VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
The famous legend says Parameswara sat under a Melaka tree, watched a mouse deer kick a hunting dog into the river, and decided to found a city. Within a century it became one of the greatest trading ports in the world. How was that even possible?
In this video I dig into the real history behind Melaka’s rapid rise. We go beyond the museum plaques and the simplified story to uncover the man Parameswara actually was — a Srivijayan prince who fled Palembang with a floating city of ships, nobles, artisans and soldiers — and the forgotten people who made it all possible: the Orang Laut, the “People of the Sea.”
These indigenous boat-dwelling communities were the secret weapon of both the Srivijaya Empire and the Melaka Sultanate. They were the guides, navy, information network and muscle that controlled the Straits. Without them, Melaka as we know it may never have existed.
Join me as I revisit the History and Ethnography Museum inside the Stadthuys in Melaka, point out what’s missing from the official story, and piece together the dramatic true account of how a defeated prince and his loyal sea people turned a strategic river mouth into a global powerhouse — with a little help from the Ming Dynasty along the way.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
I wanted to start today’s video here in front of this painting in downtown Melaka because this painting, it illustrates the legendary story of the founding of Melaka. I think a lot of people already know this story. This man here in the yellow who’s sitting underneath what is a Melaka tree, that is Parameswara, who is considered the founder of Melaka. And the story goes is that Parameswara was sitting underneath this Melaka tree and he spotted a mouse deer and it kicked one of his hunting dogs into the river. And he took this as an omen that something seemingly small and weak, something that looks powerless like this tiny mouse deer, it can be deceiving and it can defeat something as big and powerful as one of his hunting dogs. And he took it as an omen that he should found a city here. And he called it Melaka because he was resting underneath a Melaka tree. And that is the story as told, I believe, in the Sejarah Melayu. And the image you get is of this man with a couple of followers, a couple of friends, stumbling through the jungle, coming to rest under this tree, and then he gets this omen and he decides to found a city there. And this was all taking place in 1396, somewhere around that year. And then in a very short time, Melaka, a world center of trade, grew up here. And the glory days of Melaka was in the 1400s. And this story always bothered me to an extent because how in the world could something as incredible as Melaka grow in such a short amount of time? Going from one man sitting under a tree and then within a hundred years you’ve got a world center, traders from everywhere on the globe meeting here, a big cosmopolitan city, a powerful city. How could all of that have happened in such a short amount of time? And this kind of was stuck in the back of my head and bothering me. And I’ve been doing a lot more research, a lot of reading, a lot of digging into the actual history. And one thing I learned about is what you see in the title of this video, Melaka’s secret weapon, the Orang Laut. And translate that into English. These are the people of the sea. So today we are going to learn about Parameswara, who he was in reality, what it was like when he arrived here, and who are the Orang Laut, his secret weapon that very few people know about.
A fascinating thing about the Orang Laut, despite their real importance, is that I’m not aware of any monuments to them. There is no museum dedicated to them that I’m aware of. There is no statue, no exhibit. So you’d think if I’m going to talk about the Orang Laut, I would go to that museum, go to their exhibit, go to their statues, but there aren’t any that I’m aware of. So there’s nowhere for me to go to talk about their story. So what I’ve decided to do is revisit the museum that’s here in the Stadthuys. This is probably the biggest and most extensive museum about Melaka’s history, the History and Ethnography Museum. I went there when I first arrived in Melaka. So I did a tour of this museum, but I knew very little about what I was looking at at the time. So what I’m going to do today is go through the museum a second time and just pick out a few items here and there along the way and add them to my chain of interesting like did you know items, including the story of the Orang Laut. So I’m going to head up there, buy a ticket, and then head into the History and Ethnography Museum.
