VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
The last time I walked through the History and Ethnography Museum in Melaka, I didn’t fully know what I was looking at. But after weeks of digging into the regional history, re-visiting the exhibits with fresh eyes tells a completely different story.
From Portuguese cannon translation errors and wooden palisades drawn as European castles, to 270 years of suppressed religious practice and the long history of the Chitty community—here are a few fascinating “did you know” details, historical corrections, and overlooked scale models from the second floor of the museum.
A quick bonus video and a deep dive into the details for the Planet Doug Crunch Club and anyone who loves peeling back the layers of Southeast Asian history!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
I think I am pretty much done with my story of Parameswara and his secret weapon, the Orang Laut. And I’m just going to go through the rest of the museum as quickly as I can and maybe look for a few did you know moments to add to what I’ve already talked about. Just little things that I’ve picked up in my time in Melaka and the reading I’ve done.
And one of the first did you know things I want to mention is that you have to be really careful when it comes to any talk about weaponry in particular cannon and pistols and guns. So here in the museum you can see this replica of a cannon and then a list detailing a variety of cannon here as well different types of weapons but when you try to slot them into time and space things get very complicated. So you can’t really take a lot of this at face value about who had these cannon because they mix up all these cannon from different time periods. They can be hundreds of years apart and you don’t really know who had what type of cannon. So anyway, it’s interesting to read about each type of weapon, but I’d be very careful about making conclusions about who had which type of weapon at that time. It gets very complicated and very confusing and quite mixed up.
And this is a good example of what I was talking about. So this is an exhibit about the cannons of Melaka and it does indicate in English here that the Portuguese noticed they the Portuguese recorded in their documents that they they were surprised at how many cannons and artillery there were in Melaka. And then this exhibit shows these cannon down at the bottom. But in my opinion, this is entirely misleading because the Melaka sultanate at that time they would not have had cannon like this. So you look at the numbers, the Portuguese say something about 3,000 cannon. And then you look at that picture and you automatically assume they had 3,000 of these huge monster cannon. But in fact, that is not the reality at all. In fact, as I talked about in a different video, the Portuguese did, the English translation of their documents says 3,000 that they seized 3,000 cannon, but that’s just a translation error. What they really meant was 3,000 guns. And they were probably referring to guns like the cetbang, a much smaller kind of like a big shotgun. So they all the things you see on the internet keep saying cannon, but you have to think about that for a minute. Okay, what exactly do they mean by that word cannon? And they could just be referring to guns of different varieties.
This is another did you know moment. It’s an exhibit about the arrival of the Portuguese. And I remember reading this the first time I went through this museum where it says in 1509 Diogo Lopes de Sequeira arrived in Melaka with five ships. So this man with his five ships were the first Portuguese to arrive in Melaka. And then it says here the Portuguese behaved rudely towards the people of Melaka. So it says that they they behaved badly. They behaved rudely and as a result the Melaka Sultanate attacked their fleet and took about 20 men captive held them in a prison in Melaka. So that’s the story that they tell. But that phrase behaved rudely is doing a lot of heavy lifting and there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes there because at that time in Melaka there were very large merchant communities from all over the world. They had big established kampong here in Melaka. So there was a Gujarati community, Javanese, Tamil, Hindu, Bengali, on and on. And these groups were quite powerful in Melaka. Of course, the Melaka Sultanate were in charge. They were on top of the heap. But these communities like the Gujaratis and the Javanese in particular were quite influential and quite powerful in Melaka because of their wealth. They had their own soldiers. They had their own fighting forces and things like that. And the Gujaratis in particular had had bad experiences with the Portuguese already because they were fighting for the same trading routes. The Gujaratis from northwestern India, the coast there. There was a Muslim kingdom and the Javanese were also Muslim and they were fighting. They had had experiences with the Portuguese elsewhere and they were competing for trade routes. So the Gujaratis and the Javanese and other merchant communities, they approached the Melaka Sultanate. They went to the Sultan and said, “Hey, you can’t trust the Portuguese. If you give them a base in Melaka, they’re eventually going to betray you, attack you, and they’re going to try to take over.” So they convinced the Sultan that the Portuguese could not be trusted, that they were eventually going to become a military threat. So then the Sultan said, “Okay.” And they banded together and they attacked the Portuguese ships and drove drove them out. So whether I explained that clearly or not, the reality is not that the Portuguese behaved rudely. It was a strategic choice by the Melaka Sultanate to drive out the Portuguese and they were influenced in that decision by the Javanese, the Gujarati and the other trading groups that were already established in Melaka.
