The Indian Ocean

by Michael Pearson

  Overall then the changes in Gujarat's trade during the sixteenth century were rather slight. This however does not apply completely to the first port city we come across as we move south and east. In the late fifteenth century Diu had become a great market, dominated by Turks. Large trading ships called here to collect Gujarati products, and those from further east, in exchange for goods from the Middle East and Europe. The capture of Diu was a central aim of the Portuguese, and this was achieved in 1535. In consequence the Muslim merchants left. Diu now became just a place where Indian Ocean ships were forced to call in and pay customs duties. Its role as a market declined. The main merchant communities were now Hindus, collectively often called banias, and Jains from Gujarat. In the great port city of Cambay some hundred or so private Portuguese settled, usually married to local women. They joined a very heterogeneous mosaic of merchants. The internal economy – the inland traders, the bankers, the shopkeepers, the brokers and the main 'capitalists'- was dominated by merchants who were Hindus and Jains. Many of these people also loaded cargoes on ships, and settled overseas, even in the Muslim-dominated Red Sea area, but the main sea traders were Muslims. Most of these were now local people, descendants usually of local converts to Islam, though many wealthy foreign groups, from Shiraz, the Red Sea, and even Turkey, were also there. The effect of the Portuguese on the activities of these people was slight. For the Portuguese Gujarati goods from Cambay and other ports were vital to make up the cargoes for Portugal, especially the large private cargoes sent home on the great naus, which were overwhelmingly cloths from Gujarat. This however made up only a very small addition to the total trade of Gujarat.

  In any case, Cambay declined during the century because the Gulf of Cambay, at whose head it was located, silted up. Large ships found it more and more difficult to get to Cambay. It was replaced by Surat, which was also favoured by the integration of the independent sultanate of Gujarat into the Mughal empire in 1572 (see page 34). By the end of the century Surat was the greatest market in India, in the Indian Ocean, and indeed maybe in the whole world. Here were found the fabulously wealthy Hindu and Jain merchant communities which so many Europeans wrote of so admiringly. Here also were found products from all over the world, including those which the Portuguese hoped to monopolise. There was a host of merchant communities: not only Hindus and Jains (and these anyway were often subdivided according to caste or to economic speciality) but also Armenians, Jews, Portuguese, and Muslims from Persia and Turkey.

  The economic relationship between Gujarat and Goa was quite assymetrical. From the Portuguese side, trade with Gujarat was vital and essential, so much so that even the most martial governor had to realise that wars with Gujarat could not be allowed to go on for too long, for a protracted war would be disastrous for the economic health of Portuguese India. João de Castro's reprisals after the end of the second siege of Diu, in 1546–48, drew a barrage of complaints from residents of Goa whose trade was blocked by his actions.

  Two elements can be distinguished. Some of the Portuguese settled in Gujarat were agents for rich merchants in Goa, others traded in a small way on their own account. Their main task was to acquire cargoes for the several convoys of small trading ships which each year went from the Gulf of Cambay to Goa. Two or three such convoys sailed each year, guarded from pirates by Portuguese warships, and with 200 or more ships in each one. These convoys were absolutely central for the economic health of Goa. Most of the cargoes sent home on the carreira were goods from these convoys. The private fortunes of many of Goa's residents, including senior political and ecclesiastical figures, depended on these fleets of small trading ships.

  Further peaceful and mutually beneficial ties were formed by Gujarat's role as a major money market in the Indian Ocean area in the sixteenth century. Its great Hindu and Jain merchants provided loans quite impartially to traders, rulers, anyone with good credit, and many Portuguese took advantage of their vast resources. Here also is an element of reciprocity; rather than the din of battle, the heroic sieges, it is these economic transactions, deals, accommodations, which show the real nature of relations between Portugal and Gujarat in the sixteenth century.

  Along most of the west coast of India coastal trade was dominant, with small local ships carrying goods to the major nodes, of which Surat and Goa were the most important. As one example, the area of Kanara was a rice surplus region which provided food to other areas all up and down the coast, and indeed as far as Hurmuz. The next major market that we must notice is the Portuguese capital of Goa. Goa was analogous to other exchange markets in that it drew very little from its hinterland. Rather, its vaunted sixteenth-century prosperity was a result of Portuguese policies. It was the focus of their military–economic attempt to centralise Indian Ocean trade in their ports. The result was that Goa rose from being a relatively minor port to be a major exchange centre, based on coercion. Within the Portuguese system Goa was most important as their capital, and as the place where private traders could collect cargoes for their trade both within Asia and also to Europe on the state-owned or licensed naus. Yet although Goa had the advantage of military backing from the Estado da India, as a market it ranked far behind the great ports in Gujarat. At its height in the late sixteenth century Goa's trade was worth at most one-tenth of that of all the ports of Gujarat, and Surat alone far outtraded Goa. As the Estado declined in the next century the gap widened: Surat alone around 1640 had four times the trade of Goa. It and the other Portuguese port cities were, in terms of merchant communities, atypical in one important respect, in that alone in the Indian Ocean world they had no important Muslim groups. This was the result of the Portuguese antipathy to Muslims in general, and Turks in particular. Goa was ruled by the Portuguese, but its internal economy was dominated by a caste of Saraswat Brahmins, while its main financiers were banias from Gujarat.

