FROM NEGARA TO KOTA: THE SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN MARITIME CITIES SARAH MEI ISMAIL (B.A. ARCH., HONS.) NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN HISTORY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2006 Acknowledgements I wish to thank the following people, without whom this thesis would not have been possible: My supervisor and mentor, Associate Professor Timothy P. Barnard. Thanks for the guidance, the advice, the patience, and above all, the truly masterful kick in the pants, without which this thesis would not have been written. My mother, See Poh Choo, for instilling a love of reading and history in me, and for not asking if I could get a job with a history degree. Head of Department Associate Professor Ian Gordon, for having enough faith in me to support this architecture graduate’s application to read for a masters in History. Deputy Head of Department Associate Professor Brian P. Farrell, for insisting that I teach military history, sending this thesis into new and unexpected ground. Thanks also for the practical aspects of early modern warfare; with the Field Marshal’s help, Melaka was conquered again. Dr. Quek Ser Hwee, for the moral support and friendship through the years, and the laksa. Dr Anthony Reid, for the suggestions and the extremely kind loan of Dr. Bulbeck’s Ph.D. thesis. Dr. David Bulbeck of Australian National University and Dr. William Cummings of the University of South Florida, for sharing their love and knowledge of Makassar. “I stand on the shoulders of giants.” ii Dr. Jan van der Putten, for the kind help in the various translations and vagaries of the Sejarah Melayu. Dr. Geoffrey Wade, for unnerving levels of interest. Kelly Lau, and the administrative staff of the History department. For teaching me that history is written by historians, but history happens because of people like them. To the postgraduates of the History Department. Without them, this thesis would have been completed much earlier, and it would have been the poorer for it. Thanks for the memories, the late nights, the stimulating conversations and various things that thankfully, will never be part of official history. To my aunt, Zuraidah Ibrahim, for professional services rendered pro bono. To the rest of my family, for their unquestioning support of my decision to pursue further studies. To God, for making coffee and chocolate available to the world. Such are the true building blocks of a thesis. And finally, to Zakir Hussain, for the unwavering support, the helpful suggestions, the friendship. And for the love and affection stuff. iii Contents 1. 2. 3. Acknowledgements ii Contents iv Summary vi List of Illustrations viii List of Abbreviations and Symbols ix The City in Early Modern Southeast Asia 1 The issue of sources 3 Writings on Southeast Asian cities: Defining the city 4 Methodology: Urban type, hierarchy and structure 7 Colonialism, War and Southeast Asian urbanism 15 Melaka: Between the winds 22 Historiographical overview and sources 22 Melaka: A historical overview 23 Melaka under the sultans 26 Melaka of the Portuguese 39 The two Melakas: Comparison 44 Melaka at War: Defense and the port cities 50 Makassar: Golden Cock of the East 55 Historiographical overview and sources 56 History: The rise and fall of Gowa 57 Makassar: City and polity 60 The city of Ujung Padang: Under Dutch rule 80 Influences on the urban form: Trade and war 82 iv 4. Conclusion: A Tale of Two Cities 87 Continuity and Change: The urban form 87 Viewed from the ramparts: War and the city 91 Writ in Stone: Changes in material culture 94 The city between monsoons: Further areas for study 98 Appendices 1. Approaches to city definition 101 2. Southeast Asian Cartography and Illustrations 113 3. The Melaka debate and limitations of sources 117 4. The Portuguese Attack and Melakan defense 126 5. Construction Timeline of Makassar fortifications 130 6. 1638 sketch of Makassar 133 Bibliography 134 v Summary The development of urbanism in early Southeast Asia took a significantly different route from its counterparts in Europe and China. Many European cities began as fortified townships and the city wall was the sine qua non of the city, defining city limits in both the physical sense and in the realm of meaning. However, the great maritime cities of Southeast Asia from Melaka to Aceh made no such distinction between city and country, with the city encompassing entire rural districts within its physical definition. The early European explorers were thus faced with a brand of urbanism different to their own; Southeast Asian negara stood counterpoint to European city. However, the pre-colonial maritime centers experienced a considerable amount of change during the “Age of Commerce” (1400-1700) when international trade peaked. The volume of trade in these cities, and the corresponding exchange of technology and ideas, shaped the growing port cities. Increased wealth through trade also made new urban projects possible and desirable, with reasons ranging from increased stakes to prestige. Also at play was the changed nature of warfare in the region after the 1511 Portuguese conquest of Melaka. The new “modern” warfare, which emphasized conquest over spheres of influence required a new set of measures to defend port cities. All these factors served to spark a change in the rising maritime cities, Makassar being a prime example of a highly cosmopolitan center of commerce. New urban forms, such as protective defensive city walls came up, this time in brick and influenced by European – usually Portuguese – technology, as well as that of the existing walled cities of mainland Southeast Asia. In some cases, earlier urban forms such as thick earthen walls, were recalled and revived. Either way, these changes gave the port cities a new material prominence and militaristic intent that contrasted with their traditionally ephemeral nature. Negara was now becoming kota. The Age of vi Commerce was thus a time of rapid evolution in Southeast Asian port cities, where changing economic and military factors were reflected in the physical structure of the city. The city walls that emerged as urban symptoms of evolution were had the ability to be agents of change and affect the city’s functions. Through a comparative study of urban structure and hierarchy during this post-1511 period, this study will examine how these new elements affected the functioning and form of the maritime cities, the society that shaped these cities, and were shaped by them in return. This thesis will argue that the walls were a reflection of a shift in warfare trends that changed the perception in the city, and that these walls did not change the urban life, but instead were used to fossilize existing divisions within. Pre-1511 Melaka and Makassar will be considered, to discover the possible indigenous urban response to the altering military and international circumstances of the 1500-1600s, as well as the changes in urban form experienced by both as they passed under European rule. Both the indigenous and European-controlled city in the post-1511 period will be compared to discover possible differences in the urban development conducted by the new colonialists and by the indigenous rulers who rose to prominence in the high-stakes world of the Southeast Asian Age of Commerce. vii Illustrations Figure 1. The Portuguese Attack 27 Figure 2. Melaka 30 Figure 3. Eredia’s Melaka 40 Figure 4 a) Pre-1511 Melaka b) Post 1511 Melaka 45 Figure 5 Makassar’s Fortifications at 1667 61 Figure 6 Overview of Somba Opu 66 Figure 7 Archaeological form of Benteng Somba Opu laid over the Dutch Sketch 67 1638 Figure 8 Somba Opu, 1638 69 Figure 9 Ground Plans of Makassar Fortresses 75 viii List of Abbreviations and Symbols JMBRAS = Journal of Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society JSEAH = Journal of Southeast Asian History JSEAS = Journal of Southeast Asian Studies KITLV = Koninkliijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde MBRAS = Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society VOC = Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie ix Chapter One: The City in Early Modern Southeast Asia “For the fort was the pride of Malacca and after its destruction the place lost its glory, like a woman bereaved of her husband, the lustre gone from her face. But now by the will of Allah it was no more, showing how ephemeral are the things of this world. The old order is destroyed, a new world is created and all around us is change…” -Munshi Abdullah, Hikayat Abdullah. 1 When British colonel William Farquhar destroyed the Portuguese fort A Famosa in 1807, the residents of Melaka mourned the loss of this mark of prestige that had protected them for so long. For two hundred years, it had been the centerpiece of Portuguese and Dutch Melaka, and had been behind the port’s status as a powerful trade centre and its identification as a city. The destruction of the great fort marked the end of an age. However, if the loss of A Famosa marked the end of an old order, then its construction had been the beginning of another. The fort had first risen amidst the ruins of old Melaka in 1511, and local feeling then was very different. Hostility and suspicion were but a few of the sentiments with which Southeast Asians had initially viewed its construction. The great Portuguese fort of Melaka was the first of many such fortifications. After 1511, the port cities of insular Southeast Asia began the construction of stone city walls, girding the great maritime centers that had once expanded freely over the land. Cities such as Johor Lama, Banten, and Makassar began to invest in city fortifications and more elaborate defense systems, all of which were focused on the linchpin of the stone fortress. This heralded a change in the urban structure of coastal cities, for the conception of the city in maritime Southeast Asia had never been before tied to the fort and to fortified city walls. Before 1511, few cities possessed either of these, a circumstance that was reflected in the various indigenous terms for city that 1 A.H. Hill, The Hikayat Abdullah, by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, trans. by A.H. Hill, (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 63. seldom distinguished polity from city, let alone the city from the country. The fort that had become nearly ubiquitous by the 1800s was virtually unknown in pre-modern insular Southeast Asia. This relatively new urban element that became so intertwined with the ports after 1511 played a part in the everyday functions of the city. The fort, a major feature of the urbanscape, was a product of new concerns that necessitated the re-thinking of the city’s function towards its residents, and was a reflection of underlying changes. However, it was not merely a symptom, but was also the stimulus of change in its own right, influencing the city in ways beyond that which it had been originally built. The significance of these fort walls therefore became more than the fact of their existence, due to their relationship with the cities that build them. Cities are often the centres of cultural production, and changes that occurred rippled outward in the society that created them. As vital, active players in this urban theatre, forts were part of a larger historical process and through a study of their evolution, it becomes possible to understand changes that were occurring in the greater world of island Southeast Asia. The nature of changes in the urban structure and function, and in the society that the city housed in its form in early modern Southeast Asia is the concern of this thesis. Through a comparative study of urban structure and hierarchy during this post-1511 period, this study will examine how these new elements affected the functioning and form of the maritime cities and the society that shaped these cities, and were shaped by them in return. Pre1511 Melaka and Makassar will be considered, to discover the possible indigenous urban response to the altering military and international circumstances of the 1500-1600s, as well as the changes in urban form experienced by both as they passed under European rule. Both the indigenous and European-controlled city in the post-1511 period will be compared to discover possible differences in the urban development conducted by the new colonialists and by the 2 indigenous rulers who rose to prominence in the high-stakes world of the Southeast Asian – as Anthony Reid has coined it – “Age of Commerce”. The issue of sources The reconstruction of the urban fabric necessary in this study is hindered by the same issues that have affected the studying of any aspect of pre-modern insular Southeast Asia – namely, the sources. Southeast Asian indigenous historiography has been patchy for a variety of reasons, including a tendency towards orality as well as records scribed on perishable materials. Surviving records also can be optative, bordering on the near mythic. 2 Much of what has been gathered on pre-modern Southeast Asia through traditional sources come from records that have been kept by civilizations external to the region, bringing in the issue of correct translation, which has affected past studies of the city. In addition, the translations have had the effect of replacing the indigenous term with a new term that brings with it additional sets of meanings never intended in the original, as well as ignoring, or erasing regional differences in meaning. 3 Besides these difficulties, an additional problem lies in the limited range of sources. Records from the subaltern, indigenous perspective that comprises quotidian city life are often scarce. The archaeological record is also patchy, and is especially so for coastal Southeast Asia. 4 Archaeologist John Miksic has observed that the archaeological record in Southeast Asia has been heavily disturbed, due to the efforts of colonial historians, the construction of modern cities, 2 C.C. Berg, “Javanese Historiography – A Synopsis of its Evolution”, Historians of Southeast Asia, ed. D.G.E. Hall, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 16. 3 John N. Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change: The Case of Sumatra”, Archipel, 37, (1989): 9, 12. 4 John N. Miksic, "Archaeological studies of style, information transfer and the transition from Classical to Islamic periods in Java", JSEAS, 20, 1 (1989): 10; Bennett Bronson, “Exchange at the Upstream and Downstream Ends”, Economic exchange and social interaction in Southeast Asia, ed. Karl L. Hutterer. (Ann Arbor : Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1977), p. 47. 3 and coastal erosion. All this has resulted in the slow development of urban studies on the coastal cities of Southeast Asia. 5 A thin archaeological record and scattered, diverse sources in different languages are thus the major obstacles in any meaningful study of the urban forms in pre-modern Southeast Asia. Although it is still possible to conduct such a study, an understanding of the limitations and pitfalls of the materials at hand must still be taken into account when analyzing them. For instance, constructing an elaborate sociological theory of urban life in the pre-modern era would remain highly speculative, since such a theory would require a high volume of archaeological and archival evidence to support it. 6 Writings on Southeast Asian cities: Defining the City Much has been written about urban generation, and the rise of cities in Southeast Asia, by authors such as Paul Wheatley and Miksic. Others like Richard O’Connor have chosen to focus on the sociological aspect of urbanism, and the effects of urbanism on the indigenous lifestyle. Work has been done on defining the city in indigenous terms, as well as establishing a typology of cities based on case studies conducted within the region. However, due to ongoing archaeological digs and archival issues, urban theory in Southeast Asia is somewhat fluid, subject to re-writing with each new discovery. Related to the issue of translating the meaning of city, or urban settlement, in Southeast Asia is the most hotly debated question in global urban history studies: the precise definition of “city”. The reason for the depth of debate lies partly in the potential political implications of city occurrences in history. Too often seen as a measure of technological progress or an image of greatness, the very existence of a city is often dependent on the agenda of the researcher. 5 John N. Miksic, “Heterogenetic cities in pre-modern Southeast Asia”, World Archaeology, 32, 1, (2000): 110. 6 John Miksic, “Settlement Patterns and Sub-regions in Southeast Asian History” Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 24, 2, (1990): 103. 4 An early common approach in Western schools of urbanism was the use of formalist definitions involving the selection of a characteristic, or a set of characteristics, that would denote urban status, such as Kingsley Davis’s stipulation of a minimum population of 100,000. 7 This approach has been heavily criticised for its forced and arbitrary definition of a city which does not acknowledge the differing cultural and ecological contexts that produce similarly diverse city types. These traditional urban theories of classical and pre-modern cities tend to be based on studies of medieval, Mediterranean and Southwest Asian cities, resulting in monothetic, “Western” models rather than “Southeast Asian”. 8 As a result, urban sociologist Max Weber and urban historian Spiro Kostof emphasised the defensive perimeter or walls as the prerequisite for a city. 9 Even the etymology of the word for city reveals intrinsic bias – tun in English, gorod in Russian, cheng in Chinese – originally referred to a walled enclosure. 10 This fixation on a single characteristic – in this case, the circumference wall - as the determinant of urbanism has affected the analysis of early urban sites in coastal Southeast Asia. While the coastal cities had internal walls – such as those around the palace compound, and the individual compounds of prominent personages, it seldom possessed an all-encompassing city wall that defined city limits. 11 Admiral Beaulieu, a European visitor to Aceh in 1621 remarked that the lack of a surrounding defensive circuit, or a wall, affected him to the point that he considered Aceh a village rather than a city. 12 The functionalist approach, which Wheatley champions, involves identifying a settlement as being urban based on the social institutions it contains, whether physical or otherwise. Wheatley’s chief essential factor is the existence of social institutions that co-ordinate economic 7 Kingsley Davis, “The Urbanization of the Human Population” in The City Reader, ed. Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 5. 8 Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 15; “Heterogenetic cities”, p. 106. 9 Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped,(London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), pp. 38-40; Mogens Herman Hansen, “The Concepts of City-State and City-state culture”, in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, ed. by Mogens Herman Hansen. (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 2000), p. 12. 10 Henri Pirenne, “City origins” in The City Reader, p. 39. 11 Anthony Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states of the 15th and 16th century” in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, p. 422. 12 Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 15. 5 exchange, regardless of whether the institution is mosque or church, run by religious or state authorities. 13 However, the emphasis on the economic role ignores the possibility that the city might serve different functions even within the same region, supported by the varying definitions and terms used in Southeast Asia to signify a city within that cultural context. John Miksic also notes that so little is known of the structure and daily function of the coastal trade cities of insular Southeast Asia, that it would problematic to form inferences about the typical urban behaviour. 14 There still remains the need for any localized study to design an urban theory relevant to the region, with a suitable definition of urbanisation and the city, rather than force the indigenous cities into a preconceived universalist urban theory that could result from a formalist or functionalists approach. Due to the limitations of a global urban theory, settlement pattern studies, a method of archaeological study that gained momentum in the 1970s, has been brought forward as a viable approach to analyzing Southeast Asian urban sites. Settlement pattern studies involve the in-depth collection of archaeological data from sampled sites, in the expectation of building a foundation on which inferences into the site function and sociological framework can be derived. It incorporates the contextual situation of artifacts, and maps out their physical relationship to each other as well as the site. 15 The use of settlement pattern analysis allows the creation of an indigenous, locallyrelevant definition of the city. The site is seen in the context of the regional settlement pattern, and if it appears to be a higher tier site, meaning with at least one tier of settlements under it, it could be considered an urban site. 16 The underlying assumption is that a settlement of a distinctly different size would be differentiated from the lesser settlements in other ways, whether in terms of culture, function or physical structure. In short, it would have to be different simply because 13 Paul Wheatley, “What the Greatness of a City is Said to Be”, Pacific Viewpoint, 4, (1963): 166. Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 12; “Settlement Patterns”, p. 103. 15 Jeffery R. Parsons, “Archaeological Settlement Patterns”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 1 (1972): 129. 16 Some studies favour two tiers. Miksic, “Settlement Patterns”, p. 96. 14 6 there would have to be an underlying factor whose symptoms included but would not be restricted to, a difference in size. As such, because it would be different from the merely residential/agrarian village-level settlements, it could be considered urban. Settlement pattern analysis in Southeast Asia, however, is still somewhat at the datagathering stage. Regional-level settlement pattern analysis still remains somewhat hypothetical, with theories being drawn up in a heuristic spirit, subject to further development on discovery of further evidence. Despite its admitted drawbacks, settlement pattern analysis would seem to be the most relatively objective method in which to draw up a needed indigenous definition of urbanism. 17 Miksic suggests simply accepting conventionally acknowledged cities to be cities, erring on the liberal side in adding new settlements to the list of cities, and then proceed to move on to categorise and analyse them. 18 For the purposes of this study, commonly recognised cities have been used, and effort has been made to distinguish the settlement from the polity. The city will be defined in each case, based on what was commonly considered to be the city from contemporary perspective, as well as several requirements drawn from the basis of this study – namely, it should contain a relatively densely populated area, possess various economic and cultural functions, and have at least one tier of settlements under it. Methodology: urban type, hierarchy and structure Urban types Traditionally, most urban studies conducted on pre-modern cities in Southeast Asia have noted two main urban types and used them to organize subsequent analysis. The first is the ceremonial, inland city, the axis mundi that connects heaven and earth, the planned 17 For a full explanation of the various approaches and effects on urban study, see Appendix 1. John N. Miksic, “14th Century Singapore: A port of trade” Early Singapore 1300s-1819: Evidence in Maps, Text and Artefacts, ed. J.N. Miksic, Cheryl-Ann Low Mei Gek, (Singapore: Singapore History Musuem, 2004), p. 41. 18 7 cosmographical representations of Hindu-Buddhist belief, such as Angkor Wat, Pagan and Sukhothai. Usually found in mainland Southeast Asia, or on the ecologically similar island of Java, they were highly agrarian states. The other type of city identified were the trading coastal cities, unplanned and organic, generally found at river estuaries, near the coastline or close enough to the river mouth so as to command some influence in the surrounding sea lanes, such as Srivijaya, Melaka and Aceh. The purest form of the latter was the market city, similar to Karl Polyanyi’s port city concept, divorced from the surroundings and solely devoted to trade. 19 Both the coastal market city and the inland ceremonial city were said have diminished under European rule, resulting in the superimposition of a third type, the colonial city. The criteria used for the categorization can vary, depending on the focus of the urban study, but eventually result in rather similar divisions that seem to support the idea of an inland/coastal dichotomy. T. G. McGee, J. Kathirithamby-Wells and J. Villiers, although using different criteria, emerged with similar inland agrarian sacred cities versus coastal maritime market cities. 20 Spiro Kostof’s study of urban form also divides the cases into the planned or created city – the ville créée, with geometric lines and planned by the governing body – and the organic city – the ville spontanée, left to be developed by persons that act individually, with irregular lines and curves, again demonstrating a divide that supports the existence of two distinct urban types. 21 These two urban types have also been more frequently classified as heterogenetic and orthogenetic cities, a concept introduced by Robert Redfield and Milton B. Singer in 1965, and based on the differing cultural roles of cities. Orthogenetic cities are preservers, refiners of traditional culture and are generally associated with political power. Heterogenetic cities tend to 19 Robert B. Revere, “’No Man’s Coast’: Ports of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Trade and Market in the Early Empires, ed. Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson, (Glencoe: The Falcon’s Wing Press, 1957) p. 54. 20 T.G McGee, The Southeast Asian city, (London: Bell, 1967), p. 33; J. Kathirimhamby-Wells and John Villiers, “Introduction”, The Southeast Asian Port and Polity (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990) p. 3. 21 Kostof, City Shaped, p. 43. 8 be market cities, with commerce as the main activity, and are producers of new modes of thought that may be in contradiction or competition with traditional culture. 22 The orthogenetic city, thought to be the primary city, is the cultural and ceremonial centre for the country, supported by a homogenous population. The heterogenetic city is a second-stage city, and acts as the service station for the country, as an intermediary between civilizations, and is the entry point for the entry of foreign peoples and ideas, resulting in a heterogeneous demography. 23 Although there are issues with the original concept, applying the heterogenetic/orthogenetic framework to Southeast Asian cities has its benefits. Culturally and ecologically flexible, permissive of variation, and suited to the patchy records of the region, the idea of heterogenetic/orthogenetic has been adapted and applied extensively to the mainland and coastal cities respectively by various researchers, including Miksic in his numerous works on Southeast Asian archaeology. 24 However, the main issue with any classification system lies primarily in the risk of overgeneralization, and in the case of the above mentioned cases and the proposed orthogenetic/heterogenetic dichotomy, their failure lies in being unable to account for cities that straddle categories, as was the case in the sacred city of Majapahit that also engaged in trade to the extent that it became a premier commerce centre. 25 However, it is possible to use the heterogenetic/orthogenetic categorization as a sliding scale rather than as a mutually exclusive classification, allowing more variation than Redfield had perhaps originally envisioned. In addition, the flexibility of this approach allows for cities to shift from one end to the other over time. Although Redfield’s original theorization that the end product of orthogenetic urbanism must be the heterogenetic city is problematic, there is at least the implicit understanding that cities can and do change over time. 22 Robert Redfield and Milton B. Singer, “The Cultural Role of Cities”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 3, 1, (1954): 58. 23 Redfield and Singer, “Cultural Role of Cities”, p. 70. 24 Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 6. 25 Miksic, “Heterogenetic cities”, p. 117. 9 In recent years, the tenability of this concept of these city types, even as a heuristic device, has come under fire. 26 Luc Nagtegaal has sharply criticised most of the existing typologies, rightly pointing out that certain proposed city models in current usage were initially based on cultural/religious assumptions in other fields of studies that have since been dismissed or rendered obsolete. The concept of the ceremonial centre relies on the devaraja theory, where the king was a sacred being who expressed cosmological order in his city. However, this has been proven to be a somewhat idealised version of reality, to the point that city maps were found to have been altered to fit the indigenous portrayal of a perfect centre. 27 Other findings continue to suggest that the dichotomy of the sacred orthogenetic city and the market heterogenetic city, or between the indigenous city and the colonial city, or indeed any urban model may be markedly less distinct than proposed. However, the perception of there being two broad urban types, or at least cities that can be positioned somewhere between these two extremes has persisted and continued to frame urban studies of pre-modern Southeast Asia. More recent studies have in general been careful to qualify their assignations of urban type with appropriate acknowledgement of independent variations, and often avoid the direct labelling of the urban centres under analysis. Nevertheless the sense of difference remains and the idea of the inland city versus the coastal city underpins these studies for want of a better conceptual framework. Urban Hierarchy and Structure Inter-city relations, or the urban hierarchy, is also considered important in any urban study of the region. No city is an island, even in insular Southeast Asia, and to understand the forces that shape it, they have to be studied in context. A dominant city, high in the urban hierarchy, could wield cultural/political influence over the lesser tributary cities, commanding or 26 Luc Nagtegaal, “The pre-modern city in Indonesia and its fall from grace with the gods”, Economic and Social History in the Netherlands, 5 (1993): 56. 27 Ibid., p. 42. 10 inspiring them to duplicate its features, organizational structure and institutions, as the latter sought to gain political legitimacy in a language dictated by the former. 28 Urbanism and its symbols linked a city to the dominant city, as well as indicate its position in the urban hierarchy, lesser cities having less prominent symbols. 29 Urban hierarchy, due to its links with economic and cultural hierarchy, could and did influence the city form. For Southeast Asia, the dichotomy of inland/coastal is often invoked, such as in Bronson’s economic theory of “upstream” and “downstream” city relationships. 30 Insular Southeast Asia by and large did not have wide-spanning empires that wielded the same cultural dominance and institutionalized political control that, for example, had been found in the Roman Empire. Reid describes the region as having a city-state culture, with multiple citystates sharing a common culture and language, with no one city-state having the ability to completely dominate another beyond a tributary system, and all possessing a degree of selfgovernment, if not autonomy. 31 A traditional European empire emphasized control of territory. However, in Southeast Asia’s city-state culture, it was the maintenance of a network of inter-city relationships that denoted the nature of empire, with certain cities occupying the dominant position in the relationships that formed the urban hierarchy. 32 The implications of the city-state cultural concept on the urban hierarchy indicated that urban status was extremely fluid. Cultural influence could be a bilateral process, rather than the simple radial model of culture emanating from a dominant city. This resulted in the entire region sharing a common urban culture that was nevertheless unique to the region. 33 Although there were “first amongst equals”, such as sixteenth-century Gowa, there was no city-state that could be 28 Paul Wheatley, Nagara and Commandery, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983), p. 430. Richard O’Connor, A Theory of Indigenous Southeast Asian Urbanism, p. 7 and Wheatley, Nagara and Commandary, p. 430. 30 Bronson, “Exchange at the Upstream and Downstream Ends”, p. 48. 31 Reid, “The Culture of Malay-Speaking City-States “, p. 427. 32 Pierre-Yves Manguin, “City-States and City-State Cultures”, in A Comparative Study of Thirty CityState Cultures, p. 413. 33 Reid, “The Culture of Malay-Speaking City-States”, p. 427. 29 11 rightly called dominant in the urban hierarchy, at least not for an appreciable period of time. It should be noted that this seeming equality may be only applicable for the coastal or island citystates; as the inland cities seemed to have a cultural/spiritual dominance that operated on a different dynamic. The urban structure of the Southeast Asian city has also been the focus of considerable debate, partly due to the differing definitions of which portions were actually urban, as well as the sparse archaeological evidence. However, enough has been found to suggest that the coastal, usually heterogenetic cities of insular Southeast Asia differed greatly in their urban form from the orthogenetic cities of the mainland Southeast Asia. Mainland cities were generally planned cities, with a grid layout and a firmly demarcated city limit. They were centres of cultural production that acted as beacons to the faithful by being material anchors of their faith. 