Liquid Market, Solid State: The rise and demise of the great global emporium at Malacca, 1400-1641

At the turn of the sixteenth century, the city of Malacca was a vibrant trade hub. Its position between the Indian Ocean to the west and China and the Moluccas (the Spice Islands) to the east resulted in a great gathering of international merchants eager to do business with one another. Gujaratis, Tamils, Chinese, Javanese, and Malays all at one time or another served as advisors to the sultans; Arabs and Italians visited the city and left their impressions. Yet within a decade of the Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511, the city had lost its prominence and much of its population, to the consternation of its European administrators. How did this happen?;I argue that Malacca's greatest strength - diverse trading populations - was also its chief weakness and the reason for the city's post-1511 decline. The Malay sultanate that administered Malacca from 1400 to 1511 took a laissez-faire approach to government as well as trade. People of all backgrounds were welcomed and the city mostly refrained from homogenization. For example, in the period to 1511, city leaders imposed different taxes on traders of different ethnicities (allowing some to pay in cash while others paid in kind). Four different but parallel shahbandars (port officials) were drawn from the four biggest ethnolinguistic communities, and they presided equally over the city's port. Religion in Malacca was extremely varied, with facilities catering to Muslims, Hindus, adherents of Chinese folk religion, and Nestorian Christians, among others. In Malacca's markets, traders exchanged dirhams, ducats, tin, Chinese cash, and several other forms of specie; only the exchange of gold for gold or silver for silver was forbidden by law.;This openness drew merchants from across the Asian world, and they in turn made Malacca famous as a Southeast Asian market city unparalleled in wealth, population, or reputation.;But the city's multinational community was fragile. Malacca's streets were often riven with violence, a result of cross-communal tensions coupled with local Malay ideas about honor and manliness. At the Malaccan court, identity politics played a major role in political factionalization. Few Malaccans formed strong ties to the city where they lived.;When the Portuguese conquered the city, they did so by exploiting the divisions between Malacca's Muslims and Hindus. The Portuguese then brought greater strictures to the governance of the city, including a Catholic conversion program, uniform currency, monolingual political administration, and policies designed to establish a monopoly over the spice trade. Portuguese Malacca also came under frequent attack from neighboring Malay states.;For many Malaccans, the combination of a more controlling administration and a constant state of siege was an onerous hardship. These relatively rootless people found it easy to emigrate to other, more laissez-faire ports. And this, in turn, explains the city's swift decline.