Papers on Johore Lama and the Portuguese in Malaya (1511–1641). C.A. Gibson-Hill {and} G. de G. Sieveking

Ian A. MacGregor’s “Notes on the Portuguese in Malaya” (1955) is a social and administrative history of the Portuguese garrison community at Malacca between its conquest in 1511 and its loss to the Dutch in 1641. Drawing extensively on Portuguese archival records from the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo in Lisbon, MacGregor’s central thesis is that the Portuguese in Malaya were not a trading company’s agents but a small, often underpaid, royal civil and military service whose members were drawn from the fidalgo class and whose living conditions, family patterns, and institutional arrangements can be reconstructed in considerable detail from the surviving administrative paperwork.

Summary

MacGregor establishes that the Portuguese presence in Malacca was numerically modest and highly seasonal. The garrison rarely exceeded 600 men, and a complete set of monthly ration orders for April 1519 to May 1520 shows the number fluctuating between 29 and 348, with an average under 200 (p. 4). Reinforcements arrived with the monsoon fleets in May–June and October, while departures for India and the Moluccas in November–January caused sharp declines. Unlike their Dutch successors, these men were servants of the Crown, each registered in Matricula books that recorded his father’s name, birthplace, pay entitlement, and service history (p. 6). The pay system comprised a soldo (fixed salary by rank) and a mantimento (ration allowance, initially issued in kind as rice). In the early years the Captain of the Fortress and senior officers received 60 gantang of rice per month, while men-at-arms and sailors received 30 and chaplains a mere 15 (p. 5). By 1527 the Crown was already in arrears, and MacGregor catalogues the five typical responses of an unpaid soldier: selling his pay-claim at a discount, attaching himself to a powerful patron, begging, selling his weapons, or deserting to become an adventurer (pp. 7–8).

The Crown’s response to the chronic shortage of men was to encourage local marriage and settlement, a policy strongly supported by Afonso de Albuquerque. The results were disappointing: only 38 married Portuguese settlers were recorded at Malacca in 1525, and even by 1626 the number had reached only 114, of whom just 120 were fit or willing for military service during the 1529 siege (pp. 9–10). MacGregor attributes this to the high mortality rate, the men’s reluctance to settle during their early years, and the fact that many were already married in Portugal. He also demonstrates that Portuguese service in the East was profoundly family-based: Jorge de Albuquerque’s second captaincy (1521–25) was accompanied by his brother-in-law Henrique Leme, another brother-in-law dom Sancho Henriques (who commanded the naval squadron and was killed in the Pahang river in 1523), and dom Garcia Henriques (later Captain of the Moluccas) (pp. 15–17).

MacGregor devotes considerable attention to the quality and social standing of the Captains of Malacca. Of the 20 different men who held the post between 1512 and 1560, four went on to become Governors of Portuguese India, and four were sons of Vasco da Gama (pp. 27–30). He argues against the caricature of the Portuguese in Malaya as a “second-rate collection of corrupt and unprincipled intriguers,” noting that while some were indeed corrupt, the post attracted men of high ability and respectable lineage who were often given considerable latitude due to the communication delays between Malacca and Goa (pp. 25–27). The paper closes with a meditation on the cultural context of the “great Portuguese century” under King Dom Manuel (r. 1495–1521), illustrated by the career of Duarte Coelho, who served at Malacca before going on to found a permanent settlement in Brazil (pp. 33–36).

Key Findings

• A complete set of monthly ration orders for Malacca (April 1519–May 1520) shows the Portuguese garrison averaging under 200 men, with a low of 29 in one month, confirming that the community was small and highly seasonal (p. 4).
• The Crown was in arrears on wages and ration payments by 1527, and the resulting poverty drove soldiers to sell their pay-claims illegally, attach themselves to patrons, beg, sell weapons, or desert (pp. 6–8).
• The policy of encouraging local marriage produced only 38 married settlers by 1525 and 114 by 1626; at the 1629 siege only 120 settlers were fit or willing for military service (pp. 9–10).
• Of the 20 Captains of Malacca between 1512 and 1560, four subsequently became Governors of Portuguese India and four were sons of Vasco da Gama, demonstrating that the post attracted men of the highest social rank and administrative ability (pp. 27–30).
• The Confraternity of Mercy at Malacca, founded by 1532, played a critical role in managing the property of deceased Portuguese and distributing weekly alms of rice (200–1,875 gantang per month) to poor local Christians and the children of indigent servants (pp. 13, 40–41).
• The Captain of Malacca received the same salary as the Captains of Ormuz and Goa, reflecting the town’s strategic importance as a trading “bank” from which Albuquerque financed campaigns in the Arabian Sea (p. 25).

Conclusion

MacGregor’s definitive takeaway is that the Portuguese in Malaya were a small, often impoverished, but socially respectable royal service community whose members were drawn from the fidalgo class and whose institutional life—pay, marriage, mortality, charity, and family networking—can be traced with unusual precision through the administrative records of the Portuguese Crown. He resists both romanticisation and wholesale condemnation, presenting a community that was simultaneously capable of high administrative achievement and riddled with the petty corruption and personal misfortune that characterised sixteenth-century Portuguese overseas service, as captured in Barros’s lament that India was “a cruel stepmother of the faithful and a doting mother of the tricksters” (p. 39).

Context

• The paper forms part of a larger collaborative volume on Johore Lama and the Portuguese in Malaya (1511–1641), edited with C.A. Gibson-Hill and G. de G. Sieveking, and draws on manuscript sources from Lisbon, Évora, Goa, and London that had not previously been systematically exploited for Malayan history.
• MacGregor’s use of the Corpo Cronologico collection at the Torre do Tombo—particularly the monthly ration orders, Matricula registers, and alms distribution records—established a methodological precedent for reconstructing the social history of Portuguese Southeast Asia from fiscal and administrative documentation rather than from the chronicles alone.

References