Introduction

Researchers studying Singapore and the Straits region during the early modern period have long been familiar with the maps drawn by Manuel Godinho de Erédia found in his treatise Declaraçam de Malaca, or Description of Malaca (c.1613). One of these, the Discripsão chorographico dos estreitos de Sincapura e Sabam or “Chorographic description of the Straits of Singapore and Sabam”, dated 1604 and featured on vol. 61 of the original manuscript, depicts the island of Sincapura, to which Erédia also added some place names along the east coast between present-day Changi Point and Tanjung Rhu (Gibson-Hill 2018; Miksic 2013, 164; Kwa 2017, 50–1; Kwa et al. 2019, 93). The objective of this chapter is not to subject this map to a fresh review and discussion, but rather to compare it with another one of Erédia’s maps that depicts Singapore, the southern Malay Peninsula and the Straits. This second specimen featured in the Atlas Miscelânea, or Miscellany Atlas (1616–22), contains certain additional details, such as place names on and around the main island of Singapore. A grainy photo of this map dating from the late 1950s or early 1960s survives. In the present chapter, I will argue that fresh perspectives on the local economy at the beginning of the 17th century can be gained when the map is read and evaluated against the backdrop of Erédia’s texts.

Manuel Godinho de Erédia and Singapore

Before turning to a review of the map found in his work, the Description of Malaca, a few words about Manuel Godinho de Erédia (sometimes spelled Herédia) are warranted. He was a Eurasian author, cartographer, engineer and adventurer who is best remembered in Southeast Asia today for his maps and writings on the Malay Peninsula and Southeast Asia at large. Since the 1930s, English-speaking readers have had access not only to a translation of Erédia’s Description of Malaca, but also to a shorter (and arguably earlier) treatise entitled Informação da Aurea Chersoneso, ou Península, e das Ilhas Auríferas, Carbúculas e Aromáticas (Information on the Golden Chersonese, as well as the Islands bearing Gold, Carbuncles on [Gems] and Spices). Both translations were prepared by J.V. Mills and published as a long article in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Erédia, 1930). The annotated translations are also published as a stand-alone book (Erédia, 1997). Due to the absence of published translations, less familiar to researchers in Southeast Asia are some of Erédia’s other writings including his Suma de Árvores e Plantas da Índia (Summary of Trees and Plants of the East Indies) written around 1612 (Erédia 2001), as well as his Tratado de Ophir (Treatise on Ophir), believed to date from around the year 1616 (Erédia 2016; Cortesão & da Mota 1987, IV, 50–1). An up-to-date biography of Erédia by the Belgian academic John G. Everaert acts as part of a preface to the Summary of Trees (Erédia 2001).

According to his two extant autobiographical sketches, Erédia was the son of an Aragonese nobleman, João Erédia Aquaviva (who arrived in Melaka around 1540), who was wed to the daughter of the king of Supa, one of the Bugis rulers on the island of Sulawesi (Erédia 2001, 30–5; Miksic 2013, 163). In his early adolescence, Manuel was sent to Goa in India to continue his studies, and there he briefly joined the Society of Jesus before returning to secular life around 1580 (Erédia 2001, 42–3). Shortly thereafter, he received a commission from the captain of Melaka to explore the Portuguese colony’s hinterland. The background to this commission is explained as follows:

He, the said Manuel Godinho de Herédia, was sent on this mission by the Viceroy Count Admiral Dom Francisco da Gama and by Viceroy Aires de Saldanha on the basis of the instruction issued in Lisbon on 14 February 1594 and the warrant issued in 1601. By virtue of this instruction he was sent with many favours to Melaka where he arrived in the year 1601. Just as he [Erédia] was ready to set out on a [new] voyage of discovery he was informed by the general for the South, André Furtado de Mendonça, that the southern channels [i.e Singapore Straits] were being blockaded by the corsairs from Jacob Heemskerk’s fleet, which had seized that carrack from China and taken to Holland [i.e. the Santa Catarina], and it thus proved necessary for the explorer to remain at the fortress of Malacca in order to [help] defend it …. (Erédia 2016, 161).

In 1604, he led a Portuguese naval squadron on an exploration of Singapore, the Straits and the Johor River region (Miksic, 2013, 165). Erédia’s autobiography, contained in the Tratado de Ophir (Treatise on Ophir), describes the background and context of this mission as follows:

He [Erédia] also accompanied, at his own cost, General André Furtado de Mendonça during the [1604] conquest of the fortress of Johor and diligently assisted with the fortification and defence of Melaka, until he was taken ill [with beriberi]. Even after he fell ill, he did not cease in his efforts to explore [the area] for mineral deposits, paying his own expenses. He explored the entire hinterland of the district of Melaka, between the Muar and Linggi rivers, and he discovered deposits of gold, silver, tin and all sorts of metals and minerals and precious gems. [He also discovered] a new pearl fishing area [apart from deposits of] mercury, alum, saltpetre, and other riches …. (Erédia 2016, 162).

