Charney, Southeast Asian Warfare 1300-1900, (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p 16

Melakan area for some ten days after its fall to the Portuguese, in the expectation that Portuguese would eventually leave.48

However, the fall of Melaka saw the beginnings of another type of warfare, one that battled in the language of sieges and strongholds The European need for a Southeast Asian base differed somewhat from that of the indigenous polities, and they waged a different war for location and land The port cities, both indigenously controlled or under colonial rule, now began

to fortify themselves Previously, earth or taipa walls had been occasionally applied in the island

world, but now brick and stone appeared, possibly in response to the heavier firepower the Europeans could wield

It is likely that the reason for this change went beyond the desire to defend against European canons Earth walls, if thick enough, are also effective against heavy firepower, as the Chinese city walls were able to prove when they held out against the nineteenth century colonial

cannons In addition, it was also mentioned that the taipa walls were often able to withstand the

bombards in the early days of Portuguese firepower.49 Also, if heavy firepower was more a European feature, it also raises the question whether the various polities would have fortified because of the Europeans alone, although fortified Portuguese Melaka’s ability to withstand heavy Acehnese fire was probably appreciated and noted Under these circumstances, the use of stone could potentially be seen as overkill and a waste of manpower

Given this, it is possible that reasons other than defence also lay behind the construction

of stone walls, as opposed to traditional earth in the indigenous cities There may have been was a symbolic element to the use of hardier building material, both in the colonial and indigenous cities Through the examination of the walls, this thesis will seek to prove this Also will be considered is the statement in the earlier paragraph – that there was a shift towards a more siege-based type of warfare in the island world, which resulted in the construction of permanent walls

With the movement towards taking strongholds rather than maintaining dominance, the city itself had become a possession of value that had to be defended

The walls of Southeast Asian society

Walls, in addition to being defensive structures, are essentially boundary markers that act

to divide space They act as barriers, whether symbolic or actual, preventing entry from one space

to another In doing so, they are able to grant meaning to a space; through this demarcation that identifies this space; through their function; and lastly through their appearance For instance,

fortress walls of Somba Opu in Makassar delineated the royal residential zone, controlled access

hence giving the zone exclusivity, and its brick walls indicated the manpower available to residents in the zone, as well as physically dominating the cityscape.50

With that in mind, walls can be seen to shape quotidian urban life and control urban functions As such, they are often used as instruments of control by dominant parties to achieve certain goals dictacted by social norms or otherwise However, intent is seldom precisely outcome, and the city dwellers can affect the walls as well This discourse between the hard urban structures and the people that live in them is what makes up urban life

The walls that came up in Southeast Asian port cities were used to shape the city However, in the case of the indigenous cities, it is doubtful that they actually changed the functioning of the city, given that they were still produced by the same dominant group, with similar sets of concerns, and basic geographical concerns remained the same It is more likely that they acted to reinforce existing cultural or physical divisions If that is the case, there should be greater change exhibited by cities that had been taken over by the Europeans

Therefore, this paper will focus on wall construction and its possible effects on Southeast Asian society Several hypothesis will be examined; that there was a shift in warfare that changed the role of the city and thus its function; that there was a symbolic and defense reason behind the

50

Further explanation in chapter 3

wall construction and that the urban life in the indigenous cities were fundamentally unchanged

by the changes mentioned

Several examples will be considered: the pre-1511 indigenous controlled city, the

post-1511 indigenous city, and the post-post-1511 colonial city.51 In this manner, it can be seen if the walls were a post-1511 phenomenon, and if there were appreciable differences in the walls constructed

in the indigenous and the colonial city A comparison of the pre- and post-1511 indigenous city and the indigenous city versus the colonial city will also show how the walls may have affected urban activity With the understanding that urban structures both shape and are shaped by forces within, possible changes in Southeast Asian society may be reflected in the city form

The first case selected is that of Melaka, the most prominent and best documented of the early port cities Melaka has been chosen as it was a major cultural centre of the pre-1511 island world, and its corresponding fall sent ripples throughout the island world It was the first Southeast Asian city to transform into a European stronghold, and the indigenous port polities

watched with apprehension and interest as the Portuguese built A Famosa, the first stone fort in

the region Taking their cue from Portuguese Melaka, cities like Johor Lama, Banten and Makassar began building fortifications of their own Melaka’s importance was such that even after its fall, it would continue to influence cities in island Southeast Asia

Makassar has been selected partly because it had much in common with Melaka, allowing for a meaningful comparison Like Melaka, it was also a strongly maritime city that would have been strongly affected by events in the wider world Makassar was also an indigenous controlled coastal city for over two hundred years, during which the direct urban response to the changing circumstances of the post-1511 world can be seen In addition, the rulers of Makassar had both the ability and resources to fully realise any major fortification project, thus illustrating perhaps the largest range of urban response and change in the city structure Makassar also absorbed many of the refugees from Melaka, who brought with them urban concepts that had

