Matutando Sobre Estreitagens ڤميکيرن تنتڠ سلت ملك

The great absence from the Muzium Samudra is clearly Zheng/Cheng Ho. His voyages are not part of the official history of Melaka offered by the museum even though he is part of the history of the port.

There is however an excellent private museum about him and his voyages, devised by a local Chinese scholar. The well that was supposedly dug by his crew is within the museum complex. The guide explained to me that the bricks on the upper rim of the well were Portuguese bricks. The Portuguese would have destroyed part of the original well and replaced it with their own bricks. The well had been neglected and forgotten for many years, again according to the guide, until it was rediscovered in recent times. Zheng Ho is also celebrated in the Maritime Museum of Macau near the A-Ma Temple. I had first learned about him in Brazil years ago through an article in a scholarly journal, Comparative Studies in Society and History. Even though African history is now a compulsory subject at Brazilian schools - at long last as about half of the country has at least some roots in Africa - Chinese voyages to the East Coast of Africa are usually not part of the syllabus. East Africa is in fact a very obscure place to us as African Brazilian history is almost all about Atlantic Africa, Moçambique excepted.

The Cheng Ho museum displays stress that the Ming fleet led by Zheng Ho had much larger ships than Portuguese naus; was in fact a vast armada of thousands of people and dozens and dozens of vessels; and was far better prepared for sea voyages than European fleets as for instance soya bean sprouts were grown on board, among other vegetables, to prevent scurvy. Animals were also raised on some of the smaller ships. There is an impressive diorama of the vast armada leaving port in full sail with hundreds of ships. The several fleets sent out during the diverse voyages in the first half of the fifteenth century touched dozens and dozens of countries in the Indian Ocean, all the way from today's Kenyan coast to Ternate in today's Moluccas in Eastern Indonesia. Dozens of embassies bearing gifts and letters to the Ming Emperor also sailed to China with the returning fleets. A couple of larger ships were almost like luxurious floating mansions carrying dignataries to far away places.

In fact, the incredibly detailed displays of the Cheng Ho museum - who also organizes international conferences on Cheng Ho both in Melaka and Beijing - make the Museum of the Sea seem by comparison a poor cousin even though it clearly benefited from government largesse and is housed in a publicly funded reconstructed Portuguese nau. Two powerful histories are therefore represented in town, one denying the other. The Cheng Ho private museum however makes a point of stressing Zheng Ho's Muslim origin and his purported role in spreading Islam in Melaka and elsewhere. Nonetheless, this makes me suspicious as the coming of Islam to Melaka in the Muzium Samudra is related to Pasai in Sumatra (whereas in the Sultan's reconstructed palace next to the Bastião de Santiago there is a conversion scene of the Sultan with dummies, one of which represents a Middle Easterner). Both histories are contemporary and perhaps complementary even though they are clearly silent about each other. Baba Nyonya history also features in the Chinese-conceived museum as well as of course the history of China proper (in fact, there is even an extensive exhibit on the origin and development of Chinese characters). Both histories are entirely absent from the Museum of the Sea. The Cheng Ho museum is in turn silent about the Melaka Sultanate except en passant.

There is also no Indian museum and therefore Indian Melakan history is not represented anywhere as far as I know. Besides, there is no museum on the history of the Portuguese minority in town. These and other histories - for instance, that of the Orang Asli in Melaka, the indigenous people - are silenced among the deaf skirmishes of the warring official histories of the city. Interestingly, there is also no history of the Arabs in Melaka, nor of Sumatrans. Historian Abdur-Razzaq Lubis from Penang in fact tells me that Melaka was historically a major point of entry for Sumatrans on their way to Negeri Sembilan - where many if not most people descend from Minangkabau from the highlands of Sumatra - and elsewhere in the Peninsula. Last but not least no mention of slavery is made in the local museums. Both Sumatran slaves and slaves originating in Africa and India - these last are in fact some of the ancestors of people in the Portuguese community - are absent from local museums. Besides, nobody ever learns from local museums that once there were Africans in Melaka before the current population of students. There are also the Orang Laut ("gente do mar") and the Orang Selat ("gente do estreito"), seafaring indigenous communities about which there is nothing in Melaka's public space.

