Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds : Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri [1 ed.] 9781443830447, 9781443829311

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Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds: Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri

Edited by

Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds: Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri, Edited by Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2931-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2931-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures............................................................................................. ix Preface ........................................................................................................ xi K. N. Chaudhuri Gwyn Campbell Foreword ................................................................................................. xvii From Tuscany: Art and Apologia James Kaye

Part I: Intermixing Chapter One................................................................................................. 2 Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands: Geopolitics, Missions and Métissage Andreu Martínez D’Alòs-Moner Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 33 Seeking the Lost Tribes of Israel Tudor Parfitt Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 51 Nagasaki: A Christian Port in the Land of the Rising Sun João Paulo Oliveira e Costa Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 62 The Cartographic Flight of the Parrots Francesc Relaño

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Part II: The World of Trade Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 84 The Expansion of Cotton Textile Production in the Western Indian Ocean, c. 1500-c.1850 William Gervase Clarence-Smith Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 107 Eastern Indonesia: A Study of the Intersection of Global, Regional and Local Networks in the ‘Extended’ Indian Ocean Leonard Y. Andaya Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 141 Changing Economic Patterns in the Indian Ocean: Effects on Sri Lankan Culture Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 155 A List of Spices Known and Used in Europe during the Sixteenth Century, Their Provenance, Common Names and Ascriptions Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith

Part III: Colonial Paths Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 232 ‘The Most Revered and Feared King’: The Construction of the Public Image of the Viceroys of the Portuguese State of India, c. 1700-1750 João Vicente Melo Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 255 Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano Cristina Osswald Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 287 Islands in the Indian Ocean World in the Early Modern Period Malyn Newitt Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 314 Portuguese Colonial Charity: The Misericórdias of Goa, Bahia and Macao Isabel dos Guimarães Sa

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Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 336 ‘Floating’ European Clergy in Siam during the Years Immediately Prior to the National Revolution of 1688: The Letters of Giovan Battista Morelli, O.F.M Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith Bibliography ............................................................................................ 377 Contributors............................................................................................. 381 Index........................................................................................................ 384

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Northern view of Portuguese settlement and Jesuit Residence of Fremona, c. 1563-1633. Figure 2. Map of Jesuit Residences and Sites with Ethio-Portuguese in Ethiopia, c. 1545-1670. Figure 3. Portuguese Family Trees in Ethiopia, 1541-c. 1650. Figure 4. Map of city and port of Nagasaki, Japan (Museu da Marinha, Lisbon, 17th century). Figure 5. A detail of Brazil on the so-called Cantino planisphere, Biblioteca Estense, Modena, 1502. Figure 6. South America on Martin Waldseemüller’s Universalis Cosmographia, secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioruque Lustrationes”, Library of the Princes of Wardburg zu Wolfegg-Waldsee, Württemberg, 1507. Figure 7. Martin Waldseemüller, “Tabula Terre Nove”, in Jacobus Aeschler & Georgius Ubelin, Claudii Ptolemei viri Alexandrini mathematice discipline philosophi doctissimi Geographie opus nouissima traductione e Grecorum archetypis castigatissime pressum, ceteris ante lucubratorum multo prestantius (...), Strasbourg: Argentine, 1513. Figure 8. Martin Waldseemüller, “Tabula Terre Nove”, in Lorenz Fries, Claudii Ptolemaei Alexandrini Mathematicor[um] Principis Opus Geographi[a]e Noviter Castigatu[m] & Emaculatu[m] (...) Hec Bona Mente Laure[n]tius Phrisus Artis Appollone[a]e Doctor & Mathematicar[um] Artium Clientulus, In Lucem Iussit Prodire. Agammemnonis Puteoli Plurimu[m] D[e]dicati. Strasbourg: Ioannes Grieninger Civis Argentoraten[sis] Opera Et Expensis Propriis Id Opus Insigne, 1522. Figure 9. Lopo Homem, Mappamundi, contained in the Atlas Miller, 1519, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Figure 10. Oronce Finé, double-cordiform world map (1531), in Simon Grynaeus’ Novus Orbis Regionum, Paris: Apud Ioannem Paruum, 1532. Figure 11. Abraham Ortelius, “Typus Orbis Terrarum”, in Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Antwerp : Aegidius Coppenius Diesth, 1570. Figure 12. François Valentijn, “Kaart der Reyse van Abel Tasman”, in Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, Dordrecht: J. van Braam, 1724-26, vol. 3. Figure 13. The island world of Southeast Asia. Map produced by Leonard Y. Andaya. Figure 14. The Maluku world. Map produced by Leonard Y. Andaya. Figure 15. North Maluku. Map produced by Leonard Y. Andaya. Figure 16. Central and South Maluku. Map produced by Leonard Y. Andaya.

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Figure 17. Shibam at sunset (Yemen). [Pp. 142ff]. Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 18. Al Mukalla harbour (Yemen). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 19. Janjira Sea Fort (India). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 20. Sanaa House (Yemen). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 21. Janjira lateen rigged boats (India). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 22. Bangkok Floating Market (Thailand). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 23. Yazd Great Mosque (Iran). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 24. Nara temple (Japan). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 25. Sulawesi seascape (Indonesia). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 26. Dhow shipyard, Viraval Kutch (India). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 27. Basra house on Shatt al Arab (Iraq). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 28. Sulawesi Prahus in Harbour (Indonesia). Colour photograph by K.N. Chaudhuri. Figure 29. Saint Francis Xavier’s burial chapel with the saint’s tomb (Giovanni Battista Foggini, and Indian artists), Basilica of Bom Jesus, Goa. Figure 30. Doorway of the second church of the Colégio de S. Paulo Velho (156072), attributed to Martin Ochoa. Figure 31. The Basilica of Bom Jesus, Goa, completed 1605. Figure 32. Pulpit of the Basilica of Bom Jesus with Indian naginis (female snake figures), second half of the 17th century, Indian artist(s). Figure 33. High Altar of the Bom Jesus, first half of the 17th century, Goa. Figure 34. Chiesa di San Michele in Insola, 1469-1478, by Mauro Codussi, Venice. Figure 35. Oil painting of Jesuits in Adoration of the Salvator Mundi, Basilica of Bom Jesus, Indian artist, first half of the 17th century. Figure 36. Oil painting of five Jesuits in Adoration of Our Lady and Saint Catherine, patron of Goa, with two Evangelists, turn of the 17th century, Indian painter, Basilica of Bom Jesus. Figure 37. Scene of the Life of St. Ignatius, Rachol. Indian artist, first half of seventeenth century. Figure 38. Martyrs of Salsette, Church of Our Lady of the Martyrs, Goa, 18th century. Figure 39. A missionary in the Orient. From Usage du royaume de Siam en 1688, s.l./ n.d.

PREFACE K. N. CHAUDHURI GWYN CAMPBELL

It is with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation to write a few words about Kirti Chaudhuri in a collection published in his honour. I first met Kirti in Avignon, where I was lecturing at the university, and close to which he had just bought a large sun-baked mas. I was delighted that such an eminent historian had moved to the region, even more so when he warmly accepted my invitation to deliver a keynote speech at a conference I was organising on ‘Women in Slavery’ in October 2002. It was fitting that Kirti was there, for this formed one of a series of conferences I have held which compared the history of slavery and other forms of servile labour in the Indian Ocean and Atlantic worlds. In the pre-industrial era labour constituted the primary form of capital, and to this day production in many parts of globe remains heavily labour intensive. However, what became increasingly clear as these conferences progressed was that, outside a few European enclaves, forms of servile labour in the Indian Ocean world (IOW) were markedly different to those that are traditionally given prominence in the Atlantic world. Moreover, possibly only on Réunion and Mauritius from the late eighteenth century were Atlantic world structures of slavery duplicated. In other European enclaves, from the Cape to Goa, Batavia and Hong Kong, the structure of slavery differed from that of the Atlantic model. Moreover, it became increasingly evident that these differences in turn reflected markedly different economic structures. The IOW economy was of a different order. And Kirti Chaudhuri stands out as a pioneer, as one of the earliest historians to realize this fundamental difference, and to adopt the analytical concepts of space, time and structure that Fernand Braudel so fruitfully used for the Mediterranean, and apply it to the Indian Ocean region, centred on South Asia. Kirti was able to do this for a number of reasons. First, he and his family are steeped in the traditions of Asia. Kirti, who was born in

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Kolkhota, and grew in Delhi, was the second son of writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1999) who in 1938 became secretary to barrister Sarat Chandra Bose (1889-1950) through whom he came to know the inner circle of nationalist leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and Sarat’s brother, Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), the future Netaji. Kirti witnessed independence for India from British rule when just shy of his thirteenth birthday, and some of the social dislocation and sectarian violence that accompanied the subsequent partition of India (some 12.5 million people were displaced and anything from several hundred thousand to a million killed), with the emergence of a predominantly Muslim Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and a predominantly Hindu West Bengal. Steeped in both a rich political culture and a strong Bengali and literary and intellectual tradition, Kirti moved to London to study history under such luminaries as the Indologist, Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914-86); C.R. Boxer (1904-2000), historian of European overseas expansion; Bernard Lewis (b. 1916), specialist in Middle Eastern history; Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawn (b. 1917); and philosopher Karl Popper (1902-94). Such influences laid a solid foundation for Kirti’s own academic career. He obtained a B.A. (first class) in 1959, and a Ph.D. in 1961ʊboth from the University of London, where he went on to take up a lectureship in economic history. He progressed to Professor, and in 1991 became the first Vasco da Gama Professor of the History of European Expansion at the European University in Florence. Kirti earned plaudits for his The English East India Company: the Study of an Early Joint Stock Company 1600-1640 (London: Frank Cass, 1965), a meticulous economic history. And his reputation as one of the most eminent historians of our time was cemented with subsequent works in which he applied Braudelian concepts to the Asian arenaʊ notably The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); The Trade and Civilisation in Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Asia before Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). It is difficult to do justice to such broad and innovative work. Thus Santhi Hejeebu remarked that “For the range and importance of its findings, its unique method, and its empirical bounty… and for its lasting impact on economic history, Trading World of Asia certainly deserves its present distinction -- one of the most significant works of the twentieth century” (EH.Net 2000-12-19); Again, of Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean, Tapan Raychaudhuri commented: “a remarkable intellectual achievement. It is perhaps the first serious effort to write an economic

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history of Asia as distinct from its several component cultures. Subsequent attempts to emulate Prof. Chaudhuri's example will have to contend with a punishingly demanding standard (Economic History Review, ns. 39. 2 (1986), 326); and Om Prakash wrote that it was “an excellent book… a superb analysis of an important area of research in Asian history” (Indian Economic Social History Review, 24.3 (1987), 339-41). Kirti’s work has earned him numerous honours. The only historian from South Asia to have been elected to the British Academy (1990) and Academia Europaea (1994), he was also elected to the Royal Historical Society (1993), and gained the Dom João de Castro Prize in International History (1994). There are two areas I would highlight in which Chaudhuri’s work has had considerable impact. First, is Chaudhuri’s vision of the IOW over the longue durée in Braudelian terms; and second is his revision of the Eurocentric interpretation of Islam as a belief system that choked individual enterprise and hindered economic growth. In applying Braudelian concepts to the Indian Ocean, Chaudhuri showed the importance of the monsoon regime as the key to production and long-distance exchange across the entire geographical space between the Red Sea and China. This has in turn enabled scholars to break free from the intellectual constraints imposed by conventional preoccupations with “area studies” and the history of the “nation state.” His approach has laid the ground for an emerging school of scholars who consider the monsoons as giving the entire macro-region a unifying force of such historical depth and intensity and regularity of commercial exchange, that it may be termed an Asian “global” economy. Moreover, as Chaudhuri emphasised, it was the world’s first sophisticated durable complex of long-distance economic production and exchange. The time it emerged - by the B.C.E./C.E. changeover (Andre Gunder Frank),1 alongside Islam from the seventh century (Chaudhuri and André Wink2), or linked to developments in tenth-century Sung China (Janet AbuLughod,3 George Modelski and William R. Thompson4) - is subject to debate. However, the three great productive and consumer regions of 1

Andre Gunder Frank, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: Berkeley University Press, 1998. 2 André Wink, Al-Hind. The Making of the Indo-Islamic World 2 vols Leiden / New York / Köln, 1996-97. 3 Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony. The World System A.D. 1250-1350, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. 4 George Modelski and William R. Thompson, Leading Sectors and World Powers. The Coevolution of Global Economics and Politics, Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1996.

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China, India, the Middle East (focused on Babylonia / Iraq) and the trade routes that linked them constituted its core. The Mediterranean basin and Europe was a significant but less important economic region. Second, Chaudhuri has been forefront in a serious challenge by an ‘Asiacentric’ school to the Eurocentric view that non-Western societies possessed insuperable institutional and ideological obstacles to innovation and economic development, which experienced stagnation and decline from around the thirteenth century until the arrival of Europeans from 1500. In particular, he has challenged the negative Eurocentric view of the historical role of Islam which they present as a unified body of beliefs that developed between the eighth and eleventh centuries, but subsequently failed to evolve. Hence the inevitable triumph of European Christian and capitalist civilisation.5 Asiacentrists consider that, following a significant decline between about the fourth and sixth centuries, the Asian global economy experienced an unprecedented boom, characterised by increased production, long-distance trade and migration, that endured until the arrival of Europeans in the IOW in the sixteenth century. Chaudhuri and others associate this renaissance with the rise of Islam; Muslim traders allegedly dominated all significant long-distance trade networks in the IOW in the early medieval era,6 while Wink considers Islam created the basis of a 1,000-year IndoMuslim civilisation.7 Inevitably some areas of significance were left largely untouched in the innovatory challenge of Chaudhuri and others to conventional paradigms, but their work has promoted an ongoing and vigorous debate about the role of Islam in the IOW following the arrival there of European powers8 and the role in the IOW global economy of Africa9

5

See discussion in Richard M. Eaton, ‘Islamic history as global history’, in Michael Adas (ed.), Islamic and European expansion; the forging of a global order, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993, 1-36. 6 Himanshu Prabha Ray, `Seafaring and Maritime Contacts: An Agenda for Historical Analysis’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 39, No. 4. 1996, 423. 7 André Wink, Al-Hind. The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Leiden / New York / Köln, 1996, vol. 1, 4. 8 See, for example, the special issue of Journal of Global History, 2.2, (2007). 9 Gwyn Campbell, `Islam in Indian Ocean Africa Prior to the Scramble. A New Historical Paradigm’, in Edward Simpson and Kai Kresse (eds.), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean, London: Hurst, 2007, 1-50; `The Role of Africa in the Emergence of the Indian Ocean World Global Economy’, in Pamila Gupta; Isabel Hofmeyr & Michael Pearson (eds.),

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that will transform our understanding of global economic history, and of the historical role of Islam and other non-Western faiths. Kirti has since moved on. Quite literally, from his splendid but solitary mas into a beautifully renovated heritage site in the centre of Avignon; and from researching the economic history of the Indian Ocean world into investigating the history of the Cold War in South America. He has also revived his earlier interests as a creative writer, artist, and a musician, and is currently producing audio books and films. However, he retains a passion for Asian history and is, I hope, encouraged by the rapidly developing field of Indian Ocean world studies which he has done so much to inspire.

Eyes Across the Water: Navigating the Indian Ocean, Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2010, 170-96.

FOREWORD FROM TUSCANY: ART AND APOLOGIA JAMES KAYE

In 1998, K.N. Chaudhuri concluded his last autumnal introductory presentation at the European University Institute (EUI) with the bold claim that he was an artist; a peacock wandering on the terrace outside emitted a high-pitched cry. This was an unusual statement within the context of a scholarly presentation and the coincidence of the peacock’s cry helped to fix it in my memory. Chaudhuri beyond academics has been a creative force. He was appointed the first Vasco da Gama Professor of the History of European Expansion at the EUI in 1991. This by default settled him in the Mediterranean world that, particularly as conceived by Braudel, had a profound effect upon his academic development. Life in Tuscany, the intellectual climate of the EUI and the sensual cultural landscape of the Mediterranean would similarly effect his personal and professional development. Chaudhuri’s prime occupation in this climate shifted from the métier of Economic History in which he had gained renown over four decades to artistic interests and practices that he had long pursued and which formed an important, yet little known component of his life. The shift in production was marked, as can be seen in the progression from his last academic monographs completed at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (1985) to Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (1990), to his research agenda at the EUI. At the EUI, his production culminated in the production of the monumental Sea & Civilisation: A Visual Archive. (2003). The publication of From the Atlantic to the Arabian Sea: A Polyphonic Essay on History (1995), as a limited edition, was a first step in this direction. In that volume, Chaudhuri used polyphony: different textures and voice communication in the production of a book. From the Atlantic is not merely a written work but

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one combining textures of writing and photography juxtaposed and conversant with one another. The author importantly assumed the role of the historian as a creator of visual images. From the Atlantic was the first volume of a trilogy that represented the shift to Chaudhuri’s artistic production; the book occupied a grey area on the boundary between art and historiography. The sea change occurred during the following year when the second component of the trilogy The Dream of the Unicorn in the Year of Geneviève was published. If Chaudhuri straddled the threshold with From the Atlantic, then The Dream clearly placed him beyond the pale as a producer of livres d’artiste. In the introduction the author characterised The Dream as “an apologia, for lost time, and present time, and a time which does not exist”, that is to say ahistorical, the time in a dream. The volume is a collection of twelve segments, eight with vignettes. In line with the temporal theme, they encompass four seasons and delineate a year. Some of the “months” are all titled with words; “Punishment” and “Insanity” are examples, and others are entitled with phrases including “In the Shadow of Paradise: Recalling Sophie, The Slave Princess of Shalimar”. None of the vignettes extends beyond the length of a page. Each segment contains an image, yet neither text nor photo is a caption or illustration: they are voices or textures that together form a mental image, a dream containing complex polytonal surreal and historical details in the mind. Chaudhuri’s theory of photography at this point was not entirely liberated from the documentary methods he refined working in premodern historical sites. In these sites he attempted to transcend time, record the not-yet-lost-past, historical time in the present. In the introduction of The Dream, he literally subscribes to the school of straight photography, with reference to his documentary work: “I have always avoided any kind of manipulation of the images through technical devices and rely wholly on the play of light and shade, empty space, diagonal lines the plasticity of forms and shades of colour to capture a mood, an idea, and something that I have seen.” It is difficult to say whether this was not written without a touch of irony stemming from the quest for historical truth that had long been his, every camera/recording medium combination is a technical device that manipulates. In fact, he also writes: “the inner meaning conveyed by the distribution of light and the blending of colours provides the photographer with the palate of self-expression.” Thus, it is not only as was, or as it was, but what the photographer made of it. In line with this philosophy, his application of the photography supersedes straight photographic work at

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the close of the twentieth century. The choice of paper and the magnificent offset tri-tone prints belie any claim to mundane documentary objectives of the author; this is a livre d’artiste. In stark opposition to straight photography, the image of the Satyr in the cypress-lined garden of villa Schifanoia is powerfully pictorialist as are the images of the protagonist(s) Sophie and Geneviève and her (or their) polyonymous interlocutor. The punctuating volume of this trilogy was entitled A Mediterranean Triptych: Venezia, Islam and the Desert (1998). This is a highly complex work, simultaneously a livre d’artiste and a historical philosophical confrontation with the prime number of three, with three chapters poetically enunciating the Island Republic, East and West and neither East nor West; the Sahara and the Alps, what the Mediterranean is not; and the monomial unity of Islam in opposition to the Christian Trinity. The irony of civilisation identified by and as a construction of, the terrestrial animal, man through domination of the sea from Tyre through Venice (and before England) is a recurrent theme. The volume is richly adorned with the selection of a set of photographs Chaudhuri assembled over decades of research, documentation and creation. The communication of the images and text expose the sensual beauty unity and contrariety of the Mediterranean. This trilogy was grounded in an evolution of Chaudhuri’s mode of production. In addition to authoring the contents of his works, he progressively assumed control of their material fabrication. The first step was the establishment of a private press and publishing house in 1994, prior to the publication of the trilogy. Chaudhuri was inspired by the tradition of early twentieth-century art presses. The name selected for this press was Schifanoia. The very concept `schifanioa’ connected the arts with his academic environment and present with past. Chaudhuri’s office and studio at the EUI were located in the eponymous villa. The root of the word is “che schiva la noia”, which can be translated as “that which evades boredom”. This press became a tool which enabled him to create books as works of art. The progressive assumption of control of the many aspects that brought the production of a book to completion brings to mind ideals of the auteur theory in cinema where the director is accorded full visionary responsibility for the project. Chaudhuri moved toward full creative responsibility in the polyphonic fusion of his creative expression juxtaposing photography and text. During the initial years of Schifanoia, printing was done by Martino Madersteig at the Stamperia Valdonega in Verona. The first two volumes of the trilogy, for example, were printed at Valdonega. The third differed from the preceding volumes and foreshadowed the later work of Chaudhuri

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insofar as the printing was not subcontracted by Schifanoia but done by Chaudhuri himself (in this instance collaborating with Giuseppe Lauricella, while binding was done by Giulio Giannini). This represented a step towards more complete control of the finished product. Meanwhile, ever more luxurious raw materials were sought out for the book production enterprise, including Japanese Kozo bark paper and Gampi vellum, while full Morocco leather became the binding material of choice. Following the conclusion of his tenure at the E.U.I., Chaudhuri established a base and studio/gallery in Province; first at a mas in the environs of Avignon comparable to Villa Schifanoia, and then in the former Palace of the Cardinal and Archbishop, where the premises were smaller but far more accessible to the city centre. The Schifanoia press continued its operation from these locations and Chaudhuri was invited back to Villa Schifanoia in 1999 for a one man-exhibition of his photography entitled Mellifluence, Yielding Architecture or What They Saw. In the Introduction to the exhibition, I wrote of Chaudhuri’s leap into visual expression: one of the few academics of renown who has no qualms about the equation of his scientific and graphic production is Kirti Chaudhuri. Professor Chaudhuri has added dimension to linear literary representations of history—in his life-long confrontation with paradoxes of history, comparison, time and space—through the exploration of such themes as the architecture and landscape of power, of symbols, and the surreality of temporal beauty. He does this to transcend logical and serial description of a world that itself transcends logical and serial description. In this effort, his goal is not, and can not be, to unify, but to provoke.

No longer engaged in an academic institution, Chaudhuri was able to devote a more significant portion of his time to art, itself the challenge and provocation of an éminence grise. This provocation and the possession of a voracious Wanderlust transformed Chaudhuri into a hybrid nomad/cosmopolitan. He fashioned himself as “The Flying Dutchman”. Through 2004, this itinerancy was focused upon the Mediterranean, he frequented and worked in Florence, Venice, Rome and the environs of the Gulf of Naples; in France he extensively explored Provence and spent much of time with colleagues and associates in Paris. He made numerous excursions to the Maghreb coast and the Sahara, including Libya and Tunisia. These were punctuated by visits to London. The selection of the allegory “The Flying Dutchman” was not injudicious. “The Flying Dutchman” did not choose perpetual flight; it was condemned to ply the seas, without a home port and unable

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to moor. The professor as an artist seems to assume this mantle of condemnation, for which his work is the expression of apologia, or the result of a Faustian bargain, even if he is never in want of welcoming ports. Chaudhuri’s travels, along with memories of pasts, provide much of the raw material that he processed into literary and graphic art. This first period of voyage through 2004 resulted in no less than a dozen volumes. The extent of this creative explosion is truly remarkable (one can garner an idea by examining the bibliography appended below). During this period, assuming even more control over his publications, Chaudhuri bound many of the volumes himself. And as he produced book after book, he refined his skill, often in consultation with master bookbinders including Annie Boige, James Brockman, Paul Delrue and Flaurent Rousseau (all have bound volumes for Schifanoia). From 2005, the Dutchman began to frequent Latin America. There he was at ease and at times remained writing and photographing for months. This extension of travel did not slow output; between 2005 and 2007 he would publish an additional fifteen volumes, ten of which had Latin American themes. Latin America came to occupy Chaudhuri as the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean had earlier. The shift occurred quickly. His first novel Tree of Blood, a tragedy published in 2005, was centred in Europe and the Mediterranean. His second novel The Jaguar of Chaco (2007), similarly born of tragedy, is an entirely South American adventure. Nevertheless, reading it one cannot help but wonder if South America is not a placeholder for Chaudhuri’s coming of age. A clear return in the novels is to literate text, albeit fictive, and not academic prose. The most recent development in his work has been the extension to drama. The first foray was with the audio play Four Nights in Tunis produced in 2007. This afforded Chaudhuri, working both in a professional sound studio in London and with editing software on the computer in his studio, a return to the roots of polyphonic expression, with the addition of sound tracks to his text. The story is one of the deranged assumption of responsibility by a once normal and active family man for the crimes of another. It shows his possibility of survival in prison by assuming the guilt of the criminal he had been condemned to be. Four nights was followed by the audio story Twelve Days of Summer in Benito Juarez (2008). This dream-like story of atonement was first conceived as an audio play. After the sound editing was complete Chaudhuri decided to create an image track and using video editing software in his studio. The result was a remarkable work of video art that employed video shot in Europe and Latin America, and photography from

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the author’s archive in conversation with the sound track. Chaudhuri’s latest work is The Downfall and the Redemption of Dr. John Faustino (2010). It represented a significant step in the maturation of his filmmaking and video art as it was conceived as a film from the beginning of production. This is not to say that it was conceived as a standard film, but a step in his effort to develop genre of film emphasizing narrative with sparse dialogue and highly developed cinematography. The film was one which spanned two continents and drew on the talents of a troop of professional actors.

PART I: INTERMIXING

CHAPTER ONE EARLY PORTUGUESE EMIGRATION TO THE ETHIOPIAN HIGHLANDS: GEOPOLITICS, MISSIONS AND MÉTISSAGE ANDREU MARTÍNEZ D’ALÒS-MONER

Portuguese expansion, which achieved momentum in the reigns of Dom Manuel I (1498-1521) and Dom João III (1521-1558), saw the foundation of a number of African and Asian port cities subject to the Lusitanian Crown and also the establishment of several informal communities across the Orient. These informal communities were not the product of a deliberate royal policy. They were rather the outcome of spontaneous colonisations nurtured by the flow of Portuguese – and European – nationals that went to Africa and Asia following the rise of the Estado da Índia. Moreover, there were also cases of mixed-race people who had been in contact in some way or another with the Portuguese and who adopted a Portuguese identity. Some such Portuguese comunidades enjoyed only an ephemeral existence, but a few managed to preserve some form of Portuguese identity for centuries and even up to modern times. In present-day Senegal, emigrants from Portugal (some of whom were Jews seeking to escape religious persecution), and who were known as ‘lançados’, settled along the Upper Guinea Coast. Many of them married women from local communities and by the early sixteenth century the offspring of these unions, the ‘Portuguese’, as they called themselves, established themselves at trading centers from the Petite Côte in Senegal to Sierra Leone in the south. As late as the nineteenth century, there were still groups on the Petite Côte claiming to be Portuguese though no longer

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using Portuguese Creole as their language.1 In Persia, a company of arquebusiers enrolled in the army of the Shah Ismail I (1487-1524), and their descendants lived there for a few generations.2 Also, throughout the sixteenth century more than 2,000 Portuguese settled in Bengal.3 In southeast Asia there were also a number of Portuguese comunidades. The historian Ana Guedes has recalled the interesting story of Portuguese merchants and mercenaries living in Burma who were active in the unification of its kingdom under the local ruler Anaukpetlun (died 1628) and during the independence of Siam.4 In Melaka, 340 years after the Dutch had captured it from the Portuguese, there was a group of locals still calling themselves Portuguese. Moreover, up to the nineteenth century there were a few islands in Indonesia with ‘Portuguese’ minorities: Flores, Adonara, Solor, and Timor.5 A less well-known case of Portuguese diaspora was the community that lived in the Ethiopian highlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The roots of this group go back to the early 1540s and survived as a distinct community until the second half of the next century. A large part of the Portuguese were occupied in military roles, as members of the army of the Christian negus.6 In Ethiopia, the Portuguese were known as 1 Peter Mark, ‘Portuguese’ Style and Luso-African identity. Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2002, 13, 28. 2 Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial, vol. 3, Lisboa: Presença, 1982 (1963-71), 123. 3 Francisco Rodrigues da Silveira, Reformação da milicia e governo do Estado da India Oriental (British Library, Additional Manuscripts: Portuguese, Ms. n. 25:412), quoted in George D. Winius, The Black Legend of Portuguese India. Diogo do Couto, His Contemporaries and the Soldado Prático. A Contribution to the Study of Political Corruption in the Empires of Early Modern Europe, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1985, 45. 4 M. Ana de Barros Serra Marques Guedes, Interferência e integração dos portugueses na Birmánia, ca. 1580-1630, Lisboa: Universidade de Lisboa, 1991, 27. 5 Ronald Daus, Portuguese Eurasian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Inst. of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989, 2. 6 The state for which the Portuguese fought was ruled by the Solomonid dynasty. The foundation of this dynasty is attributed to Yekuno Amlak (1270-85) and the last Solomonid ruler was Haile Sellasie I (1930-1974). The Solomonid name stems from the fact that the Ethiopian rulers were traditionally believed to be descendants of Solomon, King of Israel, and Makedda, the Queen of Sheba. See Carlo Conti Rossini, “La caduta della dinastia Zagué e la versione amarica del BeŸela Nagast”, Rendiconti della Reale Academia dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche ser. 5a, vol. 31, fasc. 7-10, 1922, 279–314.

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Burtukan or simply as Ferenj (from ‘Frank’) and during more than 130 years preserved a Portuguese identity. Some of them spoke the Portuguese language, practiced Catholic cults and used Portuguese names. Historical sources reporting on this group are relatively abundant, but they have been little used to date. With this study, I will draw on Portuguese and Ethiopian sources and reconstruct the dynamics of this Portuguese diaspora. The genesis and development of this group will be addressed as well as issues concerning their identity and integration into Ethiopian societies. An important focus will be the relationship between this foreign group and the Jesuit mission, active in Ethiopia from 1556 to 1632.

The Portuguese and the Ethiopian Kingdom in the sixteenth century The Portuguese were not the first foreigners to settle in the Ethiopian highlands. The Ethiopian and Coptic Churches had since early date strong ties and it was the See of Alexandria which nominated the abun, the official head of the Ethiopic Church. From this it is reasonable to infer the permanent presence of Coptic ecclesiastics at the Ethiopian court. Moreover, the presence of lay foreigners such as Egyptian Copts, Armenians and probably Arabs at the courts of different Solomonid rulers is amply attested since the fourteenth century.7 In the fifteenth century, as a consequence of an increase in the diplomatic contacts between Christian Ethiopia and European powers, an important number of Europeans were reported to be living in Ethiopia. A large number of the Europeans who settled in Christian Ethiopia were Italians and some enjoyed influential roles at the royal court.8 Thus in 1450 the Sicilian Pietro Rombolo was

7

On the earlier foreign policy of the Solomonid state, see Taddesse Tamrat, Church and state in Ethiopia: 1270-1527, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. An Arabic source has it that negus Yeshaq (1414-1429) had in his court Coptic officials who were to help him reforming the army and administration, see Ibn Fadl Allah al-Omari, Masalik el absar fi mamalik el amsar. L'Afrique moins l'Egypte [14th century] ed., tr. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1927, 36-37. 8 The most complete summary on the foreign – mainly Italian – presence in Ethiopia up to the sixteenth century remains Renato Lefèvre’s `Riflessi etiopici nella cultura europea del Medioevo e del Rinascimento (Parte I)’, Annali Lateranensi 8, 1944, 9-89; idem (Parte II), Annali Lateranensi 9, 1945, 331-444; idem (Parte III), 11, 1947, 255-342. A valuable up-to-date survey is Gianfranco Fiaccadori, `Venezia, l’Europa e l’Etiopia’, in: Giuseppe Barbieri & Gianfranco Fiaccadori (eds.), Nigra sum sed formosa. Sacro e bellezza dell’Etiopia cristiana

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands

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sent by Zära Yaeqob (1434-1468) to meet Alfonso V of Aragon to request artists and craftsmen and three decades later Giovanni Battista Brocchi da Imola took on the same role as Ethiopian envoy in Rome.9 Towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, with the build up of their dominion in the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese began to replace the Italians as the first European group in Ethiopia. In ca. 1500, an envoy of Dom João II, Pero da Covilhã, arrived at the court of negus Naod (14941508). Covilhã settled in the country, received lands and eventually stayed there until his death towards 1530.10 By 1508, Afonso de Albuquerque had landed two other Portuguese envoys, João Gomes and João Sanchez, on the Ethiopian shore; the outcome of their mission, however, remains obscure.11 Soon thereafter, a period of a few decades ensued during which the Portuguese achieved a fragile control of the waters of the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. From India convoys were sent yearly to the mouth of the Red Sea to patrol the area and block the trade route that through the Red Sea connected the Mediterranean with the Indian ports.12 The Portuguese were able to maintain this system in function for a few decades until it ceased in the 1550s but for a few sporadic visits.13 In 1520, (Venezia, Ca’ Foscari, 13 marzo–10 maggio 2009), Vicenza: Terra Ferma, 2009, (26), 27-48. 9 Renato Lefèvre, `Riflessi etiopici’, Annali Lateranensi 9, 1945, 388-89, 407–44. 10 On Covilhã’s trip, see Conde de Ficalho, Viagens de Pêro da Covilhã, Portugal: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1989. 11 See Damião de Góis, Chronica do Feliçissimo rei dom Manuel [1566], Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1954, parte III, ch. lix; and Armando Cortesão, Esparsos, Coimbra: Imprensa de Coimbra, 1974, 25, 77-81. 12 On this point, see Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, `In the Company of Iyäsus: the Jesuit Mission in Ethiopia, 1557-1632’, Ph.D. thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2008, 11. 13 The abandonment of the patrols to the Red Sea was grounded on practical and geopolitical factors. On the one hand, this policy was a costly enterprise that overstrained the Indian treasury. On the other hand, after the failed sieges of Diu of 1538 and the Portuguese attack on Suez three years later, the relations between the Ottomans and Portuguese somehow improved. The two powers reached an unofficial truce wherein each would respect its newly-acquired possessions: the Portuguese were granted free hand in India and the Ottomans full control of the Red Sea. On the failed siege of Diu of 1538, it is worth recalling the study of Dejanirah Couto, `Les Ottomans et l’Inde Portugaise’, in: Congrès International Vasco da Gama et l’Inde, vol. I, Lisbonne-Paris: Fondation Gulbenkian, 1999, 181-200. Significantly, the loss of control of the Red and Arabian Seas by the Portuguese revitalized the old trade route between Venice and India that crossed the Red Sea. See Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial, vol. 3, 132-

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the armada sent to patrol the Red Sea called off Massawa, then the main port connecting the Red Sea with the Ethiopian highlands, and landed an embassy of Dom Manuel I to the Ethiopian negus.14 The embassy was headed by the fidalgo Rodrigo da Lima and comprised eight other Portuguese officials. Towards the end of 1520, the Portuguese group met with negus Lebnä Dengel at Taguelat and, due to the difficult communications with India, could only leave for Europe in 1526. Beyond strengthening the ties between the two distant lands, the embassy also resulted in a fine account of Ethiopia written by the Portuguese chaplain Francisco Alvares.15 The next important chapter of Ethio-Portuguese contacts focused on one of the members of da Lima’s embassy, the physician João Bermudez, who with the painter Lázaro de Andrade remained in the company of the negus after the Portuguese entourage had left. Bermudez became a major player in the later settlement of the Portuguese group in Ethiopia. The physician soon gained the trust of the negus and in the early 1630s would have been sent as the ambassador of the Solomonids to Europe. Although this episode remains still obscure, by dispatching Bermudez to Europe Lebnä Dengel probably wanted to request military help from his European allies in a moment when his kingdom was suffering a devastating djihad from the neighbouring sultanate of Adal.16 In 1535, Bermudez arrived in Europe where he claimed to have been appointed as Patriarch of Ethiopia. In all truth, the Portuguese court was suspicious of him and he thus could

33; and Frederic C. Lane, `The Mediterranean Spice Trade: Its Revival in the Sixteenth Century’, in: Idem, Venice and History. The collected papers of Frederic C. Lane, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966, 25-34. 14 On Dom Manuel’s policies in the Red Sea and Ethiopia see Jean Aubin, `Duarte Galvão’, in Aubin, Le latin et l'astrolabe: Recherches sur le Portugal de la Renaissance, son expansion en Asie et les relations internationales, LisbonneParis: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 1996, 11-48; Luis Filipe Thomaz, `L’idée impériale manuéline’, in: Jean Aubin (ed.), La découverte, le Portugal et l’Europe. Actes du colloque célébré à Paris le 26, 27 et 28 mai 1988, Paris: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 1990, 35-103. 15 Francisco Alvares, Verdadeira informção das terras do Preste João [1540], Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1889. A valuable study of Alvares’s account and its impact in Portugal is Jean Aubin, `Le prêtre Jean devant la censure portugaise’, Bulletin des Études Portugaises et Brésiliennes 41, 1980, 33-57. 16 On the figure of Bermudez, see Marius Chaine, `Bermudez, patriarche de l’Ethiopie’, Revue de l’orient chrétien 4, 14, 1909, 321-29; and Francisco Rodrigues, `Mestre João Bermudes’, Revista de História 3, 1919, 119-37.

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands

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not attain recognition of his Patriarchal claims.17 This notwithstanding, his embassy had an impact in Portugal and on Portuguese policies in the Orient. Indeed, far from being removed from office, the “Patriarch” was included in the armada to India from 1538 led by the newly-appointed governor Dom Garcia de Noronha. Bermudez then stayed in Goa for about two years during which time we may assume he became one of the main advocates for sending an expeditionary force to the Red Sea and Ethiopia.18 In 1541, spurred by Bermudez and by the fresh news that came from Ethiopia recounting the effects of the djihad of Ahmad Grañ, the decisionmakers in Goa decided to send a major armada to the Red Sea. The armada was captained by the newly-appointed governor of India Estevão da Gama, who had just replaced the inefficent Noronha. According to Gaspar Correa, the armada comprised 77 minor ships (fustas e catures), 3 galiots (galeotas) and 12 major ships carrying artillery and more than 2,000 oarsmen.19 Bermudez sailed aboard one of its flagships. The main objective of the expedition was to destroy the Ottoman fleet at Suez, which had become the major challenger to Portuguese supremacy in Asian waters and to go in rescue of the Ethiopian ‘ally’.