There’s another pretty good did you know moment here because I’ve just gone through all the exhibits about the Portuguese and the Dutch era when they colonized Melaka when they occupied Melaka basically and there’s something that’s missing from all of these exhibits and that is the role of religion because the Portuguese in particular when they came to Melaka they were interested in taking over the spice trade to make money, but they were also here to spread Christianity and fight against Islam. And when the Portuguese took over Melaka, they essentially banned all other religions. Hinduism was banned. And during the battle for Melaka, of course, much of the city was burned to the ground. And then the Portuguese tore down all of the mosques, Hindu temples, shrines, tombs, anything related with Hinduism or Islam, Buddhism took all of those stone and used that stone, of course, to build their fortress and their buildings. And after that, they banned the public practice of Islam and Hinduism and I believe Buddhism. So for example, the Tamil Hindu community, all of their shrines had been destroyed and they were not allowed to practice Hinduism in public. So they built secret Hindu shrines inside their homes and kept their Hindu practices, their religion, their worship, their traditions. They kept it alive in secret inside their homes within the strict city limits where it was banned by the Portuguese. And the same thing happened to Islam. Of course, the practice of Islam was prohibited within the city limits by the Portuguese. And when the Dutch took over, they continued that tradition allowing only the practice of their own Dutch Christian Reformed Church. So essentially all religions other than Christianity were banned for about 270 years. And that doesn’t really get mentioned in these museums that I’m aware of. And that’s a really important figure because a lot of tourists go to Harmony Street in Melaka. And on Harmony Street there is the famous Kampung Kling Mosque, a famous Hindu temple and a famous Buddhist temple. And the Hindu temple in particular when you look it up, it was founded, it was built in 1781. And I learned that that year is quite significant because 1781 is when the Dutch finally eased up on their suppression of other religions. So in 1781 people were allowed to practice Hinduism in public. So in 1781 that Hindu temple was built. Up until that time, like I said, for nearly three centuries based based on what I read, you can correct me if you know different that other religions other than Christianity were completely banned within the city of Melaka. And all these religions had to go underground and they were still conducting their religions in secret in private until 1781. Yeah, it’s another fascinating side note to the history of Melaka that yeah, you just don’t see in these museums. At least I’ve never seen it mentioned so far.
Here is another very interesting did you know moment for me anyway. I remember seeing this exhibit my first time in the museum and I read the sign up there. It is the ceremony of shaving baby’s first hair of the Chitty society. And I remember reading that but I had no idea who the Chitties were. That that name that word was completely unknown to me and I never thought about it again. But I recently learned and I shot nearly a whole video about it is that the Chitty people are the descendants of the original merchants and traders from southern India who came to Melaka and settled here. So the Chitty community, the Chitty people from India, they basically go back all the way to the very beginnings of Melaka with Parameswara. Their history goes back that far. So here in Malaysia, of course, there is a very large Indian society. There are a lot of people here from India. Malaysia has the three major cultures, the Malay, the Chinese, and the Indian. And most people would think of the Indian as coming to Malaya under the British administration because the British needed workers on all the rubber plantations and they created this system of indentured labor and they just brought all kinds of workers from India on a contract basis to Malaysia and then these people ended up staying and becoming Malaysian. So that is the Indian society of Malaysia. But the Chitty also from India and they predate the other Indian community by centuries because these their ancestors came to Melaka back in the late 1300s and the 1400s. So yeah, it’s just a fascinating little Did you know when you see anything about the Chitty people, they’re from India and these are the direct descendants of the Indian people that came to Melaka to trade under the Melaka Sultanate back in the 1400s and you can still find their community today here in Melaka. You can go and visit the Chitty the Chetti village.
