MELAKA : A COSMOPOLITAN CITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA馬六甲：東南亞的大都會
The article argues that the cosmopolitanization of Southeast Asian coastal cities between the first and sixteenth centuries must be understood as a direct product of the maritime trade regimes articulated by India and China. By tracing seasonal routes and monsoon conditions—with port stays during tr...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
October 2011
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40040/3118 |
| Summary: | The article argues that the cosmopolitanization of Southeast Asian coastal cities between the first and sixteenth centuries must be understood as a direct product of the maritime trade regimes articulated by India and China. By tracing seasonal routes and monsoon conditions—with port stays during transitional periods—the text maintains that the continued presence of crews and passengers, interacting with local populations, generated specific forms of urban cohabitation, sometimes marked by integration and at other times by social and spatial barriers.
Methodologically, the contribution operates at a historiographical level: it reconstructs trajectories and connections through an interpretative synthesis of contact chronologies, patterns of maritime mobility, and settlement dynamics. The discussion situates Melaka as a key point of convergence for these networks and as a space where urban emergence intensifies: the scale and strategic role of the strait would facilitate both supply and trade as well as the formation of settlements by immigrants—especially South Asian groups—contributing to the consolidation of local powers.
It concludes that the "cosmopolitan city" results not merely from abstract commercial circulation, but from a coastal urban ecology shaped by markets, environmental vulnerabilities (such as fires), and demographic reorganizations that reconfigure identities and sociabilities in port contexts. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |