Old Malacca

Book excerpt: Beautifully illustrated with color reproductions, black and white prints, and maps, Old Malacca introduces readers to Malacca's historical periods to explain how the city has acquired its present-day character, and to remind readers of the various elements which have gone into Malacca's cultural make-up. Beginning as a fishing settlement before Parameswara arrived around 1400 A.D., Malacca became the greatest emporium the world had ever known. It was a place crammed so full of all kinds of goods that they almost overflowed into the river itself, and many of the townsmen became rich. Drawing on early chroniclers and travelers' tales, Sarnia Hayes Hoyt examines Malacca's golden age and the colonial periods that followed, when the Portuguese, Dutch, and finally the British imposed a new maritime trading organization on Malacca and the South-East Asian region. Old Malacca offers a balanced perspective which gives due credit to the various eras of Malacca's history.