17

On suspicions by the Portuguese monarch regarding Bermudez’ nomination to the Ethiopian Patriarchate, see Francisco Rodrigues, `Mestre João Bermudes’, 123. The Holy Roman Emperor was also sceptical about the Patriarch; see Georg Schurhammer, Die Zeitgenössischen Quellen zur Geschichte Portugiesisch-Asiens und seiner Nachbarländer (..), Rome: Institutum Historicum S. I., 1962, doc. 195. 18 Shortly before his death in 1570, Bermudez published a personal account of his wanderings. Although the statements therein found have to be taken with much caution, the narrative is a valuable and informative source on the period under scrutiny. In the book, Bermudez attributed himself important commitments. He thus informed that: `already when I was in Portugal the king gave me all his authority so that I could provide of everything and I could take all the necessary craftsmen under my service’ (porque ja em Portugal me fizera el Rey merce de com sua autoridade prover todos os officios necessarios pera a gouernança da gente que levasse commigo); João Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada que o Patriarcha D. João Bermudez trouxe do Imperador da Ethiopia vulgarmente chamado Preste João dirigida a el-Rei D. Sebastião, Lisboa: Typographia da Academia, 1875 (1565), ch. 10. 19 Gaspar Correia, Lendas da India, vol. IV, Nendeln: Kraus Reprint, 1976 (facsimile repr. of Lisboa: Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1864), 161-63. Couto provides different numbers for the composition of the armada: Diogo do Couto, Da Asia, Lisboa: Regia Officina Typografica, 1777, Década V, liv. VII, cap. V.

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In January 1541, the Portuguese expedition called at Massawa and contacted the Christian baher nagash Yeshaq.20 Yeshaq informed the Portuguese of the progress of the djihad conducted by Ahmad Grañ and, responding to it, the Portuguese constituted in July a company of 400 soldiers that should go to support the Christian cause. Although a review of the Portuguese involvement in the Ethiopian campaigns is beyond the scope of this paper, it deserves to be remarked that the intervention of the Portuguese was decisive. Over two years the Portuguese faced the enemy in at least four major encounters, liberated a number of strategic locations and ultimately contributed to the decisive annihilation of Ahmad Grañ’s army at Wayna Dega on 21 February 1543. It was as a result of these experiences that most of the survivors of the campaigns decided to settle in Ethiopia.

The formation of a mixed race group The Portuguese soldiers paid a heavy toll during the two years of combat. Reportedly, more than half of them died. However, their prowess, commitment and their military skills earned them a reputation and the admiration of the negus. The rewards promised them by the Ethiopian state, the possibility of marriage to local wives and the hardships of a mercenary life that would await them back in India convinced most of them to settle down.21 Of the some 170 survivors about 120 stayed in Ethiopia and towards 1544 some fifty soldiers went back to India. One of the soldiers who left, the arquebusier Miguel de Castanhoso, would write, once in Portugal, an account of the military expedition.22 Another group of

20

Baher nägash means literally ‘ruler of the sea’ (provinces) and was the title of the semi-independent lord based in the provinces of Tegray and Hamasen and formally subject to the Christian negus. 21 The Portuguese troop that went to India with Estevão da Gama at its departure from India was mostly formed of young soldiers, probably in their 20s and 30s, and of a few fidalgos; the young age of many and the attraction for the Preste John might have been two important factors pushing many of them to volunteer for the Ethiopian campaigns and, later on, to settle in the African land. For the composition of the armada to the Red Sea I rely on Correia, Lendas da India, vol. IV, 161. 22 In Portugal Castanhoso received a pension from the crown and wrote a valuable account of the military expedition in Ethiopia, the above-mentioned Dos Feitos de D. Christovam da Gama em Ethiopia, first published in 1564. After the settlement of Christovão’s soldiers, a few more Portuguese or foreigners might have settled in Ethiopia but these did not number more than a few dozens at the maximum.

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands

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soldiers reportedly left some fifteen years later, when Viceroy Dom Constantino de Bragança (1558-1561) was in power.23 The Portuguese who stayed had a simple but challenging role to fulfil for the Ethiopian Christian state: to defend it. As the campaigns against Ahmad Grañ had shown, the Portuguese had arrived at a moment of extreme weakness for the Solomonid state. From about 1528 to the arrival of the Portuguese, the Muslim army marched uncontested across most of Christian Ethiopia, destroying churches, plundering riches and sowing chaos. The worries of the Christian state, however, were not limited to the djihadic outburst waged by Somali and Afar warriors, which after all proved to be a temporary episode.24 The rise in power of the Solomonid state in the fifteenth century went hand in hand with that of its Muslim neighbours and a consequence of it was that de facto it was landlocked. The Christians did not have direct contact with the sea and were hence unable to upgrade their military and technical capacities. This handicap became critical when the military revolution that had its epicentre in Europe reached the Indian Ocean and the Muslim world in the early sixteenth century.25 Whilst contact with the Mamluk, and later Ottoman states guaranteed Ethiopia’s Muslim rivals easy grasp of modern weaponry and military skills,26 the Solomonid monarchy could not rely on Reportedly, Bishop Andrés de Oviedo and his five Jesuit companions arrived in Ethiopia accompanied with a few Portuguese laymen. 23 Castanhoso left for India with a few dozen (Couto says about fifty) soldiers on 16 February 1544 in a fusta of Diogo de Reinoso. Castanhoso, História das cousas, ch. 28, 29; Couto, Década V, liv. IX, ch. IV; Diogo do Couto , Tratado dos feitos de Vasco de Gama e seus filhos na India, ed. J. M. Azevedo-J.M. dos Santos, Lisboa: Cosmos, 1998 (ca. 1610), 180; Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. XLVIII. 24 The djihad was indeed as devastating as short-lived. The Christian Ethiopian `Short Chronicle’ described it, not without exaggeration, as having ended `like the smoke and the ash of an oven’, René Basset (ed. & tr.), Études sur l'Histoire d'Éthiopie. Première Partie: Chronique Éthiopienne, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1882, 112. 25 On this issue, see Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800, Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 26 Mamluks and Ottomans were the chief suppliers of modern weaponry to the Muslim sultanates in the Horn of Africa. The Mamluks ruled in Egypt from 1250 to 1517, during which period they were also the major force in the Red Sea. On their military structure and power, see William J. Hamblin, `Egypt: Mamluk Dynasty (1250-1517): Army and Iqta’ System’, in: Kevin Shillington (ed.), Encyclopedia of African history, New York [u.a.]: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005, 444-46; James Waterson, The Knights Of Islam: The Wars of the Mamluks, Greenhill

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receiving help from any ally at close reach. The Portuguese thus came to occupy a much needed role. This might explain their rapid integration within the state structure and the important roles that, given their scarce numbers, they were destined to play in the forthcoming decades. As soon as the campaigns against Ahmad Grañ were over, the Portuguese soldiers reportedly formed a sort of elite unit in the service of the negus. Bermudez reports that negus Gälawdewos (1540-1559) “had ordered the Portuguese to protect him and follow him wherever he went to with two squadrons.”27 In 1555, when the Jesuit mestre Gonçalo went to meet the negus in the province of Gurage, he found 93 Portuguese under the command of Captain Gaspar de Sousa at the court.28 During the same period, names such as Afonso de França Moniz, Diogo de Alvelos da Azinhaga, Simão do Several, and Alvaro da Costa de Covilhão are mentioned as important soldiers of the guard of Gälawdewos.29 For their upkeep, the Ethio-Portuguese were given lands and received a payment from the Ethiopian state. Thus, when in 1557 the Jesuit Andrés Books, London, 2007; Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 100-07; and especially the extraordinary work David Ayalon, Gunpowder and firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom: a challenge to a mediaeval society, London [u.a.]: Cass, 1978. The decay of the Mamluks, partly accelerated by the Portuguese blockade of the Red Sea trade route, was sealed with the Ottoman invasion under sultan Selim I. Selim’s successor, Suleiman I the Magnificent, intensified Ottoman control of the Red Sea, with the occupation of the strategic ports of Massawa, Sawakin, Mokha and Aden and also supported the Muslims Adal. In 1542, the basha of Zabid sent a company of Arab and Turkish mercenaries armed of firearms to Ethiopia to combat the Portuguese. Moreover, it must be emphasized that the arms’ traffic in the region involved more surprising actors, such as Europeans. João de Barros, for instance, informed that in the 1510s a Catalan ship called at Zeila, one of the principal ports of the Muslim sultanate of Adal, to sell weapons; Barros, Da Asia, Lisboa: Regia Officina Typografica, 1777, Década III, parte I, cap. V. In addition, although I could not find evidence thereto, the Venetians might have been involved in that trade thus seeking to empower the regional enemies of the Portuguese and thus break their blockade of Red Sea trade, so harmful in the sixteenth century to Venetian interests. As a matter of fact, Venetian craftsmen and agents participated as technical advisers in the Ottoman navy; see István Ráckóczi, `Adem turca e Diu portuguesa num documento de 1538’, in: Artur Teodoro de Matos & Luís Filipe F. Reis Thomaz (eds.), A Carreira da Índia e as Rotas dos Estreitos: Actas, Fundação Oriente, 1998, 527-50, 523 note 16. 27 … Ordenara que os portugueses o guardassem e andassem sempre junto delle em dous esquadroes; Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. XLIV. 28 Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. I, ch. VIII. 29 Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. IV, ch. XI.

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de Oviedo went to meet Gälawdewos, the latter ordered a golden mark to be given to the Bishop and an ounce to every Portuguese soldier and servant, a quantity that was held “more than sufficient in view of the cheap prices in the land”.30 Moreover, a few members of the Portuguese group were described as wealthy and with large estates. One Francisco de Magalhães was said to have received lands somewhere near the region of Gafat and the chronicler stressed that with the other Portuguese the same was true.31 The two decades that ensued after the death of Ahmad Grañ were crucial for the Ethiopian state. On the one hand, the death of the Muslim leader had not appeased the Muslim neighbours in Adal and under Nur bin Mujahid of Adal the clashes between the Christians and Adalites found renewed vigour. On the other hand, the Oromo tribes began their expansion northwards in the 1540s. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that throughout the same period the Portuguese militia was busy and historical sources would support this view. Indeed, shortly after the battle of Wäyna Daga the Portuguese militia contributed to recapture the fortress of Däbrä Seyon in Gäralta32 and in 1544 they were probably involved in Gälawdewos’s recovery of the southern province of Däwaro, where a few of them thereafter settled.33 For a few more years sources are silent on the fate of the EthioPortuguese. Be it as it may, the northern push of the Oromo tribe thwarted any optimistic projects Gälawdewos and the Portuguese guard might have hosted. In ca. 1555, the Portuguese militia was reported to have waged a campaign against the Oromo in the Bali region and in March 1559 eighteen of them died in the battle against the company of Mälasay of Nur bin Mujahid of Adal, where Gälawdewos eventually also perished.34 The Däwaro province was again lost to the Oromo during the Bifole gada

30

`E posto que o Bispo fora sempre bem provido, mandou El Rey, depois que veio, que lhe dessem hum marco de ouro cada mez pera sua pessoa, e pera cada soldado, e criado seu huma onça, porção muito bastante pera a barateza da terra’, Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. VII, ch. IV. 31 Bermudez, who informed on this detail, said that Francisco de Magalhães ‘vinha de ver humas terras, que lhe elrey tinha dado: porque a todos os portugueses daua terra de cujas rendas se manteuessem.’ Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. XLIV; also Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. IV, cap. XI. 32 Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. XXXVII. 33 Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. XLVII; and ch. XLIII. 34 Camillo Beccari (ed.), Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti a saeculo XVI ad XIX, 15 vols., Romae: C. de Luigi, 1902-17 (henceforth RASO), vol. X, 151; Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. VII, ch. IV, and ch. VI.

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(1546-54)35 and for the Portuguese this setback marked the beginning of a period of wandering that is difficult to track accurately in the sources. Initially, they would have resettled in Damot, then they moved to Gojjam and eventually, in the 1560s or 1570s, the larger groups would have taken a more permanent seat in areas to the north, around the Lake Tana and in Fremona, Tegray.36 The settlement in Tegray became eventually the most important of the Ethio-Portuguese. Its foundation is associated with a political crisis that occurred during the rule of negus Minas (1559-1563) when the association between the Portuguese and the negus broke. Fervently anti-Catholic, the son of Gälawdewos abolished all the favorable decisions of his father concerning the Ethio-Portuguese and also imposed a hard hand towards the Jesuit missionaries who were active in his lands since 1557. His actions provoked a split in the foreign group. A large group joined the short-lived rebelion of Ozdemir Pasha and baher-nagash Yeshay in Tegray.37 Another group of Portuguese soldiers, headed by one Affonso de França, remained nevertheless loyal to the negus. In the late 1550s, the group from the north was living in Debarwa and when the rebellion of Yeshaq and Ozdemir Pasha was over they settled with the Jesuit missionaries in the Adwa plateau at a site called Fremona, where Yeshaq had given them a gwelt (i.e. rights of cultivation and taxation over the land).38 Henceforth, Fremona was to be associated with the missionaries and the Ethio-Portuguese for the next hundred years. Shortly after its foundation, the village was reported to already have about 250 people. In the seventeenth century, it was there that the largest number of Catholics and Portuguese were concentrated and in the years to come it became the main point connecting the southern Jesuit residences with the coast. It was amidst this troubled period that the Ethio-Portuguese group took shape. The Portuguese soldiers mixed with local women, who bore them mixed-race offspring. The historian Diogo do Couto reports that in 1555 35

Mohammed Hassen, The Oromo of Ethiopia: a history 1570-1860, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 24. 36 Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. XLVI. 37 Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. VII, ch. XII; VII, liv. VIII, ch. IX; VII, liv. X, ch. VI. After his failed first attempt to challenge central power baher nägash Yeshaq remained quiet for some years until he resumed his rebelion against central Ethiopian rule in the 1570s. Then the army of Särsä Dengel proved superior and he was killed in battle; see Carlo Conti-Rossini, ‘La guerra turco-abissina del 1578’, Oriente moderno, 1, 1921, 634-36, 684-91; 2, 1923, 48-57. 38 RASO X, 207; RASO XI, 292, 230; Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. VII, ch. XII; RASO V, 463; Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. LVIII.

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there were already about 1,200 “Portuguese” in Ethiopia.39 The group comprised the ageing veterans of the 1540s campaigns, their wives and children and probably a few Europeans as well, who henceforth would be also identified as “Portuguese” by the local people or in the sources. In 1598, the group grew to reach about 3,000 members and in the ensuing decades of the seventeenth century, depending on which different clusters of “Portuguese” were taken into account, their number oscillated from a minimum of 1,000 to a maximum of 3,000 members.40 Such numbers remained steady until the group disappears from the historical record around 1667.

The Jesuit mission and the making of a Portuguese Catholic group The fact that the Ethio-Portuguese were defined as “Portuguese” in contemporary sources and perceived as different by the locals emphasizes their distinct Portuguese identity. The question that arises is what was this identity based on? How different were in actuality the Ethio-Portuguese from their Amhara, Agäw and Tegreñña neighbours, to name just the three most important groups among whom the foreigners lived? An important feature of the Ethio-Portuguese that may have affected the way they were perceived locally was the fact they were considered Portuguese “citizens”. Indeed, the Portuguese king took under his patronage the Ethio-Portuguese in Ethiopia. This gave the Ethio-Portuguese the feeling of belonging to the once mighty nation. Moreover, the interest of the Portuguese king had some practical consequences. On the one hand, the Catholics in Ethiopia became a matter of concern at the Portuguese court in the 1550s. Indeed, it was officially to minister to them that the crown decided to send Jesuit missionaries to Ethiopia. More importantly, beginning from Dom João III until the period of the Spanish Felipes, the Portuguese Crown allocated a subsidy for its subjects in Ethiopia. Although the subsidy, which the sources call esmola, i.e. ‘alms’, was never extraordinary and problems with it reaching its destinataries were frequent, it showed the true commitment of Portugal towards this African 39

Couto based his information in meetings he had in Goa with members of Portuguese families – one Simão Fernandes and one Diogo Dias – who had come from Ethiopia during the rule of Viceroy Constantino de Bragança; Couto, Da Asia, Década V, liv. IX, ch. IV ; and Id., Tratado dos feitos, 180. See also Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. XLVIII. 40 See for instance, RASO XI, 143, 382.

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diaspora. Around 1555, a Portuguese staying in the Red Sea port of Arquico is reported. He was supposed to forward the contributions (pera arrecadar as rendas) sent from India for the Ethio-Portuguese.41 Further references to this subsidy appear only towards the end of the century, when communications between Portuguese India and the Red Sea might have improved. In the successive decades, payments, which oscillated between 200 and 500 pardãos, became more regular and constituted the main source of income of the Ethio-Portuguese.42 In Ethiopia, the Portuguese soldiers and their offspring appear to have enjoyed a special status, too. As indicated above, they were allotted states by Gälawdewos and a few Portuguese became landowners. Moreover, they had the right to practice their faith. At the conclusion of the wars with Ahmad Grañ, “Patriarch” Bermudez was allowed to stay in Ethiopia as “Patriarch of the Portuguese” and during his residence at Debarwa from about 1554 to 1556 he celebrated mass for his flock at the church of “Nossa Senhora”.43 Moreover, somewhere after 1558, Pero Leão, a fidalgo and the arquebusier who had killed the Muslim leader Ahmad Grañ in 1543, was reported to have built a monolithic church (de roca viva) in the region of “Decono”.44 The church was meant to be used by the Jesuit bishop and the Catholic group. Besides, the Portuguese also enjoyed the privilege of being ruled under Portuguese laws. During the short reign of Gälawdewos’s successor, Minas,45 these privileges seem to have been

41

RASO X, 13, 51. In 1595, the Crown sent them 200 pardãos (60,000 reis); RASO X, 401. In the successive years, the sum seems to have reached, with a few exceptions, Ethiopia on a yearly basis; see RASO VII, 19; RASO XII, 244, 312, 319. 43 The bombastic title of `Patriarch of the Portuguese’ should be seen as just another fabrication of the enigmatic Bermudez. It still indicates, however, that the Portuguese had the right to their own spiritual leader; Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, chs. XLVI, LV and LVI. 44 On Leão’s earlier military feats, see Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, XXXIV. On him settling in Ethiopia and erecting a church there, Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. VII, ch. V and Década VII, liv. VII, ch. VI. The exact location of “Decono” remains uncertain. There are at least two places with a similar spelling: Dekhana in the province of Dämbeya and Dähono, another name for the port of Hergigo (Arquico in Portuguese sources). Significantly, in both places there was at some point a Portuguese presence, but no rock-hewn church has been found. A site more distant phonetically to Decono but more fitting to the description provided by Leão would be Degum in Gäralta. Degum indeed possesses an important complex of rock-hewn churches. 45 RASO X, 86, 151, 278. 42

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands

15

suspended but they were ratified later by two influential rulers, Särsä Dengel (1563–1597) and Susenyos (1607-1632).46 The Portuguese in Ethiopia, for their part, managed to preserve their “European” identity. Although by the 1570s, considering the dominant black phenotype, any Portuguese traits might have been erased from the younger generations, the group continued to be perceived as different within the wider Ethiopian society until the next century. Moreover, sources indicate that the Portuguese had a sense of pride regarding their origin. A set of factors may explain this trend. Firstly, in the sixteenth century Portugal enjoyed of a widespread prestige in Asia and parts of Africa. As occurred with similar mixed-race groups that had originated overseas, being a Portuguese meant belonging to a powerful nation; it reinforced one’s symbolic position within the local society. The EthioPortuguese shared the same living conditions of their contemporary Ethiopians, and Jesuit sources often emphasize the destitution in which most of them lived; yet their Portuguese background surely granted them a special status. Indeed, in the seventeenth century and largely thanks to the mediation of the Jesuit missionaries, belonging to this group was a shortcut for social promotion. The feature that perhaps most clearly emphasized the Portuguese identity of this group was the preservation of their homeland’s system of naming. Hence, of the 69 “Portuguese” born in Ethiopia which I could identify in the historical record, only eight bear non-Portuguese names. For the record, the most popular names were António (eight occurrences) and Manoel (four occurrences). There may be room to speculate about such preferences. António may have been a payment of homage of the patron saint of Lisbon, and Manoel was perhaps a way for the EthioPortuguese to recall the Portuguese king who had most strongly pushed the Ethiopian agenda in Portugal. Religion also served as an important marker of their distinct identity. However, here the cut might not have been that clear. The Ethiopians among whom the Portuguese lived were Christian Orthodox and initially many Portuguese might have simply adopted the Christian rituals and beliefs of their neighbours. In their beginnings, there was after all no Catholic priest who could minister to them. Circumcision, for instance, a practice common in many societies of the region, including amongst the 46

Both Särsa Dengel and Susenyos protected the Ethio-Portuguese group and it is no surprise that their rule represents the most prosperous period for the Burtukan. A few Ethio-Portuguese really thrived during this period. For example, we learn of one Jorge Nogueira who lived in `Nanina’ (Agäw Meder), where Särsä Dengel would have granted him lands; RASO V, 469.

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Christian Amharas and the Tegreñña speakers, seems to have been widely practiced amongst the Ethio-Portuguese from the beginning.47 With regard to the Portuguese language we must accept a similar acculturation: the adoption of the local languages must be taken for granted. The opening of the Jesuit mission in 1557 was a turning point for the Ethio-Portuguese group.48 As previously stated, the mission had been launched by the Portuguese crown with the chief purpose of not abandoning the Portuguese flock and providing them with spiritual support. The Jesuit missionaries contributed in a significant way to preserve – when not to reinvent – the identity of the färänj according to Portuguese-Catholic premises. With the mission, the focus was on religion. Unlike in other missionary terrains, the Society’s strategy and the practice followed in Ethiopia were not ones of accomodatio. The Jesuits’ strategy was one of radical Latinisation of the Ethiopian Church, which affected their choices on liturgy, iconology, architecture, moral issues and dogma. Consequently, their impact on the Ethio-Portuguese was that of stressing their distinct origin and protecting them from “contamination” from unwanted local practices. Thus, while in its first decades of life this group might have been short to full assimilation into the local groups, with the opening of the mission the clusters that were closer to the priests came to emphasize their foreign origin and somehow revive their Portuguese background. The padroch, as the missionaries were known in Ethiopia, introduced the Portuguese-born in Ethiopia to the Catholic rites and strove to minister to as many Ethio-Portuguese as possible. It is worthwhile stopping for a moment to look at three fields where missionary action was more strongly felt in order to understand how a “Portuguese” identity was promoted during the time of the Jesuit mission. Firstly, the Jesuits had an impact on the marriage practices of the Portuguese. Until the arrival of the Jesuits, the members of the Portuguese militia mixed with local women and might have been little concerned with the faith their partners professed and even less so with that of their offspring. The missionaries, as spiritual leaders of the community, tried to 47

RASO X, 329. The literature on this mission is vast. Among the most recent studies, I address the reader to Hervé Pennec, Des jésuites au royaume du Prêtre Jean (Ethiopie): Stratégies, rencontres et tentatives d’implantation (1495-1633), Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian - Centre Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian, 2003 and Leonardo Cohen, The Missionary strategies of the Jesuits in Ethiopia (1555 - 1632), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009. A bibliography of relevant titles published prior to 2005 is Leonardo Cohen & Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, `The Jesuit Mission in Ethiopia: An Analytical Bibliography’, Aethiopica 9, 2006, 190-212.

48

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands

17

fix this ‘problem’. They strove to control the marriage practices of the Ethio-Portuguese and at least in part seem to have succeeded. Beyond their status as priests, in their favour was the fact that they controlled the alms sent from Portugal that were aimed for the clothing and for the payment of the dowries (dote) of the Ethio-Portuguese. It is to be noted that this detail was not plainly accepted by the Ethio-Portuguese and a few openly complained about it.49 By managing the alms the missionaries could thereby orient marriage preferences and sanction those families that had behaved more according to their tenet.50 Therefore, whilst imposing endogamic marriages within the Catholic groups might not have been possible due to small numbers, the emphasis must have been on expanding the Catholic group through the conversion of those seeking an alliance with the Ethio-Portuguese. To be true, the marriage policy was not fully successful and signs of frustration from the missionaries punctuate their correspondence. In 1582, the Jesuit Manuel Fernandez informed the Superior General in Rome that several daughters of the Portuguese had to marry non-Catholics due to the lack of Catholic partners.51 Earlier, a Portuguese soldier named Luiz Custodio was reported to have married a “Nestorian wife”, i.e. a Christian Orthodox, and he had himself converted to this faith, revealing a behaviour that might have been more widespread.52 But the missionaries achieved some victories, too. The Portuguese soldier Alvaro da Costa, who became a close servant of Gälawdewos, was married to an Ethiopian 49 In 1628 a Jesuit priest reported that “for this reason the Portuguese became suspicious [of the missionaries], since the fathers misused their alms, and so they openly complain about that and discredit our image” (Pollo qual respeito entrarão ja os Portuguezes em desconfiança, avendo que os padres lhe comem a dita esmola, e assi fazem disso muitas queixas con notavel discredito nosso, como eu ouvi nestes dous annos em que fui seu vigario), RASO XII, 312. 50 A few examples from the sources emphasize the interference the missionaries had, or tried to have, in the marriage practices of the Ethio-Portuguese. Around 1605, a Portuguese widow married an Ethiopian Christian against the opposition of the Jesuit fathers, who energetically (por suas amonestações e concelhos) tried to persuade her not to do so, RASO XI, 117. On the missionaries managing the alms sent from India for the Ethio-Portuguese and their marriage practices, see RASO XII, 312. 51 `Many daughters of the Portuguese and other Catholic women, since there are not enough Catholic partners, are forced to marry men who are alien to our holy faith’ (Tem mais muitas molheres filhas de Portugueses difuntos e outras catholicas, por nao aver homens catholicos com que se casem, casanse com outros alienos de nossa santa fee), RASO X, 329. 52 RASO X, 144.

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woman who had been converted by Bishop Oviedo.53 Also during this period, in one of the most tense episodes between the negus and the foreign community, Minas and the Orthodox abun forced the Bishop to hand them the wives of Portuguese he had converted. The women were imprisoned but must have been released at the death of the ruler.54 Secondly, the Jesuits were also active combating the practice of circumcision, which as we saw above, was initially also forced upon Ethio-Portuguese children. The foreign priests were adamant in banning circumcision, initially only among those whom they ministered. Yet, once they had gained more influence in the kingdom, they tried to impose this rule over the wider Ethiopian society. Although historical literature attests that they encountered serious opposition,55 it can be assumed that a large number of the Ethio-Portuguese children under their ‘custody’ were kept away from this rite. There were deep religious reasons that pushed the missionaries to be so rigid with this custom.56 What is more important for the present discussion, however, are the practical consequences provoked by the missionaries’ rigid stand. For most of the societies on the Ethiopian highlands circumcision was an essential rite of passage. The rite enforced upon the individual the change that helped him evolve into a social being. Uncircumcision was, in consequence, regarded as a serious imperfection of the body; the uncircumcised person was seen as dirty, ugly,57 closer to animal nature and unfit to live a normal social life. In modern Amharic yaltägärräzä, literally ‘non-circumcised’, stands as well for “ill-mannered, insolent, rude, and vulgar”.58 Therefore, the missionaries confronted their neophytes with a difficult choice: either to give in to one of the most pressing wishes of the missionaries while at the same time condemning their children to the worst status in Ethiopian society, or to conform to 53

In sources, Custodio appears as “one of the closest servants of the Emperor” (um dos grandes privados do Emperador); Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. IV, cap. XI; liv. VIII, cap. IX. 54 On this episode, see Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. VIII, cap. IX. 55 RASO X, 329; RASO XI, 443; Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu, Rome (henceforth ARSI), Goa 39 II, 425v. 56 I have elaborated on that aspect in Andreu Martínez d’Alòs Moner, `Paul and the Other: The Portuguese Debate on the Circumcision of the Ethiopians’, in Verena Böll et al. (eds.), Ethiopia and the Missions: Historical and Anthropological insights, Münster: Lit, 2005, 31-51. 57 A Jesuit priest once reported that a local Ethiopian couple considered the uncircumcised state of their son “ugly” (parecia fealfade); RASO XII, 474. 58 Thomas Leiper Kane, Amharic–English Dictionary, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990, 1938.

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popular pressure and then be accused by the missionaries of judaizing practices. For the Jesuits, renunciation of circumcision was seen as imperative for salvation while the contrary was true for most Ethiopian societies. The dilemma probably deterred many an Ethiopian to join the mission on the terms expected by the European priests and it may have also isolated those who complied fully with the Pauline-cum-Jesuit tenet from society. Indeed, the Jesuits and those who followed their tenet found themselves in the undesirable position that Ethiopians ascribed to the uncircumcised. Their opponents often insulted them with the opprobrious term qwälläfa59 and many probably saw their uncircumcision as a sign of the foreigners’ barbaric nature. Last but not least, the Portuguese language became the lingua franca in the small communities that settled around the missionary centres. It was the main language of instruction at the schools managed by the missionaries and, together with Latin, might have been used during masses as well. Moreover, during the period of strongest influence of the mission, the Portuguese language gained in prestige: influential figures would send their children to the missionary schools to enjoy of the education there but also to make them acquainted with that language and some political figures are reported having learnt it too. Se’elä Krestos, one of the Ethiopian leaders closest to the missionaries, asked in 1612 his friend the Jesuit Pedro Páez to teach him Portuguese and a few years later could communicate in it.60 Moreover, in the 1610s the Jesuits had an interpreter at the court, one Dionisos (or Denazios, born in 1607), who knew Amharic, Portuguese and Latin.61 It has to be emphasized, however, that the missionaries also owed their survival and success in large part to this mixed-race community. Indeed, the role the Ethio-Portuguese played in helping the missionaries settle and survive in the Ethiopian environment cannot be exaggerated. Oviedo and his other four companions were received by two veterans of the 1540s campaigns at landing on Arquico in 1557, Luiz Custodio and Antonio de

59

For example, in a letter from 1621 written by an unidentified supporter of Ethiopian Christianity the negus was exhorted, “not to listen to the colafas, i.e. the uncircumcised, who said that in Christ there are two natures” (não ouça os Colâfâs, idest incircuncisos, que dizem que em Christo estão duas naturezas); RASO VI, 339. 60 Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Mss/11088, 1-131r, here 119rv. 61 Dionisos was a gifted native scholar from Gorgora who served at least from 1613 to 1619; Arquivo Distrital de Braga, Portugal (henceforth ADB), Legajo 779, doc.17, 117r; ARSI, Goa 39 I bis, 109v.

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Sampaio.62 These would have then helped the priests cross safely the dangerous Eritrean highlands. Moreover, as it was mentioned above, after some years of wanderings, the missionaries settled towards 1565 in Fremona, in the northern province of Tegray, in the company of a few dozen Portuguese families.63 In the second and third missionary settlements, Gorgora and Qwälläla, the same patterns can be observed. At Gorgora, founded in 1605, the missionaries were surrounded by EthioPortuguese who had settled in the 1570s.64 Meanwhile, an important Burtukan settlement that remained without missionary presence was Taqussa (“Tacussa, Tacuça”), northeast of Lake Tana, which the Jesuits might have considered too distant from the Ethiopian court to establish any presence.65 In all these settlements, the Portuguese militia was to all intents and purposes fundamental in keeping at bay thieves, enemies and rebels and providing an impression of strength and security. The settlement of Fremona, for instance, suffered several attacks but was able to defend itself on each occasion.66 The Ethio-Portuguese were also of paramount importance in revitalizing the mission during its most critical moments. Between 1598 and 1602, when all the Jesuits from the first period had died and no replacements were forthcoming, a group of Portuguese elders formed a conselho and 62

RASO III, 40. Fremona and some lands in the neighbourhood were reportedly given as a gwelt (i.e. rights of cultivation and taxation over the land) to the Ethio-Portuguese; RASO X, 207; RASO XI, 292, 230; Couto, Da Asia, Década VII, liv. VII, ch. XII; RASO V, 463. Shortly after its foundation the village was reported having about 250 people, Bermudez, Breve relação da embaixada, ch. LVIII. 64 Reportedly, the group of Portuguese had settled at Dämbeya at the request of negus Särsä Dengel and fleeing the insecurity that punctuated their life in the north. In 1574, the Jesuit priests Francisco Lopes and Gonçalo Cardoso were sent to preach among them but a permanent residence was only established at the beginning of the next century, see RASO X, 265; RASO III, 115, 119. 65 The Jesuit priest Barradas reported that Taqussa `was the house of many Portuguese’ (morada e assento de muitos Portuguezes); RASO IV, 10. His fellow Manoel de Almeida reported that, towards 1626, in the regions of `Tacuça, Gambelua, Cantafa’ there were said to be more than 2,000 Ethio-Portuguese; RASO VI, 414. 66 On at least two occasions, in 1608 and 1616, Tegrayan rebels and opponents of the mission tried unsuccessfully to storm the site. Towards 1612, an attack of the Rayyaa Oromo tribe was also thwarted; RASO VI, 205-06, 335. It must be stressed that Fremona became a stronghold in its own right for the site, located on a strategic hill, was fortified and surrounded by a ring of walls with ramparts. On the architectonic and military improvements at the site, see RASO VI, 378; RASO XI, 434; ARSI, Goa 39 I, 229r. 63

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands

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studied a plan to introduce new missionaries into the country.67 Although by then the project to reinstate the mission was already underway in India, the Ethio-Portuguese doubtlessly contributed to its success. One of the elders who took part in the conselho, Mauriçio Soares, the son of one Gaspar Soares, is also reported to have taken over ministry duties in his Catholic parish during the years when there were no Jesuit missionaries.68

Figure 1. Northern view of the Portuguese settlement and the Jesuit Residence of Fremona, ca. 1563-1633. The walls and bastions built between ca. 1600 and 1630 can be seen on the upper reaches. Photography by the author.

When the mission matured towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, this relationship intensified. Towards the 1620s the Jesuits, headed by the dynamic Pedro Páez (1564-1622), had already established a network of residences where they lived and worked together with a great 67

See RASO III, 213-14. Soares is mentioned as “father of the Christians” (paj dos christaes); ADB, Legajo 779, vol. 1, doc. 15, 76v. 68

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number of associates and aides who had – or claimed to have – Portuguese ancestors. They also managed a group of schools where the Portuguese children and a few locals received Jesuit teachings. Ethio-Portuguese, having grown up at the Jesuit schools in Fremona, Gorgora and Qwälläla, became then a well-trained and solid force the mission could fully rely on. Every Jesuit father typically had one or two Portuguese youths or teens as his aides. These aides served as interpreters, local guides and eventually also joined in apostolic tasks. Moreover, towards the end of the mission at least half a dozen of the Burtukan were ready to join the order, a privilege that the Society of Jesus only conceded on rare occasions in their Asian and African missions.69

Burtukan stories It is worth recalling a number of those who grew up near the missionaries or studied at the Jesuit schools due to their important contribution to the mission. Among the most prominent figures was one João Gabriel and his sons Basilio and Dionisio Gabriel. João Gabriel met the three generations of Jesuits who worked in Ethiopia. He grew up with Patriarch Andrés de Oviedo, and in his youth, together with António Joannes and Manoel Jorge, served as one of the three Ethio-Portuguese aides of Oviedo.70 Later in his life, he helped Pedro Páez and Manoel de Almeida to safely enter Ethiopia, and became their guide and interpreter. His son Basilio had similar commitments. He studied at one of the Jesuit schools, probably Fremona, and was one of the first interpreters the Jesuits

69

As a matter of fact, admission to the order in the Orient was only open to recruits from Japan and China, which has to be related with the high esteem in which these two lands were held in the Society, especially in the mind of the Alessandro Valignano, Visitor of the Jesuit missions in the East between 1573-1606. Thus, although the way into the order was nowhere easy for Chinese and Japanese nationals, in 1584 the easternmost mission had 29 Japanese dojuku (a term borrowed from Japanese Buddhist institutions and literally meaning "cohabitant," auxiliary personnel who were not members of the Jesuit order but affiliated with it in such capacities as acolyte, verger, and cathechist), and the first two Japanese priests were ordained in ca. 1601. On discussions among Jesuits concerning the ordination of the Japanese, see J.F. Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits. Alessandro Valignano in sixteenth-century Japan, London-New York: Routledge, 1993, 2, 162-67. 70 ARSI, Goa 39 I, 250v; RASO XI, 367; Antonio de Arana, `Historia de la Santa vida, muerte y virtudes de el Santo P. Andres de Oviedo (..)’, 1631 (manuscript), Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Codice 4473, 93.

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had at the royal court. He was made governor of a region and as captain he died whilst on an expedition he commanded against the Agäw.71 During the most favourable mission period, at their schools and residences the missionaries found zealous aides who accompanied them in country missions and served as private interpreters and guides. One Francisco Machado was an aide to the Jesuit João Pereira, whilst two other Ethio-Portuguese, Cosme de Mesquita and Lucas Rapozo, were the guides of the same Pereira and of his fellow Gaspar Paes, respectively.72 Another Ethio-Portuguese, Zana Gabriel Machado, was assistant to the Italian father Bruno Bruni for ten years and was killed by traditionalists in ca. 1635.73 Jacobo Alexandre (born ca. 1586 in Ethiopia), the son of one Spaniard “messer Alexandre” and a student in Fremona, in the early 1610s helped the Jesuit Lorenzo Romano to oversee the residence in Tegray. In the late 1610s, Alexandre also participated with father de Angelis in a proselytizing campaign among the Agäw that saw the baptism of “eighteen thousand men”. In ca. 1625 he was ordained as a priest by the Jesuit Patriarch Afonso Mendes and became chaplain and confessor to the missionaries.74 Paulo Nogueira, a grandson of one of Christovão’s soldiers (perhaps one Jorge Nogueira) and xum (i.e. landlord), helped eight missionaries, among whom Patriarch Mendes, to cross the dangerous route that brought them through the Danakil from Berbera to the Tegray.75 Finally, the figures of Bernardo Nogueira and António de Andrade, both born in Ethiopia of Portuguese grandparents, are worth mentioning for the role they played during the period when the Catholics were persecuted. Nogueira grew up in one of the Jesuit residences, was ordained a priest and in 1646 was accepted into the Society off the record. During a few years he served as the liaison between the exiled Jesuit leadership in India and the remaining Catholic clusters in Ethiopia.76 Moreover, he was one of the leaders of the Catholic group until he was captured and hanged in 1652 by an anti-Catholic mob.77 António de Andrade, whom some sources indicate as a grandson of the captain João Gabriel, grew up in Fremona. In the mid-1630s, he accompanied some missionaries fleeing to 71

RASO III, 223-24; RASO XI, 54, 424, 432; ARSI, Goa 39 I bis, 109r. The other brother, Dionisio, appears also in the historical record as a landowner and Catholic; RASO XIII, 266. 72 RASO VII, 362, 370; RASO XIII, 37-38, 55. 73 RASO VII, 361-77. 74 RASO VII, 17-23; RASO XII, 340, 368. 75 RASO VI, 458; RASO XII, 147. 76 RASO XIII, 265. 77 RASO XIII, 412-13.