So far inside the museum, no hint of the Orang Laut at all. And the very first room that I went into is kind of fascinating to me. I didn’t pick up on this on my first visit. So when you come into the museum, the entrance is right over there. And this is the beginning of your tour. You turn left into this room. And this room is all about the era of the Sultanate of Melaka. So this room is dedicated to the era post arrival of Parameswara that I’ve been talking about. But because I’m from the West, I automatically go from left to right. That’s my instinct for everything. So as soon as I came into the room, I started here and the first thing I saw was the date 1509. And it says, of course, that is when the very first Portuguese arrived, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira. He arrived to establish trade relations with the port, with the Melaka Sultanate. So I thought, whoa, the entire museum begins its story with the arrival of the Europeans. And I didn’t remember the museum being so European-centric. But then I realized this is not the beginning of the exhibit. Instead of going left to right, you have to start over here and go right to left. So this is actually the beginning of the display. The year 1400. So this is where the story in the museum begins. And there is the story that I was talking about. Parameswara, the prince of Palembang, after being defeated by Majapahit, went to Temasek, the earlier name of Singapore, and then went on to establish Melaka. And that’s it. That is the whole story. And no mention of the Orang Laut in particular. No mention of anything other than the bare bones. And then some important things happened, of course, that led to the growth of Melaka. Particularly, I don’t know if it was a lucky chance, but right after the founding of Melaka, like in 1403, Admiral Yin Qing of China of the Ming dynasty, he happened to stop by. He was on a trade mission in a whole bunch of ships and he just happened to stop by Melaka and establish diplomatic relations. And then an envoy from Parameswara got onto his ships and returned with him to China and established a strong diplomatic relation with China. So the powerful Ming dynasty, which was kind of the superpower of the era, they adopted Melaka and said they were going to protect it. And then of course Cheng Ho, the head of the Chinese trade fleet, like a massive fleet of treasure ships, then came to Melaka and they built a big trading site here, like they built buildings and established a trading post. So right out of the gate they had China as a sponsor.
And then in 1411, Parameswara, he himself went to China to continue the diplomatic relations and he went there with many, many ships and 540 people. That was his royal entourage. Anyway, I just thought it was kind of fascinating that when you come into the museum, it seems like it starts in 1509, like the story doesn’t even begin until the first European arrives, but it’s a little bit better than that because it does pick up the story in the year 1400. However, what I’m interested in is what happened before 1400. What happened before 1396? Who was Parameswara? And how did he manage to build such a powerful trading center in such a short amount of time? And I wish the museum began with that story because it’s actually the most interesting part of Melaka’s history in my opinion. I wish there was an exhibit here, some kind of a map that I could refer you to to talk about this, but there doesn’t seem to be anything like that. But the basic idea is that this man Parameswara, he was one of the last remaining members of the royal family of a vast trading empire, the Srivijaya, a Buddhist Hindu empire that was based in Palembang from like the 7th century to the 13th century. And Parameswara was part of the royal line of this empire. And by the time Parameswara was alive, the Srivijaya Empire was in its decline. And it had been taken over by the Majapahit Empire based on Java. And Parameswara, he led a rebellion against the Majapahit and he lost. And because he lost, he had to flee from Palembang. But here is the key difference. This is where my mental image of the story diverges from the actual history. Because in my mind I pictured Parameswara as a refugee, some guy in rags, wounded, sneaking onto a little boat and going away from Palembang, hiding and making his way to Singapore. But that image of a weak refugee on the run is completely different from the reality. When he left from Palembang, he left with a fleet. He essentially left with a fleet of maybe 50, 60, 100 ships filled with his royal family, royal entourage, the nobles, all the treasure he could gather together, artisans, the families of all these people. He was leaving and taking the city with him in all these ships. And he had as an escort the Orang Laut. The Orang Laut, the people of the sea, as I said, they were the secret weapon of Melaka and they were the secret weapon of the Srivijaya Empire. It was a trading empire that all their power was based in international trade, just like Melaka. It wasn’t really a land-based empire. Their reach, their influence was mainly about