MALACCA: CROSS-CULTURAL CONTACTS IN THE 15TH CENTURY In a sense, the discrete categories like "trade" and "warfare" that historians use to describe aspects of cross-cultural contact are often little more than artificial labels of convenience. The history of Malacca illustrates this point well. Malacca's evolution from a small fishing village in the late 1200s into a major trade centre by 1400 shows how the commercial, social, ideological, and political products of cross-cultural contact overlap and reinforce each other. Malacca began its transformation into a prosperous mercantile city-state through military aggression and advantageous marriage alliances. Early rulers attracted traders by sending out fleets to force passing trade vessels to call at Malacca and pay duties. Malacca secured its dominant position on the Malay Peninsula, however, not just with weapons and armies, but by providing trade services indispensable to the surrounding local and regional economies, and to long-distance traders from distant countries. Malacca and the Ecumenical Trade Zone From the early 1400s until the Portuguese seized it in 1511, Malacca flourished as a major trade emporium, linking the western and eastern segments of the ecumenical trade sphere. Malacca prospered as a trading port in the 1400s partly because of its advantageous geographical location. It also flourished, however, because doing business there was relatively inexpensive. As in other Far Eastern trade centres, commercial transactions in Malacca were anchored in the Chinese tribute system. Whereas the Chinese in Canton exacted tribute payments valued at 30 percent of a trader's goods, however, the Malaccan sultan asked for less than 6 percent of incoming merchandise in tribute. The income he derived from this tribute was, nonetheless, substantial. The sultan, who maintained a sizeable merchant fleet of his own, also prospered from his own trading enterprises. The Chinese Tribute System In the early 1500s, Portuguese visitor Tome Pires found in Malacca "... Moors from Cairo, Mecca, Aden, Abyssinians, men of Kilwa ..., Hormuz, Parsees ... Turks, Christian Armenians, Gujaratees, men of ... the kingdom of Deccan, Malabars and Klings, merchants from ... Ceylon, Bengal, Siam, Malay, Cambodia, Champa, Cochin China, Chinese, men of Brunei, Timor, Java, Palembang, [and] the Maldives." By 1511, Malacca had a population of 50,000 people, including a resident trade community that spoke 84 languages.  As in other diaspora communities, foreign traders lived in formally designated, semi-autonomous quarters, each consisting of people with similar cultural backgrounds. Each residential zone maintained an officer called a shabandar. Shabandars, who reported to the local sultan, served as liaisons between the merchant community and Malacca's rulers. They informed the sultan of trade difficulties, and transmitted information from the court regarding services provided by the city (such as warehouses and elephant transport), and local market prices. Originally Hindu, Malacca's rulers converted to Islam early in the 1300s. Whatever the religious motivation involved, the move enhanced Malacca's economic status by attracting Islamic traders from the West. It also helped sustain the city's political independence. Malaccans courted the Chinese to offset the influence of Siamese Buddhists, and encouraged the influx of Muslim traders as a counterbalance to China's political and economic influence in the area. Religious leaders (qadis, mullahs, and sufis) eventually arrived, transforming Malacca into a centre of Islamic studies and missionary work. As Malacca expanded its control of the Malay Peninsula in the 1400s, more and more local rulers converted to Islam. Islam remained a religion of the court elites during the early part of the century. Gradually, however, Indian sufis, organised in trade guilds, spread the faith amongst the general populace. The religion that people adopted, however, was not a precise copy of the Islam of Mecca or Medina. What emerged was a syncretic blend of Islamic mysticism and elements of traditional Malay folk religions. The latter disappeared only in the 1700s after a campaign designed specifically to eradicate them.