34 Found in fertile mainland Southeast Asia and the rich plains of Java, they were thus somewhat more permanent than their coastal counterparts, since agricultural economies are less mobile than trade economies. Their physical form seemed to respond to this same sense of permanence, with visible anchors to the area around them in the form of large streets that created strong lines in the four directions, creating a sense of centre to the city with an axis that lead from the heavens to the city centre, and on the horizontal plane, spread out in the four directions of the mandala. Clifford Geertz referred to them as exemplary centres, which expressed cosmological order, and, through the actions of the king to maintain the order in his capital, served to keep harmony with the macrocosm. 35 Symmetry in the urban form gave it an intended monumentalism, and girded by one or more rings of fortified city wall, it was also a reflection of the realities of the defense strategy and warfare in the region. An agricultural-based economy was bound to its territory, as was any city that had pretensions to religious significance, with the result that retention of location was a factor 34 Redfield and Singer, “Cultural Role of Cities”, p. 56. Clifford Geertz, Negara: the theatre state in nineteenth-century Bali, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 135. 35 12 in defense considerations. It was also able to commandeer the resources required for a massive urban investment such as a permanent defensive city circuit. The coastal, heterogenetic city of insular Southeast Asia tended towards a more organic approach, with the city form responding to the coastline or river coast. If the mainland orthogenetic city looked towards the sky and centered on that central axis, the coastal, heterogenetic city always looked towards the sea, the source of its wealth and often its raison d’etre. The city form stretched out in a linear fashion along the coastline, maximizing its usable harbour front, an example of which can be seen in Makassar. Its governing axis was in the horizontal plane, leading from the palace compound to the waters, The feature of the coastal, heterogenetic cities that has occasioned the most comment is perhaps the feature that it lacked at that point in pre-colonial Southeast Asia: that of a permanent, defensive city wall. As mentioned earlier, the city wall was the sine qua non of the Western fortified town, to the point where Max Weber, Mogens Hansen, Henri Pirenne and others used it in their definitions of a city. While the coastal cities had internal walls – such as those around the palace compound, and the compounds of the nobles and wealthy merchants – it seldom possessed an all-encompassing city wall that was used to define the city limits. 36 If there was a wall, it would usually be a wooden palisade, sometimes permanent, but usually hastily erected when the city was threatened. This reflected the guerrilla realties of warfare in the island world, coupled with scarce manpower compared to the mainland, which will be discussed more completely later in this thesis. Although ecology resulted in the rise of two perceived urban types, it has been noted that they nevertheless shared a cultural/religious foundation which was reflected in their urban forms. Mount Meru of Hindu-Buddhist faith, the axis mundi of the cosmos, is thought to have figured in 36 It should be noted that in true city state culture fashion, the coastal cities did not believe that the city ended where its structures ceased…at that point in time, it was rare for coastal Southeast Asia to think in the binary of city versus country. In Melaka, for example, the term used for city denoted the country as well, that of negeri; Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states”, p. 422. 13 urban conceptualisation of both. Mahameru, or Saguntang Maha Meru, was the central mountain of the cosmos that was surrounded by rings of lesser mountains and continents, and which figured heavily in Malay creation myths. 37 Although the prominence of a representational Mount Meru was greater in the planned Hindu-Buddhist cities of the mainland kings, such as Mandalay and Angkor Wat, the use of a hill or high ground as a urban focal point nevertheless occurred in the island maritime kingdoms as well. The cosmological demands for the macrocosm and Mount Meru to be reflected in the microcosm of the city had its grounding in a far more prosaic reason – that of control and defense. Although the practical extent of this belief has been debated, 38 it nevertheless holds some influence, on both cosmological and defense grounds, as can be seen in the Melaka founding myth. The institutions and characteristics within were also somewhat similar. Both usually possessed a palace compound, known alternately as the desa (place of the ruler) or the kadatuan in Sumatra, the kraton of Yogyakarta and the pura of fourteenth century Java. 39 The buildings were usually of wood and built off the ground, while tomb markers, if present, would be of stone. There was usually a square of some sort, and a population divided into wards based on their ethnic groups. The mainland city possessed temples, and the coastal city naturally had a port, although it usually had a somewhat less impressive temple as well. 40 Overall, urban theory in Southeast Asia has covered various aspects of urbanism, from hierarchy to generation to actual structure. However, although there has been work done to analyse the urban structure over regions, mostly by Miksic and Reid, its evolution over time has been left mostly unstudied. Any study over time has been restricted to early periods of urban generation, rather than the latter times within established cities. 37 Joseph H. Schwartzberg, “Cosmography in Southeast Asia”, The History of Cartography, Vol. 2 Book 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 702. 38 Nagtegaal, ‘The pre-modern city“, p. 42. 39 Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 8. 40 Peter J.M. Nas, “The Early Indonesian Town: Rise and decline of the City-state and its capital”, The Indonesian city, ed. Peter J.M. Nas (Leiden: KITLV, 1986), p. 33. 14 Colonialism, War and Southeast Asian urbanism The city, as the arguably most prominent product of a civilization, is naturally also a manifestation of its material culture. The material culture of a people is influenced by a variety of factors, such as local events and the development of local beliefs, as well as the ways it can affect people. As such, the city, in both its physical form and cultural role, can be affected by events that occur to the civilization or region as a whole, and also be used to effect changes. Colonialism, and the advent of the Europeans has frequently considered to be the event, or rather, historical process that has had the most effect on Southeast Asian history. Although it has been said that the actual change effected has been overstated, it is nonetheless accepted that the entry of the Europeans in larger numbers than previously experienced had its consequences. The effect may have remained at the fundamentally superficial level of the “thin and flaking glaze”, which has been said of Indian and Chinese influences as well. However, there was a change, and a corresponding response in the material culture and urban form. Urban studies on the effects of colonialism by and large regard the colonial city as a completely new urban type, imposed on the indigenous country. To some extent they were; European conquerors generally built the city in the image of their own home, or used the opportunity of the tabula rasa presented before them to experiment. The new city was different in that it had not been founded to serve the needs of the immediate region, but rather that of the faraway imperial power. There were also the indigenous cities that were conquered and adapted for use. The combination of pre-existing indigenous urban structures and colonial urban forms and institutions led to what some writers have considered the hybrid city, such as McGee’s referring to these conquered cities as possessing European transplants. 41 41 McGee, The Southeast Asian City, p. 49. 15 In both cases, the approach to that period of urban history seems somewhat Eurocentric, or rather, too focused on the direct European-indigenous interaction. 42 The emphasis is on direct European impact on Southeast Asian cities, with the result that cities that did not directly experience European rule and urban re-design are effectively sidelined before their colonisation by a European force. While this could be considered a product of a lack of sources, the emphasis in urban history on the changes within the European-dominated region of Southeast Asia obscures any development in the urban forms of the regions that either never came under direct European hegemony, or had failed to achieve prominence in the colonial era. The Europeans are depicted as the dominant or even the only cultural force in the region, with Southeast Asian cities viewed as the hapless recipients of culture, mere repositories of European ideas of urbanism. There seems to have been little effort to discover the indigenous Southeast Asian response to the entry of the Europeans. Very little has been written on the development of the urban form in indigenous cities, free of European control in the pre-modern period of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The period of urban history experienced by autonomous, indigenous cities between the entry of Europeans and complete European hegemony in the region has been covered to some extent. However, focus is usually on the city-state and its people, and urban form is described as part of the circumstances at the period rather than discussed in its own right. Reid perhaps comes the closest to discussing the change in the urban form at that period of time, noting the changes that the indigenous cities made in response to the new European threat. 43 However, the focus is on the general urban status of the cities, rather than focusing on the actual structure, or its role as a tool in the changing currents of maritime Southeast Asia. War and the Southeast Asian City 42 John R. W. Smail, “On the possibility of an Autonomous History of Southeast Asia”, JSEAH, 2, 2, (1961), p. 101. 43 Anthony Reid, “The Structure of Cities in Southeast Asia”, JSEAS, 11, 2, (1980): 242. 16 As mentioned earlier, port cities seldom possessed permanent walls, meant for the overall defense of the city. This lack of a defensive wall was reflective of the style of warfare between the coastal cities at the period, with raids rather than conquests, reflective of the commonly-held understanding that it was not economic for one trade city to conquer and occupy another. 44 Defenders would put up a token defence, but when faced with a decisively stronger enemy, strategic retreat secure in the expectation of the enemy’s eventual departure, was preferred. Thus given the relative value of manpower over material resource, rulers were more likely to retreat than defend. Normally, the purpose of defending a city would also be to defend a favourable location. However, the rulers of insular Southeast Asia, with their highly mobile trade cities, had no such impulse. In fact, the city of Inderagiri shifted location of its own accord after suffering an attack from the Acehnese. 45 Manpower, not location, was the goal of the attackers, and correspondingly, of the defenders as well. With that in mind, it made little or no sense to invest in a permanent defensive structure. The inhabitants were not technologically incapable of building city walls of brick or stone, as the rulers had intimate contact with the orthogenetic cities of the mainland, as well as the great fortified cities of the Middle East and China – they simply had no reason to do so. Makassar, for instance, built brick tombs long before the first of its great constellation of forts. 46 Although the tenability of the idea of strategic withdrawal as a popular insular Southeast Asian response to aggression has been questioned by Michael Charney, this form of warfare was evident the case of Melaka. 47 Portuguese accounts mention that Sultan Mahmud remained in the 44 Bronson, “Exchange at the upstream and downstream ends”, p. 48. Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states”, p. 421. 46 Francis David Bulbeck, A Tale of Two Kingdoms: The Historical Archaeology of Gowa and Tallok, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. (PhD Thesis: Australian National University, 1992), p. 126. 47 Michael W. Charney, Southeast Asian Warfare 1300-1900, (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 16. 45 17 Melakan area for some ten days after its fall to the Portuguese, in the expectation that Portuguese would eventually leave. 48 However, the fall of Melaka saw the beginnings of another type of warfare, one that battled in the language of sieges and strongholds. The European need for a Southeast Asian base differed somewhat from that of the indigenous polities, and they waged a different war for location and land. The port cities, both indigenously controlled or under colonial rule, now began to fortify themselves. Previously, earth or taipa walls had been occasionally applied in the island world, but now brick and stone appeared, possibly in response to the heavier firepower the Europeans could wield. It is likely that the reason for this change went beyond the desire to defend against European canons. Earth walls, if thick enough, are also effective against heavy firepower, as the Chinese city walls were able to prove when they held out against the nineteenth century colonial cannons. In addition, it was also mentioned that the taipa walls were often able to withstand the bombards in the early days of Portuguese firepower. 49 Also, if heavy firepower was more a European feature, it also raises the question whether the various polities would have fortified because of the Europeans alone, although fortified Portuguese Melaka’s ability to withstand heavy Acehnese fire was probably appreciated and noted. Under these circumstances, the use of stone could potentially be seen as overkill and a waste of manpower. Given this, it is possible that reasons other than defence also lay behind the construction of stone walls, as opposed to traditional earth in the indigenous cities. There may have been was a symbolic element to the use of hardier building material, both in the colonial and indigenous cities. Through the examination of the walls, this thesis will seek to prove this. Also will be considered is the statement in the earlier paragraph – that there was a shift towards a more siegebased type of warfare in the island world, which resulted in the construction of permanent walls. 48 49 Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 131. Charney, Southeast Asian Warfare, p. 94. 18 With the movement towards taking strongholds rather than maintaining dominance, the city itself had become a possession of value that had to be defended. The walls of Southeast Asian society Walls, in addition to being defensive structures, are essentially boundary markers that act to divide space. They act as barriers, whether symbolic or actual, preventing entry from one space to another. In doing so, they are able to grant meaning to a space; through this demarcation that identifies this space; through their function; and lastly through their appearance. For instance, fortress walls of Somba Opu in Makassar delineated the royal residential zone, controlled access hence giving the zone exclusivity, and its brick walls indicated the manpower available to residents in the zone, as well as physically dominating the cityscape. 50 With that in mind, walls can be seen to shape quotidian urban life and control urban functions. As such, they are often used as instruments of control by dominant parties to achieve certain goals dictacted by social norms or otherwise. However, intent is seldom precisely outcome, and the city dwellers can affect the walls as well. This discourse between the hard urban structures and the people that live in them is what makes up urban life. The walls that came up in Southeast Asian port cities were used to shape the city. However, in the case of the indigenous cities, it is doubtful that they actually changed the functioning of the city, given that they were still produced by the same dominant group, with similar sets of concerns, and basic geographical concerns remained the same. It is more likely that they acted to reinforce existing cultural or physical divisions. If that is the case, there should be greater change exhibited by cities that had been taken over by the Europeans. Therefore, this paper will focus on wall construction and its possible effects on Southeast Asian society. Several hypothesis will be examined; that there was a shift in warfare that changed the role of the city and thus its function; that there was a symbolic and defense reason behind the 50 Further explanation in chapter 3. 19 wall construction and that the urban life in the indigenous cities were fundamentally unchanged by the changes mentioned. Several examples will be considered: the pre-1511 indigenous controlled city, the post1511 indigenous city, and the post-1511 colonial city. 51 In this manner, it can be seen if the walls were a post-1511 phenomenon, and if there were appreciable differences in the walls constructed in the indigenous and the colonial city. A comparison of the pre- and post-1511 indigenous city and the indigenous city versus the colonial city will also show how the walls may have affected urban activity. With the understanding that urban structures both shape and are shaped by forces within, possible changes in Southeast Asian society may be reflected in the city form. The first case selected is that of Melaka, the most prominent and best documented of the early port cities. Melaka has been chosen as it was a major cultural centre of the pre-1511 island world, and its corresponding fall sent ripples throughout the island world. It was the first Southeast Asian city to transform into a European stronghold, and the indigenous port polities watched with apprehension and interest as the Portuguese built A Famosa, the first stone fort in the region. Taking their cue from Portuguese Melaka, cities like Johor Lama, Banten and Makassar began building fortifications of their own. Melaka’s importance was such that even after its fall, it would continue to influence cities in island Southeast Asia. Makassar has been selected partly because it had much in common with Melaka, allowing for a meaningful comparison. Like Melaka, it was also a strongly maritime city that would have been strongly affected by events in the wider world. Makassar was also an indigenous controlled coastal city for over two hundred years, during which the direct urban response to the changing circumstances of the post-1511 world can be seen. In addition, the rulers of Makassar had both the ability and resources to fully realise any major fortification project, thus illustrating perhaps the largest range of urban response and change in the city structure. Makassar also absorbed many of the refugees from Melaka, who brought with them urban concepts that had 51 European colonization occurred only after 1511. 20 been further developed because of the Portuguese experience, creating continuity between the two cities. Although there exist differences between two cities, such as Makassar’s stronger relationship with the hinterland and others which will be addressed later, a comparative study will allow a sense of the changes in the Southeast Asian port city, both European and indigenous, in the dynamic Age of Commerce. Thus, this study will consider the role of the city walls within the construction of the city, and possible variations between the colonial and indigenous city experience. However, its effects on the city’s relationship in the greater world of Southeast Asian warfare, and hierarchy will be considered as well, in order to fully understand the extent of the influence and the ramifications that a simple wall could have in the history of Southeast Asia. 21 Chapter 2: Melaka – Between the Winds Melaka, sometimes considered the heir to the Sri Vijaya Empire that dominated early island Southeast Asia, has long been an object of fascination. Lying on the lucrative China route and one of the principle centres of the spice trade, Tomé Pires described the port as “the city made for merchandise.” 1 Close links with the indigenous sea-people and commercially-inclined rulers helped Melaka dominate the surrounding seas for over a hundred years, an epoch in the infamously ephemeral dynasties of insular Southeast Asia. Trade brought both wealth and ideas to Melaka, turning it into a leading cultural centre that even had one sultan proclaiming it superior to Mecca. Melaka was truly legendary, and is perhaps the best documented and most representative of the pre-1511 port cities in the region. Although Melaka undoubtedly earned its reputation as the premier centre of trade and culture in the island world, it is Melaka’s catastrophic fall that firmly carved its place in Southeast Asian history and literature. It became the first European controlled city, and the first to experience the changes and fortifications that were to be reflected in other Southeast Asian ports in decades to come. Through a study of pre-1511 and Portuguese Melaka, the changes that a new era wrought in the urban form of the maritime cities can be seen. Historiographical Overview and Sources The range of sources available for Melaka vary greatly according to the period. For the pre-1511 period, the Chinese records of the Ming voyages and the Malay epic, the Sejarah Melayu comprise the main corpus of extant sources. Their limitations have been discussed extensively, and other alternative avenues such as the archaeological record are non-existent, as the site has since been heavily contaminated and built over. There was also no indigenous 1 Armando Cortesão, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pire, (London: Hakluyt Society, 1944), p. 286. tradition of city illustration or mapping, with the result that a city plan will not be forthcoming, although there is a rather bare Chinese nautical map of early Meleka. 2 For post-1511, European sources (usually Portuguese) records which dominate. However, they are also useful for the earlier period, with works such as Tomé Pires’ Suma Oriental providing coverage of early Melakan history based on oral interviews with the locals. The Portuguese sources, however, are limited by their perspective, temporal proximity to pre-1511 events, potential cultural prejudice – and in the Suma Oriental’s case, a problematic manuscript but in addition, have been accused of essentially creating a myth of a golden pre-1511 Melaka. Nevertheless, the Portuguese records remained unparalleled and comparatively rich in information with which to reconstruct the post-1511 urban fabric of the city. 3 The Europeans also provided valuable illustrations of Portuguese Melaka as unlike the indigenous rulers before, they had the necessary impetus to do so due to militaristic need, colonial administration, and a rising trend for sieges in European art. 4 Despite this handicap of limited sources, a better understanding of Melaka’s history, as well as the physical structure of the city has emerged. Though gaps in the extant knowledge still exist, there is sufficient evidence on which an analytical study of the Melakan urban structure evolution and its effects can be based. Melaka: A Historical Overview Paramesvara, also known as Iskandar Shah, a prince from Palembang, who after first fleeing to Singapore, established himself as ruler of Melaka around the year 1400. He was 2 For further clarification, see appendix 2. Schwartzberg, “Southeast Asian Cartography”, p. 689 and 700; Geoff Wade, “Melaka in Ming Dynasty Texts”, JMBRAS, 70, 1 (1997): 54. 3 For further information on Portuguese sources and the Melakan debate, see appendix 3. 4 For further clarification, see appendix 3. Muhammad Yusoff Hashim, The Malay Sultanate of Malacca, (Kuala Lumpur : Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1992), p. 11; Martha Pollack, “Representations of the city in siege views of the seventeenth century”, City Walls, ed. James D. Tracy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000), p. 614. 23 thought to have first settled in Bertam, a day’s travel up the Melaka River. 5 His son, Megat Iskandar, was thought to have founded the port. 6 At the time, Melaka was said to have 1000 residents, a number that increased rapidly as its rulers encouraged traders to this new entrepot on the peninsula. As it rose as a port, Melaka drew the attention of Zheng He and the Ming Maritime fleet. The Ming Emperor Yong-Le took steps to formally establish contact, which was reciprocated by Paramesvara in his visit to the Ming court in 1411. 7 Melaka was enfeoffed and formally raised to the status of a city-state when Yong-Le took the unprecedented step of sending a tablet engraved with his personal inscription along with Zheng He on his 1409 voyage. 8 This move declared that Melaka was to be brought under the imperial umbrella and was no longer considered a barbarian state; in short, legitimising it. The tablet was a symbol of China’s official protection, a shield which may have been more symbolic than actual, which waned over the years. 9 This became less of a factor as Melaka’s influence grew over the Straits. Although never achieving the same level of dominance that had allowed its declared ancestor Sri Vijaya to turn the Straits into a private sea, Melaka’s dedication to commerce led to the influx of a mix of traders. 10 By the time of the Portuguese attack of 1511, Melaka had a thriving populace of traders and locals, and claimed to be able to summon a fighting force of 90,000 men. Tomé Pires wrote that in the markets of Melaka, 84 languages were spoken, a testament to its cosmopolitan nature. Its cultural prominence was such that the king Sultan Mahmud Shah declared it the equal of 5 Brown, Sejarah Melayu, p. 41. Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 237. 7 Wang, Community and Nation, p. 126. 8 Enfeoffment refers to the creation of a fief. Willem Pieter Groeneveldt, Historical notes on Indonesia and Malaya compiled from Chinese sources, (Djarkata: C.V. Bhratara, 1960), p. 129. 9 Wang, Community and Nation, pp. 97, 157. 10 Barbara Watson Andaya and Leonard Y. Andaya, A History of Malaysia,(Basingstoke: Palgrave Publishers, 2001), p. 53. 6 24 Mecca itself. Mahmud Shah also formally renounced allegiance to Siam and Java, stating that as a vassal of China, Melaka should not be a vassal to them. 11 The Portuguese first made contact in the form of five ships with 400 men led by Diogo Lopez de Siqueira. The story of first contact is murky, with the Sejarah Melayu and Portuguese sources giving different accounts; but both agree it ended badly. De Siqueira limped back to India, bringing news of his defeat to Afonso de Albuquerque, the architect of Portuguese expansionism in Asia. Albuquerque led a force of 15 ships and 1600 men to Melaka, arriving in June, 1511. When he arrived, the Melakans, aided by the foreign traders present, had prepared for the expected reprisal and had erected stockades along the seaboard and at strategic points within the city. 12 The story of the attack was a textbook response to aggression in the island world, before the city walls that were to grace the port cities became a feature. The Melakans seem to have chosen the usual tactic of constructing temporary defensive fortifications and defending the city before strategically retreating in the expectation of the eventual departure of the attackers. The Portuguese fleet and allies dropped anchor at the present-day Pulau Besar, then referred to as Pulau Cina due to the Chinese merchants living there. After negotiations failed, Albuquerque ordered an attack, with the primary focus on the market bridge as it was the only link between the north and south sides of Melaka (See Fig. 1). The Melakans seemed to have been equally aware of this weakness, building palisades of tough nipah palm and furiously defending it with bombards and arrows. When the Portuguese broke through, the Sultan led armed men from the back of an elephant, counter-attacking from the mosque side, which seemed to have served as the defense bastion. However, the Portuguese proved stronger, and sporadic attempts continued for a month before a second attack at the bridge caused an overwhelmed sultan and retinue to flee to 11 Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 296 and 254. The number of ships varied between 15-20, and between 1000-1600 men. Birch, The commentaries, Vol. 2, p. 221, Vol 3, pp. 68-69; Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 279. 12 25 the ancestral stronghold of Bertam, in the expectation that the “white Bengali” invaders would soon leave after raiding the city. 13 The Portuguese, however, did not leave. Albuqeurque set about building a timber stockade on the hill, before tearing down the mosque and other stone structures in order to use them as materiel for A Famosa. During this time, the Portuguese were under near constant attack from the inland by forces led by the sultan, who still commanded considerable numbers despite his recent defeat. 14 The decision to fortify seems to have been wise, since the Portuguese rule over Melaka would never be an easy one. Attacks by the sultan continued over the first year, this time from his new stronghold at the Muar River, a trend that lasted until the Sultan fled to Bintan. Over the course of the next 150 years, Portuguese Melaka would sustain attacks from Johor, Aceh, and the Javanese, before finally falling to the Dutch in 1640, the newest maritime power in the region. 15 Long after it ceased being the “Mecca of the East”, Melaka remained a prize for any polity that sought to rule the spice trade of Southeast Asia. However, before these changes can be understood, we must first understand the site, and the structure of the city. Melaka under the Sultans The natural environment of fifteenth-century Melaka was typical of most port cities in the island world. The climate was equatorial, prone to the seasonal monsoons that governed trade in the island world, and had given the port its title as the city that lay at “the end of monsoons and the beginning of others”. 16 The river mouth of the Melaka River was unusually free from mangrove swamps that lined the rest of the coast, with a sheltered estuary. The present day St. Paul’s Hill, the same locus of psychic power that figured in the founding story, was near the 13 For a full description of Melakan defenses, see appendix 4. A. Bausani, Letter of Giovanni da Empoli, (Djakarta: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente Centro Italiano di Cultura, 1970), p. 132, Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, pp. 102-103,131. 14 Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 139. 15 The Portuguese would also experience internal uprisings, such as the rebellion by Javanese leader Utemutaraja; Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 140. 16 Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 286. 26 shoreline, providing a good vantage point of the harbour, forming the natural focal point for any defence. Fig. 1: The Portuguese Attack 27 While the coast line was clear of mangrove, the river banks were less so and distinctly swampy as the entire area was low-lying and marshy. 17 The possibility of flooding, combined with the heat and poor foundational support in the soft ground, gave rise to the distinctive stilt house architecture common to Southeast Asia. The area was also lacking in convenient, easily quarried rock which ensured that the only stone structures were that of the mosque and rulers’ tombs. 18 The soil was largely infertile for intensive cultivation of staple crops, but supported the fruit trees and vegetables interspersing the urban area, a common form of port-city mixed land use that blurred the line between the urban/non-urban. 19 Bertam, the original settlement of Paramesvara, was described as being two or three leagues (about 10-15km) up the Melaka River. 20 The topography of the area was substantively different from Melaka. While Melaka consisted of a relatively narrow flat coastal area surrounded by hills and orientated towards the sea, Bertam was described as a flat plain extending 3-4 leagues (about 15-20km) that was considered unusual for the region. Bordered by mountain ranges with a supply of freshwater described as abundant, it was the palace of the Melakan kings and the recreation ground of wealthy Melakan merchants and nobility, and was thought to be along the Sungei Bertam at possibly Bertam Ulm. 21 For the purposes of this study, Melaka will be used to refer to the river mouth settlement. Melaka in the indigenous usage often refered to both the polity and the city, thereby technically including Bertam and the entire inhabited stretch from Kuala Penejah to Hulu Muar. 22 However, major changes in the urban fabric occurred at the river mouth settlement as it was the city heart and main area of urban interaction between different ethnic groups. The settlement by the river 17 J.V. Mills, Eredia’s Description of Malaca, Meridional India, and Cathay, (Kuala Lumpar: MBRAS, 1997), p. 19. 18 Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 100. 19 Mills, Eredia, p. 29. 20 Paul Wheatley, "‘A city that was made for merchandise’: The geography of fifteenth-century Malacca,” B.I.S.A., 1, (1959): 2. 21 Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 233-4. 22 Brown, Sejarah Melayu, p. 151. 28 also fulfils most existing conditions for urban status, ranking above other sites in the settlement pattern hierarchy, and clearly being able to provide economic and religious functions and institutions that others lacked. It was also independent, due to its status as the seat of the Melakan polity. The City Proper The city of Melaka on the eve of the Portuguese attack was a large one by contemporary standards, and was said to have stretched one league (about 5km) along the coastline. (See Fig. 2) It supposedly had a population of 190,000 households, and said to be able to field over 100,000 fighting men, a number which has been the subject of debate. 23 Nevertheless, Melaka was considered to be impressive in size by the standards of that time, leading Albuquerque to comment that even the 8,000 bombards found later in the sultan’s treasury had been insufficient for its defence. 24 The houses were described as hugging the coast rather than venturing inwards, making for a narrow city, which would be typical of a port city that was focused on the source of trade. 