by Iain Gately
These early Atlantic ventures were of little initial importance in comparison to trade in the Mediterranean. However, in 1453, Constantinople, the ancient capital of the eastern Roman Empire and the last bulwark of Christianity in the region, fell to Islam. The loss of Constantinople had serious repercussions for commerce, as it had been the terminus for European trade with Asia and China. As a consequence, European eyes turned toward the Atlantic. Might it be possible to reach Asia by sea, by traveling south around Africa and thence east across the Indian Ocean? If so, the new island colonies would be important staging posts. The possibility fascinated Henry of Portugal. Between the discovery of the Azores and his death in 1460, he had sent fleets as far down the west coast of Africa as Sierre Leone. The Portuguese push south was continued by his successors, and in January 1488 Captain Bartolomeo Dias rounded Cape Horn and sailed into the Indian Ocean. These voyages brought the Europeans into direct contact with a number of African cultures for the first time. At each step south down the coast, the Portuguese had established trading stations. The Africans had ivory, gold, slaves, and palm oil to offer, and by a process of trial and error the Portuguese discovered which goods of their own were appealing to their counterparts. In the case of the Wolofs, who occupied what is now Senegal, the best articles of trade were wine, weapons, and horses. The Wolofs were a sophisticated culture, nominally Muslim, who maintained links with other members of their faith through a trans-Saharan land trade route, but who had chosen to disregard the Koranic ban on drinking. They had a number of native beverages, including palm wine and millet beer, and these two drinks were found to be common throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, at every point of the continent where the Portuguese landed, they found alcohol to be present and to have been integrated into the customs and rituals of the peoples with whom they made contact.
In addition to seeking a route to Asia by sailing around Africa, Europeans also contemplated the possibility of reaching it by traveling west. Although no one thought the world was flat, they disagreed as to just how big and round it was. In 1492, the Spanish king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella, financed a fleet of three ships under a Genoese sea captain, Christopher Columbus, which sailed from Seville to the Canary Islands, and thence across the Atlantic to the Americas. Within fifty years of this voyage, the Spanish had established an American empire that stretched from Florida to southern Chile. The empire was created by conquest of two great civilizations, the Aztecs and the Incas, and the piecemeal annexation of the territories of various smaller cultures. During the same decades the Portuguese succeeded in their ambition of reaching Asia via Africa, established a colony in Brazil, and sponsored, under Ferdinand Magellan, the first expedition in history to sail around the world. Both Spain and her neighboring power provisioned their fleets with bounteous stocks of wine, sourced from Andalusía, or their respective Atlantic Island colonies. Wine was a significant part of the cost of fitting out an expedition. Magellan spent more on sherry than on armaments; indeed his wine rations cost nearly twice as much as his flagship, the San Antonio. In consequence, the Spanish and the Portuguese paid careful attention to the presence or absence of alcoholic drinks in the places where they traded or conquered, to their potential for vineyards, and to the drinking habits of the natives.
The Spanish found not one but a multitude of drinking cultures in their American possessions. These were concentrated in Middle or Mesoamerica, between Mexico and Panama, and were as diverse among themselves as they were different from Spanish custom. Mesoamerican civilizations were perhaps the most ingenious in history in identifying potential sources of alcohol. They fermented cacti and their fruits, maize and its stalks, the sap of a good two-dozen species of agave, honey, sasparilla, the seed pods of the mesquite tree, hog plums, and the fruit and bark of various other trees. The ubiquity of alcohol was remarked upon by the conquistadores, who observed that in their new dominions “up to now no tribe has been found which is content to drink only water.”
Among the novel types of fermentables observed by the Spaniards in Mesoamerica, four in particular stood out: the fruits, or tunas, of cacti; maize; tree bark; and pulque. The manufacture of alcoholic beverages from cacti proved widespread among hunter-gatherer tribes. Typically, the tribe in question would move to an area where cacti were in fruit and spend all their time brewing and drinking until the season was over. The Chichimeca of central Mexico, for instance, would work in short cycles, preparing then consuming “tuna wine”: “every third day, the women make the wine and the men drink so much that they lose their senses.” According to Spanish accounts, the Chichimeca were highly volatile when intoxicated, so that the women would hide their menfolk’s bows and arrows lest they kill each other. Moreover, in order not to be surprised by their enemies when under the influence, the Chichimeca “never all [got] drunk at the same time” and appointed drink monitors, whose duty was to stay sober and keep a good lookout.
A more important source of fermentable material was maize, the principal cereal crop of the Americas, which hitherto had been unknown to Europeans. This was used to produce tesguino—maize beer. Tesguino was made by masticating corn kernels and boiling these for a prolonged period to produce a syrup, which was rediluted, then fermented for three to five days. The Spanish called it vino de maíz—maize wine—and noted the enthusiasm with which it was consumed by their new subjects: “They have solemn festivals of drunkenness for which the whole pueblo congregates.” Tesguino was the drink of choice in central and western Mexico.
