THE SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF MARITIME CITIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

FROM NEGARA TO KOTA: THE SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF
SOUTHEAST ASIAN MARITIME CITIES

SARAH MEI ISMAIL
(B.A. ARCH., HONS.) NUS

A THESIS SUBMITTED
FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN HISTORY
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
2006


Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following people, without whom this thesis would not have been possible:

My supervisor and mentor, Associate Professor Timothy P. Barnard. Thanks for the guidance, the
advice, the patience, and above all, the truly masterful kick in the pants, without which this thesis
would not have been written.

My mother, See Poh Choo, for instilling a love of reading and history in me, and for not asking if
I could get a job with a history degree.

Head of Department Associate Professor Ian Gordon, for having enough faith in me to support
this architecture graduate’s application to read for a masters in History.

Deputy Head of Department Associate Professor Brian P. Farrell, for insisting that I teach
military history, sending this thesis into new and unexpected ground. Thanks also for the practical
aspects of early modern warfare; with the Field Marshal’s help, Melaka was conquered again.

Dr. Quek Ser Hwee, for the moral support and friendship through the years, and the laksa.

Dr Anthony Reid, for the suggestions and the extremely kind loan of Dr. Bulbeck’s Ph.D. thesis.

Dr. David Bulbeck of Australian National University and Dr. William Cummings of the
University of South Florida, for sharing their love and knowledge of Makassar. “I stand on the
shoulders of giants.”

ii


Dr. Jan van der Putten, for the kind help in the various translations and vagaries of the Sejarah
Melayu.

Dr. Geoffrey Wade, for unnerving levels of interest.

Kelly Lau, and the administrative staff of the History department. For teaching me that history is
written by historians, but history happens because of people like them.

To the postgraduates of the History Department. Without them, this thesis would have been
completed much earlier, and it would have been the poorer for it. Thanks for the memories, the
late nights, the stimulating conversations and various things that thankfully, will never be part of
official history.

To my aunt, Zuraidah Ibrahim, for professional services rendered pro bono.

To the rest of my family, for their unquestioning support of my decision to pursue further studies.

To God, for making coffee and chocolate available to the world. Such are the true building blocks
of a thesis.

And finally, to Zakir Hussain, for the unwavering support, the helpful suggestions, the friendship.
And for the love and affection stuff.

iii


Contents

1.

2.

3.

Acknowledgements

ii

Contents

iv

Summary

vi

List of Illustrations

viii

List of Abbreviations and Symbols

ix

The City in Early Modern Southeast Asia

1

The issue of sources

3

Writings on Southeast Asian cities: Defining the city

4

Methodology: Urban type, hierarchy and structure

7

Colonialism, War and Southeast Asian urbanism

15

Melaka: Between the winds

22

Historiographical overview and sources

22

Melaka: A historical overview

23

Melaka under the sultans

26

Melaka of the Portuguese

39

The two Melakas: Comparison

44

Melaka at War: Defense and the port cities

50

Makassar: Golden Cock of the East

55

Historiographical overview and sources

56

History: The rise and fall of Gowa

57

Makassar: City and polity

60

The city of Ujung Padang: Under Dutch rule

80

Influences on the urban form: Trade and war

82

iv


4.

Conclusion: A Tale of Two Cities

87

Continuity and Change: The urban form

87

Viewed from the ramparts: War and the city

91

Writ in Stone: Changes in material culture

94

The city between monsoons: Further areas for study

98

Appendices
1.

Approaches to city definition

101

2.

Southeast Asian Cartography and Illustrations

113

3.

The Melaka debate and limitations of sources

117

4.

The Portuguese Attack and Melakan defense

126

5.

Construction Timeline of Makassar fortifications

130

6.

1638 sketch of Makassar

133

Bibliography

134

v


Summary

The development of urbanism in early Southeast Asia took a significantly different route
from its counterparts in Europe and China. Many European cities began as fortified townships

and the city wall was the sine qua non of the city, defining city limits in both the physical sense
and in the realm of meaning. However, the great maritime cities of Southeast Asia from Melaka
to Aceh made no such distinction between city and country, with the city encompassing entire
rural districts within its physical definition. The early European explorers were thus faced with a
brand of urbanism different to their own; Southeast Asian negara stood counterpoint to European
city.
However, the pre-colonial maritime centers experienced a considerable amount of change
during the “Age of Commerce” (1400-1700) when international trade peaked. The volume of
trade in these cities, and the corresponding exchange of technology and ideas, shaped the growing
port cities. Increased wealth through trade also made new urban projects possible and desirable,
with reasons ranging from increased stakes to prestige. Also at play was the changed nature of
warfare in the region after the 1511 Portuguese conquest of Melaka. The new “modern” warfare,
which emphasized conquest over spheres of influence required a new set of measures to defend
port cities.
All these factors served to spark a change in the rising maritime cities, Makassar being a
prime example of a highly cosmopolitan center of commerce. New urban forms, such as
protective defensive city walls came up, this time in brick and influenced by European – usually
Portuguese – technology, as well as that of the existing walled cities of mainland Southeast Asia.
In some cases, earlier urban forms such as thick earthen walls, were recalled and revived. Either
way, these changes gave the port cities a new material prominence and militaristic intent that
contrasted with their traditionally ephemeral nature. Negara was now becoming kota. The Age of