It turns out there’s an entire exhibit up on the second floor that I completely missed the first time I came to this museum. I don’t know how I walked right by the door, I guess, but there’s this room here dedicated to the Melaka Sultanate, the history. And then there’s another exhibit on the other side about Melaka under the Portuguese. And there are a couple of did you know opportunities here, things that I’ve picked out to talk about as I walk through. One of them is a kind of a repeat because this is the same scene of Parameswara underneath the Malaka tree and there’s the the mouse deer kicking the poor hunting dog into the river. It’s a great story. I love the story. Unfortunately up here it’s nearly impossible to read anything. The writing is so small it’s really hard to make out and it’s so low. But basically it says the the short version again that Parameswara a prince of Palembang was forced to wander as a result of the breakup of the Majapahit Empire. He traveled to Temasek before settling down in Bertam here in Melaka. And then it tells the story of his hunting dog being kicked by a mouse deer. But if you remember the story, the real story that I told of Parameswara, I mean, this doesn’t even come close to the actual history. It just says that he wandered away from Palembang when the Majapahit Empire disintegrated which doesn’t even make any sense to me based on what I’ve read because he was forced to flee from Palembang because he rebelled against the Majapahit Empire. It wasn’t breaking up. He was trying to break it up and he lost and then he fled as I said with his flotilla of ships and the support of the Orang Laut and then he went to Singapore and he didn’t just travel to Singapore he went there with his entire city basically and then when he got there he took over the place he assassinated the leader of Singapore of Temasek and then took over and then he was driven out of Temasek again by the Majapahit Empire or from a combination of Siam forces and Majapahit forces. It’s not entirely clear. And then he left with his entire fleet of ships, all of his people, the Orang Laut supporting him as guides and muscle. And he had the royal right to rule that he brought with him everywhere he went. So he attracted followers because he was a true prince of the Srivijaya Empire.
Another did you know moment is here in the next room they actually have a model of Melaka during the Melaka Sultanate which is quite interesting. Yeah. A couple of things to note. One is you can see how the fortress walls right Melaka is sitting right on the coast that is the Melaka Strait right now but in modern times all of this ocean has been reclaimed. So now the shore is way you know way over here somewhere but back in the days of the Melaka Sultanate and the Portuguese this is the geography and then one thing you can note of course is the grand mosque and the mosques of that era were not like the mosques you see today with the minarets and the domes. They have a very different roof structure that you can see there. And then there’s the palace, the Sultan’s palace. But quite interesting to me is you can see the fortifications going around here along the coast and then inland over the hill. And you can see that the fortifications are a wooden palisade. And my understanding is that it that is exactly how it was built in those days. There was like huge sharp wooden logs placed in the ground in rows and then they built up earthworks around it. So you basically had a wall made out of dirt and wooden logs and you can see the wooden palisade continuing. And that’s particularly interesting because you often see pictures like engravings or drawings or paintings of the Melaka Sultanate done by the Portuguese. And in all of their illustrations, they show Melaka as having stone walls like a stone fortress going around the mosque and the Sultan’s palace. But that that was only done because the Europeans who made those drawings have never even been to Melaka. They they never even left Europe. They were just artists in Europe who were hired to draw illustrations for a book. And they were told draw Melaka so we could put it in the book. And they drew on what they’re familiar with. And they put in European architecture, European walls, European castles, European fortresses, when in reality, Melaka at that time would have been made out of wood and out of thatch. Yeah, just like this.
Moving through the Portuguese era exhibit, there’s a few did you know moments that I can talk about from in here. Some quite interesting ones. Most of the exhibit is made up of these paintings and unfortunately the labels or the the notes are so small I it’s almost impossible to read. I guess if you’re very very young and you have very sharp eyes, you can read all of that. But it it’s just exhausting for me to try to focus on that tiny text. But I know most of the story already anyway. So it doesn’t really matter whether I read that or not. And one of the did you know might be that Melaka at that time under the Melaka Sultanate was made out of wood. Like I already talked about the wooden palisades around the fortress. And you could see this is quite accurate I think in what the houses the homes would have looked like when the Portuguese arrived. But the one thing that I read about is the bridge and how important that bridge was. And according to what I read, the actual bridge was much bigger than that than how they show it in all these paintings, much wider and it was actually like a market square. The whole bridge was lined with shops, traders, money changers. Like all of the buyers and sellers from all over this part of the world were crowded onto this bridge. And I think the river shore, this shore, all of the streets would have been much more crowded, bustling with people, like a very vibrant marketplace. It would not have looked as empty as it does in these paintings, I don’t think.
Another did you know moment maybe based on this painting. Again, the bridge connecting the two sides doesn’t seem nearly big enough to me, but you can see that the Portuguese here are burning down the mosque, burning down the the Sultan’s palace, and then all the the houses across the river, they’ve all burned to the ground as well. And I think that is a very realistic portrayal of what what happened.
Another did you know moment is that the fort of Melaka changed quite a bit over the years. So whenever you see a tower like this in the corner and then kind of a rectangle, a smaller rectangular fortress, you’re looking at what the Portuguese built. So as soon as the Portuguese defeated the Melaka Sultanate, the very first thing they did was build a kind of mini fort which you see here, a small fort with a tower in one corner. Though I think the original tower would have been much bigger than that across the base. It would be a much larger construction than they’re showing there. But this is essentially what the Portuguese built. This shows that idea pretty clearly. I don’t think it’s accurate in terms of the scale or the design, but you can see that mini fortress over there with the tower in the corner. That is the first stage of the fortress. So that’s the very first thing that the Portuguese built. And they used a lot of stone that they took from the grand mosque, from Hindu shrines, from Buddhist shrines. They tore down all of the temples and shrines and tombs and they used the stone to build that which was their original fortress.
