Dutch VOC captures Melaka from the Portuguese
Citations (1)
- Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference pp. 175-178 · open book
After establish ing a base in the small town of Jayakarta, renamed Batavia (now Jakarta) , on the island ofJava in 1619, the VOC's breakthrough came in 1641 when it captured Melaka-a key entrepot of the southeast Asian trade-from the Portuguese. The Indonesian archipelago at this time was divided into many king doms or sultanates, most of which had been Muslim for a century or more, and had developed links through Indian, Chinese, and Malay traders to commercial circuits across much of southeast Asia and to China.