vi


Commerce was thus a time of rapid evolution in Southeast Asian port cities, where changing
economic and military factors were reflected in the physical structure of the city.
The city walls that emerged as urban symptoms of evolution were had the ability to be
agents of change and affect the city’s functions. Through a comparative study of urban structure
and hierarchy during this post-1511 period, this study will examine how these new elements

affected the functioning and form of the maritime cities, the society that shaped these cities, and
were shaped by them in return. This thesis will argue that the walls were a reflection of a shift in
warfare trends that changed the perception in the city, and that these walls did not change the
urban life, but instead were used to fossilize existing divisions within.
Pre-1511 Melaka and Makassar will be considered, to discover the possible indigenous
urban response to the altering military and international circumstances of the 1500-1600s, as well
as the changes in urban form experienced by both as they passed under European rule. Both the
indigenous and European-controlled city in the post-1511 period will be compared to discover
possible differences in the urban development conducted by the new colonialists and by the
indigenous rulers who rose to prominence in the high-stakes world of the Southeast Asian Age of
Commerce.

vii


Illustrations

Figure 1.

The Portuguese Attack

27

Figure 2.

Melaka

30

Figure 3.

Eredia’s Melaka

40

Figure 4

a) Pre-1511 Melaka b) Post 1511 Melaka

45

Figure 5

Makassar’s Fortifications at 1667

61

Figure 6

Overview of Somba Opu

66

Figure 7

Archaeological form of Benteng Somba Opu laid over the Dutch Sketch

67

1638

Figure 8

Somba Opu, 1638

69

Figure 9

Ground Plans of Makassar Fortresses

75

viii


List of Abbreviations and Symbols

JMBRAS = Journal of Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society
JSEAH = Journal of Southeast Asian History
JSEAS = Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
KITLV = Koninkliijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
MBRAS = Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society
VOC = Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie

ix


Chapter One: The City in Early Modern Southeast Asia

“For the fort was the pride of Malacca and after its destruction the place lost its glory,

like a woman bereaved of her husband, the lustre gone from her face. But now by the will of Allah
it was no more, showing how ephemeral are the things of this world. The old order is destroyed, a
new world is created and all around us is change…”
-Munshi Abdullah, Hikayat Abdullah. 1
When British colonel William Farquhar destroyed the Portuguese fort A Famosa in 1807,
the residents of Melaka mourned the loss of this mark of prestige that had protected them for so
long. For two hundred years, it had been the centerpiece of Portuguese and Dutch Melaka, and
had been behind the port’s status as a powerful trade centre and its identification as a city. The
destruction of the great fort marked the end of an age. However, if the loss of A Famosa marked
the end of an old order, then its construction had been the beginning of another. The fort had first
risen amidst the ruins of old Melaka in 1511, and local feeling then was very different. Hostility
and suspicion were but a few of the sentiments with which Southeast Asians had initially viewed
its construction.
The great Portuguese fort of Melaka was the first of many such fortifications. After 1511,
the port cities of insular Southeast Asia began the construction of stone city walls, girding the
great maritime centers that had once expanded freely over the land. Cities such as Johor Lama,
Banten, and Makassar began to invest in city fortifications and more elaborate defense systems,
all of which were focused on the linchpin of the stone fortress. This heralded a change in the
urban structure of coastal cities, for the conception of the city in maritime Southeast Asia had
never been before tied to the fort and to fortified city walls. Before 1511, few cities possessed
either of these, a circumstance that was reflected in the various indigenous terms for city that

1

A.H. Hill, The Hikayat Abdullah, by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, trans. by A.H. Hill, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1969), p. 63.


seldom distinguished polity from city, let alone the city from the country. The fort that had
become nearly ubiquitous by the 1800s was virtually unknown in pre-modern insular Southeast

