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Melaka, “Piracy” and the Modern World System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Gene M. Chenoweth
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Because our modern world system emerged within world-wide contexts, we must consider how founding relationships that established it reflect global interconnectedness of their own era. Douglas Sturm has written, “History is a process of new formations. What we are and what we shall become are not givens. They are results of many relations in which we are engaged and whose character we affect, in however small a degree, by the manner of our participation.” Too often this relational perspective has been ignored in propounding origins and fundamental relationships of our modern world. For over five hundred years, for example, Eurocentrism has betrayed indebtedness to Renaissance hubris. Further, contemporary memories of our relational past are laced with policies and perspectives of forebears who constituted nation states. These processes entailed “inventing traditions” post facto, while also vesting collective memories with [hi]stories on behalf of national dignity and imperial stature. Even as false memories have been used for socializing children into citizens, and for motivating troops and voters, they also render indispensable historical understandings problematical. Sometimes there are hints of such fabrications in paradoxical impressions. Edward Lucie-Smith muses: “Granted that piracy is really no more than robbery at sea, how did the crime come to acquire the aura of sinister glamour that still clings to it, an aura which sets the pirate apart from other and more commonplace malefactors?” Piracy's “aura of sinister glamour” is not confined to tropes like Blackbeard, the Jolly Roger, or Long John Silver. “Piracy” has clouded Asian history and rationalized European incursions, at least since the Portuguese captured the fabulous port city of Melaka in 1511.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , 1996 , pp. 107 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1996

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References

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2. In Historia general de las Indias, written in 1553, Spanish historian Francisco Lopez de Gomara extolled the opening of Iberian routes to the East and West Indies as “the greatest event [sic] since the creation of the world, apart from the incarnation and death of him who created it.” Quoted in Boxer, C. R., Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 1415-1825 at 1 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand U Press, 1965)Google Scholar. For an almost identical passage see, Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations IV vii c 626 (Clarendon Press, 1976)Google Scholar, as well as note 73. See also Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Tucker, Robert C., ed, The Marx-Engels Reader at 469–500, 474 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2nd ed, 1978)Google Scholar.

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7. Id at 345-46.

8. Rare, not unprecedented, as associates of Douglas Sturm, honored recipient of this essay, will avow.

9. “Brigandage,” because it denotes and connotes “thieving outlaw bandso” Today, “piracy” also refers to “theft of intellectual property rights” a meaning without currency in the 16th century.

10. Simkin, C. G. F., The Traditional Trade of Asia at 162 (Oxford U Press, 1968)Google Scholar. The spelling, “Malacca” stems from an antiquated English usage; “Melaka” is preferred today.

11. Id at 260. At 251-60, Professor Simkin borrows and embellishes “the historical constant” from Dutch historian Leur, J. C. Van, Indonesian Trade and Society at 87–88 (The Hague, 1955)Google Scholar.

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33. The following are typical in this respect, while they differ significantly over other issues; the list is not exhaustive, of course. 1 Dictionary of Ming Biography, entries for “Cheng Ho” at 194–200, 195–96 (cited in note 24)Google Scholar and for “Shih Chin-ch'ing,” at 1198-1201 passim; Dreyer, , Early Ming China at 195 (cited in note 21)Google Scholar; Levathes, , When China Ruled the Seas at 98, 102 (cited in note 15)Google Scholar; Simkin, , Traditional Trade of Asia at 142 (cited in note 10)Google Scholar; Tsai, , Eunuchs in the Ming at 151 (cited in note 22)Google Scholar.

34. The Dictionary of Ming Biography account reveals:

Six days after the reception of Cheng Ho [Zheng He] at the Ming court [upon return firom the first voyage] and the presentation of the captives, Shih Chin-ch'ing's son-in-law, Ch'iu Yetv-ch'eng, was granted an audience at court. The emperor issued a decree proclaiming the establishment of an office of pacification at Palembang and the appoint of Shih Chin-ch'ing as the commissioner. Ch'iu received the robes, sash, and seal of office to take back to Shih. This is the only occasion in history when the Chinese government had an overseas agency to take charge of Chinese settlers. But neither its authority over Shih nor Shih's control over his domain was very strong…[For, as the official Ming History states] “Although he accepted the decrees of the imperial court he was also a vassal of Java. His territory was a small strip and cannot be compared with Sri Viuaya of the past.”