international trade, about ships. And the Orang Laut were the original peoples of this era. Their history went back centuries and centuries and they were intimately familiar with the waterways. The Orang Laut lived on ships. They didn’t really live on the land. They weren’t based in cities and towns. These were people who lived on boats and they knew the reefs, the sand bars, the currents, the safe passages. They knew the weather and they had an arrangement with the Srivijaya Empire, the royal family, that they swore a loyalty oath to them and acted as their guides, their navy, an information network and as their muscle. So when Parameswara fled from Palembang after his failed rebellion against the Majapahit Empire, he wasn’t one guy in a canoe. He left with his city. It was basically a floating city accompanied by a swarm of Orang Laut boats protecting him and guiding him. It was a totally different image from what I had in my mind. So he went to Temasek, to modern-day Singapore. And when he arrived there, he wasn’t like Robinson Crusoe stumbling onto a beach, you know, thirsty and hungry. No, he arrived with hundreds of ships, maybe anywhere between a thousand and 2,000 people in total, I think. And then he met up with the current leaders of Singapore. And then he eventually killed the leader of the Temasek community at that time, which I think was supported by Siam, the kingdom from Thailand. He killed the local leader and basically took over Singapore. So that’s the kind of man we’re talking about. And when he left from Palembang, he carried with him what they call daulat, which is basically the royal right to rule because he was a direct descendant, the lineage of the royal family of Srivijaya, and the Orang Laut had pledged loyalty to that family. They carried it over to Parameswara wherever he went. And he had the loyalty of the Orang Laut to support him. Everywhere he went, he was treated as the true heir of the Srivijaya Empire. He was not just a random dude who washed up on the shore. And then when he landed on shores of Temasek, he killed the leader, took over the place. So he kind of moved the heart of the Srivijaya Empire from Palembang. He was driven out of Palembang and then he took the city and moved it to Singapore. So that’s kind of the basic idea that I got from my reading. So that’s the image you have to have in your mind. The true image when you read something like this, that Parameswara, defeated by Majapahit, went to Temasek and then established Melaka. There is so much more to that story than what you read in that short paragraph. And when you think about who Parameswara was and what he brought with him to Singapore, don’t think about just the man. You have to include in that image that he brought with him all of these ships, all of these alliances, all of this knowledge of trade, trade networks, the experience that he had with that. And he brought with him the daulat, the royal right to rule. Everywhere he went, he brought with him this aura, this historical fact that he was the direct descendant of the rulers of Srivijaya. And he had the loyalty of the Orang Laut people who, as I said, were the secret weapon of their empire and the secret weapon of Melaka. They were the guides, the scouts, information network, a navy and the muscle of the Srivijaya Empire. And they carried that forward to Melaka because they were loyal to Parameswara.
I’m still in the very first room of the museum. I haven’t moved on because as far as I can tell, the story that I’m trying to tell, Parameswara, who he was, how he founded Melaka, the role of his secret weapon the Orang Laut, it isn’t in this museum. This museum really seems to focus on the European era, basically beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese. That’s where the story begins and the only reference to the Melaka Sultanate is this brief timeline here. And in the story I’ve told so far, we have Parameswara rebelling against the Majapahit Empire, losing, fleeing from Palembang and essentially taking the city with him, going to Temasek, Singapore, where he establishes relations with the leaders of Temasek. But then he assassinates their leader and takes over Singapore. And he is there as the ruler with all the ships and the people and the Orang Laut that he brought with him from Palembang and he was there for a few years but he was still on the run essentially from Majapahit and it’s not entirely clear who sent the forces. It might have been Siam forces or Majapahit forces but they sent a big force to attack Parameswara in Temasek and he was forced to flee again and that is where the story picks up from that painting that I started the video with. A lot of people have this image of Parameswara like that. One man, a couple of guards sitting under a tree in the jungle as if he had gone overland through the Malay Peninsula before he arrived at the, I think it was the Bertam River at the time and they changed its name to the Melaka River. But there’s no way he did that. I mean, I recently tried to ride my bicycle a little bit down the coast from Melaka, and you run into river after river after