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Portugal and the Portuguese

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Portugal and the Portuguese

Scope and Historical Definition

Portugal’s presence in the Malay world, spanning from the first European contact at Malacca in 1508 through the fall of the Portuguese stronghold to the Dutch in 1641 and beyond, constitutes one of the most extensively documented episodes in the maritime history of the region. The Portuguese established themselves at Malacca following the conquest of 1511, and from that base projected naval power across the Singapore and Johore waters, into the straits of the Malay Peninsula, and as far as the Moluccas and the Philippines. Their influence extended well beyond the formal period of colonial rule: even after the loss of Malacca in 1641, Portugal retained a diplomatic prestige among Malay courts that far exceeded its material military capacity, as evidenced by the deference shown to a single undermanned Portuguese vessel during the Johore succession crisis of 1717–1718 [1, pp. 111–156]. The Portuguese presence is thus best understood not as a single continuous colonial administration but as a layered phenomenon encompassing military conquest, commercial extraction, diplomatic negotiation, and cosmographical contestation over the legal boundaries of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

The defining feature of Portuguese activity in the region was the tension between naval superiority and the persistent inability to secure the loyalty of the native population. Rebellions by Pate Quitir, the assassination attempt by Tuan Maxiliz, the false accusations that led to the execution of the Bendara Abdela, and the repeated sieges by the King of Bintang and the King of Acheen all illustrate a pattern in which the Portuguese garrison, often reduced to a few hundred men, survived through a combination of fortification, naval power, and the rivalries among Malay and Javanese polities rather than through any stable political settlement [2, pp. 117–149].

The Conquest and Consolidation of Malacca

The Portuguese arrival at Malacca began with the failed diplomatic mission of Diogo Lopez de Sequeira in August 1509, when his squadron anchored in the road and a culturally clumsy envoy named Teixeira fastened a bead necklace around the Bendahara’s neck, deepening Malay suspicion and precipitating a half-hearted but irreversible outbreak of hostilities [3, pp. 71–73]. Sequeira was forced to withdraw with his men captured; sixty Portuguese men were left in slavery at Malacca, and eight were killed [2, pp. 120–123]. The political aftermath proved fatal to Malaccan cohesion: the Sultan, resenting the Bendahara Mutahir’s growing prestige as the nominal leader of the resistance, had him executed, and the minister’s daughter was taken into the harem while his wealth was dissipated at a royal wedding [3, p. 73].

When the Viceroy d’Albuquerque appeared in the roads on 1 July 1511 with 19 ships, 800 European soldiers, and 600 native sepoys, the Sultan attempted to temporize, offering the execution of the Bendahara as a gesture of goodwill while refusing to release the Portuguese prisoners or pay an indemnity [3, pp. 73–75]. The decisive assault fell on 24 July 1511, when d’Albuquerque’s troops, though heavily outnumbered and suffering from poisoned arrows, heat, and smoke, broke through the Malay defences by burning the buildings as they advanced [3, pp. 75–76]. Prince Alaedin led repeated charges in person and the Laksamana Hang Nadim sent fireships down the river, but the combination of Portuguese armour, discipline, and superior weaponry proved decisive [3, p. 76]. The city fell within nine days of the initial landing, and 3,000 of the 8,000 cannons Mahmud had relied upon were found in the city [2, pp. 122–126].

The consolidation that followed was marked by a series of military crises. Pati Unus of Japara assembled a fleet of ninety sail and 12,000 men to recover Malacca; Ferdinand Perez defeated him with 350 Portuguese and native troops in seventeen vessels, after which the Javanese were “for ever banished from Malacca” [2, pp. 130–131]. The 1518 siege by the King of Bintang fielded 1,500 men and 60 vessels against a garrison of only 200, many of them sick; the Portuguese lost 18 men to the enemy’s 330 [2, p. 135]. The 1571 siege by the King of Acheen involved a fleet of nearly 100 sail carrying 7,000 soldiers; Tristan Vaz de Vega broke the blockade with ten vessels and 300 men, capturing or killing 700 of the enemy at the cost of five Portuguese lives [2, pp. 143–145].