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India and in Goa studied grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and theology. It was in Goa that at some point in the 1630s he was accepted into the Jesuit order, after which he would lead a failed mission organized in India to regain a foothold in Ethiopia.78 These careers also indicate that towards the end of the 1620s the Jesuits had done the groundwork for the mission’s internal renewal. Similar to the case of the Japan mission, where local scholars and dojuku constituted a valuable workforce in its missionary structure,79 in Ethiopia a large number of scholars and “irmãos da orden”, principally of Portuguese blood, were active participants in the missionary project. Moreover, it is reasonable to argue that they would have been the principal assets the mission was to count on in the future had this project not been abruptly halted during the political and religious upheavals of the 1630s.

Crisis, assimilation and exile On 16 September 1632, negus Susenyos died. The death of the ruler who during two decades had backed wholeheartedly missionary activities in the land was the prelude to the rapid collapse of the Jesuit project in Ethiopia. Susenyos’s son, Fasilädäs (1632-1667), shortly after gaining power, abolished most of the measures that had been promoted by the foreign priests. He also published a decree on freedom of religion that made the Jesuit presence in the land a risky endeavour. This was the prelude to a decade of persecutions against the missionaries and the Catholics at large. This political U-turn had, as it could be imagined, serious consequences for the Ethio-Portuguese. Those who had embraced the foreign faith and who lived closer to the missionaries were to follow the same fate of the padres. It is likely that Ethio-Portuguese Catholics who decided to hold on to their faith lost their rights and possessions and the frequent antiCatholic riots that ensued within the ten years of Fasilädäs’s restoration may have resulted in the pillaging and sacking of any valuables they might have possessed. In 1634, Fasilädäs ordered all the missionaries to leave the country and the Ethio-Portuguese to be relocated at his royal camp somewhere in Dämbeya. Following this decision, a large group of Jesuit priests accompanied by a few hundred Catholics, mostly Ethio-Portuguese, went into exile to India.80 78

RASO VII, 458; RASO XIII, 251-52; RASO I, 179. Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits, 52-53, 167-68. 80 RASO VII, 255-59. 79

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands

25

During a few years, the Catholic clusters in Ethiopia hid from Ethiopian authorities and continued professing their faith. They were led by eight Jesuit priests who had remained in the country and four priests of Portuguese origin who had been ordained by the Patriarch before his departure for India.81 Moreover, initially, the Catholic groups counted with the protection of some Ethiopian lords such as baher nägash Yohannes Akay, the xum of Bur Käflä Maryam and kantiba Zära Yohannes who either sympathized with the Catholics or owed them some past favours.82 Soon, however, Ethiopian authorities increased vigilance and stepped up the persecution of the Catholic fellows. By 1640, all the Jesuits had been assassinated together with at least six local priests and assistants. In 1646, Bernardo Nogueira, who by then served as liaison with the Jesuits in India and was one of the leaders of the Catholics in Ethiopia, reported that five Portuguese priests and confessors were still active in Ethiopia, together with three Amhara aides.83 Six years later, shortly after having received at Massawa news of his acceptance into the Society of Jesus, Nogueira was himself hanged.84 Not all the Ethio-Portuguese, however, were the object of persecutions. Some of them chose to compromise and accepted Ethiopian Orthodoxy. How large this group was is unknown and missionary sources are often elusive when speaking of these ‘traitors’. In 1646, Nogueira informed the Jesuits in India that Damo and Rafael Fernández, two captains of the Portuguese militia, had embraced Orthodoxy with their families.85 From their example, it can be inferred that a considerable number of the Burtukan soldiers and their families embraced Ethiopian Orthodoxy. Such an act might have granted them peace and, more importantly, the preservation of their military status and careers. Indeed, negus Fasilädäs, like his father, is known to have had a company of Ethio-Portuguese soldiers under his command throughout his reign. 81

The eight Jesuit priests were: Bishop Apollinar de Almeida, Bruno Bruni, Luís Cardeira, Luíz de Azevedo, Jacinto Francisco, Gaspar Paes, Francisco Rodrigues and João Pereira. The Ethio-Portuguese priests were Bernardo Nogueira, Lourenço da Costa, Pero da Costa and António Dalmança; see Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, `In the Company of Iyäsus’, 287 & Appendix 7. 82 The kantiba was a representative of the Ethiopian monarch in a small region, or village. 83 RASO XIII, 265. 84 RASO XIII, 412-13. 85 RASO XIII, 265. Fernández was mentioned as captain of the Portuguese troops already in 1633, at the same time when the Patriarch Mendes left his library in Fernández’s custody; RASO XIII, 62.

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The Ethio-Portuguese who had abandoned Catholic practices continued to live unmolested in Ethiopia until the death of Fasilädäs. They preserved a distinctive identity and were considered as a group apart, notwithstanding the fact that the cultural and racial differences with the larger population might have been very minute. The accession of Fasilädäs’s son, Yohannes (1667-1682), who had never seen any missionary nor had been raised surrounded by foreigners like his father and grandfather, sealed their fate. During the first year of his reign, probably under the pressure of conservative ecclesiastics, Yohannes convened a political-religious council. In the council it was decided that the Burtukan leave the country.86 For a reason that is still not clear, the foreign group chose to resettle in the city of Funj, capital of the kingdom of Sennar, then ruled by Badi II (1644/5-1681) instead of going ‘back’ to India. It seems reasonable to assume that such a move was not improvised and that it had been planned beforehand and a more in depth research into the relations between Christian Ethiopia and Sennar may shed light on this episode. Furthermore, it can be speculated that by relocating to this Muslim principality, then the centre of a wide-ranging commercial network, they sought new opportunities to carry on their mercenary lifestyle. 87 Henceforth, the traces of the Ethio-Portuguese diaspora in the Sudan get lost. In 1696, an Ethiopian envoy of the negus still attested of their presence in Sennar.88 Later on, however, the numerous Catholic missionaries and explorers who crossed this kingdom on their way to the Ethiopian

86

The episode is reported in Ignazio Guidi (trans.), Annales Johannis I, IyƗsu I, BakƗffƗ, Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO, 1961 (repr. from 1903), Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium Vol. 25, Scriptores Aethiopici T. 8, 6-11. 87 On the Kingdom of Sennar, the classic study is by Jay Spaulding, The heroic age in Sinnar, East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1985. 88 The Ethiopian envoy, the Armenian Murad, responding to a questionnaire sent him by the Dutch authorities in Batavia that had been prepared by the Orientalist Hiob Ludolph, reported that: ‘The envoy says that this is not 150, but about 70 [sic.] years ago when the emperor banished all of them out of his empire, so that at present not a single Portuguese is to be found in Abyssinia. All have left for the regions of Soenar, where several of them are still living under the Muslims; some still practice the Roman religion, others have adopted Islam’, quoted in Emeri Van Donzel, Foreign relations of Ethiopia, 1642-1700. Documents relating to the Journeys of Khodja Murad, Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-archaeologisch Institut, 1979, 94.

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27

highlands failed to mention their presence.89 With the Burtukan that might have managed to stay in Ethiopia the story was likewise. Hence, when in the end of the eighteenth century the Scotsman James Bruce went to Gondar and travelled extensively across Ethiopia he found no “Portuguese” groups.90 The memory of the Burtukan was not easily erased, though. In the decades that ensued after their migration to Sennar, some local groups and political figures would claim to descend from them. Queen Mentewab (a.k.a. Berhan Mogasa, 1706-1773), a dominant figure during the late Gondarine period, and two dynasties from the southern region of Ennarya, the Sigaro and Sapera, alleged to have Portuguese ancestors.91 The myth of the Ethio-Portuguese also survived in other forms. A large number of the buildings and infrastructure works built during the Gondarine kingdom (1640s to 1760s), mostly built by local workers and Indian and Arab masons, would be identified by European travellers as genuinely Portuguese.92 Even today, the magnificent “Portuguese bridge” over the 89

A compendium of missionary accounts on Sennar appears in Osbert G.S. Crawfurd, The Fung Kingdom of Sennar. With a Geographical Account of the Middle Nile Region, Gloucester: John Bellows Ltd., 1951. 90 Bruce’s narrative was the first lengthy eye-witness account after the demise of the Jesuit mission, James Bruce, Travels to discover the source of the Nile, in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773, Farnborough: Gregg Internat. Publ., 4 vols., 1972 (1790). 91 According to James Bruce, the first to have spoken of Mentewab’s Portuguese blood, she was the granddaughter of one `Victor’, brother of Minas (a reference to Fiqtor, son of Minas?), who was the father of one azmach Robel, Mentewab’s father from a Portuguese woman, Bruce, Travels to discover the sources of the Nile, vol. 2, 611. Now, missionary sources refer to an azmach (a military commander, literally `the one who leads’) called Robel, who helped the Portuguese militia in 1541, but he lived too long before Mentewab to be her ‘grandfather’. However, Portuguese and Jesuit sources also mention one azmach `Reguet Baranda’ who married a Burtukan named Anna and fathered a woman called Aragabo who lived in the 1620s; though still distant in time, this Aragabo lies closer to the period of Queen Mentewab and could thus be one of her alleged Portuguese ancestors; ADB, Legajo 779, doc. 40, 472. On the Sigaro and Sapera, see Antonio Cecchi, Da Zeila alle frontiere del Caffa, Roma: Ermanno Loescher, 1886, 157. 92 The references found in European travel literature to `Portuguese buildings’ in Gondärine Ethiopia are numerous and two may serve to illustrate this point. In the eigheenth century, the Franciscan Remedius Prutky, who had been in Gondär in 1751, described Fasilädäs’s palace as `built in the past by the Portuguese and was well fortified’, Remedius Prutky, Prutky's travels in Ethiopia and other countries, tr. and ed. by J.H. Arrowsmith-Brown and annotated by Richard Pankhurst,

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Abbay, near the Tis Issat Falls, constitutes one of the chief attractions of the country.

Conclusions The history of the Burtukan in Ethiopia represents one of the many histories of mixed-race communities born during the early expansion in the East. Most of the Portuguese who migrated to the East were youngsters and members of the under-class seeking opportunities that their motherland did not offer. Like the members of the lower echelons of the fidalguía, for many of these fellows the migration to the East was the gate to prosperous careers or, more prosaically, as in the case of the new Christians or those fleeing justice, simply a refuge. Christian Ethiopia, or the Preste, as it was often called at the time, became in the sixteenth century one such land of shelter and opportunities. To be sure, half of those who resettled there paid with their lives for their adventurousness, and not a few might have encountered abroad the destitution they thought they had abandoned at home. But a few successful careers are also attested and the century-long activities of the Portuguese militia in the Ethiopian state demonstrate that migration also offered some rewards. In this study, I have benefited from the richness of sources and used prosopographical analysis to reconstruct the dynamics of the Portuguese minority in Ethiopia. Thereby, it has been possible to follow the entire process of genesis, development and disappearance of the Ethio-Portuguese group. Moreover, the paper has focused on some of the main features of the identity of this group as well as the way they integrated into wider Ethiopian society. It has been shown that the Ethio-Portuguese played an important role in the unfolding of the Jesuit mission. Whilst recently this mission has been the focus of increasing attention, the contribution of Ethio-Portuguese to this episode had been hitherto largely neglected. To be sure, for a few decades Jesuits and Burtukan lived in the same places and shared similar goals. The Ethio-Portuguese found in the Jesuit missionaries spiritual guidance and a way to reinforce their ‘Portuguese’ identity. The missionaries, in their turn, enjoyed in the Ethio-Portuguese fellows and in the youth they trained at their schools a valuable pool of aides, associates and followers. Thus, whilst it is hardly conceivable that London: Hakluyt Society, 1991, 173. Similarly, in the next century the Frenchman Raffray, who stayed in Ethiopia from 1873 to 1875, described Gondär as `longtemps la résidence des Atiés et des Raz d’Amarah, qui se plaisaient dans les palais que leur avaient construits les Portugais’, Achille Raffray, Abyssinie: Afrique orientale, Paris: Plon, 1880 (2. ed.), 296.

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the Ethio-Portuguese would have preserved their distinct identity without the arrival of the missionaries, the opposite seems to have occurred too: the mission might not have been able to survive for so many decades and with so few members as it had without the help of the Portuguese group. Moreover, it has been also shown that during the 1610s and 1620s, the most fruitful period for the mission, logistic and apostolic tasks were shared by a number of well-trained and energetic youths, mostly from among the rank of the Ethio-Portuguese. Last but not least, an important political dimension of the EthioPortuguese story, which could only be sketched here, was their integration in the Ethiopian state structure. Like their Portuguese ancestors, the EthioPortuguese became a militia serving the Ethiopian negus. They introduced modern military skills to a backward army and might thus have provided it with a resilience that it did not possess before. Taking this into account, an hypothesis might be made that the Ethio-Portuguese militia contributed to the relative peace that the Ethiopian state endured under their presence. As a matter of fact, from the late sixteenth century to the downfall of the Gondärine kingdom in the late eighteenth century, the Ethiopian state was able to preserve the same territory and centre of power, thus enjoying one of the longest periods of stability in the history of the Solomonid dynasty. A more in depth investigation, such as comparing the Portuguese with other foreign groups that during the same period were active in the Christian Ethiopian state, might shed new light on the contribution of foreigners to stabilizing political power in pre-Gondärine and Gondärine Ethiopia. In addition, a more wide-encompassing and comparative analysis of the different Portuguese comunidades in the East, one which would need to draw on the joint work of different scholars, could elucidate the geopolitical impact Portuguese (and European) diasporas had upon local polities in the Orient.

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Figure 2: Map of Jesuit Residences and Sites with Ethio-Portuguese in Ethiopia, ca. 1545-1670.

  

  

DĂŝŶƚŚŝŽͲWŽƌƚƵŐƵĞƐĞƐĞƚƚůĞŵĞŶƚƐ :ĞƐƵŝƚƌĞƐŝĚĞŶĐĞƐ KƚŚĞƌƐŝƚĞƐ

Early Portuguese Emigration to the Ethiopian Highlands Figure 3. Portuguese Family Trees in Ethiopia 1541-ca. 1650.

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Chapter One

CHAPTER TWO SEEKING THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL TUDOR PARFITT

As Kirti Chaudhuri perceptively remarks, the dialectic of barbarian versus civilised came to the fore in Europe at the time of the Reformation as a useful concept in the war of abuse between Catholic and Protestant.1 In the expansion of this discourse into colonial possessions this everchanging dialectic of ‘us’ and ‘them’ takes on a particular pungency in the attempt to incorporate parts of the savage world into the sacred history of Christendom. One aspect of this was the attempt to locate and construct the lost tribes of the Judeo-Christian tradition in India. * Today, the population of India is around a billion. After China, it is the second most populous nation on earth. The Jewish population of India reached perhaps thirty or forty thousand after the Second World War but today is much less.2 In other words Jews count for a minuscule, a nugatory 1 See K.N. Chaudhuri ‘From the barbarian and the civilized to the dialectics of colour: an archaeology of self-identities’, in Society and ideology : essays in South Asian history presented to Professor K.A. Ballhatchet, Delhi / New York : Oxford University Press, 1993, 23. 2 There are three main divisions of Indian Jewry: the Bene Israel traditionally of the Konkan Coast near Bombay (Mumbai); the Jews of Cochin, and the immigrant community of Iraqi Jews called Baghdadis. These communities have attracted a good deal of scholarly attention. See Judah Ben-Zion Segal, A history of the Jews of Cochin, London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1993; Benjamin J. Israel, The Bene Israel of India, London: Sangam Books, 1984; Thomas Timberg, The Jews of India, Delhi: Vikas, 1986. See also Shalva Weil, Bene Israel Indian Jews in Lod, Israel: A Study of the Persistence of Ethnicity and Ethnic identity, Doctoral thesis defended at the University of Sussex, 1977, 99, 10. Today one would add the Judaising communities of the Shinlung, see Tudor Parfitt, `Tribal Jews’, in Nathan

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fraction of Indians. Why then in The Moor’s Last Sigh a novel set mainly in Bombay should Salman Rushdie use as a figure of baroque, incarnate evil a Jew from Kerala? Why in In an Antique Land should the equally gifted Amitav Ghosh be fascinated by a twelfth-century Jewish merchant, Abraham ben Yiju of Mangalore? A surprising number of other Indian literary works deal with Jews and there is still an interest in comparing the religious systems of India with Judaism.3 India has a dazzling array of problems, of problematics, real and imagined. It is difficult to imagine that the Jews figure prominently among them. And yet they seem to.4 Did Westerners impose a Judaic identity on Indians as they did so frequently elsewhere? At the outset it must be said that for many western travellers the multitudes of India did not immediately evoke the suggestion of a monolithic Judaic ancestry. However, comparisons between Indians and Jews were made with astonishing regularity. As early as the seventeenth century François Bernier, the scholar and traveller, who was in India from 1656-1668 was asked by Melchisédec Thévenot (16201692), a traveller and publisher, to discover if Jews had long been resident in Kashmir. Bernier reported that Jews had once lived here, but that they had converted to Islam. Nonetheless, as he put it: there are many signs of Judaism to be found in this country. On entering the kingdom after crossing the Pire-penjale mountains the inhabitants in the frontier villages struck me as resembling Jews. Their countenance and manner and that indescribable peculiarity which enables a traveller to distinguish the inhabitants of different nations all seemed to belong to that ancient people. You are not to ascribe what I say to mere fancy, the Jewish appearance of these villagers having been remarked by our Jesuit Fathers, and by several other Europeans, long before I visited Kachemire. A second sign is the prevalence of the name of Mousa, which means Moses, among the inhabitants of this city, notwithstanding they are Mahometans. A third is the tradition that Solomon visited this country and that it was he who Katz ed., Indo-judaic studies in the twenty-first century. A view from the margin, New York: Palgrave / Macmillan, 2007, and the Telugu-speaking communities of Andhra Pradesh, which community is the subject of a forthcoming book by Yulia Egorova. There are, in addition, a number of discrete communities known as Banu Yisrail who, while living as Muslims, did not traditionally inter-marry with others and who treasure a tradition that they descend from the Jews of Medina in the Hijaz. According to census data there were 22,480 Jews in India in 1941. See Asha A. Bhende & R. E. Jhirad, Demographic and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Jews in India, Mumbai: Organisation for Educational Resources and Technological Training, 1997, 3. 3 See Ananda, Hindu View of Judaism, New Delhi: APC Publications, 1996. 4 Yulia Egorova, Jews and India. Perception and Image, London: Routledge, 2006.

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opened a passage for the waters by cutting the mountain of Baramoulé. A fourth, the belief that Moses died in the city off Kachemire, and that his tomb is within a league of it. And a fifth may be found in the generally received opinion that the small and extremely ancient edifice seen on one of the high hills was built by Solomon; and it is therefore called the throne of Solomon to this day.5

One of the most striking of the early works devoted to comparisons between Jews and Indians was M. de la Créquinière’s Conformité des coutumes des Indiens orientaux, avec des Juifs et des autres Peuples de l'Antiquité (Conformity of the Customs of the Indians with the Jews and other Peoples of Antiquity) which was published in Brussels in 1704 and the following year in London in a translation of John Toland, the wellknown historian of philosophy and religion. 6 De la Créquinière had spent a number of years in India and paid particular attention to the inland peoples whose traditions had not been overtly affected by contacts with outsiders. His intention was not to throw any particular light on Indian society but rather to 'clarify Antiquity' and especially to cast light on the Bible.7 In other words, he wanted to hold up to the mirror of India Europe’s own religious legacy to see what was reflected in it. Of a number of Jewish customs which were much discussed at the time in intellectual circles in France, one was circumcision. De la Créquinière wrote at length on the subject of circumcision in the context of India.8 In addition to this, de la Créquiniere enumerated many other similarities between the Israelites and the Indians: their ‘enchantments’, funerals, public buildings, their way of eating locusts, their esteem for the arts, their aversion to wine, 5

François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire A.D. 1656-1668, London: Constable, 1891. 6 The English translation by John Toland is The Agreement of the Customs of the East Indians with those of the Jews and other Ancient Peoples, London: Printed for W. Davis, 1705 7 Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1964, 346. 8 One idea was that all the circumcision in the world had started with the Jews. A counter-argument then current had it that the Jews could not have passed the habit of circumcision on to Black Africans on the grounds that it was absolutely necessary for the latter to circumcise in order to have children, but de la Créquinière observed that he himself had seen Blacks in Guinea, America and Asia and 'they are not otherwise made as to these Parts than we are’. Others had argued that the Jews too needed to circumcise to have children, but if so how did they manage for 40 years in the wilderness when they did not circumcise and how about those converts from Judaism who did not circumcise and who had children?

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similar forms of behaviour, their ointments, their sweet-scented waters, their way of fighting, their shared love of washing and extreme cleanliness. In this latter point the Indians 'may dispute with the most scrupulous Pharisees with whom they agree in many things beside'.9 He concluded: The Indians agreed with the Ancients and particularly with the Jews; but one that would Reason like a Pagan would find a far greater Resemblance between these two Nations....the people of Judea and those who dwell in the remotest Countries of the Indies agree very well in their Temper, their Customs and Manner of Governing. First, both of them Lived in Hard Bondage, to which they were so much the more subject, because they lov'd it and even ador'd their Captivity; I mean that of the Law which was the hardest slavery... the learning of both consists only in getting by heart what they say the Gods have done for them; besides, the Books of Morality whose precepts they take care to learn (...) The Jews and Indians have preserved at least in a great measure the Simplicity of the Primitive Ages of the World; which they make appear in the food, their Cloaths; and their Pleasures; wherein they always seek after that which is most Natural; for they love that most which most readily offers itself to their thoughts and most Naturally gratifies their Fancy (…) They practise very punctually all the Rules which the Religion they profess prescribes; and considering that no Man can live independently, but in a manner born for Subjection, they love rather to serve their Gods and submit blindly to their Law than to be Slaves to Caprice and Ambition (...) they never trouble their heads about Novelties but follow their Traffick or exercise themselves in that Trade which they have learn'd from their Fathers.10

This passage then suggests that the passivity, the closeness to nature of Indians, their learning by rote, lack of ambition, their ‘Simplicity of the Primitive Ages of the World’ were similar to what could be perceived in Jews and that both possessed something close to a natural religion. Similarly, the scholarly Catholic missionary, the Abbé Dubois, arrived in India in 1792 where he was first attached to the Pondicherry mission before going to work in the Deccan and the Madras Presidency until 1823 when he returned to France. The bearded Abbé, who travelled around in native dress, knew classical and colloquial Tamil and spent his years in India studying the lives and customs of the Hindus. His research was written up and in 1806 his manuscript was handed to an English officer but remained unpublished until 1816, when it appeared in London under the title Description of the Character, Manners and Customs of the 9

The Agreement of the Customs of the East Indians, 132,136-140. The Agreement of the Customs of the East Indians, 19.

10

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People of India and of their Institutions Religious and Civil. Whereas the Abbé did not believe that Hinduism derived from Judaism, like de la Créquiniere he noted: 'Many passages in the Hindu sacred writings recall the rules which the law of Moses laid down for the children of Israel concerning the various kinds of defilements, real and technical (...) It is in fact impossible to deny that there are many striking points of resemblance between Jewish and Hindu customs.' 11 Such comparisons continued. C. T. E. Rhenius, for instance, who was sent by the English Church Missionary Society to South India in 1813, noted that: 'the Vishnu and Siva sects and religious worship exhibit a strong likeness to the Jewish dispensation'.12 Similarly the Brahmin caste was perceived by many as having specifically Jewish attributes. As R. Lovett wrote in his History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895 of the Brahmins: 'Each is an infallible pope in his own sphere. The Brahman is the exclusive and Pharisaic Jew of India'.13 Explanations of the origin of the Brahmins often followed this path. According to some, high-caste Hindus were actually Scythians and as such probable descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. One English writer, G. Moore, the author of a book on the Lost Tribes, which was published in 1861 ‘transcribed’ Indian inscriptions into Hebrew in order to prove this contention. According to Moore, Buddhism was a fraudulent development of Judaism which had been brought to India intact by the Lost Tribes.14 Claudius Buchanan, one-time vice-provost of the college of Fort William in Bengal and a member of the Asiatic Society, like others before him was inclined to the fairly popular view that Hinduism had borrowed substantially from Judaism in ancient times: suggestions that the opposite might be the case he dismissed furiously. 15 He held fairly sober views on 11

Abbé J. A. Dubois Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, ed. Henry Beauchamp Oxford: Clarendon Press, 3rd ed., 1906, 198-9 (this is an edition of a later improved version carried out by the Abbé). 12 Johann Rhenius, Memoir of the Rev. C.T.E. Rhenius, London, James Nisbet & Co, 1841, 71. I am indebted to Yulia Egorova for bringing this reference to my attention. 13 Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895, London: Oxford University Press, 1902, ii, 24; John Adam, Memoir of John Adam, Late Missionary of Calcutta, London: J. Cross, 1833, 225. 14 George Moore, Lost Tribes: with new views of Buddhism, and translations of rock-records in India, London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861, 143-60. 15 Claudius Buchanan, Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India, London: printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812, 150-1. I am indebted to Yulia Egorova for bringing this reference to my attention.

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the issue of the Lost Tribes. For instance, he maintained that ‘the greater part of the Ten Tribes which now exist are to be found in the countries of their first captivity’. Nonetheless he, too, believed that many of the populations in Afghanistan, Bokhara and Kashmir were of Jewish descent.16 A key thinker in the evolution of the discourse which linked Jews and India was Godfrey Higgins (1772-1833) whose chief works were Horae Sabbaticae (London, 1826), which examined the origins of the Sabbath, An Apology for the Life and Character of Mahommed (London, 1829), The Celtic Druids or An Attempt to show that The Druids were the Priests of Oriental Colonies Who Emigrated from India; and were the Introducers of the First or Cadmean System of Letters, and the Builders of Stonehenge, of Carnac, and of Other Cyclopean Works, in Asia and Europe. (London, 1827), and Anacalypsis - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis; or an Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions (London, 1833-36).17 Godfrey Higgins, a contemporary of Lord Kingsborough, was quite a remarkable man and is still evoked regularly by Theosophists, seekers of the Holy Grail, Lost Tribes enthusiasts, Afrocentrists, Hebrew Israelites and various esoteric sects. Higgins studied Law at Cambridge, before joining the Volunteer Corps when it seemed that Napoleon would invade England, and was promoted to Major in the 3rd West York Militia in 1808. Appointed Justice of the Peace in the West Riding of Yorkshire, he used his position to expose the appalling treatment of ‘pauper lunatics’. At the same time he campaigned for the reform of Parliament, was opposed to excessive taxation, resisted the Corn Laws and fought against the exploitation of child labour. But it was as a religious thinker and student of comparative religion that he was to make his greatest mark. He became a member of the Society of Arts, the British Association for the Advancement of Science and other learned bodies and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the origin of religious phenomena. In the preface to the 1829 edition of his book on the Druids, he stated that he was preparing a new work which would review 'all the ancient Mythologies of the world, which, however varied, and corrupted in recent times, were originally one, and that one founded on principles sublime, beautiful, and true.' He posited that there were ancient civilisations 16

Claudius Buchanan, Christian Researches in Asia: with notices of the translation of the Scriptures into the Oriental Languages, London: printed by G. Sidney for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1811. 17 Anacalypsis was first published in London in an edition of two hundred copies. It was partially reprinted in 1878, and in full in an edition of three hundred and fifty copies in 1927. In 1965 it was reprinted in full in an edition of 1,000 copies by University Books, New York.

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that had acquired superior religious knowledge, much of which has since been lost, and that all religions have an universal origin. He was struck by the ‘absolute ignorance displayed in the writings of the ancients, of the true nature of their history, their religious mythology, and, in short of every thing relating to their antiquities.’ He, by contrast, was convinced that ‘there was a secret science possessed somewhere, which must have been guarded by the most solemn oaths. And though I may be laughed at by those who inquire not deeply into the origin of things for saying it, yet I cannot help suspecting that there is still a secret doctrine known only in the deep recesses, the crypts, of Tibet, St. Peter's and the Kremlin.' 18 Convinced that Hebrew place names were to be found all over India Higgins ridiculed the idea ‘that the old Jewish names of places have been given by the modern Saracens or Turks’.19 In proof of this he observed that when the first Muslim conquerors arrived at Lahore they already found that the name of the Hindu prince defending the city was ‘Daood or David.’ 20 However the great cities of India ‘Agra, Delhi, Oude, Mundore, etc., which have many of them been much larger than London’ can hardly have been built, all of them, by ‘the little Jewish mountain tribe (the "Lost Tribes")’. The only way of accounting for them and other features of India was “the supposition that there was in very ancient times one universal superstition, which was carried all over the world by emigrating tribes, and that they were originally from Upper India”.21 The Jews, specifically the Tribe of Judah thus originated in India: the natives of Cashmere as well as those of Afghanistan, pretending to be descended from the Jews, give pedigrees of their kings reigning in their present country up to the sun and the moon, and along with this, they shew you the Temples still standing, built by Solomon, statues of Noah, and other Jewish Patriarchs...the traditions of the Afghans tell them, that they are descended from the tribe of Ioudi or Yuda, and in this they are right, for it is the tribe of Joudi noticed by Eusebius to have existed before the Son of Jacob in Western Syria was born, the Joudi of Oude, and from which tribe the Western Jews with the Brahmin (Abraham) descended and migrated…..22 Similarly ‘in the valley of Cashmere, on a hill close to the lake, are the ruins of a temple of Solomon. The history states that Solomon, 18

Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis; or an Inquiry into the Origin of languages, Nations and Religions, London: Longman, Orme, Rees, Browne, Green and Longman, 1833-36, vol.1, 50. 19 Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol.1, 438. 20 Ibid., vol. 1, 432. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., vol.1,740

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Chapter Two finding the valley all covered with water except this hill, which was an island, opened the passage in the mountains and let most of it out, thus giving to Cashmere its beautiful plains. The temple which is built on the hill is called Tucht Suliman….Afterwards Forster says, 'Previously to the Mahometan conquest of India, Kashmir was celebrated for the learning of the Brahmins and the magnificent construction of its temple.' Now what am I to make of this? Were these Brahmans Jews, or the Jews Brahmins? 23

India and the surrounding countries thus became a rich hunting ground for remote Jewish communities and continue so to be. Behind most speculation on the subject lurks the old idea that the Lost Tribes may have reached India in remote times. This discourse is clearly rooted in mediaeval thought on the subject. John Mandeville, for one, claimed that the Lost Tribes were to be found in mountain valleys in a distant land beyond Cathay ‘toward the high Ind and toward Bacharia’.24 Specific Lost Tribes were supposed to have spread throughout the surrounding area as well. Godbey mentions the Keralan tradition that the tribe of Menasseh was sent East by Nebuchadnezzar and that many of them spread through India and the surrounding countries.25 Afghanistan was one of the favoured supposed homes of the Lost Tribes. According to Afghani belief, the Afghan people were banished by Nebuchadnezzar into the mountains of Ghur where they maintained a relationship with the Jews of Arabia. When some of the Arabian Jews converted to Islam one of their number – a certain Khaled – wrote to the Afghans and invited them to convert to Islam. A number of Afghan notables arrived in Arabia under a leader who traced his descent back forty-six generations to King Saul. Muhammad greeted him with the deferential title malik or ‘king’: At the end of the nineteenth century the leading families of Afghanistan still claimed descent from the man so honoured by the prophet and the Afghanis’ claim to be of Israelite descent

23

Ibid., vol.1, 771. On Higgins and his influence on theosophy, see Leslie Shepard `The ‘Anacalypsis’ of Godfrey Higgins, precursor of H.P.B.’, in Theosophical History, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July 1985), 46 ff. 24 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The version of the Cotton Manuscript in Modern Spelling, London / New York : Macmillan Company, 1900, ch. XXIX “Of the Countries and Isles that be beyond the Land of Cathay; and of the fruits there”. 25 Allen H. Godbey, The lost Tribes a Myth - suggestions towards Rewriting Hebrew History, Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1930, 372; Joseph Wolff, Narrative of a mission to Bokhara in the years 1843-1845 to ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Capt. Connolly, London: John W. Parker, 1845, vol. 1, 283.

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is accepted by the majority of Muslim writers as well as by many others.26 Buchanan noted “the tribes of the Affghan race are very numerous, and of different castes; and it is probable, that the proportion which is of Jewish descent is not great. The Affghan nations extend on both sides of India (…) some tribes have the countenance of the Persian, and some of the Hindoo; and some tribes are evidently of Jewish extraction”. In the case of Bokhara, Buchanan seemed to think there was firmer ground for speculation. With Giles Fletcher's well-known book The Tartars Or, Ten Tribes (1609-11) in mind he observed: This is the country which Dr. Giles Fletcher who was Envoy of Queen Elizabeth at the Court of Muscovy assigned as the principal residence of the descendants of the Ten Tribes. He argues from their place , from the name of their cities, from their language, which contains Hebrew and Chaldaic words, and from their peculiar rites, which are Jewish. Their principal city Samarkand is pronounced Samarchian, which Dr.Fletcher thinks might be a name given by the Israelites after their own Samaria in Palestine.

It is worth noting that this is apparently what the Bukharan Jews thought too: Joseph Wolff, another Lost Tribes hunter whom we have mentioned above, reported: “the Jews in Bokhara are 10,000 in number. The Chief Rabbi assured me that Bokhara is the Habor and Balkh the Halah of II Kings:17:6”. Wolff was also told that in the heights of the Hindu Cush the tribes of Naphtali, Dan, Zebulun and Asher were still to be found and that they still knew the Shma Yisrael. 27 Wolff also found traces of the Lost Tribes in Afghanistan. “Some Affghauns”, he wrote, “claim a descent from Israel. According to them, Affghaun was the nephew of Asaph, the son of Berachia, who built the Temple of Solomon. The descendants of this Affghaun, being Jews, were carried into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, from whence they were removed to the mountains of Ghoree in Affghanistan, but in the time of Mohammed turned Mohammedan”.28 And local experts supported him: a certain Captain Riley, according to Wolff “the best Arabic scholar in India (...) looked on the Affghauns as of Jewish descent”.29 In Peshawar, Wolff found traces of 26

George Moore, The lost tribes and the Saxons of the East and West with new views on Buddhism and translations of rock-records in India, London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861, 143-60. 27 Wolff, Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, vol. 1, 14; Joseph Wolff, Travels and Adventures, London: Saunders, Otley, 1861, vol. 2, 15. 28 Wolff, Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, vol. 1, 16. 29 Wolff, Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara , vol. 1, 19.

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Israelite descent among the 'Kaffre Seeah Poosh' and as he noted “some of the learned Jews of Samarkand are of my opinion”.30 By the end of the eighteenth century, this view was widespread. In 1799 Charles Crawford located some of the lost tribes in Afghanistan citing “the best Persian historians”, some lived among the Tartars “who boast of their descent from the Jews” ('the Tartars have a town called Jericho') while the name ‘Samarkand’ (in the vicinity of which town were to be found a Mount Zion and a River Jordan) he too took to be a corruption of Samaria. Missionaries had reported back that not only were the inhabitants of these areas Jews but that in Tartary there were to be found people who spoke a language similar to that of some American Indians - of course also Lost Tribes.31 John Chamberlain, a Baptist missionary in India in the second decade of the nineteenth century, was quite convinced the Ten Tribes were to be found in the vicinity of Afghanistan. He noted: I find there are many of the Ten Tribes towards Kandahar. Many of the Afghans are undoubtedly of the race of Abraham. One person I saw at Delhi had all the appearance of an Israelite, and on asking him whether he was not a son of Israel he confessed, ‘I am’. They are now become Musulmans; but have not forgotten that their progenitors were the sons of Israel…’ 32

In fact, throughout the nineteenth century the idea that the Afghans were of Jewish descent was commonplace in Christian circles: the missionaries Carey and Marshman, Sir Alexander Barnes and Sir William Jones, the Sanskrit scholar and member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, are all mentioned as espousing this view,33 and this in turn gave further credence to the idea.34 In 1840, in a long pamphlet entitled An appeal on Behalf of the Jews Scattered in India, Persia and Arabia, the Jewish convert to Christianity the missionary J. Samuel announced that in the area 30

Woff, Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, vol. 1, 17. Charles Crawford, An Essay upon the Propagation of the Gospel, Philadelphia: Printed by J. Gales, 1799, 18-19. 32 William Yates, Memoirs of Mr. John Chamberlain late Missionary in India, Calcutta: printed at the Baptist Mission Press, 1824, 395. 33 William T. Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews 1809-1908, London: London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, 1908, 198. 34 Elias Boudinot, A Star in the West or a Humble attempt to discover the long Lost Tribes of Israel preparatory to their return to their beloved city, Jerusalem Trenton, New Jersey: Fenton, Hutchinson & Dunham, 1816, 30-31. 31

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of Afghanistan there was a 'population of many hundred thousand Jews descendants of the Twelve Tribes just “waiting to be converted”.35 Some of these Indian and Central Asian Lost Tribes were spotted in Europe. In 1833, the Anglo-Germanic Advertiser reported that: the Lost Ten Tribes of the Jews have been found in Li Bucharia, some of them attending the last Leipsic fair as shawl manufacturers. They speak in Thibet the Hebrew language, are Idolaters, but believe in the Messiah, and their restoration to Jerusalem; they are supposed to consist of ten millions, keep the Kipour, and do not like white Jews, and call out like the other tribes, “Hear, O God of Israel, there is but one God”, are circumcised, and have a Reader and Elders.

The notion that the Afghans were of Jewish extraction became even more widespread and is still popular. In 1928 as the Boston Herald (27th April 1928) noted, a controversy was caused by: the visit of the King and Queen of Afghanistan to England, over the socalled Jewish origin of the Afghan people (...) As to the Afghans, quite a number of British officers well acquainted with them are said to be strong believers in the Hebrew theory. And what of the evidence its favour? One thing which travellers sometimes tell us after investigation on the spot is that nearly all the Afghan women and many of the men are “of a distinctly Jewish cast of countenance” and that a large number of them have JewishChristian names, such as Ibrahim for Abraham, Ayub for Job, Daoud for David, for Job, Ismail for Ishmael, Ishak for Isaac, Yohia for John, Yakub for Jacob and Suleiman for Solomon. The Afghans, moreover, are known to recognise a common code of unwritten law which appears to resemble the old Hebraic law, though it has been modified by Mohammedan ordinances (…) And eager as are the subjects of the King of Afghanistan to claim Hebrew descent there is little likelihood of them joining the Zionist movement or swelling the twentieth century migration to the Holy Land.36

Rabbi Avraham Hacohen, formerly the head of the Jewish community in the Afghan city of Harath, has recalled hearing the former Afghani king Habib Allah proclaim that he was derived from the Israelite tribe of Benjamin. An Afghani Jewish immigrant to Israel similarly remembered King Habib Allah riding around Harath on horseback. When he was 35 Jacob Samuel, An appeal on behalf of the Jews scattered in India, Persia and Arabia, London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1840, 8. 36 See J. Reit and M. Weis to the Afghan Minister Fhuja-ud-Daula 2.ii.1928, Faitlovitch Collection (Tel Aviv University), file 117. I am grateful to Professor Emanuela Trevisan Semi for this reference.

