Portuguese traders (Dutch: Portugeezen) were the European merchants, soldiers, and missionaries who arrived in the Indonesian archipelago in the early sixteenth century and established a commercial and military presence in the spice-rich regions of Sumatra, the Moluccas, and the straits of Malacca that competed directly with the Acehnese sultanate and supplied the maritime economy that the later Dutch East India Company would inherit and displace. Trading in pepper, gold, gunpowder, weapons, and opium, and engaging in the straits in piracy and slave-capture — including the procurement of Nias islanders for the slave markets of the archipelago — the Portuguese found in Acheh a “conglomerate of fiercely competing Mohammedan potencies” each conducting trade with the Overwal (Malacca). Their activities contributed to the early modern maritime economy that later attracted Dutch and English interest, and their presence in the straits supplied the long-term casus belli between Acheh and Portuguese Malacca that structured the history of the region for more than a century.
The Estado da Índia and the capture of Malacca
The Portuguese presence in the East Indies was the work of the Estado da Índia, the network of forts, feitorias (factories), and missions established by Afonso de Albuquerque after his capture of Malacca in August 1511. The fall of Malacca to Albuquerque’s fleet broke the existing Malay-Muslim trading network that had centred on the Malaccan sultanate and displaced the Muslim merchants who had dominated the straits trade; many of these merchants resettled at Acheh, Pedir, and Pasei, and the Koetaradja Sultanate that coalesced in the early sixteenth century drew much of its commercial and military momentum from the displaced Malaccan Muslims. The Portuguese feitoria at Malacca became the principal European entrepôt of the straits, and its captains — operating under the Estado da Índia based at Goa — conducted an aggressive commerce in spices, Chinese porcelain, Indian textiles, and Sumatran pepper that brought them into continual competition with the Acehnese sultanate and the other Muslim polities of the region. The Portuguese traders who appear in the Atjeh record were, in this sense, the commercial and military arm of the Estado da Índia in the straits.
Trade, piracy, and the slave traffic in Nias
The commercial activities of the Portuguese traders in the Atjeh region were varied and frequently violent. They dealt in pepper — purchased at the Acehnese ports of Pedir, Pasei, and Pidie and shipped to Malacca and onward to Europe — and in Sumatran gold, camphor, and benjamin, and they introduced into the trade the gunpowder, muskets, and cannon that the Acehnese sultans eagerly purchased for their wars. They also dealt in opium, which became one of the principal European imports into the archipelago. The Portuguese of the straits were, in addition, active in piracy and slave-capture: the Cristão (Portuguese-speaking) renegades and adventurers of the straits preyed on Muslim shipping, and the Portuguese traders procured slaves — including the Nias islanders whose capture is recorded in the source — for the labour markets of the archipelago. The slave traffic in Nias islanders was a long-standing feature of the regional economy, and the Portuguese involvement in it antedated and shaped the later Dutch regulation of the same traffic. The combination of commerce and predation that characterised the Portuguese traders in the straits is the source’s principal image of them.
The Acheh–Portuguese wars and the displacement of the Portuguese
The commercial and confessional rivalry between the Acehnese sultanate and the Portuguese of Malacca produced a series of naval wars that lasted for more than a century. The Acehnese attack on Aru of 1539 — repulsed by a Portuguese relief fleet — and the great Acehnese attack on Malacca of 1629 were the principal military episodes of this rivalry, but the straits saw continual Portuguese-Acehnese naval action throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Portuguese traders found in Aceh a “conglomerate of fiercely competing Mohammedan potencies” — that is, a fragmented set of coastal polities — and the consolidation of these polities into the Koetaradja Sultanate was, in part, a response to the Portuguese threat. The Portuguese monopoly in the straits was broken in the early seventeenth century by the arrival of the Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company, and the Dutch capture of Malacca in January 1641 — accomplished with Acehnese acquiescence — ended the Portuguese era in the straits. The Portuguese traders who remained in the archipelago were absorbed into the new Dutch-dominated commercial order or withdrew to the residual Portuguese possessions of Timor, Solor, and Macao.
Legacy and the long memory of the Portuguese
The Portuguese presence in the Atjeh region left a durable legacy. The Roman Catholic faith introduced by Portuguese missionaries in the Moluccas — at Ambon, Saparoea, and the surrounding islands — survived the Dutch Reformed mission that succeeded it and remained the confession of a substantial minority of the Ambonese soldiery of the colonial army. The Portuguese language, in its creolised form, remained a lingua franca of the archipelago’s Christian communities well into the nineteenth century, and Portuguese loanwords entered the Malay and Acehnese vocabularies. The Portuguese introduction of firearms, cannon, and gunpowder into the Sumatran trade had a longer-term strategic consequence: the Acehnese sultanate of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was one of the most heavily armed Muslim polities of the Indian Ocean, and the great Acehnese naval expeditions against Malacca would have been impossible without Portuguese arms. The Portuguese traders, in this sense, both competed with and armed the Acehnese sultanate, and their displacement by the Dutch in the seventeenth century closed the first European chapter of the Atjeh maritime economy.
See Also
- Koetaradja Sultanate
- Portuguese conquest of Malaka (1511)
- Conquest of Portuguese Malakka (1641)
- Atjeh’s attack on Malakka (1629)
- Dutch East India Company
- English East India Company
- Strait of Malacca
- Malacca
- Ambon
- Nias
- Dutch East Indies Government
- Aceh War
- Black pepper
- Opium
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 3-4.