Asia.
This relatively new urban element that became so intertwined with the ports after 1511
played a part in the everyday functions of the city. The fort, a major feature of the urbanscape,
was a product of new concerns that necessitated the re-thinking of the city’s function towards its
residents, and was a reflection of underlying changes. However, it was not merely a symptom, but
was also the stimulus of change in its own right, influencing the city in ways beyond that which it
had been originally built.
The significance of these fort walls therefore became more than the fact of their
existence, due to their relationship with the cities that build them. Cities are often the centres of
cultural production, and changes that occurred rippled outward in the society that created them.
As vital, active players in this urban theatre, forts were part of a larger historical process and
through a study of their evolution, it becomes possible to understand changes that were occurring
in the greater world of island Southeast Asia. The nature of changes in the urban structure and
function, and in the society that the city housed in its form in early modern Southeast Asia is the
concern of this thesis.
Through a comparative study of urban structure and hierarchy during this post-1511
period, this study will examine how these new elements affected the functioning and form of the
maritime cities and the society that shaped these cities, and were shaped by them in return. Pre1511 Melaka and Makassar will be considered, to discover the possible indigenous urban
response to the altering military and international circumstances of the 1500-1600s, as well as the
changes in urban form experienced by both as they passed under European rule. Both the
indigenous and European-controlled city in the post-1511 period will be compared to discover
possible differences in the urban development conducted by the new colonialists and by the

2


indigenous rulers who rose to prominence in the high-stakes world of the Southeast Asian – as
Anthony Reid has coined it – “Age of Commerce”.

The issue of sources

The reconstruction of the urban fabric necessary in this study is hindered by the same
issues that have affected the studying of any aspect of pre-modern insular Southeast Asia –
namely, the sources. Southeast Asian indigenous historiography has been patchy for a variety of
reasons, including a tendency towards orality as well as records scribed on perishable materials.
Surviving records also can be optative, bordering on the near mythic. 2 Much of what has been
gathered on pre-modern Southeast Asia through traditional sources come from records that have
been kept by civilizations external to the region, bringing in the issue of correct translation, which
has affected past studies of the city. In addition, the translations have had the effect of replacing
the indigenous term with a new term that brings with it additional sets of meanings never
intended in the original, as well as ignoring, or erasing regional differences in meaning. 3
Besides these difficulties, an additional problem lies in the limited range of sources.
Records from the subaltern, indigenous perspective that comprises quotidian city life are often
scarce. The archaeological record is also patchy, and is especially so for coastal Southeast Asia. 4
Archaeologist John Miksic has observed that the archaeological record in Southeast Asia has
been heavily disturbed, due to the efforts of colonial historians, the construction of modern cities,

2

C.C. Berg, “Javanese Historiography – A Synopsis of its Evolution”, Historians of Southeast Asia, ed.
D.G.E. Hall, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 16.
3
John N. Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change: The Case of Sumatra”, Archipel, 37, (1989): 9, 12.
4
John N. Miksic, "Archaeological studies of style, information transfer and the transition from Classical to
Islamic periods in Java", JSEAS, 20, 1 (1989): 10; Bennett Bronson, “Exchange at the Upstream and
Downstream Ends”, Economic exchange and social interaction in Southeast Asia, ed. Karl L. Hutterer.
(Ann Arbor : Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1977), p. 47.

3

and coastal erosion. All this has resulted in the slow development of urban studies on the coastal
cities of Southeast Asia. 5
A thin archaeological record and scattered, diverse sources in different languages are thus
the major obstacles in any meaningful study of the urban forms in pre-modern Southeast Asia.
Although it is still possible to conduct such a study, an understanding of the limitations and
pitfalls of the materials at hand must still be taken into account when analyzing them. For
instance, constructing an elaborate sociological theory of urban life in the pre-modern era would
remain highly speculative, since such a theory would require a high volume of archaeological and
archival evidence to support it. 6

Writings on Southeast Asian cities: Defining the City
Much has been written about urban generation, and the rise of cities in Southeast Asia, by
authors such as Paul Wheatley and Miksic. Others like Richard O’Connor have chosen to focus
on the sociological aspect of urbanism, and the effects of urbanism on the indigenous lifestyle.
Work has been done on defining the city in indigenous terms, as well as establishing a typology
of cities based on case studies conducted within the region. However, due to ongoing
archaeological digs and archival issues, urban theory in Southeast Asia is somewhat fluid, subject
to re-writing with each new discovery.
Related to the issue of translating the meaning of city, or urban settlement, in Southeast
Asia is the most hotly debated question in global urban history studies: the precise definition of
“city”. The reason for the depth of debate lies partly in the potential political implications of city
occurrences in history. Too often seen as a measure of technological progress or an image of
greatness, the very existence of a city is often dependent on the agenda of the researcher.