25 The city itself was divided into two main sections – the south bank with St. Paul’s Hill and the palace, and the north bank with the traders and markets. An elaborate market bridge connected the administrative sector with the commercial sector in the north, and the river itself linked Melaka with Bertam, where the wealthier merchants and nobility would head for pleasure jaunts or visit the ancestral istana. The king himself alternated his residence between Bertam and Melaka, which was easily accomplished and only marginally lessened his control over either city since the two were only an hour’s journey by boat. 26 23 Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 279. Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 128. 25 M.J. Pintado, “A letter from Rui de Araujo”, Portuguese Documents on Malacca, Vol 1, 1509-1511, (Kuala Lumpur, National Archives of Malaysia, 1993), p. 131. 26 Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 246. 24 29 Fig. 2: Melaka 30 The city walls of Melaka Like many port cities, Melaka had protective walls for its royal demesne, the traces of which could be seen as late as 1641. 27 Evidence suggests there were two rings of protection – the first being around the istana buildings themselves, and a possible second one enclosing the entire hill with the predominantly native Melakan population. Both had at least one main gate that would have been used for formal processions, such as escorting the arrival of a royal envoy. Individual compounds had their own walls as well, that divided the city into its ethnic communities and orang kaya strongholds. 28 The existence of the external perimeter wall at the hill seems to have been in some doubt, given the lack of reference to it in Portuguese sources and Joao Barros’s comment that the Portuguese force had considered Melaka unimpressive as it lacked a wall. 29 However, the European image of city walls was that of considerably more impressive structures, and the Sejarah Melayu mentions the existence of a city gate. However, even if the perimeter wall had not existed as a single independent element, the walls of the compounds on the hill would have effectively walled off the hill. The permanent walls, such as those used for the individual compounds and palace, were probably composed of earth tightly packed between timber walls (taipa), the latter the favoured tough nipah palm. 30 The temporary structures erected before the Portuguese attack were probably somewhat less elaborate, lacking the earth reinforcement between, but possessed points and small earth ramparts for bombards to allow defensive forces to fire upon the Portuguese. 31 The latter were built as needed, usually in expectation of direct attack, a trait common to the island world. The Sejarah Melayu mentions an incident whereby the men of Melaka went to aid Pahang, which 27 Irwin, “Melaka Fort”, p. 783. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, pp. 46, 53. 29 Pintado, Asia, p. 149. 30 Mills, Eredia, p. 33. 31 Birch, The commentaries, Vol. 3, p. 103. 28 31 was facing a possible attack from Legur (Ligor), a vassal of Siam. The Melakan fleet sailed to Pahang, only to find that the fortifications of Pahang were still being constructed. 32 Oddly, earth alone was not used as a construction material for any of the palisade walls. Earth as a defensive structure had precedent in the island world, the most recent example before Melaka’s time being that of Singapore. Fourteenth-century Singapore used earth walls of about five metres at the base, and some three metres high, running along the modern day Stamford road. 33 Melaka, despite certain and prior first-hand knowledge of Siamese aggression, never chose to build fortifications of this magnitude. If earth walls were never constructed, permanent stone or brick walls were an even less likely prospect. While there are hints that the mosque walls could have been of stone, there is very little use of stone throughout the city. The Melakans were familiar with stone-craft, given the existence of the kings’ tombs and the stone bathing pavilion found some way outside of Melaka at Batu Blah. 34 While it could be argued that a lack of locally available easily quarried stone made it an unpopular building choice, laterite, a hard rock product, is available in the Melaka area. The iron-rich material, once called brickstone for its reddish appearance, was found in recent excavations of the original Portuguese fort. It was likely to have been the material of choice for the Melakans as well, given Portuguese assertions that the mosque had been dismantled to build the fort. 35 Neither was brick used, although it had been known to Majapahit and Sri Vijaya, and by extension, Melaka. Given that Melaka existed for over 100 years, the rulers had ample time to use more permanent materials if they so chose. It can be argued that they were unwilling to expend the manpower required for these more labour intensive materials. This supports the theory that defenses required by the current style of warfare did not need heavy fortifications, something that was to change after 1511. 32 Brown, Sejarah Melayu, p. 151. Miksic, “14th Century Singapore”, p.112. 34 Mills, Eredia, p. 130. 35 Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 139. 33 32 The only walls in Melaka that could be considered permanent, and even then, only by Melakan standards, were the earth reinforced walls surrounding the individual compounds, the palace, the mosque, and the perimeter wall around the hill. Given the location of these walls, it is possible to question their expectation of use by the Melakans under direct attack. It is not implausible that even these permanent walls were more of a social demarcation and a statement of personal loyalties than actual defensive structure. The Melakan Hill: Axis mundi The administrative centre on the southern bank contained the main hill of Melaka, and the natural focal point of the city. Megat Iskandar, son of the Buddhist Melaka founder Paramesvara, was said to have been responsible for selecting the hill as the centre of his proposed port settlement, citing the hill’s source of mystic energy. The connection with the Mount Meru of Hindu-Buddhist faith, the axis mundi of the cosmos, is unmistakable. Megat Iskandar, the descendant of Sri Vijaya, would have been aware of and sensitive to the beliefs that structured around the hill, although the extent of its influence is debatable. In addition, the association of high places with importance was common in pre-historic Southeast Asia, making this scenario even more likely. 36 It is also possible that he realized that it simply made sense for the centre of a proposed city to be on high defensible ground if available, as it permitted the occupant of that centre to survey both the city inhabitants and the harbour. The palace and the mosque were situated on the hill as befit their status as the most important buildings of Melaka. Surrounding them were the compounds of the privileged merchants and orang kaya, the proximity to the palace probably in direct relationship with their owner’s rank. In earlier times, the palace had been said to be by the riverbanks, perhaps an indicator of a former closer link to upriver Bertam. 37 In 1511, the Sultan’s palace was at the crest 36 37 J. N. Miksic,"From Seri Vijaya to Melaka", JMBRAS, 60, 2 (1987), p. 22. J. V. G. Mills, Ma Huan, Ying-yai sheng-lan, (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1970), p. 109. 33 of the hill, and had its own compound within the larger enclosure that may have surrounded the compounds of the courtiers. The Sejarah Melayu gives a detailed description of the first palace built by Mansur Shah after the Hang Kasturi incident. 38 Supposedly some 17 bays long, it was ornately carved and as befitting a royal palace, gilded in gold, a colour only the ruler was allowed to use. This palace along with the original mosque was burned down in what was described merely as a fire in the Sejarah Melayu. The replacement palace probably bore some resemblance to the old one, and was said to have even eclipsed it. It and the replacement mosque were built through community effort, by levying manpower from various districts under Melakan vassalage. 39 The Melakan mosque was renowned for its grandeur, but very little is known about it. Built by Mansur Shah around 1455, it received very little commentary even in the Sejarah Melayu, perhaps due to its lack of involvement in the everyday politics of Melaka. 40 It was on the hill, indicative of its status within Melakan society and its religious nature which relates to cosmological symbolism. At least one of the principle streets would have led from the bridge to the mosque. Although probably not the only mosque in Melaka, it was easily the largest and principle place of worship. Zakaria Ali has attempted a reconstruction based solely on the assumption of a shared material culture with a 1497 Demak mosque, suggesting a wooden building on stilts with a pyramidal roof, accompanied by a garden and graveyard. It would have had a surrounding wall with grand gateways, guarded to control visitors. His reconstruction features extensive use of wood, which seems to jar with European accounts of the building of A Famosa, which mention using stone from the mosque to build the fort. The mosque’s compound walls were also considered sturdy enough to be used as the main defensive headquarters during 38 The Hang Kasturi incident is sometimes attributed to Hang Jebat instead. In the tale, Hang Kasturi ran amok in Mansur Shah’s original palace, and was finally killed by his friend Hang Tuah. Mansur Shah refused to live in the palace after that, and a new one was built. Cheah Boon Kheng, Sejarah Melayu: The Malay Annals, MS Raffles No. 18, (Kuala Lumpur: MBRAS, 1988), p. 164. 39 Sherwin’s attempted reconstruction puts one bay at 4.5m, making the original palace of Mansur Shah an oddly large 76.5m long. Sherwin, “The Palace”, p.104; Brown, Sejarah Melayu, p. 78-79. 40 Zakaria Ali, “Notes from the Sejarah Melayu and Malay Royal Art”, Muqurnas, 10, (1993), p. 384. 34 the Portuguese attack. 41 It is therefore reasonable to assume that at least some stone – or more likely, laterite, was used in the construction of the mosque foundations and walls. The cemetery in the mosque also contained the graves of previous kings, possibly including that of Mansur Shah himself, while some remained on the hill. The grave markers were made of stone and seemed to have been partially underground, in the style of Islamic graveyards in the region. 42 There was also possibly some sort of square, or at least an open space, somewhere around the bridge, and said to be the site of the betrayal of the Portuguese factor that had led to the 1511 attack and the later execution of the Javanese rebel. 43 The north bank: diversity and commerce The north side of the city was the region of the trading enclaves, which stretched from the riverbanks to the coastline. 44 It was the residential area of the foreign traders in Melaka, and probably contained the social institutions peculiar to each ethnic group. As the traders’ area, it was also the location for the auxiliary port facilities and attendant services for incoming traders, such as warehouses and lodgings. Typical for port cities, the transient trading population in Melaka was divided into its ethnic communities, which may have had shared enclosures, with individual clusters having their own compound wall. An example of such a division can be seen in Banten Lama, where the Chinese had their own quarter. 45 This division along ethnic lines was reflected in the administrative structure as well, with each ethnic group having its own syahbandar. 46 41 Ali, “Notes”, p. 384; Birch The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 122 and 136; Cortesão, Suma Oriental, p. 241 and 281; Bausani, “Letter of Giovanni”, p. 139. 42 J.N. Miksic, "Parallels between the upright stones of west Sumatra and those of Malacca and Negeri Sembilan", JMBRAS, 58, 1 (1985): 73. 43 Pintado, Asia, p. 45. 44 Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 95. 45 Claude Guillot, “Urban Patterns and Polities in Malay Trading Cities”, Indonesia, 80 (Oct 2005), p. 43. 46 Jones, The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema, p. 84; Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 149; Cortesão, Suma Oriental, p. 265. 35 Since no map exists of the northern bank, also called the Upé or Upeh district, its actual layout must remain conjecture. Eredia’s map of the city in the early 1600s, the closest to the 1511 date, has few clues to offer due to the differences that a hundred years, an invasion by a foreign ethnic group, and various fires created in the urban landscape of Melaka. However, in Upeh, there was an influential community of Gujeratis, a Coromandel coast Indian community, and a strong Javanese or general Indonesian group led by Utemuraja, who was also the strongman of the entire suburb. 47 Most of the buildings took the indigenous form of wooden stilt architecture, building verandahs and using palm trees as building material. . The only mentioned community of Chinese was thought to be clustered around Bukit China on the south side of the river. When the Chinese of the earlier official Ming voyages traded in Melaka, they were said to have built their own compound which resembled a miniature Chinese city, complete with two layers of stockades, and drum towers at the four gates, which was said to have been further up the northern bank. Giovanni da Empoli recounts a Chinese community at Pulau Cina in 1511, but it is unclear if there was a Chinese community at Bukit China then. 48 Most trading occurred in the marketplace, although in the city built for merchandise, a great deal occurred outside the designated trading area. Warehouses and shop buildings along the river banks had goods stored in underground stone and clay basements. The main marketplace was the bridge, which was said to have been a most elaborate structure built by Mansur Shah or Muzaffar. 49 Ma Huan described it as having more than twenty bridge pavilions, where trading could take place. The bridge market must have remained impressive at the time of the Portuguese attack, for Albuquerque to have been able to occupy it and for the Melakans to have built 47 Brown, Sejarah Melayu, p. 82; Pintado, Asia, p. 159; Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 127. Pintado, Asia, p. 161; Wade, “Melaka”, p. 55, Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 132. 49 Mills, Ma Huan,, p. 109. 48 36 palisades on it. 50 Trade in general – presumably, the smaller items – also took place on nearly every street. Pires writes that many households would obtain permission and set up stalls in front of their houses. Many of the stall holders were women, and they paid a sales tax to the orang kaya in charge of the street. 51 Bertam:Palace and Origins Little enough is known about the urban layout of Melaka, but it is a veritable tome when compared to the blank slate of Bertam, the original settlement by Paramesvara. Alternatively spelt as Bietam, Bretam, or Bretão, no site has been identified, although most believe it to be around Sungei Bertam or Sungei Baru. The closest to a possible description lies in a combination of Portuguese description, and oral history. Pires claimed that the name Bertam itself meant “spacious plain” and describes a “beautiful plain surrounded by mountain ranges”, the size of a large town. Later, Eredia claimed that he found the remains of the royal orchard of Sarvarrallos, with extensive plantations of fruit trees and fragrant flowers, all located at the source of the Sunebaru (Sungei Baru). 52 Colonial historians in the 1920s turned up stories of a Malay king who had built his istana on the crest of the hill, and planted rice-fields and orchards. He was thought to have built kubu, a temporary stockade of earth and wood, and controlled the river approach. 53 The king was later driven out and the palaces occupied by the baba adriang (Mill’s translation: Portuguese). J. V. G. Mills seemed to believe the veracity of the stories, although never going as far as identifying it as Bertam. He points out that oral tradition had been relatively untouched in 50 Albuquerque mentions that he thought a hundred men with barricades would be required to hold the bridge, which should give some indication of its size. Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 102. 51 Cortesão, Suma Oriental, p. 276. 52 Pires, Suma Oriental, p. 233. It is worth noting that only Eredia mentions Sarvarrallos, and considering its resemblance to the legends of the gardens of Paradise common to many religions, its veracity should be questioned. (Mills, Eredia, p. 25.) 53 Charney, Southeast Asian Warfare 1300-1900, p. 88. 37 that region, and that the site of former orchard, now a rubber estate, had durian trees some hundreds of years old. 54 Bertam might have functioned as a more orthogenetic centre of tradition and administration, in contrast to the more heterogenetic, commercial Melaka. This arrangement seems similar to that of Aceh or Banten Lama, where there might be a royal residence upriver and separate from the harbour settlement. 55 Historians have used this and Paramesvara’s Buddhist heritage to speculate that Bertam was probably laid out on Hindu-Buddhist concepts of cosmology, with the settlement as microcosm. 56 However, while Paramesvara may have conducted his court along Hindu-Buddhist lines, it is doubtful that he would have the resources, given his semi-refugee status, to carry out any grand urban plans at Bertam. In all likelihood, Bertam’s layout would have been a small scale version of its equivalent in near-contemporary Banten Lama. While Bertam may not have looked like a ceremonial and administrative centre, it seems to have functioned as one to a limited extent. Like many orthogenetic cities, it was more agricultural than commercial, and would have had a relatively homogenous population and culture, given its inland position. It was also able to function as an administrative centre, being a mere hour’s journey by boat to Melaka, and the king would switch residences between the two, with a senior minister or relative often left at Bertam. It is likely that the choice of residence depended on the king’s interest in trade and the activities of the port city, since Paramesvara was said to have remained at Bertam while his son, Megat Iskandar, stayed at Melaka and developed the port he had founded. Bertam also played the role of an ancestral stronghold, as witnessed by 54 Mills, Eredia, p. 131. Guillot, “Urban Patterns”, p. 45. 56 Paul Wheatley and Kernial Singh Sandhu, “The City in pre-colonial southeast Asia”, Melaka: the transformation of a Malay capital c.1400-1980, (Kuala Lumpur : Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 35. 55 38 Sultan Mahmud’s retreat to the upriver istana after the Portuguese conquest. 57 The settlement probably formed Melaka’s inland link as the original residence of Paramesvara. For the reasons above, it is tempting to describe Bertam as an orthogenetic centre, and attribute to it the typical characteristics and influence of a ceremonial, sacred inland centre. However, it should be remembered that Bertam pre-dated Melaka by at most a decade, and thus its ability to act as a spiritual centre by virtue of superior links to the ancestors was limited. In addition, it is difficult to support the idea of Bertam as a city, but rather, as an upriver settlement with links to Melaka. Bertam cannot be considered as a “full” orthogenetic city in the league of Angkor Thom. Rather, it should be considered as being closer to that end of the spectrum than Melaka, and fulfilling certain functions that the latter lacked. Melaka of the Portuguese The first hundred years of Portuguese rule would see the constant transforming of Melaka’s urban structure, as the city underwent new cultural influences and demographic shifts, as well as new challenges, which included the integration of a new foreign elite, the removal of the previous ethnic ruling group, and their respective attending cultural/religious symbols and institutions. Another factor at play was the increased military threat from rising polities that sought to take Melaka’s place in domination of the spice trade. However, underlying all of these factors and subsequent changes could be said to have been a fundamentally different cosmological concept, and thus a different idea of what the city should be. All of these would gradually affect the Melakan cityscape. By the 1600s, the urban structure could be said to have settled into the form demanded of it by the Portuguese. Eredia’s sketch of Melaka is the primary source of information for the city layout in the 1600s (see Fig. 3). Although his work has been questioned for accuracy, he nevertheless remains 57 Cortesão, Suma Oriental, p. 238 and 246; Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 131. 39 the first to attempt any sort of schematic representation of Melaka. 58 By the 1600s, Melaka was said to have been divided into four main districts, and a total of eight parishes that included 7400 Christians and assorted infidels. The districts were Upeh, the newly bounded area north of the river; Yler or Hilir, the area south of the hill around Ayer Leleh stretching to Bukit China; Sabah, the marshy area along the river directly east of the hill, and finally the district of A Famosa itself. It is interesting to note that Eredia carefully specifies the city of Melaka as comprising these districts, giving the city an internal definition and external differentiation that was not apparent in pre-1511. 59 Fig. 3: Eredia’s Melaka 58 Irwin makes the observation that Eredia’s sketch records materials used for the A Famosa walls that contradicted his own report. (Irwin, “Melaka Fort”, p. 786.) Other sketches are available, but either add little to Eredia’s, or have been left out for space constraints. 59 Mills, Eredia, p. 20. 40 Of the zones, only Upeh and the hill were protected by walls. Upeh was bound by Tranqueira, Portuguese for stockade, on the landward side. Initially a simple wooden palisade, it was later changed to stronger taipa by the time of the 1537 Acehnese attack. 60 It began at a stone bastion built along the sea coast some 700 fathoms (1.2km) from the river mouth, headed eastward before turning southeast towards the Melaka River. Tranqueira was built in the first years of Portuguese rule around the Keling compound, possibly around the time of the 1518 Pahang-Bintan attack. It was thought to have rotted by the the time of the 1525 Bintan attack, and was replaced by its taipa incarnation prior to the Acehnese attack. 61 Tranqueira was said to have been built to protect Upeh from the Celates, which seems puzzling as that would suggest a landward attack from the sea-faring Orang Laut. However, if the prospective invaders landed north of Melaka, and attacked Upeh from the landward side, it would allow them to avoid the firepower of A Famosa, a factor that the Portuguese must have realised. Tranqueira therefore provided protection for Upeh, or rather, deterred invaders where the Portuguese guns could not reach. Other than Upeh, only the hill was encircled by protective walls. Initially a simple wooden taipa palisade surrounding the main fort at the river mouth, orders were given for its replacement with full-fledged fortifications in stone by 1564, when it was felt that the current situation warranted it. The orders from Goa also brought with it artillery and guns; nevertheless the stone walls must have played a great role in the city defence, a factor that did not go unappreciated by other Southeast Asian cities. The walls on the river and sea front were reinforced first, with the east and south later. The latter generally received less maintenance than the all-important seaward front as the Portuguese gradually realised that the heavy marshlands around the east made approaches problematic. 62 60 Manguin, “Of Fortresses and Galleys”, p. 620. Eredia states that Tranqueira was of earth, however, Manguin suspects that it was actually taipa. (Manguin, “Of Fortresses and Galleys”, p. 620.) 62 Ibid., p. 614. 61 41 Other than A Famosa and Tranqueira, there were no other walls built around Melaka. The closest to fortifications on the inland Hilir side were the stockades built on Bukit China and surrounding hills. However, the stockades were more to prevent attacking forces from capturing an advantageous spot, as well as to act as lookout points, as the Portuguese realised that the Dutch guns, if mounted on Bukit China, had sufficient range to fire into the city. 63 Upeh seemed to have been a mixed commercial/residential zone, comprising three main areas – Campon Chelim (Keling compound) around the centre, Campon Cina (Chinese compound) along the river banks, and the Bazaar of the Jaõs (Javanese markets) on the seaward coast. Its boundaries were marked out by Tranqueira on the north/northeastern side, and comprised the entire north section of the city. The Keling compound was thought to have dated from pre-1511 Melaka, and formed the richest non-Portuguese group in the city. As would be typical in a port city, the areas along the coast were the more highly commercialised areas. The indigenous traders that kept Melaka supplied in staples traded on the coastline, while the Chinese compound on the riverfront entertained merchants. 64 Upeh, though part of the inner urban area, seemed to have been comprised of tile-roofed timber houses, with stone godowns for the larger, wealthier residences, interspersed with heavy greenery. The residences along the shoreline were described as being on stilts, and partially on water. 65 Much as before, stone and mortar was not a commonly used building material which may have been due to Portuguese directives. Eredia mentions that this was due to the exigencies of war, which suggests that this measure was put in place for defensive reasons. In the case of Upeh falling to an attack from the north, or an internal uprising, it could be used as a base from which to focus on A Famosa. Stone buildings would provide the attackers with a bastion stronghold. Upeh would have been mostly non-European and was thus regarded with a certain suspicion. That being said, the Portuguese were willing to maintain Tranqueira and to allow 63 Irwin, “Melaka Fort”, p 789. Manguin, “Of Fortresses and Galleys “, p. 618; Mills, Eredia’s, p. 19 65 Manguin, “Of Fortresses and Galleys”, p. 617. 64 42 Upeh residents to seek refuge in A Famosa if needed. Some small measures were also taken to defend Upeh during the Dutch attacks in the form of trenches dug outside Tranqueira. 66 This suggests that Upeh was considered of some importance to the Portuguese, if not completely trusted. The other areas of Portuguese Melaka included Hilir, or Yler, referring to the area south of the fort and hill. The land there was said to have been marsh and fields, suggesting a somewhat more rural feel and pursuits and general poverty than that of the urban district of Upeh. 67 Sabah referred to the rural, poor, marsh district on the south bank further up the river. Neither figured highly in Portuguese concerns. The district of St Paul’s Hill, however, was undoubtedly the centre of Melaka. The fortifications of A Famosa only served to indicate its importance of its contents to the Portuguese. It was the administrative, military, and spiritual centre, at least from the Portuguese point of view, and was also the main Portuguese residential area. In addition to the fort, it contained the main churches, two hospitals, as well as the residences of the governor and bishop. Entry to this protected enceinte was through the four gates of the fort. Passage in and out of this important area was mostly through the Porta da Alfándega gate by the Custom House that led to the bridge, and by the Porta de Santiago gate on the southern side. 68 Upeh and A Famosa were the foremost districts in Melaka and were featured most frequently in accounts and illustrations. Predominantly non-Malay, perhaps tellingly, they were also the only districts that warranted defensive fortifications. Both areas were linked by a stone bridge over the river, which was monitored at all times. The bridge led to the Customs Terrace house, a far cry from the market bridge of pre-1511 Melaka. 69 Correa also mentions that the fort gate that opened towards the bridge was tightly controlled. Access into the fort by this gate was 66 Mills, Eredia’s, p. 19; Irwin, “Melaka Fort”, p. 791. Mills, Eredia, p. 20. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., p. 19. 67 43 up a flight of narrow steps, restricting entry to a single person at a time, under the eyes of the sentry. 70 The Two Melakas: Comparison Portuguese Melaka in the last days before 1640 looked very different from pre-1511 Melaka (See Figure 1.5a and b). The most outstanding feature was that of A Famosa. Significant enough to have become the focus of illustrations, it was the symbol of the new Melaka. Other material changes included Tranqueira and the greater use of stone and brick than was previously the case. Demographic changes included the reduced role of native Melakans, taken here to refer to Malays, in the construction of the urban fabric and presence in the city. There was also a shift in the religious elite, moving from the indigenous Malays to the Portuguese. All this might be said to have influenced and altered the face of Melaka. However, it could also be said that the city structure had not greatly altered from its time under the Sultans, in terms of usage. Upeh was the residential area in Melaka for the nonindigenous population, as it had been prior to 1511. The same residential area conducted light market commerce, displaying the same mixed-usage that had been the case earlier, with the more intense commercial areas still along the river banks and marine coast. The other districts such as Hilir and Sabah remained relatively less urban than Upeh. The hill district itself experienced the greatest material change due to the building of A Famosa, whose stone ramparts and imposing bastions loomed over Upeh in the Melakan skyline. Again, usage does not seem to have altered significantly. The hill was still the residence of the ruling ethnic elite, albeit no longer a group indigenous to the area. The key administrative and religious buildings, such as the Governer’s residence and the church Nossa Senhora da Anunciada simply took over the roles that the previous istana, graves and mosque had fulfilled. As before, the hill contained the main administrative and religious sector of the city. 70 Pintado, Lendas da India, p. 259. 44 Figure 4a: Pre-1511 Melaka Fig. 4b: Post-1511 Melaka 45 The role that the hill played in relation to the city remained similar in the defensive/military sense as well. In the attack of 1511, the Melakans’ defensive strategy had centred on the palisaded hill, with the mosque functioning as the main stronghold for the defenders. The situation remained the same for the Portuguese during the various attacks, with the walls of A Famosa lining the hill district and the fort, built on the same location as the mosque, functioning as the primary stronghold. In the spiritual sphere, the hill remained the centre of Melaka, much as it had pre-1511. Power and religious rule was associated with the hill, and all urban activity was eventually determined by its residents. However, although the hill gained cosmological importance because of its residents, it in turn granted its inhabitants powers other than that of strategic advantage over the lesser ethnic groups in Upeh. Residents on the hill were seen as closer to this spiritual centre, giving them a rank in the cosmos higher than that of the swamp-dwellers of Upeh and Hilir. This perception would hold for both the Melakans and the Portuguese, as the interpretation of urban structure that associates high ground with spiritual superiority is common to many cultures. Even certain areas that seemed to have altered in usage can be considered similar if their function within the urban context is considered. A key difference would appear to be the replacement of the mosque with the fort, as can be seen in the Fig. 4b. In pre-1511 Melaka, the mosque stood as the main spiritual guardian to the city’s inhabitants, and its placement at the river mouth allowed it to overlook the city. The original fort of A Famosa was built over the mosque, and in turn functioned as a guard to the river mouth and to the district of Upeh. Although the fort may be thought to have provided military protection as opposed to the mosque’s spiritual protection, it should be noted that the latter’s use as a defensive bastion in the 1511 attacks suggested that it had much in common with the fort. Other similarities included their function as containers of power, both sacral and military that the ruling elite could draw on. The great mosque of Melaka represented the link to God, and the universal Muslim umma. The sultan’s visits to the mosque enhanced his secular power by 46 joining it with the sacral power of the mosque, which in itself derived its legitimacy by essentially being a conduit to Mecca. It also theoretically linked Melaka with the Muslim polities in general, and Melaka was in theory able to call upon their support in troubled times to defend a fellow brother of the faith. 71 The fort, as the stronghold of the Portuguese, was the main source of their military superiority. It was also a material symbol and reminder of the connection with the other forts that took root in other conquered territories, and representative of the Portuguese empire. In short, it too was a conduit of power, bearing with the promise, although probably not the actuality, of the firepower of the entire Portuguese empire. In addition, when considering that the indigenous association of military power with spiritual power, A Famosa would also have functioned as a container of sacral power from the point of view of the non-Europeans. To a large extent, the similarities that have been observed can be attributed to the demands of topography. Port cities tend to evolve to certain similar forms regardless of the civilisation that created them, due to the requirements of the environment and commerce. Even with a major demographic change, the overall structure of the city tends to remain, especially when the changes are considered in terms of their function and usage to the city rather than their form. Here can be seen an example of the city remaining largely unchanged despite the construction of walls, due to similar factors at work. However, there were changes that occurred in Melaka that affected the way the city functioned, or reflected a shift in the concept of the city and its role. One interesting difference was the reduction of the bridge’s role and importance to Melaka. The bridge under the sultans had been host to as many as 20 market pavilions or stalls trading in a wide variety of goods. 