Dr Ramón Vega Piniella from the National Library of Singapore presented during Panel 2 of Day 2 of the Pahang and the Sea workshop
This panel explores Pahang's Connections with the Persian Gulf and Europe. Dr Piniella examines Pahang's pivotal role within the shifting maritime networks of the early modern world, focusing on its strategic and symbolic place in Iberian expansion across the Malacca Strait during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing on early Portuguese and Spanish sources, including the neglected 1580s proposal by Captain Antonio de la Torre, it explores how Pahang became a hinge between the twin sea empires of Portugal and Spain during the Iberian Union.
Beyond its economic allure as part of the legendary Aurea Chersonesus, the "Golden Peninsula," Pahang operated as a connective corridor in the mental and cartographic geographies of both empires. Iberian notions of tribute, labor, and wealth-shaped by the Spanish encomienda mentality-intersected here with indigenous agency, local navigation, and regional trade in gold, pepper, and silk. The paper also highlights how Pahang's maritime routes appeared in early Iberian, Chinese, and Jesuit maps, and how references within Portuguese documentation shed light on its political and cultural evolution.
Through the lens of De la Torre's "Passage of Pahang" and the corroborating voyage of Alvaro
Bolaños Monsalve, the study argues that this littoral zone was not a marginal frontier but a central node in the firstglobal system of exchange. Ultimately, Pahang's early documentation, especially in Portuguese archives, captures a transitional moment when Southeast Asia ceased to be merely an imagined "Golden Peninsula" and emerged as an integrated maritime hub linking Malacca, Brunei, and Manila across the Indian and Pacific Oceans