To the south, in the Yucatán Peninsula, the principal alcoholic drink of the once-great Mayas was balche—mead fermented with the bark of the balche tree. The resulting concoction has been described as “milky white, sour to the smell, and at first very disagreeable to the taste.” Despite its unpleasant flavor, the Maya consumed balche in volume at their frequent “fiestas, dances, and weddings,” where they would “dance after drinking repeatedly from small jars and in a short time become intoxicated and act as if they were crazy and childish.”
Whereas many of the native types of alcoholic drink fell out of use after the Spanish conquest, one in particular remained common and grew in popularity. This was pulque, the fermented sap of the maguey, the Spanish generic name for a the agave plant. Like the poetical mead of the Anglo-Saxons, pulque had a special cachet, especially among the Aztecs, whom the Spanish had displaced as lords of Mexico. According to Aztec theology, pulque was blessed with a mother goddess, and a band of immortal guardians—the Centzontotochtli—the Four Hundred Moon Rabbit Gods of Pulque. Their number, and their place of residence, were both symbolic of fertility, and their principal sphere of influence, beyond the supervision of the manufacture of pulque, was breeding. The connection between the moon, the rabbits, fertility, and pulque was enhanced by the milky color of the fluid, which was liberally employed at planting and harvest festivals.
The manufacturing process of pulque was complex and required the death of the plant. Magueys mature when they are five to seven years old, whereupon the center, which resembles a giant artichoke, begins to swell prior to sending out a quiote—a single flower stalk. The quiote bud is cut out and a cavity scraped clean in the center of the plant, which fills with sap, called aguamiel—honeywater. The aguamiel is extracted two or three times a day—a large plant can yield seven liters per day, until it dies, and it may survive in this wounded state for up to six months, bleeding out a total of perhaps a thousand liters. This was an aesthetically pleasing process for the Aztecs—reminiscent of their usual method of human sacrifice—cutting out the victim’s heart and draining the cavity of blood.
Once collected, the aguamiel was placed in clay pots and sealed for a period of four days, during which time it fermented. Pulque brewers were a superstitious lot. They would abstain from sex for the fermentation period, as they believed that intercourse made the brew sour. They also refrained from tasting the pulque, or drinking any other pulque during the brewing period, for the same reason. Anyone brea
king abstinence was likely to be cursed with a twisted mouth or possessed by an angry rabbit god. Once pulque was ready, it had to be consumed quickly, as it had a shelf life of little more than twenty-four hours. Fresh pulque has a sweet odor said to be reminiscent of bananas. Off-pulque, however possesses a smell so noxious that, in the words of a Spanish observer, “there are no dead dogs, nor a bomb, that can clear a path so well.” In order to circumvent such perishability, the aguamiel was sometimes boiled down into a syrup, which later could be rediluted and fermented.
The Aztecs appear to have had the strictest drinking laws in history outside Islam. Only men or women over the age of fifty-two could have a draft of pulque whenever and wherever they wished. Most Aztecs died before they were old enough to drink. Illicit drinkers had their hair cut off, their houses demolished, and/or were summarily executed. The Codex Mendoza (1541), a postconquest compilation of native beliefs, features a picture of three young people being stoned to death for drunkenness with a caption explaining that this was no less than they deserved. The old took advantage of their privileges, especially on the festive occasions when they were expected to drink deep. Bernadino de Sahagun, who compiled an account of Aztec civilization before it vanished, gives a touching picture of legal, albeit geriatric, drinkers in their cups: “Once they were all intoxicated they began to sing; some sang and cried, others sang to give pleasure. Each one would sing whatever he liked and in the key he fancied best, and none of them harmonized; some sang out loud, others softly, merely humming to themselves.” The elderly were also issued cigarettes to smoke while they drank, for the combination of alcohol and tobacco was a popular one throughout Central America.
An Aztec matron enjoys the milk of old age.
There were, however, numerous exceptions to such Draconian drinking laws. The nobility of either sex, warriors, pregnant women, pulque brewers and maguey cultivators, and various classes of priests and temple choirs were permitted to drink with differing degrees of freedom. The nobility drank pulque with their meals, as a privilege of their caste, and sometimes mixed it with their chocolate. Warriors and brewers helped themselves from stone troughs at various temples, which were filled to the brim in honor of a number of the denizens of the Aztec pantheon. Moreover, there was one festival at which the entire population, including babes in arms, were required to drink. This was the Pillahuana (Drunkenness of Children) festival, held every fourth new year, at which all the children born in the intervening period had their ears pierced and were taken to watch the human sacrifices by their godparents, who acted as chaperones throughout the event and who encouraged, or forced, their charges to drink liberal quantities of pulque. The results, according to a Spanish source, were ugly: “Once drunk, they would quarrel among themselves, they cuffed one another and fell on the floor on top of each other, or else they would go embracing each other.”