More information about the 1603–04 campaign in the Singapore Straits and Johor River is outlined in the following section familiar from Mills’ translation containing the Description of Malaca:

In his capacity of ‘descobridor’ [Erédia] prepared maps of the [Singapore] Straits, having at his disposal the whole southern fleet of rowing boats, namely 12 galliots and 60 brigantines and bantins. With this fleet, too, he continued the performance of his naval duties, he destroyed the relief ships belonging to the pirates and other ships which set out with people from [Asahan (?)] on Sumatra to help the Malays; he sank many provision ships and made allies by land to attack the Malays…… Furthermore, at his own expense he accompanied General André Furtado de Mendonça during the conquest of the fortress of Johor and assisted in every possible manner in the fortification and defence of Malacca, until illness supervened (Erédia 1997, 266).

The conflict with Johor in this period was not new, but seriously escalated as a result of the Dutch plundering of the Portuguese carrack Santa Catarina off the coast of Singapore on 25 February 1603. This was in addition to other incidents in the region, such as the earlier capture of the Madre de Deus in the Straits of Melaka and the Luso-Dutch naval conflict off Banten in 1601 (Borschberg 2004b; Boxer, 2010). The admiral and newly-appointed Portuguese captain of Melaka, André Furtado de Mendonça, imposed a blockade on the Johor River in the weeks leading up to the next northeast monsoon trading season in August or September 1603 (Borschberg, 2004a). It was during this period that Erédia collected information that was later incorporated into his sketches of Singapore Island and the adjacent Straits, complete with some place names (Erédia 2001, 53–7; Cortesão & da Mota 1987, IV, 41). Two such map specimens featuring place names on Singapore survive; one is found in the original manuscript of his aforementioned Description of Malaca, and the other one in the Miscellany Atlas, which shall be described in more detail below. Unfit for active service due to failing health, Erédia returned to Goa around 1605–07. The main texts for which he is remembered were written and completed in India. He passed away less than a decade later in 1623.

No account of Erédia’s life and works would be complete without also saying something about his patchy reputation. This reputation stems, among other things, from his indulgence in esoteric geography, exaggeration of his own credentials, his lies, as well as his evident drive to find deposits of gold. In his detailed and well-research biography of Erédia that prefaces the 2001 edition of the Summary of Trees, Everaert lists a number of unpleasant personal dispositions and character traits that include: an eccentric temperament, extravagant imagination, pretentiousness, a propensity to exaggerate, frustrated ambitions and an evident drive—nay obsession—to make an important discovery (Erédia 2001, 75–6). Erédia’s agenda and the reliability of his writings have sometimes been compared to another broadly contemporaneous adventurer, Fernão de Mendes Pinto, whose reputation remains mixed today. In a series of studies published over recent decades, Erédia has been maligned as a fraudster and an attention seeker. Jorge Flores dubbed him an imperial pretender and a self-styled adventurer who sought to ingratiate himself with his patrons and get into their good books (Flores 2015). W.A.R. Richardson lamented that Erédia was occasionally naïve and astonishingly unobservant, nay even careless, illogical and contradictory, and reckons that his maps represent barely more than a “cartographic nightmare” (Richardson 1995, 2008).

It should be immediately adjoined here that the verdict on Erédia’s writings and maps is restrained, but also not universally negative. Judging by formal enquiries made by the Portuguese authorities in Goa about the work of Erédia, there already seem to have been doubts about his sincerity from at least 1605 onward (Cortesão & da Mota 1987, IV; 41). Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira de Mota, compilers of the landmark Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica (Monuments of Portuguese Cartography), concede that he was sometimes influenced by questionable geographical trends which induced him to put forward and expound errors and absurdities; but on closer examination these do contain some real value and interest, and the debate over whether Erédia may have been the first to chart the Australian continent continues (Erédia 2001, 26-7, 46-7; Richardson 2008; Schütte 1969). In a similar vein, Hans Hägerdal opines that Erédia’s maps present a mix of fact and fiction, but also adds that he was a keen observer and is thus in a position to provide helpful information on products, commodities, and the political situation in general (Hägerdal 2012). However, all these — sometimes clashing and contradictory—verdicts hint that Erédia’s insights remain useful, although they are doubtlessly problematic. Like with all authors from the early modern period, his texts and maps should be read and processed with due caution.