I must say that I find the presentation of Melakan history through museums a fiendishly difficult affair because of the complex history of the city spreading as it does in every possible direction. A good deal of it also remains fairly obscure, first and foremost that of the Melaka Sultanate. In retrospect however the Chinese influence seems enormous. It is said that the largest Chinese cemetery outside of China is Bukit Cina in Melaka. A Ming princess came to Melaka and married the local ruler, bringing with her a large retinue (they settled on Bukit Cina). Melaka was arguably as much a sultanate as a Chinese trading outpost. The influence of Siam seems also beyond dispute, at least in the political realm. Yet Siam is only mentioned in passing in local museum displays, usually as a distant threat (fortunately repealed as in the Museum of the Sea so as to enhance the image of one or two local heroes). Then there is the very complex issue of the various processes of creolization that gave rise to the local Portuguese, the Straits Chinese - Malayized Baba Nyonya who were however supposedly never Muslims - the Chitty community of Indian and Malay origin and so on and so forth. The Creole or hybrid languages arising from this crux are also quite astonishing: Papia Kristang or Melaka Portuguese, Chitty Malay, Baba Malay, local Hokkien, Melaka English. There is no museum of languages in Melaka. Language only features indirectly in the Muzium Sastera or literature museum and the Muzium Pendidikan or education museum housed in the Stadthuys complex. Last but not least, 'Malay' may hide a great deal of diversity behind a single, deceitfully simple-looking ethnic label, not unlike 'Chinese'. That a Malay identity of sorts first arose across the straits in Sumatra (in fact, around today's Palembang), under the influence of Indic culture and using a mix of Malay and Sanskrit in its official inscriptions, is also not mentioned anywhere. Parameswara, the almost mythic founder of Melaka, is however mentioned - he was a Hindu prince, a fugitive from Palembang via Singapore and Muar and from the armies of both Java and Siam.

Chinese influence and patronage therefore make sense because they were pragmatically the only way Parameswara's polity could survive in a world contested, by the early fifteenth century, by two very powerful neighbours, namely, Java and Siam (or Majapahit and Ayutthaya). Unfortunately, that does not make sense in a postcolony trying to retrieve its 'lost' roots through a narrative of ethnic purity, be it Malay or Chinese. The silence on Indian history also speaks bookloads about postcolonial realities. The impressive displays that I saw in Bangkok's various museums stressing the many ancient links between the diverse parts of Indicized Southeast Asia and beyond are mostly entirely lacking in Malaysian museums of every persuasion. In the Muzium Negara in Kuala Lumpur Java some times raises its head though the visitor is left to wonder what may be the connection between Borobudur and Melaka. The Muzium Samudra gives the impression that, Parameswara and the coming of Islam not withstanding, the Malays are somehow a self-made people. It also interestingly clearly stresses Melaka's many trade and other connections, thereby allowing the visitor to suspect that there is more to local history than meets the eye through the displays and the copious explanatory material in both Malay and English (no Chinese).

Furthermore, Melaka is hailed as the source and origin of Islamic Malaysia and yet it is a fairly Christian city in a Muslim-majority country. Once it was a major missionary hub - in fact, since the times of the Portuguese. Saint Francis Xavier was buried here before his body was removed to Goa. It remained an important base for missionaries well into the British era in the nineteenth century, when various Protestant missionaries would use Melaka as a beachhead to reach into China as well as the surrounding sultanates. I learned about the connection by visiting the Protestant cemetery in Macau, where some of the graves connect both cities through a religious link as well as a trading one. A history of the relations between Macau and Melaka after the Portuguese period still remains to be written (and considering the paucity of historians in both Macau and Malaysia, it will probably never be written).  Another history that seems unwritten is that of the several different Chinese communities in Melaka, whether Christian or not. There is an amazing number of them, all different from each other. Finally, there is no museum of the British colonial era, in spite of the fact that the Brits were here for the longest time (they were in fact longer in town than the Melaka Sultanate itself).

