STATE tourism promotion agency Tourism Melaka has come under fire from French historian Serge Jardin who spotted a dozen or more glaring factual errors in its latest guidebook.
Jardin who has sound knowledge of Melaka’s history aside from being married to a Melakan, listed 10 of the errors as follows:
#1 – “The Emperor bequeathed Hang Li Poh to Sultan Muzaffar Shah.” (She married Sultan Mansur Shah);
#2 – “The arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century under Alfonso de Albuquerque …” (1511 is the 16th century);
#3 – “… the Portuguese ruled for the next 150 years.” (1511 to 1641 is 130 years);
#4 – “… the European invasion back in the 14th century.” (1511 is definitively the 16th century);
#5 – “After independence, a colonial building was built by the British which was known as Melaka Club.” (The new Malacca Club was built in 1912);
#6 – “Melaka celebrating 750 years in history” (1400 to 2024 is 624 years);
#7 – “Queen Victoria’s Fountain was built in 1901 to commemorate Her Diamond Jubilee.” (It was built in 1904 to commemorate the death of a Great Queen, as Her Diamond Jubilee was commemorated in 1897);
#8 – “In 1574, St Francis Xavier died in a ship.” (He died in 1552 on Sangchuan Island, China);
#9 – “Melaka Stamps Museum” (It is definitively closed for four years already); and
#10 – “Poh San Temple was built in 1754 at the foot of Bukit Cina.” (It was built in 1795).
“Just to name a few, not mentioning mistakes about Cheng Ho, A Famosa, Porta de Santiago, the museums and the Dutch bastions, St Paul Church and Cheng Hoon Temple, etc,” berated Jardin in a Facebook post. “Is there somebody in charge?”
Recall that Jardin has most recently hit out at Univerisiti Putra Malaysia’s (UPM) ‘non-historian’ academician Prof Datuk Dr Hashim Musa for repeating ad nauseam (at least since 1989) that “Melaka welcomes 2,000 ships a day!” to describe greatness of the Melaka Sultanate.
As netizens poured scorn on the embarrassing blunder, it was revealed that the content writer is Angela Annie Petrus whose professional background is in doubt.
Delving further on the blunder, Jardin went on to reveal that he had in fact proposed some corrections to the fourth edition of the guide dated 2020 but only for the mistakes to be visible four years later.
Apart from the historical blunders pointed out by Jardin, a netizen who claimed to have browsed through the e-version of the guide claimed that the entire workmanship of the project was sloppy at best.
“Someone needs to be held accountable for this,” he chastised. “We need to know how much the publisher is paid to do such a disgraced tourist guide.” – July 10, 2024