Erédia’s maps of Singapore, the Johor River and the Straits

The principal map specimen examined and discussed in the present section can be found in the Description of Malaca, the original manuscript of which is preserved in the Royal Library in Brussels, Belgium. A facsimile edition of the original Portuguese text with French translation was published in 1882 (Erédia 1882, 1997). The map appears on folio 61 and is entitled Discripsão chorographico dos estreitos de Sincapura e Sabam (Chorographic description of the Straits of Singapore and Sabam [i.e. Kundur]) and bears the date 1604. The map not only stands out for its detail but also for the toponyms, especially on and around the island of Singapore. The names along the east coast of Singapore are from north to south: Tanion Ruca (or Ruça), Tanamen, Sunebodo, Tanion Rhu, and Xabandaria (Tanjung Rusa, Tanah Merah, Sungai Bedok, Tanjung Rhu, Shahbandaria). There are also several names featured along the Johor River, including Iohor (indicating the former capital and royal residence at Batu Sawar), then Panchor, Cotabato, Pulo Layan (Pancur, Kota Batu [i.e. Johor Lama], Pulau Layan) and Pangaraman (uncertain toponym, possibly a corruption of Pengeran). Other entries include Tanion Romania (Tanjung Ramunia), Barbuquet (Berbukit), Estreito novo (New Strait of Singapore), Estreito Velho (Old Strait of Singapore), Balcan maty (the old name for present-day Sentosa), Pulo ular y das cobras (“Snake Island or also Island of the Cobras,” present-day Pulau Merambong), Rio Pule, Pulo Cucot, P. Tanion Buru, and Pulo Pisan (Pulai River, Pulau Kukup, Pulau Tanjung Bulus, Pulau Pisang). On several occasions, we also encounter around the Johor River region the expression turucan (probably to be read from the Portuguese as turuçan), which represents a variant of “terusan,” a Malay term that refers to a type of channel or maritime passage (Erédia 1997, 219).

Erédia’s 1604 “Chorographic description” is substantially similar to a second map specimen that is found in one of his later works, the Atlas Miscelânea, or Miscellany Atlas, believed to date from around 1616–22. Its last recorded viewing was before the early 1960s when the atlas is said to have been in poor condition and belonged to a private collector by the name of C.M. Machado Figueiro (Cortesão & da Mota 1987, IV, 53, 58). Its current whereabouts are unknown. What is known about the contents of the Miscellany Atlas derives from some black-and-white reproductions that have been published in the Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica (Monuments of Portuguese Cartography). A reproduction of the map concerned can be found in volume IV as plate 417C. Erédia has given it the title in capital letters: “Taboa dos Estreitos de Sabam ede Sincapura com Orio de Ihor” (Table or map of the Straits of Sabam [Kundur] and of Singapore together with the Johor River). The projection of this map has north on the left-hand side of the page. A casual glance at this map reveals a visualisation of the greater Johor River estuary between Tanjung Bulus (west) and Ramunia Point (east).

Like its counterpart, the 1604 Chorographic description, this map features several toponyms on and around Singapore, but there are also some noteworthy differences. Already familiar from the 1604 map are place names along the eastern and southern coast of the main island, such as Tanjung Rusa, Tanah Merah, Bedok, Tanjung Rhu and Shahbandaria.

The Erédia map from the Miscellany Atlas appears to place the settlement Xabandaria (Shahbandaria, spelled here in the Portuguese manner) just beyond the point marked as Tanion Rû (Tanjung Rhu). It cannot be reconstructed with certainty where this might have been located. From written sources of this period, and especially the writings of the Flemish merchant Jacques de Coutre who was a contemporary of Erédia in Melaka, we know that the main settlement on the island was known as Sabandaria (Shahbandaria)—after the presence of a shahbandar, a “lord of the haven” or harbour master, on the island. De Coutre also explains that Malays who were loyal to the Johor sultan (de Coutre 2015, 79)inhabited this place.

As the toponym suggests, the settlement must have also encompassed the port and trading facilities of the shahbandar, including the warehouses to store goods slated for import into or export from Johor. The Shahbandaria is also marked up on a manuscript chart drawn by the Portuguese cartographer André Pereira dos Reis that dates from around 1654. Two almost identical copies of the chart survive. One is preserved in the Dr. W.A. Engelbrecht collection at the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam, and a second is found in the library of the Paço Ducal at Vila Viçosa, Portugal. Only the chart in Rotterdam features the name Xebandaria on the island of Singapore; on the copy in Portugal, this name is absent (Borschberg 2010; Kwa 2017, 50; Kwa et al. 2019, 94; Miksic 2013, 165).

Two additional place names can be found on the map contained in the Miscellany Atlas that do not feature on the aforementioned Chorographic Description of 1604: Pulo Chagni (Pulau Changi) for present-day Pulau Tekong Besar as well as Batu Qina (Batu Cina) near the entrance of the Old Strait of Singapore. The latter is, without doubt, a reference to a rock formation variously known to passing mariners, period cartography and early modern travelogues as Varela or Varella in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian; Batu Berlayar in Malay; Batu Blair, Sail Rock, or Lot’s Wife in English; or Longyamen (Dragon Tooth Gate) in Chinese. The Shahbandaria is also marked in the Portuguese spelling as Xabandaria, though just as in the case of the Chorographic Description, its exact location between Tanjung Rhu and the exit of the Old Strait of Singapore at Pulau Brani remains inconclusive.
What becomes immediately apparent to the viewer is the manner in which the island of Singapore is drawn on the specimen of the Miscellany Atlas. Singapore is clearly depicted as an island in a greater Johor River estuary, and this offers the key to unlocking this map, as well as other samples drawn by Erédia. By showing it as an island situated within a larger river estuary, Erédia informs his readers not only about the island’s location within the Johor River at large but also intimates the role the island and the Shahbandaria would have played within the context of Johor’s upstream-downstream economy.

