Read the excerpt below and determine the author's primary thesis:

"The historical rise of the Melaka Sultanate as a pre-eminent global entrepôt was not solely a product of geographic serendipity along the straits. Rather, it resulted from calculated institutional innovations: equitable maritime trade laws, standardized harbor weights, and the appointment of cosmopolitan foreign harbor masters (syahbandar) to govern diverse merchant communities."

The author argues that Melaka's commercial success was primarily driven by:

Answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. deliberate institutional governance and commercial trade policies

  1. Step 1: Analyze the counter-argument and thesis: the author asserts success 'was not solely a product of geographic serendipity', but 'resulted from calculated institutional innovations: equitable maritime trade laws, standardized harbor weights, and the appointment of cosmopolitan foreign harbor masters'.
  2. Step 2: The central thesis is that institutional and governance policies drove commercial triumph.
Answer
deliberate institutional governance and commercial trade policies.
Why not the others: 'purely accidental geographic location with zero administrative planning' is the exact view refuted by the author; 'complete military conquest of all neighboring Southeast Asian kingdoms' is unsupported by the text; 'the total exclusion of foreign international merchants from local ports' contradicts the welcoming appointment of cosmopolitan merchant syahbandars.

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