R.J. Wilkinson, writing in 1935, critically assessed the traditional Portuguese claims of a town of 100,000 inhabitants defended by 30,000 warriors and thousands of guns, arguing these figures were implausible on several grounds: the Malay Annals stated the Malays were unacquainted with artillery, the Portuguese suffered most from poisoned darts rather than firearms, no important Malay leader was slain, and the army was composed of a small palace guard, lesser retainers, and a demoralised conscript levy [4, pp. 68–69]. On population, he noted Malacca had no rice-growing hinterland to sustain such numbers [4, p. 69].

Portuguese Operations in the Singapore and Johore Waters

The Portuguese naval presence extended well beyond Malacca into the Singapore and Johore waters, where it intersected with the ambitions of the Johore succession and the expanding power of Aceh. I.A. MacGregor’s 1955 study undertook a systematic re-examination of when and how Johore Lama became the capital of the Johore Empire, dismantling the long-standing tradition—traceable to Valentijn (1724–26)—that the Malacca royal family established itself there immediately after the Portuguese conquest of 1511. MacGregor argued instead that the earliest plausible date for Johore Lama’s elevation to capital status was around 1540, based on the chroniclers’ consistent statement that the sultan’s city lay seven leagues from the river’s mouth, the physical geography of the Johore river, and the time required for the Portuguese fleet to reach the target [5, pp. 48–125].

The Portuguese destruction of Johore Lama on 15 August 1587 represents the most dramatic single operation in this theatre. The 1587 fleet comprised 16 vessels (3 galleons, 2 galleys, 4 galleots, 7 foists) carrying 500 troops; the city garrison numbered 12,000 men including allied rulers from Trengganu, Indragiri, and Kampar [5, pp. 55]. 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 [5, 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 [5, pp. 58–61].

In the 1570s, Achinese war fleets operated with increasing freedom in the straits and rivers of the Malay Peninsula. MacGregor reconstructed the first of three naval engagements between the Portuguese and the Achinese off Singapore, fought on 1 January 1577 during the captaincy of Mathias de Albuquerque. The Portuguese fleet comprised 12 vessels (one galleon, two galleasses, three galleys, six foists); the Achinese fleet numbered 150 sail, of which 40 were royal galleys with two rows of oars [6, pp. 11–13]. The Achinese were armed with spheres and basilisks firing projectiles “as large as a man’s head”; the Portuguese possessed only two spheres [6, p. 13]. Portuguese casualties were 13 killed according to da Costa; Achinese losses were 1,600 killed and captured per da Costa, though Moniz Barreto’s certificate gives 300 [6, pp. 15].

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the emergence of new European competitors. The Dutch first appeared in the Indian seas in September 1597; their organised fleet of eight ships and 800 men under Jacob Cornelius van Neck sailed from Amsterdam on 13 May 1598 and returned to Holland on 20 April 1600 [2, pp. 146–148]. Jacques de Coutre, a Flemish merchant-traveller who operated out of Portuguese Malacca and Goa, proposed the construction of two fortresses on Singapore soil—one on Sentosa at the Surgidero, exploiting its “natural fortress” of stone, and another on the eastern coast of the island—as well as a small fort on a sandbank in the Johor River estuary to patrol the entire river and prevent junk traffic [7, pp. 82]. He measured Singapore Island at approximately seven leguas across from east to west, and identified the Surgidero (anchorage point) at the convergence of the Old and New Straits with the site of present-day Fort Siloso [7, pp. 82–83].

The Fall of Malacca and the Aftermath

The Dutch conquest of Malacca in 1641 marked the end of Portuguese colonial rule in the region. The siege lasted from August 1640 to January 1641; the town’s population of over 20,000 was reduced to approximately 3,000, with more than 7,000 deaths attributed to famine and pestilence [8, p. 232]. The Dutch lost more than 1,500 men, mostly to contagious disease, and suffered the deaths of three successive commanders—Adriaan Antonissoon, Jacob Koper, and Pieter van den Broek—during the siege [8, pp. 229–230]. The fortified town was armed with 64 brass and 4 iron guns, 43 brass swivel guns, and 31 iron swivel guns [8, p. 232]. The town was stormed on 14 January 1641 under Captain Mime Willemssoon Kaartekoe [8, pp. 225–246].