And this one captures a much later date. You can see the original rectangle up there. But then over the next 76 years, the Portuguese completed the rest of the fort. So the entire fortress of Melaka that you think of, the Portuguese didn’t build it all at once. They built it in sections. And in fact, the entire fort took 76 years before the Portuguese completed it. And you can notice that their defenses were not just the stone walls around the fort. Outside of that fort, they built wooden palisades. So, there were several lines of defense before you even got to the fort itself. And I I think that’s quite a realistic portrayal there. And on the other side of the river as well, they had wooden palisades protecting that side of the city. Yeah, it’s a very cool painting.
This is an interesting painting as well. This painting dates from the Dutch defeat of the Portuguese. And because this is the Portuguese fort, you can still see the inner rectangle there, the small one. That’s the first thing they built. And then over 76 years, they built this wall with these bastions on the corners. So you see pretty much the completed fort here. And the Dutch with their allies trying to break through the walls.
This is very interesting. As I said, I didn’t know these rooms existed the first time I came to the museum. So, I never saw this model before. But for did you know what I can tell you is that when you see one of these models and you see this square or rectangle with the tower that tells you this is the Portuguese fort and this is how the fort would have looked when it was fully completed. So right across the bridge in Melaka leads right to this mini fortress and then they have the walls going all the way around St. Paul’s Hill and you can see that the walls of the Portuguese fortress A Famosa is right along the water right along the Melaka Strait on this side and this side.
And this is a very good illustration of the A Famosa fortress. It’s the best one that I’ve seen.
Another did you know moment. This is amazing. I didn’t even know, as I said, that they had so many different models of the fort here. I missed them entirely on my first visit. But this is the fort how it looked under the Dutch administration. And the way you can tell that this is the Dutch model, the Dutch fort and not the Portuguese is that the square, the mini fortress with the tower is completely missing and it’s been replaced by this, which is the Middelburg Bastion and then the Frederick Bastion over here. So underneath the Portuguese, you cross the bridge and you would have found a little mini fortress right here and then the wall going around. But during the war with the Dutch, that tower and that mini fortress were completely destroyed by cannon fire. So the Dutch just tore it all down and they built instead the Middelburg Bastion as well as the Frederick Bastion. And then they expanded the walls going all the way around adding bastions and things like that. And the Dutch also built water defenses. So if you see a moat like you can see that ditch there a wide moat going from the Melaka Strait going all following the fortress walls and then coming around here and going all the way to the river. If you see that moat then you know you are looking at what the Dutch built. So this is the Melaka fortress under Dutch administration and all the expansion and the changes that they made to the Portuguese fort.
One more really amazing did you know moment. This is a model of Melaka under the British. And of course, the thing to know about this time is that by this point in history, the British had torn down the entire fort. So, as you can see, it’s gone. The walls are gone. The bastions are gone. The British essentially tore down the entire fort. Only one small piece was remaining and you can see it right there. That little white structure right in front of my GoPro. That is a Santiago gate and that is the only piece of the fort that the British left standing. So here you get a very good idea of how this part of Melaka looks today. The basic structure and skeleton of modern Melaka is right here in this model now that the fortress has been torn down. And something that’s quite interesting to me is that when you look at the river there and you look at the all the shophouses along the river, the front of those shophouses would have been on the street if you know what I mean. Like there’s two rows of shophouses right there facing the street and the street side that would have been the important side that looks the best because that is the front of the shop house and the other side of the shop house like this side of it here going along the river technically that was like their backyard. Though it there was no attempt made to make it beautiful. That was where they threw all the garbage. So the rear side facing the river was like the equivalent of the backyards, the alleyways basically of Melaka. But today, of course, because of tourism, the river has been completely rebuilt, re-engineered, and the rear side of these buildings have all been painted with bright colors. So, this is where you see all of the restaurants, the bars, the pizza shops, all the places for tourists lined up along the river. That was basically never meant to be public facing. That was only facing the river where they threw out like basically like I said the alleyway or the backyard. Just something that occurred to me. But yeah, there it is pretty much getting closer and closer to modern Melaka. You even have the Stadthuys where we are now. This giant red building right there. That’s where the museum is located now. And you can see the fountain in the middle of the square. Huh. I never noticed that park area. Does that park still exist today? I don’t I don’t think that that exists anymore, but I’m not sure. And over this is a beautiful model. Hats off to whoever made this. Beautifully done. So much detail. You can even see the Dutch cemetery over here. Miniatures of each of the tomb sites. So that’s the Dutch cemetery right there in miniature. And of course St. Paul’s up on the top of the hill. Yeah, that is a beautiful, beautiful model.
