Historical versus Practical Pasts? Enrique de Malacca in Malaysia’s Historical Imagination

Abstract

The commemoration of the 500th year anniversary of Magellan-El Cano expedition in 2019-2022 reinvigorated the discussion about Enrique de Malacca in Southeast Asia. As Magellan’s slave of Malay origin, Enrique’s importance rests on the claim that he may be the first circumnavigator of the world. Using how historical and literary accounts, as well as public memories of Enrique, are appropriated in Malaysia, this paper aims to illuminate the efficacy of the distinction between the concepts of historical and practical pasts. It argues that despite the existence of overlapping concepts such as popular vs. academic history, the historical vs. practical past differentiation is more analytically efficacious because of the ontological and epistemological parity it grants to both categories, eschewing the a priori assumption of the superiority of one over another that is widely upheld. The notion of practical past and how it applies in different local and national settings needs to be further examined.