1 Dictionary of the Ming Biography at 1200 (cited in note 24); for other details at 196.

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36. For Melaka, consult Andaya, , Religious Developments at 517 (cited in note 35)Google Scholar. In the case of Palembang it is suggested that Shih Chin-Ch'ing's daughter, the Elder Mistress Shih, “had a part in the introduction of Islam” into parts of Java, took the Javanese name, Niai Gede Pinatih, and became “shahbandar” (chief of port) at Gresik, a city In eastern Java adjacent to the island of Madura. 1 Dictionary of Ming Biography at 1200-01 (cited in note 24). Exactly how she may have participated in Islamic life at Gresik is not clear from this account. Today, scholars believe Islam was “firmly established in eastern Java by the end of the 13th century.” Casparis, & Mabbett, , Religion and Popular Beliefs at 339 (cited in note 20)Google Scholar.

37. 1 Dictionary of Ming Biography at 1200-01 (cited in note 24).

38. William Dampier (?1651-1715) was a famous English pirate and intellectual. In addition to being aluminary in demand at London social functions, he frequented the Royal Society, along with Sir Isaac Newton and Charles II. Dampier was also an oceanographer, geographer, and a prolific writer. He was the contemporary of Sir Henry Morgan (a “buccaneer” who sacked Panama and became Governor of Jamaica) as well as Daniel Defoe (who under the pseudonym, Johnson, Captain Charles, wrote the runaway best seller, A General History of the Pyrates in 1724)Google Scholar. Johnson, Captain Charles, A General History of the Pirates (Dodd, Mead, 1926)Google Scholar.

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43. The Book of Duarte Barbosa, excerpted in Bastin, John, ed, The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: 1511-1957 at 8–11 (Prentice Hall, 1967)Google Scholar.

44. Subrahmanyam, Sanyay, The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History at 13 (Longman, 1993)Google Scholar (Melaka's population is said to have been “variously estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000” while Istanbul's was “no more than 100,000” late in the 15th century).

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47. Id at 471.

48. Braudel, Fernand, Civilization and Capitalism in 3 The Perspective of the World at 526–27 (Harper & Row, 1984)Google Scholar.

49. Braudel, , Perspective at 528 (cited in note 48)Google Scholar.

50. Id at 528. (One wonders why Braudel was so surprised.) It seems to me the existence of a Malay lingua franca helps to explain how Antonio Figafetta, Magellan's scribe, was able to compile 450 Malay terms used at Spice Island Sultanates. Linguists who are amazed by his efforts apparently overlook the fact that Magellan's translator was a Melakan, whom Magellan had enslaved while at the city on a Portuguese campaign. It seems probable that Pigafetta was familiarized with an existing list by his translator on their voyage, rather than undertaking entire compilations during his short stay in the Moluccas. See Pigafetta, Antonio, Magellan's Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation at 11 (Dover, , Skeiton, R. A., trans, 1994)Google Scholar; various lists are available on 90-91,128-130 and 172-177.

51. See the remarkable study by Andaya, Leonard Y., The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (U of Hawaii Press, 1993) (especially 47–112)Google Scholar.

52. See Curtin, Philip D., Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge U Press, 1984) (instructive about alternative models of commercial relationships)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Harper & Row, 1973)Google Scholar. (Especially relevant for this essay is Vol II, Part Two, Ch VII, at 836-891.)

54. Braudel, , Perspective at 492 (cited in note 48)Google Scholar.

55. See also Andaya, , Religious Developments at 516 and following (cited in note 35)Google Scholar.

56. See entries for “pirate” in A New English-Chinese Dictionary at 994 (U of Washington Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

57. From The Malay Armais, composed prior to 1536; excerpted in Bastin, , Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia at 13–14 (cited in note 43)Google Scholar.

58. For valuable perspectives on Portugal, see Subrahmanyam, , The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500-1700 (cited in note 44) (especially 9–79)Google Scholar.