72 Considered the main market in Melaka, and it was large enough that palisades were erected during the 1511 attack. However, under the Portuguese, the 71 It is doubtful that much help would have been sent, although the situation changed slightly by the rise of the Ottoman empire. Geoffrey Parker, “The artillery fortress as an engine of European overseas expansion, 1480-1750” in City Walls: the Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective, ed. James D. Tracy. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2000), p. 407. 72 Mills, Ma Huan, p. 109. 47 market bridge had been replaced by simpler one of stone and mortar which led to the Customs House Terrace on the south bank. It also was guarded at all times. Here, it can be seen that the bridge, previously an important commercial area in its own right, had been reduced to a mere passage. It was no longer a location or an urban nodal point that attracted people to it; the bridge now merely linked two areas. The loss of the market on the bridge was significant beyond the loss of a commercial space, as it was also the loss of an important, interactive neutral zone. Markets nearly universally act as safe areas, where different ethnic or religious groups interact, usually for purposes of commerce, but occasionally for more social reasons. Due to the need for a safe zone in which to conduct these activities, markets were usually to be found in the boundary areas between different zones. In the case of pre-1511 Melaka, the market bridge linked the north bank with the merchants to the south bank with the ruling elite. It allowed both sides to connect and interact, unifying the two halves of pre-1511 Melaka. Under Portuguese rule, this zone did not exist. A Famosa was cut off from Upeh by more than walls, but by the removal of a significant zone of interaction. Access to the bridge and into the Portuguese dominated hill area was tightly controlled. The market bridge that had been the symbol of the vibrant, trade orientated Melaka now had more in common with a castle drawbridge. The other major change was that of the addition of the defensive walls of A Famosa and Tranqueira. A Famosa’s walls probably followed the lines of the old palisade wall of the sultans, continuing to define and enhance the ruling elite within, albeit in more forceful terms than before. However, the Tranqueira wall’s addition was different in that it was a completely new element in the city. Prior to this, the Upeh area had no boundary wall, and the individual compounds spread out, letting the urban meld seamlessly with the rural. However, Tranqueira reined in Upeh, and clearly divided the rural from the urban. Melaka no longer flowed seamlessly into the forest. Tranqueira also gave an indication of Upeh’s status. The Portuguese had brought Upeh into the walled area of Melaka, unlike Sabah and Hilir. By walling Upeh, the Portuguese 48 indicated that they were willing to defend it. Upeh and A Famosa were now distinct from the rest of the settlement. In comparison, pre-1511 Melaka had simply two broad districts; the sacred enceinte of the hill and everywhere else. Tranqueira had inserted layers of internal urban hierarchy into Melaka. Tellingly, Upeh was the residence of the non-indigenous merchants, such as the Chinese that the Portuguese and later the Dutch would rely on for support and intermediaries with the indigenous ethnic group that had earlier ruled Melaka. However, the city walls that came up were also reflective of a far greater change in Melaka than in the internal urban hierarchy and structure. As mentioned, Tranqueira helped to protect against inland attacks. Although the threat from the interior lessened and the Portuguese turned their attention towards the seaward threat, the distrust of the inland remained. Portuguese Melaka was a city that stood alone, without the link to the upland ancestral stronghold of Bertam that pre-1511 Melaka had enjoyed. Port cities in insular Southeast Asia, while orientated towards trade, often looked towards the interior for the source of spiritual power that legitimised them. The importance of this link would wax and wane with the fortunes of the port city, but the link and the relationship between the two cities remained. In short, the heterogenetic port cities often existed in binary with the upland, or upriver, orthogentic cities. They were bound to the land, and the peoples of the city often acknowledged some sort of relationship with those of the inland. By contrast, Portuguese Melaka had no such link, and could see no real benefit in dealing with the interior. The point of conquest had been the sea trade, and the protection of Portuguese ships. The inland, and the possible connotations of sacred power that the pre-1511 rulers had considered important, were simply not relevant to the new masters of Melaka. Overall, the key difference between the two Melakas lay in the walls, both metaphorical and physical. The removal of the market bridge, the erection of Tranqueira, the building of A Famosa all served to highlight, emphasise and reinforce divisions between the different groups in Melaka. While it has been observed that there had been sharp divisions in Melakan society pre- 49 1511, such as the huge income gap between the ruling elite and the common people, 73 and internal tensions at court between the Melakans and the Orang Laut, 74 these gaps had never before been so strongly reinforced in the urban fabric. Melaka also stood apart from other port cities in the region, and from the inland world. Towns devoted to commerce – it is frequently observed - seldom invest in walls, and often seek to break them down. 75 These towns invited trade by demolishing barriers, keeping as open as possible, and grew organically. However, the walled town of Melaka was a settlement that took a guarded attitude towards trade, and felt the need to draw a line between the townspeople and the greater world. 76 Portuguese Melaka, unlike the city that came before, was a fortress before it was a port, a stronghold before a country. It was a city that stood alone. In comparing the two Melakas, it can be seen that some changes did occur – insertion of a new layer of internal hierarchy, and the shift in the external urban hierarchy. However, the initial hypothesis seems at least partially supported - that the walls did not fundamentally change the city, but instead reinforced existing divisions. Melaka at War: Defence and the port cities Overall, it seems that pre-1511 Melaka never saw the need to invest in any form of permanent defensive structure, despite its extensive ability to do so. Circumstances would have made it advisable to do so. Melaka was under threat at most times by both Java and Siam and China’s protection was nominal. By 1481, this protection was non-existent, of which Melaka was fully aware. Melaka had every expectation of being its own defender, making defensive investments more worthwhile. 73 Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 95. Jones, Varthema, p. 84. 75 Tracy, City Walls, p. 4. 76 Lewis Mumford, The City in History, (London: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 108. 74 50 However, the question arises as to whether Melaka had the inclination to do so. There is the often raised point about the nature of island warfare, which advocated strategic withdrawals rather than fights to the finish. It seems as though the Melakan Sultan subscribed to this, in the expectation that the Portuguese would simply sail away after pillaging the city, a theory supported by Portuguese accounts and the still substantial strength he wielded even after the fall. 77 Although that expectation seems odd in light of the fact that Melaka was aware of Goa’s occupation by Portuguese, it is possible that custom ruled in this instance. Generally, investment in defensive fortifications would not have seemed worthwhile either to most city states. It is also possible that Melaka never truly anticipated having to defend itself on land as well. The Sejarah Melayu alone mentions four instances of attacks, apart from the Portuguese invasion of 1511. All attacks were met far out at sea. Melaka’s strong relationship, rooted in custom with the Orang Selat or Orang Laut, further added to its naval power. 78 When threatened, the laksamana usually led the Melakan fleet, often manned by Orang Laut, and engaged the enemy far away from the city. The combination of strong naval power and the preference for naval engagements in the island world, ensured that permanent fortifications or even temporary ones at the city itself, would remain a option of last resort. Melaka’s first line of defense, and in fact its major line of defense, lay at sea. If Melaka’s chosen defensive strategy was that of pre-emptive naval engagement, then the absence of the Melakan fleet in that fateful 1511 Portuguese attack becomes noticeable. Albuquerque’s fleet drew anchor at Pulau Besar, and was never attacked directly. Sources in the Sejarah Melayu and local interviews suggested that court intrigues may have resulted in the laksamana refusing to lead the Melakan fleet. It is also possible that given the comparative firepower of the Portuguese forces, the decision may have been made to keep the ships out 77 78 Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 131. Andaya and Andaya, Malaysia, p. 44. 51 harm’s way. 79 It is also possible that the Sultan had realised his relative weakness on the waters instead wanted to force the Portuguese to engage on land where the native Melakans undoubtedly had the advantage of numbers. The fall of Melaka was thus due to a combination of factors: court intrigue that weakened its naval defense, the lack of land defenses to bolster infantry forces, the comparative strength of the Portuguese naval power necessitating a land battle, and finally and perhaps most decisively, the misunderstanding of Portuguese intentions that resulted in a miscalculated use of the customary strategic withdrawal. The combination of the last three had never before been experienced in the island world. The city of Melaka was in a war that it had never anticipated and thus had never prepared for – the beginnings of siege warfare based on the conquest of strongholds. Melaka of the Portuguese, however, faced an altogether different situation. Unlike pre1511 Melaka that enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with Bertam and inland villages, Portuguese Melaka had to deal with attacks from the interior. The Portuguese also faced the prospect of an uprising from within the new city confines, as was shown by the Javanese rebellion from Upeh in 1512. 80 Portuguese Melaka thus had to defend itself from attacks by land and by sea. The outsider status of the Portuguese also resulted in their fundamentally different intentions in Southeast Asia. Melaka was to become a stronghold for the Portuguese, the springboard for their inroad into Southeast Asian trade, the base for their fleet, and the protector of their merchant ships. For the Portuguese, Melaka represented a vital crack from which they would penetrate Southeast Asia. Unlike the previous rulers of Melaka, who were prepared to shift location when needed, the physical land of the city had become all important. The Portuguese needed the land, and were thus prepared to defend it to a higher degree. 79 Leonard Y. Andaya, The Kingdom of Johor, 1641-1728, (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford university press, 1975), p. 21; Pintado, Lendas da India, p. 65. 80 Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 139; Pintado, Asia, p. 187. 52 The relative weakness of the Portuguese on land was also a factor in their decision for investment in static defence. The relative scarcity of manpower had always been a factor in island Southeast Asia, and it continued to be a problem for the Europeans, only slightly alleviated by Asian and African mercenaries. Since the Portuguese, unlike the indigenous forces, needed to hold its conquest rather than pillage and withdraw, reinforcement was needed. The lack of numbers compared to indigenous forces made it only logical for the Portuguese to invest in defensive fortifications to shore up what little manpower they did have. The effectiveness of this solution can be seen in the later Acehnese attacks, when an undermanned A Famosa still fended off an overwhelming attacking force. 81 All this showed a movement towards siege warfare and the perception of the city as stronghold, further supporting the hypothesis that changed war conditions had inspired the walls. Overall, the Portuguese takeover resulted in Melaka, the city made for merchandise, being transformed into a city prepared for war. The reasons behind it were simple – that of need, a need for greater fortifications under Portuguese rule, one that the Melakan sultans had never felt. The Portuguese status as outsiders was reflected in these fortifications, which made Melaka a predator, alien city in the island trade world of Southeast Asia. Pre-1511 Melaka, the golden city that figured in the legends of two continents, never had the strong city walls that were to figure in later island port cities. The reasons were simple; the lack of the expectation that they would ever be put in use. Whether the construction of those walls would have foiled a Portuguese invasion and thus changed the course of history in Southeast Asia, remains speculative. However, Melaka’s downfall saw the beginning of direct European influence in Southeast Asia, and this was reflected in the urban structure as the Portuguese sought to alter Melaka to fit their own needs and requirements of a city. The geography remained unchanged as did the basic functions and essential city form, but the real changes were deeper. The walls that came up in Melaka were reflective of more than defensive imperative; they were 81 Manguin, “Of Fortresses and Galleys”, p. 623. 53 the product of a colonial mindset that saw the city in very different terms than the indigenous rulers before them. Other port cities in Southeast Asia, untouched but not unaffected by these changes, would start to erect their own walls against the Europeans and against each other. Melaka was but the harbinger of a world very different from what a refugee prince could ever have imagined in the year 1400. This new world would see the rise of a young Makassar to the east. This port-city on the south-western coast of Sulawesi was to become a key port in the island world, and a study of its urban form and structure will reveal if the changes that Melaka experienced to influence it in any way. This successor to Melaka, at the forefront of international Southeast Asian trade, would reflect the different currents of this post 1511 world in its urban form. 54 Chapter 3: Makassar – Golden Cock of the East After the fall of Melaka in 1511, many city-states in insular Southeast Asia fought to take its place as the premier trading entrepot of the island world. While polities in the western archipelago such as Aceh and Banten could claim a dominant role, the undisputed dominant polity of eastern Indonesia was Makassar. For nearly two hundred years, this city on the doorstep of the Spice Islands was to determine trade routes and policy for the Sulawesi Sea. Famous for its constellation of brick fortifications that stretched out along the South Sulawesi coastline, it fell to the Dutch in 1669. The term Makassar has been used variously to refer to the polity, the city, the territory controlled in South Sulawesi, as well as the ethnic Makassarese group. 1 Makassar city, however, generally refers to the urban formation that sprung up around the mouth of the Jeknekbereng River. Formerly the port belonging to Garassik, it was conquered by Talloq and Gowa in the 1530s. It then became the capital city of the Gowa-Talloq empire, and soon outstripped in importance the original Gowa base (Kale Gowa) further up the river. This was the city that formed the image of Makassar in the eyes of the traders and its rulers, and thus came to assume the identity of Makassar the polity. For that reason, Reid only chooses to refer to the GowaTalloq polity as Makassar after their conquest of the Garassik port. 2 1 When referring to the polity, the term Makassar indicates the joint kingdom created by Talloq and Gowa in the 1530s. Some historians prefer to refer to the joint kingdom as Gowa-Talloq, in order to acknowledge the duumvirate formed by the two equal sultanates, as well as to distinguish the city from the polity. Makassarese scribes and Dutch records of that time preferred to use Gowa to indicate the empire, a naming convention followed by Leonard Andaya and other modern historians. Makassar is also the name used by merchants and other polities to refer to the emporium with which they traded. The Sejarah Melayu makes reference to Mengkaser, while Tomés Pires and various Portuguese writers refer to a group of islands called Maçacar. Anthony Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 17 (1983): 128-9. 2 Ibid., p. 135. Makassar: Historiographical overview and sources The history of Makassar, both the polity and the region that comprised the kingdom, is tied to the rise and fall of the kingdom of Gowa due to the historical sources available. Indigenous sources mainly comprise unusually accurate chronicles (patturioloang), which focus on court life, 3 while external sources regarding the region tend to focus on Gowa as the major trading point in Sulawesi. The focus of the sources available, as well as the genuine importance that Gowa assumed in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, ensured that historical narratives tend to be framed around the rise and fall of Gowa. 4 External sources on Makassar usually begin with Portuguese accounts from the early 1600s, when the Dutch made it increasingly difficult to trade for spice in the Malukus, sending other foreign traders into a port still open to them. The Dutch interests in Gowa, which culminated in a 1660 invasion, sparked in a rise of studies conducted by the VOC, including detailed maps of the city and its environs. Southeast Asian sources that mention Makassar do not seem to deal greatly with the city environs, although the fourteenth-century Javanese poem Nagarakertagama makes reference to Makassar’s early existence, naming it as one of the places known to Javanese traders. 5 The archaeological record in Makassar is fairly intact and indeed, rich for a coastal Southeast Asian site. Although most of the original buildings and fortifications were destroyed by the Dutch, the bulk of the fortification foundations are still in place. 6 However, with regards to archaeological records, several problems have been encountered. The first was obvious; the current city of Makassar has built over and obscured part of the original site, namely the area 3 J. Noorduyn, “Some Aspects of Macassar-Buginese Historiography”, in Historians of Southeast Asia, ed. D. G. E. Hall, (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 35. 4 William Cummings, Making Blood White, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), p.21, 25. 5 Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, 139; Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 23. 6 C.C. Macknight, “The Early History of South Sulawesi” (working paper 81), (Victoria: Monash University, 1993), p. 2. 56 between Talloq and the mouth of the Jeknekbereng river. 7 The second was that the beach ridges that form the coastline are of relatively recent formation, and have been built up over the centuries by deposited silt. In addition, the river itself was thought to have changed course, partially due to natural reasons, as well as a river-diverting project carried out in the seventeenth century. Lastly, some of the fortifications had had their bricks “recycled” by local inhabitants for the use of construction in wells and tombs. 8 While the reconstruction of pre-sixteenth century Gowa is difficult, the sources after that are more than sufficient for the reconstruction and analysis of the urban structure, though still sparse before the Islamic period. There is the usual problem of the absent subaltern indigenous perspective, however, there is enough from the external sources for the formation of a working impression. History of Makassar: The Rise and Fall of Gowa Makassar, the trading polity in South Sulawesi that rose to prominence in the sixteenth century after the fall of Melaka to the Portuguese, began with the formation of Gowa. Initially an inland agrarian state north of the Jeknekberang River, Gowa gradually extended its influence towards the sea by conquering weaker coastal trading states. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Gowa and its arch-rival Boné, the Bugis polity on the eastern coast of South Sulawesi, were the dominant regional powers on land and sea. In the 1530s, the coastal state of Talloq joined with Gowa to conquer the coastal state of Garassik, at the mouth of the Jeknekberang River, the site of the trading polity of Makassar. 9 The conquest of Garassik changed the course of history in Sulawesi, as Gowa now had access to an excellent harbor that could accommodate the vessels of ocean traders. During the reign of Tunipalangga (r. 1548-66) foreign ideas were introduced to Makassar, including Melakan trade 7 Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 187. Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 142 and 148. 9 Ibid., p. 135. 8 57 concepts and fortifications. From this time onwards, the Gowa government and society experienced major restructuring in the effort to transform Makassar into the premier port of South Sulawesi. 10 As Makassar grew in influence, various European trading companies and representatives of island trading communities arrived and took root. The Portuguese arrived after the 1641 fall of Melaka, seeking out a port that still remained opened in the time of increasing Dutch monopoly. 11 State conversion to Islam in 1608 was also to have consequences for Sulawesi as a whole. Introduced under Karaeng Matoaya, the adoption of Islam gave Gowa the spiritual endorsement for a war of conversion on neighbouring lesser states, resulting in its complete domination of the west coast of South Sulwaesi. However, the expansion of Gowa also made it a target, resulting in the need for greater defenses. Its domination of South Sulawesi resulted in Gowa gaining complete control over the external affairs of South Sulawesi polities. This placed it in the forefront of European-Sulawesi interactions and eventually in direct conflict with the Dutch. 12 Aware of the very real nature of the threat, Karaeng Matoaya embarked on a series of massive fortification efforts in 1615, leading an English observer to remark that all of the land seemed to be making bricks in expectation of attack. 13 The next few decades would see a series of skirmishes between the Dutch and Makassar, including an attempted blockade from 1634-36. 14 In 1660, Makassar experienced its first direct attack, and Sultan Hasanuddin opted for a quick peace treaty with the Dutch, due to a Bugis 10 L.Y. Andaya, The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A History of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century, (The Hague:Nijhoff, 1981), p. 28-29. 11 Heather Sutherland, “The Makassar Malays: Adaptation and Identity, c. 1660-1790”, in Contesting Malayness, ed. by Timothy P. Barnard (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004), p. 79; Anthony Reid, “A Great Seventeenth Century Indonesian Family: Matoaya and Pattingalloang of Makassar” Masyarakat Indonesia, 1, (1981):10; Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 139 12 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 33 and p. 38; Cummings, Making Blood White, p. 34. 13 For a complete timeline of construction and historical events, see appendix 5. David Bulbeck, “Construction history and significance of the Makassar fortifications”, Living through Histories, ed. Kathryn Robinson and Mukhil Paeni, (Canberra: University Printing Service, 1998), p. 79-80. 14 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 80. 58 insurgency. 15 The treaty’s terms were not upheld, and the Makassarese continued to fortify the city and environs. Relations continued to worsen, and eventually Dutch-Bugis forces, led by VOC admiral Cornelis Speelman and dispossessed Bugis prince Arung Palakka, attacked from the southern end of Sulawesi. They fought their way north to the walls of the main citadel Somba Opu, aided by groups formerly loyal to Gowa, but who sensed an imminent shift in the political hierarchy of Sulawesi. 16 Sultan Hasanuddin eventually agreed to a cessation of hostilities, and signed the landmark 1667 Bungaya treaty. However, in April of 1668, hostilities recommenced and Dutch ships shelled the citadel while Arung Palakka led Bugis forces against Kampong Melayu that lay between Ujung Padang (now Fort Rotterdam) and Somba Opu. The Makassarese defended from the stone godowns of the Chinese, but starvation and disease soon began to take its toll on the defenders. Nevertheless, Somba Opu remained standing. With the presence of the Sultan Hasanuddin, the citadel achieved a spiritual significance that served as a focal point for scattered Makassarese forces in Sulawesi. The Dutch realized this, and were determined to destroy Somba Opu. 17 Eventually on 14 June 1669, Dutch-Bugis forces dug a tunnel under the heavy walls of the citadel, and packed it with gunpowder. The resultant explosion breached the walls, and the enemy forces entered from the north. The defenders used the palace and mosques as defensive positions within the citadel, but eventually fled. 18 Somba Opu, the heart of Makassarese pride and guardian of Gowa’s prized sea trade, had fallen. The history of Gowa continues beyond Somba Opu, as the Sultan and his descendants fled to their upriver stronghold of Kale Gowa, ancestral home of the polity of Gowa. However, their ability to affect events outside Sulawesi was gone, and their political influence within was 15 C. R. Boxer, Francisco Vieira de Figueiredo: A Portuguese merchant-adventurer in South East Asia, (Gravenhage: Marinus Nijhoff, 1967), p. 29. 16 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 93. 17 Ibid., p. 118-130. 18 Ibid., p. 133. 59 minimal, as they were no longer able to perform the duties of overlordship such as the protection of vassal states. From the point of view of the chronicle writers, both Makassarese and the Bugis, Makassar fell with Somba Opu. 19 The new era of Sulawesi was to be of the VOC and the Bugis. Makassar: City and polity The city known as Makassar was formed when the Gowa-Talloq forces conquered the Garassik area at the mouth of the Jeknekbereng river. Although the urban forms that combined to constitute Makassar stretched from Talloq in the north to Pattukangang in the south, and included Kale Gowa, the old capital of Gowa to the east along the Jeknekbereng river, it is the Garassik area that attracts attention. (See Fig. 5) It was this area, around the fortress of Somba Opu that was the heart of Makassar. The identity of Makassar city, or the image that would signify Makassar, was also bound up in this area around the river mouth. External sources described Makassar as the port, and identified it accordingly, with Speelman considering the surrounding areas mere villages. 20 It was also the fall of the Somba Opu citadel that was considered the end of Makassar the city and the polity. The various Chronicles reflected this belief, indicating that the fall of Somba Opu signaled the ending of the Makassarese era, and even of Gowa. 21 The settlement around Somba Opu was thus considered to be the city of Makassar, both in the minds of foreign traders and in the minds of the Makassarese. Larger than most of the Gowa settlements, it certainly ranked over others in the settlement hierarchy. While it must be acknowledged that no city ever truly exists in isolation, any urban study of Makassar will naturally be focused on this citadel. 19 Ibid., p. 137. Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 148. 21 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 137. 20 60 Fig. 5: Makassar’s Fortifications at 1667. Copyright@ David Bulbeck “Construction history and significance of the Makassar fortifications”, p. 69 Kale Gowa and Somba Opu: Sacral Centre, Trading Port The relationship between Makassar’s identity and its port was reflective of the polity’s shift in its focus and primary economic activity. Gowa was initially a primarily agrarian state, 61 with its capital at Benteng (fortress) Kale Gowa. When Tumapaqrisiq Kallona opened the possibility of international trade after conquering Garassik, he built the first Somba Opu. Over the years, the capital would shift to Somba Opu when trade rose in importance, returning to Kale Gowa only when Gowa-Talloq was ruled by a regent from Talloq (Karaeng Matoaya). This resulted in the weaker ruler being sent to the location that may have been more secure than Somba Opu, but possibly also possessing relatively lesser status. Benteng Kale Gowa was kept as a sacral centre, with the ruler returning only to conduct ceremonies. When the Gowa rulers retreated here after Somba Opu had fallen, Kale Gowa became a capital once again. 22 Kale Gowa and Somba Opu, would seem to have formed a symbiotic urban relationship similar though not identifical to the one already discussed with regards to Bertam and Melaka. Kale Gowa, as the original agrarian settlement of Gowa, provided for the basic military and economic needs that allowed Gowa to conquer weaker coastal states which nonetheless possessed trade contacts and advanced technology. 23 Somba Opu was Gowa’s contact and face to the world, while Kale Gowa, containing the graves of fourteenth century rulers, functioned as the sacral centre to the Makassar empire. Kale Gowa was also the physical stronghold of Gowa, and acted as a place of refuge. 24 The difference between Kale Gowa and Somba Opu was also reflected in their respective fortifications. Benteng (fortress) Kale Gowa was significantly larger than Somba Opu, possibly due to the difference in roles played – Benteng Kale Gowa was a royal palace compound, built to impress with its size. Somba Opu, although also a royal palace compound, was on the coastline, a location of greater defense importance and had to be relatively compact for defense. 25 Benteng Kale Gowa’s size, which would have enhanced the sacral power of the king residing within those walls, would thus resulted a more orthogenetic slant to the upriver settlement. 22 Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 141; Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 236. Bronson, “Exchange”, p. 48; Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 120. 24 Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 219; C. Skinner, Sja’ir Perang Menkasar, (Nijhoff: S-Gravenhage, 1963), p. 215. 25 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 77. 23 62 Kale Gowa or the old Gowa state, however, while shading towards orthogenetic in comparison to the port, was not in the same category as the highly agricultural ceremonial cities. Although Gowa possessed relatively fertile lands, agriculture did not play a great role and Gowa relied on its later conquest of Maros, Takalar and Bantaeng for the vital rice that was the main export of the port. Neither was Kale Gowa a heterogenetic maritime city, lacking the intense trade of the market-driven heterogenetic city, and possessing a racially homogeneous population. 26 It is also telling that the ruler’s residence was moved to the coastal Somba Opu when Makassar’s role as a trading polity grew. Kale Gowa’s exact designation as orthogenetic or heterogenetic, however, is a highly subjective classification. As has been pointed out in other studies, very few cities in the world were able to completely satisfy all the requirements of either category. The labels have been used to give an impression of the city’s characteristics and functions, and its differences with Somba Opu, acknowledging that it lay closer to the pure orthogenetic settlement than the other. The area around Somba Opu, and the urban formations along the coast are therefore the areas that should be studied in any analysis of coastal cities in insular Southeast Asia. Somba Opu fulfils the requirements to be considered a city, as it performed several functions, and was at least a second tier settlement. Kale Gowa should be regarded as a separate formation, with separate functions from Somba Opu and likewise different forms. That being said, no city is truly a discrete unit with a distinct urban/rural binary, especially a trading city, a point put forcefully across by Heather Sutherland. 27 Although this study is intended to focus on the general urban structure with particular emphasis on walls and other methods of perimeter demarcations, the greater urban or suburban context will be considered wherever possible. 26 Redfield and Singer, “Cultural Role of Cities”, p. 58. Heather Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium and company town”, Brides of the Sea, ed. Frank Boeze, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), p.98. 27 63 Somba Opu: The City in 1638 28 Makassar was known as such only to non-Makassarese, who used the term to refer to the entrepot around Somba Opu rather than Kale Gowa. For the Makassarese scribes, the same area was known as Somba Opu. The fort that protected the palace and formed the inner citadel was also referred to as Somba Opu, somba being the title given to the ruler of Gowa who ranked above the karaeng. 29 The settlement probably first sprung up around the river mouth of the Jeknekberang, spreading out from the central citadel along the beach ridges in the 1600s. The area was elevated and relatively flat, with sandy ground that allows for wells to be dug easily. Archaeological evidence suggests that the site chosen by Tumapaqrisiq for the fort was originally a port in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, though little is known about it. 30 The city had a linear layout, which followed the coastline and river as was typical for a maritime city that depended on the water rather than roads for transportation. (See Fig. 6) The foreigners’ quarters lay to the north of the Jeknekbereng, with the Makassarese community to the south, the two separated by the river and the fortress. There was a market to the south and the north, servicing their respective communities. 