In addition to the aforementioned exceptions, some people were cursed by the stars to drink. Rabbit served as an astrological marker—it was one of the signs of the Aztec zodiac, and anyone born on the day of Umetochtli—2-Rabbit—was destined to become a drunk, who “would not look for anything else in life save alcohol . . . and only drink it . . . in order to get intoxicated . . . even before breakfast.” Two-Rabbits were easy to spot, as they were notoriously unkempt: “They totter along, falling down and getting full of dust, and red in the face. . . . They do not care, although they may be covered in bruises and wounds from falls, provided they can get drunk, nothing else matters.” Interestingly, the Aztec legal process was unusually sympathetic toward them. Their drunkenness was a valid alibi for any crime. “He has become his rabbit” would be the judgment, and punishment would be left to fate. The defense of possession by one’s rabbit was proof against every charge, though at the price of stigma—people born on luckier days had nothing but “loathing and hatred” for 2-Rabbits.
The Spanish did their best to exterminate Aztec and other New World religious practices and to replace them with Christianity. All the traditional drinking occasions were prohibited, as were the intricate laws governing who might drink and when. This cultural apocalypse resulted in an increase in tippling among their new subjects, to whom it became a secular, as opposed to ritual, pastime. Given the unpleasant living conditions that they were forced to endure after the conquest, it is likely that most of them resorted to alcohol for the purpose identified by Sophocles in classical Greece: to “banish woe.” And while the traditional range of Mesoamerican additives to alcoholic drinks, including tobacco, peyote, yage, toad juice, and magic mushrooms, vanished from their brews, the drinks themselves lived on. In Mexico, the Spanish turned pulque into gold. They introduced licensing laws for its production and sale, and taxes on its consumption. A century or so after the conquest, levies on pulque were second only to the silver mines as a source of imperial revenues. They also introduced the technology of distillation, which the Mexicans were quick to adopt. They applied their ingenuity to building stills from the simplest of materials—clay and hollowed-out logs—which they used to extract elixirs from their traditional potations, creating new beverages in the process. Pulque, for example, was transformed into mescal.
A similar course of events occurred in Spain’s dominions in South America, which they had subjugated with the same mixture of cunning and brutality as they had employed against the Aztecs. The Incas, their victims in the south, were rulers of an empire encompassing much of modern Peru, Chile, and Ecuador, and parts of Argentina. Their common beverage was maize beer. Its consumption was a vital part of their religious and social rituals. A few drops were offered to the sun god before drinking; and intoxication was encouraged at major ceremonies and feasts, especially those relating to the initiation of children. These last were celebrated by all parents on the second birthday of their first child, when it was given a name, received valuable presents from its relatives, its first haircut, and its last taste of breast milk, and was introduced to alcohol. According to a Spanish source, “As soon as the presentation of gifts was over, the ceremony of drinking began, for without it no entertainment was considered good. They sang and they danced until night, and this festivity continued for three or four days, or more.”
Although the indigenous peoples of South America continued to drink their traditional maize brews postconquest, these were supplemented, as had been the case in Mexico, with distilled spirits, and also with new drinks introduced by the Spanish. The principal novelty was wine. The Spaniards planted the vine in every suitable part of the Americas that they controlled. It flourished best at first in Peru. Although the Spanish government latterly attempted to restrict the trade in South American wine, so as to protect the market for its own exports, by the 1570s Peru was sending its vintages to Chile (which was also a producer), Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and to the Philippines, to which a transpacific trade route had been opened in 1565.
While the Spanish were building an empire in Central and South America, the Portuguese had concentrated on trading with the Far East. In 1494, after mediation from Pope Alexander VI, the two maritime powers had divided the globe between them along a north-south meridian, with the Spanish allotted all “new” lands west of longitude 39’ 53‘ and the Portuguese the other half of the world. Brazil fell into the Portuguese hemisphere, which they settled and to which they introduced sugarcane and distillation, but their principal efforts were focused on Asia. They established bases in Goa, in India, in 1510, and in Malacca, in Malaysia, the following year, with the intention of cornering the spice trade. In 1536, the Chinese permitted them to use Macau on their coast as a harbor and to purchase the silks and other luxury goods that fetched such colossal prices in Europe. From Macau the Portuguese voyaged to Japan, where they were granted permission to send one ship each year.
Japan had featured large in the European imagination since the publication of Marco Polo’s largely fictional account of the gold-rich island of Zipangu. The gold was a myth, but the actual wealth, power, and sophistication
of Japan, and moreover of China, came as a shock to Europeans and increased their fascination with these ancient and complex civilizations. European goods were shoddy in comparison to what China and Japan had to offer, and both places were conscious of their superiority. In consequence, their political organization, their religions, and the personal habits of their populations were scrutinized, with the aim of discovering how commerce could be advanced. As usual, careful attention was paid to their drinking customs.
The universal alcoholic beverage throughout China was rice wine. It had been described by Marco Polo as “a liquor which they brew of rice with a quantity of excellent spice in such fashion that it makes better drink than any other wine.” Moreover, it was “clear and pleasing to the eye. And being very hot stuff, it makes one drunk sooner than any other wine.” The Portuguese found the same substance common in Japan, where it was known as sake and was in such demand “that they say that more than one-third of the rice grown in Japan is used in making it.” The rituals with which this popular fluid was drunk were set down in some detail by João Rodrigues, a Portuguese Jesuit who spent several decades in the country, commencing in 1577. His observations reveal some parallels, and some radical differences, with European drinking practices.