5

John N. Miksic, “Heterogenetic cities in pre-modern Southeast Asia”, World Archaeology, 32, 1, (2000):
110.
6

John Miksic, “Settlement Patterns and Sub-regions in Southeast Asian History” Review of Indonesian and
Malaysian Affairs, 24, 2, (1990): 103.

4


An early common approach in Western schools of urbanism was the use of formalist
definitions involving the selection of a characteristic, or a set of characteristics, that would denote
urban status, such as Kingsley Davis’s stipulation of a minimum population of 100,000. 7 This
approach has been heavily criticised for its forced and arbitrary definition of a city which does not
acknowledge the differing cultural and ecological contexts that produce similarly diverse city
types. These traditional urban theories of classical and pre-modern cities tend to be based on
studies of medieval, Mediterranean and Southwest Asian cities, resulting in monothetic,
“Western” models rather than “Southeast Asian”. 8 As a result, urban sociologist Max Weber and
urban historian Spiro Kostof emphasised the defensive perimeter or walls as the prerequisite for a
city. 9 Even the etymology of the word for city reveals intrinsic bias – tun in English, gorod in
Russian, cheng in Chinese – originally referred to a walled enclosure. 10
This fixation on a single characteristic – in this case, the circumference wall - as the
determinant of urbanism has affected the analysis of early urban sites in coastal Southeast Asia.
While the coastal cities had internal walls – such as those around the palace compound, and the
individual compounds of prominent personages, it seldom possessed an all-encompassing city
wall that defined city limits. 11 Admiral Beaulieu, a European visitor to Aceh in 1621 remarked
that the lack of a surrounding defensive circuit, or a wall, affected him to the point that he
considered Aceh a village rather than a city. 12
The functionalist approach, which Wheatley champions, involves identifying a settlement
as being urban based on the social institutions it contains, whether physical or otherwise.
Wheatley’s chief essential factor is the existence of social institutions that co-ordinate economic
7

Kingsley Davis, “The Urbanization of the Human Population” in The City Reader, ed. Richard T. LeGates

and Frederic Stout (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 5.
8
Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 15; “Heterogenetic cities”, p. 106.
9
Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped,(London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), pp. 38-40; Mogens Herman Hansen,
“The Concepts of City-State and City-state culture”, in A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures,
ed. by Mogens Herman Hansen. (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 2000), p. 12.
10
Henri Pirenne, “City origins” in The City Reader, p. 39.
11
Anthony Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states of the 15th and 16th century” in A
Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, p. 422.
12
Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 15.

5


exchange, regardless of whether the institution is mosque or church, run by religious or state
authorities. 13 However, the emphasis on the economic role ignores the possibility that the city
might serve different functions even within the same region, supported by the varying definitions
and terms used in Southeast Asia to signify a city within that cultural context. John Miksic also
notes that so little is known of the structure and daily function of the coastal trade cities of insular
Southeast Asia, that it would problematic to form inferences about the typical urban behaviour. 14
There still remains the need for any localized study to design an urban theory relevant to the
region, with a suitable definition of urbanisation and the city, rather than force the indigenous
cities into a preconceived universalist urban theory that could result from a formalist or
functionalists approach.
Due to the limitations of a global urban theory, settlement pattern studies, a method of
archaeological study that gained momentum in the 1970s, has been brought forward as a viable

approach to analyzing Southeast Asian urban sites. Settlement pattern studies involve the in-depth
collection of archaeological data from sampled sites, in the expectation of building a foundation
on which inferences into the site function and sociological framework can be derived. It
incorporates the contextual situation of artifacts, and maps out their physical relationship to each
other as well as the site. 15
The use of settlement pattern analysis allows the creation of an indigenous, locallyrelevant definition of the city. The site is seen in the context of the regional settlement pattern,
and if it appears to be a higher tier site, meaning with at least one tier of settlements under it, it
could be considered an urban site. 16 The underlying assumption is that a settlement of a distinctly
different size would be differentiated from the lesser settlements in other ways, whether in terms
of culture, function or physical structure. In short, it would have to be different simply because
13

Paul Wheatley, “What the Greatness of a City is Said to Be”, Pacific Viewpoint, 4, (1963): 166.
Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 12; “Settlement Patterns”, p. 103.
15
Jeffery R. Parsons, “Archaeological Settlement Patterns”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 1 (1972):
129.
16
Some studies favour two tiers. Miksic, “Settlement Patterns”, p. 96.
14