  Goa was also the home of a considerable number of other European merchants who had come to feed on the Portuguese body. Some of these people were very substantial. They often held the most important of the government tax farming contracts, and syndicates of them ran the pepper trade for the state later in the century. One of the biggest was Ferdinand Cron, a German who had a great trade in Goa in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He acted as agent for substantial merchant houses back in Europe as well as trading on his own account. Part of his success was based on his control of information, achieved through a network of couriers which enabled him to be first with news of markets and prices. This network, which he took over from the Fuggers, went from his home town of Augsburg to Goa (a distance of over 8,000 kms) and on to Melaka and Macao.36

  The Kerala or Malabar coast was the second great area of concern to the Portuguese, for this is where they got pepper, and the naus for Portugal sailed from Cochin. There were several major changes in this area as a result of the Portuguese presence. Calicut, at 1500 the greatest market by far, and dominated by pardesi Muslims from the Red Sea and Cairo, declined as a result of Portuguese attacks. These foreign Muslims moved out to safer parts. The local Muslims, that is local converts called Mapillahs, perforce stayed, and continued to try to trade in pepper outside the Portuguese monopoly system. Cochin became a Portuguese puppet town, and a centre of their trade in pepper. The town included a large casado population, but trade except that to Portugal was dominated by Gujarati merchant groups, and locally by Malabar Hindu groups.

  Sri Lanka was a somewhat aberrant part of the Portuguese estado, for it was only here that they attempted a large land conquest. The island was valued both for its strategic location, and for its monopoly supply of true cinnamon. Colombo was considered to be one of the lynch pins of the whole Portuguese system. Yet here also their sea patrols were unable to achieve a monopoly over the export of cinnamon. Encouraged by the conversion of a local king, the Portuguese later in the sixteenth century became embroiled in major land wars. These were unsuccessful, and their cost contributed in a major way to the increasing financial strait
s of the estado at the end of the century and later.

  The Bay of Bengal was an area where the official Portuguese writ ran lightly. The most important port had been Pulicat, and during the sixteenth century the Portuguese dominated this and the neighbouring port of San Thomé, especially the very lucrative trade to Melaka. Consequently, local traders moved to Masulipatnam further north, which became the greatest market in the whole Bay of Bengal. This is yet another sign of the way local merchants could avoid the Portuguese, in this case by moving from Pulicat to Masulipatnam, in others from Diu to Surat, or Hurmuz to Bandar Abbas, or from Sofala to Mombasa. Masulipatnam drew on an extensive and productive hinterland in the sultanate of Golconda. Here the main merchant communities were Hindu groups like the Klings and Chettis, others Muslim such as the Chulias, but also some Gujaratis yet again and Persian Muslims. Further north in Bengal the main market was Chittagong, and later Hugli. While the local economy was controlled by indigenous Bengali traders, long-distance trade often was dominated by people from outside. For example, trade to the major market of Melaka was done by Kling merchants based in Melaka, and the pepper trade by Persians.

  At the end of our tour we reach one of the greatest port cities, Melaka. This is another example of a market dominated entirely by foreign goods; very little came from the interior area of the Malay peninsular. Rather, goods from literally all over the world were available there. We noted above that there were four major merchant communities in Melaka at the time of Albuquerque's conquest in 1511. Portuguese control affected them considerably. Their attempts to centralise and tax trade led to an exodus, especially of the Gujaratis, who moved off to more welcoming and less corrupt ports. In particular, the decline of Melaka led to the rise of Aceh, in northern Sumatra, which during the century became a major centre for trade, especially pepper from the east and Indian products from the west.

  How then can we sum up changes in Indian Ocean trade in the sixteenth century as a result of the Portuguese presence? The key word must be continuity. Most things did not change. Markets and trade remained controlled, at the most fundamental level, by the monsoons. The major markets needed either to be located adjacent to major production areas, as in Gujarat, or at choke points, such as Aden, Melaka, and Hurmuz. The goods traded in these markets changed little. The great mass of the trade remained coastal trade in humble port markets strung all along the littoral of the Indian Ocean. As to the dominant merchant communities, variety remains the key. A host of traders, both pedlars and princes, traded across the ocean.

  In areas controlled more or less tightly by the Portuguese, that is the west coast of India, Muslim traders faced formidable opposition and moved away. Other communities were little affected. As to markets, at least four formerly important ones declined once they were taken over by the Portuguese: Sofala, Hurmuz, Diu, and Melaka. To be sure, Hurmuz and Diu had large surpluses from customs duties, but these resulted not from their roles as markets, but from Portugal's coercive trade control system. Calicut, while not taken over, was badly affected by Portuguese attacks. The only success was Goa, which prospered thanks to concentrated Portuguese efforts; but we must remember that its trade was, as noted, only one-tenth of that from Gujarat's ports. In any case, Goa's success was entirely dependent on the success of Portuguese trade control policies, and once these were challenged and rendered nugatory by the arrival of the Dutch Goa fell into decline, as also did Diu. We must now sketch changes in the seventeenth century.

