![[Talk] The Ancient Town of Si Thep in Thailand: A Crossroads of Indianization](https://www.southeastasianarchaeology.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/the-ancient-town-of-si-thep-in-thailand-a-crossroads-of-indianization-502-120x86.jpg)
Readers may be interested in this webinar by Dr. Nasha Khaw on the Sultanate of Melaka, part of the Temasek History Research Centre’s Archaeology and Art History programme. (Disclosure: I am a co-convener for this series).
The Sultanate of Melaka is a confederation of several Malay states which began as a trading outpost at the estuary of the Melaka River. Parameswara, who founded the Melaka ruling dynasty at the end of the 14th century CE, gradually pacified nearby coastal and riverine settlements such as Muar, Beruas and Klang. This gave Melaka an advantage over the distribution of local resources, especially tin and rainforest products. In the successive decades, the network of ports and polities under Melaka further expanded to Southeast Sumatra and the rest of the Malay Peninsula, giving the main port a monopoly over certain products as well as control over the movement of peoples and goods. By the second half of the 15th century CE, Melaka became a thalassocratic state with written laws, taxation, and foreign diplomatic relations, as well as an established system of rulers, nobles, chieftains and administrators. Long after the fall of Melaka port to the Portuguese, successor states such as Perak, Johor and Pahang still retain the old vestiges in the forms of their jurisprudence, court rituals and social hierarchy. This lecture reviews the archaeological and historical sources on Melaka, based on which its culture, economic and political system will be discussed.
Source: Webinar Registration – Zoom
