Dutch East India Company

The Colonial Era · Chronicle · 15 min read

What Was a Kapitan in Colonial Melaka?

The Dutch took Malacca not to make it prosper, but to ensure it didn't. Yet in a downgraded city, people learned to survive through a system called the Kapitan.

In 1641, the Dutch bombarded Malacca and ousted the Portuguese. But the very first thing they did next was not to rebuild it into a new trade centre— instead, they directed their fleets to Batavia (now Jakarta). Malacca was left as a mere outpost. In this downgraded city, the Dutch did not have enough manpower to govern every community directly, so they adopted an old method: letting each community elect a headman to govern their own people on behalf of the colonisers. That headman was called the Kapitan. This arrangement was used from 1641 all the way to 1824—a full one hundred and eighty-three years. And its lingering shadows remain today.