Free Download The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka, 1575-1619: Power, Trade and Diplomacy By Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto
2012 | 416 Pages | ISBN: 9971695707 | PDF | 23 MB
Following the fall of the Melaka Sultanate to the Portuguese in 1511, the sultanates of Johor and Aceh emerged as major trading centres alongside Portuguese Melaka. Each power represented wider global interests. Aceh had links with Gujerat, the Ottoman Empire and the Levant. Johor was a centre for Javanese merchants and others involved with the Eastern spice trade. Melaka was part of theEstado da India, Portugal's trading empire that extended from Japan to Mozambique. Throughout the sixteenth century, a peculiar balance among the three powers became an important character of the political and economical life in the Straits of Melaka. The arrival of the Dutch in the early seventeenth century upset the balance and led to the decline of Portuguese Melaka.