31 The undeniable centre and focus of the city, however, was the fortress of Somba Opu, which lay on an island in the river delta, with the river separating it from the two communities on either side. In a city built of mostly wooden houses, the citadel of brick stood out sufficiently for foreigners to remark upon it. 32 The coastal wall which came up around 1634, although not depicted in the 1638 sketch, stretched along the shoreline on either side of the fortress. 28 The 1638 Dutch sketch of Makassar is the last known accurate map of Somba Opu, as it was destroyed by the invading Dutch in 1669. However, 1638 can also be taken to give an impression of a successful Makassar in its heyday. 29 Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 398; Cummings, Making Blood White, p. 29. 30 Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 119; Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 371. 31 Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 141. 32 John Jourdain, The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608-1617, ed. William Foster. (Hakluyt Society: Cambridge, 1905), p. 295. 64 The destruction of Somba Opu in 1669, the inevitable erosion of time and the flooding of the river has made the reconstruction of the citadel difficult. The 1638 Dutch sketch suggested that it was orthogonal; however the archaeological record indicates that it was actually somewhat irregularly shaped (see Fig. 7). 33 Bulbeck suggests that the walls may have actually followed the internal streets within Somba Opu, responding to various significant structures or spiritual nodes. The southwest bastion is the only one preserved, due to a tomb it contained. 34 The fort was renovated and rebuilt many times throughout the years of Makassarese dominance. Its first incarnation was as an earthern fort, built by Tunipaqrisiq Kallonna. His successor Tunipalangga began to buttress Somba Opu with brick walls around 1550 when trade became important, and did the same at Benteng Kale Gowa and Benteng Anak Gowa. The brick walls may have been built with Portuguese advisors, as Tunipalangga often invited craftsmen to Makassar. 35 Only the western wall facing the sea was retained in the later rebuilding of the fortress. Built of a double layer of bricks with packed earth in between to form a wall around 3.5 metres thick, an additional brick layer later reinforced it on the inside. The method of building a double layer of brick with interstitial earth seems to have represented the second stage of Makassarese brick wall development. Earlier walls incorporating brick, such as used in Benteng Anak Gowa, used a single spine of brick with earth tightly packed around it. The new method had the added advantage of being physically impressive and also prevented attackers from carving footholds to scale an earth wall. 36 33 The 1638 illustration is discussed in appendix 5. Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 71; Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”, p. 149. 35 Cummings, Making Blood White, p. 27; Reid, “Matoaya and Pattingalloang”, p. 12. 36 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 74-76. 34 65 66 Fig 6: Overview of Somba Opu (Adapted from 1638 sketch from the Secret Atlas of the VOC. Taken from Wieder, F. C., Monumenta cartographica, vol. 1, ed. F.C. Wieder, The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1925-1933) Fig 7: Archaeological form of Benteng Somba Opu laid over the Dutch Sketch 1638. Copyright @ David Bulbeck, “Construction history and significance of the Makassar fortifications”, p. 71. Somba Opu underwent another round of improvements under Sultan Alauddin and Karaeng Matoaya around 1620, with the construction of the main gate on the southwestern corner 67 near the sea using masonry facing. 37 The last and most dramatic round of transformations took place in 1630s, probably in response to the increasingly aggressive Dutch. The walls, formerly made of brick layers with interstitial earth, were replaced by solid brick walls of around 3-4 metres thickness. Only the western wall was left intact, possibly as a safety measure as it remained the main seaward defense fortification, but was reinforced with a inner wall of brick. By this time, the Makassarese engineers’ understanding of brickworks had considerably improved, and the much smaller bricks that were produced now allowed for greater versatility in building. The new walls featured niches and complex apertures, which allowed for the mounting of canons and other weapons. 38 The 1638 illustration shows that the tops of the walls had battlements, with crenellations to allow cannons to be fired upon attacking forces. 39 European eyewitnesses in 1635 mentioned that Makassar possessed at least 20 heavy guns donated by friendly Europeans, and the artillerymen were commanded by an English convert to Islam. 40 However, the finer details of the walls, such as the finishings on the merlons, are possibly an improvement on the original by the artist. That said, Somba Opu’s final renovation represented Makassarese brick construction at its peak. 41 The citadel of Somba Opu that faced the Dutch in 1660 was a formidable, impressive monument that jutted out above the rolling plains and coastline of western Sulawesi. It sheltered an area of 16-20 hectares, and according to Dutch sources, capable of providing refuge for 40,000 men. 42 When the Dutch-Bugis forces besieged Somba Opu, it took ten days to break into it, a feat only made possible by the already weakened state of its inhabitants, and the European access to 37 Benteng Talloq is the only fort to have had masonry walls. Somba Opu only used stone for the main gate. Bulbeck, “Construction history ”, p. 80 and 97. 38 Ibid., p. 81. 39 Skinner, Sja’ir Perang Menkasar, p. 215. 40 Parker, “The artillery fortress”, p. 411. 41 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 96. 42 Ibid., p. 81. 68 large stores of gunpowder. In the final days of 1669, it sheltered the entire Makassarese and Malay population. Within Somba Opu Fig. 8: Somba Opu, 1638 (Adapted from 1638 sketch from the Secret Atlas of the VOC. Taken from F. C. Wieder, Monumenta cartographica, vol. 1 Somba Opu has been described as both a royal palace and a citadel, fulfilling its role as the privileged enclave and focal point of military power, and in the process becoming the focal point of Makassar city. 43 While in itself a source and symbol of strength, its importance in the 43 The distinction between Makassar city, Makassar the polity and Gowa is important here, as Kale Gowa, as ancestral stronghold, might have varying spiritual importance for all three. 69 spiritual and physical sphere had been derived primarily because of the inhabitants of the protected enclave (See Fig. 8). Many of the houses were of wood on stilts, while some such as the warehouses and those of the more important nobles, may have been made of brick. 44 The important buildings were clustered to the southwest corner, and included the king’s palace, the royal warehouses and the mosque. The palace, known as the Maccinik Daggang (“Watch the trade”) palace was directly facing the main gate of Somba Opu. Built in 1631 under Sultan Alauddin, it was rebuilt in 1650 and given the new name of Maccinik Sombalak (“Sighting of the Sails.”). 45 The change in the palace name, suggests a shift in focus and purpose for the citadel as a whole, from that of a trade orientated installation to one more concerned with defense. This speculation would seem to be borne out by the traces of concentric brick walls centering on the new palace, which were not reflected in the 1638 sketch. 46 To the eye, the main spiritual focus of Somba Opu, other than the temporal-spiritual one in the form of the royal palace, would have been the royal mosque. However, there are no less than six spiritually important locations within the walls: the mosque; two pre-Islamic cemeteries; two non-royal early Islamic cemeteries, all mostly along the jagged northern wall; and the saukang (“spirit of the fort’), sometimes symbolized in an object, at the southwest bastion. David Bulbeck makes the observation that Somba Opu and the other forts seem to favour locating the corners of the perimeter wall at these pre-Islamic spiritual foci. 47 It is possible that the corners, vulnerable points in a fortress, were located here to take advantage of the perceived spiritual power. The royal residence and other buildings were destroyed in 1669 following the Dutch invasion. During the last ten days of besiegement, the palace functioned as defensive bastion for 44 Jourdain, John Jourdain, p. 295. Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 80; Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 369. 46 Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 369. 47 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 99. 45 70 the defenders, as did the mosque, the other brick building in Somba Opu. 48 The remaining heir to the sultanate fled upriver to Benteng Kale Gowa, to the ancestral stronghold of the Gowa polity. Somba Opu and the City All of these elements – defensive bastion, royal palace, spiritual focal points - may have granted the citadel of Somba Opu an importance greater than the sum of its parts.From the defensive perspective, it could grant its inhabitants additional protection, especially for a brick fort as monumental as Somba Opu, From the spiritual perspective, a fort that contained a spiritual fount – such as Somba Opu’s saukang, cemetaries, and royal presence – could grant the spiritual protection to the inhabitants. Somba Opu was indisputably the linchpin of defense and Makassar. As mentioned, the original earth fort had been built in reaction to growing numbers of traders in the Garassik delta. It was later upgraded whenever a foreign threat loomed. In the last years of pre-Dutch Makassar, it fulfilled its initial role as a refuge and defensive bastion for the city population. Outside the city, Somba Opu was flanked by the lesser benteng strung out along the coast, in a satellite formation around the star of Makassarese forts that was Somba Opu. The Dutch, during the 1666 invasion, had to neutralize the outer layer of fortified villages and townships starting as far south as Galesong, before attacking Somba Opu. Access to Somba Opu would have been tightly controlled, a situation made possible by the heavy brick walls. Of the three gates seen in the 1638 illustration, two on the seaward side were protected by fortifications, and at least one of the two had stronger masonry construction. The last gate, on the southern side facing the ethnic Makassar communities, was under the direct observation of the corner bastion. People entering would have been monitored by the sentries, the result being a sense of perceived exclusivity that would have enhanced the spiritual stature of its inhabitants. Wooden palisades, the typical fortification method in previous times, and which 48 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 133. 71 were still used for the various enclaves, were fairly permeable as barriers and allowed easy adaptation for future access. The heavy brick walls drew a far heavier dividing line in the urban landscape, with restricted access more permanent than before. The use of brick in the citadel, in a city primarily constructed of wood, would also have been a status symbol. As a labour intensive form of construction, it indicated to all that the owner of the structure could and did command vast manpower resources, a powerful statement in labour-scarce Sulawesi, where the measure of a ruler was in the number of people bound to him. It also gave the ruler greater defensive capabilities, which in turn translated to being able to better defend his followers, giving him greater status and a more powerful negotiation platform in the shifting politics of the Sulawesi polities. Some understanding of this significance must have been apparent to the rulers of Somba Opu, as the use of brick as a construction material was highly restricted in Makassar. The foreigners were not allowed to build in brick, but mostly lived in “bamboo shacks”, as did Francisco de Vieira, the richest and most prominent Portuguese merchant in the city. 49 European observers in 1658 felt that the reason behind the restrictions was one of comparative status; the Makassar sultan did not want anyone to build houses more imposing than his. However, it is also likely that the Sultan was more concerned about the defensive capabilities granted by the use of brick, and was wary of the Europeans turning their wooden factories into stone fortresses, as had been the case in other parts of Southeast Asia. 50 The use of material was not the only thing that allowed the citadel to dominate Makassar. Somba Opu’s position would also have allowed it to control, or at least supervise negotiations between the ethnic Makassarese communities to the south and the foreigners, such as Europeans and Malays, to the north. Each had their own market, and any attempt at interaction would have required passing under the walls of the citadel. Although it would be inaccurate to insist there was strictly no inter-ethnic cohabitation, or that Somba Opu restricted or was able to restrict contact, 49 50 Boxer, Francisco Vieira, p. 31. Ibid., p. 31. 72 its presence would have been felt nonetheless. The Dutch recalled that during the negotiation of the Bungaraya treaty, they found that they were unable to gather information in the markets as they normally did, as the locals had been forbidden to speak to them. 51 Overall, however, the brick walls of Somba Opu would have stood out in the city. Built of brick, it contrasted favourably with the lightweight wooden houses of the average townspeople. The brick gave it a permanence that only enhanced the spiritual power of the ruling elite that resided inside. The forts of Makassar Tumpaqrisiq built other earthen forts in Gowa that predate Somba Opu, including Benteng Kale Gowa, the earthen walls that protected the old capital of Gowa. The walls had a relatively large perimeter of around two kilometres, surrounding the central elements of the sacred coronation stone, a well, and the tombs of rulers. Benteng Anak Gowa, built by Tunipalangga, was considerably smaller and was a secondary fortified palace and southern outpost to Kale Gowa, falling out of recorded history when Makassar subdued the south. 52 However, the forts of Makassar were also reflective of a widely differing set of physical and spiritual needs, and the evolving defensive requirements of a growing empire, as well as a rapidly developing understanding of siege warfare. The vital forts on the coast were generally smaller and more compact than the inland forts of Gowa, requiring a smaller defensive force to man the perimeter walls. The brick forts also were generally far larger than earthern forts. Bulbeck noted that the larger forts were the royal residences at one point or another, and suggests that the use of brick and the large size, the latter of which would have been defensively problematic, was due to this need for aggrandization of the ruler. He also points out that Somba Opu, although possibly the most important fortified palace, with the greatest need to impress 51 52 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 65. Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 126, 263. 73 through size, was also the smallest of the royal residences, possible reflecting a sober decision to balance monumentality with practical needs. 53 In the spiritual sphere, the forts had an internal hierarchical arrangement in the eyes of the Makassarese. Many of them had contained places that were spiritual foci, such as pre-Islamic burial grounds or sacred menhirs. There seemed to be a trend towards placing the corners of the fort walls such that they enclosed these sanctified points wherever possible. (See Fig. 9), with this taking precedence over points that would have made more militaristic sense. The reverence towards these somewhat animist spiritual loci may seem odd in light of Makassar’s adoption of Islam. However, Islam may have changed very little in the spiritual sphere, as the Makassarese were quick to adapt it to pre-existing belief systems. Pre-Islamic shrines and gaukang (sacral objects) co-existed comfortably with mosques, and the Karaeng Matoaya, before embarking on the wars, made his ritual vows on both the Qu’ran and the state gaukang (a sword), thereby invoking and combining the spiritual powers of both beliefs. 54 This pattern was considered clearest at places such as Kale Gowa, Talloq and Sanrabone, and less so at Somba Opu and the defensive costal forts, leading Bulbeck to suggest that the former fortresses were more ceremonial than defensive, or at least was more influenced by the ceremonial element than Somba Opu. 55 This in turn suggested that the locations that these fortresses encircled were somehow more sacred to their respective communities than the other similarly fortified locations, possibly rooted in their role as the origins of the Talloq and Gowa polities respectively. 53 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 77. Andaya, The Heritage, p. 33 and 35. 55 Ibid., p. 101. 54 74 Fig. 9: Ground Plans of Makassar Fortresses. Copyright by David Bulbeck “Construction history and significance of the Makassar fortifications”, p. 99. The fortifications also may have acted in the creation of a sacral centre. In Kale Gowa and Sanrabone, the respective centres only became a hub of spiritual power after the construction 75 of the fortress walls. 56 Here, the walls seem to have acted as concentrators of power, acting to define a point within that could be the centre of the settlement. Somba Opu seemed to have lacked a known specified sacred centre, though it functioned as a concentration of military power, often synonymous with sacral power. Overall, it seems that the fortress walls that sprung up around Makassar had a spiritual, symbolic element to them, that occasionally overrode their military function, supporting the idea that the walls constructed were for more than defensive reasons alone. Somba Opu and Benteng Kale Gowa thus represented two very different fortresses. While both were fortified palaces, Benteng Kale Gowa acted to guard the spiritual stronghold of Gowa, while Somba Opu guarded its secular, trading stronghold. This difference was represented in their forms, and the other forts of Makassar fell in somewhere along the spectrum of choices between the two. Outside the Citadel: Foreign quarters and local markets As Makassar’s influence as a trading polity rose, so did the status of Somba Opu, changing the city form. Foreign enclaves sprung up, starting with the Melakan Malay community in 1561. 57 Other trading ethnic communities sought similar permission to set up a base in Makassar, as increasing Dutch power made it difficult to trade elsewhere for spice. The English, the Dutch, the Danish, the Bandanese all had established a presence in Makassar by the seventeenth century. These foreign enclaves tended to be granted land north of the Jeknekberang mouth, along the coastline. Through the 1638 Dutch illustration, it is possible to obtain a detailed overview of the layout of the respective communities. The Gujeratis and the Portuguese had their godowns and houses along the citadel side of the river, where goods from the merchant vessels were 56 57 Ibid., p.100. Cummings, Making Blood White, p. 28. 76 unloaded on the docks. The English factory was further up the Sulawesi coastline, north of the Great Market. Next to them was the Danish factory, formerly occupied by the Dutch. The artist paid special attention to illustrating the quarters of the latter two, and considered the Gujerati and Portuguese unusual and important enough in the urbanscape to note their location. The rest of the city on the north side was left undistinguished, but probably had the Malay community and a small Chinese kampong. 58 The 1638 illustration suggests that there was a main north-south road running through the compounds, leading to the river, as well as several main roads perpendicular to it. One led to the large market on the north side of the river mouth, called the Great Market. It was the main market for the trade of foreign goods and for that area, and also represented an important zone of interaction for the various communities. Dutch sources report that their factors would usually gather information at the markets, especially about local politics and news. 59 Although a city area, it seems to have had a large amount of vegetation and trees, with palm trees thickly lining the avenues. 60 Evidence suggests that community leaders made some effort to distinguish their communities from the others by physically demarcating the land that had been granted to them. Records of the agreement between Nakhoda Bonang and Tunipalangga stated that the Makassarese officials were not to enter the Malay compounds, an arrangement that could have only come about through the use of physical markers to denote where the grant of land lay. The Europeans had a similar arrangement, with Jordain mentioning that the East India Company, was granted “50 fathome of land”, which he later hedged with bamboos and canes. Speelman’s later description of Makassar as being the city of Somba Opu surrounded by outlying villages matched Jourdain’s account of a typical coastal city composed of compounds heavily interspersed with trees, confusing a European used to the walled towns of medieval Europe. 61 58 Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium”, p.100. Andaya, The Heritage, p. 65. 60 Boxer, Francisco Vieira, p. 23. 61 Reid, “The Rise of Makassar”,p. 138 and 148; Jourdain, John Jourdain, p. 293. 59 77 To the south of the citadel were the ethnic Makassarese communities. Unlike the mostly foreign enclave area to the north, the Makassarese communities had access to Somba Opu via a gate on the south side, reflecting the closer ties that they undoubtedly had with the rulers of Makassar, as well as the probable greater level of trust between them than there was between the elite and the foreigners. There may have been Malays living here as well, since they occupied a privileged niche above the other foreigners. Some Makassarese lived in the northern part of the city, but the southern part was the predominantly Makassarese area. 62 The main market for the community, known as the New Market, was by the southern mouth of the Jeknekberang river. Fortifications outside of Somba Opu An overall coastal defensive wall was built in the 1630s under Sultan Alauddin and Karaeng Matoaya, also responsible for southernmost coastal earthern Benteng Paknakkukang, and strengthening the Barombong wall to the south of Somba Opu. Karaeng Mataoya also added to the fortifications built then, with the main coastal wall that led from Benteng Ujung Tana to Somba Opu, as well as the wall that led south from Somba Opu till Paknakkukang. 63 It was a massive construction effort, which was reported as needing 17,000 men to complete. Construction began in 1634, and represented a considerable investment in manpower resources for Makassar. However, it was thought to have been necessary, considering the anticipation of the rising Dutch aggression, which ultimately proved correct. Efforts were focused on augmenting seaward rather than landward defences, given the Dutch forces’ relative strength at sea. The 1660s saw another round of fortification, after the fall and subsequent destruction of Benteng Paknakkukang by the Dutch. The entire coastal system was overhauled and augmented, under Sultan Hasanuddin. The final incarnation of the seaward wall must have been a formidable one, built of paired layers of brick with interstitial earth, forming a massive seaward barrier 62 63 Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium”, p.100. Bulbeck, Two Kingdoms, p. 355. 78 nearly four metres thick and “the height of a man”. 64 Sultan Hasanuddin also built defensive channel and walls to the south of Somba Opu in 1661, all through the harsh use of Bugis war captives, an action that was to cause great resentment and generate sympathy in the ethnic Bugis communities to Arung Palakka’s – and by extension, the Dutch - cause. The concerted attempt to strengthen defenses to the south was understandable given that the Dutch were showing signs of aggressive activity in the southern tip of Sulawesi. By the time the Dutch had landed in the south and were advancing towards Somba Opu in 1667, there was a staggering ten kilometres of coastal wall, and no less than eight brick-walled benteng that guarded the political heart of Makassar. 65 These fortifications may have proven somewhat effective, as the Dutch ultimately were never able to use their considerable naval power to force a landing at Somba Opu, even after the destruction of the Makassarese fleet. While it would have been quicker to destroy the centre of Makassar, the walls seem to have convinced the Dutch that it would be preferable to conduct a land campaign, though they were capable of breaking through, as they learnt in the 1660 conquest of Benteng Paknakkukang. However, that prize was won at some cost, and the Gowa-Talloq forces had been weakened by a Bugis insurrection of some magnitude, which resulted in the Makassarese desire to swiftly resolve the Dutch-Makassar conflict. 66 In the second invasion of 1666-7, Speelman decided that Makassar could only be weakened from within, and began a land campaign, beginning at the southern tip of Sulawesi, gradually eating away at Makassarese strength, conquering valuable rice fields and more importantly, convincing various communities to support the Dutch-Bugis forces. Arung Palakka’s presence and the mounting victories gained, suggested to the Sulawesian mind that the Dutch-Bugis forces were a powerful new polity possessing obvious spiritual strength that any pragmatic ruler would want to ally himself to. Even so, the combined strength of the Dutch-Bugis forces and their allies was unable to break down the citadel of Somba Opu itself. 64 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 74. Ibid., p. 68. 66 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 60. 65 79 Many of the forts built along the coast and the coastal defense wall were destroyed by the time Makassar fell in 1669. Some had been destroyed according to the Bungaya Treaty of 1666, where the Dutch demanded that the Makassarese dismantle the forts and walls. The rest were destroyed with the Dutch invasion, with the exception of Benteng Ujung Pandang. It was named Fort Rotterdam after the Dutch took over, under the terms of the treaty. Fort Rotterdam became the focal point of the new Dutch-dominated city of Makassar, or Ujung Pandang. The City of Ujung Pandang: Under Dutch rule Dutch rule saw the complete and utter dismemberment of the old city of Makassar. Under the terms of the 1667 Bungaya treaty, all fortifications were to be destroyed, a condition that Sultan Hasanuddin deemed best to ignore. The Dutch, wanting to ensure that Makassar could never become an indigenous stronghold, dismantled the massive ramparts of Somba Opu and the intricate coastal system that had sheltered the greatest port in South Sulawesi after 1669. 67 The ancestral stronghold of upriver Gowa did not escape this wholesale erasure either; when it became the bastion of the resistance forces, the Dutch-Bugis forces marched on Kale Gowa and the fortifications were razed in 1677. 68 Dutch Makassar was further north, centred on the old Benteng Ujung Pandang, now rebuilt and renamed Fort Rotterdam. Designed in the style of the newer Italian trace enceintes and diamond bastions, positioned on a site that jutted out from the coastline, it was the unquestioned centre of the new settlement. Built of stone, it was roughly the size of Benteng Ujung Pandang at one hectare, a relatively defensively-compact fortress. 69 It contained the Dutch church and the garrison barracks, and it was chiefly the residence of the VOC soldiers and officials. To the north of the fort was the walled quarter of Vlaardingen, where the non-Company European officials and Chinese merchants lived. North of Vlaardingen was the main Malay 67 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 134. Ibid., p. 184. 69 Bulbeck, “Construction history”, p. 77. 68 80 kampong, though in latter years a secondary settlement called Kampung Baru would spring up south of the Fort, comprising a mix of European burghers, company officials, and native peoples. The main Dutch market lay between Vlaardingen and Fort Rotterdam. The Dutch, unlike the Portuguese, did not officially endorse assimilation, and emphasized strict ethnic separation in Makassar as they did in the other Southeast Asian cities under Company rule. 70 However, Makassar was not the headquarters of the VOC like Batavia, and the ethnic segregation was not as strongly enforced, allowing for some intermingling. The observation has been made that in Dutch Makassar the communities were ordered according to the level of trust that they enjoyed. 71 The closer their proximity to Fort Rotterdam, the higher their social standing and usefulness to the VOC. As such, Company officials lived within Fort Rotterdam, while non-Company Europeans and the Chinese who were often relied on in official matters over the native Makassarese and Malays, lived in the walled stockade of Vlaardingen. While trust existed, the VOC still regarded Vlaardingen with suspicion. The Company guarded its trade monopolies jealously, and thus regarded all independent traders, whether of European or non-European origin, as potential rivals. In the eyes of the ruling Dutch VOC, there were two main groups in Makassar – the Company, and everyone else. This world-view was reflected in the urban structure of the city, where the stone walls of Fort Rotterdam rigidly guarded the entryway into the privileged residential enclave of the Company, and loomed over the wooden houses of Makassar. The caveat must be made, however, that the urban structures were a reflection of official hard policy rather than the realpolitik of every day inter-ethnic relations and social arrangements in what was essentially an outpost town. Sizeable interactions did take place between Company and town, between officials and quasi-legal private traders, between European men and the native 70 71 Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium”, p. 108-109, 119. Ibid., p. 111. 81 Makassarese women. The concentration of European compounds could be found outside of Vlaardingen, and Company officials were known to maintain mestizo families outside of the fort in the country. 72 That is not to say that the hard urban structures had no effect on the functioning of Makassar; in any city, the quotidian events and experiences of urban life are the result of an ongoing discourse between the built form and the society within. In considering the position of Dutch Makassar in the urban hierarchy, it must be observed that it was lower in rank and had a different orientation from the other city of Makassar under the Sultans. As mentioned earlier, pre-1669 Makassar had been the capital settlement, if not city, of the Gowa-Talloq empire. It looked outward for trade, but traced its roots to the inland settlement of Kale Gowa that gave it its spiritual legitimacy and was its centre. Through Kale Gowa, pre1699 Makassar was fundamentally rooted in the soil of Sulawesi. Dutch Makassar, however, was the satellite outpost of Batavia. It was primarily interested in trade, evidencing little interest in the indigenous communities beyond their effect on the commercial sphere. 73 Fort Rotterdam, although built on the site of Benteng Ujung Padang, reflected this trade orientation, positioned on land that jutted out from the coastline into the seas. The colonial disinterest and disconnect with the spiritual inner world that was rooted in the agricultural Sulawesi can be seen in the VOC’s response to the former Gowa nobles’ request for permission to trade: “Return, and till your lands.” 74 Influences on the urban form: War, Trade and Control The sixteenth and seventeenth century saw many changes in the urban development and form of Makassar the polity, mainly the rise of the city at the Jeknekberrang river mouth and the use of permanent fortifications in brick to protect the coastal as well as the upriver, sacral city. It also saw an internal shift in the urban hierarchy, as Gowa shifted from an orthogenetic to a more 72 Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium”, p. 119. Ibid., p. 114. 74 Nagtegaal, ‘The pre-modern city in Indonesia “, p. 55; Andaya, The Heritage, p. 165. 73 82 heterogenetic polity, and commerce-based Somba Opu achieved greater importance than old agrarian Gowa. 75 The rise in trade was a factor behind the brick fortifications of Somba Opu. As the trade volume increased, the importance of the port to Gowa rose, as shown by the shift in the capital city. The royal residence was first moved to Somba Opu in 1547 under Tunipallangga, who later proceeded to improve upon Tumapaqrisiq’s earthern fort with brick walls, an indicator of the investment that Gowa had in its port city, and also supporting the theory that the brick carried additional symbolic meanings. The second spike in trade around the early 1600s also prompted Karaeng Matoaya and Sultan Alauddin to invest more heavily in the defences of the existing forts, before a definite rise in Dutch aggression in the 1620-30s prompted the massive construction of a coastal defence network. The existence of old Gowa itself would have played a factor in Somba Opu’s fortifications. Benteng Anak Gowa is thought to have been the first fort to have been built, followed by Benteng Kale Gowa, protecting the sacral centre. The existence of these structures would have made it natural for Tumapaqrisiq, and later Tunipallangga, to have repeated the same urban form at Somba Opu, an example of the peripheral cities reflecting the form of the centre, which was repeated at Sanrabone, although Somba Opu became a centre in its own right at least in the secular sphere. Tunipallangga’s interest in technology could also have influenced his decision to reinforce the walls of Somba Opu and other fortifications with brick, an interest that was shared by later rulers such as Karaeng Matoaya and Pattingalloang. All were known to have invited foreigners to the court in a bid for advancement in learning and technology, and Portuguese advisors had been involved for both rounds of the fortification of Somba Opu. 76 The presence of old brick tombs suggest that the Makassarese were acquainted with the technology required to 75 76 See p. 9 for discussion on shifts within the orthogenetic/heterogenetic framework. Reid, “Matoaya and Pattingalloang”, p. 12. 