6


there would have to be an underlying factor whose symptoms included but would not be
restricted to, a difference in size. As such, because it would be different from the merely
residential/agrarian village-level settlements, it could be considered urban.
Settlement pattern analysis in Southeast Asia, however, is still somewhat at the datagathering stage. Regional-level settlement pattern analysis still remains somewhat hypothetical,
with theories being drawn up in a heuristic spirit, subject to further development on discovery of
further evidence. Despite its admitted drawbacks, settlement pattern analysis would seem to be

the most relatively objective method in which to draw up a needed indigenous definition of
urbanism. 17 Miksic suggests simply accepting conventionally acknowledged cities to be cities,
erring on the liberal side in adding new settlements to the list of cities, and then proceed to move
on to categorise and analyse them. 18
For the purposes of this study, commonly recognised cities have been used, and effort has
been made to distinguish the settlement from the polity. The city will be defined in each case,
based on what was commonly considered to be the city from contemporary perspective, as well as
several requirements drawn from the basis of this study – namely, it should contain a relatively
densely populated area, possess various economic and cultural functions, and have at least one
tier of settlements under it.

Methodology: urban type, hierarchy and structure
Urban types
Traditionally, most urban studies conducted on pre-modern cities in Southeast Asia have
noted two main urban types and used them to organize subsequent analysis. The first is the
ceremonial, inland city, the axis mundi that connects heaven and earth, the planned

17

For a full explanation of the various approaches and effects on urban study, see Appendix 1.
John N. Miksic, “14th Century Singapore: A port of trade” Early Singapore 1300s-1819: Evidence in
Maps, Text and Artefacts, ed. J.N. Miksic, Cheryl-Ann Low Mei Gek, (Singapore: Singapore History
Musuem, 2004), p. 41.

18

7


cosmographical representations of Hindu-Buddhist belief, such as Angkor Wat, Pagan and

Sukhothai. Usually found in mainland Southeast Asia, or on the ecologically similar island of
Java, they were highly agrarian states. The other type of city identified were the trading coastal
cities, unplanned and organic, generally found at river estuaries, near the coastline or close
enough to the river mouth so as to command some influence in the surrounding sea lanes, such as
Srivijaya, Melaka and Aceh. The purest form of the latter was the market city, similar to Karl
Polyanyi’s port city concept, divorced from the surroundings and solely devoted to trade. 19 Both
the coastal market city and the inland ceremonial city were said have diminished under European
rule, resulting in the superimposition of a third type, the colonial city.
The criteria used for the categorization can vary, depending on the focus of the urban
study, but eventually result in rather similar divisions that seem to support the idea of an
inland/coastal dichotomy. T. G. McGee, J. Kathirithamby-Wells and J. Villiers, although using
different criteria, emerged with similar inland agrarian sacred cities versus coastal maritime
market cities. 20 Spiro Kostof’s study of urban form also divides the cases into the planned or
created city – the ville créée, with geometric lines and planned by the governing body – and the
organic city – the ville spontanée, left to be developed by persons that act individually, with
irregular lines and curves, again demonstrating a divide that supports the existence of two distinct
urban types. 21
These two urban types have also been more frequently classified as heterogenetic and
orthogenetic cities, a concept introduced by Robert Redfield and Milton B. Singer in 1965, and
based on the differing cultural roles of cities. Orthogenetic cities are preservers, refiners of
traditional culture and are generally associated with political power. Heterogenetic cities tend to
19

Robert B. Revere, “’No Man’s Coast’: Ports of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Trade and Market
in the Early Empires, ed. Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson, (Glencoe: The
Falcon’s Wing Press, 1957) p. 54.
20
T.G McGee, The Southeast Asian city, (London: Bell, 1967), p. 33; J. Kathirimhamby-Wells and John
Villiers, “Introduction”, The Southeast Asian Port and Polity (Singapore: Singapore University Press,
1990) p. 3.

21
Kostof, City Shaped, p. 43.

8


be market cities, with commerce as the main activity, and are producers of new modes of thought
that may be in contradiction or competition with traditional culture. 22 The orthogenetic city,
thought to be the primary city, is the cultural and ceremonial centre for the country, supported by
a homogenous population. The heterogenetic city is a second-stage city, and acts as the service
station for the country, as an intermediary between civilizations, and is the entry point for the
entry of foreign peoples and ideas, resulting in a heterogeneous demography. 23
Although

there

are

issues

with

the

original

concept,

applying

the

heterogenetic/orthogenetic framework to Southeast Asian cities has its benefits. Culturally and
ecologically flexible, permissive of variation, and suited to the patchy records of the region, the
idea of heterogenetic/orthogenetic has been adapted and applied extensively to the mainland and
coastal cities respectively by various researchers, including Miksic in his numerous works on
Southeast Asian archaeology. 24
However, the main issue with any classification system lies primarily in the risk of
overgeneralization, and in the case of the above mentioned cases and the proposed
orthogenetic/heterogenetic dichotomy, their failure lies in being unable to account for cities that
straddle categories, as was the case in the sacred city of Majapahit that also engaged in trade to
the extent that it became a premier commerce centre. 25 However, it is possible to use the
heterogenetic/orthogenetic categorization as a sliding scale rather than as a mutually exclusive
classification, allowing more variation than Redfield had perhaps originally envisioned. In
addition, the flexibility of this approach allows for cities to shift from one end to the other over
time. Although Redfield’s original theorization that the end product of orthogenetic urbanism
must be the heterogenetic city is problematic, there is at least the implicit understanding that cities
can and do change over time.
22