Erédia was not alone in visualising Singapore to be situated within a larger riverine system. Key to this understanding are two insights: first, around the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the eastern coast of Singapore was seen to form part of the lower right bank of the Johor River. Second—and this is perhaps the crucial point—the waterway bordering the northern coast of Singapore was not seen to represent a maritime strait in its own right (today’s Tebrau or Johor Strait), but due to its strong currents during the change of the tides was understood to represent (by the Europeans) another branch of the Johor River. Several navigational instructions prepared by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and especially also the Itinerario and Reysgeschrift of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, can be adduced to support such a conclusion. Linschoten wrote: “About one [nautical] mile from this point [Tanjung Bulus] there is a river [i.e. Pulai River] and a short mile further ahead there is another river [i.e. Tebrau Strait] featuring a large estuary, where one finds a small island named Old Sincapura [i.e. Pulau Merambong]. Here, there is deep and clean ground. This river leads back out to the port of Iantana.” The latter represents a corruption of the Malay place name Ujong Tanah (Land’s End) and was commonly used in 16th- and 17th-century cartography to refer to the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula in general. Linschoten continues: “Antonio de Mello accidentally sailed into [this river] with a ship of 800 bahar…. and he came out again in the Johor River” (Linschoten 1939, IV, 95). Later in the 17th century, however, in 1695, the Italian traveller and adventurer Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri sailed past Singapore and now referred to this waterway not as a river, but as a ‘channel’ (in the meaning of a ‘strait’), as the following excerpt from his Giro del Mondo (Voyage Around the World) explains: “The only straits to separate the [peninsular] mainland from the island [of Singapore] is the Straits of Johor, where a long channel runs into the sea. This channel leads to the metropole by the same name (consisting of huts) and then to the sea on the opposite coast [of Singapore]” (Careri 1699, III, 315).

In order to deepen our understanding of how Singapore was visualised within the geographic setting of the Johor River and the straits, it is helpful to look at another broadly contemporaneous Dutch specimen that can be found in the travelogue of the Dutch fleet commander Wybrant van Warwyck (de Bry 1607; Borschberg 2004a). This depicts the different stages of a naval confrontation between the Dutch under Jacob Pietersz van Enkhuysen and a Portuguese naval squadron in early October 1603: the first stage took place around Johor Lama in the Rio de Batasubar (Johor River), the second off Changi and Tanjung Pengerang, the third around Pedra Branca, and the fourth off the north-eastern coast of Batam. The map is crude and hard to immediately recognise what it is, but the southern coast of Singapore, Changi Point and the eastern part of Pulau Ubin are clearly visible. The objective of this map is not to offer a depiction of the sea and landscape, but rather to help the reader visualise and appreciate the geographic dynamics of the seaborne conflict in its different stages that had lasted for several days. It remains uncertain how this crudely drawn map came about, whether it was drawn by one of the members of the crew aboard the vessel at the time of the four-stage battle around October 1603, or whether it might have been adapted from another pre-existing chart. The curious mix of comments and place names in different languages is noteworthy: Rio Batasubar (Portuguese or Spanish for Batu Sawar River, i.e. Johor River) as well as Valsch Sinca Pora (Dutch or possibly Old High German: False Singapore); Cust onbekend (Dutch: Coast Unknown or Unexplored) or Weiße Fels (German: White Rock, or Boulder) suggest that this map may represent a collage of information gleaned from different but now unidentifiable or unverifiable sources.

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However, there is more: the place name Sinca Pora is marked as a river estuary. Could this possibly represent the Singapore River? And what about the toponym Tanse Pora? Could that be a phonetic corruption of Tanjong Pagar? Both are within the realm of possibility. Moreover, the Dutch sketch of the 1603 naval battle, together with the two contemporaneous specimens by Erédia depicting Singapore, the Johor River and the straits discussed above, offer rare historic instances when the place name Sincapura was deployed. In 16th- and 17th-century cartography, the island was, as a rule, unnamed, while the place name Sincapura was generally employed to refer to a number of geographic features such as a cape, a ridge, or a hinterland. Naming the island or even the settlement as Sincapura (or by one of its many orthographical variants) was the exception rather than the norm. A sense of this diverse and multi-faceted understanding of the name is still reflected in the different entries under different spellings for Singapore listed in the German Zedler Universal-Lexicon (Encyclopaedia) dating from the first half of the 18th century: it offers readers a summary of what a resourceful person would have been able to retrieve by trawling works of earlier centuries (Zedler 1731-54, Khoo and Borschberg 2021, 2022).

