The Hotel Of Mallaca

Not one to squander the obvious golden goose, the first sultan of the Malay Peninsula shrewdly crafted a lucrative enterprise on the needs of the passing traders and traffickers, and secured the patronage and protection of the Ming dynasty. And he was raking it in, becoming a source of considerable pride and nostalgia in modern Malay minds, a notion succinctly captured in the Malacca's Sultanate Palace and the Museum of History. Malacca soon established itself as an important trading port for China and traders began to flock here.
In 1405, Admiral Cheng Ho sailed into the Malaccan harbour in great style and grandeur with a crew of 37,000 in 317 ships. Malacca was Admiral Cheng's logistical headquarters for a total of seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433 when he navigated his navy to such distant and exotic places as Ceylon, Maldives, Mecca and Zanzibar. For sure, the man would have loved to visit again, but his luck ran out with the resurgence of isolationist Confucius thinking in the Chinese ruling bureaucracy. All that remains of the wonder sailor are the commemorative Sam Poh Kong Temple and the Hang Li Po's Well.
Parameswara's successors continued to prosper as a Ming Protectorate and from the tested formula of greasing the wheels of maritime trading. Islam had arrived earlier with the Arabic and Gujarati traders in the 1200s and become entrenched with the conversion of the rulers to the faith. At the height of its glory, the Sultanate of Malacca owned a tributary empire embracing the whole of the Malay Peninsula and much of eastern Sumatra, and won a battle or two against the forces of the famed Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya. Then in 1511, under the naval craftsmanship of Alfonso de Albuquerque, the second Portuguese governor of India, the Sultanate succumbed to Portuguese guns and powders.

Where it all began

Malacca rose from a humble fishing village to become a major center of the spice trade forming a vital link between the East and the West. Melaka (Malacca) is rich with history. In fact, the earliest written records of the country made reference to the Malacca Peninsula, instead of the Malay Peninsula or Malaya. Since it's founding, circa 1400, by a fleeing Sumatra prince, Parameswara. The journey which Parameswara made during his flight to escape the wrath of the Emperor of Majapahit whom he had unsuccessfully tried to overthrown. At the height of its power, the Sultanate of Malacca extended its borders over the whole of peninsula to encompass Pantani in the North and on the west right into the neighboring island of Sumatra to included Aru, Rokan, Siak, Kampar and Inderagiri. This was during the mid-1400s. The Golden Age of the Malacca Sultanate unfortunately lasted only for less then a century.

In 1511, the first of many foreign invasions of Malacca took place when the Portuguese arrived. The Portuguese were determined to control the East-West trade; so Malacca still retained its importance as a trade center until 1641 when the Portuguese surrendered Malacca to the Dutch. The Dutch who had a stronger foothold over the Indonesia archipelago swung the trade center over to Sumatra. In the meantime, Malacca's trade also declined due to the silting of its port. In 1795 Melaka (Malacca) was given to the British to prevent it form falling to the hands of the French, where the Netherlands was captured during the French Revolution. By the time British took over in 1824, the focus of the trade has shifted from Malacca to Singapore and Penang. Malacca however becomes the focal again during the struggle for independence after the Japanese Occupation during the Second World War and the British Colonial period that followed. So when Malaya gained its independence, it was only fitting that the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed in Malacca, where it all began. In 1989, Malacca has been declared as Malaysia's history city.