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greeted by representatives of the Jewish community of the city the king asked the Jews which tribe of Israel they belonged to. Abashed they answered that they did not remember. Habib replied ‘Well we do know. We, the Mahmad Zei family, are all descendants of the tribe of Benjamin from the seed of King Saul, from the sons of Yonatan Afghan and Pithon’. This is the claim of many Pashtun elders to this day: they are the descended, they say, from Pithon of the tribe of Benjamin, a greatgrandson of King Saul, who is mentioned among a list of hundreds of names chronicling the descendants of the Twelve Tribes (Chronicles I 8:35). We know no more of him. Support for the identification of the Pathans as Israelites in Afghanistan and elsewhere was also given by Isaac Ben Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel. Among other things, he noted that all Pathans acknowledge an oral constitution known as Pushtun-Wally which he claimed closely resembles Hebrew law.37 Today the Pathans of Western Pakistan and Afghanistan are widely believed to be of Israelite extraction and even more widely since the showing of a TV documentary in the United States by the Emmy awardwinning film maker Simcha Jacobovici in the spring of 2000. In 1993 the Jerusalem Report, a relatively sober Israeli periodical, noted that in many respects the Pathans are among the more serious of Lost Tribes claimants: Numbering at least 15 million, the Sunni Muslim Pathans live on both sides of the Afghani-Pakastani border (and as far east as Indian Kashmir) where part of the 10 tribes are believed to have settled. Indeed, the names of Pathan sub-tribes seem to echo those of the Israelite tribes: Rabani (Reuven), Shinwari (Shimon), Daftani (Naftali), Ashuri (Asher), Yusuf-sai (sons of Yosef).The mostly illiterate Pathans have a centuries-old tradition of Israelite ancestry, and some still call themselves "Bani Israel," the children of Israel. A retired Pathan diplomat living in the U.S. is translating a book on basic Judaism into Pashtu, the Pathan language, which the Amishav group plans to distribute among educated Pathans.

With the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, interest in the Pathans increased overnight. A virulent, medieval hatred of Israel and more widely of Jews underlay a good deal of the resentments of Usamah bin-Laden and al-Qaedah’s ideologues. It was somewhat paradoxical then that the sixteen million strong Pathans so long suspected of being Jewish themselves were the great supporters of al-Qaedah. According to 37

Itzhak Ben Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed, the strange Jewish `tribes’ of the Orient, Philadelphia: s.n., 1958, 216.

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the Pashtun they are the real Afghanis: the others – particularly the Uzbeks and Tajiks – are rank outsiders who have perfectly good homelands elsewhere. The Pashtun who are to be found in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan see themselves as a superior group: and one of the things that sets them apart is their belief that they are descended from the Jews of old. The Pathans have a centuries-old tradition of Israelite ancestry. Pashtun separatists who aspire to an independent Pushtunistan (otherwise called Pakhtunistan or Pakhtoonistan) who have been active for the last fifty years make particular play of their proud descent from Abraham and Isaac. and to this day some call themselves Bani Israel, the Children of Israel The Kulanu list-serve carried many communications on the Pathans most of them sympathetic. In the charged climate after the attacks many feared for the safety of the Pathans and expressed a kind of fraternal solidarity with them. The President of Kulanu, Jack Zeller, observed: ‘I would hope that a Kulanu inclination would be to greet ever Pathan with sincere warmth, if only to make up for neglect and denial that is not without pain.’ Another contributor observed: ‘In spite of the fact that the Pathans are not Jewish in the modern sense of the term, we are still their brothers, and it hurts me deeply that they have joined our most bitter and implacable enemies.’ The suggestion that the Pathans are of Jewish origin may have had had some impact on recent events. It has been suggested for instance that because of this ancient tradition, the Taliban – mainly Pashtun – were not as opposed to Israel as other Islamists and that in this respect a rift existed between the Pashtuns and their Arab ‘guests’.38 The supposed Israelite origins of the Pashtun were well known in the area. A Northern Alliance commander quoted recently in the New York Russianlanguage newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo spoke of the Pashtun in the crudest anti-Semitic terms. And other voices were raised against the ‘Jewish’ Pathans in which anti-Semitic rhetoric was present. As one Muslim contributor to an internet site has put it: May Allah ruin the homes of the Pathans and their Punjabi masters because I know from experience that the Pathan race is wretched in its entirety. They are a cursed, Jewish-natured lot. Point out one good Pathan out of the more than 11 million of the Khar population that resides in North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. They are all traitors (…) They are either servant of the Punjabis or they are Kafir and anti-Islam (…) When 38

The suggestion has been made that the Taliban, conscious of their ‘Israelite’ origins do not engage in anti-Israeli rhetoric to the same extent as other Islamist groups. See http://www.kulanu.org/india/index.php (URL accessed 18 September, 2011).

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Chapter Two Afghans find the opportunity, they should slit the throat of every Pathan they can lay their hands on. A good Pathan is a dead Pathan. Let Allah sort out the good from the bad.

One Jewish response to this was that ‘The Israelite Pathans need our help in the face of hostile anti-semitic opposition to their own self-identity. They have tried a couple times to break free of Pakistan (…) but this has not yet come to fruition.39 It may be added that in Pakistan there is a virulent strain of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist sentiment. In some cases India is perceived as being in direct collaboration with Israel to the detriment of Pakistan and Muslim throughout the world.40 One Pakistani author concludes a political pamphlet with the ringing denunciation: “The mentality of leaders in both countries (India and Israel TVP) is the same. Having studied the mental make-up of the leaders in India and Israel one starts wondering if ‘Aryan Brahmins’ now ruling India are not one of the “lost tribes” of the Jews.”41 Amishav, the Israeli organisation dedicated to the finding and rehabilitation of the Lost Tribes, organised an expedition to visit the Pathans as well as the Kashmiris in 1982. One of the delegates was a young rabbinical student called Henry Noach, a descendant of the illustrious Manuel Noah (1785-1851) who had been such a strong supporter of the Israelites in America theory. According to the Jerusalem Report: ‘While visiting the Kashmiri national museum, Noach met its director, Prof. F.M. Hassnain, who asked the young tourist where he was from. Noach replied that he'd come from Jerusalem looking for traces of the 10 tribes. Hassnain became visibly excited. "I've waited for you for 30 years!" he said, explaining that he'd written a book tracing the Israelite origins of the 5 million Kashmiri Sunni Muslims.’ And indeed the claim to be of Israelite extraction is widespread among Kashmiris, who point to the similarity of place names which appear to reflect Biblical names like Mamre, Pisgah and Mt. Nevo. The internet is not deficient in web pages which purport to show historical connections between India and the Jews, India and Jesus, who is alleged to have gone there, the identical nature of Hebrew and Sanskrit and so forth. On one such website a certain Gene D. Matlock unwittingly follows in the path of Daniel Defoe, who had claimed a connection between Hebrew and the languages of the 'Subjects of the Great Mogul, that is to say, in 40

See, for example, Muhammad Hamid, The Unholy Alliance, Indo-Israel Collaboration against the Muslim World, Lahore: Islamic Book Centre, 1978. 41 Mohammed Tayab, Indo-Israel Relations: A study of Indo-Israel Collusion against the Arab World, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1974, 35.

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that Part of the World we call more properly India’.42 Matlock more specifically believes that Sanskrit is Hebrew and quotes ‘part of his complete manuscript showing the global influence of ancient India's culture and language’. He shows that Judaism started in India and points to the presence of a vast number of Hebrew and Biblical place names scattered throughout India (these include ‘ancient Seuna-Desa (Zion Land) in what is now Maharashtra (…) the city of Paithan, on the banks of the river Godivari (…) The Indo-Hebrews named the part of the river passing through Paithan's territory Paithan (Pison, Phison ) the city of Satana (…) According to the legends of the Yadavas (Indo-Hebrews), Satana would have made the folks in Sodom and Gomorah envious…..’.) Gene D. Matlock concludes ‘The truth about the origins of the Hebrews has been screaming in our faces for thousands of years, but our benumbed minds have chosen not to hear it.’ Jews were not immune to Lost Tribes enthusiasms in the sub-continent. In 1883 a young Sephardi Jew Isaac Hayyim Barukh armed with a letter to the Sons of Moses, like so many of his predecessors, set off from Tiberias and in 1886 arrived in Calcutta. In an article in a Jewish JudeoArabic paper called Ha-Perah - a publication of the Indian Baghdadi community - he exlained that he was an emissary from the Holy Land and that he was seeking the Sons of Moses who live beyond the Sambatyon. The same year he published a further announcement in the paper namely that in Tibet and on the way to Tibet he had discovered traces of the Sons of Moses. In 1885 he was in Bombay where he founded an organisation 'the Society of the Founders of the Flag of Israel' and a couple of shortlived journals. The society helped to fund a further mission to find the Sons of Moses but unfortunately the Jew from Tiberias was stopped by the British on the borders of India and was forced to return to Bombay. In a farewell article in Ha-Perah he denounced the British authorities who he said had deliberately aborted his mission because for their own inscrutable reasons they wanted “to put off the Redemption of Israel”. 43 Tibet continued to offer scope for speculation. A further theory noted in 1904 by the Israel’s Messenger and first put forward by an American J. 42

http://www.viewzone.com/matlock.html (URL accessed on 1 August 2011); Daniel Defoe, Essay upon Literature or an Enquiry into the Antiquity and Original of Letters Proving that the Two Tables written by the Finger of God in Mount Sinai was the first Writing in the World and that all other Alphabets derive from the Hebrew , London: printed for Tho. Bowles; John Clark; and John Bowles, 1726, 77. 43 Abraham Ya'ari, Sheluhei Eretz Yisrael, Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav .ҕXNҕ, 1950, 150.

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D. Eisenstein had it that the Luz of the Book of Judges was none other than the Tibetan capital Lhasa. The newspaper commented 'Mr Eisenstein quotes the Talmud to the following effect: “It is the same Luz where Sennacherib ascended but could not disturb it nor could Nebuchadnezzar destroy it. It is the same Luz where the Angel of Death never predominated. ‘What did they do with aged?’ They took them outside of the city walls, where they died”. The city was therefore distinguished for its impregnability and for the longevity, or, rather immortality, of its inhabitants. The former qualification is undoubtedly descriptive of the city of the Dalai Lama’.44 The Benei Israel community of Western India shared many of these ideas. A Bombay Jewish journal noted in 1898 that the discoveries of a Hungarian Jew, a certain Dr.Stein, an Orientalist who for some time occupied the chair in Sanskrit at the University of Budapest, would “finally settle the descent of the Afghans from the Ten Tribes. The Afghans themselves believe in the Israelite descent and call themselves Bene Israel. Circumcision is said to have existed among the Afghans before their conversion to Mahomedanism in the first century of the Mahomedan era, and they still maintain the old customs prevalent in Israel of yore, such as the punishment of stoning and the obligation of marrying a deceased brother’s widow. There are many inscriptions in Afghanistan and the surrounding country in the so-called Arian or Bactrian language which, when transliterated into the Hebrew language, make good sense and defy interpretation otherwise”.45 This notion had become sufficiently anchored in Jewish thought that by 1926 Jacques Faitlovitch the activist for the so-called Black Jews of Ethiopia, the Falashas, had tried to persuade the American Pro-Falasha Committee to send a mission to Afghanistan to study the Jewish element in its population.46 One of the most obvious candidates for membership of the Lost Tribes was the community of Bene Israel itself. Israel ben Joseph Benjamin (1818-1864), the Rumanian Jewish traveller, otherwise known as Benjamin the Second (a somewhat self-serving nod in the direction of Benjamin of Tudela the great twelfth-century Jewish traveller) left a somewhat confused account of the Lost Tribes in India in his well-known

44

Israel’s Messenger, vol. 1, no. 16, 18 November, 1904. I am grateful to Yulia Egorova for bringing this reference to my attention 45 The Bene Israelite, vol.5, Monday, 31 January, 1898. 46 See J. Reit and M. Weis to the Afghan Minister Fhuja-ud-Daula 2.ii.1928 Faitlovitch Collection, file 117.

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book Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846-1855. The Bene Israel – otherwise, according to him known as the White Jews, lived in the: East Indies since the remotest ages. I have the firm belief and do not consider it difficult to prove, that the Bene-Israel are not only real Jews, but are likewise lineal descendants of the Ten Tribes, who in the time of Hoshea, the last king of Israel, were carried into exile by the Assyrians to Halah, Nabor, the shores of the Ganges, and the cities of the Medes (…) The river Gozen, mentioned in the Bible, is according to the assertion of the Bene-Israel, no other than the Ganges which flows through India, on the shores of which this tribe dwells in great numbers. The Indian word “Ganges” contains all the letters of the Hebrew word “Goshen” (…) it is known that the Ganges has its rise in Upper Thibet, a country bordering on the kingdom of Cabul (…) The Jews, who travelled through the desert, have as it were, left a trace of their passage behind them; for several brethren remained there, whose descendants exist to the present day.

According to Benjamin II, the Bene Israel once owned a chronicle which had covered their history until the time of their arrival in India. However, on account of “the many wars they had with Europeans, with regard to their occupation of the country, this chronicle was lost, the Bene Israel being forced always to flee from one province to another”. Benjamin also brings the famous Cochin Jewish community into his record of Lost Tribes in India although he gives no evidence for their origin and also of the Canarins of the Malabar coast who, says Benjamin, “appropriated to themselves a great many Jewish practices”.47 In the same vein, in 1899 an article from the Jewish Chronicle quoted in The Bene Israelite (a Bene Israel Bombay newspaper) noted that in general the Bene Israel indignantly reject the title of ‘Jew’. The article observed that the German Jewish orientalist, Dr.Gustav Oppert (1836-1906), who held the chair in Sanskrit at the University of Madras before taking up a teaching post in Berlin in 1894, “is of opinion that they are survivors of the Lost Ten Tribes, that were made Assyrian captives. Other reasons in support of this belief are the absence till recently of the Torah from their ritual, and that they did not possess the later books of the Hebrew canon”.48 In India today there are still a number of groups who claim descent from the Lost Tribes of Israel or from some other distant and venerable Jewish community. There are small and ancient Muslim communities throughout India and Pakistan who call themselves Banu Israil and claim 47

Israel J. Benjamin, Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846-1855, Hanover: the author, 1863, 176ff. 48 The Bene Israelite, Bombay, 7 June, 1899, vol. 6, no.2-3.

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descent from the ancient Jewish communities of Medina. There is a Christian community called the Kenanaya centred in Kottayam in Kerala which claims descent from Jews: one or two members of the community have even converted to Judaism in recent times. And in Andhra Pradesh there are two small communities together numbering five or six hundred members who believe that they are the remnant of the Lost Tribe of Ephraim, learn Hebrew and practise a sort of Judaism. None of these groups has attracted much if any international attention. The Bene Israel community of west India who at one time attracted a good deal of attention are no longer the focus of international interest as likely claimants to the mantle of the Lost Tribes of Israel. That has passed to another, much larger group, drawn from the Mizo, Kuki and Chin peoples on the other side of India, in the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram on the Burma frontier. This group, usually known as the Bene Menashe – or Sons of Manasseh – numbers some 10.000 hard-core adherents although there are a large but uncertain number of others who cherish an idea of Israelite descent. Of these 10.000, 2.000 have emigrated to Israel over the last decade, where the Israeli Rabbinate has proclaimed them descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The discourse surrounding Lost Tribes in India and the Indian Ocean is still alive and kicking and has some way to go.

CHAPTER THREE NAGASAKI: A CHRISTIAN PORT IN THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN JOÃO PAULO OLIVEIRA E COSTA

When the Portuguese arrived in Japan in 1543, commerce was the first thing that linked them to the Japanese. After that, relations intensified with the intervention of missionaries and the cultural impact of the newly arrived `southern barbarians’ (nambanjin). They brought innumerable techniques and know-how, which gave the Japanese a real knowledge of the planet in which they lived, but which they were practically ignorant of. In the first years, the merchants settled in various ports of Kyushu island, the southernmost of the four large isles of the archipelago and the most propitious for avoiding the civil war that tore the country apart for almost a century. After various experiences, the Portuguese converged systematically on the port of Hirado, on the western coast of the island. The local lord or daimyo, Matsuura Takanobu, immediately promised to convert to Christianity and even allowed Jesuits to open a mission, in 1555. In the meantime, Portuguese clergy (religiosos) had already converted Koteada Yasutsune António, the daimyo’s principal vassal. By 1557 there were already around 1300 Christians, and Yasutsune showed himself to be very full of zeal and even intolerant with respect to other religions. The daimyo meanwhile feared the influence of the Church and expelled the missionaries in the same year. To the despair of the Jesuits, the trading vessels that arrived continued to ask for Hirado. As the Jesuits wished for the terminus of the Chinese-Japanese trade to also be a base for a mission, they sought an alternative to satisfy both parties. In 1562, the annual trading ship (nau de trato) switched from Hirado to Yokoseura, the first Christian port in Japan. This was a small bay situated in the lands of Omura Sumitada Bartolomeu, the first Christian daimyo, who was

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baptised the next year. Too close to areas dominated by Sumitada’s enemies, Yokoseura was razed in 1563, but the nambanjin did not return to Hirado; over the next few years, they used various ports of the Omura littoral. Their experiences between 1564-1569 were not satisfactory and so a deep and narrow bay was sought out in the neighbourhood of Fukuda, the port where in 1565 Portuguese artillery annihilated Matsuura’s attempted retaliation. In 1569, Portuguese pilots and a Jesuit, Melchio Figueiredo, carefully observed the water flow in this bay and decided that it was deep enough for the kurofune, the great ‘Black Ship’ that annually linked Macao to Japan. Beyond this, it was situated at the southernmost extremity of Omura, far from their enemies and close to the regions where other Christian communities flourished, namely the Amakusa archipelago and the Shimabara peninsula. Protected from typhoons by the lengthy (naga) cape (saki), this seemed to be an ideal anchorage point. At the end of the bay, some fishermens’ shacks existed and a small fortress was built on a nearby hill, where one of the first vassals of Sumitada, Nagasaki Jinsaemon Sumikage Bernardo settled, who also was baptised in 1563. The land, suitably trapped in by the mountains and with difficult and wearisome overland connections with the rest of the island, was not suited to the development of large-scale commerce, but the goodwill of the Portuguese merchants overcame Japanese tradition and reserve. In 1570, the nau de trato anchored in Nagasaki bay and in the following spring the first neighbourhoods of the new city were built. In this way, the city that came to constitute the most remote limit of the commercial networks controlled by the Portuguese came into being. From the outset, the city was almost exclusively populated by Christians, becoming one of the principal bases of the Jesuits; beyond this, it came to also be the radiating nucleus of the nanban bunka, the culture of the nanbanjin or `southern barbarians’. Thirty years later, on 14 August 1606, the situation had changed. The civil war that had ravaged the Japanese Empire had ended, and Tokugawa Ieyasu was in power. He had seized the country in the summer of 1600, after the Battle of Sekigahara. Later he had himself named Shogun in 1603 and two years later, he transferred the title to his son Tokugawa Hidetada, which allowed power to continue to be held within the embrace of his own family. Christianity meanwhile was now followed by more than 300.000 people, but since 1587 was opposed by the state. Ieyasu tolerated the presence of the Church, but on taking power had made it clear that the ecclesiastic presence depended on his will. The city of Nagasaki felt this change, since in 1587 it no longer belonged to the Omura fief, but passed

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under direct government control of the state. The local administrators were all Christians but above them was the bugyo, the governor named by central power who did not in the meantime reside in the city. The post was occupied by Ogasawara Ichian, with whom the clerics had excellent relations. Nagasaki was thus the principal base for the Christians and continued to be the port of the kurufune. It really was an exotic city in its Japanese context, since daily life was greatly influenced by lifestyles imported from abroad. At the same time, Nagasaki did not stop being a Japanese city. Founded by the Portuguese, Nagasaki was now visited by merchants of other nationalities, and the calm waters of the bay became a bustling entrepôt. Chinese junks predominated, since for five or six years merchants from Fujian came here, and their numbers rose rapidly, just as Nagasaki remained the easternmost terminal of their commercial activities. Ships from the continent joined those from the Philippines which, for a decade had been an active partner with Nagasaki and other Japanese ports. At times, other ships from Cochinchina and Siam arrived. Japanese merchants must be added to this list. This was a rare era in which Japanese merchants were allowed to trade with the continent; the shogun conceded the famous vermilion seals, and Nagasaki was the principal port from which they sailed. Around the city, various shipyards sprang up where indigenous shipping techniques were perfected with the teaching of men who had sailed across half the world to arrive there. A cosmopolitan city, Nagasaki also contained a Korean community which had arrived in the last decade of the 1500s. These Koreans had settled here after the war with their country had been brought to an end. In the glow of its success, the shape of the city became visible. It was an immense clustering of houses (casario) that sheltered more than 20.000 residents besides all the seasonal visitors, be it those from abroad or the Japanese that ran to the city to do trade. The first neighbourhoods of the city were built in a levelled area and organised in perpendicular rows of streets, according to the urbanistic style of the Japanese, but the growth of the city was not possible given the site chosen by the Portuguese. In its systematic growth, the conurbation opened up along the valley of the River Nakashima; the inhabitants thereafter avoided construction on steep slopes, but the streets, following the terrain, were given sinuous curves in the Portuguese way. Alongside its six original neighbourhoods, another twenty were added up until 1587, which now constituted the uchimachi (the inner city). What grew up thereafter became sotomachi, or the outer city. The more recent

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bairros belonged to the Daimyo of Omura, but Ogasawara Ichian managed to get Ieyasu to subordinate the entire perimeter of Nagasaki to the administration of the state, granting Omura Yoshiaki Sancho other lands in compensation. In terms of what this meant for the city, these measures constituted the rationalisation of Nagasaki, but for Yoshiaki this meant a rude blow, since the territories granted him in compensation could not yield the same revenue as those he had lost. Furious, the daimyo held Fathers Francisco Pasio and Tçuzu responsible, who were the principle interlocutors of the Japanese government when it came to the silk trade from Macau, and expelled the missionaries residing on his territories, leaving more than 50.000 missionaries without spiritual assistance. Yoshiaki was now without an important source of revenue; the Church had just lost one of its principal supports and saw its continued presence in the country as an ever more insecure prospect. Life in Nagasaki was marked by tolling bells: early in the morning, many faithful congregated awaiting the opening of the churches to assist in the celebration of the Eucharist, or to confess. At the southern extremity of the city, next to the sea, the Society of Jesus and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption sprang up, the largest church in Japan, opened five years earlier. The church had three naves and was 58 metres long and 22 metres wide; the plan for the building had been too ambitious, since the space available was insufficient given a steep slope (ribanceira) above the sea.1 In the end, the original plan won over – the main chapel and sacristy were completed in a stockade (estacaria) three floors high. It was a building of wood, like all houses, temples and palaces of Japan, in which Japanese and European styles combined, in the interior as in the exterior. The church was constructed ‘with its verandas around it so as to be more gainly and appreciable to the eyes of the Japanese’, but next to the main façade a tower was built with three bells and with a ‘large clock and well fashioned so as to show the time outside in both Latin and Japanese characters. It also shows the daily course of the sun, the enlarging and diminishing phases of the moon, which is a very new things amongst the Japanese, who come to admire this artifice and marvel at the delicacy of the things and people of Europe’. On entering, the visitor encountered a space without benches and the floor covered in tatami, a traditional floor covering even today; this reproduced the characteristic sobriety of Japanese interiors and also respected local habits, since Japanese civilisation did not know the chair 1

Carta Annua de 25 de Outobro de 1600, Lisboa, Biblioteca de Ajuda, 49-IV-59, fl. 6v.

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and people normally seated themselves on cushions. In this way, the faithful participated in the Eucharist. As in all Japanese churches, there was a compartmentalisation so that women would remain on one side and men on another, entering with doors opened, something which was ‘well received by the Japanese’.2 Further on, some zashiki had been built, small compartments where the most important personages could follow the rites whilst separated from the multitude. If the organisation of space respected Japanese sensibilities, the decoration of the walls, on the other hand, followed western tastes, to which Japanese Christians seems to have got used to. Enormous religious paintings were hung there and the visitors who saw them for the first time would surely think that they were paintings imported from Europe. In truth, many had been painted in Japan by local artists. Even the bells that sounded reflected this symbiosis of western and native elements, since the Gregorian chant was often accompanied by musical instruments characteristic of Japan, made from bamboo. The richness of the port city was reflected in the silver missal objects, of which there was an abundance. The church was solemnly opened at the end of summer 1601 with a pontifical mass, presided over by the bishop and where there were more than 21 churchmen, including the Visitor Alessandro Valignano and the Vice-Provincial Francisco Pasio. Great festivities followed, with ‘different representations in Japanese of what the Christians were doing, and the children of the richest citizens of the city entered very richly dressed’. A week later, the building was lucky to escape a fire. Japanese cities were often devastated by fires since all buildings were of wood. In October 1601 at approx. 5 o’clock, 9 or 10 streets burned down, ‘the most important of this city’, situated in its ancient heart. The church and the Jesuit headquarters were surrounded by flames, but just as the first buildings started to be licked by the flames, the wind changed course and the greater part of the Jesuit buildings were saved. Being a dynamic city, the works to reconstruct the damaged buildings took little more than a year. The college of the Company of Jesus was the centre of the Jesuit mission in the Far East. Here the Vice-Provincial and some tens of religiosos lived. The Rector of the college was Father Diogo de Mesquita, one of the mission’s veterans; between 1582 and 1590 he accompanied the celebrated visit of the daimyos to Europe (1584-6). In the college orchard, Mesquita taught the cultivation of new plants unknown in Japan; from 2

Ibid.

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Portugal he brought a fig tree, which matured and which had produced fruit seven years previously; he also experimented with olives which he had been sent from Manila. Perhaps he had already conducted other experiments, amongst others with peach trees, cherry trees and grapevines, which he asked in 1599 to be sent him from Mexico or Peru. Nagasaki was, in fact, the region most open to the adoption of foreign habits. When Hideyoshi had successfully reunified Japan, Portuguese clothes became the mode at his court; the tailors of Nagasaki were overburdened with orders, as they alone knew how to fashion these clothes. Also, the population started to eat domestic animals, like pigs, chickens and cows, which had never been the case before. Next to the buildings of the Company were those of the Bishop. Dom Luis Cerqueira arrived in Nagasaki on 15 August 1598, but only disclosed this to the authorities in 1600. Head of the Christian community, he became one of the most important figures in the city, and his authority extended to all Europeans when the Captain General (Capitão mór) of the nau de trato was not in the city. From the outset, the formation of Japanese clerics was a central concern. In opposition to all the overseas dioceses that the Church created during the previous century, here there were no secular fathers; in this period, there was a sole diocesenal presbytery, but three others had been named deacons and received their sacerdotal ordination a year later. It was a work that demanded patience – having a limited vocabulary and combatting opposition from the greater part of the missionaries, D. Luís had to prepare small groups each time. Amongst the clerics who had been ordained deacons, there was the son of one Murayama Toan António, the daikan, or vice-governor of the city; this was an important connection that allowed the Bishop to always keep good relations with the governing classes of the city. The area where the central structures of the Company and bishop were to be found was full of action. Besides the dozens of religiosos who resided there, there were hundreds of auxiliaries, on the one hand catechists and collaborators in apostolic work, on the other servants and helpers who kept up the imposing ambience that the religious orders worked hard to sustain. Besides these, there were innumerable visitors, whether religiosos working in other parts of the country and who came to speak to the directors, or else Japanese Christians who came to demonstrate their devotion next to the church, or heathen on courtesy visits. There was a fair degree of azafama (toing-and-froing) in that complex of religious buildings.

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The offices common to the Bishop and Vice-Provincial were also a lively place. At that time eighteen scribes worked there. The lion’s share of work consisted in correspondence with Christians and local and imperial authorities. It was arduous and sensitive work, since an intimate knowledge of etiquette was called for to not hurt the feelings of the important lords. The church authorities communicated with various daimyos, some Christian, some heathens, and various other individuals. Then, with the boats sailing for Manila or Macao, numerous letters were sent in duplicate or triplicate, which represented hours of work for these scribes. For example, the Bishop D. Luis Cerqueira corresponded habitually with the Pope, the General of the Company, the Assistant of Portugal in Rome, the Portuguese Provincial, the Indian Provincial, the Viceroy, the Town Council of Macao and its procurators (procuradores) in Lisbon, Goa, Malacca and Macao. The Vice-Provincial surely had an equal number of interlocutors to whom he wrote regularly, all of which allows us to calculate the arduous task of those who worked in the office. There were also many letters which had been sent out from missionaries, and the copies kept behind for the various quarters of the Christian world; on top of that was the abundant internal correspondence and all the official documentation relating to the daily workings of the mission, like the livros de receita and spending or notarial acts. There was also, just as in various churches scattered across the world, a number of books registering baptisms, weddings and confessions. In the drawers where all this documentation was kept, the history of Japanese Christianity breathed life. Side by side there were texts in Portuguese, Castilian, Italian and Japanese, testimony to the great cultural symbiosis generated by LusoJapanese relations. Only a few of these documents have been passed down to our days, since most were destroyed during the persecutions and others were carried off to Macao. In the crush, most perished to humidity or were eaten by insects, or small rodents. In the streets were men of various European attributes. The majority were Portuguese, who had established themselves in the city or who had married local women. Most participated in overseas trade. Besides this, some buildings testified to the Luso-Japanese character of Nagasaki. On the right, overlooking the river, were the buildings of the Misericordia, of which the principal were the church and the hospital. This institution, the Misericordia, typically Portuguese, was introduced into Japan early in the ‘50s by Father Cosme de Torrès and other mission pioneers. Many communities had established brotherhoods in the style of the Santa Casa, without the organisation being institutionalised. In Nagasaki, however, the brotherhood, which sprung up in 1570, evolved

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and won a certain institutional character, adopting the statutes of its coorganisation in Macao. They had ‘flag, tombs and vestments for the brothers to accompany the dead and the processions’, and they had established the first church in 1583. In 1585 they already had 100 members and by the turn of the 17th century they already had almost 150 members. Nagasaki, like all great commercial centres, was a city of contrasts: the commerce enriched many of the inhabitants, but also attracted many beggars and people with broken dreams of prosperity who needed propping up. The Brotherhood of the Misericordia annually collected great profits in the shape of collections, with which it sought to sustain these individuals. Such were the receipts, that the decision was taken to begin work on a new church. To the left, close to the beach, another hospital was built, the Hospital of Santiago, founded in 1603, with a capacity for 50 ill people. Outside the city, ten years previously, the padres had built another institution, this time destined for the leprotic. In the sotomachi, some distance away, was the convent of the Franciscans. They had arrived via Spanish Manila; in this way, they disrespected the Orders emanating from Rome, who had been granted a monopoly on missionizing in the Japanese archipelago from the Archbishop of Goa. On the other hand, the Franciscans disrespected the Cortes de Tomar of 1581, which saw autonomy and thus sovereignty granted to the Portuguese Empire overseas. Finally, the Spanish Franciscans contravened the orders of the bishop himself. Critical of the methods of the Jesuits, but stimulated by the geo-strategic interests of Manila and the Tokugawa, they had installed themselves thanks to the shogun. They claimed legitimacy on the basis of an edict granted by a heathen people, despite all the official determinations of the authorities they were subject to. Their presence created a focus of tension amongst the ecclesiastics, which extended many times to the crews anchored in the port. Nagasaki was also the only place where moveable type was at work in Japan. The first machine was introduced in 1590 by Alessandro Valignano, and was destined to print books in western characters. The first books printed in Japanese were written therefore in romanji, the system of transcription invented by the missionaries when they started to study the Japanese language and that is still used today, namely in this text. After this the Jesuits designed a second machine destined to print texts in ChinoJapanese characters. In the last decade of the 1500s, the printing press moved locations a number of times, but ended up definitively in Nagasaki in 1600. In this period, the religious community continued to administer

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the machine brought by Valignano, but the printing of the letters of Japan was in this year (1600) outsourced to a Christian publishing house outside Nagasaki with the condition that it was not to print any book other than under the express instruction of the Superior of the Company of Jesus. The publishing house made books at its own cost and took its profits from the publications it then sold. On that day, 14 August 1606, the city was on the boil. The hustle and bustle of the everyday was now subject to another source: on everybody’s mouth was the word ‘kurufune’. The black ship had been spotted and messengers had already brought notice. Although many tens of embarkations animated the harbour of Nagasaki, the business that was realised on the boat coming from Macao and organised by the Portuguese constituted the principal raison d’être of the city, and the coming of the great ship was always an exceptional event. When the silhouette of the kurufune appeared, many people ran to the port. Amongst those awaiting the first greetings was certainly João Rodrigues Tçuzu, the Jesuit who was simultaneously the counsellor of Tokugawa Ieyasu on external affairs and who had to supervise the negotiations between Portuguese and Japanese in order to establish the price of silk. When the ship approached, it was observed that the ship was badly damaged; some thought that the vessel had fought against an attack of the hostile Dutch who were sailing the seas of China for some years. The reason, however, was another one. The boat had left Macao on 19 July and, twelve days later, it was hit by a typhoon: a wave hit it in such a way that water entered and remained up to the foresail boom. It was like this for three-quarters of an hour, but thereafter the sailors managed to set the vessel straight. Before setting to business, the journeyers sought to thank God for their salvation and proceeded to carry out the thanks they had promised in the midst of the tempest. Barefoot, they crossed the city in procession, carrying the foresail to the Church of Nossa Senhora do Monte, which was on one of the hills above the city. This was the first time that Nagasaki had seen public expressions of faith. In the preceding year, the Bishop had allowed the procession of the Corpo de Deus for the first time. A place in the procession was much competed for amongst possible participants – the prelate transported the Most Holy Sacrament on a bier underneath a canopy, surrounded by other priests, men-of-the-cloth and deacons, and followed by the masses of faithful. On that feast-day, sources relate how ‘the things that made people most happy were two dances of Japanese boys; one in the Japanese manner, the other European, and both richly dressed, together with some

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theatre pieces which were performed in places where the procession halted and they danced in front of the Most Holy Sacrament with much grace and airs’. After that, the business of unloading the merchandise began, while the Capitão-Mor Dom Diogo de Vasconcelos and other fidalgos went to present their respects to the Japanese authorities and to the religiosos. They also carried great bundles of correspondence, which allowed the clerics and some of the married men of the town (casados) to update their knowledge of the outside world. Amongst the news, was one report that was particularly bad: on 20 January of that year, in Macao, Alessandro Valignano had died, news of which was now spread across Japan. If Nagasaki was cosmopolitan anyway, with the arrival of the nau de trato it won a new aura altogether. Portuguese, Chinese, Siamese, Malays, Malabar Indians and blacks were amongst them, as well as individuals of other nationalities. The high emotions of the day were prolonged into the night. While some were reunited with wives or lovers, other seamen, when the day was ended, looked for their pleasure or sought to unburden their lust or risked their fortune in games of cards. Cards and dice were a means by which a lot of money changed hands; a number risked their livelihoods or salaries from Macao creating delicate situations. Later, on 15 March 1609, the bishop, referring to Portuguese and Spaniards, commented that ‘many of them are not content with any old game, but the most cruel of all, by which they say they can lose their skin and even their head’. He consequently decided to promulgate a bull threatening excommunication to all those who persisted in such games. At night, the city could become unsafe; at dawn one could find blood in some isolated parts of the city, or by the wharves. The excesses of the festivities with wine surrounding the landing, the desire for the same woman or old personal animosities were some of the multiple factors which contributed to the explosion of fights and affronts. On more than one occasion, these nights ended in inert bodies bathed in blood, fruits of discord contested to the death, either in fights between Portuguese and Spaniards, which was all too frequent, or else between Europeans and Japanese. Referring to the latter, Luís Frois explained already in 1593 that ‘as the customs and means of proceeding of the Portuguese are completely opposed, many discords, rivalries, and strifes survive amongst them’.3 3

Luís Froís, História de Japam, ed. José Wicki, Lisboa: Preside‫ޛ‬ncia do Conselho de Ministros, Secretaria de Estado da Cultura, Direcc޽mo-Geral do 3DWULPynio Cultural, Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, 1976-1984, vol. V, 211.

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Here, as in any other port city, life was lived sometimes excessively, but if some Luso-Japanese encounters led to death or, at the least, to misunderstanding and ruin, others followed the opposite course; the LusoJapanese community expanded and in the meantime saw its children grow up in peace and security. In the most far-flung corner of the world whither ran Portuguese commerce, a unique city developed in which a real encounter between Occident and Orient took place. When the roots of the Japanese state were put down, all material traces of the previous Portuguese presence, as well as the decadence of all those who had settled here and who were then expelled or killed, disappeared. But the Nagasaki namban did not disappear completely; the dialect, strongly influenced by words of Portuguese or Latin origin continued; just as the scientific knowledge which had been introduced by the westerners. Thereafter, the city continued as one of the rare ports of communication with the outside world, and continued to prosper and grow. For those who knew it, Nagasaki gained a unique role in the Japanese context, just as it had amongst the Portuguese cities scattered across the world. Figure 4. Map of city and port of Nagasaki, Japan, 17th century (Museu da Marinha, Lisbon, MB-80-84).

CHAPTER FOUR THE CARTOGRAPHIC FLIGHT OF THE PARROTS FRANCESC RELAÑO

Parrots are still nowadays associated with a certain “taste for the exotic” in European imagery. It is thus easy to understand the European fascination for these animals in the 16th century.1 They appear in the maps of the period playing a twofold function: on the one hand, the image of a parrot in equatorial lands denoted considerable acquaintance with these recently discovered regions; on the other, the depiction of a beautiful bird on a map served as a means for concealing the absence of more detailed knowledge. It was thus a way of showing the latest results of real discoveries and, at the same time, an iconographic subterfuge for apprehending the geographical unknown. Taking all this into account, the present paper will study the strange process whereby the “Land of Parrots”, initially located in present-day Brazil, came to denote other imaginary territories located far to the South.

Parrots and European Discoveries European fascination with parrots dates back from ancient times. Alexander the Great might have brought some specimens from India and, as early as 396 BC they are mentioned by Ctesias in his work Indica.2 During the Middle Ages, the availability of parrots must have seriously diminished but, during that time, these birds began to acquire a mythical

 1

Despite the ornithological inaccuracy, but in line with sixteenth century records, we shall use here the generic term `parrots’ to designate the different species of the Psittacidae family. 2 See Bruce Thomas Boeher, Parrot Culture : Our 2500-year-long fascination with the world’s most talkative bird, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, 8, 9, 182, 190.

