Capture of Malacca (1511): Portugal Seizes the Spice Strait

The capture of Malacca in 1511 brought the richest port in Southeast Asia under Portuguese control. Afonso de Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India, besieged the capital of the Malacca Sultanate in July and August 1511 and took it after several weeks of fighting. Control of Malacca gave Portugal a grip on the narrow sea lane that linked the Indian Ocean with China and the Spice Islands.

Background

Founded around 1400, the Malacca Sultanate grew rich by controlling the Strait of Malacca between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. Ships had to wait there for the monsoon winds to change, so the city became a vast marketplace where Gujarati, Tamil, Arab, Persian, Javanese, Chinese and many other merchants exchanged textiles, spices, porcelain and gold. The Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires, who lived there soon after the conquest, claimed that 84 languages could be heard in its streets.

The Portuguese had already reached India and taken Goa in 1510. They knew that cloves, nutmeg and mace came from islands far to the east, and that most of this trade passed through Malacca. In 1509 King Manuel I sent Diogo Lopes de Sequeira to open trade there. The visit ended badly: the Malaccans, warned by Gujarati merchants and court factions hostile to the newcomers, attacked the Portuguese, and around 20 men, including the factor Rui de Araújo, were held as prisoners.

The expedition

Albuquerque sailed from Cochin in the spring of 1511 with about 18 ships. Estimates of his force vary, but most give some 800 to 900 Portuguese soldiers and sailors, plus around 200 to 300 Malabar auxiliaries. He arrived off Malacca on 1 July 1511 and demanded the release of the prisoners and compensation.

Sultan Mahmud Shah, who had ruled since 1488, released the captives only after Albuquerque set fire to ships and buildings along the waterfront, and he refused the further demands. Malacca had a large population and many defenders, artillery and war elephants, but it had no strong stone walls, and the court was divided between the sultan and his son Ahmad, whom he had recently made co-ruler.

The court had also been shaken by an internal crisis. According to the Malay Annals, in 1510 the sultan had ordered the execution of his powerful chief minister, the Bendahara Tun Mutahir, and members of his family on suspicion of plotting against the throne. The loss of this experienced official weakened the city’s leadership on the eve of the Portuguese attack.

The siege and assault

The key to the city was a bridge over the Malacca River, which divided the royal and mosque quarter from the main merchant districts. On 25 July 1511, the feast of Saint James, the Portuguese attacked the bridge. They took it but could not hold it under heavy fire and withdrew to their ships.

Albuquerque then prepared a second, better organised attack. In early August he brought a tall junk close to the bridge as a floating platform for artillery, landed his troops and fortified their position on the bridge. After days of street fighting the defence collapsed. The sultan and his son retreated inland, and by 24 August 1511 the city was under Portuguese control. Several days of looting followed. Many foreign merchant communities, including some Chinese and Hindu traders, chose to accept Portuguese rule.

Key people

• Afonso de Albuquerque (c. 1453–1515): Portuguese governor of India, who planned and led the attack.
• Sultan Mahmud Shah (died c. 1528): the last sultan of Malacca, who continued to resist from exile.
• Diogo Lopes de Sequeira: commander of the 1509 visit whose failure led to the conflict.
• Rui de Araújo: Portuguese factor held captive in Malacca, who sent information to Albuquerque.
• Tomé Pires: Portuguese apothecary whose book, the Suma Oriental, describes Malacca’s trade around this time.

Timeline

• c. 1400: The Malacca Sultanate is founded.
• 1509, September: Diogo Lopes de Sequeira’s fleet is attacked at Malacca and Portuguese men are taken prisoner.
• 1510, 25 November: Albuquerque captures Goa.
• 1511, 1 July: Albuquerque’s fleet arrives off Malacca.
• 1511, 25 July: The first Portuguese assault on the bridge fails.
• 1511, 24 August: Malacca is under Portuguese control after a second assault.
• 1511, November: Albuquerque sends ships under António de Abreu towards the Spice Islands.
• 1641, 14 January: The Dutch East India Company and Johor capture Malacca.

Consequences

Albuquerque built a stone fortress, A Famosa, using material from the city’s mosques and royal tombs. He issued coinage, sent envoys to Siam and Pegu (in Burma), and dispatched a small fleet that reached the Banda Islands, source of nutmeg. On his return to India, his flagship Flor de la Mar was wrecked off Sumatra with much of the plunder.

The sultan’s family regrouped further south and founded the Johor Sultanate, which together with Aceh in Sumatra fought the Portuguese for decades. Many Muslim merchants moved their business to other ports, such as Aceh, Johor and Banten, so Portugal never controlled all the trade it hoped to capture. Malacca had also been a tributary of Ming China, and the conquest soured early Portuguese relations with the Chinese court. Envoys of the exiled sultan appealed to the Ming emperor for help. When Tomé Pires led the first official Portuguese embassy to China between 1517 and 1521, it failed, partly because of complaints about Malacca and about the conduct of Portuguese traders on the Chinese coast, and clashes followed in 1521 and 1522.

Tomé Pires summed up its importance in a famous line: “Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice.” In his view, control of the spice route through the strait would ruin the Venetian trade through the Middle East.

Malacca under Portuguese rule

Portuguese Malacca was governed by a captain appointed from Goa. It served as a naval base, a customs post and a hub for Portuguese voyages to the Moluccas, China and Japan, and from 1557 it supported the new Portuguese settlement at Macau. Catholic missions also used it as a base; the Jesuit Francis Xavier passed through several times in the 1540s and 1550s.

The city faced repeated sieges. Johor and Aceh attacked it many times in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and in 1629 a large Acehnese fleet under Sultan Iskandar Muda was defeated outside its walls. The Portuguese garrison was usually small, and the city depended on alliances with local traders and on supplies from Java and elsewhere.

The fall of Malacca also left a strong mark on Malay memory. The Sejarah Melayu, or Malay Annals, a court chronicle compiled in the following century, tells the story of the city’s rulers and its loss from the Malay point of view, and remains an important source alongside Portuguese accounts.

Legacy

Portugal held Malacca until 1641, when the Dutch East India Company took it with help from Johor. The British later ruled it from 1824. Today Melaka is a UNESCO World Heritage city, and a small Portuguese-Eurasian community, the Kristang, still speaks a Portuguese-based creole there.

Why it matters

The capture of Malacca extended Portuguese power from the Indian Ocean into Southeast Asia and opened direct European access to the Spice Islands and China. It also marked the end of an independent Malay sultanate that had been one of the great trading states of Asia.