French Historian Slams Malaysian Professor for Repeatedly Reinventing History
French historian Serge Jardin has once again accused Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) adjunct professor Prof Datuk Dr Hashim Musa of distorting historical facts to inflate the image of Malay maritime power. In a series of scathing Facebook posts, Jardin criticised Hashim for repeatedly misrepresenting foreign ships – Portuguese, Dutch, and Chinese – as symbols of Melaka’s past glory.
Turning a Foochow Pole Junk – a Chinese cargo vessel – into a majestic Malay jong?
Is this reclaiming maritime greatness… or just straight-up madness?
“Mistaking a Chinese Foochow Pole Junk for a Malay jong?
Bold move to ‘reclaim’ maritime history… or peak academic madness?”
The latest outburst follows a seminar held in Melaka on 19–20 June 2024, titled Seminar Kapal Mendam Berahi: Realiti Atau Mitos. During his presentation, “Warisan Tradisi Maritim Melayu dan Teknologi Pembuatan Kapal Besar”, Hashim displayed an old print showing “so many ships” arriving in Melaka, claiming it depicted the sultanate’s greatness.
“Melaka in 1450: 2,000 ships a day!
Source: a Dutch painting from 1708?
Church on the hill ➜ Mosque
Dutch invasion fleet ➜ 2,000 kapal Melayu sehari
Showing a room full of PhDs a picture of Dutch ships and calling it ‘Warisan Maritim Melayu’?
Congrats Malaysia, we’ve finally decolonised history!
Turn the church the Portuguese built into a mosque
Turn the Dutch fleet that kicked us out into kapal Melayu
When you celebrate the Dutch fleet as Malay greatness, are you flexing our maritime power… or just throwing a 383-year late surrender anniversary party?
When you flex so hard about maritime glory that you accidentally flex the colonial navy that ended your empire.
Jardin, who is married to a Melakan and has authored several books on the region’s history, quickly pointed out the glaring error. “Nobody stood up in the learned assembly to say: ‘Sorry Sir, I am afraid you are confused’,” he wrote. “Your print is dated 1708, the ships are Dutch East Indiamen, and your so-called mosque is actually St Paul’s Church.” The image, he noted, showed the Dutch fleet – the very power that ruled Melaka for 130 years after defeating the Portuguese in 1641.
This is not the first time Hashim has been called out. Since 1989, he has repeatedly claimed that “Melaka welcomed 2,000 ships a day” during the sultanate’s peak – a figure Jardin describes as being repeated ad nauseam (so often that it has become sickening).
In January 2024, Jardin went viral with a post titled “How Low Can Academia Go! Shame, Shame, Shame” after exposing a research paper co-authored by Hashim and UPM senior lecturer Rozita Che Rodi. Published in the International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences (Vol. 13, Issue 11, 2023), the paper used a photograph of a Foochow Pole Junk – a Chinese cargo vessel – to illustrate a traditional Malay jong, a large sailing ship originating from Java. The image, sourced from the Royal Museums Greenwich, was falsely credited to the Maritime Museum of Jakarta.
Jardin also debunked the paper’s claim that galleys were part of the Melaka Sultanate’s fleet. “In the Sejarah Melayu, the word ‘galley’ appears six times – all in connection with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1511,” he wrote. “Galley was never used by local mariners during the sultanate period. Southeast Asian navies only adopted galleys after Portuguese and Ottoman influences arrived.” The famous galley Mendam Berahi from Hikayat Hang Tuah is, he added, a 17th-century anachronism.
The pattern of revisionism extends beyond the classroom.
Turning a slave who was on Magellan’s ship into ‘the first Malay to sail around the world
On 30 June 2024, the Melaka Chief Minister announced on TV3 that a “newly discovered” Spanish manuscript proves a Melaka native, Enrique de Malacca (also known as Henry the Black), was the first person to circumnavigate the world. Jardin dismissed the claim: the two manuscripts displayed were Magellan’s 1519 will and crew list – documents known since the 19th century and available in Melaka since 2010. Neither mentions Enrique completing a circumnavigation, nor do they identify him as the first to do so.
Manuscript 1: Magellan’s will (1519)
Manuscript 2: Crew list (1519)
Enrique’s name inside? ❌
Proof he finished circumnavigation? ❌
Date of the voyage ending? 1522 ❌
But hey, Panglima Awang is now officially the first human to circumnavigate the world… based on vibes and hope?
Damage to Reputation and Tourism
Such repeated fabrications, Jardin argued, damage the reputation of Malaysian universities and treat tourists with disdain. “Visitors come to Melaka expecting authentic history, not fairy tales,” he wrote, calling on academics to “stand and be counted to stop the rot before it’s too late.”
“This is how low the Malaysian public education system will go when there’s no check and balance.”
How Low Can It Go?
Malaysia’s universities, once respected across the region, have slid in global rankings for years. When academics mislabel Chinese junks as Malay jongs, Dutch fleets as Melaka’s armada, Portuguese galleys as local inventions, and even credit the Romans with building ships for a 15th-century sultanate, the pursuit of truth is abandoned for personal glorification.
How much lower can our academicians go in reinventing imaginary histories just to feed a fake sense of grandeur? Turning a slave into a world-circumnavigating hero, a Chinese cargo boat into a Malay masterpiece, and European colonial ships into symbols of local power is not scholarship – it is fiction dressed as fact.
It is time to restore rigour, demand evidence, and end the shameful practice of fabricating history. Malaysia’s true maritime heritage – rich, diverse, and shared with neighbours – deserves to be told accurately, not reinvented for applause.
Until that happens, Serge Jardin’s question remains: How low can academia go?
Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen! We have officially achieved Peak Fantasy History. Why settle for real achievements when you can just Photoshop someone else’s ships, churches, and entire navies and call it “warisan maritim Melayu”?
Question to the clowns in charge: When your self-esteem is so low that you have to steal Chinese junks, Portuguese churches, and Dutch fleets just to feel tall… maybe the problem isn’t the history. Maybe the problem is the inferiority complex that needs all this fake glory to survive.
Real history is impressive enough. Stop embarrassing us with this low-budget fanfiction.
This is no longer harmless kampung storytelling. This is state-funded fanfiction being fed to students as peer-reviewed fact.
When a UIA professor can stand in front of hundreds of students and declare that Malays gave shipbuilding lessons to the Roman Empire…
When UPM professors can mislabel Chinese, Portuguese, and Dutch vessels as “Malay maritime greatness” without a single colleague daring to correct them…
When a Chief Minister goes on national TV with 500-year-old documents that prove exactly nothing and declares “new chapter in world history”…
We have crossed the point of embarrassment. We are actively raising an entire generation that cannot tell the difference between legend and lie, between pride and plagiarism.
What happens to our children tomorrow?
- They will be laughed out of global conferences when they cite Foochow junks as “Malay technology”.
- They will grow up believing real achievement is unnecessary because you can just rename someone else’s history and call it warisan.
To every academic still peddling this nonsense: Stop. You are not protecting Malay dignity. You are strangling it with humiliation. Real pride comes from real evidence, not from stealing Chinese boats, Portuguese churches, Dutch fleets, and Roman shipyards.
Malaysia’s universities were once respected across Asia. Today, thanks to you, we are becoming the continent’s biggest joke.
Enough.
Let historians do history. Let fantasists write novels. And let the next generation learn facts—not fairy tales disguised as PhDs.
Because if this disgrace continues, the only thing our children will inherit is global mockery. And that, dear professors, is the real “shame, shame, shame”.
Source : Focus
Source : Focus
Source : Focus
