Article

Johore Lama in the sixteenth century. {In Papers on Johore Lama and the Portuguese in Malaya (1511–1641

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Johore Lama in the sixteenth century. {In Papers on Johore Lama and the Portuguese in Malaya (1511–1641

I.A. MacGregor’s 1955 article, published in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, undertakes a systematic re-examination of when and how Johore Lama became the capital of the Johore Empire in the sixteenth century. Working from a dense corpus of Portuguese chronicles, contemporary letters, and Malay genealogical texts, MacGregor dismantles the long-standing tradition—traceable to Valentijn (1724–26)—that the Malacca royal family established itself at Johore Lama immediately after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511, arguing instead that the earliest plausible date for Johore Lama’s elevation to capital status is around 1540.

Summary

The article opens by tracing the historiographical confusion that has surrounded the post-1511 movements of the Malacca royal family. From Valentijn through Marsden, Crawfurd, Newbold, and into the early twentieth-century works of Wilkinson and Winstedt, writers have variously placed the sultan at Johore, Bintan, Muar, or Pahang in the years immediately following the fall of Malacca, often conflating events of 1511–12 with those of 1519–20 or 1526. MacGregor demonstrates that this confusion stems from the unreliable secondary sources (Osorio, Maffei) that Valentijn used, from the conflation of “Bertam” with “Bintan” in English-language accounts derived from Faria e Sousa, and from the Malay Annals’ own tendency to compress or transpose events. By cross-referencing the primary Portuguese chronicles—Castanheda, Barros, Correa, the Commentaries of Albuquerque, Gaspar Correa, and Damiao de Goes—with contemporary documents such as the letters of Fernao Peres de Andrade (February 1513), Tome Pires (January 1513 and the Suma Oriental), and Giovanni da Empoli (1514), MacGregor reconstructs a more reliable sequence: the sultan first withdrew to Bertam, was driven out in September 1511, moved to the Muar area, and reached Bintan by January 1513, where he remained until his death at Kampar between November 1527 and July 1528.

The second major argument concerns the location of the capital during the reign of sultan Ala’ud-din (c. 1528–1564). MacGregor shows that when dom Estevao da Gama attacked the sultan’s fort in 1535 and 1536, the settlement was not at Johore Lama but well beyond Kota Tinggi, based on the chroniclers’ consistent statement that the city lay seven leagues from the river’s mouth, the physical geography of the Johore river (its width, depth, and the position of shoals that would have prevented a ship from anchoring below Johore Lama), and the time required for the Portuguese fleet to reach the target. The sultan appears to have been still mobile in the late 1530s—Pinto places him at Bintan and Kampar in 1540, and Pero de Faria described him in November 1539 as “a king of the jungle and clearing land”—but by 1545, when Simao de Mello reported 300 lancharas assembled by the “king of Jantana,” the sultan was sufficiently established to be based at Johore Lama.

The final section provides a detailed narrative of the events leading to the Portuguese destruction of Johore Lama on 15 August 1587. MacGregor draws on seven sources, including Couto’s Tenth Decade (completed by 1593), Couto’s Vida de dom Paulo de Lima, the Historia of dom Antonio de Ataide (c. 1616), Joao dos Santos’ Ethiopia Oriental, Linschoten’s account, Faria e Sousa, and the letters published by Cunha Rivara. The narrative covers the breakdown of the 1583 treaty between Johore and Portugal, the blockade of the Singapore Strait by sultan Ali Jalla’s fleet in 1586, the resulting famine at Malacca, and the expedition dispatched by Viceroy dom Duarte de Menezes under dom Paulo de Lima, which captured and burned the city after a two-day assault.

Key Findings

  • Sultan Mahmud of Malacca was confirmed to be at Bintan by January 1513, based on the independent testimony of Tome Pires’ letter (10 January 1513), Fernao Peres de Andrade’s letter (22 February 1513), and Castanheda’s chronicle (pp. 19–21).
  • The Portuguese attack on the sultan’s fort by dom Estevao da Gama in 1535 and 1536 targeted a settlement seven leagues up the Johore river—well beyond Kota Tinggi—not Johore Lama, as confirmed by river depth and width measurements and the six-to-nine-day sailing times reported by the chroniclers (pp. 33–35).
  • Simao de Mello’s letter of 15 November 1545 reports that the “king of Jantana” had assembled 300 lancharas, indicating the sultan was well established by that date and likely at Johore Lama (p. 37).
  • The 1587 Portuguese fleet comprised 16 vessels (3 galleons, 2 galleys, 4 galleots, 7 foists) carrying 500 troops (not the 700 promised); the city garrison numbered 12,000 men including allied rulers from Trengganu, Indragiri, and Kampar (pp. 55, 60).
  • Dom Paulo de Lima’s own letter of 26 November 1587 states he attacked with 400 soldiers against 8,000 defenders and three allied kings, capturing 800 pieces of bronze artillery and 1,200 vessels; Portuguese casualties were 80 killed according to Couto, 55 according to Santos (pp. 65–66).
  • The city’s fortifications included walls of double-thickness stout timber, a central bastion mounting a serpent and a camel, a beaten-earth fort called Cotabato with a camel, two camelletes and a falcon, and a surrounding ditch full of spikes and caltrops; the suburb burned by Noronha on 22 July contained a fort called Corritao with thirty pieces of artillery and approximately 200 men (pp. 58–61).

Conclusion

MacGregor’s definitive historical takeaway is that Johore Lama’s career as a royal capital was both later in origin and shorter in duration than the received tradition had supposed. The site cannot have served as capital before approximately 1540, and its tenure ended permanently with the Portuguese destruction of 15 August 1587, after which the Johore court relocated to Batu Sawar, where it remained until 1617. The article thus corrects a historiographical error that had persisted, in various forms, from Valentijn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien through the early twentieth century.

Context

  • The study draws on primary manuscripts held at the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), the Biblioteca Publica e Arquivo Distrital (Evora), and the Arquivo Histórico e Geral do Estado da Índia (Goa), including letters, certificates, and the Descripcam dos cercos de Malaca (a rare seventeenth-century manuscript).
  • The article’s principal historiographical contribution is the resolution of a dating problem that had generated contradictory accounts for over two centuries, achieved through systematic collation of Portuguese chronicle evidence against contemporary documentary sources and physical geography.

References