Evidence of Singapore’s economic roles (c.1580–1630)

As has been seen so far, Erédia’s maps of Singapore, the Johor River and the Straits region found in the Description of Malaca and the Miscellany Atlas depict the known and explored regions of the southern Malay Peninsula and the Straits region. There are different ways to unpack how Singapore’s location was historically understood and visualised, and how the island was imagined to be located within a larger river estuary. The next step ascertains Singapore’s role, especially the function(s) it played within the region. To this end, different analytical frameworks have served as points of departure in extant secondary literature, that include (but are not limited to) John Gullick’s classic Malay capital, Bennet Bronson’s upstream-downstream economy, or Karl Polanyi’s “port of trade” (Bronson 1977; Gullick 1958; Miksic 1985, 2013; Polanyi 1963). An overview of some different frameworks and how they have been applied to Singapore’s historical contexts was published in an article co-authored with Benjamin Khoo (Borschberg & Khoo 2018). Other frameworks that could prove useful include K. G. Hirth’s “gateway community” (Hirth 1978), ideas surrounding strategic location and contested space, as well as the Southeast Asian Maritime Interaction Sphere (SAMIS) discussed in this volume.

Scrutiny of Erédia’s maps of the Singapore and Melaka Straits, the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra can yield valuable information. They are best studied alongside his written testimonies such as notably his Information on the Golden Chersonese and his Description of Malaca and are to be taken in conjunction with some additional textual evidence dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The objective of the present section is to bring some of Erédia’s cartographic materials into dialogue with his texts, which will enable us to tease out some additional information about commodities, raw materials and trade flows with reference to both Singapore, as well as the Straits region, the Peninsula, and Sumatra at large. Three additional maps can be found in the Miscellany Atlas, with the fourth representing a single hand-coloured sheet depicting Portuguese Melaka and its hinterland between the Linggi and Muar Rivers. It is preserved in the National Library of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. All of these have been reproduced in volume IV of the Monumenta Portugaliae Cartographica (Borschberg 2010, 2015, 2019).

Let us now explore in more detail the area around Singapore, the adjacent straits and the Johor River and ask: what do Erédia’s maps inform us about economic activity in this region? In addition, how might this information be corroborated by texts that were written around this period?

First, as is known from written testimonies of the 16th century, Singapore served as the main—or at least one of the main—bases of the Melaka Sultan’s armada, and later also of the Johor Sultans, with a fleet comprising 16 oared galleys described by the Spanish bishop Diego Francisco de Aduarte (Aduarte 1640, 227; Borschberg 2021, 63). It would therefore appear that the island of Singapore and its settlement(s) served as a strategic gatekeeper of, or even as, a “gateway community”—in a meaning outlined by Hirth—to the Johor River, its tributaries, hinterland and its upstream settlements. Its location as a port settlement (of unspecified size) situated at or at least located near the estuary of a major riverine network offers evidence to support Gullick’s deliberations on the economic and geographic structure of traditional Malay polities in western Malaysia (with their capitals located at or near the sea and rivers used to gain access to as well as to integrate the hinterland economically). The presence of a royal administrative centre located in the upper reaches of the Johor River at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries brings into play Bronson’s observations about the dynamics of an upstream-downstream economy (Gullick 1958; Bronson 1977). Given the centrality of rivers to the traditional Malay polities, Bronson developed a model whereby one main centre was located at or near the river estuary and acted as an access and redistribution point for goods destined for other centres that were located upstream, including the river’s various tributaries. Bronson’s model has been critiqued by Manguin and Miksic (Manguin 2009, Miksic 2009). The latter contends that such centres were not located at the sea as such, but rather at hinterland fringes of river deltas, as is exemplified by Palembang and later Johor Lama (Miksic 2009, 80). In this way, the different centres in the estuary and farther upstream became interconnected by trade and institutions. Based on such insights, it is possible to hypothesise Singapore’s political and economic function within a larger geographical setting. Since Singapore was envisioned as an island situated within the estuary of a large riverine system at or at least near the sea, it retained its function as a collection centre for goods and commodities brought downriver, redistributed to the upstream towns of the Johor River, or indeed to the settlements of the nearby islands of the Riau Archipelago.

Second, most of the toponyms entered on the island are placed along Singapore’s eastern coastline. This may simply reflect how Erédia and the Portuguese had surveyed the coastline in the 1500s and early 1600s. However, it could also be taken to mean that these locations were seen to form part of Johor’s riverine economy.

Third, Singapore and the upstream towns of the Johor River acted as intermodular ports and serviced maritime, riverine and overland trading activity. This impression arises from the study of Erédia’s untitled map of the Malay Peninsula contained in the Miscellany Atlas (Cortesão & da Mota 1987, IV, plate 417C). By “overland traffic,” one not only refers to produce brought from the densely forested inland regions but also to goods imported or redistributed along the trail networks that spanned across the entire Malay Peninsula. These observations underscore the criticism of Bronson’s model as excessively focused on the dynamics of riverine commercial exchange (Manguin, 2009; Miksic 2009).