83 build in brick, and the ability to build large fortifications was certainly known in mainland Southeast Asia, as well as inland Java. However, the fortifications in Makassar led Nicholas Gervaise to remark that they were raised by the Portuguese. 77 An examination of fortifications over time displays an increasing sophistry, reflecting a development in the technological ability of Makassarese engineers. The rise and ebb of threats that came with international trade also had a part to play in the shaping of the urban structure of Makassar. Trade saw to Makassarese wealth and the emergence of a thriving dynamic commercial quarter, but also brought it into the high-stakes world of the international economy where negotiations were conducted by the cannonfire of the VOC. The Makassarese response to threat took the form of brick fortifications, focused on the sea, and a constellation of brick benteng that introduced nascent siege warfare to Sulawesi. The investment in these fortifications did not allow for easy retreat, for fear of giving up a stronghold to an enemy. As proposed earlier, the nature of war had changed, manifesting itself in fortified indigenous strongholds, not just in the colonial cities. The cities in turn assumed a greater permanency than they had before, centered around a definitive brick fortress and privileged enclave, which could not be easily adapted nor abandoned as a wooden or earth perimeter enclave could be. Nor could it be easily ignored, as the brick or stone asserted its dominance over land and city, a Mount Mehru in reality as never before. The investment of permanent walls, combined with the potential symbolic content of brick, gave the city potentially new levels of importance and meaning. Makassar under the Dutch was a completely different city, having its origins in the indigenous village on Somba Opu’s periphery that had sprung up around the old coastal fort of Benteng Ujung Pandang. Its defense concerns were somewhat different from the old Makassar, as it was mainly interested in maintaining the outpost rather than defending a polity and an ancestral inland stronghold. Fort Rotterdam, while resembling Somba Opu in its aspect as a citadel, 77 Nicholas Gervaise. An historical description of the Kingdom of Macasar. (London: N.P., 1701), p. 57. 84 guarded against a landward attack as well. Dutch Makassar had no need for an extensive coastal wall, or indeed, any fortifications for the protection of the greater city. Walls that were built were for the protection of the Company, in the shape of Fort Rotterdam, or for the protection of trusted communities in Vlaardingen. The phenomenon was not isolated to Makassar; around 1680, the VOC started building forts in Javanese port cities, generally on the seaward side of the town, reflecting the connection between the VOC, the sea, and the trade that came on its tides. 78 Makassar, the city of trade that has achieved near-legendary status in Sulawesian history, experienced much change in its rise to the premier port of eastern insular Southeast Asia during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. As a successor to Melaka, it was a product of the new world that was emerging after 1511, which was reflected in its urban structure. Trade, the advent of the Europeans, shifting trends in warfare, pragmatic leadership and the unusual dual-city structure that formed the polity of Makassar, all helped to shape the urban form of this highly unusual city that came to dominate trade in Southeast Asia. By comparing it to Melaka, it is possible to garner an understanding of the Southeast Asian port city structure in a rapidly changing world. As mentioned earlier, considering pre-1511 Melaka to pre-Dutch Makassar will allow a sense of how indigenous urbanism changed. However, as also mentioned earlier, there exist differences in the variables that also influenced the urban structure of the two cities, beyond those studied here. Makassar’s differences from Melaka included a stronger relationship with the inland, status as a polity led by indigenous peoples compared to Melaka’s founding by a refugee prince, relative agricultural wealth, differing trade patterns and colonial policies. Melaka and Makassar’s urban differences possibly stemmed from more than changed geopolitical realities and defensive concerns over time. Nevertheless, a meaningful comparative study is possible. In general, the multiplicity of factors that make each city unique, also make it difficult to definitively attribute any changes in the urban structure to just one. Nor is it possible to select urban examples such that a factor may 78 Nagtegaal, ‘The pre-modern city in Indonesia “, p. 55. 85 be perfectly isolated. Extant differentials are a perennial consideration; however, while they are acknowledged, sufficient commonalities are present for the case studies presented here. Both Melaka and Makassar were highly cosmopolitan maritime cities, heavily influenced by trade, and had similar, though not identical, cultural and religious background. Both.experienced European threat, and had the capacity for large urban projects. Judicious analysis, with an understanding of the existing differences, is possible. The transformation experienced by Makasssar was not an isolated incident, as can be seen in the wall construction and other urban projects taking place in other cities in the island world, such as Banten. Makassar may have been but the most prominent example of a phenomenon that was occurring in both European and indigenous port cities, or even representative of a greater change in the political and social spheres around the region – that of a transformed approach to warfare, the beginnings of a more structured political structure and the fossilization of indigenous society. 86 Chapter 4: Conclusion – A Tale of Two Cities Makassar and Melaka, two cities that rose to greatness in the heady days of the spice trade, were separated by a sea and a century. However, they were linked by the raison d’être of commerce, and they embraced the high-stakes game of the spice trade, which brought them into direct conflict with the Europeans, the newest players in the international theatre of Southeast Asia. Pre-1511 Melaka was an indigenous urban settlement that developed prior to active European involvement in Southeast Asia, and was utterly transformed under the Portuguese. Makassar developed in a time where the fleet of the VOC roamed the island seas and was an active concern to independent Southeast Asian polities. In the comparison of the urban changes experienced under European rule by Melaka and Makassar, it is possible understand the extent of the effects by the entry of a culture group foreign to the region. However, with a comparative study of pre-1511 Melaka and pre-Dutch Makassar, we also begin to see the indigenous urban response to a time when factors such altered patterns of warfare, rising trade became important considerations. Through this, it becomes possible to see something of the development of urban concepts and form in the Southeast Asian mind. Continuity and change: the urban form When considering the city in terms of its functions, it seems that the initial statement put forward in this paper – that urban life remain fundamentally unchanged despite the walls –has been supported. Ecology and basic human need are powerful determinants of urban form, and that may account for the relatively unchanged land use in port cities. Melaka experienced political change and saw the growth of new urban forms such as A Famosa, but the location of the various urban functions and institutions remained unchanged. Even the replacement of the mosque with the fort was not a change as far as its role in the interplay of city activity and life was concerned. Though Dutch Makassar was for all intents and purposes a different city, very little seemed to have changed there as well, with the Dutch city fundamentally keeping the same functions of the earlier Makassar. In comparing Melaka and Makassar, there is very little functional change that cannot be easily attributed to differences in the environs. The essential form remains unchanged – the sacred enceinte of the ruling elite that was also the defense stronghold remained, ethnic compounds, trade conducted along the coastline. In terms of the spiritual sphere, the sacred centre was still unchanged, as was the link with the ancestral upriver stronghold, the Makassar-Gowa relationship probably stronger than the Melaka-Bertam connection. At the functional level, the city seemed unchanged. However, while proponents of the longue durée may prefer to see the European intrusion as merely one of many forces that would seek to shape and be shaped by Southeast Asia, and avoid the sin of exceptionalising the colonial impact, it is also true that cities after 1511 saw the evolution of a new urban structure – that of the brick or stone wall. Arguably an old form revived and improved upon – the earth and wood kubu, was after all, an early temporary fort, and old Singapore had its earth walls guarding the city – the port cities of sixteenth and seventeenth century Southeast Asia nevertheless began to incorporate fortification walls into their urbanscape. Permanent fortifications, made of stone or brick, became a feature in post-1511 cities. Both colonial cities and indigenous cities had fortresses, with Melaka’s A Famosa, and Makassar’s Somba Opu and later Dutch Makassar’s Fort Rotterdam. Around the region, other indigenous cities expended valuable manpower and resource, building stone or brick strongholds in Banten and in Johor. 1 The fortifications usually took the form of the creation of a protected royal compound, which would contain the premier religious institution, royal palace, perhaps the residence of a few ministers, and often some sort of spiritual focal point such as a keramat, or in 1 C.A. Gibson-Hill, “Johore Lama and other ancient sites on the Johore River”, JMBRAS, 28,2, (1955): 153. 88 Banten’s case, a sacred banyan tree. 2 If possible, both colonial and indigenous cities would invest in further fortifications, such as coastal walls, perimeter walls, or outposts, though these secondary fortifications were frequently never as strong or sophisticated as the sacred enceinte. Where the earlier urbanscape can be studied, it can be seen that the new fortifications frequently mimicked the earlier layout, with the result that the basic urban structure remained the same. This holds for the indigenous/colonial comparison, and for the pre-1511/post-1511 indigenous comparison. The walls of A Famosa followed the lines of the hill, the old stronghold of Melaka. In Makassar, the basic idea of a fortified enclave with the ruling elite within which could project its power over the settlement and defend it from seaward attacks remained. Makassar’s basic fortification layout also matched Melaka’s, although the latter’s was in wood and earth. Although Melaka did not have Makassar’s coastal wall, it did have a temporary wooden one, as it was mentioned that the Sultan had placed spiked barricades and walls along the shoreline during the Portuguese attack. 3 If there was a change in structure, it was in colonial Makassar and Melaka which exhibited one new element: the introduction of a secondary walled privileged enclave. Portuguese Melaka had the district of Upeh, bounded by Tranqueira, the quarters of the non-European merchants. Dutch Makassar had Vlaardingen, bounded by a stout stockade wall of its own, where non-Company Europeans lived. By comparison, Melaka and Makassar had two broad districts – that of the sacred enclave and everyone else. There were individual compounds, but there was no attempt to distinguish one above another, nor to indicate the higher relative social/political ranking through the use of a wall or other city forms. In terms of hierarchy, the European-controlled cities also experienced a change. This went beyond the customary fall from a capital city to a lesser city in a greater empire, due to the nature of Southeast Asian city-state culture. A city might be a vassal to another, but was allowed 2 Claude Guillot, “Urban Patterns and Polities in Malay Trading Cities, Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries”, Indonesia, 80, (2005): 42. 3 Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3, p. 109. 89 to maintain its laws and customs (bicara dan adat), which allowed it a degree of independence, so much so that Gowa’s unusual decision to install a Makassarese regent for the newly vanquished Boné in 1640 was met with much resentment. 4 With the colonial powers in charge, the city was no longer head of its individual polity, no matter how humble, but instead was the second-tier city to the greater empire. There was also a disruption in the relationship of urban centres within the region. The port cities traditionally had a relationship with the inland settlements, linking these heterogenetic commerce centres with the more orthogenetic ceremonial centres. While the degree of importance and the actuality of the relationship between the port city and its inland partner has been debated, there is no denying that the port cities did have a connection and interest in the inland settlements. Melaka had Bertam, and Makassar had Kale Gowa. The colonial city by contrast looked outward, over the seas to a faraway capital. The VOC, for instance, was only interested in controlling the foreign affairs of Sulawesi, and had little interest in what the fallen Makassarese did as long as they stayed in the ricefields and away from trade. 5 It is possible to argue that Makassar was already on the path that would have led to a more formal hegemony of its own, installing its own structure in vassal cities that would have infringed bicara dan adat. The shift in the urban hierarchy, where the cities were no longer the capitals of their polities, should not be seen as a purely European invention of inter-city relationship. However, the key difference lay in the relationship with the centre – it is doubtful that a colonial power, indigenous to the region, would have disrupted the connection with the inland settlements. Overall, there was a definite trend towards heavy fortifications of brick and stone in both colonial and indigenously controlled port cities after 1511. Cities that did not do so built earth walls which could be modified in the future. However, colonial cities had a tendency to create 4 5 Andaya, The Heritage, p. 43. Ibid., p. 156. 90 secondary privileged enclaves, and were often cut off from the inland settlements that had previously co-existed symbiotically with the port city. That said, the urban form, whether of post-1511 indigenous cities or colonial cities, usually followed the same general type of the pre1511 port city. Viewed from the ramparts: War and the city Much has been discussed previously about how the style of warfare naturally affected the urban form in pre-1511 Southeast Asia. Traditional guerilla warfare, accompanied by the popular use of strategic retreat in insular Southeast Asia, made fortifications an unattractive urban investment. Thus, port cities only chose to start building heavy fortifications after 1511. The most plausible implication is that there was a major development in the warfare of the island world that caused rulers, who hitherto scorned heavy walls, to view them as a necessary investment. It is not the intent of this study to explain shifting trends in warfare in the region, as the focus remains first and foremost on the city itself. However, the city is tied to war and indeed, influenced by it, and a brief discussion on its military/defensive role is necessary. It should not be considered a full analysis, but rather an issue that must be acknowledged and left for future researchers. City walls are primarily fortifications, and if their lack can be attributed to an unwillingness to defend with tenacity, then their construction can be thought to suggest a shift in that mode of thought. Strategic retreat in lieu of protracted defense was employed notably by the last Melakan Sultan. However, Makassar was far more determined in the battle of Somba Opu against the Dutch, and refused to give ground until the walls were finally broken. Makassar’s case may be thought to be different, since although it is customary grouped with the manpower-scarce maritime cities, it may actually have had more in common with the Javanese kingdoms, which have been grouped with the mainland cities. At the heart of the theory of the strategic retreat is the assumption of scarce manpower, and that the local lords were reluctant to risk losing men. 91 The mainland kingdoms generally had more manpower at their disposal, due to the requirements of a more agricultural economy, and were slightly more willing to risk losing resources. Makassar, although a port, still had begun life as an agrarian state, and had shown the ability to marshal large armies from the ricefields. In addition, Makassar seemed to have stronger ties to upland Gowa than Melaka had. Therefore, comparing Melaka to Makassar in order to draw a tentative conclusion about shifting trends in warfare is problematic. However, a comparison of Melaka with Johor may be more fruitful. The Johor Sultanate, direct descendants of Melaka, had the same limitations that Melaka did as a port city – a limited agricultural economy with a similarly limited populace. Both Batu Sawar and Johor Lama, successive capitals on the Johor River, featured forts and coastal walls which had not been seen in their predecessor. Johor Lama used coral blocks and sandstone as a skirting wall for its fortress of Kota Batu, an unusual investment for a port city and particularly so in this case, since the coral had to be shipped from the Johor River mouth. 6 The Johor Sultan Sultan Hammat Syah even announced at one point that he refused to shift his capital again in response to Portuguese attack, and insisted on fortifying the one he had. 7 It is reasonable to conclude that there was a shift in defensive measures and the expectations of warfare in the region, at least for some polities. Overall, there seemed to be a movement towards siege warfare, which unfortunately the Europeans were more acquainted with than the Southeast Asians. While the cities may have initially built stronger fortifications for prestige and defense, it is also true that the investment in this urban project would have made the rulers far more reluctant to abandon them. This may have led to a degree of tenacity in defense that was never fully intended. The relative weakness of the indigenous powers on the water also may have played a role in the fortification of the indigenous city. Polities generally chose to do so if they were unable to 6 7 Gibson-Hill, “Johore Lama”, p. 154. Andaya, The Kingdom of Johor, p. 125. 92 project their power at their perceived frontiers, away from the centre of governance. 8 Port cities depended primarily on their fleets to defend them, as can be seen in Melaka’s history. The fortification of the indigenous city could be seen as acknowledgement of this weakness. Both the movement towards siege warfare and fortifying against heavier firepower, however, rest on one simple decision – that of the intention to hold onto the city. As mentioned, the maritime cities were often not particularly attached to their settlement points, and attacking forces usually had no intention of ruling the city after victory. The land was seldom important, and could be recovered, and even in the case of being turned into a vassal city, the polity would still enjoy a large degree of independence. The Portuguese occupation of Melaka, followed by the Dutch conquest and rule of Batavia, could have been seen as a disruption in this traditional fluid city-state culture. For the Europeans, the direct control of land, or rather, specific points strategic in the protection of the shipping routes, was the goal. This was accomplished by the establishment of strongholds, usually taking over indigenous cities. The decision that the preservation of the city was a worthwhile cause may have been influenced by the realization that a valuable location and autonomy was at stake, which in turn gave the individual city a value that it may not have possessed earlier. However, the European effect cannot be considered to be the sole impetus behind this political shift that saw the building of city fortifications. It is equally possible that there were changes in the indigenous political structure that were in the process of evolving as well, with a movement towards hegemonic empires, as was the case in Boné. Also, for a hundred years before the Dutch conquest, the Portuguese, who were few in number, and therefore also considered manpower important, acted much as any local power – preferring to dominate rather than conquer, having already acquired its stronghold. 8 James D. Tracy, “To wall or not to wall: Evidence from medieval Germany”, City Walls: the Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective, p. 73. 93 That said, the Johor case becomes all the more interesting with the idea that the European intervention influenced warfare and the shift in the city role in indigenous culture. Of all the cities that came after 1511, Johor was the most likely polity to have reacted directly from lessons learnt in its last major encounter. Banten and Makassar were closer to the mainland city types, and had greater resources that affected their cultural concepts and choices. Johor’s decision to fortify, and to build in at least partially in coral and sandstone, despite similar limitations to Melaka, is perhaps the strongest case for the European entry having at least partial influence on Southeast Asian warfare. Overall, it can be said that there was a change in warfare, and that resulted or was linked to the increasing fortifications of Southeast Asian port cities. In addition, it is possible to suggest that at the same time, there was a change in the perception of the city – it was now a possession to be protected, and had value in itself. Writ in stone: Changes in material culture Another issue that is relevant to the changing structures of the city is the material culture of Southeast Asia, specifically with relation to stone and brick. In both Melaka and Makassar, relatively permanent building materials were associated with kingship and other important buildings. Keramats were stone, as were mosques. When a Makassarese fort became the residence of a king, it was seen as necessary to fortify it with brick. The inland forts of Gowa, which might never see military action, had large, difficult to defend city walls of brick, indicating the location’s status as the sacred heart of Gowa. Stone – and brick carried connotations of sacral and secular power. As proposed earlier, the fortifications that came up had symbolic meaning, and were not purely for defence. Brick and stone may have begun to take on a new meaning after 1511. The district of Upeh was not allowed to build in stone, for reasons of war, and similar sentiments were echoed 94 by indigenous rulers. 9 The stone and its substitute brick had become more strongly associated with defensive capability, and in a time of increasingly powerful firepower, had become proportionately more important. The ability to defend is a privilege in any culture, and it seems that brick and stone had become materials of privilege, more so than before, for at least some polities. Building walls: Society and the City As discussed earlier, walls are more than just fortifications; they also act as boundaries between one space and another. In the post-1511 cities, where large scale perimeter walls started to appear in the urbanscape, they became delineators of class, and often, of ethnicity as well. In the case of Portuguese Melaka, the dominant group lived primarily in A Famosa, while the second most important group, the foreign merchants, lived bounded by Tranqueira. In Makassar, the elite lived behind the walls of Somba Opu, a trend followed by the Dutch where only the Company employees, distinguished from private Dutch traders, lived in Fort Rotterdam. The latter along with Chinese traders formed the second most important social group lived in the walled stockade Vlaardingen. 10 The creation of this second grouping in the colonial cities resembled the schematic of a castle, with its surrounding walled town where the burghers lived. Anyone beyond that wall was not considered part of the city, but instead part of the country, without the rights of a town dweller, and without easy access to the throne of power. With the secondary privileged enclave, the ruling elite had managed to effectively distance the indigenous population from the new centre of power, to the point of perhaps even suggesting through organisation of the urbanscape that they were not part of the city, and had no part to play. The residents of the enclave, foreign to the land, were the new intermediaries and supporters of the colonial power in the fort, and were 9 Mills, Eredia, p. 19. Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium ”, p. 111. 10 95 thus privileged to live within the walls. The indigenous population who lived outside was the lowest class in this new society, outside the walls, and outside the inner circle of power. This phenomenon may not have been particular to colonial cities as the examples of Portuguese Melaka and Makassar suggest. Banten Lama in 1659, which was under indigenous rule, seems to have had a more tightly organized ward structure, which included a foreign merchants’ quarter, numerous lord and dependent compounds, as well as the internal palace enclave. 11 Here, the wall as status symbol and class divider is somewhat easier to discern and more defined. While it is true that individual compound walls, even perimeter walls, had existed pre1511, the new perimeter walls of stone and brick that usually surrounded at least the palace compound had greater impact due to the permanency of the material used. Taipa or simple wooden walls are relatively porous, and easily shifted. Earth walls are necessarily thick and relatively unsophisticated, making them more difficult to use, and required more frequent maintenance. Brick or stone walls appeared unmovable and permanent. These walls were able to grant more control and power than had previously been the case. They stood out in a mostly wooden city, and the greater defense capability associated with them made the inhabitants that more powerful in the eyes of the populace. To live within the stone walls indicated that the inhabitant had political power, as was the case in Banten, where traders that had managed to live within the walled city were the same individuals that had been granted special privileges. 12 The walls denoted ethnicity and class, and were instruments of control, over the populace and over any entry into the city, and into the inner enclave. The greater use of stone and brick only heightened the status gap between the rest of the city and the inhabitants within. Entry into these zones of privilege, physically and possibly metaphorically, was that more difficult than before. The walls of the city, although often merely outlining what had been there before, were a 11 12 Guillot, “Urban Patterns “, p. 43. Ibid., p. 46. 96 physical representation of the social political hierarchy within the city. Now made of stone, and combined with the greater permanency of the city itself, it is possible to read into it the hardening – and fossilization of the groups and divisions within the inhabitants of both the indigenous and colonial city. As proposed earlier, the building of the walls did not act to change the city, but rather to.emphasise and maintain divisions that were already present. Reading social change in the urban structure has its limitations. Claude Guillot used the evolving urban structure as part of his grounds for a previously maritime society that was beginning to shape itself into a more rigid agrarian model, with limited success. However, urban structure is ultimately a statement of intention rather than actuality, a court history rather than a story in the marketplace. Heather Sutherland is quick to point out that in Dutch Makassar, interaction occurred between the various wards, and indeed, back doors were cut into Vlaardingen’s walls to allow unauthorized, unsanctioned entries. 13 This example is unlikely to be an isolated one, especially given the circumstances that gave rise to the Portuguese mestizos, suggesting that the walls may not have shaped urban life as much as the planners had originally envisioned. Neither is it likely to have been restricted to the colonial cities. However, cities, even now, still function very much in this way. Authorities lay down a vision of what should be, creating the hard, planned city, a reflection of an idealized world. In counterpoint, the soft everyday actions of the populace serve to adapt the city to their own particular needs, developing it organically. It is perhaps this discourse of the planned and the organic – Kostof’s ville creé versus his ville spontanaeé, the orthogenetic that lies within and the heterogenetic that lies outside – it is the interaction of these two forces that drive the city. The hard urban structures, such as the city walls, both within and without, ultimately serve to direct and shape interactions within the city. Their reinforcement, construction, and fortification, were reflections of greater social 13 Sutherland, “Eastern Emporium”, p. 119. 97 barriers that arose in both the indigenous and colonial city, and perhaps prophetic of the classifications of nineteenth century colonial administration. 14 The city between monsoons: Further areas for study Through this study of the urban form structures, it can be seen that at the functional level, the construction of permanent walls did little to change to quotidian urban life in both the cities that experienced colonial rule and the cities that developed independently after 1511. Developments were external; colonial cities did not have the same relationship with the inland settlements, and were no longer head of independent polities. The concept of the city had changed, moving from being synonymous with the polities it led, to discrete entities that functioned as siege strongholds. As the walls came down in both the colonial and indigenous cities, they served to reinforce existing social structure and ethnic divisions, perhaps halting any society development that was about to take place. There are questions raised that cannot be answered satisfactorily here. Guillot sees in the urban structure of the city the symptoms of the rise and fall of a middle class that was defeated by the emergence of strong, empire-creator leaders. This commercial middle class struggled to emerge before the onset of colonial powers fossilized old power relations, a hint of which was seen in Melaka’s loss of the market bridge, a significant urban form that had been a site of interaction and symbol of trade. Makassar had exhibited the signs of a shift towards a more institutionalized form of dominance, unlike the relatively fluid city-state relations that had previously prevailed, a shift that was reflected in the brick fortresses that it built, including one in Sanrabone, a vassal state. The question remains as to whether these fortifications, which were occurring in places outside of Sulawesi, were reflective of greater changes in the urban and power hierarchy of Southeast Asia. For this, the contemporaneous cities of Cirebon and Banten Lama should be used in further studies. 14 Ibid., p. 126. 98 The fortifications within and without were also symbolic representations of ethnic and class divisions. However, they were not just effects of change, but effectors of change, which brings in the issue of the extent of their influence. If urban life is a continual negotiation between the organic and the planned, then the city walls had a role in the control of society, class mobility and social development. The urban structure’s impact on the evolution of civil society, while not determinist, was nevertheless present, though as yet unknown. Lewis Mumford once said that “Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.” 15 In this study, only a few of the ways in which the urban forms influenced Southeast Asia have been considered. Cities, as the pinnacle of cultural monuments, are invariably complicated entities, sprawling over many areas of study. The study of Melaka began this investigative journey, and like the actual city of near myth, the culmination of this journey only begins another. Malacca is a city that was made for merchandise, fitter than any other in the world, the end of monsoons and the beginning of others. Malacca is surrounded and lies in the middle, and the trade and commerce between the different nations for a thousand leagues on every hand must come to Malacca. Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental. 16 15 16 Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, (London: Secker and Warburg, 1939), p. 5. Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 286. 99 Appendix 1: Approaches to city definition Defining the city is an issue that has plagued urban researchers of the urban form, whether from a Western or non-Western school of thought. Various suggested definitions are often derided by later urban researchers, mostly for the impact they have left on urban studies of a region. The impact is often the greater when this definition is applied on a region that lies outside of the initial case studies. Southeast Asia is no exception, and the study of the urban form in that region has been affected by the use of problematic definitions in the past. An early common approach in Western schools of urbanism was the use of formalist definitions. This formalist approach involved the selection of a characteristic, or a set of characteristics, that can be used to identify a city. Traditionally, a population of 100,000 was set as a benchmark for a real city, as set forth by Kingsley Davis. 