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dimension. After centuries of legendary speculations, it was finally through the Great Discoveries of the fifteenth century that western civilisation finally re-encountered parrots in real life. The landfall of Pedro Álvares Cabral in the Terra de Vera Cruz, in particular, facilitated recognition of the existence of abundant parrots in present-day Brazil. Since then, this bird is no longer perceived as a sacred or supernatural creature. Instead, in the early sixteenth century it became fashionable to bring parrots as presents to the kings who had paid for the transoceanic expeditions. King Dom Manuel I of Portugal (1495-1521) was surely one of the first sovereigns to receive a pair of these exotic animals. Early written evidence supporting this fact is the famous letter of Pêro Vaz de Caminha, secretary of Cabral’s fleet. His diary relates the official discovery of the Terra de Vera Cruz (Brazil) by the Portuguese between April 22 and May 1, 1500. Showing considerable astonishment at several aspects of the country, as for example the aspect and customs of the Tupiniquim Indians, he does not fail to mention the existence of numerous parrots. In one passage of the letter, he says that the Portuguese had taken “very beautiful red parrots and two little green ones”. Most importantly, he adds that “all these things Your Highness will see, because the captain will send them to you, as he says.”3 Indeed, Cabral immediately sent a ship back to Portugal in order to announce the discovery, whereas the rest of the fleet continued on its way to India. The captain of Cabral’s supply ship returning to Lisbon was Gaspar de Lemos. He left Porto Seguro on May 2, but no historical record has been preserved concerning the precise date of his arrival in Lisbon. We know, however, that he really did. Several authors, for instance Gaspar Correia, confirm that the supply ship reached Portugal and contained, among other exotic products, several kinds of parrots.4 It is thus fairly possible that the King and the Portuguese court could admire the colorful feathers and talkative skills of these animals before the end of 1500. Nevertheless, Dom Manuel might have kept all these novelties secret for some time, since no contemporary ambassador makes the slightest mention of the premature return of Gaspar de Lemos.

 3

`Letter of Pêro Vaz de Caminha to King Manuel, 1 May 1500’, in William Brooks Greenlee: The Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India from Contemporary Documents and Narratives, New Delhi / Madras: Asian Educational Services, 1995, 26. 4 Gaspar Correia, Lendas da India, libro I, tomo I, capitulo II, ed. Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1858, 152.

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Quite the contrary, the arrival from India of the first ships of Cabral’s surviving fleet on June 23, 1501, was widely acknowledged by a number of contemporary authors. The Venetian ambassador to the King of Portugal, Giovanni Matteo, known as Il Cretico (“the Cretan”), wrote to the Doge on 27 June, 1501. His letter, like a number of other similar texts, informs their respective rulers of the new lands discovered by Cabral.5 In the case of Venice, the consequences of this voyage were particularly important, as noted by Girolamo Priuli. His diary, dating from July 1501, sets down the impact of Il Cretico’s letter in the following terms: When this news was truly learned in Venice, the whole city was much stirred by it, and everyone was stupefied that in this our time there should have been found a new voyage which was never heard of or seen in the times of the ancients or of our ancestors. And this news was held by the learned to be the worst news which the Venetian Republic could have 6 had.

As far as the subject of the present study is concerned, the letter of Giovanni Matteo, il Cretico, is also important because it confirms the existence of magnificent parrots in the newly discovered lands. Two large specimens are said to have come with the Anunciada, one of Cabral’s surviving ships, whose sailors were certainly questioned by Il Cretico. This fact allowed him to report: Above the Cape of Good Hope towards the west they have discovered a new land. They call it that of the parrots, because some are found there which are an arm and a half in length, of various colours. We saw two of these.7

 5

Besides Giovanni Matteo, Il Cretico, one can also mention the letters of Bartolomeo Marchioni, Giovanni Francesco de Affaitadi, Girolamo Sergini, Antonio Salvago, Pietro Pasqualigo, etc. Most of these texts were collected and printed by Francan Montalboddo in his Paesi novamente retrovati & Novo Mondo da Alberico Vesputio Florentino intitulato (Milano 1508), reproduced in facsimile edition by Princenton University Press, 1916. For a more general overview and analysis, see Antonio Alberto Banha de Andrade, Mudos Novos no Mundo, Lisboa: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1972. 6 ‘The diary of Girolamo Priuli’, in William B. Greenlee, The Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India from Contemporary Documents and Narratives, New Delhi-Madras: Asian Educational Services, 1995, 132-133. 7 ‘Letter of Giovanni Matteo Cretico, 27 June 1501’, in W.B. Greenlee: The Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral, 120. The existence of two parrots brought back by the “Anunciada” is confirmed by other authors. See, for instance the complementary testimony of Bartolomeo Marchioni, `Letter of Bartolomeo

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So, whether with the supply ship commanded by Gaspar de Lemos or with Cabral’s fleet returning from India, the Portuguese king and his court could certainly admire the parrots captured in the newly discovered lands by mid-1501 at the very latest. Soon after, the so-called Cantino planisphere (1502) shows three beautiful parrots placed in the interior of present-day Brazil (see Fig. 5).8 The map also shows other parrots on the opposite African coast, but they are not so prominent in size. This fact illustrates that the Portuguese were already familiar with the smaller varieties found in Guinea during the 15th century, but the larger species discovered in the Terra de Vera Cruz in the early 16th century were surely an impressive novelty for everybody. So much so that, in one form or another, parrots served as a primary identifier of this territory in many subsequent maps. Let us take for example the case of Martin Waldseemüller, one of the most famous cartographers of the time. In his world map of 1507 (see Fig. 6), particularly renowned because of the first naming of “America”, Waldseemüller echoes the existence of parrots in the region through the depiction of a bird and a circumspect caption reading “Rubei psitaci” (red parrots).9 Both are located next to an unnamed river flowing into the Atlantic Ocean at the latitude of cape “s. rochi”, somewhat north of Porto Seguro. In 1513, Waldseemüller contributed to the publication of a new edition of Ptolemy’s Geography. In the continuous task of updating the Alexandrine’s work, namely through the addition of tabulae novae to the original cartographic setting, Waldseemüller was responsible for the first

 Marchioni to Florence, 27 June 1501 and July 1501’, in Greenlee, The Voyage, 148. 8 This anonymous work of Portuguese origin takes its name from Alberto Cantino, the agent of Duke Ercole d’Este who secretly obtained the map in Lisbon in October 1502. Among the various studies dealing with it, I shall stress the contributions of Armando Cortesão & Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda, 1960, vol. I, 7-13. For a more recent analysis, see Ernesto Milano, La Carta del Cantino, e la rappresentazione della Terra nei codici e nei libri a stampa della Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, Modena: Il Molino, 1991, 87-156. 9 The complete title of the map is `Universalis Cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioruque Lustrationes’. Although contemporary records seem to demonstrate that this printed world map was a great success in its day, there is only one extant copy now preserved in the library of the Princes of Wardburg zu Wolfegg-Waldsee, Württemberg. For a facsimile reproduction in its original size, see Joseph Fischer & Franz von Wieser, The Oldest Map with the Name America of the year 1507 and the Carta Marina of the Year 1516 by M. Waldseemüller (Ilacomilus), Innsbruck: Wagner’sche Universitäts, 1903.

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“modern map” devoted solely to the New World. The map, commonly known as the Admiral’s map, shows present-day South America as “Terra Incognita” and bears and inscription stating that the land was discovered by Christopher Columbus sailing under a mandate from the King of Castile (see Fig.7).10 Despite the existence of the place-name “rio de Brasil” between Porto Seguro and Monte Pascoal, no reference or design makes the slightest allusion to parrots. But in subsequent re-editions of this map, carried out by Lorenz Fries, the Brazilian territory is no longer labelled “Terra Incognita” but as “Terra Nova” (see Fig. 8). Next to this inscription, a picture shows scenes of cannibalism, which draws on Vespucci’s influence and, more interestingly, there is also a big caption reading: “Terra Papagalli” (Land of Parrots). Finally, the identification of the Brazilian region with this animals is made still clearer in Waldseemüller’s Carta Marina (1516), where a similar design bears the inscription: “Brasilia sive Terra Papagalli” (Brazil or Land of Parrots). This denotes that the German cartographer was less influenced by Vespucci (the name “America” is not used any more) and, perhaps through the reading of Montalboddo’s German version of the Paesi (1508), he seems better acquainted with Cabral’s voyages.11 Most importantly for the present study, the evolution of Waldseemüller’s cartographic work evidences that a new “Land of Parrots” was progressively coming to bear on European imagery.

The Land of Parrots The earliest Portuguese designations of the new territories discovered by Alvares Cabral were Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross) and Terra de Santa Cruz (Land of the Holy Cross). This nomenclature reflects the initial uncertainty as to whether the expedition had come across an



10 The real title of the map is `Tabula Terre Nove’, and it is one of the new maps added to the 1513 Strasbourg edition of Ptolemy’s Geography. The inscription concerning Columbus reads: `Hec terra cum adiacentib. Insulis inuenta est per Columbus ianuensem ex mandato Regis Castelle’. 11 Francazano da Montalboddo was indeed one of the first to compile a collection of contemporary voyage and travel accounts, which included most of the authors studied in this paper. The first edition of his work, written in Italian with the title Paesi nouamente ritrouati, was printed in Vicenza in 1507. Only one year later, a German version appeared with the title Newe vnbekanthe Landte, Nürnberg: Georgen Stüchssen 1508. Waldseemüller surely had access to this book, which helped him to nuance the honor made to Vespucci as discoverer of the New World in his 1507 map.

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island or terra ferma. Amerigo Vespucci and other authors made clear very soon that the new territories were not just a province, and still less an island, but a mainland of substantial size. Because of the profusion of parrots found there, it seems that the name Terra de Papagaios was a commonplace in vernacular Portuguese at that time,12 although no such place-name appears in any Portuguese map of the early 16th century, even if, as we have seen, beautiful depictions of parrots can be found in the appropriate location on the Cantino planisphere and other manuscript maps of Portuguese origin. The “Land of Parrots” might thus have remained an informal designation in Portugal of the new discovered territories. With regard to written records, the term “Brazil” was soon preferred. Stemming from the Portuguese name Pau-Brasil (brazilwood, or Caesalpinia echinata), this tropical tree, particularly abundant in the newly discovered lands, was to have a major impact on the development of Portuguese colonialism.13 It should be noted that brazilwood yields a red dye particularly appreciated in the manufacture of luxury textiles such as velvet. Commodities of this type were in high demand during the Renaissance. Thus, in the absence of precious metals in the region, brazilwood trees soon became the most valuable export product. It is not really surprising then that the red dyewood ended up giving its name to present-day Brazil. So, despite the outright disapproval of João de Barros, merchant terminology finally prevailed over the nomenclature of religious inspiration.14 According to Antonio Baião, the expression “land of Brazil” appears for the first time in the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, a famous cosmographic work written by Duarte Pacheco Pereira between 1505 and 1508.15 Further

 12

This fact is illustrated, for example, by Giovanni Matteo, Il Cretico. He certainly spoke to members of the crew of the first vessel back from India before writing his Letter. This text thus reflects what the Portuguese sailors had told him and their understanding of what they had seen. Taking this into account, when Il Cretico says that the Portuguese called the new land that of the parrots (see above note 6), he was just echoing the popular designation of present-day Brazil at the very beginning of the 16th century. 13 For a general overview, see Bernardino José de Sousa, O Pau-Brasil na História Nacional, São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1978. 14 João de Barros, who was a fervent Christian, considers that this change was a `diabolic influence’. See Da Asia de João de Barros e de Diogo do Couto, Dec. I, Bk. V, Ch. II Lisboa: Na Régia Officina Typografica, 1778-1788, vol. I, 392. 15 Antonio Baião, `O Comércio do Pau Brasil’, in Carlos Malheiro Dias ed., História da Colonização Portuguesa do Brasil, Porto: Litografia Nacional, 1923, vol. II, 315-347. On Duarte Pacheco Pereira and his work, see Joaquim Barradas

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evidence that the term Brazil was being adopted in official circles can be found in the letter sent by King D. Manuel to King Ferdinand of Castile, dated of 6 September, 1513.16 In cartographic terms, the first time that the name “Brazil” is used to designate a broad region of South America, and not just the river where the expedition of Gonçalo Coelho (1501-02) found assortments of brazilwood, occurs in the Orbis typus universalis tabula, a world map made in Venice by Gerolamo Marini in 1511.17 In sum, present-day Brazil was from the very beginning a land of parrots and brazilwood. The Portuguese chronicler Gaspar Correia points out very clearly that the cargo of the supply ship returning to Lisbon from Porto Seguro to report on Cabral’s discovery to the King contained both parrots and brazilwood.18 The former were used as identifiers of the new territories in popular and colloquial language, while the latter was preferred for written and official records, replacing progressively the initial designations of Vera Cruz and Santa Cruz. Finally, we can note that the equivalence of both terms was principally of Portugal origin. Subsequent to some initial confusion, and surely after the instructive reading of Montalboddo’s compilation of travels, we have seen for instance Waldseemüller conclude in his Carta Marina (1516) that the region could indistinctively be named “Brazil or Land of Parrots”. What we are going to see now is how the term Land of Parrots was transferred from Brazil, where it clearly belonged, to other unknown regions. This process, allowing the first cartographic flight of parrots, began with the publication of an anonymous manuscript pamphlet: Newen Zeytung auss Pressilg Landt (1515).19

 de Carvalho, Á la Recherche de la Specificité de la Renaissance Portugaise. L’Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis de Duarte Pacheco Pereira et la Littérature Portugaise de Voyages à l’Epoque des Grandes Découvertes, Paris : Fondation Galouste Gulbenkian, 1983, 2 vols. 16 José Ramos Coelho ed., Alguns Documentos do Archivo Nacional da Torre to Tombo acerca das Navegações e Conquistas Portuguezas, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1892, 292. 17 Reproduced in Carlos Malheiro Dias ed., História da Colonização do Brasil, vol. II, Porto: Litografia Nacional, 1923, 324-325. 18 Gaspar Correia, Lendas da India, libro I, tomo I, capitulo II, 152. 19 The manuscript copy of this text is now preserved at the Fugger Archive in Dillingen. It was first popularised by Konrad Haebler, `Die “Neuwe Zeitung aus Presilg-Land” im Fürstllig Fugger’schen Archiv’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 3rd series, 30 (1895), 352-368.

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Flying to the South In the second decade of the sixteenth century, the River Plate estuary had become one of the most strategic points in the planet for the Portuguese and the Spanish crowns. In 1513, Balboa’s sudden encounter with the Pacific Ocean demonstrated once and for all that Columbus’s theory of having attained the Indies was false. Since then, the Spaniards began looking for a passage across the American landmass to reach Melaka and the Spice Islands. At the same time, the ambiguities of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) encouraged the Portuguese to explore this same region in view of possible territorial claims. The actual discovery of the River Plate estuary is a controversial issue. Without dealing with it in all its complexity, we shall just underline that the Newen Zeytung (1515) is the main source of information for an early expedition to the region, which took place sometime between 1511 and 1514. It was composed of two ships fitted out by Nuno Manuel and Cristobal de Haro. We do not know with certainty who was the commander-in-chief, but it seems that a big storm put an end to the exploration and separated both ships. On the way back, one of them finally arrived in Madeira in October 1514. It was in this island that the crew and the pilot gave an account on what they had seen to a business agent of the Fugger family. The written record of it, now known as the Newen Zeytung, was ultimately sent to a friend in Antwerp. The second-hand knowledge on which the text is based explains to a large extent its confusing geography. For the purpose of the present paper, the first thing which is worth mentioning is that the River Plate estuary was believed to be the entrance to the long-sought passage providing a sea route to Melaka: When they had arrived around forty degrees of latitude, they found Brazil with a cape, which is a point extending into the ocean. And they sailed around this very cape and found that the same gulf lies as Europe does, with the side lying west to east. Then they saw land on the other side as well when they had sailed a distance of sixty miles along the cape in the same manner as when one travels toward the east and passes the Strait of Gibraltar and sees the land of the Berbers.20

 20

Translation based on Mark Graubard & John Parker eds., Copia der newen Zeytung ausz Presillg Landt. Tidings out of Brazil, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1957, 28-29, but adapted by the present author, taking into account the original text and translations from other languages.

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The anonymous reporter makes this point utterly clear by announcing that, according to the pilot, the distance from Brazil to Melaka is just 600 miles. It would be thus very easy and highly profitable for the King of Portugal to follow this route since – the text goes on to say – once the cape is rounded, there is continuous land along the strait all the way from Brazil to Melaka. It is hard to believe that such an idea came from a Portuguese pilot who had made several journeys to India. By this time the Portuguese were already settled in Melaka and knew very well its geographical position with respect to India. Regarding the opposite route (i.e. from Melaka to Brazil) nothing was known with certainty. Nevertheless, in a letter to the King of Portugal dated from 1 April, 1512, Afonso de Albuquerque, Governor of India at that time, says that he acquired from a Javanese pilot a map depicting the land of Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope and the regions where the spices were produced.21 Surprisingly, the pilot who informed the author of the Newen Zeytung, and who is said in the text to have been one of the most famous officers in the service of the King of Portugal, does not seem aware of the most up to date knowledge on the subject. The misleading geography of the Newen Zeytung contains other inaccuracies. One of them is particularly important for the purpose of the present paper, namely because of its unexpected consequences in the long run. The original passage in question says: As they came again to the coast of Brazil toward the southwestward they found many good rivers and harbors which they then navigated. All of this region is full of people and very habitable, and they say the nearer the cape the more prosperous are the people, being of good manners and honorable character with no vices at all except that they wage war, one village upon another. They do not eat one another as is the custom in Lower Brazil.22

From this muddled part of the text, the only thing that can be grasped with certainty is that, in the mind of the author, there are two distinct regions which should not be confused: Brazil and Lower Brazil. What could then be the geographical nature of this latter entity? From an

 21

Cartas de Afonso de Albuquerque Seguidas dos Documentos Que as Elucidam, ed. R.A. de Bulhão Pato, Lisboa, Academia Real das Sciencias, 1884-1935, vol. I , 29-65. Cf. Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira, `Uma carta maritima do seculo XV e o descobrimento do Brasil’, Boletim da Classe de Letras da Academia das Sciências de Lisboa, vol. XIII, fasc. 2, 1919, 665-673. 22 Translation based on Graubard & Parker, Tidings out of Brazil, 29-30, but adapted by the present author, taking into account the original text and translations from other languages.

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anthropological point of view, the text seems to imply that Lower Brazil broadly corresponds to Equatorial Brazil.23 From the etymological point of view, on the contrary, one can easily understand that contemporary authors interpreted the term Lower Brazil as being a territorial extent south of Brazil. Where exactly? As we shall see now in the case of the German cosmographer Johannes Schöner, one possibility was to conceive of Lower Brazil as a new landmass extending beyond the above-mentioned strait.

And Still Beyond Schöner was one of the most important and prolific globe-makers of the sixteenth century. He spent all his life in German countries, but he managed from there to obtain the most recent information concerning the Iberian discoveries. In Nuremberg, his friend and fellow citizen Jobst Ruchamer translated Montalboddo’s pioneering collection of travels into German in 1508. Schöner also had access to Waldseemüller’s Cosmographiae Introductio, a text published a year earlier to accompany his 1507 world map. In addition, Franz Wieser has demonstrated that Schöner read the Newen Zeytung carefully. Indeed, several paragraphs are literally transcribed in the Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio, an explanatory text prepared by Schöner to accompany his 1515 globe.24 With all these elements, Schöner could easily conclude that there was a strait running westward from Brazil to Malacca; and secondly, that Lower Brazil was a new land extending beyond this sea channel. His globe of 1515 does not fail to translate both geographical assumptions into cartographical terms. A strait is indeed shown separating the New World, named “America”, from a fictitious southern continent labeled “Brasilie Regio”. This inscription misplacement is thus the result of a curious chain of misconceptions: what began with the oral report of a pilot, actually referring to the present-day Plate River estuary, is now portrayed with Brazil as an austral continent completely separated from the lands first sighted by Cabral. Interestingly, the depiction of birds at the southernmost tip of America seems to mean that, unlike the name of Brazil, the parrots had not yet been able to cross the strait.

 23

On the issue of cannibalism in the region, for example, see Donald W. Forsyth, `The Beginning of Brazilian Anthropology: Jesuits and Tupinamba Cannibalism’, Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 39, n° 2, 1983, 147-178. 24 Franz Wieser, Maglhâes-Strasse und Austral-Continent auf den Globen des Johannes Schöner, Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner’schen UniversitaetsBuchhandlung, 1881, 29-32.

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It should be noted that the notion of a Terra Australis Incognita was already present in Antiquity and that, from then on, one can always find partisans of this theory. It emerged among ancient Greek philosophers, for whom the hypothesis of a spherical Earth and the evidence of extensive lands in the northern hemisphere obliged them to conclude that there should be similar landmasses in the southern hemisphere, lest the world be unbalanced. The reasoning was thus purely hypothetical. What is new about Schöner’s austral continent is that it emerged in his mind not as a result of a theoretical inference, but on the basis of contemporary navigational experience, even if he obtained most of this information through secondhand knowledge. Another contemporary theory which, stemming from Ptolemy’s Geography, was also present in the early decades of the sixteenth century, put forward the idea that there was an encompassing land enclosing all the oceans like a lake. One passage of the Portuguese cosmographer Duarte Pacheco Pereira, composed between 1505-8, illustrates this point: “The Ocean does not surround the earth, as the philosophers have declared, but rather the earth surrounds the sea, and it lies in its hollow and centre. And from this I conclude that the Ocean is nothing other than an enormous lake in the hollow of the earth.”25 In cartographical terms, the best illustration of this is Lopo Homem’s mappamundi (see Fig. 9), which opens the socalled Atlas Miller (1519).26 Odd as this world-view might seem at first sight, it should be noted that, before Magellan, it could not be contradicted by the most recent discoveries. Quite the reverse, it was a way of redefining Ptolemy’s authority to bring it into line with the discovery of Portuguese route to India by the way of the Cape of Good Hope and the finding of a New World at the other side of the Atlantic.27 The simultaneous cohabitation of this theory with Schöner’s conjectural strait, which somehow prefigures Magellan’s discovery, evidences the

 25

Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, bk. I, ch. 2, ed. by D. Peres, Lisboa: Academia Portuguesa da História, 1954, 21. 26 Rés. Ge. D. 26179, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. On the insertion of Lopo Homem’s world map within the Atlas Miller, see Marcel Destombes, `Lopo Homem’s Atlas of 1519’, The Geographical Journal, vol. 90, n° 5, 1937, 460-464. For a general study and reproduction, see A. Cortesão and A. Teixeira da Mota, Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1960, 55-61, pl. 16. 27 For further details on this theory, see Francesc Relaño `Cartography and Discoveries: The Re-definition of the Ptolemaic Model in the First Quarter of the Sixteenth Century’, in Diogo Ramada Curto, Angelo Cattaneo & André F. Almeida, eds. La Cartografia Europea tra Primo Rinascimento e Fine Dell’Illuminismo, Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2003, 49-61.

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prevailing incertitude as far as the edges of the world is concerned in the early decades of the sixteenth century. Schöner himself carried out some changes in the nomenclature of the Southern Landmass in his subsequent globes.28 But once Magellan’s circumnavigation was completed, the margin left for geographical hesitations was seriously reduced. The arrival of Juan Sebastián Elcano at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in early September 1522, after having rounded the world, carried two major consequences for the present study: first of all, the theory of a terrestrial continuum encircling the world proved to be false and, incidentally, Schöner’s hypothetical sound was corroborated; secondly, Magellan’s first-hand sighting of a land beyond the strait, which he called Tierra de Fuego, was taken by a number of authors as being the first visual encounter with the northernmost fringes of Terra Australis. It was a “proof” of its real existence. Subsequent discoveries in the southern hemisphere, such as New Guinea in 1526, were to consolidate this belief. It sufficed to join together the different points unveiled and a huge southern continent emerged in many maps of the period. Within this context, the double-cordiform map drawn by Oronce Finé in 1531 is not exceptional (see Fig. 10). Like other contemporary works, he conveyed the available information in the representation of an imaginary austral landmass. If we pay particular attention to this depiction here, it is because Finé introduced some significant changes to Schöner’s original setting, even if they are not self-evident at a glance. Still, in the vein of the German cartographer, Finé continues to name “America” the lands discovered by Cabral and displays the label “Brasielie Regio” in the alleged Southern Continent. But, unlike Schöner, this latter inscription is transferred to the East of this austral landmass in a region facing the Indian peninsula from the other land at the far south of the known world. Several reasons can explain this sudden shift. To begin with, the French cartographer was perfectly aware of the results of Magellan’s voyage. It was then impossible for Finé, as Schöner did, to name Brazil the very same region that Magellan had recently christened the Tierra de Fuego. Finé surely thought that Brazil might still well be somewhere in the Southern Continent, but not just there. It should also be recalled that the Newen Zeytung emphasized the bridge between Brazil and Melaka. Nothing then was more reasonable in his mind than relocating the “Region

 28

In his 1520 globe, `Brasillia Regio’ is replaced by `Brasilia Inferior’, which in fact is closer to the text of the Newen Zeytung; and `America vel Brasilia sive Papagalli Terra’ appeared where Brazil was. In his 1523 globe, the austral continent is removed, but it re-appears again in his globe of 1533. Cf. Wieser, Maglhâes-Strasse und Austral-Continent.

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of Brazil” from what was then known as Tierra de Fuego to another zone in the eastern parts of the Terra Australis, facing India from the other side of the ocean. No mention is made, however, of the existence of parrots.

Across the Ocean Oronce Finé’s map was widely diffused, since it was included in the Paris edition of Simon Grynaeus’ Novus Orbis Regionum (Paris: Apud Ioannem Paruum, 1532). Therefore, the series of logical inferences initiated with the Newen Zeytung is not yet finished. The next relevant step comes with a set of anonymous globe gores dated c. 1535.29 At first sight, it seems to differ considerably from the cartographic tradition derived from the German pamphlet written in Madeira. For, unlike Schöner and Finé, for whom no form of the name Brazil is found in South America, the author of the gores notes down in this region, with capital letters, placenames such as “Brasilia Regio” and “Papagalli Regio”.30 Does this mean that we are here back to the original tradition where Brazil is conceived as the Land of Parrots? The fact that the gores also show a customary representation of Terra Australis may already indicate that this is not the case. Indeed, a careful examination of this imaginary continent reveals that the author of the gores was in fact largely influenced by Finé. Like the French cartographer, one can see there the inscription “Brasielie Regio” prominently displayed in one zone of the Southern Continent facing India. But the most outstanding feature is that, somewhat to the West, in a region now facing Madagascar, the globe gores display a place-name not shown by any previous author at this latitude: “Psitacorum Terra”. This would then mean that, in the author’s mind, the Austral Continent was also a “Land of Parrots”. One may then wonder how they managed to take “flight” across the Indian Ocean… Overall, the analysis of globe gores suggests that its anonymous author was unable to make up his mind between two different kinds of sources. The twin duplication of references to Brazil and the land of parrots in his map is in that sense a case in point. On the one hand, the inscriptions “Brasilia Regio” and “Papagalli Regio” are noted down in present-day

 29

Reproduced in Frederik C. Wieder, Monumenta Cartographica. Reproductions of unique and rare maps, plans and views in the actual size of the originals; accompanied by cartographical monographs, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 192535, vol. I, pl. 1-3. 30 In larger typeset, one can also see `America’ or `Terra Nova’, which can be found in both Schöner and Finé.

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South America according to the original tradition stemming from the letter of Pêro Vaz de Caminha. On the other hand, a second reference is made to Brazil (“Brasielie Regio”) in the austral landmass, this time in compliance with the tradition derived from the Newen Zeytung. But neither Schöner nor Finé had ever contemplated the existence of parrots here. If the anonymous cartographer does, it is simply because he knew of the association of parrots with a country called Brazil. The problem is that he was uncertain as to which Brazil might this correlation be made, so he put an appropriate legend in both: the canonical “Papagalli Regio” is used for denoting the parrots seen in present-day Brazil; and a Latin variant, “Psitacorum Terra”, is preferred for the expected parrots in the spurious Brazil of Terra Australis. In so doing, it was the first time that the parrots had flown over the Strait of Magellan on a map. Today this would indicate, of course anachronistically, that there are parrots in the Antarctica! Subsequent authors began little by little to cast some doubts on the internal consistency of this world view. While the word Brazil, in one form or another, was becoming generally accepted as referring to the area we know now by that name, even armchair geographers of non-Iberian origin began simultaneously to query its austral counterpart. But, curiously enough, the eventual removal of the name Brazil from the Southern Continent did not affect the survival of the parrots to which it was usually associated. This attitude can be illustrated by Mercator’s famous map of 1569, where a long inscription, in roughly the same position as the anonymous author of the globe gores had put his Psitacorum Regio, says: Region of Parrots, so called by the Portuguese, carried along by the libeccio [SW wind] on their way to Calicut, on account of the unheard-of size of those birds there. As they have followed the coast for 2000 miles without finding the end of it, there is no doubt that they have reached the Southern Continent.31

This new version of the Austral Continent, where the putative existence of parrots is definitively dissociated of its Brazilian background, was the one adopted by Abraham Ortelius in his widely diffused Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) (see Fig. 11). Various generations of subsequent

 31

Mercator’s map bears the title `Nova et Avcta Orbis Terrae ad Vsvm Navigantium emendate accommodate’, Duisburg, 1569. For thorough analysis of Mercator’s sources and a reproduction of the detail concerning the parrots, see William A.R. Richardson: `Mercator’s Southern Continent: Its Origins, Influence and Gradual Demise’, Terrae Incognitae, vol. 25, 1993, 67-98, fig. 4.

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cartographers, mainly of non-Iberian origin, thus continued for almost two centuries to depict some kind of Terra Australis with a Psitacorum Regio.

Up to Australia Much has been debated on how some features of the Southern Continent exhibited in sixteenth century maps could be a sketchy layout of certain parts of the Australian coastline. By the same token, a considerable amount of literature has been devoted to the question who was the first to glimpse the real seaboard of this vast island.32 A still more troubling resemblance is denoted in succeeding world maps from the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the depiction of present-day Australia is still routinely joined to the north with New Guinea and to the south with Tasmania. These misapprehensions could have been resolved with two expeditions: the first was the voyage of Luis Váez de Torres (1606-07) who, working for the Spanish Crown, sailed through the Strait that now bears his name; the second were the voyages of Abel Janszoon Tasman (1642 and 1644) who, in the service of the VOC (Dutch East India Company), was the first to reach the islands of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand. But in both cases the information they provided was not made widely available until much later. As far as Váez de Torres is concerned, most of the documents concerning his discoveries were not immediately published but sent to Spain, where they were filed away in the archives. It was not until the 1760s that the written accounts of the expedition were seen by the British Admiralty Hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple, who passed this information on to Joseph Banks and James Cook.33 Likewise, the VOC directors did not pay much attention to Tasman’s accounts, because from the Company’s perspective he had failed to find gold, spices or easier passages to trading areas. Despite the early recording of his findings in the large world map Joan Blaeu published in 1648, it was left to his

 32

On the theory of an early discovery of Australia, namely by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, see Kenneth Gordon McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia: Portuguese Ventures 250 Years Before Captain Cook, Sydney: Souvenir Press, 1977; Roger Hervé, Découverte fortuite de l’Australie et de la Nouvelle-Zélande par les navigateurs portugais et espagnols entre 1521 et 1528, Paris: Editions du CTHS, 1982 ; Cf. W.A.R. Richardson, The Portuguese Discovery of Australia : Fact or Fiction, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 1989. 33 Miriam Estensen, Terra Australis Incognita: The Spanish Quest for the Mysterious Great South Land, Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2006, 222.

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countrymen Hendrick Doncker, Pieter van Alphen, and Pieter Goos to popularize Tasman’s discoveries in the 1660s.34 A map like François Valentijn’s “Kaart der Reyse van Abel Tasman” (see Fig. 12), included in the third volume of his monumental Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (Dordrecht: J. van Braam, 1724-26), is quite representative of the knowledge available to the VOC after a century of Dutch exploration. It shows that in the early decades of the eighteenth century there was enough evidence on hand for conceiving of New Holland as an independent island entirely surrounded by navigable waters. Nevertheless, the last pieces of puzzle which gave shape to present-day Australia and demolished the myth of the Southern Continent, still present for instance in Melchisédech Thévenot’s (1663) representation of the South-West Pacific or in Dampier’s “Map of the East Indies” (1697), were finally settled after James Cook’s voyages during the second half of the 18th century. Among other important contributions, his pioneering survey of the eastern coastline in 1770 allowed mapmakers to fill in the gaps of Australia’s outline. The mysteries of the interior parts took even longer to unravel, but for the purpose of the present study the most important discovery was to realize that Australia was in fact a land of parrots. Over fifty species are now to be found there, which is more that in Brazil itself. Should we then ironically infer that when the anonymous author of the globe gores makes allusion to these animals in the Southern Continent he was actually hinting at a real fact? To say so, however, would be to not understand the Renaissance relationship between the process of acquiring knowledge through travel and exploration, and its representation within a discourse which also includes previously acquired theoretical elements.

 34

See Günter Schilder, Australia Unveiled. The Share of the Dutch Navigators in the Discovery of Australia, Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1976.

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Figure 5. The so-called Cantino planisphere (1502). Detail relating to Brazil.

Figure 6. Martin Waldseemüller, `Universalis Cosmographia…’ (1507). Detail of South America.

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Figure 7. Martin Waldseemüller, `Tabula Terre Nove’ (1513).

Figure 8. Martin Waldseemüller, `Tabula Terre Nove’ (ed. 1522 by Lorenz Fries).

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Figure. 9. Lopo Homem, mappamundi contained in the Miller Atlas (1519).

Figure 10. Oronce Finé, double-cordiform world map (1531).

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Figure 11. Abraham Ortelius, “Typus Orbis Terrarum”, in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570).

Figure 12. François Valentijn, `Kaart der Reyse van Abel Tasman’ (1726), in Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, vol. 3, 1724-26.

PART II: THE WORLD OF TRADE

CHAPTER FIVE THE EXPANSION OF COTTON TEXTILE PRODUCTION IN THE WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN, C. 1500-C.1850 WILLIAM GERVASE CLARENCE-SMITH1

Introduction Kirti Chaudhuri’s magisterial surveys clearly establish the significance of cotton textiles in the economy of the Indian Ocean before 1800. Focusing on the dominant South Asian zones of production (Punjab, Gujarat, Coromandel, and Bengal), Chaudhuri notes that their cotton textile industries supplied cloth to the rest of the Indian Ocean world and Inner Asia.2 Michael Pearson alleges that it was the low remuneration of labour that made South Asian textiles so competitive.3 Chaudhuri rightly contradicts this notion, by rather stressing the importance of ‘highly specialized technical skills.’4 However, he does not comment on the impact that South Asian textiles might have had on artisanal activity in importing territories. Dependency theorists take the argument a step further. Ravi Palat and 1

My thanks are due to the Global Economic History Network, based in the London School of Economics and Political Science, for comments on earlier drafts, and to Elizabeth Lambourn for helpful comments at a late stage. 2 Kirti N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: C.U.P. 1990; Kirti N. Chaudhuri, Trade and civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an economic history from the rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1985, 306-23. 3 Michael N. Pearson, Port cities and intruders; the Swahili coast, India and Portugal in the early modern era, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, 112. 4 Kirti N. Chaudhuri, ‘The structure of the Indian textile industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,’ in Tirthankar Roy ed., Cloth and commerce: textiles in colonial India, New Delhi: Sage, 1996, 33-84.

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Immanuel Wallerstein allege that Indian proto-capitalists exploited the advanced cotton textile techniques of their home regions to prevent the flowering of indigenous industries elsewhere in the ocean basin.5 Michael Pearson acknowledges that much South Asian cloth penetrated deep into Indian Ocean markets in early modern times, but he cautions that the impact of such exports was open to multiple interpretations.6 Anthony Reid explains fluctuations in the peripheral production of early modern cotton textile production in terms of a ‘zero-sum game,’ an argument developed for Southeast Asia, but which has proved to be more widely influential. According to Reid, the profits of the sixteenth-century spice trade were partially retained in situ, and imports of South Asian cottons rose, while Southeast Asia’s own output fell. This process was reversed when Southeast Asian incomes contracted during the ‘seventeenth-century crisis.’ Local weavers were then called upon to replace unaffordable imports.7 This seductively simple explanation raises a number of serious problems, which I have explored elsewhere in the context of Southeast Asia.8 Reid’s model fails to distinguish between finished textiles and cotton products imported for further processing. The entire commodity chain needs consideration, from raw cotton, through spun yarn, to weaving, dyeing, decorating, and the making of garments. Moreover, production of Southeast Asia’s cotton textiles continued to expand in the eighteenth century, even though local incomes rose again. Lastly, Reid fails to explore the evolution of techniques and costs of production in Southeast Asia. Barbara Andaya adds an additional twist to Reid’s argument, again in the context of Southeast Asia, by noting that sustained Western demand for South Asian textiles durably pushed up their price from around the 1690s, making them less competitive in Indian Ocean markets.9 This could 5

Ravi A. Palat & Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Of what world-system was pre-1500 “India” a Part?’ in Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau eds., Merchants, companies and trade: Europe and Asia in the early modern era, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1999, 36-7. 6 Pearson, Port cities, 121-2. 7 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the age of commerce, 1450-1680. Volume 1, The lands below the winds, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, 96. 8 William G. Clarence-Smith, ‘The production of cotton textiles in early modern South-East Asia,’ in Giorgio Riello & Prasannan Parthasarathi, eds., The spinning world, a global history of cotton textiles, 1200-1850, Oxford : O.U.P., 2009, 12742. 9 Barbara Andaya, ‘The cloth trade in Jambi and Palembang society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,’ Indonesia, 48, (1989), 26-46.

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help to explain continuing growth in Southeast Asian textile output in the eighteenth century, but Andaya’s price surge came too late to explain the initial stages of the renaissance of Southeast Asia’s cotton textile sector. Moreover, it still begs the question of local changes in productivity. According to Palat and Wallerstein, the textile industry of the western Indian Ocean was as vulnerable to an inflow of South Asian cotton textiles as that of Southeast Asia.10 Although spinning, weaving and dyeing were ancient crafts in the Middle East by 1500, the transformation of cotton was underdeveloped in comparison to that of silk, wool, linen, and even hemp.11 Cotton was quite prominent in eastern Africa and the offshore islands, but the industry as a whole was less firmly established than in the Middle East.12 It is argued here that South Asian exports probably stimulated rather than hampered the production of cotton textiles in peripheral markets. South Asian artisans sometimes migrated with their skills, and everywhere they provided models to imitate, as well as semi-manufactures to transform. Specialized trading diasporas supplied credit, shipping, commercial facilities, and information about demand and techniques, even if the extent and nature of technical diffusion remain hazy. Alterations in labour regimes had an uncertain effect, while political efforts to encourage or frustrate import-substitution were usually ineffective. The information available for different regions is extremely uneven, but certain general trends may be discerned.