river, mangrove swamp, mangrove swamp, mangrove swamp, muddy flats. Even today, it’s really, really difficult to move on land down the Malay Peninsula following the coast. It’s just too muddy. Mangrove swamps, muddy flats, just too many rivers. So back in the late 1300s when Parameswara fled from Singapore, he wasn’t traveling overland, hacking his way through the jungle, slogging through the mangrove swamps. It would have been impossible. When he left from Temasek, he brought with him all his ships again. So when he left from there, he brought with him all of his ships, all the people that he left Palembang with and he had the support of his loyal Orang Laut. And it was this floating city. It was basically a city on the move that started making their way up the coast of Malaysia looking for a new place to establish his trading empire because again that’s how he viewed himself. He was the direct inheritor of this trading empire of the Srivijaya and he was seen by the Orang Laut and other people as the rightful heir, the daulat from the royal line of the Srivijaya Empire. So he stopped for a while at Muar and then he finally got to the Bertam River, which became the Melaka River. And again, the legend has it that he just stumbled across it. Like he went up there in his boat. Oh, wow. This looks like a great place. But of course, it was well known to the Orang Laut. The Orang Laut knew all of the rivers up and down the coast. They knew all of the places that would serve as a good harbor. And they guided Parameswara and his floating city to that spot. And then we get the story where under the Melaka tree he saw a mouse deer kick a hunting dog and he says, “Yeah, okay. This is where I am going to establish my new city, my new empire.” Basically. And to my mind when I discovered all of this, the real history of Melaka, it explained to me how Melaka could have grown so quickly. Because the legendary story was that Parameswara stumbled across a sleepy fishing village. It’s always called a sleepy fishing village. And then boom, he created a major trading empire, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was more like a, you might think of it as a turnkey system. He had the empire with him in his boats. He had all of these followers already. So when he arrived here in Melaka, he didn’t just show up in a small boat by himself and a couple of friends. He arrived with a floating city. He had taken the city of Palembang with him, brought it to Singapore, and now brought it to this site. And he already had relationships with the Orang Laut. And he had his whole city with him basically. And he started to build Melaka. I don’t know if I’ve described the Orang Laut accurately enough. I have some notes about them that I kept and maybe I could read some of my notes just in case you don’t really have the full idea. So what I have here is the Orang Laut, sea people, were indigenous nomadic boat-dwelling communities who inhabited the islands, mangroves and narrow channels around Sumatra, the Riau Archipelago and the Singapore Strait. Historically, the Orang Laut owed deep loyalty to the Srivijayan crown. They were not just boat people. They were the standing navy of the straits. And to that end they possessed unparalleled navigational knowledge of the reefs, shallow inlets and secret mangrove channels of the Strait of Melaka. When Parameswara fled Palembang, his loyal Orang Laut clans followed him. They provided his personal bodyguard, served as his navy, and actively steered merchant ships away from competitor ports toward Parameswara’s newly chosen settlement at Melaka. And something in that last section really solved another puzzle for me. Puzzle number one was how did Melaka grow so quickly? The answer to that is Parameswara arrived with a city in his boats. He was essentially the leader, the royal leader of a floating city, a trading empire, and he just reestablished it in Melaka. You know, that’s simplistic, but that’s basically what happened. But the other thing that kind of bothered me when I was learning about the Orang Laut, I was being told over and over again that they were the muscle of Melaka. They were the enforcers. They went out into the strait, the Melaka Strait, and they forced ships to dock in Melaka. So if some sort of a merchant trading vessel was trying to go up or down the Melaka Strait, the Orang Laut would track them down, force them to stop in Melaka and where they had to pay taxes and submit tribute to the Sultan there, that kind of thing. But that didn’t make any sense to me for two reasons. One is that these Orang Laut, their boats were quite small. They were not navy vessels with cannon and guns. They were basically nomadic communities living on the boats with their families. So how in the world were they forcing big merchant ships to dock in Melaka? What kind of power did they bring to the table? I didn’t understand that. And I couldn’t understand how they were hiding. Like they kept talking about how they knew about all the mangrove inlets, the tricky currents, the reefs, the sandbars. And when you go to the coast here in Melaka, none of that