1 V. Gordon Childe, author of “The Urban Revolution” which laid down the theoretical framework for urban studies, also uses a formalist approach, listing a set of qualifications that a settlement form must possess in order to be considered a city. They include monumental public buildings and architecture, a system of writing, a ruling class, and a higher density of population than experienced in any earlier settlement for that civilization. 2 The problem with the formalist approach is firstly, that of its arbitrary nature. For both Davis and Childe, the list of selected characteristics results in a rather forced and arbitrary definition of a city. The figure cited by Davis, for example, had not been based on anything concrete, but rather was a definition imposed for the purposes of classification, based on mere observational physical evidence gathered from cities that the author had previously considered to have been cities. 3 Childe’s qualifications for a city in turn were derived from his urban studies of 1 Davis, “The Urbanization of the Human Population”, p. 5. V. Gordon Childe, “The Urban Revolution” in The City Reader, ed. Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout , (London: Routledge 2000), p. 27. 3 Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p.15. 2 Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus basin, all of which have a substantially different environmental and cultural ecology from Southeast Asia. The formalist approach also does not sufficiently acknowledge the wide variety of cultural and ecological contexts that can be found which would result in a substantially different type of city. Cities differ from region to region, and develop in different ecological and cultural settings. For instance, the fortified towns of medieval Europe were build on high defensible ground, resulting in an organic layout to the town as the roads were forced to follow the contours of the site. Imperial Chinese cities, on the other hand, built on wide rolling plains, could carry out a planned grid layout. Cultural issues also influenced the structure and other aspects of the cities. Chinese superstitions that demons came from the north, coupled with the more practical fear of Mongol invasions, resulted in cities designed to face the south with its major gate, and present a high defensive wall to the ill-omened north. 4 The wide range of ecological and cultural settings that produce an equally diverse set of cities results in the need for any localized study to design an urban theory relevant to the region, with a suitable definition of urbanisation and the city, rather than force the indigenous cities into a preconceived universalist urban theory that could result from a formalist approach. The conceptualising of a formalist definition is also highly dependent on the case studies selected for analysis. Traditional urban theories of classical and pre-modern cities used on Southeast Asian cities tend to be based on studies of medieval, Mediterranean and Southwest Asian cities. As a result of this, the typology of cities derived tends to be monothetic, 5 “Western” models rather than “Southeast Asian”. This limited field of primary study effectively restricts the possible types of cities in the pre-modern and classical era, without allowance for variations. This 4 Heng Chye Khiang, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes, (Singapore University Press: Singapore, 1999), p. 104. 5 Miksic, “Heterogenetic cities”, p. 106. 102 has resulted in generalized studies do not have the language required to explain or allow for the wide variety of cities found in Southeast Asia. 6 The lack of range in primary case studies also results in a narrower definition of what constitutes a city, resulting in the exclusion of cities that do not follow the typology of the cities in the case studies. For instance, Spiro Kostof’s influential book on the history of urban forms, The City Shaped, does not discuss Southeast Asian cities with the exception of the prominent ceremonial centres of Angkor Wat and Pagan, cities which corresponded closely to what had come to be expected of the classical period in any civilization. It is interesting to note that Kostof’s criteria for a city, based on the case studies in his book, include several that many Southeast Asian coastal cities would be unable to meet. For Kostof, a city must interact with the countryside around it, with the countryside acting as the city’s hinterland and supplying it. There must a physical divide between the rural and the urban, which may be represented symbolically – for example, privileges or taxes imposed on those living in the “urban” section – or in material form, with city walls to sharply separate the two. There also must be a rural to exist in binary with the urban. And lastly, there must be some sort of monumental architecture that stands out amongst the residential units of the city. 7 Melaka, the golden city of pre-modern insular Southeast Asia, would be incapable of satisfying all three criteria for a city. Neither is Kostof alone in allowing a limited range of case studies to limit the definition of the city; V. Gordon Childe’s seminal work “The Urban Revolution”, also cites a list of characteristics of a city drawn from his archaeological study of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley basin. 8 The biases associated with the formalist approach has prejudiced research on early urban sites in Southeast Asia. The nineteenth century urban sociologist Max Weber’s formalist definition of the ancient Western city, Stadtgemeinde, included five characteristics; that of a defense circuit (generally a wall or a moat), market, laws and law court, political decision6 Ibid., p.107. Kostof, The City Shaped, p. 38-40. 8 Childe, “The Urban Revolution”, p. 27. 7 103 making, and at least partial autonomy. 9 This definition of the city was ingrained in the European perception, and was applied accordingly when to wall-less coastal cities of Southeast Asia. Admiral Beaulieu, a European visitor to Aceh in 1621 remarked that the lack of a surrounding defensive circuit, or a wall, affected him to the point that he considered Aceh a village rather than a city. 10 Even the etymology of the words used to signify town are revealing, as the word for city – town in English, gorod in Russian – originally referred to a walled enclosure. 11 Neither was the perception of the city as being defined by its wall restricted to Western civilizations. In China, for instance, one of the oldest words for city was cheng, which carried the additional meaning of wall. The preoccupation with a single feature, in this case, the circumference wall, has led to problems especially when studying the insular cities of Southeast Asia. While the coastal cities had internal walls – such as those around the palace compound, and the compounds of the nobles and wealthy merchants, it seldom possessed an all-encompassing city wall that was used to define the city limits. 12 If there was a wall, it would usually be a wooden palisade, sometimes permanent, but usually hastily erected when the city was threatened. This had implications when it came to identifying a city, whether an existing one or locating a pre-modern urban site. John Crawford, for instance, commented that Jakarta in 1812 was no more than an aggregation of villages, citing the lack of a defensive perimeter and the presence of trees between the compounds. 13 This fixation on a single characteristic as the determinant of urbanism has affected analysis of early urban sites in coastal Southeast Asia. If a city was to be defined by its wall, it 9 Hansen, “The Concepts of City-State and City-state culture”, p. 12. Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change: The Case of Sumatra”, p. 15. 11 Pirenne, “City origins”, p. 39. 12 It should be noted that in true city state culture fashion, the coastal cities did not believe that the city ended where its structures ceased. The city continued into the surrounding countryside, and the citizens frequently did not separate the idea of city and country or state. At that point in time, it was rare for coastal Southeast Asia to think in the binary of city versus country. In Melaka, for example, the term used for city denoted the country as well, that of negeri. (Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states”, p. 422.) 13 Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p.15. 10 104 implied that alleged pre-modern urban site which had no remains that could be positively identified as a circumference wall could not be considered a city. It also could prejudice searches for rumoured pre-modern urban sites, causing researchers to pass over a site if it did not possess the characteristic that a city, going by the formal definition, was thought to have. For instance, the long searched-for Sri Vijaya was thought to have been a fortified location with walls of stone according to Chinese sources which had described it as a fortified city. However, Sri Vijaya in actuality had not possessed a perimeter wall other than that of earth works, which meant that archaeologists who had focused on locating a city with monumental works as befit a city of Sri Vijaya’s legendary status sought in vain. 14 A preoccupation with the city wall as defining the limits of the city, the line that created Kostof’s country-city binary, can also affect the perceived city size, and by extension, the position of the city in the urban hierarchy of the region. It was not unusual for researchers to consider the walls of the inner stockade or citadel to be the extent of the city. In the case of Jambi, the city was described as being surrounded by brick walls and occupying an area of several “tens of li”, while people lived on the outside. 15 However, if the brick wall described was merely the inner citadel protecting the royal compounds and temples, the people living outside would have undoubtedly considered themselves part of the city, and would have probably intimately involved in its daily functions. To the Southeast Asian way of thinking, they were undoubtedly part of the city, as most indigenous definitions of the city did not distinguish between city and country. 16 To exclude them from a city’s population count would seem needlessly restrictive, and arbitrary. The dependence on a single feature, or a series of features that must be discerned from the murky record that forms the insular Southeast Asian is also problematic. Coastal cities tended to built using perishable materials such as wood, which increased the possibility of the stipulated urban sine-qua-non being destroyed or decayed in a relatively short period of time. Potentially 14 Ibid., p.16. Ibid., p.19. 16 Reid, “The Culture of Malay-Speaking City-States”, p. 422. 15 105 urban sites would then be left out despite possibly functioning on an urban level for that particular society. In short, the formalist approach, drawn from a limited number of case studies, does not sufficiently address the wide variety of cities that can be produced by differing cultural and ecological contexts. Based on completely arbitrary standards, it can and does hinder the study of urbanism in Southeast Asia due to its exclusionary nature. The functionalist approach, which Paul Wheatley champions has also played an important role in the development of Southeast Asian urban theories. The functionalist definition of the city involves identifying a settlement as being urban based on the social institutions it contains, whether physical or otherwise. Wheatley’s chief essential factor for distinguishing the urban from the non-urban is the existence of social institutions that co-ordinate economic exchange, and in doing so, allow occupational specialization amongst members of the city. 17 Therefore, as long as a settlement possesses an institution that allows for such an exchange to take place, it can be considered urban, regardless of whether the institution is mosque or church, run by religious or state authorities. However, Wheatley’s definition places a possibly problematic emphasis on the economic role of a city, ignoring the possibility that not all societies might regard the true role of the city in the same light. A functionalist approach to what constitutes the city in Southeast Asia allows for regional variation, and will not necessarily be tied down by theories formed on cities external to the region. However, it should be noted that this functionalist approach may not be applicable to studies of all Southeast Asian cities in the premodern era. John Miksic notes that so little is known of the structure and daily function of the coastal trade cities of insular Southeast Asia, that it would problematic to form inferences about the typical urban behaviour. 18 17 Paul Wheatley, “What the Greatness of a City is said to be: Reflections on Sjoberg’s ‘Preindustrial City’”, p. 166. 18 Miksic, “Settlement Patterns”, p. 103. 106 There also exists the possibility that different cultures might use their cities towards completely different ends from each other, in other words, the city might serve different functions across regions. This can be seen in the way the definition of a city varied greatly even within a region, as would the term used to signify a settlement that could be considered a city by most informal standards. For instance, the term bandar, in what is now Malaysia, originally referred to a place where foreign trade was encouraged. In Aceh, negeri was used to define a fairly large community, centred usually on a river estuary, an entrepot for foreign merchants, with some political influence over the surrounding territory. For the Minangkabu, a nagari would be a kota (fortified place) with a council house and mosque. 19 The great diversity of meanings and purposes for a city within insular Southeast Asia alone would also suggest that even if it were possible to identify cities according to indigenous definition, it would be too inchoate to serve any real analytical purpose. The functionalist approach would seem to be open to greater application than the formalist approach. However, it is open to a variety of flaws as mentioned above, as well as being problematically exclusionary when operated in the early urban insular Southeast Asian context. Settlement pattern studies, a method of archaeological study that gained momentum in the 1970s, has been brought forward as a viable approach to analyzing Southeast Asian urban sites. Settlement pattern studies involves the in-depth collection of archaeological data from sampled sites, in the expectation of building a foundation on which inferences into the site function and sociological framework can be derived. 20 It incorporates the contextual situation of artifacts, and maps out their physical relationship to each other as well as the site. In doing so, archaeologists are able to study the manner in which early societies laid themselves out on the site. The pattern formed by these groups are heavily influenced by cultural and environmental 19 20 Miksic,. “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 12. Parsons, “Archaeological Settlement Patterns”, p. 129. 107 needs and beliefs, and as such, allow a starting point for the archaeologist interested in a functional interpretation of these ancient cultures. 21 There are said to be three levels of settlement pattern studies, ranging from the individual dwelling unit to entire regions. At the micro level, the structure of one household is studied and mapped. The entire settlement is taken for the next level, followed by the entire region and the relationships between the different settlements. 22 Extensive archaeological data is ideally measured from surveys, including the distribution of shards and rock rubble that enabled measurement of settlement surface area, the density of the shards that allowed a relative idea of habitation levels, fauna and floral remains which give further indication into chronological, societal, and technological issues. Architectural remains – if any – are also noted, as is the prominent environmental features surrounding the site. The location of the sites relative to each other is also mapped within the studied region, and the shift in the distribution patterns of these sites is also studied over time. 23 The incorporation of the physical relationship between artifacts, and between the artifacts and their environment is key to a study of settlement patterns. Intensive recording of archaeological data is required. The Application of Settlement Patterns in the definition of a Southeast Asian Urbanism Using settlement pattern analysis in the study of Southeast Asian urbanism has its advantages. From the archaeological standpoint, its comprehensive approach to the collection of data can only be beneficial in the artifact-poor environs of Southeast Asia. As mentioned early, frequently the most information-rich remains, especially in the coastal regions, are dependent on holistic analysis and an exhaustive approach to details. Reconstructing archaeological cultures 21 Ibid., p. 129. Ibid., p. 137. 23 Ibid., p. 142. 22 108 from settlement pattern analysis is also made easier by the methodology employed which ensures a wealth of data for study. Settlement pattern analysis is generated first and foremost from archaeological data, ensuring that any further hypotheses will stand on a solid foundation of relatively uncontestable data. Unlike nebulous concepts of state and problematic assertions of a specified structure based on a universalist theory, settlement patterns are easier to establish by virtue of the physicallypresent, 24 patently obvious and theoretically mostly non-optative remains. Once the data is collected, it becomes easier to test hypotheses with regards to complex sociological questions The use of settlement pattern analysis is also useful in the determination of a Southeast Asian urbanism. Most studies that employ settlement pattern analysis take the approach that the definition of urbanism should be a relativistic, culturally relevant one. Generally, the site is seen in the context of the regional settlement pattern. If it appears to be a higher tier site, meaning with at least one tier of settlements under it, it could be considered an urban site. 25 The underlying assumption would be that a settlement of a distinctly different size would be differentiated from the lesser settlements in other ways, whether in terms of culture, function or physical structure. In short, it would have to be different simply because there would have to be an underlying factor whose symptoms included but would not be restricted to, a difference in size. As such, because it would be different from the merely residential/agrarian village-level settlements, it could be considered urban. Taking the settlement pattern approach also allows the avoidance of the pitfalls that have been cited in the formalist and functional approach. Unlike the formalist approach, it does not take any one feature, nor set of features to be the sine qua non of a city across all cultural and ecological contexts. This effectively removes one possible accusation of arbitrary standards for the defining of urbanism. 24 25 Miksic, “Settlement Patterns”, p. 96. Some studies favour two tiers. Miksic, “Settlement Patterns”, p. 96. 109 Similarly, it does not link the definition of urbanism with the function of a city within a specific socio-cultural group. That particular approach has been considered problematic as it requires substantial amount of archaeological data to base inferences as to a site’s socio-economic role within a cultural-ethnic group. In Southeast Asia, where archaeological and archival data is sparse, basing a definition of urbanism on its function might be pre-mature at best. In both these cases, the method of settlement pattern analysis works because it acknowledges both the cultural and ecological context, and sites its definition of urbanism within the physical and sociological boundaries of the settlement group. It also acknowledges the restrictions of archaeological work in Southeast Asia. Finally, settlement patterns work simply because they are the equivalent of primary records in the archaeologists’ field. They are the most direct reflection of socio-economic behaviour than almost any other side of material culture available. 26 However, there are also charges that have been levied at settlement pattern analysis. The evidence collected ultimately relies on the objective sampling of sites, which does not always take place. Settlement sites must also be found in the first place for sampling and analysis to take place, a process that favours sites near existing habitated areas, and sites less obscured by the inevitable vegetation. 27 As a result, the monumental sites, mostly found in mainland Southeast Asia and Java, the region of the alleged 28 orthogenetic cities, are once again favoured over the coastal urban sites of insular Southeast Asia. From the practical standpoint of governments, they are also easier to market as income-generating tourist attractions, thereby ensuring a greater willingness on the part of the state to fund archaeological work on them. However, tourist marketability can also be regarded as a two-edged sword. Many sites were heavily disturbed by state attempts to improve 26 Parsons, “Archaeological Settlement Patterns”, p. 130. Miksic, “Settlement Patterns”, p. 98. 28 Many of the orthogenetic cities did not remain orthogenetic, and orthogenetic/heterogenetic should be viewed as a sliding scale rather than an absolute dichotomy. However, this classification process remains outside the scope of this paper. 27 110 and improvise on the remains. During the 1980s upgrading of Muara Jambi in eastern Sumatra for instance, Chinese and local ceramics were unearthed. However, they were not deemed part of the work being restored, and were thus discarded. 29 There is also the question as to what constitutes a “settlement”. Certain sites, such as Borobudur, have been noted for being ceremonial centres, but have very little evidence of actual regular habitation. There are also settlements that experience periodic habitation, such as the market towns that sprang up across the island world. Kota Cina was one such example in northeast Sumatra. It later became a permanent settlement that flourished for two hundred years, but it began as one of the many transitory trading centres that littered the southern Indonesian beaches for a season before vanishing, reminding archaeologists of the European medieval trade fairs. 30 The tiered settlement concept used to define urbanism also runs the risk of being considered arbitrary in its own right, the same charges that plagued the formalist approach. The physical size of settlement has often been used to classify them into first, second, or third tier sites, which is often dependent on the researcher’s chosen physical limits for each size. There is also the question with regards to the number of subordinate settlements required before a site can be thought of as urban. However, anthropological studies have suggested that there is a “natural” size for villagelevel settlements within any region, and villages beyond a certain size fission off into different settlements of the same size. Occasionally, a village grows beyond the average size without fissioning off, due to unidentified factors. 31 The impetus behind it presumably also spurs structural and cultural variations that give the settlement that nebulous quality of “urbanism”. That being said, settlement pattern analysis in Southeast Asia is still somewhat at the data-gathering stage. Regional-level settlement pattern analysis still remains somewhat 29 Miksic, “Heterogenetic cities”, p. 110. Ibid., pp. 110-111. 31 Miksic, “Settlement Patterns”, p. 105-106. 30 111 hypothetical, with theories being drawn up in a heuristic spirit, subject to further development on discovery of further evidence. Despite its admitted drawbacks, settlement pattern analysis would seem to be the most relatively objective method in which to draw up a needed indigenous definition of urbanism. 112 Appendix 2: Southeast Asian Cartography and Illustrations In any urban study, the availability of city plans and illustrations would be of paramount importance. However, pre-colonial insular Southeast Asia did not apparently have an extensive indigenous tradition of map-making, whether urban or nautical, nor of illustrating the city. Most available maps in Southeast Asia in general seem to have been after the Portuguese arrival in the sixteenth century, apart from certain temple friezes in the mainland kingdoms. 1 However, this lack of city plans is somewhat illustrative of underlying indigenous attitudes towards the city in general. Even amongst the mainland kingdoms of Siam and Burma, there was a relative lack of city plans as compared to the cosmological, regional or nautical maps. 2 Joseph Schwartzberg attributed it to a comparatively late development of urbanisation in the region, since city planning which would have necessitated maps of the existing city imply a desire for control over the urban form which seldom develops until a later date. While that appears to be somewhat simplistic, it is still true that there are few city plans even in the more organised mainland cities, most of which were to be found in Burma. These were drawn up to guide the city form, and in the case of a Burmese map of Ayutthaya, to allow for a planned invasion. 3 The lack of city plans in the island world can be more easily attributed to the structure of the maritime cities. Organic and unplanned, unlike the cosmological representations in urban form of the mainland kingdoms, there would have been no need to draw up plans to develop the city from the start. Conversely, the organic structure of the maritime city would have also been difficult to represent if any ruler had commissioned such a plan of the existing city. 1 Schwartzberg, “Introduction”, p. 689. Ibid., p. 700. 3 Joseph H. Schwartzberg, “Southeast Asian Geographical Maps”, The History of Cartography, Vol 2 Book 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward. (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 798. 2 The nature of Southeast Asian warfare might have had a role to play as well in the lack of geographically correct plans of cities and their environs. As has been noted, both mainland and island Southeast Asians preferred quick, decisive, preferably bloodless battles for the capture of additional manpower. The long sieges and extensive battles to gain a stronghold or a city simply were not favoured in a region that measured wealth in men rather than land. 4 One of the key requirements of the extended battle would be intimate knowledge of the targeted city, and the ability to transmit this information to others, in other words, a plan of the city and its environs. The lack of this need in Southeast Asian warfare might account for the lack of plans, as well as explain why the only known detailed city plan was commissioned for the invasion of Ayutthaya, by the mainland Burmese who were perhaps more willing to embrace the use of the siege and extended battle than other Southeast Asian polities. 5 The absence of maps produced by indigenous Southeast Asians might also be attributed to the element of control intrinsic to the medium itself. The creation of a plan or a map requires extensive gathering of information, and after that, the plan becomes a tool of control in itself due to the information represented therein. Maps and plans were used by monarchs to display impressive conquests, and to record lands and villages for taxation. 6 Likewise, the gift of a map from a defeated polity represented the surrender of information to its acknowledged master as well as the transfer of control. This was the case in the Javanese city-state of Kediri, whose Raja offered a map as an indication of surrender to the Yuan invaders of 1293. 7 The creation and use of plans to implement control over the urban area might not have been of much use in the maritime port cities as well. Due to its nature as a port, control over the populace could very well have been wielded at the customs point at the docks. Also, many of the port cities were noted for their compounds, where the orang kaya and local leaders would stay 4 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680, Vol. 1, (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 1988), p. 123. 5 Thomas Suárez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia. (Singapore: Periplus Editions (HK)Ltd., 1999), p. 29. 6 Suárez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, p. 29. 7 Schwartzberg, “Introduction”, p. 697. 114 along with their sworn men and families. Control of the populace was thus done through the agency of their leader, again removing the need to map the city in order to control it. Southeast Asian merchants, such as the Malays and Javanese, were also protective over maps that they did have. The issue of maps and plans as valuable information sources of local terrain and as tools of control was at play here. With the rising presence of the Europeans and the Dutch, indigenous traders naturally preferred to keep maps hidden from their economic and military rivals. For similar reasons, village chieftains in later years were reluctant to disclose territories that they ruled over to their Dutch colonial masters. 8 Having noted the lack of indigenous maps, it should also be said that such maps or plans, had they existed, might have been of limited use as a viable source about early modern Southeast Asian maritime city urban structure. Maps were sometimes more cosmological representation than geographical records, and the scientific style of Western map-makers was not always a key feature nor desired requirement in Southeast Asian maps. This was not to say that Southeast Asians were incapable of drawing such maps or city plans, but that they were often uninterested in doing so. 9 Pre-modern Malay art also does not seem to have run towards panoramic views in general, whether of the city or countryside, or that of individual houses. Representations of life forms, although often interpreted as not permissible in Islam, nevertheless did take place in Southeast Asian art. However, if there are wooden carvings of houses or cities for Melaka, they do not seem to have survived. 10 Overall, the lack of illustrations and city plans can be attributed towards a lack of need, and as well as to the perception of the city, both in cosmography and warfare, that did not lend itself towards such representations. This absence of illustrations, coupled with the lack of city 8 Suárez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, p. 32. Ibid., p. 27. 10 Sherwin, “The Palace of Sultan Mansur Shah”, p. 103. 9 115 maps, means that any reconstruction of the urban form must be done through the archival records, and through foreign maps and art. 116 Appendix 3: The Melaka debate and limitations of sources Known historical sources on Southeast Asia increase with the advent of European influence, and in Melaka, European records provide a heavy portion of information on both the pre-Portuguese and Portuguese period. However, they are subject to a number of limitations, and one in particular – that of essentially creating the myth of a golden Melaka – has bearing on this study of Melaka’s urban form.. The bulk of the known European records of Melaka in the 1511 period are Portuguese. The majority of these records and produced works were generally based on interviews with local Melakans, Persian and Arab traders, and reports submitted by Portuguese factors and officers to Lisbon. 1 Compiled after the fall of Melaka, they relied heavily on oral history in the region to reconstruct pre-Portuguese Melaka. Portuguese-authored histories of that fifteenth century Melaka were therefore based on mostly secondary sources. The most prominent of these works included: 2 Tomés Pires’s Suma Oriental (1512-1515), Joao de Barros, Asia (Completed 1539, published 1553), Braz de Albuquerque’s The Commentaries of the Great Alfonson Dalboquerque (published 1557), Manuel Godinho de Eredia’s Report on the Golden Chersonese (1597-1600) and Description of Malacca, Meridional India and Cathay (early 1613), Diego de Couto’s Decada (completed 1597). The Portuguese writings naturally have their limitations when used as a source for pre1511 history, apart from the issue of relying on second hand information. They tended to be products of their time, reflecting the interests and beliefs of the writers. Historian Ian MacGregor noted that the writings tended to show an anti-Muslim bias which was typical for that period in 1 2 Hashim, The Malay Sultanate, p. 11. Ibid., p. 11-13. time, in addition to being Portuguese-centric in their coverage of Southeast Asian history. 3 Barros’s Asia, for instance, contextualised the Portuguese conquest as part of the meta-narrative of Christian advancement and glory. Albuquerque’s Commentaries was inclined to blame all misunderstandings and problems on “the Moors”, 4 and managed to imply that Melaka’s downfall was due to the sultan’s inexplicable intransigence in acknowledging the overlordship of Portugal. Their records are clearly from a foreign lens of understanding, leaving room for cultural misunderstandings and mistranslations. 5 In addition to these issues, the Portuguese records and historians have been suspected of glorifying pre-1511 Melaka. Most are thought to have done so in order to emphasise Portuguese accomplishment in general, and that of Albuquerque in particular, such as the Commentaries and Joaos Barros’s Asia. 6 Others, such as Pires, were thought to have inflated Melaka’s wealth and status in Southeast Asia and glossed over problems during the first days of Portuguese rule, so as to impress the King and convince him that it was worth diverting resources towards holding this new possession. 7 Issues such as these have led certain historians to contend that Melaka was not the dynamic world-class city dominating Southeast Asia as frequently portrayed, but a rather smaller settlement that was closer to a regional hub. 8 However, there is sufficient documentation from non-Portuguese sources to confirm that Melaka was prominent enough to be of importance to its contemporaries. While the actual status in the urban hierarchy can be contended, the fact of its significance cannot. Overall, the Portuguese records remain invaluable in terms of reconstructing pre-1511 history in Melaka and the region. Although reliant on interviews for indigenous history, they had 3 Ian A. MacGregor, “Some Aspects of Portuguese Historical Writing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on South East Asia”, Historians of South East Asia, ed. D.G.E. Hall, (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 199 4 Birch, The commentaries, vol 3, p. 69. 