Robert Redfield and Milton B. Singer, “The Cultural Role of Cities”, Economic Development and
Cultural Change, 3, 1, (1954): 58.
23
Redfield and Singer, “Cultural Role of Cities”, p. 70.
24
Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 6.
25
Miksic, “Heterogenetic cities”, p. 117.

9

In recent years, the tenability of this concept of these city types, even as a heuristic
device, has come under fire. 26 Luc Nagtegaal has sharply criticised most of the existing
typologies, rightly pointing out that certain proposed city models in current usage were initially
based on cultural/religious assumptions in other fields of studies that have since been dismissed
or rendered obsolete. The concept of the ceremonial centre relies on the devaraja theory, where
the king was a sacred being who expressed cosmological order in his city. However, this has been
proven to be a somewhat idealised version of reality, to the point that city maps were found to
have been altered to fit the indigenous portrayal of a perfect centre. 27 Other findings continue to
suggest that the dichotomy of the sacred orthogenetic city and the market heterogenetic city, or
between the indigenous city and the colonial city, or indeed any urban model may be markedly
less distinct than proposed.
However, the perception of there being two broad urban types, or at least cities that can
be positioned somewhere between these two extremes has persisted and continued to frame urban
studies of pre-modern Southeast Asia. More recent studies have in general been careful to qualify
their assignations of urban type with appropriate acknowledgement of independent variations, and
often avoid the direct labelling of the urban centres under analysis. Nevertheless the sense of
difference remains and the idea of the inland city versus the coastal city underpins these studies
for want of a better conceptual framework.

Urban Hierarchy and Structure
Inter-city relations, or the urban hierarchy, is also considered important in any urban
study of the region. No city is an island, even in insular Southeast Asia, and to understand the
forces that shape it, they have to be studied in context. A dominant city, high in the urban
hierarchy, could wield cultural/political influence over the lesser tributary cities, commanding or
26

Luc Nagtegaal, “The pre-modern city in Indonesia and its fall from grace with the gods”, Economic and
Social History in the Netherlands, 5 (1993): 56.

27
Ibid., p. 42.

10


inspiring them to duplicate its features, organizational structure and institutions, as the latter
sought to gain political legitimacy in a language dictated by the former. 28 Urbanism and its
symbols linked a city to the dominant city, as well as indicate its position in the urban hierarchy,
lesser cities having less prominent symbols. 29 Urban hierarchy, due to its links with economic
and cultural hierarchy, could and did influence the city form. For Southeast Asia, the dichotomy
of inland/coastal is often invoked, such as in Bronson’s economic theory of “upstream” and
“downstream” city relationships. 30
Insular Southeast Asia by and large did not have wide-spanning empires that wielded the
same cultural dominance and institutionalized political control that, for example, had been found
in the Roman Empire. Reid describes the region as having a city-state culture, with multiple citystates sharing a common culture and language, with no one city-state having the ability to
completely dominate another beyond a tributary system, and all possessing a degree of selfgovernment, if not autonomy. 31 A traditional European empire emphasized control of territory.
However, in Southeast Asia’s city-state culture, it was the maintenance of a network of inter-city
relationships that denoted the nature of empire, with certain cities occupying the dominant
position in the relationships that formed the urban hierarchy. 32
The implications of the city-state cultural concept on the urban hierarchy indicated that
urban status was extremely fluid. Cultural influence could be a bilateral process, rather than the
simple radial model of culture emanating from a dominant city. This resulted in the entire region
sharing a common urban culture that was nevertheless unique to the region. 33 Although there
were “first amongst equals”, such as sixteenth-century Gowa, there was no city-state that could be

28

Paul Wheatley, Nagara and Commandery, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983), p. 430.
Richard O’Connor, A Theory of Indigenous Southeast Asian Urbanism, p. 7 and Wheatley, Nagara and

Commandary, p. 430.
30
Bronson, “Exchange at the Upstream and Downstream Ends”, p. 48.
31
Reid, “The Culture of Malay-Speaking City-States “, p. 427.
32
Pierre-Yves Manguin, “City-States and City-State Cultures”, in A Comparative Study of Thirty CityState Cultures, p. 413.
33
Reid, “The Culture of Malay-Speaking City-States”, p. 427.
29