is here really. You look out into open water all the way across to Sumatra. So it’s like, well, how in the world are the Orang Laut doing anything out there? It’s just open water. But the key is that wasn’t their home base. Their home base was around Singapore. And if you look at Google Maps or any map of that area around Singapore, you will see hundreds and hundreds of little islands. That is where the Orang Laut had their power because there were only very narrow channels that big ships could navigate through that cluster of islands near Singapore. So Melaka was the center of power for the Melaka Sultanate, this trading empire. But his navy, his control was with the Orang Laut down off the coast of Singapore. The Orang Laut were aware of every ship trying to get through that area. And when they spotted one of them, they would swarm the ship. It wouldn’t be just one little boat. It would be dozens of Orang Laut boats swarming around this big ship. And the Orang Laut were good fighters. They had like blowpipes and arrows, like bow and arrows with poison darts. And they would board the ship and basically, well, I think they would start offering their services as a guide and a pilot. I guess I skipped over that part of the arrangement that the Orang Laut, with their intimate knowledge of the waterways, they acted as pilots and guides for any of the merchant ships going past Singapore into the Melaka Strait. And then when they get on these ships to guide their way, you know, they would kind of nudge them and go, “Hey, you might want to pull into this river over here and meet the Sultan of Melaka and pay taxes on the goods you’re trading and things like that.” And if any of these ships resisted, then the Orang Laut muscle would appear and there would be dozens of these ships surrounding them. They would board them and essentially force them to dock in Melaka whether they wanted to or not. It was required. They’re basically paying a toll to use the Melaka Strait. And of course, the Melaka Sultanate was offering something very valuable in return to all of these merchant vessels going up and down the Melaka Strait. They were offering a safe, secure harbor. And the Orang Laut were clearing out the pirates in the Melaka Strait. So they were saying to all these ships, okay, you got to dock in Melaka and kick in a little bit. You know, you got to pay your taxes, but we will protect you. We will clear out any of the pirates in the Melaka Strait. And these merchant ships, they often had to wait for months at a time for the new monsoon season for a monsoon to end and a new one to begin. Basically, for the weather to become favorable. And at the Melaka Sultanate in Melaka, they had a safe place where they could park their ships and stay there for months at a time until it was safe to go out to sea again. And the Orang Laut were paid handsomely for their services by the Melaka Sultanate and they attained high positions within the Melaka Sultanate as well. Which brings me full circle I guess coming all the way back around to this idea that the Orang Laut were the secret weapon of Melaka. In fact, I think you could make an argument that without the Orang Laut, Melaka never would have existed to begin with. They’re sort of that important to the growth, to the establishment of Melaka being the guides and loyal to Parameswara. And they also help build it and maintain it. And their role also explains partially why Melaka grew so quickly from a sleepy fishing village into a world trading center. I think I’ve covered the basics of the story of the Orang Laut and the story of Parameswara. And the interesting thing is that yeah, if you come to this museum, you won’t learn any of that. The entire history before 1400 is basically missing. At least it’s missing from this exhibit. It basically starts with pretty much the arrival of the Portuguese and just kind of a nod to the major timelines of the Melaka Sultanate, but it doesn’t really explain the importance of everything that took place. And before I move on from this exhibit, I just want to give one last nod to the role of China, the Ming dynasty. Because if you’re trying to explain how did Melaka grow so rapidly, yes, you begin with this idea that Parameswara was the direct descendant of the royal family of the Srivijaya Empire. And he arrived in Melaka with a city. Basically, he had a fleet of ships ready to go. But as you can see, right at the very beginning in 1403, a mission from China just happened to stop by. He sent an envoy, like Parameswara put an envoy on this ship because it was on its way back to China. So he really got in on the ground floor with China very, very quickly. And then in 1411, Parameswara himself accompanied with 540 of his people sailed to China to establish, you know, to cement their diplomatic relations. And then finally, now that Melaka was under the protection of China, Admiral Cheng Ho with his fleet of 300 treasure ships came to Melaka and established a base there. And that gave Melaka the final boost that it needed. And then everything went on from there until, of course, 1509 when the Portuguese arrived.