5 Hashim. The MalaySultanate, p. 14. 6 MacGregor, “Some Aspects of Portuguese Historical Writing”, p. 174. 7 Ibid., p. 175. 8 Roderick Ptak, “Reconsidering Melaka and Central Guangdong: Portugal’s and Fujian’s Impact on Southeast Asian Trade (Early Sixteenth Century)”, in Iberians in the Singapore-Melaka Area (16th to 18th Century), ed. Peter Borschberg (Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), p. 6. 118 the advantage of being in the region while local memory was still relatively fresh – Pires, for instance, was in Melaka the year after its fall. It should be noted however, that Malay/Melakan culture was significantly different in the latter half of the century, and accounts from that time period should be used judiciously when speculating about pre-Portuguese indigenous customs. Portuguese factors and servicemen also sent extensive reports back to Lisbon, reports that were treated seriously and were filled with information that they felt was necessary for the furtherment of Portuguese interests in Southeast Asia. While the subjects of interest tended to be that of wars and political situations, with some secularly written histories focused on trade, there were still some that had an interest in noting indigenous culture and histories. 9 In fact, in certain respects the Portuguese records were considered more complete than their indigenous counterparts, as the Portuguese factors based their information on oral interviews, wrote about Melakan commoners and society rather than the goings-on of the Melakan elites. 10 These voluminous reports were mostly preserved and available to this day. This is partly due to the Portuguese King Manuel, who was thought to have a strong interest in Southeast Asia bordering on the expansionistic, with the result that reports were meticulously archived and prolifically filed. Portuguese historians such as Barros and de Couto were thus able to draw on a strong pool of resources when writing their respective histories of Southeast Asia. There are fewer Portuguese sources on Southeast Asia after 1650, reflective of the loss of Melaka, and their ebbing influence. 11 Tomé Pires’s Suma Oriental and the Albuquerque commentaries are most frequently cited as sources for pre-1511 Melakan history. Although written and compiled after the fall, they are the closest to a contemporary historical account. Pires arrived in Melaka a year after the Portuguese conquest, and stayed there for several years as he wrote the Suma Oriental, using 9 MacGregor, “Some Aspects of Portuguese Historical Writing”, p. 172 and 199. C. H. Wake, “Malay Historical Traditions and the politics of Islamisation”, Melaka : the transformation of a Malay capital c.1400-1980, ed. Paul Wheatley and Kernial Singh Sandhu, (Kuala Lumpur : Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 134. 11 MacGregor, “Some Aspects of Portuguese Historical Writing “, p. 198-199. 10 119 interviews with the locals in the reconstruction of recent Melakan history. 12 The Albuquerque commentaries were based on letters and diaries written by the Portuguese conquerer of Melaka, Afonso de Albuquerque, compiled and edited by his son Braz de Albuquerque. Barros’s Asia is also regarded as a reasonably reliable source, and is based on the aforesaid colonial reports and relying on Suma Oriental for some pre-1511 information. Although Barros never visited Asia, his lack of local experience is not necessarily an issue. As mentioned, the reports submitted to Lisbon were extremely meticulous and voluminous, to the point that Southeast Asia was considered to be better documented in the royal archives than in India. 13 In his position in the Portuguese government, he had direct access to these archives and incoming reports from the Indian office, and could interview newly returned travellers and officers from Southeast Asia. Regretfully, his work has not been fully translated into English, although M.J. Pintado has translated the portions of Barros’s work that relate to Melaka. 14 Eredia’s Description of Malacca, Meridional India and Cathay is also frequently used, and is invaluable due to the sheer amount of descriptive information and illustrations provided. He was born and raised in Southeast Asia, and he provided the local element that Barros lacked. However, it should be noted that Eredia was not considered to have been overly discriminating about his selection of sources, leading to various inaccuracies. 15 In terms of urban description, it is mainly Eredia and Pires that can be said to have described Melaka to any depth. Other accounts, although useful, provide urban details only incidentally, such as in Albuquerque’s description of the attack. All the accounts however, rely on Suma Oriental to one degree or another, warranting a closer look at Tomé Pires’s work. 12 Hashim. The Malay Sultanate, p. 12. MacGregor, “Some Aspects of Portuguese Historical Writing”, p. 199. 14 It is however, my opinion that Pintado’s translation should be treated carefully, as certain errors in the publication did not inspire confidence. 15 MacGregor, “Some Aspects of Portuguese Historical Writing”, p. 177. 13 120 Tomes Pires’s Suma Oriental Tomé Pires’s Suma Oriental is the Sejarah Melayu of Portuguese texts, when it comes to discussing its primacy as a historical source for reconstructions of early Melakan history. Written in 1512-1515, it functioned as a report and encyclopaedia of sorts for the Orient. Tomé Pires, an apothecary and accountant for the Portuguese government, was sent to Melaka by Afonso de Albuquerque to investigate certain irregularities, supervise the drug trade and work as a scrivener for the Portuguese factory. 16 During this time, he wrote of his experiences in the Orient, basing his report on a combination of personal experience and interviews with travellers. The manuscript was kept under confidential status in the Lisbon Royal Archives, and was used by other Portuguese historians in later years before going missing for several centuries. Fragments were rediscovered, reassembled and translated by Armando Cortesão in 1937, and was published by the Hakluyt society. Since that 1944 date, the Suma Oriental has been used by nearly every history of pre-colonial Southeast Asia. As a historical source on Melaka, the Suma Oriental has its limitations. Pires used interviews with local informants as his source for pre-conquest Melaka, thus incorporating the uncertainties of memory with the prejudices of his interview subjects. For instance, his assessment of the various sultans seemed to have been dependent on the informants’ opinion of the ruler in question. 17 His dates were occasionally suspect, and he would leave out important events in favour of discussing life under the Melakan sultans. Pires was also writing for the purpose of convincing the Portuguese king to invest men and military might in Melaka, and as such was prone to exaggerate the extent of Melakan wealth. Problems experienced in Melaka after the conquest, such as the price of food, a constant bugbear even under the sultans due to Melaka’s lack of staple crop agriculture. 18 16 Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. LXII. Hashim. The Malay Sultanate of Malacca, p. 12. 18 Pires also writes: “...it will be necessary to describe the city of Malacca and its boundaries and its kingdom, and then the places under its dominion, to show its greatness according to local standards, so that 17 121 The Suma Oriental also has a problem in common with the Sejarah Melayu: that of authenticity and accurate translation. There is no original Suma Oriental to be found, even in Portuguese. The version currently used is the Paris manuscript rediscovered in 1937 by Armando Cortesão, whose English translation is commonly referenced. Cortesão himself states that the copy had to be collated with other folios, due to the numerous transcribers’ errors. Pires’ style also made translation into English an uncertain task that involved calculative guesswork on Cortesão’s part. 19 The Suma Oriental nonetheless remains invaluable in its depth of detail in addition to being the first European-authored entry on Melakan history. Although the focus in the prePortuguese section was more concerned with the political aspect of Melaka rather than city description, Pires considered the construction activities of the sultans worthy of note. His focus on trade and the need to stress Melaka’s value as a trading hub also resulted in lively descriptions of the markets. The Suma Oriental’s section on Portuguese Melaka is also useful, since Pires was physically present during those earlier years and as a government official, was privy to decisions made by the Melakan viceroy, especially the building of the fort A Famosa. Portuguese Illustrations Portuguese and other European illustrations were somewhat more prolific than their Southeast Asian counterparts. There are a few factors that can be attributed to this; firstly the militaristic intentions towards the Southeast Asian cities that necessitated the drawing up of attack plans; secondly the need to control the captured indigenous city. Lastly, there was a trend in European art towards the city plan as a subject in the sixteenth to seventeenth century, and newly captured urban prizes or famous sieges were illustrated and immortalised with varying its destruction may be realized afterwards.” Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 259; MacGregor, “Some Aspects of Portuguese Historical Writing”, p. 175. 19 Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. xvi. 122 degrees of accuracy. 20 The subjects naturally included European conquests in the Far East, with the result that European illustrations of the Southeast Asian city are reasonably prolific. The bulk of Portuguese illustrations were drawn after the fall of Melaka, and tended to understandably focus on the fort of A Famosa, possibly because later attacks on Melaka pivoted on the fort, possibly because the fort was also the Portuguese compound, therefore more promiment to the eye of the artist. As a result, the area of Upeh, on the north bank, was seldom depicted with great detail. 21 Their accuracy varied, as some of the artists preferred to idealise the fort or were never there, relying instead on plans and reports. Manuel Godinho de Eredia’s drawing of Melaka in Declaraçam de Malaca apparently did not match details in his own written account. 22 Other voices: Non-portuguese sources Although the bulk of the European records around the 1511 period are naturally Portuguese, there exist other less referenced works. There is a rare pre-1511 European source, from Ludovic Varthema, an adventurer of Bologna who travelled through Melaka in 1505. 23 There are also the letters of Giovanni da Empoli, a Venetian who travelled with Albuqeurque to Melaka in 1511. 24 His account of events is invaluable for its information on the first early days of Portuguese conquest, as well as for his neutral stance. Both Varthema and Giovanni’s account are the main extant Italian sources that have been translated to English, and it is to be hoped that other sources will be either discovered or translated. The Italians generally had very little militaristic intentions in Southeast Asia, and if Varthema and Giovanni’s accounts are be considered representative, their records were reflective of an attitude towards the region far more 20 Pollack, “Representations of the city in siege views of the seventeenth century”, p. 614. Manguin, “Of Fortresses and Galleys”, p. 612. 22 Irwin, “Melaka Fort”, p. 786. 23 Jones, The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema, p. xxv. 24 Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 116. 21 123 impartial than that of the expansionist Portuguese. 25 As such, they could prove extremely useful for future researchers of early modern Southeast Asia. In addition to European sources, there also exist patchy Arab accounts on pre-1511 Melaka. As the premier trading port of fifteenth century Southeast Asia, it naturally attracted the attention of the West Asian traders. The Arabs and Turks in particular must have been interested in this Muslim city which was said to have had pretensions to supplanting Mecca before its fall. 26 Despite this, known first hand West Asian sources on Melaka are patchy at best. Most of Arabic literature on Southeast Asia fall into five main categories – that of travellers’ accounts, navigational works, historical compilations, geographical and medical treatises. However, these texts were generally secondary writings, based on the accounts of Arab travellers to the region, such as Ibn Batutta. Those however were few and far between due to the distances involved, and frequently bordered on the fantastic. Merchant and sailors were far more likely to travel to Southeast Asia and China, but they seldom kept detailed accounts other than navigational instructions. For both the navigational works and travellers’ accounts, there was also a bias in favour of information on the far more exotic China. 27 Both primary and secondary West Asian sources are directly proportionate to the level of commerce with Southeast Asia. With the fall of the great trading polity of Sri Vijaya and the subsequent fall in Arab trade in the eleventh to thirteenth century, there was a corresponding drop in both the quality and quantity of records. There was a slight resurgence around the fifteenth and sixteenth century due to the Mongol’s reorganisation of the sea routes, and the rise of Islam in the West Asia. After the 1511 fall of Melaka, Portuguese ships controlled the sea route to China, and their Arab rivals found it difficult to travel the trade routes to Southeast Asia. Publications that 25 Ibid., p. 89. Cortesão, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pire, p. 254. 27 G. R. Tibbetts, A study of the Arabic texts containing material on South-east Asia, (Brill: Leiden & London, 1979), p. 2-3 and 6. 26 124 concerned Southeast Asia fell once again, and the region did not capture the imagination of Arabic writers until the rise of the Ottoman Empire. 28 Other than availability and subject matter, Arabic sources are also problematic due to prolific inaccuracies. Many original manuscripts were re-edited and copied in the Arabic script which is particularly susceptible to copyist errors. Also, tonal differences between Malay and Arabic, including certain Malay syllables that simply did not exist in Arabic, resulted in place names and indigenous terms rendered unrecognisable. 29 For the specific case of Melaka, information on pre-1511 Melaka is almost as sparse as that of post-1511 Melaka for the reasons specified. The main known traveller for the period was Ibn Batutta, and he does not mention Melaka at all, concentrating on India. However, the city with pretensions to being the new Mecca was sufficiently interesting for the Arabic captain Ahmad ibn Majid to take the unusual step of including a brief impression in the middle of his navigational treatise. 30 Ibn Majid’s account however, focuses more on the religious aspect of Melaka, possibly due to his professed horror at the social practices of Melakan Muslims. 31 Very little of the city is described therein. 28 Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. 30 Suárez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, p. 104. 31 Tibbetts, A study of the Arabic texts, p. 206. 29 125 Appendix 4: The Portuguese Attack and Melakan defense Warfare in Southeast Asia is not the focus of this study, but for any meaningful understanding of the role that the city walls played in the function of the city, the ways of waging war in the pre-modern world should be understood. The Portuguese attack on Melaka documents a textbook example of the indigenous response to aggression, in the pre-1511 world. The Portuguese first made contact in the form of five ships with 400 men led by Diogo Lopez de Siqueira. The story of first contact is murky, with the Sejarah Melayu and Portuguese sources giving different accounts. In any event, it ended badly with de Siqueira losing 60 men killed or imprisoned in Melaka. Portuguese sources suggested that the king was prejudiced against them, as word carried by Gujerati traders of Goa’s fall had reached Melaka. The local mullahs were said to have asked the king not to allow yet another Muslim kingdom to fall to Christian rule. 1 Other versions say that the foreign traders viewed the Portuguese as potential competitors, and prejudiced the Sultan against them. 2 De Siqueira limped back to India, bringing news of his defeat to Afonso de Albuquerque, the architect of Portuguese expansionism in Asia. Albuquerque led a force of 15 ships and 1600 men to Melaka, arriving in June, 1511. The fleet comprised mainly Portuguese forces, but included various Europeans who had been co-opted or otherwise included in this armada, including a disinherited Pasai prince. 3 When he arrived, the Melakans had prepared for the expected reprisal and had erected stockades along the seaboard and at strategic points within the city. In addition to the Melakan fighting men, the “Turks, Guzarates [Gujeratis], Rumes and 1 The Portuguese accounts of Albuquerque and Tomé Pires state that the Melakans had foul intent and had plotted to ambush de Sequira’s men, and seize the ships. The Sejarah Melayu states that the Portuguese were unmolested, and de Sequira was in fact adopted by the Bendahara Sri Maharajah. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, p. 151;Birch, The commentaries Vol 2.,p. 221; Cortesão, The Suma Oriental, p. 280. 2 Pintado, Asia, p. 43. 3 The number of ships brought seem have varied between 15-20, and between 1000 to 1600 men. Cortesão, The Suma Orienta, p. 279; Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 131. Coraconese” in the city also offered aid to the general defence in terms of men and bombards, 4 a common practice in the island world, but perhaps fuelled as well by personal grievances in this instance. The Portuguese fleet and allies dropped anchor at the present-day Pulau Besar, then referred to as Pulau Cina due to the Chinese merchants living there. Da Empoli reports that the inhabitants were friendly, and that while relations between the fleet and Melaka were naturally hostile, there was nevertheless interaction between them. Small market traders seem to have taken advantage of the situation by sailing up to the Portuguese fleet and supplying them with staples, a state of affairs that may have continued throughout the month-long siege. 5 After negotiations failed, Albuquerque ordered an attack on the city. (See Fig. 1.2). He first began by attempting to neutralise the threat to his ships by attacking and burning the houses on the northern shoreline along with the ships that lay harboured. 6 The city was also heavily bombarded by the mixed Portuguese forces, but that failed to bring about surrender. It is possible that the bombards while undoubtedly intimidating, failed to do any significant damage. Portuguese artillery had not yet reached the accuracy and firepower that later Dutch forces inflicted on Melaka, and accounts suggested that the Melakan palisades were sturdy enough that cannonballs sometimes bounced off. 7 Fires started in the city, but did not seem to have been immediately devastating, possibly due to the relatively spacious layout of the various compounds typical of the indigenous city. Albuquerque’s next option was a direct attack on the city. Realising that the market bridge was the weak point, he ordered an attack on the only link between the north and southern sides of Melaka. In doing so, he hoped to cut off the administrative sector comprising the palace, mosque and orang kaya from the trading and residential sector, thereby halving the defensive 4 Birch, The commentaries,p. 68- 69. Bausani, Letter of Giovanni , p. 131-132. 6 Birch, The commentaries Vol 3. p. 95. 7 Charney, Southeast Asian Warfare, p. 49 and 94. 5 127 forces. He considered this necessary, as he was well aware that the Melakan forces far outnumbered his own. The market bridge was also likely to have been the weakest point of the palisade surrounding the hill, as it offered a wide road to the palace and mosque stronghold. Lastly, as a market bridge, it had been built to allow the easy disembarkation of ships around it. 8 The Melakans seemed to have been aware of this weakness, as they had taken care to build defensive structures including palisades on the bridge. Eredia’s study of sixteenth-century Malay fortifications suggest that they were probably made of nipah palms supposedly favoured for their hardiness. They defended the bridge behind stockades with a combination of bombards and arrows, but the Portuguese forces manage to break through to the southern side. The Sultan, mounted on elephant, was said to have led armed men from the mosque side, which seemed to have served as the defense stronghold. They were routed by the more heavily armed Portuguese, and Albuquerque succeeded in firing the houses that were near the mosque, including the palace built for the wedding of the Pahang Sultan’s son. 9 The Portuguese then withdrew, without attempting to hold the ground gained in the first round of attacks due to fatique. Sporadic attempts continued for a month and were countered by the Sultan, giving the Melakan forces time to regroup and rebuild their stockades. The palisades on the vulnerable bridge were reinforced and strengthened by a double wall of wood, with places for artillery. 10 The Sultan ordered barricades built along the major streets that led to the mosque, both from the bridge and the southern end of the city. Poisoned chevaux-de-frise – spiked barricades- were also thrown down on the expected landing places on the shoreline. 11 The Melakans seemed to have been no stranger to the concepts of urban warfare, as the individual compounds also aided by using the bombards that were mounted on the terraces, and other projectile weapons including blow pipes and arrows being used. Trenches were dug, and there 8 Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3., p. 102; Pintado, Asia, p. 161. Mills, Eredia, p. 33;Birch, The commentaries, p. 103 and 107. 10 Pintado, Asia, p. 169-171. 11 Birch, The commentaries, Vol 3.p. 109. 9 128 were reports of primitive land mines along critical streets. The Portuguese in turn were supported by shipboard bombards that continually fired on the city as they staged their second and final attack on Melaka. Overwhelmed, the Melakan sultan and retinue fled to his ancestral stronghold of Bertam in the expectation that the “white Bengali” invaders would soon leave after raiding the city. 12 The first month left the Portuguese little time to enjoy their prize. Albuqeurque set about building a timber stockade on the hill, before tearing down the mosque and other stone structures in order to use them for the building of A Famosa. During the time, they were under near constant attack from the inland. 13 The attackers were led by the Melakan Sultan, whose still commanded considerable numbers despite his recent defeat. This led credence to the belief that in typical Southeast Asian warfare fashion, the Sultan had abandoned the city with most of his forces, rather than actually been defeated. The constant attacks led Albuquerque to build palisades blocking the main entrances back into the city. 14 The Portuguese rule over Melaka would never be an easy one. They were attacked several times in the first year by the Melakan Sultan from his new stronghold at the Muar River, a trend that continued until the Sultan fled to Bintan. Over the course of the next hundred and fifty years, the new Melaka would sustain attacks from Johor, Aceh, the Javanese and finally, fall to the Dutch in 1640. The Portuguese would also experience internal uprisings, such as the rebellion by Javanese leader Utemutaraja. 15 12 In the Sejarah Melayu, the writer expresses the shock of the Melakan defenders when confronted with the firepower of cannons, seemingly for the first time. Considering that Melakan possessed no less than 8000 bombards whose size impressed even the Portuguese, this seems unlikely. Even if cannons were traditionally used in island warfare only to intimidate, it seems improbable that the Melakans were unacquainted with the destructive capabilities of cannons. (C.C. Brown, Sejarah Melayu, p. 152.) A Florentine in Albuquerque’s fleet felt that the Melakans were not startled by the firepower, but the sheer volume and intensity of the attack. (Bausani, Letter of Giovanni p. 95.).Birch, The commentaries, Vol. 3, p. 131; Pintado, Asia , p. 167-169. 13 Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 139. 14 Pintado, Lendas da India, p. 273. 15 Bausani, Letter of Giovanni, p. 140. 129 Appendix 5: Construction Timeline of Makassar fortifications Reign Date Event Tumpakrisik Kallonna First incarnation of Somba Opu in earth was built. (r. 1511-1547) Benteng Kale Gowa was built around Gowa heartland. Tunipalangga Built the brick walls of Somba Opu (r. 1547-1565) Built the brick walls of Benteng Kale Gowa. Built Benteng Anak Gowa. Hardly used. During his reign, the capital shifts to Somba Opu. Tunibatta 1550-1615 No mention of new fortifications or improvements. (r. 1566) Conversion to Islam in 1608. Tunijalloq Increase in foreign visitors in 1613 noted. (r. 1566-90) Tunipassuluk (r. 1590-93) Sultan Alauddin 1615 Englishman reports bricks being made to finish two castles. The castles are Benteng Kale Gowa and (r. 1593-1639) Benteng Talloq. Dutch pull out of Makassar. 1618-20 Benteng Kale Gowa finished. It becomes the main palace centre for the Karaeng Gowa for 1618-1631, as Talloq was the stronger partner at this point. Benteng Talloq finished. Main gate of Somba Opu reinforced in stone. 1630s Dutch begins series of campaigns against Makassar. 1631-32 Construction of the Maccinik Dangang (“Watch the Trade”) palace. All of Somba Opu’s walls replaced completely with brick. The western wall is left intact. 1634-35 Dutch conduct a naval blockade of the harbour. Coastal wall of large brick from Ujung Tana to Somba Opu built. Benteng Panakkukang and Benteng Ujung Pandang, both coastal forts, built using a mix of brick and earth. Western wall of Somba Opu reinforced internally with brick layer. Niches and points for artillery built. A second gate is added. Sultan Malikusaid 1650 Maccinik Sombalak (“Watch the Sails”). (r. 1639-1653) Sultan Hassanuddin Maccinik Dangang palace taken down, replaced with 1660 Dutch occupy southernmost coastal fort of Benteng Panakkukang. (r. 1653-1669) Simultaneous uprising from Boné results in Sultan Hasanuddin concluding a quick peace. Treaty requires dismantling of all fortresses and walls except Somba Opu. However, terms of treaty not upheld by Makassarese. Dutch leave after destroying fort. 1661-1662 Repairwork on the Paknakukang walls, and defences 131 between Paknakkukang and Barombong which had been destroyed by Dutch occupation in 1660. The entire system of coastal defences was overhauled and expanded, with emphasis on the PaknakkukangSomba Opu stretch, Portuguese quarter south of Mariso, and Ujung Pandang. Coastal wall extended to Benteng Tallok. 1666-1667 Dutch-Bugis forces land in southern Sulawesi, gradually fight their way up to Somba Opu. Treaty of Bungaya in 1667. Ujung Pandang surrendered to the Dutch Sultan Hasanuddin spends the next two years building makeshift fortifications between Ujung Pandang and Fort Rotterdam 1669 Dutch-Bugis attack from Benteng Ujung Pandang. Somba Opu falls, and is destroyed by the Dutch. 1670 External fortification walls around old Gowa destroyed by Makassarese under pressure from the Dutch. 132 Appendix 6: 1638 sketch of Makassar The 1638 sketch of Makassar has formed the basis for most impressions and articles written on the layout of the city. The original illustration was found in the Secret Atlas of the VOC, and is thought to have been drawn by a Dutch official, Hendrik Kerckingh. He is thought to have drawn it while on board the vessel Bommel, which was lying outside Makassar on 24 September, 1638. 1 However, a major weakness of the illustration is that the shape of the walls does not concur with the archaeological record. The fort is also placed near the shoreline, which does not match the layout of the brick substructure (the foundations) that has been uncovered. 2 It is entirely possible that the Dutch artist may have made assumptions based on what he would have expected in a similar fortified European or mainland Southeast Asian city. He may have also depicted the city in a fashion following the artistic conventions of the time, a common fault in city illustrations at the time, which regardless of actual use were often treated as artworks, with attendant artistic improvements. 3 Hence to be useful, the sketch should be compared against the already sparse archaeological record and other documents. 1 Diederick Wildeman, curator of navigation and library collections, Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam (Netherlands Maritime Museum, Amsterdam), in a letter to Sarah Ismail, 31 March 2006. 2 Bulbeck, A Tale of Two Kingdoms, p. 353. 3 Pollack, “Representations of the city in siege views of the seventeenth century”, p. 613. Bibliography Books Andaya, Barbara Watson, and Andaya, Leonard Y. A History of Malaysia, 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Publishers Ltd, 2001. Andaya, L.Y. The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A History of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century. The Hague : Nijhoff, 1981. 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Zakaria Ali. “Notes from the Sejarah Melayu and Malay Royal Art”, Muqurnas, 10, (1993): 3826. 139 [...]... period of time, noting the changes that the indigenous cities made in response to the new European threat 43 However, the focus is on the general urban status of the cities, rather than focusing on the actual structure, or its role as a tool in the changing currents of maritime Southeast Asia War and the Southeast Asian City 42 John R W Smail, “On the possibility of an Autonomous History of Southeast Asia ,... nature of changes in the urban structure and function, and in the society that the city housed in its form in early modern Southeast Asia is the concern of this thesis Through a comparative study of urban structure and hierarchy during this post-1511 period, this study will examine how these new elements affected the functioning and form of the maritime cities and the society that shaped these cities, and. .. Nevertheless the sense of difference remains and the idea of the inland city versus the coastal city underpins these studies for want of a better conceptual framework Urban Hierarchy and Structure Inter-city relations, or the urban hierarchy, is also considered important in any urban study of the region No city is an island, even in insular Southeast Asia, and to understand the forces that shape it, they... differences in the urban development conducted by the new colonialists and by the 2 indigenous rulers who rose to prominence in the high-stakes world of the Southeast Asian – as Anthony Reid has coined it – “Age of Commerce” The issue of sources The reconstruction of the urban fabric necessary in this study is hindered by the same issues that have affected the studying of any aspect of pre-modern insular Southeast. .. on the city’s relationship in the greater world of Southeast Asian warfare, and hierarchy will be considered as well, in order to fully understand the extent of the influence and the ramifications that a simple wall could have in the history of Southeast Asia 21 Chapter 2: Melaka – Between the Winds Melaka, sometimes considered the heir to the Sri Vijaya Empire that dominated early island Southeast Asia, ... an object of fascination Lying on the lucrative China route and one of the principle centres of the spice trade, Tomé Pires described the port as the city made for merchandise.” 1 Close links with the indigenous sea-people and commercially-inclined rulers helped Melaka dominate the surrounding seas for over a hundred years, an epoch in the infamously ephemeral dynasties of insular Southeast Asia Trade... that the coastal, usually heterogenetic cities of insular Southeast Asia differed greatly in their urban form from the orthogenetic cities of the mainland Southeast Asia Mainland cities were generally planned cities, with a grid layout and a firmly demarcated city limit They were centres of cultural production that acted as beacons to the faithful by being material anchors of their faith 34 Found in. .. product of a lack of sources, the emphasis in urban history on the changes within the European-dominated region of Southeast Asia obscures any development in the urban forms of the regions that either never came under direct European hegemony, or had failed to achieve prominence in the colonial era The Europeans are depicted as the dominant or even the only cultural force in the region, with Southeast Asian... cities of the mainland kings, such as Mandalay and Angkor Wat, the use of a hill or high ground as a urban focal point nevertheless occurred in the island maritime kingdoms as well The cosmological demands for the macrocosm and Mount Meru to be reflected in the microcosm of the city had its grounding in a far more prosaic reason – that of control and defense Although the practical extent of this belief... life The walls that came up in Southeast Asian port cities were used to shape the city However, in the case of the indigenous cities, it is doubtful that they actually changed the functioning of the city, given that they were still produced by the same dominant group, with similar sets of concerns, and basic geographical concerns remained the same It is more likely that they acted to reinforce existing ... townships and the city wall was the sine qua non of the city, defining city limits in both the physical sense and in the realm of meaning However, the great maritime cities of Southeast Asia from... suggest that the coastal, usually heterogenetic cities of insular Southeast Asia differed greatly in their urban form from the orthogenetic cities of the mainland Southeast Asia Mainland cities were... the cities, rather than focusing on the actual structure, or its role as a tool in the changing currents of maritime Southeast Asia War and the Southeast Asian City 42 John R W Smail, “On the