Displays on the obviously connected history of the Straits Settlements are also lacking. Namely, Melaka, Penang, Dindings (Lumut harbour, Pangkor Island and their immediate hinterland in today's Perak), Labuan off the coast of today's Sabah in Kalimantan (that I learned to call Bornéu as a map-curious child in Araçatuba and São Paulo), Christmas Island (today a Malay-inhabited outpost of Australia where boatloads of refugees and immigrants sink unaided), Cocos Island (also Australia and also Malay), and Singapore. The important historical connection between the three large ports of Penang, Melaka, and Singapore is therefore entirely lost from sight. So is the fact that the colony arose out of a trade-off between Dutch and English whereby all of Sumatra was given to the former and all of the Malay Peninsula to the latter. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 therefore split the Straits of Melaka into two halves for the first time in recorded history. That split is nowadays part of the impressive divide between postcolonial Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. I am grateful to Abdur-Razzaq Lubis for clarifying the history of this to me obscure former colony that existed for well over a hundred years, as well as for giving me details of the many connections across the straits that have lasted even into the postcolonial era.

The former Settlements are therefore now split among several different Malaysian negeri as well as dispersed over three countries (Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore) and several islands. That Melaka played a pivotal role in the establishment of Singapore is also not mentioned, let alone celebrated anywhere. In fact, thousands of inhabitants moved to Singapore as the new colonial harbour was founded by the British, to get rid of the Dutch administration and also to profit from the new opportunities made available there. Nowadays people in Penang, Melaka and Singapore often have family connections in one or two of the three cities. Considering that Singaporeans are a very substantial group of tourists in the city (they often come for the weekend), a potential source of income is also being overlooked. In reality, the many old links between the different parts of the Straits have been a major casualty of postcolonial histories. Singapore for instance downplays or ignores the important Baba Peranakan - what is called Baba Nyonya here - culture and history so prominently featured in (private Chinese-run) museums in Melaka. That is a major contribution of Melaka to her two estranged and much larger and wealthier sisters. Last but not least, the emphasis on the already complex history of the harbour cities means that their interior - in the case of both Penang and Melaka a substantial expanse of territory - is an orphan of historiography. It is my impression that the hinterlands of both harbours are portrayed mostly as the place where crops and vegetables were grown (and where Malays live in large numbers...). That is perhaps undestandable in view of the many oceanic connections of both cities through the centuries but is also strange because the Straits Settlements clearly spearheaded British occupation of the rest of the Peninsula - and incidentally gave more than moderate support to the British invasion and annexation of Hong Kong as well. In fact, the historical link to the Pearl River Delta - Macau, Hong Kong, Guangdong - is also another casualty of postcolonial history as displayed in museums.

All this is reduced to a smoldering feud between Malay and Chinese histories in local museums. Melaka has comparatively speaking many museums - the old Dutch Stadhuys complex alone houses half a dozen or so - but much of its history remains nonetheless beyond the reach of the public and even that of the researcher.

In this predicament, important as he was, Zheng Ho is therefore only the tip of the iceberg.

Portanto, Malaca é historicamente tão chinesa quanto malaia, para não mencionar muitas outras coisas. Uma das ironias da cidade é que sua história longa e complexa ficou reduzida a perspectivas e visões provincianas e tacanhas. Os museus da cidade oferecem assim uma excelente oportunidade para se aprender como é difícil olhar a história de maneira que os seus fio se liguem entre si. Nesse sentido, os silêncios dos museus malaqueiros e suas lacunas são tão ou mais importantes que seus mostruários e vitrinas.


Leituras sugeridas:  


Penang and Its Region: The Story Of An Asian Entrepot. Yeoh Seng Guan, Salma Khoo Nasution et al. (org.), NUS Press, Singapura, 2009. Vide www.arecabooks.com

Singapore: A Biography. Mark Ravinder Frost e Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, National Museum of Singapore, Didier Millet, e Hong Kong University Press, Singapura e Hong Kong, 2009.

Malacca: Voices from the Streets. Lim Huck Chin e Fernando Jorge, publicado por Lim Huck Chin, Singapura, 2006. Vide www.malaccavoices.com