51

European colonization occurred only after 1511

been further developed because of the Portuguese experience, creating continuity between the two cities Although there exist differences between two cities, such as Makassar’s stronger relationship with the hinterland and others which will be addressed later, a comparative study will allow a sense of the changes in the Southeast Asian port city, both European and indigenous,

in the dynamic Age of Commerce

Thus, this study will consider the role of the city walls within the construction of the city, and possible variations between the colonial and indigenous city experience However, its effects

on the city’s relationship in the greater world of Southeast Asian warfare, and hierarchy will be considered as well, in order to fully understand the extent of the influence and the ramifications that a simple wall could have in the history of Southeast Asia

Chapter 2: Melaka – Between the Winds

Melaka, sometimes considered the heir to the Sri Vijaya Empire that dominated early island Southeast Asia, has long been an object of fascination Lying on the lucrative China route and one of the principle centres of the spice trade, Tomé Pires described the port as “the city made for merchandise.”1 Close links with the indigenous sea-people and commercially-inclined rulers helped Melaka dominate the surrounding seas for over a hundred years, an epoch in the infamously ephemeral dynasties of insular Southeast Asia Trade brought both wealth and ideas

to Melaka, turning it into a leading cultural centre that even had one sultan proclaiming it superior

to Mecca Melaka was truly legendary, and is perhaps the best documented and most representative of the pre-1511 port cities in the region

Although Melaka undoubtedly earned its reputation as the premier centre of trade and culture in the island world, it is Melaka’s catastrophic fall that firmly carved its place in Southeast Asian history and literature It became the first European controlled city, and the first to experience the changes and fortifications that were to be reflected in other Southeast Asian ports

in decades to come Through a study of pre-1511 and Portuguese Melaka, the changes that a new era wrought in the urban form of the maritime cities can be seen

Historiographical Overview and Sources

The range of sources available for Melaka vary greatly according to the period For the

pre-1511 period, the Chinese records of the Ming voyages and the Malay epic, the Sejarah

Melayu comprise the main corpus of extant sources Their limitations have been discussed

extensively, and other alternative avenues such as the archaeological record are non-existent, as the site has since been heavily contaminated and built over There was also no indigenous

1

Armando Cortesão, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pire, (London: Hakluyt Society, 1944), p 286

tradition of city illustration or mapping, with the result that a city plan will not be forthcoming, although there is a rather bare Chinese nautical map of early Meleka.2

For post-1511, European sources (usually Portuguese) records which dominate However,

they are also useful for the earlier period, with works such as Tomé Pires’ Suma Oriental

providing coverage of early Melakan history based on oral interviews with the locals The Portuguese sources, however, are limited by their perspective, temporal proximity to pre-1511

events, potential cultural prejudice – and in the Suma Oriental’s case, a problematic manuscript -

but in addition, have been accused of essentially creating a myth of a golden pre-1511 Melaka Nevertheless, the Portuguese records remained unparalleled and comparatively rich in information with which to reconstruct the post-1511 urban fabric of the city.3 The Europeans also provided valuable illustrations of Portuguese Melaka as unlike the indigenous rulers before, they had the necessary impetus to do so due to militaristic need, colonial administration, and a rising trend for sieges in European art.4

Despite this handicap of limited sources, a better understanding of Melaka’s history, as well as the physical structure of the city has emerged Though gaps in the extant knowledge still exist, there is sufficient evidence on which an analytical study of the Melakan urban structure evolution and its effects can be based

Melaka: A Historical Overview

Paramesvara, also known as Iskandar Shah, a prince from Palembang, who after first fleeing to Singapore, established himself as ruler of Melaka around the year 1400 He was

2

For further clarification, see appendix 2 Schwartzberg, “Southeast Asian Cartography”, p 689 and 700;

Geoff Wade, “Melaka in Ming Dynasty Texts”, JMBRAS, 70, 1 (1997): 54

University Press 2000), p 614

thought to have first settled in Bertam, a day’s travel up the Melaka River.5 His son, Megat Iskandar, was thought to have founded the port.6 At the time, Melaka was said to have 1000 residents, a number that increased rapidly as its rulers encouraged traders to this new entrepot on the peninsula As it rose as a port, Melaka drew the attention of Zheng He and the Ming Maritime fleet The Ming Emperor Yong-Le took steps to formally establish contact, which was reciprocated by Paramesvara in his visit to the Ming court in 1411.7 Melaka was enfeoffed and formally raised to the status of a city-state when Yong-Le took the unprecedented step of sending

a tablet engraved with his personal inscription along with Zheng He on his 1409 voyage.8 This move declared that Melaka was to be brought under the imperial umbrella and was no longer considered a barbarian state; in short, legitimising it The tablet was a symbol of China’s official protection, a shield which may have been more symbolic than actual, which waned over the years.9 This became less of a factor as Melaka’s influence grew over the Straits Although never achieving the same level of dominance that had allowed its declared ancestor Sri Vijaya to turn the Straits into a private sea, Melaka’s dedication to commerce led to the influx of a mix of traders.10

