Capture of Malacca (1511)

The capture of Malacca in 1511 was the conquest of the great Malay trading port of Malacca by a Portuguese fleet under Afonso de Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India. After a siege and two assaults in July and August, Sultan Mahmud Shah fled and the city passed into Portuguese hands. Malacca controlled the strait through which sea trade between India and China passed, and its fall gave the Portuguese Empire a base deep in Southeast Asia and a route to the spice-producing islands further east.

Malacca had been founded at the beginning of the fifteenth century and grew rich on its position on the Strait of Malacca. Merchants from Gujarat, Java, the Coromandel Coast, China, Persia, Arabia and many other places lived there; one Portuguese visitor counted 84 languages. Modern estimates put its population at around 40,000, though contemporaries gave figures ranging from 30,000 to 100,000. The city depended on imported rice, much of it from Java, and had no permanent walls, only wooden and bamboo stockades.

After Vasco da Gama opened the sea route around Africa to India, the Portuguese crown became eager to reach Malacca. In 1509 a fleet under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira arrived and was at first allowed to open a trading post. However, the influential Gujarati and Javanese merchants, fearing Portuguese competition, persuaded Sultan Mahmud and his chief minister to turn on the newcomers. Sequeira's ships beat off a surprise attack, but he sailed away, leaving about twenty Portuguese captive in the city. Letters from one prisoner, Rui de Araújo, later briefed Albuquerque on the city's defences.

Having taken Goa in 1510, Albuquerque sailed from Cochin in April 1511 with around eighteen ships. Sources disagree on the size of his force, giving figures from about 700 to 1,500 Portuguese, with several hundred Indian and other auxiliaries. The Sultan, by contrast, was reported to command around 20,000 men, war elephants and thousands of guns, but Albuquerque himself judged that only about 4,000 were real fighting men, and most of the artillery proved ineffective.

The fleet reached Malacca on 1 July. Albuquerque demanded the return of the prisoners; after weeks of fruitless talks he bombarded the waterfront, and the captives were released, but the Sultan refused his further demands for compensation and a fortress. On 25 July, the feast of Saint James, the Portuguese landed on either side of the bridge at the river mouth. Armoured troops broke the stockades, and a charge of royal war elephants was turned back, but short of supplies, Albuquerque withdrew to his ships. A second landing in early August took the bridge for good. After days of bombardment and street fighting, the city's resistance collapsed around 24 August, and the Sultan withdrew inland with his treasure. Several merchant communities, including Chinese and Hindu traders and the people of Pegu, had sided with the Portuguese. The city was then plundered for three days, with the property of these allies spared.

Albuquerque built a stone fortress, later known as A Famosa, partly using stone taken from an old rock-cut tomb and from the city's mosque, and left a garrison. He appointed local leaders for the different communities and sent envoys to the Ayutthaya Kingdom and Pegu to secure allies and rice. In late 1511 he dispatched António de Abreu eastwards to find the Spice Islands, and in 1513 a Portuguese ship sailed on from Malacca to southern China. The exiled Sultan fought on from Pahang, then Bintan and finally Kampar in Sumatra, where he died in 1527; his son founded the Sultanate of Johor.

At the time it was the most distant territorial conquest ever made, and one of the boldest Portuguese ventures of the Age of Discovery, since contrary monsoon winds made retreat to India impossible had the attack failed. It ended the rule of the Malacca sultans over the city that had given their state its name.

Our 1500 map shows the Malacca Sultanate at its height, and the 1530 map shows the area after the Portuguese conquest, in what is now Malaysia.