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Seventeenth century visitors to the Malay Peninsula

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Seventeenth century visitors to the Malay Peninsula

J.J. Sheehan’s 1934 contribution to the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is a compilation of three extended extracts from seventeenth-century European travellers who visited the Malay Peninsula: John Nieuhoff (Malacca, December 1660), the Spanish Dominican Fray Navarette (Malacca, February 1669), and the Neapolitan jurist Dr. Gemelli Careri (Malacca, May 1695). All three passages are drawn from A Collection of Voyages and Travels, 3rd Edition (London, 1745), and together they offer a layered portrait of Dutch Malacca and its surrounding polities across roughly three decades of the late seventeenth century.

Summary

The compilation is organised chronologically by visitor. Nieuhoff’s extract, the longest of the three, provides a comprehensive geographical and ethnographical survey of Malacca and its neighbours. Written from the vantage point of a VOC supercargo who had spent thirteen years in Brazil before his first East Indies voyage in 1653, it covers the city’s physical layout, its commercial function as the “staple of the Indies,” the Malay language as a regional lingua franca, the coinage and weight systems in use, and the customs of the Malay population. Nieuhoff also devotes substantial space to the kingdoms of Johor, Pahang, and Patani, drawing on earlier Portuguese sources (Barros and others) for their origins and political histories. His account of Patani is particularly detailed, describing the city’s architecture, its religious life (both Muslim and Hindu), its agricultural products, and the political intrigue between the courts of Patani and Johor.

Navarette’s extract is shorter and more personal in tone. A Professor of Divinity at Manila travelling to Rome, he arrived at Malacca on the eve of Candlemas 1669 and remained ashore for twelve days. His account is dominated by the condition of the Catholic community under Dutch rule: approximately 2,000 Catholics lived in the city, practising their faith in private houses under the threat of a French Dominican who was monitoring them. Navarette records the Dutch prohibition on public Catholic worship, the expulsion of three Jesuit fathers to Batavia, and the public burning of a crucifix. His observations on the city’s climate, fruit, and the conduct of Dutch residents (including an incident of a Dutchman flogging two Catholic women) provide a counterpoint to Nieuhoff’s more detached commercial description.

Careri’s extract, the most recent of the three, is a day-by-day voyage narrative from Goa to Malacca and onward through the Strait of Singapore to Borneo. His account of Malacca itself is comparatively brief but adds specific details on the fort’s garrison (180 soldiers), the city’s population (about 5,000 souls), the anchorage fees levied on Spanish and Portuguese vessels (100 pieces of eight), and the treatment of different nationalities by the Dutch authorities. His descriptions of the Selittes (sea nomads) along the strait, the kingdom of Johor’s pepper trade, and the political structure of Patani (governed by a queen, tributary to Siam) complement and in places contradict Nieuhoff’s earlier account.

Key Findings

  • Malacca was captured by the Dutch in 1640 after a six-month siege, ending 130 years of Portuguese possession; the Dutch found a cannon carrying a 64-pound shot among the booty (p. 74).
  • The Portuguese had levied a 10 per cent customs duty on all ships transiting the Strait of Malacca; the VOC abolished this, deeming it an “unreasonable imposition” (p. 76).
  • The kingdom of Patani could field 180,000 armed men, the city and suburbs alone furnishing 10,000; in 1602 it was governed by a queen, Pratie, aged 15 (p. 85).
  • The king of Johor attacked Malacca in 1606 with 60,000 men; the Portuguese captured 1,500 brass cannon pieces when they destroyed the old city of Johor in 1603 (pp. 80–81).
  • Careri records the fort garrison at 180 soldiers and the city population at approximately 5,000 souls, “most of them Portuguese catholicks” (p. 100).
  • The Dutch purchased 50,000 Picos of pepper annually at Achem, each Pico weighing 130 Spanish pounds, which they resold to the Moors (p. 97).

Conclusion

The compilation’s value lies in its juxtaposition of three independent European perspectives on the same region within a 35-year span, allowing the reader to trace shifts in Malacca’s commercial prominence, the persistent vulnerability of its Catholic minority under Dutch rule, and the political dynamics among the Malay polities of Johor, Pahang, and Patani. Sheehan’s editorial framing is minimal, leaving the sources to speak for themselves as a window into the late-seventeenth-century Malay world as perceived by outsiders.

Context

  • All three extracts are sourced from A Collection of Voyages and Travels, 3rd Edition (London, 1745), a multi-volume compilation published by Henry Lintot and John Osborn; Sheehan does not consult the original Dutch, Spanish, or Italian manuscripts (p. 71).
  • The article serves a reference function within the JMBRAS, providing accessible English-language primary source material on the Malay Peninsula for a readership that may not have access to the 1745 collection or the original-language texts.

References