The economic activity intimated by Erédia on his maps can also be corroborated by consulting some other broadly contemporaneous texts. Generally, there are several writings by European authors dating from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries that confirm the different types of economic activity, ranging from the collection of jungle and marine produce to mining and resource extraction, and of course, trans-regional commerce. The aforementioned Jacques de Coutre who spent eight years in Southeast Asia at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries highlighted not only that Singapore’s main port at Shahbandaria was one of the “best ports that serves the [East] Indies,” he also underscored that Johor’s capital Batu Sawar was home to many merchants who survived only on trading with foreign lands (de Coutre 2015; Borschberg 2016). His contemporary, the Dutchman Stalpaert van der Wiele, to whom the short report “Information concerning diverse lands and islands situated in the East Indies” has been ascribed, describes “Johor” (a reference to Batu Sawar which served as the capital city of Johor at the time) where ample supplies of pepper and cotton textiles could be procured. This verdict is echoed by the Dutch fleet commander Jacob van Heemskerk, who in a letter addressed to his superiors of the United Amsterdam Company dated 27 August 1603 claimed that Johor was “clearly the most suitable place in all of the East Indies to load pepper and sell textiles from Cambay and S[ão] Thomé” (de Jonge 1866-1925, III, 153; Grotius 2006, 539).

A century later, Pieter van Dam, a Dutch East India Company (VOC) lawyer and historian remarked: “From the beginning the [Dutch] Company maintained a factory in Johor, [a kingdom] which borders the land of Melaka; not that [Johor] is a land that has, or can deliver, much of itself, but in that it is well located for trade, and it always had a lot of maritime traffic” (van Dam 1931-43, II. 1, 328). These text passages can be understood to underscore the aforementioned Southeast Asian Maritime Interaction Sphere (SAMIS). As a rule, international trade was dominated by members of the royal family or by Malay merchant officials such as the bendahara, laksamana and the shahbandar, but retail trade was evidently also conducted by commoners. Erédia explained in his treatise Information on the Golden Chersonese: “They are merchants of small trade, interested not in much gains but only in what is sufficient for their maintenance.” Elsewhere he added: “Others [from among the Malays] occupy themselves with trade and commerce in spices and metals” (Erédia 2008, 75; 1997, 39). Some of these metals, like tin, copper, and iron were mined on the Malay Peninsula and the Riau Islands, as was gold panned in the riverbeds. Erédia informs us that iron—a strategically important metal—was mined in modest quantities in the upper reaches of the Linggi River and on Bintan. With reference to the latter, he added on one of his maps of the Singapore Straits the entry minas de ferro, which translates from the Portuguese as “iron mines,” or possibly “iron deposits” in line with his use of the Portuguese term “mina(s)” elsewhere in his texts and maps (Erédia 1997, 219 & plate III; Kwa et al. 2019, 78).

The commoners among the Malays, Erédia added, served in a variety of professions from carpenters to blacksmiths: “[The common people] are accomplished artisans, imparting a fine temper to iron and steel for making arms. [From fishing] they derive great profit. There are no weavers” (Erédia, 1997, 39). He found it worth emphasising that against expectation and in contrast to other areas in the Straits region, there was evidently no domestic production of textiles or, as he put it, “no weaving”. This can help explain the brisk exchange that the West Asian traders, the Portuguese—and later the Dutch—carried on in Indian cloth on the Peninsula and the Johor River towns generally.

While there was brisk trade along the Johor River with Singapore and its Shahbandaria as the strategic gatekeeper, a number of early modern texts highlight the productive industries in and around the river region, such as food preservation and pickling, the drying and salting of fish, but especially carpentry and shipbuilding. Already, Tomé Pires had commented on the timber industry on the Peninsula during the early 16th century, a tradition that endured for at least another two centuries in and around the Johor River region. The Dutch are on record as purchasing cargo vessels from the shipyards in and around Johor during the 17th century and most probably also thereafter. The anonymous author of the early 17th-century work Relação das Plantas & Descripções de todas as Fortalezas, Cidades & Povoações que os Portuguezes tem no Estado da Índia Oriental (Commentary on the Establishments and Description of all of the Fortresses, Cities and Towns which the Portuguese have in the East Indies) explains: “The port of Johor is located inside Romania Point [i.e. in the lower Johor River estuary] where many vessels are built. It has many provisions [as well as] eaglewood and pitch…” (da Costa Veiga, 1936, 45). The ruler of Pahang and Johor, the commentary adds, does a great deal of business here. This brisk trade is confirmed by an observation made by Pedro Barreto de Resende, who, in writing after the 1613 Acehnese attack on Singapore and Johor, recorded: “This king of Johor and Pahang [also] has other inhabited islands [under his rule] that are of minor significance. In this area next to the Singapore Strait is the port of Bullã [Bulan] which is densely populated by Malays [and] visited in the manner of many merchants of the whole East Indies to sell their spices from which the king of Pahang [and Johor] reaps considerable revenue” (Borschberg 2015, 20).

