The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka, 1575-1619: Power, Trade and Diplomacy

Introduction

xxi Introduction Much work still remains to be done on the history of the Portuguese presence in the Orient. Despite the plethora of several recent studies about Southeast Asia, important lacunae still persist, especially with regard to the period from the end of the 16th century onwards. Portuguese historiography has suffered from two ills—fortunately overcome in recent times— which contributed decisively to this phenomenon. First, it focused upon Goa, the Malabar coast and the western half of the Indian Ocean or, at the other end of the globe, upon Macao, as areas of a more enduring Portuguese influence. In the midst of this, the Coromandel coast, Bengal, the Malay Peninsula or the Archipelago were frequently overlooked. In Portugal there is no tradition of historiography of Southeast Asia. Yet the discovery of Tomé Pires’ Suma Oriental, as well as the commendable heuristic and editorial endeavours, in the footsteps of Cunha Rivara, by names such as Silva Rego, Basílio de Sá and Joseph Wicki made a wide array of hitherto unpublished sources available to historiographers. On the other hand, the pioneering work of Luís Filipe Thomaz, endowed with a vast and profound knowledge of the history of Asiatic civilisations, resulted in the creation of a small school of researchers xxii Introduction inclined towards studying the Portuguese presence in the Orient, frequently focusing upon areas that were virtually untouched by the national panorama of historiography: Burma, Siam, Sumatra, the Moluccas or the Sea of Sri Lanka, amongst others. Unfortunately, most of this research is available only in Portuguese, which considerably reduces its impact and the circulation that it undoubtedly deserves. Secondly, the concept of the decadence of the Estado da Índia persisted for a long time, rooted in the idea that the initial rapid advances, especially with the feats of Afonso de Albuquerque, were followed by stagnation and an inevitable decadence, thus reducing a substantial part of the 16th century and subsequent periods to a prolonged and painful decline. According to this traditional idea, the Portuguese retreated on all fronts, steeped in corruption, religious intolerance, administrative inefficiency and military debacles. It was not unusual to find the utilisation of racial explanations to substantiate this theory, tracing some sort of Portuguese decadence to racial intermixing and the consequent weakening of the stock by the likes of Afonso de Albuquerque, Duarte Pacheco Pereira and so many others. The Habsburg period, long viewed as a dark age in the history of Portugal, further accentuated this idea of decadence. The recent reformulation of this concept and many others, leading to a global reconsideration of the Portuguese expansion at the heart of political, social and economic structures in Asia, tends to open new paths and enables a more profound study of contact between civilisations that began at the end of the 15th century, now that the fog generated by the ideologies of history and the repercussions of the so-called colonial period and its sequels has, to all appearances, been dispelled. However, the Portuguese panorama of historiography of Southeast Asia still continues to be very meagre. It is even sparser with regard to this particular period. Thus, first and foremost, this work seeks to contribute towards a better understanding of the history of the Portuguese presence in an age and an area which have yet to be studied sufficiently, gathering together in a single work data and approaches which have been dealt with by various authors in a fragmentary manner. The questions generated around the analysis and study of sources are a fundamental element of any historical study. In the case of this book, many obstacles were encountered along the way. First, despite the work carried out by the aforementioned authors, an important number of the Portuguese sources for this period are still widely scattered and/or unpublished. Many are still waiting to be discovered in Portuguese archives in Simancas or Introduction xxiii in Seville. What has been published is very often innocuous, repetitive or irrelevant and of limited use, especially with regard to local history. One of the more serious lacunae of this study is related to my own linguistic limitations: my lack of familiarity with Dutch and an insufficient knowledge of Malay. Owing to the former, Dutch sources, of fundamental importance with regard to the period dating from the early 17th century onwards, were thus out of reach. The same was the case with Malay sources. In both cases I resorted...