By the time of the Portuguese attack of 1511, Melaka had a thriving populace of traders and locals, and claimed to be able to summon a fighting force of 90,000 men Tomé Pires wrote that in the markets of Melaka, 84 languages were spoken, a testament to its cosmopolitan nature Its cultural prominence was such that the king Sultan Mahmud Shah declared it the equal of

Enfeoffment refers to the creation of a fief.Willem Pieter Groeneveldt, Historical notes on Indonesia and

Malaya compiled from Chinese sources, (Djarkata: C.V Bhratara, 1960), p 129

Mecca itself Mahmud Shah also formally renounced allegiance to Siam and Java, stating that as

a vassal of China, Melaka should not be a vassal to them.11

The Portuguese first made contact in the form of five ships with 400 men led by Diogo

Lopez de Siqueira The story of first contact is murky, with the Sejarah Melayu and Portuguese

sources giving different accounts; but both agree it ended badly De Siqueira limped back to India, bringing news of his defeat to Afonso de Albuquerque, the architect of Portuguese expansionism in Asia Albuquerque led a force of 15 ships and 1600 men to Melaka, arriving in June, 1511 When he arrived, the Melakans, aided by the foreign traders present, had prepared for the expected reprisal and had erected stockades along the seaboard and at strategic points within the city.12

The story of the attack was a textbook response to aggression in the island world, before the city walls that were to grace the port cities became a feature The Melakans seem to have chosen the usual tactic of constructing temporary defensive fortifications and defending the city before strategically retreating in the expectation of the eventual departure of the attackers The Portuguese fleet and allies dropped anchor at the present-day Pulau Besar, then referred to as Pulau Cina due to the Chinese merchants living there After negotiations failed, Albuquerque ordered an attack, with the primary focus on the market bridge as it was the only link between the north and south sides of Melaka (See Fig 1) The Melakans seemed to have been equally aware

of this weakness, building palisades of tough nipah palm and furiously defending it with

bombards and arrows When the Portuguese broke through, the Sultan led armed men from the back of an elephant, counter-attacking from the mosque side, which seemed to have served as the defense bastion However, the Portuguese proved stronger, and sporadic attempts continued for a month before a second attack at the bridge caused an overwhelmed sultan and retinue to flee to

11

Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p 296 and 254

12

The number of ships varied between 15-20, and between 1000-1600 men Birch, The commentaries, Vol

2, p 221, Vol 3, pp 68-69; Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p 279

the ancestral stronghold of Bertam, in the expectation that the “white Bengali” invaders would soon leave after raiding the city.13

The Portuguese, however, did not leave Albuqeurque set about building a timber stockade on the hill, before tearing down the mosque and other stone structures in order to use

them as materiel for A Famosa During this time, the Portuguese were under near constant attack

from the inland by forces led by the sultan, who still commanded considerable numbers despite his recent defeat.14 The decision to fortify seems to have been wise, since the Portuguese rule over Melaka would never be an easy one Attacks by the sultan continued over the first year, this time from his new stronghold at the Muar River, a trend that lasted until the Sultan fled to Bintan Over the course of the next 150 years, Portuguese Melaka would sustain attacks from Johor, Aceh, and the Javanese, before finally falling to the Dutch in 1640, the newest maritime power in the region.15 Long after it ceased being the “Mecca of the East”, Melaka remained a prize for any polity that sought to rule the spice trade of Southeast Asia However, before these changes can be understood, we must first understand the site, and the structure of the city

Melaka under the Sultans

The natural environment of fifteenth-century Melaka was typical of most port cities in the island world The climate was equatorial, prone to the seasonal monsoons that governed trade in the island world, and had given the port its title as the city that lay at “the end of monsoons and the beginning of others”.16 The river mouth of the Melaka River was unusually free from mangrove swamps that lined the rest of the coast, with a sheltered estuary The present day St Paul’s Hill, the same locus of psychic power that figured in the founding story, was near the

The Portuguese would also experience internal uprisings, such as the rebellion by Javanese leader