The port of Bullã also finds mention on the 1654 chart of the southern Malay Peninsula and the Straits by André Pereira dos Reis. Judging by its location, this port probably corresponds to today’s Pulau Belakang Padang, which is located off the northwestern coast of Batam, Indonesia (Borschberg 2015, 21). The Portuguese and especially the Dutch sources point to vibrant trading activity in the Johor River and coastal regions of the Singapore Straits. The people here were engaged in a range of economic activities from metallurgy to carpentry, shipbuilding, fishing and food preservation. The sources further highlight the fact that this trade generated great profits for the ruler of Johor, who also reigned over Pahang after a dynastic succession crisis in 1615. All these testimonies can be brought into dialogue with another map dating from the early 17th century that can be brought into view in the present context: the so-called Selden map. It forms part of the working papers left by the Oxford academic, jurist and historian John Selden on his death in 1654 and is now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (with the shelf mark Selden Supra 108). This is not the occasion to delve into details about its genesis and transmission, so suffice it in the present context to refer to the detailed discussions by Robert Batchelor and Timothy Brook (Batchelor 2014; Brook 2013). The Selden map has gained the attention of the research community for a number of reasons, but most importantly for its account of the shipping routes sailed by Fujian merchants across the South China Sea and as far as southern India, the Maluku and Banda Islands, as well as Timor and Flores. Its value is in a period visualisation of these different maritime routes between coastal China and Southeast Asia that can be reconstructed from period texts. When we take these different maritime routes and transpose them onto a modern map of Asia, a few things become apparent. First, there are several nodal points where these regional and long-distance maritime routes converge in line with the Southeast Asian Maritime Interaction Sphere (SAMIS). This is especially evident in the area around the south-eastern coast of the Malay Peninsula (Kwa et al. 2019, 99). This confirms what is already known from rutters, travelogues and other written testimonies: the Singapore-Johor region acted as a hub of maritime activity where, according to the Barreto de Resende, merchants from all over Asia converged to sell their wares and spices, and from which the ruler of Johor and Pahang reportedly reaped considerable profits.

Singapore, the Peninsula and Sumatra

The Selden map has shown how the Singapore-Johor River region acted as a nexus of maritime trading activity, where several regional and long-distance shipping routes converged. A scrutiny of Erédia’s maps of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, moreover, adds meaningfully to the picture presented by the Selden map.

First, in addition to serving as a trading centre for riverine and seaborne commerce, Singapore and the Johor River region also played a role in the overland trade flows that spanned the Malay Peninsula from north to south. Erédia’s map of the Malay Peninsula marks up a trail or “road” network that features several branches terminating in the Johor River region and also around Tanjung Ramunia and reaching as far north as Phattalung on the Isthmus of Kra in the far south of present-day Thailand. The visualisation of these trails is important in several ways: on one hand, the map visualises a network of trade flows that not only connect the interior of the peninsula with the coast, but on the other, the trails also evidently serve as long-distance overland trading routes. This is unfamiliar and unique, for while several studies have touched on the trans-peninsular trade from east to west—especially in the area of the Isthmus of Kra, Kedah and Kelantan—there is little awareness of a meaningful north-south trading axis on the peninsula (Wheatley 1955, 1961; Benjamin 1986). Moreover, the overland routes intersect and connect with different riverine networks that link the interior of the peninsula with its coasts (Miksic 2009).

Erédia’s map further evidences the fact that Singapore and the Johor River region at large acted as an intermodular hub connecting seaborne, riverine, and overland flows of commerce. That is not all: another map specimen contained in the Miscellany Atlas depicting Sumatra shows a network of trails that spanned the northern half of the island, which at the time was dominated by Aceh (Borschberg 2019). A trail that crossed the island started in the west around Padang and Salida, led through the Minangkabau highlands, and then branched into three routes that terminated in the east at or around Bengkalis, Kampar and Indragiri. All these trails were used to transport commodities into and out of the central highlands of Sumatra (Miksic 1985). The main exports included pepper and tree resins, with salt and cotton textiles from India forming the main import products destined for the highlands.

As can be learned from Dutch sources—and particularly from the reports penned by Andries Soury, the Dutch factor at Jambi during the second decade of the 17th century—a good portion of Sumatra’s pepper grown in Kampar, Indragiri and even the Minangkabau highlands found its way for sale in Johor (Colenbrander & Coolhaas 1919–53). Additional trails led from the east and west coast of Sumatra into the Batak highlands further north. In sum, Erédia’s maps of the Peninsula and of Sumatra testify to the commercial complexity and sophistication of trade flows by land, sea and river in the period between the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Second, in addition to depicting trade flows on the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, Erédia’s maps in the Miscellany Atlas also mark locations where resource extraction took place (Borschberg 2019). He explained to his readers that he was chiefly concerned with discussing mineral deposits and pepper production for the benefit of the princes in Europe (Erédia 2008, 25). The information relating to Sumatra admittedly lacks details as Erédia simply lists the different types of goods that could be extracted from or acquired in a certain region, especially those of the Batak or Minangkabau highlands, such as tree resins, bezoar stones, gems and precious metals. Of significance to the coastal region of north-eastern Sumatra was minyak tanah (crude oil). This was harvested in the region around Perlak, stored in clay jars, and used for lighting the night lamps (Erédia 1997, 238; 2008, 86). More details of this and other commodities, however, are made with reference to the Malay Peninsula. This is because Erédia had gained first-hand exposure to the resources in the interior of the peninsula during his overland expedition between the months of July and October 1602.

