The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka, 1575-1619

Following the fall of the Melaka Sultanate in1511, the sultanates of Johor and Aceh emerged as major trading centers alongside Portuguese Melaka. Throughout the sixteenth century, a peculiar balance among the three powers became an important character of the political and economical life in the Straits of Melaka. Paulo Pinto uses a geopolitical approach to analyze the financial, political, economic and military institutions that underlay this triangular arrangement.