Persia and Inner Asia Persia (Iran) witnessed a consistent rise in its early modern cotton textile production, from humble beginnings. When the Safavid dynasty came to power in 1501, local cottons were coarse, serving mainly for tents and cheap clothing. They were completely overshadowed by a rising tide of

10

Palat & Wallerstein, ‘Of what world-system,’ 31-2. Maurice Lombard, Les textiles dans le monde musulman du VIIe au XIIe siècle, Paris: Mouton, 1978; Karel Otavsky et al., Mittelalterische Textilien, 1, Ägypten, Persien und Mesopotamien, Spanien und Nordafrika, Riggisberg: Abbegg Stiftung 1995; Carl J. Lamm, Cotton in mediaeval textiles of the Near East, Paris: Paul Geuthner 1937. 12 John Picton & John Mack, African textiles, London: British Museum, 2 ed., 1989; Patricia Davison & Patrick Harries, ‘Cotton weaving in South-East Africa; its history and technology,’ Textile History, 11 (1980), 175-92; John Mack, Malagasy textiles, London: Shire Publications, 1989. 11

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high quality imports from South Asia.13 However, under the effective rule of the new dynasty, the cotton sector grew and became more diversified, in both villages and towns. By the eighteenth century, qadak, a tightly woven local cotton fabric was much used for clothing, and was said to be comparable to Chinese nankeens.14 Moreover, Persians quickly imitated the printed (chit) or hand-painted (qalamkar) cottons of South Asia, at times importing unbleached South Asian cotton cloth for this purpose. These imitation ‘Indians’ competed effectively in exports to the Ottoman Empire and western Europe by the seventeenth century. Indeed, some high quality Persian textiles even found a market in Mughal India.15 Reports from the 1670s indicated that the growth of this new sector was reducing imports from India.16 Although the fall of the Safavid dynasty, in 1722, led to decades of internal turmoil and foreign wars, cottons weathered the storm better than silks. To be sure, exports to the Ottoman Empire and to western Europe withered away, reflecting import-substitution in those markets. However, the Russian empire’s growing appetite for Persian yarn, plain cloth and prints may have made up for the loss of other foreign customers.17 The khanates of Inner Asia also exported cotton stuffs to Russia, until the direction of the flow began to be reversed from the mid-nineteenth century.18 The textile industries of Bukhara had seen better days, but traders regularly brought several types of their white and printed cotton

13

Willem Floor, The Persian textile industry in historical perspective, 1500-1925, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999, 13, 82; Tomé Pires, The ‘Suma Oriental’ of Tomé Pires, and the ‘Book’ of Francisco Rodrigues, London: Hakluyt Society 1944, 21, 29-30. 14 Floor, The Persian textile industry, 186-7. 15 Katsumi Fukasawa, Toilerie et commerce du Levant au XVIIIe siècle: d’Alep à Marseille, Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1987, 19-20, 44-5; Gilles Veinstein, ‘Commercial relations between India and the Ottoman empire (late fifteenth to late eighteenth centuries): a few notes and hypotheses,’ in Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau, eds., Merchants, companies and trade: Europe and Asia in the early modern era, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1999, 104-5; Floor, The Persian textile industry, 21, 43, 64-8, 109-11, 144-5. 16 Floor, The Persian textile industry, 64, 68. 17 Charles Issawi, The economic history of Iran, 1800-1914, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971, 264, 267-8; Surendra Gopal, Indians in Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Delhi: Indian Council for Historical Research, 1988, 244; Fukasawa, Toilerie, 17-20, 24, 45; Floor, The Persian textile industry, 62-3, 94, 98-9, 146, 160, 187. 18 Gopal, Indians in Russia, 244.

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cloth to Russia.19 As late as 1870, the emirate of Bukhara contained some 100,000 wooden looms, of which about 12,000 were located in the capital city.20

The Ottoman Empire and Arabia A similar process of import substitution and export diversification occurred in the Ottoman Empire.21 South Asian cottons were entering the empire in substantial quantities by the late fifteenth century, and yet there was vigorous growth in local output.22 In Anatolia, Cyprus and southern Syria, the chief response was to grow more raw cotton, weave more yarn, and produce more and better plain cotton cloth. The latter was in turn made into shirts, coverings for cushions, and towels. Even Bursa, the Byzantine Empire’s great city of silk, developed a significant cotton textile industry, with raw cotton imported from the Aegean coast. In the eighteenth century, Tokat, in northeastern Anatolia, emerged as a major new centre for cottons.23 From the mid-eighteenth century, production boomed in Thessaly and southern Bulgaria, with a focus on yarn.24 Exports of locally produced cloth and yarn grew, mainly directed to Europe. As the printing of cottons developed in Europe in the eighteenth century, white cloth became an important component in Ottoman exports. 19

Scott C. Levi, The Indian diaspora in Central Asia and its trade, 1550-1800, Leiden: Brill, 2002, 77-82, 242-4. 20 Sarfraz Khan, ‘The development of Muslim reformist (jadid) political thought in the emirate of Bukhara, 1870-1924, with particular reference to the writings of Ahmad Donish and Abdal Rauf Fitrat,’ Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 1998, 54. 21 Fernand Braudel, Civilization and capitalism, fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, London: Collins, 1981-1984, vol. III, 468-74, 477. 22 Veinstein, ‘Commercial relations between India and the Ottoman empire’, 95-6, 104-6. 23 Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman cotton textiles: the story of a success that did not last,’ in Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi, eds., The spinning world, a global history of cotton textiles, 1200-1850, Oxford: O.U.P., 2009, 89-103; Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman empire and the world around it, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004, 71; Suraiya Faroqhi, Towns and townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia: trade, crafts and food production in an urban setting, 1520-1650, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1984, 126-31, 135. 24 Richard J. Crampton, A short history of modern Bulgaria, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1987, 10-11; Georges Castellan & Nikolaj Todorov, La Bulgarie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976, 19; Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman cotton textiles’, 96, 98-9.

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Coarse white cottons from Thessaly were sent to France for re-export to the Caribbean, to clothe African slaves.25 At this time, there were also substantial exports of yarn, both plain and dyed, mainly from Thessaly and western and northern Anatolia.26 Egypt became another sizeable producer of plain cotton cloth and yarn within the Ottoman fold, boasting growing and diversified exports. Around 1500, the country wove hardly any cotton, and had to import raw cotton from Syria. Linen traditionally dominated the delta, whereas wool reigned supreme in Upper Egypt.27 Ottoman suzerainty from 1517 coincided with a major expansion of cotton cultivation and weaving, which intensified in the eighteenth century.28 Although Egypt functioned as an entrepôt for Indian stuffs coming up the Red Sea, the bulk of Egypt’s exports came from the country’s own looms. Of the textiles dispatched to Europe, western Arabia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, about two thirds consisted of cottons and one third of linens. These proportions were reversed in exports to Istanbul and the Maghrib.29 Alexandria exported ‘rough cotton piece goods used by Negroes in the West Indies,’ though their provenance is not stated.30 Western Kurdistan and its margins were central to the development of Ottoman hand-painted and printed cottons, which substituted for imports entering from both Persia and South Asia. Diyarbarkir especially, but also Urfa, Ayntab (Gaziantep) and Aleppo, made prints modeled on those of South Asia, and the industry was also found in places in Anatolia.31 The earliest mention of locally manufactured chintzes came from Aleppo in 1637, and imports from South Asia were progressively reduced to a small

25

Fukasawa, Toilerie, 8, 26. Donald Quataert, Ottoman manufacturing in the age of the Industrial Revolution, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1993, 33-5; Charles Issawi, The economic history of the Middle East, 1800-1914, a book of readings, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966, 48-9. 27 Otavsky et al., Mittelalterische Textilien, 22; Lamm, Cotton, 230, 239-43. 28 André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIIIe siècle, (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1973-74, 182, 229-3; Patricia L. Baker, Islamic textiles, London: British Museum Press, 1995, 14, 36-8, 66-79; Fukasawa, Toilerie, 20-1, 24-6; Lombard, Les textiles, 49. 29 Issawi, The economic history of the Middle East, 475-6; Raymond, Artisans, 131, 135-6, 161, 173, 180-3, 186, 192. 30 Issawi, The economic history of the Middle East, 33-4. 31 Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman cotton textiles,’ 96-8; Fukasawa, Toilerie, 19-21, 45-51; Baker, Islamic textiles, 160 26

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trickle of the costliest stuffs.32 There were exports to Europe, including Russia, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, whereas re-exports of Persian and South Asian stuffs ceased from the 1730s.33 Constant hostilities with Persia stunted the cotton industry in the Ottoman empire’s eastern marches. In Iraq proper, a French observer opined in the 1780s that ‘a few woollen manufactures’ in Baghdad were all that remained of Abbasid glories.34 That said, Indian raw cotton and indigo served for local weaving and dyeing, and plain Indian cottons were dyed black in sixteenth-century Basra.35 Moreover, eastern Kurdistan experienced a modest textile renaissance in the second half of the eighteenth century.36 Mosul, which had given the world the word ‘muslin,’ improved its output from the 1760s.37 The Arabian peninsula may also have suffered from its frontier position, although conflict was less systematic. Yemen, an ancient centre of cotton textile production and exports, faced Indian competition and the loss of the Egyptian market, but commoners still wore local cottons, often indigo-dyed.38 Bahrein made mainly sail-cloth, with Indian cotton.39 Oman, at the centre of an expanding thalassocracy focused on eastern Africa, did best. The sultanate’s artisans worked with wool, camel-hair, and imported raw silk, and also wove cotton around 1800. However, Oman mainly supplied markets in the western Indian Ocean by dyeing imported unbleached cotton cloth with local indigo.40

32 Veinstein, ‘Commercial relations between India and the Ottoman empire,’ 10612. 33 Fukasawa, Toilerie, 8, 17-19, 23-6. 34 Issawi, The economic history of the Middle East, 136. 35 Veinstein, ‘Commercial relations between India and the Ottoman empire,’ 97-8. 36 Charles Issawi, The Fertile Crescent, 1800-1914; a documentary history, Oxford: O.U.P., 1988, 181-2; Issawi, The economic history of the Middle East, 50. 37 Dina Khoury, State and provincial society in the Ottoman empire: Mosul 15401834, Cambridge: C.U.P. 1997, 33-7; Sarah Shields, Mosul before Iraq: like bees making five-sided cells, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000, 76-8, 99; Lombard, Les textiles, 64; Fukasawa, Toilerie, 52. 38 John Baldry, Textiles in Yemen: historical references to trade and commerce in textiles in Yemen, from antiquity to modern times, London: British Museum, 1982. 39 Issawi, The Fertile Crescent, 182. 40 Mohmed Reda Bhacker, Trade and empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: roots of British domination, London: Routledge. 1992, 133-5, 147; Robert G. Landen, Oman since 1856, Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1967, 82, 145-6; Charles Guillain, Documents sur l'histoire, la géographie et le commerce de l'Afrique orientale, Paris: A. Bertrand, 1856-57, vol. III, 323.

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Madagascar and the Horn of Africa Madagascar had a particularly vibrant textile economy, connected in many ways to that of Asia. The great island displayed more diverse techniques, wove a greater variety of textile fibres, and employed a much wider palette of colours than continental eastern Africa.41 Indeed, early Modern Europeans considered Malagasy cotton textiles to be the best in the region.42 This was partly because elaborate funeral ceremonies, followed by the solemn re-burial of dried remains, required much cloth.43 Cotton dominated northwestern Madagascar, and was extensively worked on the central plateau, while the eastern and western coasts were the domain of raffia. Wild silk prevailed in many places, and other fibres played a minor role.44 Fibres might be sent to the densely peopled central plateau for weaving, and then sold as cloth in coastal areas.45 It has been suggested that South Asian competition was negatively affecting Madagascar’s textile economy by the 1780s.46 However, the evidence indicates otherwise. The mere mention of sales of South Asian cloth on the central plateau by the 1780s does not mean that local production was undermined. Indeed, a report of 1826 asserted that local cloth was competing well with the imported variety, and that every woman in the country was busy weaving.47 In the mid-eighteenth century, an anonymous author noted that the Malagasy were imitating cloth from Bengal and the Coromandel Coast, which suggests that there was some

41

John Mack, ‘Weaving, women and the ancestors in Madagascar,’ Indonesia Circle, 42 (1987), 76-91; Mack, Malagasy textiles. 42 Alfred & Guillaume Grandidier, Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Madagascar. Volume IV, Ethnographie de Madagascar, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1928, 168; António Rita-Ferreira, African kingdoms and alien settlement in central Mozambique, c. fifteenth to seventeenth century, Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1999, 117-18. 43 Karl-Ferdinand Schaedler, Weaving in Africa south of the Sahara, Munich: Panterra, 1987, 428. 44 Gwyn Campbell, An economic history of imperial Madagascar, 1750-1895; the rise and fall of an island empire, Cambridge: C.U.P., 2005, 31-2. 45 Sarah Fee, ‘Ze mañe aze; looking for patterns in Malagasy cloth,’ in Ruth Barnes ed., Textiles in Indian Ocean societies, London: Routledge Curzon, 2005, 94. 46 Pedro Machado, ‘Awash in a sea of cloth: Gujarat, Africa and the western Indian Ocean, 1300-1800,’ in Giorgio Riello & Prasannan Parthasarathi eds., The spinning world, a global history of cotton textiles, 168. 47 Pier Larson, Becoming Merina in highland Madagascar: history and memory in the age of enslavement, Oxford: James Currey, 2000, 124, 128-9, 145.

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printing of cottons.48 As late as 1838, a British observer wrote about textiles as ‘the most general employment of the people’ after rice cultivation, and gave a detailed description of spinning and weaving.49 All in all, a flourishing and vital textile sector is depicted, in both contemporary texts and oral traditions. In terms of exports, Yemen ceased to purchase Malagasy textiles from the thirteenth century, but East Africa remained a significant market.50 Moreover, European vessels took raffia cloth to the newly settled Mascarene islands, today’s Mauritius and Réunion, from the mid-seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, and they may have brought other textiles as well.51 Although Somalia’s production was broadly limited to plain white cloth, Ibn Battuta already noted in the fourteenth century that Mogadishu’s ‘unequalled’ cotton textiles were exported ‘to Egypt and elsewhere.’52 Exports to Egypt ceased in early modern times, but Mogadishu and the rest of the Benadir coast continued to send their cottons to eastern Africa well into the nineteenth century.53 Mogadishu contained around a thousand weaving households in the 1840s, with smaller numbers in other Benadir towns, and much raw cotton was imported from India. These textiles found their main market in southern Ethiopia, but they were also sent regularly by sea to Mombasa and north Somali ports.54 Highland Ethiopia itself became a significant producer of cotton textiles, directing output essentially to its own densely populated 48 Simon Peers, ‘History and change in the weaving of highland Madagascar,’ in Chapurukha M. Kusimba, J. Claire Odland, and Bennet Bronson eds., Unwrapping the textile traditions of Madagascar, Los Angeles: Fowler Museum, 2004, 145. 49 William Ellis, History of Madagascar, London: Fisher, Son & Co., 1838, I, 277, 282, 324-7. 50 Raymond K. Kent, Early kingdoms in Madagascar, 1500-1700, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Wilson, 1970, 69; Malyn Newitt, A history of Mozambique, London: Hurst, 1995, 28; Baldry, Textiles in Yemen, 17. 51 Larson, Becoming Merina, 52; Ellis, History of Madagascar, vol. I, 68; Fee, ‘Ze mañe aze,’ 98. 52 Hamilton A. R. Gibb, The travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1962, vol. 2, 374. 53 Edward A. Alpers, ‘Futa Benaadir; continuity and change in the traditional cotton textile industry of southern Somalia, c.1840-1980,’ in Entreprises et entrepreneurs en Afrique, XIXe et XXe siècles, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1983, vol. I, 77-89; Scott S. Reese, ‘Patricians of the Benaadir; Islamic learning, commerce and Somali urban identity in the nineteenth century,’ Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pennsylvania 1996, 95-6. 54 Guillain, Documents, II, 531-2, 535, and III, 148-9, 172, 323.

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territory.55 Reports of Portuguese clerics and early travelers suggest that cotton cloth only slowly became the normal form of dress, replacing skins and hides. Men adopted cloth before women, and the ‘Semitic’ peoples before the others.56 Ethiopian production was mainly geared to a plain white material, made into under-garments, shawls and turbans. More colourful and elaborate stuffs were typically imported from South Asia.57 Moreover, Ethiopians commonly unraveled imported Indian cloths to obtain coloured weft, which they used to decorate the borders of their cloth.58

The Swahili Coast and the interior of East Africa The spinning and weaving of cotton were least developed on the African mainland to the south of the Horn, and this region was, a priori, vulnerable to imports from South Asia.59 John Mack and Pedro Machado both assert that imports from the sub-continent effectively destroyed this fragile economic sector long before Manchester cottons flooded in during the nineteenth century.60 However, the story was more complex, allowing for local resurgence in the midst of growing imports. There was certainly production of cotton stuffs in port cities all along the Swahili coast in the sixteenth century, from Pate (in modern Kenya) to Sofala (in modern Mozambique).61 Spindle whorls occur in archaeological

55

Richard Pankhurst, Economic history of Ethiopia, 1800-1935, Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press 1968, 257-60; Schaedler, Weaving in Africa, 939, 396-423. 56 Frederick J. Simoons, Northwest Ethiopia: peoples and economy, Madison, 1960, 186-7. 57 Richard F. Burton, First footsteps in East Africa or an exploration of Harar, London: Tylston and Edwards 1894, II, 16-17; Augustus B. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, London: Methuen 1901, 246-8. 58 Pankhurst, Economic history of Ethiopia, 260. 59 Davison & Harries, ‘Cotton weaving in South-East Africa.’ 60 John Mack, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa and the offshore islands,’ in Jennifer Harris ed., 5000 years of textiles, London: British Museum Press, 1993, 303-4; Pedro Machado, ‘Gujarati Indian merchant networks in Mozambique, 1777-c. 1830,’ Ph.D. Thesis, University of London 2005, 91-151; Machado, ‘Awash in a sea of cloth,’ 167. 61 Malyn Newitt, ‘East Africa and Indian Ocean trade,’ in Ashin Das Gupta and M. N. Pearson, eds., India and the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800, Calcutta: O.U.P., 1987, 203, 206-7.

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remains in coastal settlements from the tenth century CE.62 Portuguese documents suggest that there had been a recent growth spurt, and noted that Gujarati stuffs, especially blue ones, were unraveled to obtain coloured yarn.63 By this time, even slaves wore a piece of locally woven blue or white cloth from waist to knees.64 In the interior, both wild and cultivated raw cotton was spun in places, and was turned into a coarse unbleached cloth. However, such cottons faced much competition, both from imported South Asian textiles, and from locally produced bark, raffia, hides and skins.65 Cotton homespun was known as machira (or machila) in the lower Zambezi and Shire valleys, and it was turned into hammocks, litters and cheap clothing.66 Such cottons were widely traded, notably in exchange for gold dust on the Zimbabwean plateau.67 The Kirimba (Querimba) islands, part of the Muslim Swahili world of northern Mozambique, provide an apparent case study of a cotton textile industry that collapsed in early modern times. The islands’ milwani cloth, dyed with local indigo and sometimes mixed with imported silk, was sold widely in East Africa in the sixteenth century. It was one of the ‘cloths of the land’ that Portuguese traders eagerly sought for their local commercial operations. However, milwani cloth was no longer mentioned in a report of 1634.68 That said, it remains unclear whether its demise was due to South Asian competition, raiding, or the migration of artisans.69 Weaving cotton in the wider Rovuma region certainly continued.70 Indeed, there seems to have been a resurgence in East African weaving 62

Mark Horton, Shanga: the archaeology of a Muslim trading community on the coast of East Africa, London: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996, 337-41. 63 Malyn Newitt ed., East Africa: Portuguese encounters in the world in the Age of Discoveries, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002, 31-3. 64 Jeremy G. Prestholdt, As artistry permits and custom may ordain; the social fabric of material consumption in the Swahili world, circa 1450 to 1600, Evanston: Northwestern University, PAS Working Paper No. 3, 1998, 24-33. 65 Edward A. Alpers, Ivory and slaves in East Central Africa, London: Heinemann 1975, 16, 21-2, 25; Davison and Harries, ‘Cotton weaving in South-East Africa’, 175-81, 187. 66 Newitt, A history, 66, 75, 94, 141, 232, 239. 67 Alpers, Ivory and slaves, 24-5, 55; Newitt, A history, 28, 78, 214. 68 Newitt, A history, 189-92; Newitt, East Africa, 125, 127-30; Prestholdt, As artistry permits , 27-30. 69 Malyn Newitt, personal communication. 70 Helge Kjekshus, Ecology, control and economic development in East African history; the case of Tanganyika 1850-1950, Berkeley: University of California Press 1977, 107.

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from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Isolated tax figures indicate that the cost of machira roughly halved between the seventeenth and eighteenth century.71 Output was said to have risen, though no statistics are available, and the cloth continued to be actively traded on the Zimbabwean plateau.72 The Portuguese authorities considered that the expanded weaving of machira was reducing potential cloth imports from India, and thus tax revenues, between 1750 and 1821.73 Production of cheap and durable machira certainly persisted into the nineteenth century and beyond, though Richard Burton criticized its ‘loose texture,’ and averred that ‘when it is dry it is rough and unpleasant, when wet, heavy, comfortless as leather, and it cannot look clean, as it is never bleached.’74 Even the arrival of machine-made Western cloth did not spell the end of this tough and inexpensive material, which continued to be produced well into the twentieth century, for example in southern Tanzania.75 Moreover, East African artisans were producing somewhat more elaborate cloths by the nineteenth century, and in new locations. Zanzibar only became a significant textile centre some decades after the sultans of Oman moved their main residence to the island in early in the century, with embroidered skull-caps becoming one local specialism.76 Weavers in the centre of today’s Tanzania produced striped and checked materials, in yellow and black. Around 1900, it was reported that the Haya, to the West of Lake Victoria, had only just learned how to weave cotton from their Nyamwezi neighbours, and were experimenting with new types of cloth.77 An undated sample from the lower Zambezi, pictured in a publication of 1893, shows an intricately patterned coloured cloth, perhaps influenced by Malagasy traditions.78 Such pieces were made with imported dyed yarn.79 71

Rita-Ferreira, African kingdoms, 118. Hoyini H. K. Bhila, Trade and politics in a Shona kingdom; the Manyika and their African and Portuguese neighbours, 1575-1902, London: Longman, 1982, 122, 131. 73 Allen Isaacman, Mozambique; the Africanisation of a European institution, the Zambezi prazos 1750-1902, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972, 66, 735, 199, 201. 74 Richard F. Burton, The lake regions of Central Africa, London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860, II, 311, cited in Kjekshus, Ecology, 108. 75 Kjekshus, Ecology, 107-9. 76 Guillain, Documents, III, 342; Bhacker, Trade and empire in Muscat and Zanzibar, 134; Kjekshus, Ecology, 105-6. 77 Kjekshus, Ecology, 107-9. 78 Mack, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’, 303-4. 79 Davison and Harries, ‘Cotton weaving in South-East Africa,’ 182. 72

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There was even some printing of cottons in East Africa, although very little is known about it. Old printing blocks could still be found in Lamu and other coastal towns in the early 1990s, where printed textiles had been produced until ‘quite recently.’80 It is thus unclear why John Gillow dismisses as mere speculation the idea that the popular kanga wrappers of the twentieth century were ‘originally block printed on the island of Zanzibar.’81

The role of merchants Exactly how traders interacted with artisans is hard to recover from the sources, but commercial networks helped to shape the evolution of textile production. Merchants stimulated the sector by supplying inputs, credit and consumer goods. They specified designs, and provided technical information. They also controlled quality, purchased finished textiles, and shipped them to distant markets. They might engage in putting-out arrangements, and even set up their own workshops. Traders who fostered the rise of Persian and Inner Asian cotton textiles not only provided credit to artisans, but also at times purchased their own looms.82 By the mid-nineteenth century, Tabrizi merchants in Persian Azerbaijan both negotiated supplies of cloth from artisans and households, in a possible putting-out system, and created their own workshops.83 Traders came from South Asia, bearing skills and information from that ‘workshop of the world.’ Thus, a Multani merchant, a Muslim from northwestern India, advanced cash to textile artisans in late sixteenthcentury Samarqand, with a proportion of the loans repayable in cloth.84 Armenians were heavily involved in Persia’s silk industry, although it is unclear whether they branched out into cottons.85 Entrepreneurs who forcefully promoted cotton weaving and printing in the Ottoman heartlands were mainly Christian. Armenian traders of Diyarbakir bought plain cloth from the surrounding countryside, and had it printed in town. Both Greeks and Armenians made prints in Izmir 80

Mack, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa,’ 304. John Gillow, African textiles: colour and creativity across a continent, London: Thames & Hudson, 2003, 158-9. 82 Floor, The Persian textile industry, 90-1. 83 Joanna De Groot, Religion, culture and politics in Iran: from the Qajars to Khomeini, London: I.B. Tauris, 2007, 20. 84 Stephen F. Dale, Indian merchants and Eurasian trade, 1600-1750, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1994, 75-6. 85 Fukasawa, Toilerie, 16-17. 81

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(Smyrna).86 Similarly, Armenians owned most of Istanbul’s printed cotton workshops in the seventeenth century.87 Greek and Macedonian merchants controlled the yarn business in Thessaly and southern Bulgaria, and may have been moving towards putting-out arrangements.88 The communities were somewhat different in Egypt, and they were perhaps less involved in direct production. The leading traders of Cairo were Muslim and Christian Arabs, from Egypt itself, or from the Maghrib and Greater Syria. Many cloth merchants provided credit to artisans. Wealthy ulama (clerics) also rented out premises to weavers. Some merchants owned textile workshops.89 In eastern Africa, traders provided a similar range of stimuli. In sixteenth-century Madagascar, when Portuguese and Arabs competed keenly for local textiles, cloths were woven to order in individual homes in the north of the island, although the exact nature of this relation is not spelled out.90 By the early nineteenth century, wealthy Arab and Somali merchants of the Benadir coast kept slaves weaving in textile workshops.91 Mozambique’s Indian and Portuguese traders commercialized machira cloth, as well as Indian cottons.92 Nyamwezi traders, from today’s central Tanzania, may have spread techniques of weaving cotton around the shores of Lake Victoria.93

The diffusion of technology The oft-repeated mantra that textile technology stagnated in the Indian Ocean world is incorrect, even if the evidence for change is thin. Economic historians find few mentions in documents, art historians concentrate on design, and archaeologists lament the perishable nature of wood. The region was clearly not heading towards any kind of industrial 86

Fukasawa, Toilerie, 23, 48. Baker, Islamic textiles, 160. 88 Eric L. Jones, The European miracle: environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1981, 189-91. 89 Raymond, Artisans, 277-9, 283-5, 400-1, 406-7, 427. 90 Kent, Early kingdoms, 69; Newitt, A history, 28; Prestholdt, As artistry permits, 30. 91 Lee V. Cassanelli, ‘The ending of slavery in Italian Somalia: liberty and the control of labor, 1890-1935,’ in Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts eds., The end of slavery in Africa, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, 312. 92 Luis Frederico Dias Antunes, ‘A actividade da Companhia de Comercio Baneanes de Diu em Moçambique, 1688-1777,’ M.A. Thesis, Lisbon 1992, 127. 93 Kjekshus, Ecology, 108. 87

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revolution, but one can detect signs of an ebb and flow of best practice, brought by either artisans or traders. Improved techniques did not necessarily imply more intricate designs or weaves, but they allowed for textiles to be produced faster, in greater quantities, more cheaply, and in wider formats. New techniques often required some capital investment, as well as the learning of skills. Furthermore, the equipment was generally less portable. Spindle-wheels, and even more spinning-wheels, could speed up and cheapen the production of yarn, albeit at some potential cost in quality.94 Unfortunately, the evidence is sparsest for this technology. Spindle-wheels were ancient in Persia, where, by the nineteenth century, hand-spindles were confined to making certain types of wool and silk yarn.95 However, Palestine and Yemen retained hand-spindles, as did the Bedouin more widely.96 The dynamism of Somalia’s Benadir coast may have been partly due to the use of wheels, which produced four types of yarn in the 1840s.97 There is no date given for the adoption of these wheels, however, and it is not specified whether they were equipped with the crank, treadle and flyer that made the Saxon spinning-wheel so effective in Europe. Ethiopia, East Africa and Madagascar remained wedded to hand-spindles.98 Christian missionaries tried to introduce some kind of spinning wheel to Madagascar in 1822, but the experiment failed when an English artisan returned home.99 Foot-operated treadles freed the weaver’s hands to work more rapidly with two fixed heddles, and pit looms fitted with such treadles appeared in the settled communities of the Middle East from around the beginning of the Common Era. Placing treadles in a pit was peculiar to South Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, although treadles themselves occurred in East Asia, and were spreading in Southeast Asia at this time. Pits reduced the size of the wooden frame containing the loom, and helped to keep the 94

Dieter Kuhn, Science and civilisation in China. Volume 5, part IX: Textile technology, spinning and reeling, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1988. 95 Floor, The Persian textile industry, 18. 96 Shelagh Weir, Spinning and weaving in Palestine, London: British Museum, 1970, 7-11; F. M. Hunter, An account of the British settlement of Aden in Arabia, London: Frank Cass, 1968 (reprint), 81; Ann Hecht, The art of the loom: weaving, spinning and dyeing across the world, London: British Museum Publications 1989, 65-7. 97 Guillain, Documents, II, 532. 98 Pankhurst, Economic history of Ethiopia, 258; Kjekshus, Ecology, 106, 108; Alpers, Ivory and slaves, 24-5; Grandidier, Histoire, 167. 99 Ellis, History, I, 324, 327.

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yarn moist in dry climates.100 Persian cottons were made with pit looms, and a foreign observer in the 1680s commented rather disparagingly that ‘four beams fitting into one another suffice.’101 Nineteenth-century Yemeni and Omani looms were similar.102 Inner Asian looms produced very narrow strips of material that had to be sewn together to form a piece, as in West Africa.103 Pit looms of a Middle Eastern type were standard in the settled regions of nineteenth-century Ethiopia and Somalia.104 As pit looms in the Horn of Africa are of the Persian type, rather than of the Egyptian variety, it can be surmised that initial diffusion was from the east rather than the north. There are suggestions of later technical diffusion from the Middle East. A photograph, taken in Gondar, Ethiopia, in 1900, depicts a large ‘tie-back’ form of this loom, which was typical of Greater Syria and Egypt.105 The pit loom was adopted in Madagascar, probably in the eighteenth century, and there were other Middle Eastern technical influences. The Northeast coast employed double-heddle pit looms by around 1800, and the technique spread some way down the east coast. Moreover, Merina weavers of the island’s central plateau showed knowledge of this kind of weaving at a later period, even though they did not practice it. When the Betsimisaraka of the east coast employed a single fixed heddle, they lashed it to the rafters, as in the Persian Gulf.106 The simple Egyptian ground loom, with its fixed single heddle, was probably older than the pit loom.107 Middle Eastern nomads and seminomads preferred it, because it was quick and easy to disassemble.108 They were not alone. Whereas pit looms were the norm in nineteenth-century Palestinian towns, this was not the case in surrounding villages.109 Whether the ground loom retreated before the pit loom in the early modern Middle East is not known. 100

Venice Lamb, Looms past and present; around the Mediterranean and elsewhere, Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books, 2005, 98-107, 111-56. 101 Floor, The Persian textile industry, 17-19, 21. 102 Henry Ling Roth, Studies in primitive looms, Bedford: Ruth Bean 1977, 3 ed., 62; Hunter, An account of the British settlement of Aden, 81. 103 Jennifer Wearden, ‘Central Asian textiles,’ in Jennifer Harris, ed., 5000 years of textiles, London: British Museum Press, 1993, 91-3. 104 Pankhurst, Economic history of Ethiopia, 259-60; Alpers, ‘Futa Benaadir’, 80; Roth, Studies, 62-3; Gillow, African textiles, 160-1. 105 Lamb, Looms, 107-10, 140, and Plate 96. 106 Mack, ‘Weaving,’ 84-5; Mack, Malagasy textiles, 21-2, 29-31. 107 Lamb, Looms, 1-6, 62. 108 Hecht, The art of the loom, ch. 2. 109 Weir, Spinning and weaving in Palestine, 16-35.

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East Africa, south of the Horn, also employed variations on the Bedouin ground loom, weaving cloths that were generally wider than those of West Africa.110 Possibly reflecting the prevalence of raiding, and the consequent need to move swiftly, a distinctive characteristic in parts of the interior was the miniaturization of the loom, which might then be raised from the ground and worked from the side.111 Nevertheless, these could be quite complex machines. When the White Fathers sought to revive weaving in the Great Lakes region, one difficulty they faced was that local looms were ‘very complicated and of a delicate construction.’112 Madagascar exhibited considerable technical variety. In addition to the new pit looms mentioned above, the west of the island had single-heddle ground looms, of the East African type. In the southeast of the island, Southeast Asian body-tension looms were encountered. There were many minor regional variations.113 Other looms were marginal to the production of cottons. Large and complex ‘draw looms,’ employing many weavers on each machine, existed in major Middle Eastern towns, but only to produce silk goods.114 Warp-weighted vertical looms with a single fixed heddle, or ‘Coptic looms,’ only occasionally wove cotton fibres in Egypt, Kurdistan, or western Persia.115 A similar type of vertical loom existed in forested parts of Africa, but was seemingly confined to weaving fibres from the raffia palm.116 The best reported change was the widespread adoption of wooden blocks for printing cotton cloth, which allowed for a much more rapid application of patterns than painting by hand. This technique was not new in the Middle East, for it was known in Egypt in around 1100, and a little later in Inner Asia.117 Indeed, India may originally have acquired the technique from Persia, although the evidence is contradictory on this 110

Davison and Harries, ‘Cotton weaving in South-East Africa,’ 181-7; Lamb, Looms, 31-3; Roth, Studies, 40. 111 Lamb, Looms, 32. 112 Kjekshus, Ecology, 80. 113 Ellis, History, I, 325; Mack, Malagasy textiles, 22-32; Mack, ‘Weaving, Women’, 84-6; Fee, ‘Ze mañe aze’, 94; Grandidier, Histoire, 167. 114 Ronald W. Ferrier, A journey to Persia; Jean Chardin’s portrait of a seventeenth-century empire, London: I. B. Tauris, 1996, 173; Baker, Islamic textiles, 26-8, 70; Lamb, Looms, 214-62. 115 Lamb, Looms, 61-3, 69, 72-3, 83, 86-8, 91. 116 Jan Vansina, ‘Raffia cloth in West Central Africa, 1500-1800,’ in Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui ed., Textiles: production, trade and demand, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998 263-81; Schaedler, Weaving in Africa, 65. 117 Baker, Islamic textiles, 76-7; Floor, The Persian textile industry, 144.

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point.118 In any event, Persians were present on India’s Coromandel Coast in 1673, to learn the ‘Art of Staining Calicuts.’119 Muslim South Asian textile craftsmen worked in late sixteenth-century Samarqand, together with a ‘Hindu cotton textile printer,’ and others belonged to the cloth bleachers’ guild of early seventeenth-century Aleppo.120 Armenian traders probably stimulated the adoption of printing blocks in Ottoman Kurdistan, and Greek and Armenian traders have been suggested for Anatolia.121 How, and indeed when, printing blocks came to East Africa is not known.122

The deployment of labour It is hard to discern how changing labour relations influenced the expansion, or the decline, of cotton textile production. From a Marxist perspective, this should have been the ‘motor of history,’ but the evidence is generally poor and contradictory. Escaping the stranglehold of urban guilds was vital for the growth of European woollen industries, but this factor was neither as obvious nor as significant in the Middle East, and was apparently irrelevant in eastern Africa. Guilds only became securely established in Middle Eastern towns in early modern times, engaging in restrictive practices, but also training workers.123 However, their power was not always great. Thus, Mosul’s guilds failed to prevent the spinning of cotton and wool from becoming a female monopoly from the late seventeenth century.124 The effect of keeping much production in towns is therefore hard to gauge. In addition, the Middle East’s cotton textile sector may have been less urban than it seemed. Willem Floor argues that Western travelers mainly had opportunities to observe large urban workshops, and that this distorted their portrayal of textile production. In reality, Persian cottons were often 118 Irfan Habib, ‘The technology and economy of Mughal India,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review, 17, 1 (1980), 10. 119 Floor, The Persian textile industry, 145. 120 Dale, Indian merchants, 75-6. 121 Fukasawa, Toilerie, 23, 46. 122 Mack, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’, 304. 123 Gabriel Baer, ‘Guilds in Middle Eastern history,’ in M. A Cook, ed., Studies in the economic history of the Middle East, from the rise of Islam to the present day, Oxford: O.U.P., 1970, 11-30; Joel Beinin, Workers and peasants in the modern Middle East, Cambridge: C.U.P., 2001, 16-18; Quataert, Ottoman manufacturing, 8-9; Ferrier, A journey to Persia, 167. 124 Khoury, State, 138; Shields, Mosul, 77.

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woven in villages, and merely finished in towns.125 Egypt’s cotton spinning was rural and familial, and weaving and dyeing were dispersed across many small towns, in workshops usually containing only half a dozen workers.126 A similar picture emerges for eastern Kurdistan.127 Bokhara’s nine main workshops in the mid-nineteenth century only contained about 0.5% of the emirate’s estimated looms.128 Thessaly’s cotton sector in the eighteenth century was clearly rural in nature, although it remains unclear how important this was to its success.129 Slavery was omnipresent in the early modern western Indian Ocean, but it is difficult to assess its impact. Rulers generally upheld the legality of slavery, but Muslims frowned on other forms of coercion, which were outlawed by the shari‘a.130 Slavery had certain advantages for employers, in terms of training and retaining skilled labour. In Persia, not only slaves but also other forms of bonded labour were employed in royal workshops.131 On balance, however, Parviz Mohebbi argues that coercion contributed to low productivity, and was a barrier to technical progress.132 Slavery was not necessarily dominant in workshops, it existed outside them, and it interacted with other forms of coercion. Free workers were replacing slaves in Bursa’s large textile workshops by the seventeenth century.133 Hadhrami weavers operated in scattered urban households in eastern Yemen in the mid-nineteenth century, while continuing to seek the help of a couple of slaves, or servants from a despised social stratum.134 Free Somali weavers, who wove full time and bought their food on the market in the 1840s, were of low caste. Family members, slaves and

125

Floor, The Persian textile industry, 13, 31, 43. Raymond, Artisans, 229-31, 319. 127 Khoury, State, 138, 140. 128 Khan, ‘The development’, 54. 129 Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman cotton textiles’, 96. 130 William G. Clarence-Smith, Islam and the abolition of slavery, London: Hurst & Co., 2006. 131 Floor, The Persian textile industry, 82-5. 132 Parviz Mohebbi, Techniques et ressources en Iran, du septième au dix-neuvième siècle, Teheran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1996, 149, 207, 215-16. 133 Halil Inalcik, ‘Servile labour in the Ottoman empire,’ in Abraham Ascher et al. eds., The mutual effects of the Islamic and Judaeo-Christian worlds; the East European pattern, New York: Brooklyn College, 1979, 27-9; Baker, Islamic textiles, 86-7. 134 Lodewijk W. C. van den Berg, Le Hadramout et les colonies arabes dans l'archipel indien, Batavia: Impr. du gouvernement 1886, 78. 126

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clients assisted them in their workshops.135 Unlike spinning, weaving in Ethiopia was not prestigious, and it was often reserved to men who were Muslims, Falasha Jews, ethnic minorities, or members of a low caste.136 The division of labour by gender could be flexible, but generally may have hindered the functioning of labour markets. In the Ottoman case, embroidery was always an exclusively female occupation, whereas spinning was increasingly devolved to rural women. The situation for weaving, dyeing and printing was mixed, with men active in workshops, but with a tendency for women to predominate in the home.137 Only in Madagascar did women nearly always weave, on Southeast Asian lines, whereas this was an exclusively male occupation in East Africa and the Horn of Africa.138 Women tended to dominate spinning in Africa, but with significant exceptions.139 The degree of specialization of workers in textile production may have had the greatest bearing on growth. A French traveler on the Malagasy central plateau in 1777 opined that women were so busy weaving that they left domestic chores to men. An 1826 report noted that many women wove full time, ranging ‘from the King’s wives to the slaves.’140 Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain information about how specialization might have changed over time.