Yet Portugal’s diplomatic weight in the region outlasted its military presence by nearly a century. The Jornada de Antonio de Albuquerque Coelho (1718), translated and published by T.D. Hughes in 1935, provides the only known European eyewitness narrative of the Johore succession crisis of 1717–1718. With only twelve Portuguese, five small cannon, and a crew of black sailors, the Governor of Macau found himself in the midst of a dynastic struggle between the reigning Raja Muda and the pretender Raja Kechil. The Governor’s intervention was decisive: he blockaded the river mouth, seized and executed Raja Kechil’s scouts, and ultimately provided the tactical counsel that led to the capture of the Datuk Bandar’s fortress and the pretender’s accession [1, pp. 111–156]. The Johore court’s deference to the Governor—evidenced by the King’s personal intervention to protect Portuguese personnel, the granting of a church site, and the delivery of the English vessel into Portuguese hands—testified to a diplomatic weight that far exceeded Portugal’s material military presence [1, pp. 111–156]. The treaty between the Governor and Raja Kechil was signed and sealed on 7 March 1718; the Governor took solemn possession of the church site at Johore Lama on 25 March 1718, the Feast of the Annunciation [1, pp. 142–145].

Cosmographical Contestation and the Pacific Question

The Portuguese presence in the Malay world was inseparable from the broader Iberian contestation over the legal boundaries of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The Treaty of Tordesillas (June 1494) fixed the Atlantic demarcation at 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands; the Treaty of Saragossa (April 17, 1529) pledged Spain’s claim to the Moluccas for 350,000 ducats and fixed the antipodal demarcation at 17° east of the Moluccas, defined as 297½ leagues [9, pp. 129]. The expansion of the Portuguese towards India and the Far East, which culminated in the reduction of Malacca by Albuquerque and the exploration of Java, Amboina and the Moluccas by Serrao and Abreu in 1512, immediately focused attention on the antipodal demarcation [9, p. 130].

The central cosmographical problem was the disagreement over the linear extent of an equatorial degree. The Ptolemaic degree of 16⅔ leagues (50 nautical miles) gave a hemispherical extent of 3,000 leagues; the Eratosthenian degree of 17½ leagues (56 nautical miles) gave 3,150 leagues—a difference of 150 leagues that determined whether the Moluccas fell in the Spanish or Portuguese hemisphere [9, pp. 142–143]. Encisco’s Suma de Geographia (1519) argued the world’s circumference was 6,000 leagues and that only 230 leagues remained in the Portuguese hemisphere beyond Malacca, placing the Moluccas firmly in the Spanish sphere [9, p. 135]. At the Junta of Badajoz (1524), the Spanish cosmographers accepted the degree of 17½ leagues “used commonly by sailors both in Portugal and Castille” but simultaneously adhered to Ptolemy’s circumference of 62½ miles per degree, revealing the internal inconsistency of their position [9, p. 147].

Diego Ribero’s World-Map of 1529 depicted the Pacific as 134° of longitude wide from Central America to the Moluccas—an underestimate of approximately 15° but a unique approximation to accuracy that was not matched by his immediate successors, who continued to show a narrow Pacific until the turn of the seventeenth century [9, p. 151]. The degree of 17½ leagues (70 Roman miles) underestimated the true equatorial circumference by 1,440 nautical miles or 24°, a margin that both generated and concealed the Spanish underestimate of the Pacific’s width [9, p. 156]. Colin Jack-Hinton’s 1964 analysis concluded that the Spanish delineation of the antipodal demarcation in a position some 30° west of its true position was not an act of deliberate cartographical fraud but an honest consequence of the Ptolemaic degree value and the inability to determine longitude with any precision [9, pp. 125–161].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Portugal and the Portuguese in the Malay world reveals a clear evolution in methodological approach and historiographical priority across more than a century of publication. The earliest contributions, such as E. Koek’s 1886 reprint of Faria y Souza’s Asia Portugueza with philological annotations [2] and W.G. Maxwell’s 1911 translation of a British Museum manuscript on Sequeira’s voyage [10], were fundamentally documentary in character: their value lay in making accessible primary sources that were otherwise unavailable to Straits readers, with the scholarly contribution consisting in name corrections, place identifications, and cross-references to Portuguese chronicles.