Another did you know moment is that this museum has an entire gallery dedicated to Admiral Zheng He who was the Admiral of the Ming dynasty. And I bring him up in particular because his treasure fleet. And through that fleet, Melaka got the support of the Ming dynasty. And it was a key element to the rapid growth and success of Melaka that they had the protection of the Ming dynasty.
I’m not going to go over this entire exhibit and talk about the history of Zheng He. I’ve actually done that in another video, but the basic idea is that he was a kind of envoy of the Ming dynasty and they sent out this huge fleet, sometimes as many as 300 ships, a real floating city. And Zheng He took this fleet out on big journeys, huge expeditions all around this part of the world, going from kingdom to kingdom, establishing trade relations, things like that. It’s a kind of I think referred to as the treasure fleet and it was a massive undertaking and they went I think he went on seven major voyages and on four of them he stopped at Melaka with his entire fleet and then their entire community tens of thousands of people I forget the exact number how many thousands of people were living on on these ships settled down in Melaka for months at a time. And can you imagine that moment if you’re living in Melaka and the arrival of 300 ships from China and all the people pouring onto shore, all of the goods that they were bringing for trade for sale and they would settle down there building homes and living there full-time until the monsoon allowed them to leave again. But yeah, it’s a pretty incredible story. The Zheng He fleet, the treasure fleet, which is a key part of Melaka’s rapid growth.
Apologies for the abrupt cut off of that video, but that that chunk of video was never meant to be a standalone video. It was actually sort of the middle end part of a different video in which I was talking mainly about Parameswara and the founding of Melaka and the role of the Orang Laut. And then I I finished talking about all of that and then I continued through the rest of the museum just to sort of round out the experience. But it turns out that the Orang Laut Parameswara section felt complete all by itself and the video was getting quite long. So I just made that video shorter and I had this part of the video left over. But I thought well I might as well post it as a Planet Doug video bonus kind of a shout out to the Planet Doug crunch club and all the other Planet Doug supporters out there. So yeah, bonus video for everyone who has been following my small adventures here in Melaka. Though I did find all of that absolutely fascinating going through the museums now after some time has passed and I’ve learned a lot about Melaka on my own just reading online, tracking down things. When I first came to Melaka, I went to that museum. I did a tour of it and I made a video about it, but I didn’t really know what I was looking at, so I couldn’t really comment on it very much. And then every time I shoot one of these museum videos, there’s always little things in the video here and there that I don’t understand. So then I start picking out these little details and doing research on them and then I learn more and more and more. So, it’s like every time I go back to one of these museums, I have a whole new set of things that I could talk about, things that I could pick out in the museum that I suddenly understand a lot better. Yeah, it’s kind of fascinating. Melaka has a lot of museums. I couldn’t even give you a final number. Somewhere between 20 and 30 probably if you added them all up. But I started thinking that there really isn’t one museum that tells the full story of Melaka like in chronological order. Something that would help visitors walking around the city to understand what they’re looking at. Like the typical visitor to Melaka, of course, will go to look at St. Paul’s Church up on the hill. They will go to the Santiago gate. The well they call it A Famosa now on Google maps and all the tourism maps that one piece of the fortress that’s still standing they call it A Famosa they see that they see the river all these different things and each one of those things you could use it as a starting point for telling the whole history of Melaka but it would be really cool if there was an a museum that went through the whole history of of Melaka so that when you go out into the city and everything you look at it’s like ah you know exactly what role it played in the history of the city and all the details about it and you could set it in time and in place. So but yeah I don’t think there’s any museum like that. So you almost have to go to these museums with a foundation of knowledge already in your head about Melaka and then you can treat what you see in the museums as exhibits and illustrations of the things you already know then the museums are very effective. But I haven’t really found one that is effective in telling you the story in a way that makes sense and in particular in chronological order. But anyway, so anyway, I hope you enjoyed that video, a whole series of did you know moments from the last part of my walk through of the history and ethnography museum here in Melaka. So that’s it. Shutting down. See you next time.