On the Kingdom of Malacca: Part I
We learned quite a great deal about Malacca in secondary school. We were taught, for examples, that Malacca was a great seaport during the 15th century which has attracted a lot of people to do business there, that the founder of this kingdom is an Indonesian prince called Parameswara, that Tun Perak is a wise prime minister, and so on. However, the standard history textbook pays extremely little attention on the connection between Malacca and China, despite the fact that Malacca is intricately related to Ming China. In 1403, Zhu Di 朱棣 became the third emperor of Ming Dynasty. One of the important decisions he made almost immediately after he ascended to the throne was to order a series of marine expeditions to the Indian Ocean. This famous series of expedition is, as you might already know, led by a muslim eunuch named Zheng He 鄭和. In October 1403, diplomatic emissaries were sent out to a lot of foreign countries. A eunuch named Yin Qing 尹庆 was sent to Malacca 满剌加, bringing wi...