  By the middle of the seventeenth century the Portuguese official position in the Indian Ocean area was in tatters. Most of its major forts – Melaka, Cochin, Colombo, Hurmuz – had been lost, usually to the Dutch. On the East African coast the Estado da India retained toe holds only in Mozambique, and Mombasa until the 1690s. Elsewhere it kept only Timor, Macau, and Goa, Daman and Diu on the west coast of India. In part the estado now moved from being a maritime entity to a land based one, for the northern provinces of Bassein (until lost to the rising Indian power, the Marathas, in 1739) and Daman became flourishing agriculture-based areas where many Portuguese did well: as the saying goes, rich men in a poor state. More important, the private Portuguese traders, the casados, continued to trade as they had done in the sixteenth century. The only difference was that while in the later sixteenth century they had loaded large private cargoes on the naus for Lisbon, they now, as the carreira declined, were forced to focus almost entirely on the Indian Ocean. They were to be found all around the Bay of Bengal, on the west coast of India, and along the Swahili coast. Like the private English traders, they by and large enjoyed no particular advantage over their Asian competitors. While the state declined, private Portuguese continued to operate. As British power expanded later in the eighteenth century they, like for example the Parsis, operated within its entrails, serving as middle men, petty traders, facilitators for the dominant British.

  With this broad background, we can turn to the vexed question of the importance of the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. I will look at several themes, but very briefly. We must first note that the linkages that the Iberians established were vast and pregnant with consequences. The Spanish linked the Americas and Europe, and via the Pacific the Americas and East Asia. The Portuguese connected southern America with Africa and Europe, and also the north and south Atlantic, as well as the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. (Later the Dutch linked the far western part of the Indian Ocean, the Cape, with the far east, that is western Australia and Indonesia.) Men began to travel widely, and serve these far-flung Iberian empires in many continents. Duarte Coelho Pereira served the Portuguese state in Morocco and West Africa. In 1509–29 he was in India, and this period included voyages to China, Vietnam and Siam. Then he returned to Portugal and was Portuguese ambassador to France, after which he had various navy commands. In 1534 he became the lord-proprietor of the captaincy of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil, where he remained for twenty years.37

  Impressive and far-flung connections indeed, yet in the case of the Indian Ocean we must remember that Asia and Europe had been linked for centuries via the Red Sea and Gulf. Rome had an extensive trade with India 2,000 years ago. Later, Asian products continued to get to the Mediterranean and European markets. Spices were the most important here. Europeans needed them to preserve meat, and to flavour it. This was certainly an important trade for the European consumers, and for the Asian producers and traders. It was also important for the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, for a significant amount of their revenue came from taxing this trade.

  Some historians claim that while certainly there had been some contact before 1498, commercial connections between Europe and Asia were greatly strengthened because the Portuguese had discovered a new, faster and more efficient route to join the two, that is the route around the Cape of Good Hope. It is true that the Cape route was, at least in theory, faster than the more difficult route from the spice production areas in the Malukus, across the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea, and then overland to Alexandria. The Cape route also was cheaper, because taxes did not have to be paid to land controllers en route, especially the Mamluks. Furthermore, at this time sea transport was substantially more cost-effective than was transport over land (see page 29).

  In practice it turned out that the Cape route was not really so much better. It was, after all, a long and arduous sea voyage which took many months. Quite often Portuguese ships were lost on the way, or had very long passages. Mortality was very high, so that often ships from Portugal had to stop over in Mozambique to cure their sick before they set off again for India. Many of the naus were overloaded, and the cargoes poorly stowed, so that the spices and other cargo reached Lisbon in very bad condition. Between 1497 and 1590 about 171,000 people, mostly Portuguese, left Portugal for India. About 17,000 were lost to shipwreck and disease en route, while of the 105,000 who set off to return to Portugal, 11,000 never made it. During the same period a similar 10 per cent of ships were lost. This data points to a quite high, but not surprising, attriti
on of men and ships.38

  There are two other matters that we need to consider in this context. First, European historians have written extensively about changes in the spice trade to Europe. What we can say here is that this trade was no doubt important for Europe, but not nearly so much for Asia. Only about one-tenth of Asia's total production of spices went to Europe. Most of them were consumed within Asia. China, for example, was a huge customer for ginger and pepper, as was the Mughal empire. To focus only on the spice trade to Europe is to ignore the bulk of this trade, which was never destined to go anywhere near the Mediterranean. The Portuguese had very little control of this intra-Asian trade.

  It could be that we are using the wrong geographical categories here. I have been writing of 'Asia' and 'Europe', but maybe this familiar terminology disguises more than it elucidates. When we write about this early modern period there is often an undertone of a successful dynamic Europe as compared with a static, even backward, Asia. We might do better to think of an area called Eurasia. This would include the eastern Mediterranean, and would take in part of the Ottoman Empire. The area then extends down through Egypt to the Red Sea, and so into the Arabian Sea. These areas have all been intricately linked for centuries, even millennia, by trade and the movement of people. If we take this perspective then we could say that the Cape route opened up an alternative to trade within Eurasia, but that this route did not take over from the more traditional ones for some time yet.