Utemutaraja; Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p 140

16

Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p 286

shoreline, providing a good vantage point of the harbour, forming the natural focal point for any defence

Fig 1: The Portuguese Attack

While the coast line was clear of mangrove, the river banks were less so and distinctly swampy as the entire area was low-lying and marshy.17 The possibility of flooding, combined with the heat and poor foundational support in the soft ground, gave rise to the distinctive stilt house architecture common to Southeast Asia The area was also lacking in convenient, easily quarried rock which ensured that the only stone structures were that of the mosque and rulers’ tombs.18 The soil was largely infertile for intensive cultivation of staple crops, but supported the fruit trees and vegetables interspersing the urban area, a common form of port-city mixed land use that blurred the line between the urban/non-urban.19

Bertam, the original settlement of Paramesvara, was described as being two or three leagues (about 10-15km) up the Melaka River.20 The topography of the area was substantively different from Melaka While Melaka consisted of a relatively narrow flat coastal area surrounded

by hills and orientated towards the sea, Bertam was described as a flat plain extending 3-4 leagues (about 15-20km) that was considered unusual for the region Bordered by mountain ranges with a supply of freshwater described as abundant, it was the palace of the Melakan kings and the recreation ground of wealthy Melakan merchants and nobility, and was thought to be along the Sungei Bertam at possibly Bertam Ulm.21

For the purposes of this study, Melaka will be used to refer to the river mouth settlement Melaka in the indigenous usage often refered to both the polity and the city, thereby technically including Bertam and the entire inhabited stretch from Kuala Penejah to Hulu Muar.22 However, major changes in the urban fabric occurred at the river mouth settlement as it was the city heart and main area of urban interaction between different ethnic groups The settlement by the river

also fulfils most existing conditions for urban status, ranking above other sites in the settlement pattern hierarchy, and clearly being able to provide economic and religious functions and institutions that others lacked It was also independent, due to its status as the seat of the Melakan polity

The City Proper

The city of Melaka on the eve of the Portuguese attack was a large one by contemporary standards, and was said to have stretched one league (about 5km) along the coastline (See Fig 2)

It supposedly had a population of 190,000 households, and said to be able to field over 100,000 fighting men, a number which has been the subject of debate.23 Nevertheless, Melaka was considered to be impressive in size by the standards of that time, leading Albuquerque to comment that even the 8,000 bombards found later in the sultan’s treasury had been insufficient for its defence.24 The houses were described as hugging the coast rather than venturing inwards, making for a narrow city, which would be typical of a port city that was focused on the source of trade.25

The city itself was divided into two main sections – the south bank with St Paul’s Hill and the palace, and the north bank with the traders and markets An elaborate market bridge connected the administrative sector with the commercial sector in the north, and the river itself linked Melaka with Bertam, where the wealthier merchants and nobility would head for pleasure

jaunts or visit the ancestral istana The king himself alternated his residence between Bertam and

Melaka, which was easily accomplished and only marginally lessened his control over either city since the two were only an hour’s journey by boat.26

M.J Pintado, “A letter from Rui de Araujo”, Portuguese Documents on Malacca, Vol 1, 1509-1511,

(Kuala Lumpur, National Archives of Malaysia, 1993), p 131

26

Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p 246

Fig 2: Melaka

The city walls of Melaka

Like many port cities, Melaka had protective walls for its royal demesne, the traces of which could be seen as late as 1641.27 Evidence suggests there were two rings of protection – the

first being around the istana buildings themselves, and a possible second one enclosing the entire

hill with the predominantly native Melakan population Both had at least one main gate that would have been used for formal processions, such as escorting the arrival of a royal envoy Individual compounds had their own walls as well, that divided the city into its ethnic

communities and orang kaya strongholds.28 The existence of the external perimeter wall at the hill seems to have been in some doubt, given the lack of reference to it in Portuguese sources and Joao Barros’s comment that the Portuguese force had considered Melaka unimpressive as it lacked a wall.29 However, the European image of city walls was that of considerably more

impressive structures, and the Sejarah Melayu mentions the existence of a city gate However,

even if the perimeter wall had not existed as a single independent element, the walls of the compounds on the hill would have effectively walled off the hill

The permanent walls, such as those used for the individual compounds and palace, were

probably composed of earth tightly packed between timber walls (taipa), the latter the favoured tough nipah palm.30 The temporary structures erected before the Portuguese attack were probably somewhat less elaborate, lacking the earth reinforcement between, but possessed points and small earth ramparts for bombards to allow defensive forces to fire upon the Portuguese.31 The latter were built as needed, usually in expectation of direct attack, a trait common to the island world

The Sejarah Melayu mentions an incident whereby the men of Melaka went to aid Pahang, which