The role of the state and political elites Official attempts to foster or hinder cotton textile production loom large in the sources, but they generally failed to achieve their purpose. As Kirti Chaudhuri showed long ago, European powers exercised growing naval supremacy in the ocean, but could not off-load their woollen cloth.141 They thus faced the same dilemma as indigenous rulers, whether to protect local artisans, or to promote sales of Indian and Chinese fabrics. Imports were easy to tax, and additional profits might accrue from monopolistic 135

Alpers, ‘Futa Benaadir,’ 81, 84; Reese, ‘Patricians,’ 96-8; Guillain, Documents, II, 531. 136 Donald L. Levine, Greater Ethiopia: the evolution of a multiethnic society, Chicago: Chicago U.P., 1974, 56-7; Pankhurst, Economic history of Ethiopia, 401, 257-9. 137 Quataert, Ottoman manufacturing, 38-9, 80-3. 138 Mack, Malagasy textiles, 21. 139 Schaedler, Weaving in Africa, 396-423; Kjekshus, Ecology, 109. 140 Larson, Becoming Merina, 124, 128; Fee, ‘Ze mañe aze,’ 94. 141 Kirti N. Chaudhuri, The trading world of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760, Cambridge: C.U.P. 1978.

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transport rights, but they simultaneously drained bullion away, especially to South Asia. Rulers occasionally attempted to become producers, but results were disappointing, due to the dubious efficacy of concentrating and coercing workers. Ottoman sultans wanted to counter a marked ‘drain’ of bullion to South Asia, given that exports of horses were insufficient to balance imports of textiles.142 However, sultans were pulled in a contrary direction by a moral and religious obligation to keep prices low for the populace, which resulted in a ‘provisionist’ policy of reduced or non-existent import tariffs. Sultan Abdülhamit I (r. 1774-1789) tried to cut the Gordian knot by banning the wearing of Indian cloth by all except those of highest rank, but this sumptuary legislation proved hard to enforce. Sultan Selim III (r. 1789-1807) made the most serious efforts to ban imports completely, despite the negative impact on customs revenues.143 The Sublime Porte generally sought more indirect ways of favouring cotton textiles. The government manipulated its considerable purchasing power to outfit palace personnel, and to equip the armed forces with clothing, tents, and sails.144 The Ottoman authorities did not try to produce cotton textiles themselves, and generally withdrew from all forms of direct production after 1709. However, they provided interest-free credit, tax holidays, and administrative support to secure raw materials and settle artisans.145 Results are hard to evaluate, but seem to have been modest. Indeed, the artificial depression of Istanbul’s prices by the chief kadi, on ‘provisionist’ lines, worked against the interests of Ottoman artisans.146 From the foundation of Persia’s Safavid dynasty in 1501, worries about the outflow of bullion to South Asia led to the setting up of royal workshops to produce cottons, employing much coerced labour. However, Willem Floor argues that their significance has been greatly exaggerated, and that they almost ceased to operate after the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I

142

Hala M. Fattah, The politics of regional trade in Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. 143 Faroqhi, The Ottoman empire, 14-15, 158-9; Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman cotton textiles,’ 97, 99-100; Baker, Islamic textiles, 160; Veinstein, ‘Commercial relations between India and the Ottoman empire’, 111. 144 Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman cotton textiles’, 92-4; Faroqhi, The Ottoman empire, 108; Baker, Islamic textiles, 101-3. 145 Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Science, technology and learning in the Ottoman empire: Western influence, local institutions and the transfer of knowledge, Aldershot: Variorum, 2004, X, 57-9. 146 Faroqhi, ‘Ottoman cotton textiles’, 100.

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(r.1587-1629).147 This ruler may have achieved more by promoting cotton cultivation and guilds, although the efficacy of these measures is equally open to doubt.148 The Portuguese attempted to frustrate the local production of cotton textiles in East Africa, albeit with no greater efficacy. They were worried that the growing popularity of machira cloth was undermining Mozambique’s import revenues, derived mainly from taxes on cloth from South Asia. In 1750, the Junta do Comercio (Board of Trade) therefore suggested banning the cultivation of cotton in the lower Zambezi valley, although this was judged to be unenforceable. Equally impractical was a 1753 scheme to buy up all available raw cotton, and sell it in India and China.149 In the event, the Portuguese proved incapable of stifling the production of machira cloth and its sale in the interior.150 The mixed-race lords of the lower Zambezi’s prazo estates may have undermined Portugal’s stance. They demanded machira cloth as part of the tribute extracted from their African ‘serfs,’ although it is not clear whether these fiscal demands stimulated or reduced output.151 In any event, machira cloth production was still flourishing in that region in the mid-nineteenth century, when David Livingstone noted that it was preferred to imports for many purposes.152

Conclusion South Asian textiles failed to de-industrialize its western Indian Ocean periphery, and the evidence suggests that rising productivity in the Middle East and eastern Africa was part of the reason. The model tentatively proposed in this essay is that merchant communities reduced costs and uncertainties in making and marketing cotton textiles. They may also have been instrumental in spreading best technical practice. In contrast, governments had little part to play in the process. Great gaps remain in the story, and it may be that the sources are not of such a nature as to be able to fill them, but it is hope that this is at least a 147

Floor, The Persian textile industry, 65, 82-7. Baker, Islamic textiles, 108-10, 120-1, 135-6, 160. 149 Alexandre Lobato, Evolução administrativa e económica de Moçambique, 1752-1763, Lisbon: Agência Geral Ultramarina, 1957, 241-2; Machado, ‘Gujarati Indian merchant networks,’ 110. 150 Stanley I. G. Mudenge, A political history of Munhunmutapa, c. 1400 to 1902, Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1988, 187. 151 Isaacman, Mozambique, 66. 152 Alpers, Ivory and slaves, 25, 35 (n. 86). 148

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plausible hypothesis. Even though Kirti Chaudhuri did not grapple with this particular problem, such a conclusion would fit well with his Braudelian approach. The actions of states are like the foam on the waves, whereas mercantile networks and trends in technical change belong more to the longue durée.

CHAPTER SIX EASTERN INDONESIA: A STUDY OF THE INTERSECTION OF GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL NETWORKS IN THE ‘EXTENDED’ INDIAN OCEAN LEONARD Y. ANDAYA

Challenged by the remarkable study of the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel, K.N. Chaudhuri sought to “discover the unity and diversity of Indian Ocean civilisations” by examining long distance trade involving the many different geographic units and cultures that constituted this Ocean.1 Chaudhuri undertook to define the Indian Ocean in its broadest terms, to include not simply the physical unit but also the human one created by people as they followed the trade routes and established relationships across the seas.2 As a tribute to K.N. Chaudhuri, whose works I have long admired, I offer this study of one section of the “extended” Indian Ocean: the seas of eastern Indonesia. In so doing, I am also attempting to redress what Edward A. Alpers in his keynote speech to an international conference on “Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World” at UCLA in 2002 called “the relative lack of interest shown

1

The notion of an “Indian Ocean world” continues to be debated and redefined since Alan Villiers helped initiate the concept in his study The Indian Ocean, London: Museum Press Limited, 1952. More recently Michael N. Pearson has attempted to clarify this notion of a unified world in a work also called The Indian Ocean, London: Routledge, 2003. In general, most scholars today acknowledge that the boundaries of such a world are reliant on shifting economic and human factors and, I would add, the nature of the inquiry of the particular scholar. 2 Kirti N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: C.U.P., 2-4.

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by scholars of insular Southeast Asia in connecting their particular region to the larger Indian Ocean world”.3 Indigenous to these eastern Indonesian seas, which include thousands of high islands and coral atolls, were spices and aromatic woods that were greatly valued in the ancient and early modern world and proved to be a major impetus to international trade. By the early eighteenth century, these seas were also the major providers of the holothurian tripang (bêche de mer or sea cucumber), a new Chinese delicacy, and of slaves to satisfy the increasing need for labour in the European cities in Southeast Asia and in the new pepper gardens planted by local rulers in response to international demand. Eastern Indonesia was geographically distant from the world centres, but it was never isolated. Its local trade systems were linked to regional and international networks that extended to all parts of the globe. Mindful of my colleague Jerry Bentley’s sensible advice that one should seek connections “without losing sight either of local experiences or of the global interactions that sometimes conditioned the experiences of the regions themselves”,4 I have focused on the crucial role played by the port of Makassar and the Makassarese merchants themselves in the interlocking global, regional and local networks in eastern Indonesia in the early modern period (c. 1500-c. 1800).

Networks in Eastern Indonesia Eastern Indonesia encompasses a vast area of islands and cultures stretching from the island of Bali eastward to the Birdshead Peninsula on the large island of New Guinea. These seas can be divided into networks, determined by the prominence of a particular product or object to the participating communities. But the value attached to that product or object could differ considerably within a single network. For example, the trade in elephant tusks was a profitable economic venture involving communities from the mainland Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Siam/Thailand, and Cambodia to the Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa Tenggara, or the islands of Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, and the Solor and Timor archipelagoes) in eastern Indonesia. But within this large regional economic network was a local network of communities in Nusa Tenggara, where the elephant tusk was highly valued for its cultural significance. The honour of the groom’s 3 Edward Alpers, `Imagining the Indian Ocean World’. Opening Address to the International Conference on Cultural Exchange and Transformation in the Indian Ocean World, UCLA, 2002, 9. 4 Jerry H. Bentley, `Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis’, The Geographical Review 89, 2 (April 1999), 222.

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family could be impugned by its inability to provide the essential elephant tusks as part of the bride price. These tusks were in constant circulation, as the male members of the bride’s family would then later present these same tusks as bride price to another family. They did not become heirlooms until more recent times, but in the past they were circulated within a fixed area, thus providing a rationale for the maintenance of this ritual network.5 The largest interlocking networks involved the trade in what the early Europeans referred to as the “trinity of spices”: clove, nutmeg, and mace. It is believed that the clove tree is indigenous to five tiny islands in northern Maluku (the Moluccas), and the nutmeg tree to the even smaller Banda islands in central Maluku. The nut from the nutmeg tree is the source of nutmeg, while mace is the red filament around the nut. But as the Europeans learned more about these spices, they realized that these trees grew in abundance in other areas of Maluku, including Ambon and the Hoamoal Peninsula on the island of Seram, though their fruit was usually of lesser quality. One network in the trade in spices involved a nested relationship of communities from the northern Malukan kingdom of Tidore to its dependencies and economic partners in southeastern Halmahera, the Raja Ampat islands, and the coasts of the Birdshead Peninsula.6 Another major network was based on the gathering and exchange of slaves and massoi bark and involved the communities in “East Seram” (a Dutch reference to the eastern end of the island of Seram and the Seram Laut and Gorom archipelagoes), the Raja Ampat islands, and the Birdshead Peninsula.7 Slaves and sandalwood formed a basis for

5

Munandjar Widiyatmika, Adat Istiadat dan Upacara Perkawainan Suku Dawan, Sumba dan Lamaholot, Daerah Nusa Tenggara Timor, Kupang: Biro Penelitian Universitas Nusa Cendana, 1978 19; Alo Liliweri ed., Inang: Hidup dan Bhaktiku, Kupang: Tim Penggerak PKK, Provinsi NTT, 1989, 139; Robert H. Barnes, Sea Hunters of Indonesia. Fishers and Weavers of Lamalera, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, 136; Johan G.F. Riedel, De Sluik- en Kroesharige Rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, ‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1886, 289. 6 Leonard Y. Andaya, The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993. 7 Thomas E. Goodman, `The Sosolot: An Eighteenth Century East Indonesian Trade Network’, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of Hawai’I at Manoa, Honolulu, 2006, 74-97; Roy Ellen, On the Edge of the Banda Zone: Past and Present in the Social Organization of a Moluccan Trading Network, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003, 88, passim.

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yet another network, which incorporated most of the communities in Nusa Tenggara.8 The creation of these networks, some dealing in the same products or objects, reflects a combination of geographic considerations and the varying needs and cultural values of the participating communities.9 The trade networks that operated in the eastern Indonesian seas were not limited to one single ethnic group but involved others, whose various skills and connections were vital to their success. The most important in the seas of eastern Indonesia were the international network of the Chinese; the regional networks of the Malays, Javanese, Bugis, Makassarese, and the Chinese based in Southeast Asia; and the local networks of East Seram and Nusa Tenggara. It is important to note, however, that the actual ethnic composition of these networks was far more flexible than the rigid and imprecise ethnic categories used by the Dutch to record the ethnic composition of incoming and outgoing vessels in their harbours, such as Makassar after 1667. For example, determining whether a boat was “Bugis” or “Makassarese” was often based on the ethnicity of the captain (nakhoda) of a boat, which might not reflect his actual crew or those individuals who purchased space on the boats for their trade goods. Moreover, the general categories of “Bugis” and “Makassarese” were imprecise because there were different kingdoms within these broad ethnic categories that outfitted boats on their own account and may even have competed with each other, such as the “Bugis” from Wajo and the “Bugis” from Bone. The less well-known South Sulawesi ethnic group of the Mandarese was often elided into the “Bugis” or the “Makassarese” communities and was therefore generally ignored in any assessment of the trade connections in eastern Indonesia.10

8 Arend de Roever, De Jacht op Sandelhout: De VOC en de Tweedeling van Timor in de Zeventiende Eeuw, Zutphen: Walberg Pers, 2002; Rodney Needham, `Sumba and the Slave Trade’, Working Paper No. 31, Melbourne: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1983; Widiyatmika, Adat Istiadat, 19; William Dampier, A voyage to New Holland, &c. In the year, 1699. Wherein are described, the Canary-Islands, the Isles of Mayo and St. Jago. The Bay of All Saints, London: James Knapton, 1703; Riedel, Sluik, 252. 9 This is a preliminary paper of a larger study where I hope to identify and describe the various networks, which form a complex mosaic of local and global interactions in eastern Indonesia in the early modern period. 10 Kathryn Gay Anderson, `The Open Door. Early Modern Wajorese Statecraft and Diaspora’, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, 2003, 51-8; Leonard Y. Andaya, `The Bugis-Makassar Diasporas’, Journal of the Malaysian branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 68, 1

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Another prominent player in these seas was the Bajau, known also as Turije’ne (“water people”) by the Makassarese and as Bajo by the Bugis. Often they were so integrated in the Bugis, Makassarese, or Mandarese trade networks that they were never credited with their own specific roles.11 After the Dutch East India Company (VOC) established a permanent presence in Makassar in 1667, it maintained extensive records of trade activities flowing through this port. It is thus possible to see the functioning of a particular network and even obtain hints of what may have been occurring outside the purview of the Dutch. Fortunately, there are also accounts of other European traders, particularly the English country traders in the second half of the eighteenth century, which help add further detail to the South Sulawesi networks operating mainly out of the port city of Makassar. VOC restrictions on trade, high customs duties, and fixed prices for goods that greatly favoured the Dutch resulted in some local traders avoiding Makassar and going to secondary ports where greater profits could be made. But the majority of traders continued to see the advantage of being based in Makassar, where many foreign merchants congregated to purchase cloves, nutmeg, mace, sandalwood, slaves, tortoiseshell, wax, and in the eighteenth century, tripang. To illustrate how such networks responded to demands of the international marketplace, and how they contributed to the conceptual unity of the eastern Indonesian seas, I will focus on the port of Makassar and the regional network dominated by the Makassarese, though the Bugis, Mandarese, and Bajau were often part of the crews of the Makassarese trading vessels.

Emergence of the Gowa-Tallo Kingdom and the Port of Makassar The trade in cloves was a major stimulant in the development of the port of Makassar and in the establishment of a Makassarese trade network. (1995), 120; Leonard Y. Andaya, `Local Trade Networks in Maluku in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries’, Cakalele: Maluku Research Journal 2, 2 (1991), 72-5. 11 For two recent works on the Bajau communities in south and southeast Sulawesi, see Jennifer Gaynor, `Liquid Territory: Subordination, Memory and Manuscripts among Sama People of Sulawesi’s Southern Littoral’, Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology and History, University of Michigan, 2005 and Lance Nolde, `Sailing the Edges of Indonesian History: History, Memory and Experience among the Sama of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia’, M.A. thesis, Department of History, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, 2008.

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Since it is believed that cloves were grown exclusively in northern Maluku until the eighteenth century, there must have been a very ancient clove trade route that extended to the Middle East, where cloves were found in the pantry of a home in Terqa, Syria, in 1700 BCE.12 There is also a Chinese reference to a Han emperor from about the second century BCE requiring his courtiers to hold cloves in their mouth when addressing him. The clove, like nutmeg and mace, was later attributed by Chinese, Middle Easterners, and Europeans, with not only culinary and preservative qualities but also with prophylatic properties against a host of diseases.13 Global demand for this “wonder drug” provided the stimulus for foreign governments to outfit expeditions to the distant islands of eastern Indonesia, as well as for the producing communities to reorganize themselves to profit from this wind-fall. In the first 1500 years of the Common Era (CE), the major entrepots located in the Straits of Melaka and in east Java were the primary redistribution centres of the spices brought mainly by the Bandanese from the production areas. The eastern Javanese kingdom of Majapahit is known to have been involved in the spice trade in the fourteenth century, and one of the ports along this route was Bantaeng on the southern coast of South Sulawesi.14 One of the crucial components in Makassar’s emergence as the dominant entrepot in the whole of eastern Indonesia was the presence of Malay traders. It is known that the Malay kingdom of Srivijaya was the principal entrepot in the Straits of Melaka between the seventh and eleventh centuries and a major redistribution centre for Malukan spices.15 It is likely that Malay traders from Srivijaya themselves would have been involved in the transport of the spices from Maluku, as they were in the fifteenth century when the Malays from the kingdom of Melaka were prominent traders throughout the region. Together with the Javanese and the Bandanese, the Malays were the principal carrier of spices.16 The fall of Melaka to the Portuguese in 1511 led to an exodus of Malay traders to other ports in Southeast Asia. Some of them went to Siang in present-day 12

Giorgio Buccellati & Marilyn Kelly Buccellati, `Terqa: the first eight seasons’, Les annales archéologiques arabes syriennes: Revue d’archéologie et d’histoire 32, 2 (1983), 54. 13 Andaya, World of Maluku, 1, passim. 14 Wayne Bougas, `Bantayan: An Early Makassarese Kingdom, 1200-1600 A.D.’, Archipel 55 (1998), 83. 15 Oliver W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce: A Study of the Origins of Srivijaya, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967. 16 Hubert Jacobs ed. and tr., A Treatise on the Moluccas (c. 1544) (…) of António Galvão, Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1970, 79.

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Pangkajene on the west coast of South Sulawesi, which had replaced Bantaeng as a major trading port on the island.17 In 1544 the Portuguese Antonio Paiva noted the bustling atmosphere at Siang, where the bulk of the merchants were Malays from Ujung Tanah (Johor), Patani, and Pahang.18 But the Christianization of the ruler of Siang by the Portuguese at that time may have spurred the Muslim Malay merchants to shift their trade to the new thriving port at Makassar, which was under the control of a newly-formed union of the Makassarese kingdoms of Gowa and Tallo. Gowa’s traditional focus was on the land and agriculture, while Tallo’s was on the sea and international trade. Tallo’s early orientation to the sea and maritime commerce is implied in the Tallo chronicles, which note the marriage of one of its earliest rulers to a woman from Siang. They then give their son in marriage to a Javanese woman from Surabaya, which served as Majapahit’s principal port located in the waterway separating the islands of Java and Madura.19 Siang and Surabaya were both ports involved in the spice trade and would have been crucial for Tallo’s ambitions to become a major entrepot in the eastern Indonesian seas. Subsequent Tallo rulers were noted for their visits as far west as Melaka and as far east as the islands of Ende (Flores), Banda, and Nusa Tenggara. Tales of the incursions of the Makassarese, who forced the people to offer their obeisance to the Raja Tallo, have become part of the folklore of many communities in Nusa Tenggara.20 In 1535 Tallo was defeated by its rival Gowa, and the combination of Tallo’s orientation toward the sea and trade and Gowa’s focus on the

17 Bantaeng was still a formidable trading port in 1667, when the Dutch commented on the prosperity of the city and noted that some 100 boats were in the harbour carrying about 6000 tonnes of rice. Leonard Y. Andaya, The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A history of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981, 75-6. 18 John Villiers, `Makassar: the Rise and Fall of an East Indonesian Maritime Trading State, 1512-1669’, in J. Kathirithamby-Wells & John Villiers eds., The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990, 146, 147; Christian Pelras, The Bugis, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996, 124-5. 19 Abdul Rahim & Ridwan Borahima, Sejarah Kerajaan Tallo’, Ujung Pandang: Kanto Cabang II Lembaga Sejarah dan Antropologi Ujung Pandang, 1975, 6; Tom Gibson, And the Sun pursued the Moon: Symbolic Knowledge and Traditional Authority among the Makassar, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005, 147. 20 Peter G. Spillett, Pre-Colonial History of the Island of Timor Together with Some Notes on the Makassan Influence in the Island., Darwin: Museum and Art gallery of the Northern Territory, 1999, 331-6.

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interior and agriculture proved to be a formidable pairing.21 The joint kingdom’s new policy of emphasizing international trade meant that the Tallo rulers initially had a greater say in the direction of the kingdom. Although Gowa attained the upperhand, Tallo’s links to the outside world were greater than those of the more agriculturally-orientated Gowa. It therefore became customary in the functioning of the joint kingdom for the Karaeng (King of) Gowa to be regarded as the preeminent ruler and the Karaeng Tallo as his chief minister and principal adviser. At times when the Karaeng Gowa was a child, it was the Karaeng Tallo who became the regent. Much of the success of Gowa-Tallo in the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century can be attributed to a series of capable Tallo rulers serving as chief ministers and regents, who helped shape the outward-looking and international nature of the newly formed entity. With the merging of the two kingdoms, Gowa in particular underwent a transformation with the creation of new offices to supervise the changing demands of an expanding commercial and agricultural kingdom. Additional lands were opened up for agricultural cultivation, and new groups of skilled artisans were formed. Tunipalangga (c. 1546-65) increased the maneuverability and effectiveness of his army by making the shields smaller and the lances shorter, and by introducing new firearms technology. The larger and more effective armies, the systematization of the government, and the increased population through improved agricultural yields, enabled Gowa-Tallo to incorporate kingdoms peacefully or by force not only in South Sulawesi but also in neighbouring islands. In addition, a series of capable and intelligent rulers in the late sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries provided the leadership that enabled the joint kingdom to become the paramount power in eastern Indonesia.22 According to Gowa traditions, “Malays” from Pahang, Patani, Johor, Campa, and Minankabau (as well as the Javanese)23 arrived in Makassar 21

Rahim & Borahima, Sejarah Kerajaan Tallo’, 8-9; G.J. Wolhoff & Abdurrahim, Sedjarah Gowa, Ujung Pandang: Jajasan Kebudajaan Sulawesi Selatan dan Tenggara, 1959, 21. 22 Rahim & Borahima, Sejarah Kerajaan Tallo’; Wolhoff & Abdurrahim, Sedjarah Gowa; Gibson, And the Sun, 147-8; Villiers, `Makassar’; Anthony Reid, `A Great Seventeenth Century Indonesian Family: Matoaya and Pattingalloang of Makassar’, Masyarakat Indonesia 8, 1 (June, 1981), 5-19. 23 In these chronicle traditions the term “Malay” seems to have been used as an ethnic category for most traders from the western archipelago, including the Javanese. The Minangkabau were widely regarded as Malay, and the Chams were closely related linguistically and culturally to the Malays and may have been

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and were granted certain privileges by the Karaeng Gowa to entice them to settle in the port. They sought assurance that their lands and homes would be inviolate and that they would be exempt from certain arbitrary royal practices.24 In agreeing to the demands of these traders, Tunipalangga took an important step in making the port of Makassar attractive not only to Malay but to all international merchants. The decision to make the position of Syahbandar, the official in charge of international trade, a separate entity from the influential Tumailalang office, was another wellcalculated move to develop Makassar as an entrepot.25 Measures taken by Tunipalangga are reminiscent of those that characterized the illustrious fifteenth century Malay kingdom of Melaka26 and may have been suggested by the new Malay settlers. He established an official system of weights and measures, and he created the post of Tumakkajananngang Ana’bura’ne to oversee some forty occupational groups within the port city. Some of the groups would have been directly involved in the requirements of any port aspiring to entrepot status, such as shipwrights, food producers, and carpenters.27 The Malays were one of the earliest foreign groups, along with the Bandanese, to settle in Makassar and would have been directly responsible for the rapidity with which Gowa-Tallo became a major player in the international spice trade.28 The seizure of the old trading centre of Bantaeng and the ship-building communities on the Bira peninsula would have been part of an overall strategy to make the kingdom the foremost player in the trade of spices and aromatic woods from eastern Indonesia.29 One of the figures crucial to the success of Gowa-Tallo was Karaeng Patingalloang, the Karaeng Tallo who served as Chief Minister in the joint kingdom in the first half of the seventeenth century. According to the indistinguishable to those from Sulawesi, Leonard Y. Andaya, Leaves of the Same Tree. Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008, 6-7, 82, 20, 43-5. 24 Abdurrahim, `Kedatangan Orang Melaju’, in H.D. Mangemba, Kenallah Sulawesi Selatan. Djakarta: Timun Mas, 1956, 144-5. 25 Wolhoff & Abdurrahim, Sedjarah Gowa, 25. 26 Barbara Watson Andaya & Leonard Y. Andaya, A History of Malaysia, Second Edition, Houndsmills, Basingstoke Hamps.: Palgrave, 2001, 44-6. 27 Wolhoff & Abdurrahim, Sedjarah Gowa, 25-6. 28 Sutherland, `The Makassar Malays: Adaptation and Identity c. 1660-1790’, in Timothy P. Barnard ed., Contesting Malayness: Malay Identity across Boundaries, Singapore: Singapore U.P., 2004, 78-9; P.A. Tiele & J.E. Heeres, Bouwstoffen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanders in den maleischen Archipel,,’sGravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1890-95, vol. 2, 260. 29 Gibson, And the Sun, 134; Wolhof & Abdurrahim, Sedjarah Goa, ,25.

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Gowa chronicles, he maintained friendships with the Spanish governor in Manila, the Portuguese viceroy in Goa, the Mufti in Mecca, the Indian rulers in the Coromandel, and the monarchs of England, Spain, and Portugal. In the archipelago, he had close ties with the sultans of Aceh, Banten, Mataram, and of northern Maluku.30 We know more about him than the other rulers because he caught the imagination of Europeans. He was described as a learned man, who spoke a number of different European languages, was conversant with European affairs, and had a strong grasp of Western science.31 By the first half of the seventeenth century, Makassar became a truly international entrepot serving as a base not only for the experienced Malay traders and other archipelagic nations, but also for the Chinese, Indians, English, Portuguese, and the Danes. It became unnecessary to go to the sites where the goods were produced or collected since the port of Makassar provided an uninterrupted supply of spices, sandalwood, slaves, tortoiseshells, wax, etc. Makassar’s emergence as eastern Indonesia’s major stapling centre for spices brought the kingdom of Gowa-Tallo into direct conflict with the monopolistic policies of the VOC. Unable to prevent the Makassarese traders from obtaining the much valued spices, and fearful of undermining its own prestige in the region, the VOC blockaded the port of Makassar in 1634-5 and in 1654-5. To protect his lucrative trade to the eastern islands, the Karaeng Gowa placed some 300 Makassarese vessels on both the north and south sides of Makassar to protect the Makassarese junks and other boats that arrived daily from Ambon via East Seram.32 When the blockades proved only temporarily successful, the VOC decided to take harsher measures. In 1660 it bombarded the port and forced Gowa-Tallo to sign a treaty that favoured the Dutch. But the initial advantage won by the Dutch was short-lived as the Makassar-based merchants found ways to continue to pursue their lucrative spice trade to Maluku. In 1666 the VOC launched a major expedition to destroy Gowa-Tallo, a task which was undertaken with great trepidation because of the fearsome reputation of the Makassarese warriors in close combat and use of firearms. The Dutch, bolstered by their Bugis allies and arch-enemies 30

Mattulada, Menyusuri Jejak Kehadiran Makassar dalam Sejarah (1510-1700), Makassar: Hasanuddin University Press, 1991 [First published 1982], 159-60. 31 Alexandre de Rhodes, S.J. Divers Voyages et Missions de P. Alexandre de Rhodes en la Chine et autres Royaumes de l’Orient, Paris: S. Cramoisy & G Cramoisy, 1653, 39. 32 Tiele & Heeres, Bouwstoffen voor de Geschiedenis der nederlanders in den Maleischen Archipel, 256.

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of the Makassarese, finally seized the port city after a protracted and fierce struggle that began in 1666 and only finally ended in 1669. By the terms of the Bungaya Treaty first signed by the Dutch and the Makassarese leaders in 1667 and renewed in 1669, Gowa-Tallo agreed to Dutchimposed restrictive measures which were intended to limit the ability of the Makassarese traders to sail to eastern Indonesia without VOC passes. The treaty introduced a number of measures which led directly to an exodus of Makassarese and an influx of Bugis into the kingdom.33 For a time there was a decline in economic activity in Makassar, but eventually the traders resumed their lucrative activities in defiance of the treaty by completely avoiding the Dutch and by trading in more remote areas of the eastern Indonesian seas. Already in the first half of the eighteenth century, the VOC began to complain about the “incursions” and “smuggling” of the traders based in South Sulawesi. It became obvious by the latter half of the eighteenth century that the Dutch were helpless to prevent a resurgence of local and international commerce in eastern Indonesia, stimulated by the growing presence of English country traders.34 Despite the VOC conquest of Gowa-Tallo in 1669, the Makassarese quickly resumed their prominent role in regional trade and helped maintain the port of Makassar as the major entrepot for eastern Indonesian commodities for the remainder of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Makassarese Trade Network in Eastern Indonesia Much of the carrying trade was still in the hands of Malays and nonSulawesians in the beginning of the seventeenth century. While Makassarese individuals may have served earlier on Malay and other ships, by the first quarter of the seventeenth century the Makassarese were trading in their own vessels and on their own account and appeared to have been encouraged by the Dutch seizure of the Portuguese settlements in Ambon in 1605 and Ternate in 1607.35 In 1602 some 40 Makassarese boats arrived in the “Solor archipelago” (a term which included not only the island of Solor but also the surrounding islands and the eastern part of Flores) at the invitation of the ruler of Maumere on the northeast coast of 33 Andaya, Heritage of Arung Palakka; Frederik W. Stapel, Het Bongaais Verdrag Leiden/Groningen/Den Haag, 1922. 34 David K. Bassett, British Trade and Policy in Indonesia and Malaysia in the Late Eighteenth Century, Zug: Interdocumentation Company, 1971. 35 Marie Antoinette Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, 163.

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Flores. Maumere had long been influenced by Makassar, where traders went to obtain cassia lignea, an inferior form of cinnamon. The fleet appeared before the Portuguese fort on the island of Solor to demand tribute from the inhabitants as an acknowledgement of Gowa-Tallo’s overlordship, but they replied that they were subjects of Ternate. The Makassarese fleet then left to return to Maumere and also began to demand tribute from the various communities in eastern Flores. But here, too, they were unsuccessful because many of the villages had converted to Christianity and were aided by the Dominicans and the Portuguese. Despite the rejection of their overlordship, the local communities welcomed the Makassarese as traders. In the late 1620s the VOC Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen lamented the fact that Makassarese competition had resulted in weaker Dutch trade in the Solor archipelago and Timor. Another worrying development for the Dutch was the fact that the Makassarese were using the islands of East Seram, the Aru-Kai archipelagoes, and Tanimbar as bases to obtain spices from Maluku.36 A Dutch report of 1603 describes an annual visit of Portuguese from Melaka to Makassar to load cloves, nutmeg, and mace, which they purchased with Indian cloth. These spices were being brought to Makassar principally by Malays, Javanese, and Bandanese. Malays resident in the city maintained links with their compatriots in other communities throughout the region and entered into cooperative ventures with the Portuguese in the trade between Melaka and Makassar.37 The Bandanese were among only about 1000 of an original Banda population of 15,000 who escaped the Dutch massacre in 1621 and settled in Kai, Aru, and East Seram.38 In 1624 the ruler of Gowa-Tallo invited the Bandanese refugees in East Seram to settle in Makassar. With their long experience as carriers of spices from Maluku to Melaka and their continuing links with other refugee Bandanese communities in the eastern islands, the refugee Bandanese community in Makassar became instrumental in the expansion of Makassarese trade to the east.39

36

Roever, Jacht op Sandelhout, 126, 192, 217, 227. Sutherland and David S. Brée, `Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to the Study of Indonesian Trade: The Case of Makassar’, in T. Ibrahim Alfian et al, Dari Babad dan Hikayat sampai Sejarah Kritis: Kumpulan Karangan dipersembahkan depada Prof. Dr. Sartono Kartodirdjo. Jokjakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1987, 400; 38 Willard Hanna, Indonesian Banda. Colonialism and its Aftermath in the Nutmeg Islands, Banda Naira, Moluccas: Yayasan Warisan dan Budaya Banda Naira, 54-5. 39 Andaya, World of Maluku, 164. 37

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Building on the expertise, experiences, and networks of the resident Malays and Bandanese, the Makassarese became leading traders to eastern Indonesia. One of the ways in which the Makassarese were able to avoid VOC patrols was to use routes that were outside the purview of the Dutch. One such route went northward around the northern coast of Sulawesi to Halmahera, then down the east coast of Halmahera to the settlement of Maba. Maba, along with Patani and Weda, were the three settlements along the southeast coast of Halmahera that constituted the Gamrange and acknowledged the overlordship of the Sultan of Tidore. At one time the island of Gebe was the most prominent community in the Gamrange and was the first acknowledged “overlord” by the Papuan islanders. But its role was considerably diminished by the seventeenth century and was no longer regarded as part of the Gamrange. From Maba the Makassarese boats were guided by Tidore kora-koras around the south coast of Halmahera, up through the Patinti Straits and then northward to Tidore.40 By taking this northern route, the Makassarese avoided the Dutch post at Ternate and, after 1669, the Dutch in Ft. Rotterdam in Makassar. This route proved valuable for the Makassarese because Tidore was the main collecting point for spices and many other desired eastern Indonesian goods brought by its dependencies in the Gamrange in southeast Halmahera, the Raja Ampat islands, and the Birdshead Peninsula. Tidore provided cloth, iron goods, and various small items to the Gamrange, which in turn issued these items as credit to the Papuans of the Raja Ampat islands to obtain slaves, massoi bark, nutmeg, mace, and tortoiseshell from the Papuans of the Birdshead. Some Makassarese traders also went with their small boats directly to Weda, Obi, Akelamo, Makian, Mayu, and various places in northern Halmahera and the Sula Islands for spices, slaves, massoi bark, and other items.41 The Makassarese were also active in the trade in cloves from northern Maluku, but after the VOC established a post in Ternate in 1607, they shifted their trade to the Hoamoal Peninsula in west Seram. The settlements on the Hoamoal Peninsula preferred to transport their spices over the mountains to Lesidi and Erang to sell cloves to the Makassarese in exchange for rice and slaves, rather than to the Dutch who offered lower prices.42 Many of these small communities found it more profitable and often easier to sell their products to the numerous Makassarese traders sailing on their small boats through these islands than to go through 40

Andaya, `Local Trade Networks’, 72. Andaya, `Local Trade Networks’, 86-7. 42 Tiele & Heeres, Bouwstoffen, vol. 2, 56-7, 97-8; Andaya, `Local Trade Networks’, 73. 41

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middlemen or bring their products to a specific collecting centre. Dutch reports estimated that some 150 to 200 boats from Makassar traded annually to Maluku and Nusa Tenggara.43 It would have been difficult for the Dutch with their limited numbers of ships to be able to patrol the extensive areas in eastern Indonesia. Moreover, the size and light draught of the Makassarese boats enabled them to seek safety or escape detection by VOC ships in creeks or small passageways between the islands. The Makassarese were therefore able to fill their limited cargo space with desired products from the east with only occasional interference from the Dutch.44 Open Makassarese trade to this area proceeded unimpeded until the kingdom of Gowa-Tallo was finally subdued by the VOC in 1669 and the Dutch established Ft. Rotterdam in Makassar. The Bungaya Treaty severely restricted the Makassarese from pursuing the kingdom’s former direct trade relationships with mainland Southeast Asia, the southern Philippines, Manila, and Macao. Any trade to the western archipelago had to be channelled through Batavia, the main VOC headquarters at the western end of Java. Despite or because of these restrictions, Makassarese trade to some regions were strengthened, such as to the eastern coasts of Borneo and to Nusa Tenggara. Although the Dutch required that all Makassar-based trade ships obtain passes, there was no way that the Dutch could prevent ships with Dutch passes from going to other ports on the way to their stated destination.45 Some of the trade that used to go directly to Makassar now went to East Seram, with the Makassarese traders an important part of this shift.46 The principal products traded in the East Seram local network were slaves, spices, and massoi bark collected from trade relationships established by the East Seram settlements with communities in Onin and Kobiai on the Birdshead Peninsula. These two areas were divided into sosolot, or bays and anchorages which extended to the interior, with each of these sosolot

43

Knaap and Sutherland, Monsoon Traders, 19. Tiele and Heeres, Bouwstoffen, vol. 2: 262. 45 Gerrit Knaap & Heather Sutherland. Monsoon Traders: Ships, Skippers and Commodities in Eighteenth-Century Makassar, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2004, 21-2. 46 Roy Ellen, On the Edge of the Banda Zone: Past and Present in the Social Organization of a Moluccan Trading Network , Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003, 88; Tiele & Heeres, Bouwstoffen, vol. 2, 56-7, 97-8, 319. 44

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maintaining a trade relationship with one of the polities in East Seram.47 Individual islands in East Seram arose at different times to be the main centre for the exchange of spices, slaves, and massoi bark, attracting large number of native boats from the western archipelago. In 1632, for example, an Ambonese reported seeing at one of the Seram Laut islands some 28 boats, of which eight were Malay, six Makassarese, and the rest from Banten, Japara, and Bukit [Surabaya]. These islands were the major supplier of slaves from the east as a result of the sosolot arrangements. At Rumbatti at Onin some 2-300 slaves were purchased annually for 10 Tobunku swords each, and then transported to Gorom, Kilwaru, Geser, Keffing, and Rarakit in East Seram. These slaves were sold by the interior non-Muslim tribes to the coastal Muslims mainly of Seram Laut or Tidore origins, who then sold them to foreign merchants, including the Makassarese.48 There is ample evidence of the flourishing slave trade operating between East Seram and the Birdshead Peninsula, which fed both Makassar and Batavia.49 In the mid-eighteenth century the trading atmosphere changed dramatically. The VOC was no longer as dominant in the eastern waters as they were before, and it had to tolerate the growing presence of the private English country traders, i.e. those who were based and conducted their trade in Asia. They followed a sea route that was first used by the English East India Company that went from India through the straits separating the Birdshead and Waigeu in the Raja Ampat Islands, to Sulu in the southern Philippines, and finally to China. They sought Southeast Asian products that were in high demand in China to exchange for tea. It was a route that avoided the Dutch and went through areas that in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was in the hands of Raja Nuku, a Tidore prince sympathetic to the English. He had revolted against the Dutch and had established himself as a separate source of indigenous authority in these waters.50 Nuku’s revolt and the increasing presence of the English country traders forced the Dutch to take further restrictive measure against all foreign trade in Maluku. The Makassar traders were thus forced to concentrate their resources on the trade to the “southern hemisphere”, i.e. the southeastern peninsula of Sulawesi, the area of the Flores Sea, and Nusa Tenggara. In the 1720s this “hemisphere” constituted just 17% of 47

Muridan Widjojo, Revolt of Prince Nuku: Cross-cultural Alliance-making in Maluku,c. 1780-1810, Leiden: Brill, 2009, 133; Ellen, On the Edge, 126-31; Goodman, `Sosolot’, ch. 2. 48 Andaya, `Local Trade Networks’, 85. 49 Goodman, `Sosolot’, 176-97. 50 Muridan, Revolt of Prince Nuku.

