The sultan’s residence and the capital of the archipelago is the island of Malé. From the earliest notices the production of coir, the collection of cowries, and the weaving of excellent textures on these islands have been noted. The chief exports of the islands besides coir and cowries (a decreasing trade) are coco-nuts, copra, tortoise-shell and dried bonito-fish.
Minikoi atoll, with the numerous wrecks on its reefs, its lighthouse, and its position on the track of all eastward-bound vessels, is a familiar sight to seafarers in these waters. The atoll, which is pear-shaped and disposed in the direction from S.W. to N.E. is 5 m. long, with an extreme breadth of nearly 3 m., with a large but shallow lagoon approached from the north by a passage two fathoms deep. The atoll is growing outwards on every side, and at one place rises 19 ft. above sea-level. The population, which numbers about 3000, is sharply divided into five castes, of which the three highest are pure Maldivians, the lower two the same as in the Laccadives. All are centred in a small village opposite Mou Rambu Point on the west or lagoon side; but most of the men are generally absent, many being employed with the Lascar crews on board the large liners plying in the eastern seas.
In 1899-1900 Messrs. J. Stanley Gardiner and C. Forster Cooper carried out an expedition to the Maldives and Laccadives, for the important results of which see The Fauna and Geography of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes, ed. J. S. Gardiner (Cambridge, 1901-1905), also Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. xi. pt. 1 (1900), and the Geographical Journ., loc. cit., &c. A French adventurer, François Pyrard de la Val, was wrecked in the Maldives in 1602 and detained there five years; he wrote an interesting account of the archipelago, Voyage de F. P. de la Val (Paris, 1679; previous editions 1611, &c.). See also A. Agassiz, “An Expedition to the Maldives” in Amer. Journ. Science, vol. xiii. (1902).
[1] These and other channels in the locality are named from their position under parallels of latitude.
MALDON, a market town, municipal borough and port, in the Maldon parliamentary borough of Essex, England, on an acclivity rising from the south side of the Blackwater, 43 m. E.N.E. from London by a branch from Witham of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901), 5565. There are east and west railway stations. The church of All Saints, dating from 1056, but, as it stands, Early English and later, consists of chancel, nave and aisles, with a triangular Early English tower (a unique form) at the west end surmounted by a hexagonal spire. The tower of St Mary’s Church shows Norman work with Roman materials. The other public buildings are the grammar school, founded in 1547; the town-hall, formerly D’Arcy’s tower, built in the reign of Henry VI.; and the public hall. There are manufactures of crystallized salt, breweries, an oyster fishery and some shipping. On Osea Island, in the Blackwater estuary, there is a farm colony for the unemployed. A mile west of Maldon are remains of Beeleigh Abbey, a Premonstratensian foundation of the 12th century. They consist of the chapter-house and another chamber, and are of fine Early English work. The borough is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 3028 acres.
At Maldon (Maelduna, Melduna, Mealdon or Meaudon) palaeolithic, neolithic and Roman remains that have been found seem to indicate an early settlement. It is not, however, an important Roman site. An earthwork, of which traces exist, may be Saxon or Danish. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that Edward the Elder established a “burh” there about 921, and that Ealdorman Brihtnoth was killed there by the Danes in 991. The position of Maldon may have given it some commercial importance, but the fortress is the point emphasized by the Chronicle. Maldon remained a royal town up to the reign of Henry I., and thus is entered as on terra regis in Domesday. Henry II. granted the burgesses their first charter, probably in 1155, giving them the land of the borough and suburb with sac and soc and other judicial rights, also freedom from county and forest jurisdiction, danegeld, scutage, tallage and all tolls, by the service of one ship a year for forty days. This charter was confirmed by Edward I. in 1290, by Edward III. in 1344, and by Richard II. in 1378. In 1403 the bishop of London granted further judicial and financial rights, and Henry V. confirmed the charters in 1417, Henry VI. in 1443, and Henry VIII. in 1525. Maldon was incorporated by Philip and Mary in 1554, and received confirmatory charters from Elizabeth in 1563 and 1592, from Charles I. in 1631, Charles II. and James II. In 1768 the incorporation charter was regranted, with modifications in 1810.
MALEBRANCHE, NICOLAS (1638-1715), French philosopher of the Cartesian school, the youngest child of Nicolas Malebranche, secretary to Louis XIII., and Catherine de Lauzon, sister of a viceroy of Canada, was born at Paris on the 6th of August 1638. Deformed and constitutionally feeble, he received his elementary education from a tutor, and left home only when sufficiently advanced to enter upon a course of philosophy at the Collège de la Marche, and subsequently to study theology at the Sorbonne. He had resolved to take holy orders, but his studious disposition led him to decline a stall in Notre Dame, and in 1660 he joined the congregation of the Oratory. He was first advised by Père Lecointe to devote himself to ecclesiastical history, and laboriously studied Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, but “the facts refused to arrange themselves in his mind, and mutually effaced one another.” Richard Simon undertook to teach him Hebrew and Biblical criticism with no better success. At last in 1664 he chanced to read Descartes’s Traité de l’homme (de homine), which moved him so deeply that (it is said) he was repeatedly compelled by palpitations of the heart to lay aside his reading. Malebranche was from that hour consecrated to philosophy, and after ten years’ study of the works of Descartes he produced the famous De la recherche de la vérité, followed at intervals by other works, both speculative and controversial. Like most of the great metaphysicians of the 17th century, Malebranche interested himself also in questions of mathematics and natural philosophy, and in 1699 was admitted an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences. During his later years his society was much courted, and he received many visits from foreigners of distinction. He died on the 13th of October 1715; his end was said to have been hastened by a metaphysical argument into which he had been drawn in the course of an interview with Bishop Berkeley. For a critical account of Malebranche’s place in the history of philosophy, see [Cartesianism].