One shallow choke point moves a quarter of world trade
Between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, a waterway only a few kilometres wide at its tightest funnels ships between the Indian and Pacific oceans. In 2008 more than ninety-four thousand vessels used it; roughly a quarter of traded goods still ride that narrow corridor.
The Strait of Malacca runs about nine hundred kilometres, widening from sixty-five to two hundred fifty kilometres between peninsula and Sumatra, linking the Andaman Sea to the South China Sea. Hydrographers draw its western edge from Sumatra’s Pedropunt to Phuket’s southern tip, and its eastern edge past Tanjong Piai toward Klein Karimoen. Since the seventeenth century it has been the main shipping channel between those oceans, and congestion peaks where the Phillip Channel squeezes to roughly 2.8 kilometres near Singapore.
Traffic numbers explain the geopolitics. About twenty-five percent of the world’s traded goods pass through, including oil, Chinese manufactures, coal, palm oil, and Indonesian coffee. By 2024 more than thirty-five percent of seaborne oil and twenty percent of gas used the strait; estimates rose from 13.7 million barrels a day in 2007 to 15.2 million in 2011. Ships that outgrow the twenty-five-metre minimum depth—called Malaccamax—must detour thousands of nautical miles via Lombok and Makassar instead of the even shallower Sunda Strait.
Power followed spice and pepper for centuries. Seventh-century Srivijaya, based at Palembang, seized both Malacca and Sunda choke points and held regional dominance for roughly seven hundred years. Later the Malacca and Johor sultanates, British Straits Settlements, and Singapore inherited the same hinge. Lore ties the name Melaka to a gooseberry tree where Sumatran prince Parameswara rested. Before the strait itself was the main route, monsoon traders stopped at Kedah with glass, camphor, cotton, ivory, and sandalwood on their way toward Guangzhou.
Source: Strait of Malacca