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rightly called dominant in the urban hierarchy, at least not for an appreciable period of time. It
should be noted that this seeming equality may be only applicable for the coastal or island citystates; as the inland cities seemed to have a cultural/spiritual dominance that operated on a
different dynamic.
The urban structure of the Southeast Asian city has also been the focus of considerable
debate, partly due to the differing definitions of which portions were actually urban, as well as the
sparse archaeological evidence. However, enough has been found to suggest that the coastal,
usually heterogenetic cities of insular Southeast Asia differed greatly in their urban form from the
orthogenetic cities of the mainland Southeast Asia.
Mainland cities were generally planned cities, with a grid layout and a firmly demarcated
city limit. They were centres of cultural production that acted as beacons to the faithful by being
material anchors of their faith. 34 Found in fertile mainland Southeast Asia and the rich plains of
Java, they were thus somewhat more permanent than their coastal counterparts, since agricultural
economies are less mobile than trade economies. Their physical form seemed to respond to this
same sense of permanence, with visible anchors to the area around them in the form of large
streets that created strong lines in the four directions, creating a sense of centre to the city with an
axis that lead from the heavens to the city centre, and on the horizontal plane, spread out in the

four directions of the mandala. Clifford Geertz referred to them as exemplary centres, which
expressed cosmological order, and, through the actions of the king to maintain the order in his
capital, served to keep harmony with the macrocosm. 35
Symmetry in the urban form gave it an intended monumentalism, and girded by one or
more rings of fortified city wall, it was also a reflection of the realities of the defense strategy and
warfare in the region. An agricultural-based economy was bound to its territory, as was any city
that had pretensions to religious significance, with the result that retention of location was a factor
34

Redfield and Singer, “Cultural Role of Cities”, p. 56.
Clifford Geertz, Negara: the theatre state in nineteenth-century Bali, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1980), p. 135.
35

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in defense considerations. It was also able to commandeer the resources required for a massive
urban investment such as a permanent defensive city circuit.
The coastal, heterogenetic city of insular Southeast Asia tended towards a more organic
approach, with the city form responding to the coastline or river coast. If the mainland
orthogenetic city looked towards the sky and centered on that central axis, the coastal,
heterogenetic city always looked towards the sea, the source of its wealth and often its raison
d’etre. The city form stretched out in a linear fashion along the coastline, maximizing its usable
harbour front, an example of which can be seen in Makassar. Its governing axis was in the
horizontal plane, leading from the palace compound to the waters,
The feature of the coastal, heterogenetic cities that has occasioned the most comment is
perhaps the feature that it lacked at that point in pre-colonial Southeast Asia: that of a permanent,
defensive city wall. As mentioned earlier, the city wall was the sine qua non of the Western
fortified town, to the point where Max Weber, Mogens Hansen, Henri Pirenne and others used it

in their definitions of a city. While the coastal cities had internal walls – such as those around the
palace compound, and the compounds of the nobles and wealthy merchants – it seldom possessed
an all-encompassing city wall that was used to define the city limits. 36 If there was a wall, it
would usually be a wooden palisade, sometimes permanent, but usually hastily erected when the
city was threatened. This reflected the guerrilla realties of warfare in the island world, coupled
with scarce manpower compared to the mainland, which will be discussed more completely later
in this thesis.
Although ecology resulted in the rise of two perceived urban types, it has been noted that
they nevertheless shared a cultural/religious foundation which was reflected in their urban forms.
Mount Meru of Hindu-Buddhist faith, the axis mundi of the cosmos, is thought to have figured in

36

It should be noted that in true city state culture fashion, the coastal cities did not believe that the city
ended where its structures ceased…at that point in time, it was rare for coastal Southeast Asia to think in
the binary of city versus country. In Melaka, for example, the term used for city denoted the country as
well, that of negeri; Reid, “The Culture of Malay speaking city states”, p. 422.

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urban conceptualisation of both. Mahameru, or Saguntang Maha Meru, was the central mountain
of the cosmos that was surrounded by rings of lesser mountains and continents, and which figured
heavily in Malay creation myths. 37 Although the prominence of a representational Mount Meru
was greater in the planned Hindu-Buddhist cities of the mainland kings, such as Mandalay and
Angkor Wat, the use of a hill or high ground as a urban focal point nevertheless occurred in the
island maritime kingdoms as well. The cosmological demands for the macrocosm and Mount
Meru to be reflected in the microcosm of the city had its grounding in a far more prosaic reason –
that of control and defense. Although the practical extent of this belief has been debated, 38 it
nevertheless holds some influence, on both cosmological and defense grounds, as can be seen in