I’m outside the museum now. There’s the Stadthuys right behind me. Really busy day here in Melaka. I’m surprised. I deliberately came here on a Tuesday because I thought the museum would be very quiet. Almost nobody there. But it was kind of bustling in there. I had to wait a long time at each exhibit before some people would clear out and I could babble into my GoPro without bothering anyone. So I’ve been here for quite a long time. But yeah, really enjoyed that. As I said, I’ve been to this museum once already a long time ago, but I didn’t really absorb very much because I didn’t have a foundation of knowledge. Now I do, and I understand everything in there much, much better this time around. And what I find particularly interesting given the theme of my video, the Orang Laut being the secret weapon of Melaka, I went through the entire museum from top to bottom, every single exhibit and based on what I saw, not a single mention of the Orang Laut anywhere. Never came up. Not a single picture, diagram, drawing, not a mention of the Orang Laut anywhere in the entire museum. And yet, based on my understanding of their importance to Melaka, they could have at least their own exhibit, like an entire room dedicated only to their role. But I guess you can kind of forgive this museum for that oversight because they weren’t really focused on the pre-Portuguese history. I guess they were like the Melaka Sultanate is in there, but their main focus is on the Melaka Sultanate when it was already up and running and then the arrival of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Japanese occupation. That is the period that they focus on. And the Orang Laut, they were important previous to that in terms of their relationship with Parameswara and the founding of Melaka and the running of Melaka through all of the 1400s. So they really should have gotten a mention at the very least, but they’re not in that museum at all. I noticed online that there seems to be a bit of a revival that history forgot about the Orang Laut. Just sort of put them aside and they might mention them as like the Aboriginal people of Malaysia, these people that live on boats and kind of mention them from an ethnography point of view. But recently, I’ve seen some things online where people are trying to bring them back into the spotlight and bring their history back into the focus of people who study history and people who study Melaka. So you might hear a lot more about the Orang Laut in the future. So I’m right across the road from the Stadthuys and the museum. You can see it all up there. And I thought it was appropriate to end the video right back where it started beside the painting of Parameswara watching the mouse deer kick his hunting dog into the river. Yeah, it’s a great story. I love the literary aspect of this story. But based on everything I just talked about, everything I saw in the museum, everything I’ve read online, what you have to do is look at this image of Parameswara sitting almost by himself underneath the Melaka tree, but then look a little bit to the right. Just cast your eyes over in that direction and imagine you’re looking out over the Melaka Strait and you see a hundred ships including a large number of his own royal ships, couple of thousand people that he traveled with, the nobles, the artisans. And beside them now imagine dozens if not a hundred boats belonging to the Orang Laut also accompanying him. And on top of all that picture this man with a royal lineage going back to the 7th century and the Srivijaya Empire and then you probably get a better image of how Melaka was founded. Yeah, really great story, great visit to the museum and hope you enjoyed that as well. I’m going to walk along the river now, head back in the direction of something to eat and a cold drink. And with that, I’m going to shut down. Shout out to the Crunch Club. Everybody that watched the video all the way to the end, put CC in the comments to let me know. And of course, big shout out to everyone who is supporting Planet Doug Video Productions. Particularly through PayPal. I’ve had some very generous donations sent to Planet Doug through the PayPal link in the description. You know who you are. You’ve been supporting me so generously. I appreciate that very much. It’s keeping me out here in the world making videos and exploring. Without it, yeah, I don’t think I’d be able to do it. So thank you very much everyone using the PayPal link and of course through Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. When I went into the museum, I told them I was 63 years old, which is true, which means I qualify for the senior citizen discount. So normal fee there for a foreigner is 20 ringgit. For an older person like me, 10 ringgit. And of course, I paid for my ticket with the power of Touch ‘n Go. Thanks to my Touch ‘n Go supporters here in Malaysia. I appreciate it very, very much. And of course, shout out to my coffee posse through the Buy Me a Coffee platform. All right, that is it. Shutting down for now on this absolutely gorgeous day in Melaka and I’ll see you next time.