Beautifully illustrated with color reproductions, black and white prints, and maps, Old Malacca introduces readers to Malacca's historical periods to explain how the city has acquired its present-day character, and to remind readers of the various elements which have gone into Malacca's cultural make-up. Beginning as a fishing settlement before Parameswara arrived around 1400 A.D., Malacca became the greatest emporium the world had ever known. It was a place crammed so full of all kinds of goods that they almost overflowed into the river itself, and many of the townsmen became rich. Drawing on early chroniclers and travelers' tales, Sarnia Hayes Hoyt examines Malacca's golden age and the colonial periods that followed, when the Portuguese, Dutch, and finally the British imposed a new maritime trading organization on Malacca and the South-East Asian region. Old Malacca offers a balanced perspective which gives due credit to the various eras of Malacca's history.

Written in the perspective of a Malaysian Dutch descendant, it gives a comprehensive and never before narrated story about the history of the Dutch in Malaysia and the Malaysian Dutch community. This book divides the Dutch historical influences in Malaysia into four different eras. Each era is analysed and represented in relation to its respective social environment and political developments. Included are the historical contributions of individuals, such as the Dutch Admirals who attempted to capture Malacca, the Dutch Governors and their administrative ranks who governed the town and the contributions of the Malacca Burghers in shaping Malaysia's history.

In his book “The Study Of Ancient Times In The Malay Peninsula”, Dato Sir Roland Braddell (1880-1966) writes, “No statement could be more untrue or more unwise than that Malaya has no history”. This dense work of 458 pages (reprinted edition no. 7 by MBRAS in 1989), from Dato Sir Braddells's studies appearing in the “Journal of Asiatic Society”, between 1935 and 1951, is followed by 50 pages of notes on the historical geography of Malaya and sidelights on the Malay Annals by Dato F.W. Douglas, a contemporary of Braddell. Sir Roland examines the book VII of “Ptolemy's Geographica” written about 160 AD, which sends us back to the land of Ophir of the Bible, also called “Golden Chersonese”, where gold of higher purity had already been found around 3000 years ago in today's Pahang. As to the human presence, the “Malay Orang”, “being an islander”, (he) was able to sail the Eastern seas long before the people of the mainland could; and by such contacts achieved a higher state of civilization: he took the products of this area, gold, incense, spices and the Malayan jungle fowl with him and then the people of other countries came here”, according to F.W. Douglas in the conclusion of his foreword, dated 15.1.1949. Malays are therefore inborn sea traders.