General Aspects of Pre-Colonial States and Major Empires, c. 1300–1500

Abstract

The political history of Indonesia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is not well known, for the same reason that the process of Islamisation is so unclear — that is, the scarcity of evidence. But two major states clearly dominated this period: Majapahit in East Java and Malacca in Malaya. The former was the greatest of the pre-Islamic states of Indonesia; the latter was probably the greatest of the Muslim trading empires. Together they symbolise the transitional state of Indonesia in these centuries. Other states, such as the new Sultanate of Pasai, have left too little evidence to support historical reconstruction.