December 24 - The History of Melaka

 Malaysia is a Muslim country, but if you look at their history, they have had Christian influences from several European countries.  Today we spent several hours at a museum and learned a lot of Malaysian history.  

We had been been warned about the swarms of local tourists who crowd the streets of Melaka on the weekends.  Add to that the fact that it is Christmas Eve - which we did not, as it is hard to imagine the Holidays while in a hot, muggy Muslim country.  So we were unprepared for the length of time it took to get from our apartment to Dutch Square.  It is not that far away, but as you get close; it all squeezes down to one single lane getting into the area.  So it is like being in a parking lot after a huge even as the cars inch forward towards the exit.

Eventually we got there and made our way to Stadthuys.  This used to be the town hall and governor's home during the Dutch period.  Now it is the History and Ethnography Museum.  It is a large complex of four buildings.  There were a lot of paintings with long descriptions in Malaysian and English.  So much to read - so much in fact that sometimes they would repeat the exact same verbiage on the next painting as well and hope that you wouldn't notice.

The brief history of Melaka is that nothing happened before around 1400.  After that there was a period until 1511 of various Sultanates.  During that time brothers killed each brothers, uncles betrayed nephews, women were used as pawns to be married off to other rulers to consolidate power.  In other words all the usual wars intrigue and hardships that all people's suffered through, then and now, all in the search for power.  

All of this fighting was local stuff until 1511 when the Portuguese showed up and overran all the local powers that were attempting to take control.  The Portuguese thought it would be easy-peasy to control the area as they wanted for trade purposes - but the locals proved hardier, and kept fighting back.  Making the Portuguese work much harder and spend a lot more money and time on protecting what they had taken.  

In 1641 the Dutch overcame the forces of the Portuguese and took over the Melaka area.  Meanwhile, the British had been hanging around in the Penang area of Malaysia where they were leasing space for their trading companies.  But they wanted to spread to other parts of Asia, including Melaka.  In 1795 the Dutch gave permission to the British to take over Melaka because they were afraid the French were interested in taking it over and they were too busy to deal with it.  But this was all politics and the British and the Dutch sort of divvied up the Malay archipelago between the two countries, with the British still holding onto Melaka.

Melaka was briefly under the control of Japan during WWII from 1941 to 1946.  At that point almost the whole area, except for Brunei, became known as the Malayan Union.  

We had ordered groceries from AEON which were to be delivered between 5 and 6pm.  As we had gotten a late start, we had skipped lunch in order to get in as much as we could of the museum.  But as we were getting ready to leave - we saw a small cafe open with not many people.  We ate croissant sandwiches quickly and then called a Grab to get home.  It took even longer for our driver to get to us.  Meanwhile we sat in Dutch Square and tried to guess people's nationalities.  A very Indian looking family sat down next to us.  They were speaking English - turns out they are from Ontario, Canada!

It is surprising to me that with all the time the Europeans spent in Malaysia the Christian influence made very little inroads into the Malaysian culture.  And pretty much the only Malaysians who are Christian are partly some other nationality.  But there is one neighborhood here that is very Catholic.  In my next post I will talk about the Portuguese Settlement.