L et’s Go,
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Melaka Malaysia
P
icture this! Hundreds of boats at anchor. Two-masted Dhows from Arabia and India with their distinctive triangular sails, smaller local trading vessel from neighbouring Sumatra, and a vast Ming Dynasty fleet of varying sized junks. Boat riggings jangle and slap in the prevailing breeze. Bells toll. Smaller barges ferry cargo and people to and from the shore. People chatter away in different languages. Onshore, carts
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piled high with goods clatter off to the bustling market stalls and warehouses. The Sultanate’s Harbour Masters keep a keen watch to ensure taxes are suitably collected. This is a trading port of great prosperity. Strategically positioned at the top of the narrow Straits separating Sumatra and the Malayan peninsula and midway along the trade routes between China in the east and India,
Arabia and Africa. Silk and porcelain from China, camphor from Borneo, nutmeg, cloves and mace from the Moluccas (The Spice Islands), sandalwood from Timor, gold and pepper from Sumatra, tin from western Malaya, and calico and other textiles from India. This was Malacca of the fifteenth century. Melaka’s colonial story started in the early 1500s when the Portuguese took control of this trading port from the