The 1930s marked a shift towards critical historiography. R.J. Wilkinson’s 1935 note on the fall of Malacca [4] and his 1912 narrative [3] represented the older colonial idiom, portraying the Portuguese as rational agents of order and the Malay court as a study in passive indecision. By contrast, I.A. MacGregor’s 1955 study of Johore Lama [5] and his 1956 reconstruction of the 1577 sea fight [6] introduced a new standard of source criticism: systematic collation of multiple independent witnesses, resolution of contradictions through internal consistency and meteorological reasoning, and the use of physical geography to test the reliability of chroniclers’ claims. MacGregor’s work drew 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) [5, pp. 48–125].

The later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw the emergence of thematic and interpretive studies. Peter Borschberg’s 2008 article on Jacques de Coutre [7] used the manuscripts to challenge the dominant “Singapore Story” that attributes the recognition of the island’s strategic potential solely to Thomas Stamford Raffles in 1819, demonstrating that European commentators had openly described Singapore’s locational value two full centuries earlier. T.D. Hughes’s 1935 translation of the Jornada [1] filled a significant gap in the historiography of eighteenth-century Johore, for which no contemporary European account previously existed. Colin Jack-Hinton’s 1964 article [9] represented a different order of contribution altogether: a synthetic analysis of the cosmographical and diplomatic background to the Spanish incursion into the Pacific, engaging with and correcting the work of Nunn (1936), Wallis (1954), Dawson (1899), and Bourne (1891), while identifying and correcting a persistent error in Burney’s (1803) treatment of the Iberian league value that had been propagated by Guppy and Sharp.

The key debates documented in the Society’s literature concern: the dating of Johore Lama’s elevation to capital status (resolved by MacGregor in favour of c. 1540 rather than the immediate post-1511 tradition) [5]; the location of the Old Strait of Singapore (resolved by Borschberg on the basis of De Coutre’s descriptions to the south of the island between present-day Harbourfront and Sentosa) [7]; the reliability of Portuguese chroniclers’ claims about Malacca’s size and military strength (challenged by Wilkinson) [4]; and the question of whether the Spanish cartographical underestimation of the Pacific’s width represented deliberate fraud or honest cosmographical error (resolved by Jack-Hinton in favour of the latter) [9].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. T.D. Hughes and J. Tavares de Vallez Guerreiro (1935). A Portuguese account of Johore. Joao Tavares de Vallez Guerreiro. {Extracts from Jornado de Antonio de Albuquerque Coelho JMBRAS 13(2): 111–156. Read on JSTOR
  2. E. Koek (1886). Portuguese history of Malacca JSBRAS 17: 117–149. Read on JSTOR
  3. R.J. Wilkinson (1912). The capture of Malacca, A.D. 1511 JSBRAS 61: 71–76. Read on JSTOR
  4. R.J. Wilkinson (1935). The fall of Malacca JMBRAS 13(2): 68–69. Read on JSTOR
  5. I.A. MacGregor (1955). Johore Lama in the sixteenth century. {In Papers on Johore Lama and the Portuguese in Malaya (1511–1641 JMBRAS 28(2): 48–125.
  6. I.A. MacGregor (1956). A sea fight near Singapore in the 1570’s JMBRAS 29(3): 5–21. Read on JSTOR
  7. P. Borschberg (2008). Jacques de Coutre as a source for the early seventeenth-century history of Singapore, the Johore river and the straits JMBRAS 81(2): 71–98. Read on JSTOR
  8. D.F.A. Hervey and F. Valentijn (1890). Valentyn’s account of Malacca JSBRAS 22: 225–246.
  9. C. Jack-Hinton (1964). The political and cosmographical background to the Spanish incursion into the Pacific in the sixteenth century JMBRAS 37(2): 125–161.
  10. W.G. Maxwell (1911). An account of De Siqueira’s voyage to Malacca JSBRAS 57: 193–195. Read on JSTOR