The Singapore and Melaka Straits: Violence, Security and Diplomacy in the 17th Century

Appendices

203 Appendices APPENDIX฀1 Challenges฀from฀Early฀Modern฀Source฀Materials:฀฀ Melaka฀and฀Adjacent฀Regions [The present appendix forms a side discussion of Chapter 1 and addresses some of the major problems of handling early modern sources of European and Asian origin. Special attention is paid to the Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, as well as to printed materials that contain accounts of chiefly Portuguese, Italian, and Malay origin. These include Gaspar Corrêa, Duarte Barbosa, Francesco Carletti, Giovanni da Empoli, Manoel Godinho de Erédia, Gianbattista Ramusio, Ludovico de Varthema, as well as the Sejarah Melayu and the Undang-undang Melaka.] Almost every modern historical account touching on the history of Melaka and adjacent regions during the early modern period has mentioned the Suma Oriental of the apothecary and diplomat Tomé Pires. It is now widely believed to have been written between 1512 and 1515.1 However, work conducted over the past five decades has not only made great headway, but also posed a series of questions about Pires’ integrity and the transmission of the text.2 It is extremely important to display a critical mindset when 07 S&MS.indd 203 12/31/09 2:59:36 PM 204฀ Appendices contextualising and translating the terminology Pires employs,3 and to the best of the present author’s knowledge, no recent studies have crossreferenced the text of the Suma Oriental with Pires’ published letters of 1512 and 1513.4 In the same vein, his Rol de Drogarias (1516), a list of pharmaceutical substances used in the context of Asian, specifically Indian medicine, has evoked very little interest and remains virtually unknown in modern scholarly circles. Researchers have grown increasingly aware — and wary — of the differences among terms and toponyms between the “Paris manuscript”, published and translated by Armando Cortesão in 1944, and the far shorter “Lisbon manuscript”, edited and first published as a self-standing text by Rui Manuel Loureiro in 1996.5 The Paris manuscript is thought to date from the second half of the 16th century,6 while the Lisbon manuscript represents a 16th century copy of the original sent by Pires to the Portuguese viceroy of India, Dom Duarte de Meneses.7 Linguistic style, nomenclature and specialist terms found in the latter, shorter text are certainly more authentic, and one cannot help but shudder at Cortesão’s own frank admission, found in the foreword to his English translation, that he sometimes had to “guess” what Pires was trying to say.8 Other early Portuguese texts fare little better. Duarte Barbosa serves as a case in point. One has a hard time appraising what parts were frivolously added by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in his collection Delle Navigazioni e Viaggi to “exoticise” the story for European readers, or alternatively, reconstructing the parts that were censured by the Portuguese authorities from the original manuscript(s) because the text revealed commercially sensitive and therefore classified information.9 A third classic Portuguese text, the Declaraçam de Malacca by Erédia, is also not without serious problems. First, it dates from a much later period, namely, the early 17th century. A comparison of this text with Erédia’s earlier treatise, the Informação da Aurea Chersoneso (about 1597–1600), reveals considerable inconsistency in the way terminology is employed and also in some of the basic insights expounded. Take, for example, what Erédia says about the home of the Malays. In the Declaraçam de Malacca he claims this to be Pahang, but in his earlier text, the home of the Malays is placed unconventionally in Patani.10 Did Erédia change his mind? Or was there genuinely no consensus on this very issue? Other authors claim that the Malays are from Melaka, Sumatra or Lingga. Who really knew? Although the view may well be sustained that Erédia’s treatise ultimately represents an honest effort, there are several, still inadequately researched, 07 S&MS.indd 204 12/31/09 2:59:36 PM Appendices 205 discontinuities of argument (terminological and otherwise) between the text dating from around 1597–1600 and the final version of 1613.11 Historians of early modern Melaka as well as the Singapore and Melaka Straits broadly concur that some important accounts have perhaps relied too strongly on Pires and the handy English language translation published by Cortesão at the height of World War II.12 It is perhaps against the backdrop of...