ABSTRACT
A s graduate students majoring in Southeast Asian history, we were introduced to Malacca (the Malaysian spelling is Melaka) through Malay and Portuguese chronicles that celebrated its golden age in the fifteenth century. During this time Malacca rose to become one of the great entrepôts (a place where goods can be exchanged with few or no import duties) of the early-modern world. From 1511, however, it fell under European control—first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British—and this ended only when Malaysia gained its independence from Britain in 1957.