His movements through Melaka’s hinterland and the peninsula at large can be retraced based on two maps that have been reproduced in volume IV of the Monumenta Portugaliae Cartographica. The information yielded in these is of considerable significance when brought into association with Erédia’s texts, Information on the Golden Chersonese and Description of Malaca. The maps provide a location where minerals such as gold, tin and copper were extracted on the Peninsula. The texts provide details of how extraction was conducted, by whom, on what scale, and also the manner in which these metals were processed and shipped for export. In this way, Erédia was able to claim that he had “discovered”—inspected with his own eyes perhaps—deposits of “gold, silver, tin, copper, mercury, alum, saltpetre, lead, iron and other metals besides minerals and precious stones, including emeralds, diamonds, topazes and crystals, as well as new fisheries for seed-pearls and pearls” (Erédia 1997, 268).

Gold, for example, was panned in the creeks and rivers, with Pahang yielding the most gold dust on the Peninsula (Erédia 1997, 233; 2008, 78). It was, however, of a lower quality, unlike the gold panned or mined in the Minangkabau highlands, which is said to have been of the highest quality (Pires 1944, II, 261, 263). As is known from Dutch sources emanating from the VOC factory at Batu Sawar, gold dust (or unminted gold as it was called) was traded in meaningful volumes in Johor (Borschberg, 2016, 145).

Tin was dredged in open mine operations and processed into biscuit-shaped ingots for export. Most of the tin was mined in Perak, but there were also operations placed under the supervision of Johor’s shahbandar at Rombo (Rembau), who was responsible for processing the mines in the region of Sungai Ujong. Erédia explains in a map legend that at Sungai Ujong, there are “large tin mines under the supervision of the Shahbandar of Rembau, vassal of the king of Johor” (Cortesão & da Mota (1987, IV, plate 411B)). Information has not been provided on the amounts of gold dust panned in the rivers of the Malay Peninsula—perhaps because panning was conducted by small-scale operators who eked out a simple living in this way—but more specific data is mentioned for tin and iron where volumes generally range between 100 and 300 bahar annually—which translates into between 18 and 54 metric tons per year. Given the political links to Johor and Pahang through the shahbandars stationed in ports along the coast as well as in the main rivers, some of these metals would have found their way to Johor ports, just as had been the case for the aforementioned pepper exports from the peninsula and Sumatra.

Conclusion

The present chapter has discussed and contextualised maps of Singapore, the Straits, and the southern Malay Peninsula by the Portuguese engineer, cartographer and adventurer Manuel Godinho de Erédia Aquaviva by focusing on the Chorographic description of 1604. This has been cross-referenced to additional specimens by Erédia that remain little known and can be found in the Miscellany Atlas (c.1616–22). The main conclusions are as follows: By imagining and depicting Singapore as an island situated in a greater Johor River estuary, Erédia reveals Singapore’s strategic and economic functions as a gatekeeper of the Johor River and its upstream towns. Here, maritime, riverine and overland trading routes converged. The map from the Miscellany Atlas features place names along the east coast of Singapore as well as in and around the islands and on the mainland along the Johor River up to the capital Batu Sawar. Most of these toponyms are already familiar from the 1604 Chorographic description, but there are also important differences: the specimen found in the Miscellany Atlas features additional place names that are not found on the 1604 map, the most significant of which is Batu Qina (Batu Cina), the rock formation that stood at the western entrance to the Old Strait of Singapore in today’s Labrador Park before it was destroyed around the middle of the 19th century.

The picture that emerges from the Erédia maps taken in conjunction with other cartographic specimens, as well as texts dating from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, is broadly this: the south of the Malay Peninsula was an economically vibrant region. Johor, which straddled both sides of the Singapore Straits at the time, had its capital in the upper reaches of the Johor River at Batu Sawar, with Singapore serving as its gatekeeper and naval base. Early colonial agents like the Portuguese and the Dutch were doing brisk business in Johor, as were evidently also merchants from all over Asia. Singapore’s strategic position in the Straits and in relation to the Johor River was well-recognised and readily acknowledged at the time. While many details in this picture are still missing, a few things are becoming clear as more material and textual evidence come to light. Singapore was not a place forgotten by time; it had a settlement of unspecified size and population and a port that was described by Jacques de Coutre as “one of the best that served the East Indies” (de Coutre 2014, 234). More research is now needed to fill in the gaps that remain.

Bibliography