the Melaka founding myth.
The institutions and characteristics within were also somewhat similar. Both usually
possessed a palace compound, known alternately as the desa (place of the ruler) or the kadatuan
in Sumatra, the kraton of Yogyakarta and the pura of fourteenth century Java. 39 The buildings
were usually of wood and built off the ground, while tomb markers, if present, would be of stone.
There was usually a square of some sort, and a population divided into wards based on their
ethnic groups. The mainland city possessed temples, and the coastal city naturally had a port,
although it usually had a somewhat less impressive temple as well. 40
Overall, urban theory in Southeast Asia has covered various aspects of urbanism, from
hierarchy to generation to actual structure. However, although there has been work done to
analyse the urban structure over regions, mostly by Miksic and Reid, its evolution over time has
been left mostly unstudied. Any study over time has been restricted to early periods of urban
generation, rather than the latter times within established cities.
37

Joseph H. Schwartzberg, “Cosmography in Southeast Asia”, The History of Cartography, Vol. 2 Book 2:
Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 702.
38
Nagtegaal, ‘The pre-modern city“, p. 42.
39
Miksic, “Urbanisation and Social Change”, p. 8.
40
Peter J.M. Nas, “The Early Indonesian Town: Rise and decline of the City-state and its capital”, The
Indonesian city, ed. Peter J.M. Nas (Leiden: KITLV, 1986), p. 33.

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Colonialism, War and Southeast Asian urbanism

The city, as the arguably most prominent product of a civilization, is naturally also a
manifestation of its material culture. The material culture of a people is influenced by a variety of
factors, such as local events and the development of local beliefs, as well as the ways it can affect
people. As such, the city, in both its physical form and cultural role, can be affected by events that
occur to the civilization or region as a whole, and also be used to effect changes.
Colonialism, and the advent of the Europeans has frequently considered to be the event,
or rather, historical process that has had the most effect on Southeast Asian history. Although it
has been said that the actual change effected has been overstated, it is nonetheless accepted that
the entry of the Europeans in larger numbers than previously experienced had its consequences.
The effect may have remained at the fundamentally superficial level of the “thin and flaking
glaze”, which has been said of Indian and Chinese influences as well. However, there was a
change, and a corresponding response in the material culture and urban form.
Urban studies on the effects of colonialism by and large regard the colonial city as a
completely new urban type, imposed on the indigenous country. To some extent they were;
European conquerors generally built the city in the image of their own home, or used the
opportunity of the tabula rasa presented before them to experiment. The new city was different in
that it had not been founded to serve the needs of the immediate region, but rather that of the faraway imperial power. There were also the indigenous cities that were conquered and adapted for
use. The combination of pre-existing indigenous urban structures and colonial urban forms and
institutions led to what some writers have considered the hybrid city, such as McGee’s referring
to these conquered cities as possessing European transplants. 41

41

McGee, The Southeast Asian City, p. 49.

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In both cases, the approach to that period of urban history seems somewhat Eurocentric,
or rather, too focused on the direct European-indigenous interaction. 42 The emphasis is on direct

European impact on Southeast Asian cities, with the result that cities that did not directly
experience European rule and urban re-design are effectively sidelined before their colonisation
by a European force. While this could be considered a product of a lack of sources, the emphasis
in urban history on the changes within the European-dominated region of Southeast Asia
obscures any development in the urban forms of the regions that either never came under direct
European hegemony, or had failed to achieve prominence in the colonial era. The Europeans are
depicted as the dominant or even the only cultural force in the region, with Southeast Asian cities
viewed as the hapless recipients of culture, mere repositories of European ideas of urbanism.
There seems to have been little effort to discover the indigenous Southeast Asian response to the
entry of the Europeans. Very little has been written on the development of the urban form in
indigenous cities, free of European control in the pre-modern period of the sixteenth and
seventeenth century.
The period of urban history experienced by autonomous, indigenous cities between the
entry of Europeans and complete European hegemony in the region has been covered to some
extent. However, focus is usually on the city-state and its people, and urban form is described as
part of the circumstances at the period rather than discussed in its own right. Reid perhaps comes
the closest to discussing the change in the urban form at that period of time, noting the changes
that the indigenous cities made in response to the new European threat. 43 However, the focus is
on the general urban status of the cities, rather than focusing on the actual structure, or its role as
a tool in the changing currents of maritime Southeast Asia.

War and the Southeast Asian City
42

John R. W. Smail, “On the possibility of an Autonomous History of Southeast Asia”, JSEAH, 2, 2,
(1961), p. 101.
43
Anthony Reid, “The Structure of Cities in Southeast Asia”, JSEAS, 11, 2, (1980): 242.

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