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the volume of traffic in Makassar, but by the 1780s it had grown to some 58%.51 Makassarese trade with the communities in the southern hemisphere mirrored that in Maluku. The desired local products were brought to specific centres where they were traded to foreign merchants. But some of the Makassarese boats went directly to the sites of production in hopes of obtaining better prices or more favourable exchange of goods. The principal products sought were sandalwood, slaves, tortoiseshells and, in the second half of the eighteenth century, tripang. In exchange the Makassarese brought rice, cloth, and iron. Rice was greatly desired by the ruling classes in Maluku as a prestige food compared to the more common staple of sago. With increasing demand for rice for the Maluku trade and for the burgeoning population in Makassar, Gowa-Tallo was unable to supply sufficient quantities even with the increased acreage under rice cultivation. To meet this demand, Gowa-Tallo conquered the major rice baskets of eastern Indonesia: Bima (1616) and Sumbawa (1618) on the island of Sumbawa, and Manado (1636) and Gorontalo (1638) in northern Sulawesi.52 Makassarese success in obtaining spices eventually led to confrontation with the VOC and the conquest of the kingdom of GowaTallo, as described above. In addition to rice, the Makassarese brought iron to exchange for eastern Indonesian goods. The area around Lake Matano in Luwu in South Sulawesi was known for its special iron mixed with nickel that the Javanese found to be ideal for making their krisses. The seventeenth century naturalist G.E. Rumphius claimed that the people living around the lake were so skilled at working the iron that the finished product was as good as steel. But for the trade to eastern Indonesia, it was the iron found at Tobunku in Southeast Sulawesi that proved more valuable, though Rumphius considered one sword made in Luwu to be worth more than six of Tobunku’s. The Tobunku knives and swords were so highly regarded in eastern Indonesia, especially among the Papuan islanders and those in the interior of the islands of Halmahera and Seram, that some groups would only trade their products for Tobunku iron. The iron ore was readily accessible in Tobunku, and the inhabitants simply waited for boats to arrive with their requests before digging up the ore and smelting it to produce their iron weapons and tools.53 Control over Luwu and Tobunku 51

Knaap & Sutherland, Monsoon Traders, 72-3. Tiele & Heeres, Bouwstoffen, vol. 2, 281; vol. 3, 135; Mattulada, Menyusuri, 53; Sejarah Sulawesi Selatan, vol. 1. Provinsi Sulawesi Selatan: Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Daerah (Balitbangda), 2004, 66. 53 Andaya, World of Maluku, 87. 52

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therefore became a strategic part of Gowa-Tallo’s plan to dominate the spice trade. Cloth was the third major trade item brought by Makassarese traders and was by far the most desired product among eastern Indonesian communities. The Makassarese obtained Indian and Chinese cloth from traders from Siam, Patani, Johor, Melaka, Jambi, Aceh, Banten, Batavia, and Bali,54 but their major suppliers of Indian cloth were the Europeans. Already by 1603 the Dutch noted that the Portuguese themselves were going to Makassar to purchase spices brought there by Malays, Javanese, and perhaps also the Bandanese, but only cloth was accepted as payment. The Portuguese also became active in the Indian and Chinese cloth trade in Makassar once they moved there in 1641 after being ousted from Melaka by the Dutch. The English established a trading post in Makassar in 1613, the Danes in 1618, and the French in 1622—all of whom supplied Makassar with a large variety of Indian cloths.55 In addition, the Makassarese brought certain locally-produced cloth from Bima, Salayar, and Buton, which had a strong market in the spice-producing islands of northern Maluku.56 Cloth was such a highly-valued item in the trade with eastern Indonesian communities that many would not part with their goods until they were compensated with cloth. The rice, iron, and cloth brought by the Makassarese traders to eastern Indonesia were not necessarily consumed by these people but often formed useful trade items to exchange for other goods within the area. In this way the Makassarese regional network directly contributed to the formation of local networks. The Makassarese themselves were not simply providing these goods to a central redistribution centre but became involved as part of local networks. To obtain sandalwood, slaves, tortoiseshell, and tripang, the Makassarese were forced to participate in a local peddling trade of buying and selling of a variety of goods from one island to 54

Jacobus Noorduyn, `De Handelsrelaties van het makassaarse Rijk volgens de Notitie van Cornelis Speelman uit 1670’, Nederlandse Historische Bronnen 3 (1983), 119. 55 Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade, 163; Anthony Reid, `Pluralism and Progress in seventeenth-century Makassar’, in Authority and Enterprise among the Peoples of South Sulawesi, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 188, ed. Roger Tol, Kees van Dijk, and Greg Acciaioli, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2000, 57. 56 Armando Cortesão, ed. & trans. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, New Delhi / Madras: Asian Educational Services, 1990 (original edition of 1944), vol. 1, 203; Gerrit Knaap, Kruidnagelen en Kristenen: De VOC en de Bevolking van Ambon, 1656-1696, Leiden: KTLV Press, 2004, 287.

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another. The Makassarese involvement in this peddling trade demonstrates most clearly how the local intersected with the regional and global trade networks to meet the economic, social, and ritual requirements of eastern Indonesian societies.

Interlocking Networks and Local Imperatives In 1650 a Dutch official visiting the eastern islands of Nusa Tenggara commented that the Makassarese, plus the Bandanese settled in Makassar, came frequently to these islands to trade in sandalwood, slaves, tortoiseshell, and cloth, and then exchanged these products for nutmeg and mace in the Southwestern Islands immediately to the south of Banda.57 This trade was later overshadowed by the strong demand beginning in the eighteenth century for tripang, which was considered a Chinese delicacy with numerous health-giving properties. The Makassarese used small boats, termed “coast-hugging creepers” by the Dutch, which carried only limited quantities of whatever commodity they obtained from the numerous little islands in eastern Indonesia. What these boats lacked in storage capacity, however, they made up in numbers.58

Sandalwood The trade in sandalwood, particularly the white sandalwood (Santalum album L.) from Timor, provides a glimpse into the way that the international and the regional networks intersected in eastern Indonesia. Both India and China were major markets for sandalwood. The earliest mention of its use in China was about 500 CE, where it was prescribed for fevers and vomiting, sudden loss of consciousness and comas, women’s chest pains, and—in an oil form—a highly regarded aphrodisiac. Chinese Buddhist priests favoured sandalwood incense, hence the name given to sandalwood, “Tan Xiang”, meaning “sincerity fragrance”. In the Indian epic the Ramayana, the demon Ravana has such an intense desire for Sita, the wife of his enemy Rama, that he becomes feverish and is treated with a balm of sandalwood paste that is applied to his body. Among the Javanese

57

VOC [Dutch East India Company Archives, The Hague], 1187, Banda, 30 April 1651, fol. 611r. 58 In 1658 the Dutch found only one ship owned by a Makassar Malay that was of reasonable size (7.5 tonnes) in the port. Sutherland, `Makassar Malays’, 79.

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of Indonesia, sandalwood is used in a decoction of jamu, herbal medicine, or as a paste applied topically to enhance beauty.59 In Indonesia the major source of sandalwood was Timor. Although Sumba was called the “Sandalwood Island”, it did not contribute as much sandalwood to international trade as was hoped because the inhabitants were reluctant to cut down a tree they regarded as sacred. The Makassarese were no stranger to Nusa Tenggara and the sandalwood trade. Toward the end of 1540, a large Makassarese fleet of between 90 and 150 boats carrying 5-7000 men sailed from Makassar to Nusa Tenggara. In January the following year they attacked and conquered Larantuka at the eastern end of Flores, and then proceeded on to Timor. Here the fleet split in two, with one going to the south coast to Batomian, and the other to the northeast coast at Manatutu, Ade, and Hon to extend control over the sandalwood-producing areas. The south coast of Timor was where much of the sandalwood was harvested and brought around the east end of Timor to Larantuka. Although the settlements of Manatutu, Ade, and Hon were not sandalwood-producing areas, they were strategically placed to patrol the movement of ships coming around east Timor. From Larantuka the sandalwood was then transported by Makassar-based traders to Makassar, the main redistribution point, where it was then taken by Indian and Chinese traders to the markets in Persia and China.60

Slaves The Makassarese were a major regional player in the slave trade in eastern Indonesia, relying on local trade dealers as well as a resident Makassar community at Ende on the island of Flores. In Gowa-Tallo’s unimpeded advance through Sulawesi, it had made slaves of a number of the vanquished populations and brought them back to the kingdom to work in the rice-fields and to build fortifications.61 When the Dutch besieged Makassar in 1634, the ruler assembled some 40,000 men, many of whom were forced labourers from vassal kingdoms. They were employed to strengthen the defensive works around Makassar and the royal city of Sombaopu, and some 17,000 were retained to maintain the defenses.62 Later rulers came to realize that slaves were also a highly desired commodity as labourers for the VOC cities and for native kingdoms that 59

John Welden, `Exchange, Integration and the Formation of Medical Identities in China and the Islands of Southeast Asia’, Unpublished Paper, 2009, 13-14. 60 Roever, Jacht op Sandelhout, 233-5. 61 Gibson, And the Sun, 153; Wolhof & Abdurrahim, Sedjarah Goa, 23-30. 62 Tiele & Heeres, Bouwstoffen, vol. 2, 256.

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had begun to participate in cash crops. As kingdoms such as Jambi and Palembang in southeast Sumatra began to open lands for the cultivation of pepper, labour was imported to work the plantations.63 The Dutch also had an insatiable appetite for slave labour, which was used for various building projects in the cities and as workers for their commercial crops. Through persistent wars and raids, particularly in the Birdshead Peninsula, Nusa Tenggara, and Sulawesi, slaves were readily available and were brought by Makassarese traders to Makassar, which became a major regional collecting and redistribution centre for slaves.64 Malays were particularly active in the slave trade, providing almost 48% of Makassar’s supply in the 1780s.65 In addition to the direct Makassarese and Malay participation in the slave trade, local networks arose in the eastern Indonesian waters. Among the most active was East Seram, notably the communities in the Seram Laut and Gorom archipelagoes. As indicated above, individual islands in East Seram had trade relationships with groups in the Birdshead, where warring non-Muslim tribes sold their captives to coastal communities. These captives were then sold to traders from East Seram who brought the slaves back to their islands, where the slave markets attracted traders from around the region.66 The numerous conflicts in the Southeastern Islands and the Southwestern Islands in Nusa Tenggara also contributed many victims to the slave market. The people here became impoverished after they were forced by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century to destroy their nutmeg trees. Nutmeg and mace formed one of the few important sources of income for the islanders, and so they turned to slaving as a viable economic alternative. People seized from enemy villages and condemned criminals were sold to the Makassarese, who visited these islands regularly each year to obtain slaves in exchange for rice.67 Other slave networks were established among Tidore’s and Ternate’s territories. In areas that acknowledged the overlordship or at least the prominent position of Tidore, the principal source of slaves was in the 63

Barbara Watson Andaya, To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 80. 64 Heather Sutherland, `Slavery and the Slave Trade in South Sulawesi, 1600s1800s’, in Anthony Reid ed., Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983, 267. 65 Knaap & Sutherland, Monsoon Traders, 119. 66 Andaya, `Local Trade Networks’. 67 VOC 1233, Amboina, Banda, Molucco, Bima, Timor, Missive 4 May 1660, fol. 254r.

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Birdshead Peninsula. Slaves were purchased by the Raja Ampat islanders through their links with certain tribal groups on the Birdshead. These slaves were brought to southeastern Halmahera and sold to the Gamrange settlements. The latter then sold the slaves to the numerous Tidorese who came to the Gamrange to trade. In the Ternate territories, the twin settlements of Gorontalo-Limbotto in northern Sulawesi were a major supplier of slaves seized from neighbouring lands and from the Togia Islands. The slaves were brought to the ports at Tobunku and Banggai located on or near Sulawesi’s east coast, where Bugis traders as far away as Melaka came to obtain slaves for resale in the region.68 In addition to the Birdshead Peninsula, perhaps the greatest numbers of slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came from Nusa Tenggara, with Sumba by far the major source. Sumba may have come under the overlordship of Gowa-Tallo during that kingdom’s expansion to the east early in the seventeenth century. A Dutch official writing in 1650 reported that Sumba sent tribute to Gowa-Tallo in acknowledgement of its subordinate status.69 This is perhaps one reason that the Makassarese were so dominant in the Sumba slave trade, a major industry with a steady flow of people seized in the many conflicts between villages on the island. Some of the slaves were forced to harvest sandalwood from the forests. In addition, foreign slavers also raided coastal villages forcing many to abandon their homes and seek refuge in the interior hills. The people from the neighbouring island of Sabu worked closely with the Makassarese traders in both the slave and the horse trade. The Sabunese presence was most strongly felt at the eastern end of the island.70 The involvement of the Makassarese from Ende can be explained by the fact that by the mid-seventeenth century, Gowa-Tallo had sent its fleets to eastern Indonesia and obtained the allegiance if not the acknowledgement of overlordship from a number of places, including Ende in the south coast of Flores where many Makassarese eventually settled.71 Slavers came from the east and sailed along Sumba’s north coasts toward the west to raid the coastal communities. From west Sumba they went overland toward the centre of the island and then southeastward. The ongoing pattern of these raids led eventually to the establishment of colonies of these foreign slave traders at Waingapu, Mamboru, at Wai Kalo (Laura), and at Pero in Kodi. The coastal communities thus became populated with

68

Andaya, `Local Trade Networks’, 85-7. VOC 1180, Solor, Missive, 15 May 1650, fol. 583v. 70 Roever, Jacht op Sandelhout, 230. 71 VOC 1180, Solor, Missive 15 May 1650, fol. 583v. 69

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people from Sabu, Rote, and the Makassarese from Ende, some of whom then became slave trade agents for their home communities.72 The slave trade became particularly profitable in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with Dutch labour requirements for their cities and plantations, especially in Banda, and with native rulers beginning to engage in cash crops. There was, therefore, increasing incentive to enslave one’s enemies and to sell them to outside traders. One suspects that this lucrative market in humans encouraged novel justifications for war and new laws to enlarge the pool of people who could be condemned to slavery. Slaving resulted in the forced mobility of many societies away from the coast to the interior, and brought new foreign communities onto certain islands to conduct this trade. In the past those captured in raids or wars were used to labour alongside the villagers and could hope to be ransomed by their people, a practice that mitigated the horrors of being enslaved. But as slaves became a highly valued commodity, they were no longer ransomed and were sold in distant markets with very little hope of returning. The impact of slave-raiding on the local communities was devastating, signs of which are still visible today among the people of Sumba. They are very aware of those who are descendants of slaves and assigned a status which deprives them of ordinary rights given to their fellow villagers. One study of Laboya in west Sumba published in 1992 provides a clear picture of slave descendants being treated as children and attributed with the same undeveloped knowledge of the spiritual and human world, but without the prospects of becoming adults and full members of the community. They could not own horses or water buffaloes and rarely owned land, and they were described as sitting quietly in their houses “being hungry and ashamed to show their poverty”.73 Yet the frequent inter-village warfare did not prevent the ongoing trade between the coastal and interior communities. Such pragmatism reflected the mutual economic requirements of both groups and was legitimized through marriage between their noble families.74

72

Needham, `Sumba and the Slave Trade’, 38. Danielle C. Geirnaert-Martin, The Woven Land of Laboya; Socio-cosmic Ideas and Values in West Sumba, Eastern Indonesia, Leiden: Centre of Non-Western Studies (CNWS), 1992, 195. See also pp. 13, 113, 131. 74 Danielle C. Geirnaert-Martin, `Final Report for Field-Work in West Sumba: Rotual Life and Weaving in West-Sumba’, LIPI/Nusa Cendana University, 1987, 9. 73

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Tortoiseshell Java and China were the largest markets for the tortoiseshell from the Hawksbill turtle (E. imbricata Agassiz). It was collected mainly from the eastern Indonesian islands and brought to Makassar as the main redistribution centre. The earliest reference to its presence in China comes from an attempt by a Chinese emperor in the first century CE to use it as currency; whereas the Javanese from early on used the tortoiseshell for combs, which women wore in their hair.75 Yet eastern Indonesia was apparently not the supplier of tortoiseshell to China until much later during the Sung and Yüan period (10th-14th centuries).76 Tortoiseshell had a ready market in the western archipelago at Batavia, Banten, Melaka, and Aceh. The search for the sea turtle, especially for the most desired and hence most valuable Hawksbill, required an intimate knowledge of the turtle’s habitat and habits. Chief collectors were the Bajau, a sea people whose activities extended from the southern Philippines and Borneo to eastern Indonesia. The principal collecting centres were in the southern Philippines, northern Sulawesi, eastern Borneo and in Alor and Tanimbar in Nusa Tenggara Timor.77 The northern Sulawesi twin kingdom of Gorontalo-Limbotto was the collecting point of tortoiseshell brought by the Bajau from the Togia Islands in Tomini Gulf, while Tobunku was another collecting point for tortoiseshell brought from Banggai and the Togia Islands.78 Local traders became intermediaries in purchasing tortoiseshell from the Bajau collectors and then trading it to the Makassarese. The trade in tortoiseshell was not a straight-forward exchange because in some islands the sea turtle had special cultural significance. In the Tanimbar islands, for example, it was believed that the spirits of the ancestors resided in the sea turtle, and in Wetar the sea turtle was part of the totem of the group and hence regarded with great reverence.79 Yet this did not prevent trade 75 Isaac H. Burkill, A Dictionary of the Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula, vol. 1. Reprint of 1935 edition, Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of Malaysia and Singapore, 1966, 950-1. 76 Roderich Ptak, `China and the Trade in Tortoise-shell (Sung to Ming Periods)’, in Roderich Ptak & Dietmar Rothermund eds., Emporia, Commodities and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c. 1400-1750, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991, 210-1. 77 Noorduyn, `Handelsrelatie’, 115; Clifford Sather, The Bajau Laut: Adaptation, History and Fate in a Maritime Fishing Society of South-Eastern Sabah, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1997. 78 Andaya, `Local Trade Networks’, 74; Andaya, World of Maluku, 87. 79 Riedel, Sluik, 281, 432.

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in this commodity, principally because it became a major source of revenue for those islands, especially in the Southwestern and Southeastern Islands of Nusa Tenggara Timur, whose spice trees had been destroyed by the VOC as part of its effort to limit production of cloves to Ambon and nutmeg and mace to Banda.80 One of the most valuable aspects of the trade in tortoiseshell was the reaffirmation each season of the relationship between the Makassarese traders and the collectors in many small islands in eastern Indonesia. By creating a reliable market for tortoiseshell, the Makassarese were able to distribute cloth, earthen- and ironware, and other goods to local communities, who resold some of these valued items in the local network to spice-producing communities. These spices were then delivered to the Makassarese in payment for the imported items. It was thus possible for the Makassarese traders to obtain small but sufficient quantities of spices from a variety of sources to fill their small boats. The spices and tortoiseshell were then brought back to Makassar, where they were purchased by the Chinese and Javanese for their home markets. In this way even some of the small barren islands were able to survive and even prosper by being part of local trade networks that were linked to the regional and international networks operating from the port of Makassar.

Tripang An example of how quickly a commodity could arise in the local, regional, and international marketplace is the case of the tripang or edible holothuria (also known as bêche de mer, sea cucumber, and the more descriptive, sea slug). Its fame rests on the fact that it was considered an exotic delicacy in China that promised health-giving results and, because of its phallic shape, enhanced sexual prowess. While there is reference in an eighth century Japanese text of tripang being used as food, the earliest Chinese reference to this sea creature is in the sixteenth century where it is mentioned as a medicine. By late Ming, however, tripang is described along with birds nests and shark fin as delicacies in China, and in the eighteenth century it was a required dish in any respectable feast menu.81 In the eighteenth century eastern Indonesia became a major source of tripang, which was exchanged in the port of Makassar for Chinese goods brought by Chinese traders from Amoy and Canton. Heather Sutherland 80

Riedel, Sluik, 466. Barbara Watson Andaya, `Being Healthy, Bearing Children, and the ChinaSoutheast Asian Connection’, Lunchtime talk presented to New England Regional Meeting, Asian Studies Association at Bentley College, November 6, 2005, 3.

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has even asserted that the tripang trade in the eighteenth century was “central to the commercial integration of the South China Sea”.82 The tripang was harvested by the local people and by the Bajau sea people in the eastern Indonesian islands from Buton in the west to the Southeastern Islands in Nusa Tenggara Timur. From an island near Makassar, the Bajau would bring their boats to join the Makassarese fleets in the search for tripang.83 Other Bajau from different islands also participated in this trade, with each group forming its own fleet of boats. Tripang obtained from the Bajau was then sold by local traders to the Malays, Makassarese, or Bugis, most of whom were based in Makassar. In Makassar by the 1780s the Chinese traders from Amoy purchased 85% of the entire supply for shipment back to China.84 The Bugis and Makassarese also became known as major tripang collectors in their own right, with one of the major sources of tripang being in present-day Arnhem Land in northern Australia. Matthew Flinders, who was in Kupang in Timor in 1803, was told that the Makassarese used to gather tripang in the islands off Java and in the coral banks off the island of Roti. But about twenty years before, one of the Makassarese boats was blown to the coast of New Holland (northern Australia). They found so much tripang there that since that time the Makassarese sent regular fleets to that area, which they called Maregeq. The earliest that the Makassarese would have been involved in the collecting of tripang from Australia in the Gulf of Carpenteria would have been in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.85 Collecting tripang in the deep sea was the work of men, while gathering on the coral reefs at low tide was reserved mainly for the women and children. In 1824 a visitor to Aru described them carrying baskets on their backs and grasping iron-tipped sticks, while wading through the shallow waters in search of tripang. Once gathered, the tripang were smoked and dried to prepare them for sale to foreign traders.86 The 82

Heather Sutherland, `Trepang and Wangkang: the China Trade of Eighteenthcentury Makassar c. 1720s-1840s’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde: Special issue entitled `Authority and enterprise among the peoples of South Sulawesi’, 156, 3 (2000), 451-2, 460-2. 83 Anton A. Cense, `Makassaars-Boeginese Praauwvaart op Noord-Australië’, Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde 108, 3 (1952), 253. 84 Knaap & Sutherland, Monsoon Traders,101-2. 85 Cense, `Makassaars-Boeginese Praauwvaart’, 250-2. 86 Adrianus J.E.A. Bik ed. Dagverhaal eener reis, gedaan in het jaar 1824 tot nadere voorkenning der eilanden Keffing, Goram, Groot- en Klein Kei en de Aroe Eilanden, Leiden: Sijthoff, 1928, 33, 69, 78.

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Makassarese fleets that went to gather tripang in northern Australia carried lepa-lepa, or dug-out canoes. Once the fleets arrived in the area, they launched the lepa-lepa to search the reefs for tripang. There were various ways of collecting tripang, but the method most favoured by the Makassarese was diving because the best quality tripang was found in deeper water.87 The presence of tripang at many of these eastern Indonesian islands provided an unexpected source of revenue for many small communities in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This development is captured in the records from the port of Makassar, which registered a rise in demand for external goods from islands that sold tripang. The intimate knowledge and skills of the mobile populations of the Bajau and local collectors, the gathering and processing capabilities of regional Makassarese and Bugis traders, and the financing, grading, and pricing of the tripang by the Chinese were all combined to make tripang a profitable commodity at all levels of production and sale.88

Elephant Tusks and Bronze Drums In a small area of eastern Indonesia, elephant tusks and small bronze drums (moko) were essential for the smooth-functioning of society. The local network involved a small group of communities in the eastern part of Flores, Solor, Adonara, Lembata, Pantar, and Alor, known collectively as the Solor archipelago. These islands are inhabited by people who share a common lingua franca and culture known as Lamaholot. Women in the Lamaholot area are highly regarded and are considered the heart or core of community life. Their value is publicly displayed in the number and size of elephant tusks that are presented as bride price.89 The reason for the importance of elephant tusks in marriage negotiations has not been explained, but it may be linked to the association of the elephant with fertility.90 In one of the villages, a large tusk was considered to be about

87

Campbell C. Macknight, The Voyage to Marege’: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1976, 49. Macknight’s work is an excellent study of the Makassarese trepang trade to northern Australia. 88 Sutherland, `Trepang and Wangkang’, 470-1. 89 Liliweri, Inang, 139. 90 In the Sanskrit tradition in India, apparently the word for naga or the cosmological snake associated with fertility can also be interpreted as elephant. Jean Philippe Vogel, Indian Serpent-lore: or the NƗgas in Hindu Legend and Art. Varanasi: Prithivi Prakashan, 1972, 7 n. 2, 63, 281.

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six feet (depa) in length.91 These tusks were not retained forever by the bride’s family but recirculated when the male members of the family married and used these same tusks as bride price. Whenever there was warfare among the two major divisions of the Lamaholot, the Paji and the Demon, one of the items used to ransom a prisoner was elephant tusks.92 To end the enmity and introduce peace at one point in the seventeenth century between the Portuguese and Lamahala, a settlement on the island of Adonara, it was agreed that Lamahala would present the Portuguese with two slaves, 19 pieces of patola cloth in return for the counter-gift of elephant tusks. But the agreement was never enforced because of the failure of the Portuguese to provide elephant tusks.93 On one occasion the son of the leader (sengaji) of the settlement of Lamakera on Solor island was seized by the sengaji of Adonara, but he was subsequently released by the payment of a ransom consisting of a piece of patola cloth, ten rixdollars, a sheep, and an elephant tusk.94 Elephant tusks were also levied as fines on vassal areas by the Raja Adonara.95 So revered were elephant tusks that any transaction involving these objects was marked by some form of commemorative feasting. One particular case was the reconciliation of two feuding families in 1986, which was solemnized by the joining of their surnames and the exchange of elephant tusks.96 One of the major sources of tusks was Burma, where the Dutch regularly purchased between 10-12,000 lbs annually in the 1650s and 1520,000 lbs in the 1660s. There was great demand in Surat and Aceh, but the latter offered higher prices.97 The VOC and the Acehnese were major purchasers of tusks, much of which was brought to eastern Indonesia by

91

Widiyatmika, Adat Istiadat, 54. Paul Arndt, Falsafah dan Aktivitas Hidup Manusia di kepulauan Solor. Translation from the 1951 edition. Maumere: Penerebit Puslit Candraditya, 2003, 294. 93 Willem Philippus Coolhaas, Generale Missiven van gouverneurs-generaal en raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, 's-Gravenhage : Nijhoff, 1960-, vol. 2 (1639-1655), 10 January 1654, fols 683-4. 94 VOC 1663, Timor, 8 May 1702, fol. 8. 95 Robert H. Barnes, Kedang: A Study of the Collective Thought of an Eastern Indonesian People, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, 9. 96 Robert H. Barnes, `Méi Nafa, A Rite of Expiation in Lamalera, Indonesia’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 145, 1 (1989), 540-1. 97 Wil O. Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma and the Dutch East India Company, 1634-1680, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006, 149, 242 fn 43. See also Appendix V. 92

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the Javanese.98 Within the Lamaholot area, the groups tended to supply one another with elephant tusks. The people of Sikka in eastern Flores exchanged products from their gardens in the mountains for elephant tusks from Solor. The Sikkanese have tales that speak of the great abundance of tusks in Solor, where even the oars were fashioned of ivory.99 It is an understandable misperception since Solor was an important secondary centre of eastern Indonesian trade, where the elephant tusks would have been brought by Javanese traders. Elephant tusks are also a valued item in the Tanimbar or Timorlaut islands, where they are given as bride price, exchanged for other goods, and serve as a form of currency. The Dutch were the major suppliers of elephant tusks to Tanimbar in the eighteenth century, and the people on the island of Fordata in the middle of the last century continued to recount stories of obtaining elephant tusks in exchange for amber.100 In the Aru archipelago, elephant tusks, copper gongs, porcelain plates, and cloth were exchanged as a sign of friendship. When a person died, these objects were broken or torn as a sign of mourning.101 Unlike the Lamaholot area, therefore, supplies of elephant tusks needed to be constantly replenished for the proper functioning of society. Only on the islands of Alor and Pantar do the small bronze drums or moko replace elephant tusks as an essential element in the bride price. The oldest of these drums are believed to have been manufactured in Dong Son in northern Vietnam beginning c. 500 BCE and found distributed throughout Southeast Asia. These moko in Alor and Pantar are usually about 50 cm high and 33 cm across, and many hundreds if not thousands were found buried in the ground by the inhabitants who believed them to be gifts from the gods. They were brought to eastern Indonesia by traders from the western archipelago, probably via Makassar, and were believed to be imbued with the sacred forces of customary law (sumpah adat).102 98

Widiyatmika, Adat Istiadat, 19. D.K. Kolit, Pengaruh Majapahit atas Kebudayaan Nusa Tenggara Timur Kupang : s.n., 1982, 24. 100 Petrus Drabbe, Het Leven van de Tanimbarees: Ethnografische Studie over het Tanembareesche Volk, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1940, 139. 101 Riedel, Sluik- en Kroesharige Rassen, 260, 267, 289. This is apparently also a practice that is found among some of the groups in India, where ivory bangles are smashed when women are widowed. Martha Chaiklin, `India in the Early Modern Ivory Trade’, Paper presented to the World Economic History Congress, Utrecht, August 3-7, 2009, 8. 102 Widiyatmika, Adat Istiadat, 19; Jaafar, personal communication, Alor Kecil, Alor, 9 March 2008. 99

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As with elephant tusks, the moko are very likely an essential requirement in marriages because they are associated with fertility.103 It is for this reason that the presence of the moko in Alor and Pantar, like the elephant tusk in the other Lamaholot areas, is still regarded as essential to solemnize any sacred union among families or agreement between individuals and groups. Among the Lamaholot and some other societies in eastern Indonesia, the presenting of elephant tusks and moko had the ritual value of establishing or reaffirming bonds among individuals, families, and communities. A woman’s value in the Lamaholot areas was measured by the quantity and size of the tusks and the type of moko presented as bride price. These objects circulated within a wide circle of communities, thus binding the group together into a local ritual network. So valued were these tusks and bronze drums that an infringement that required a fine in these objects would have been regarded as serious punishment indeed. It is little wonder that the people of Aru felt it important to send a deceased loved one to the other world with his/her worldly possessions, including elephant tusks. The trade in elephant tusks is a useful reminder that objects had various and multiple values in different nodes of a global economic network. While in Burma the tusks were carved to meet the demands of the Buddhist monks and the nobility,104 among many eastern Indonesian societies the tusks were far more valuable in their unaltered shape as an impressive statement of communal solidarity.

Conclusion This essay is offered as a contribution to K.N. Chaudhuri’s challenge to scholars to understand Indian Ocean civilizations through a close study of the numerous geographic units and cultures that constitute this vast body of water. In this study I argue that the seas of eastern Indonesia formed an “extended” Indian Ocean that constituted an important segment of global trade. Scattered throughout these eastern Indonesian seas are thousands of high and coral reef islands inhabited by numerous and frequently hostile ethno-linguistic communities. Yet these islands were 103 All Dong Son drums found east of Bali are characterized by four frogs cast in relief around the tympana. Some also contain boat scenes on the sides that may be part of a fertility ritual. Peter Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. Revised edition. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1985, 278-9. As with other creatures inhabiting more than one world, the amphibious frog is believed to possess special powers including that of fertility. 104 Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma, 242, fn 43.

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among the most visited because they were home to the clove, nutmeg, mace and sandalwood that were highly valued in the ancient and early modern world. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, eastern Indonesia became also a major source of slaves to satisfy the need for labour in the European cities in Southeast Asia and for the new cash crops being grown in the region for the international marketplace. Then in the early eighteenth century, tripang became a major commodity in eastern Indonesia in response to the insatiable demand for this delicacy in China. It was the regional Makassarese traders who extended the search for this valuable product to northern Australia, thus incorporating that continent into the extended Indian Ocean network. Because of the presence of these desired goods, eastern Indonesia has long been a major arena for such global traders as the Indians, the Chinese, and the Europeans. While these global players have attracted the attention of researchers, less well-studied are the regional and local trade networks that were the essential intermediaries in this trade. In this essay I have tried to provide a picture of the manner in which the global, regional, and local traders interacted in bringing certain highly desired eastern Indonesian products to the wider world. It also argues that economic gains were not the only motivation for the maintenance of these networks. In the Lamaholot areas of eastern Indonesia, for example, the trade in elephant tusks and small bronze drums for ritual purposes anchored the local trade networks. By focusing on the seas of eastern Indonesia, which form one segment of the extended Indian Ocean, I have attempted to respond in a small way to K.N. Chaudhuri’s call for studies that would “discover the unity and diversity of Indian Ocean civilisations”.

Eastern Indonesia

Maps

Figure 13. The island world of Southeast Asia.

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Figure 14. The Maluku world.

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Eastern Indonesia

Figure 15. North Maluku.

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Figure 16. Central and South Maluku.

CHAPTER SEVEN CHANGING ECONOMIC PATTERNS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN: EFFECTS ON SRI LANKAN CULTURE SHIHAN DE SILVA JAYASURIYA

Long-distance trade in the Indian Ocean and exchanges of commodities and the historical unity of the region was of concern to Professor K. N. Chaudhuri. In Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750, he addressed “the cultural and economic role of long-distance trade in an age when the technological breakthrough of the late eighteenth century had not as yet fundamentally changed the structure of Asian and European societies and statesystems”.1 Chaudhuri saw this vast ocean as “a common geographical space defined by an exchange of ideas and material objects” which “was strong, not only in the minds of merchants, but also in those of political rulers and ordinary people”. This paper seeks to investigate and emphasize the changes in the economy and culture of Ceylon/Sri Lanka during the transition from the precolonial to the colonial state. It follows European commercial expansion in the Indian Ocean, colonisation and changes in trade and emphasizes the economic and political significance of the island.

Introduction Indian Ocean maritime routes had been used for millennia for commerce, religion, diplomatic and military activities. Medieval Sri Lanka attracted Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arab and Jewish merchants. Sri Lanka (called Ceylon by the British, Ceylan by the Dutch and Ceilão by the Portuguese) was an attractive stronghold to those involved in European 1 K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1985, 9.

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maritime expansion in the Indian Ocean from the 16th century onwards. This is partly a question of location but also one of climate. The island’s economic advantage was linked more than anything else to these two features. European intervention changed the orientation of its trading patterns from one concerned exclusively with the Indian Ocean to a more global market. In this paper, I will concentrate on the impact of European trade and colonisation on Ceylon. What have been the spillover effects of European trade into culture? Which areas of culture have been most affected by colonial rule? The first Europeans to make prolonged contact with Sri Lanka were the Portuguese who, in 1505, were accidentally windswept to the island while they were on a voyage to the nearby Maldive Islands. Mendis remarks that the arrival of the Portuguese marked the end of the medieval period, a “turning-point (…) to the modern period.2 From this time, the people of Ceylon began to look more to the West than to India for its progress. They also began to adopt western methods and customs”. I consider this the moment when the umbilical cord was cut off from Mother India. The Portuguese set in motion a process for Ceylon evolving a distinct identity of its own. The Dutch who ousted the Portuguese in 1658, and the British who followed them to Ceylon, also made their own contributions. The Dutch made an impact on the legal and administrative sphere. Dutch influence seems to have operated on two levels. The first centred on the VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) officials who introduced Roman-Dutch law, which is still practised today. Wherever possible, customary laws – Tesawalamai for Tamils, Muhammedan laws for Moors (people of Arab descent), Kandyan laws for upcountry Sinhalese – were observed. But Sinhalese/Kandyan laws were considered inadequate and Roman-Dutch law superseded them by the end of the 18th century.3 At another level, the Vrijburgers (free burghers) or Dutch settlers owned shops and taverns and engaged in local trade. After the handover to the British, whilst VOC rule over the maritime provinces ended, the Vrijburgers carried on. But VOC men were stuck in Ceylon for several years afterwards, waiting for ships to carry them to Jakarta (Batavia). Although the British took over the coastal areas in 1796 from the Dutch, they were not able to control the whole island until 1815. Two years after takeover, in 1798, Frederick North was appointed Governor, but Major General Macdowall of the Madras Army was the Commander of the Troops and a system of dual control operated for a few years. 2

G.C. Mendis, Early History of Ceylon. Calcutta: Y.M.C.A, 1938, 126. T. Nadaraja, The Legal System of Ceylon in its Historical Setting. Leiden: Brill, 1972, 12-16. 3

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From January 1, 1802, when Major General Wemyss was appointed as Commander of the Troops in Ceylon, the Colonial Office took control and connections with the East India Company (EIC) ended. More than the trade potential, Ceylon’s value to the British was its proximity to the Bay of Bengal. Trincomalee on the east coast was a convenient port for repairing ships damaged in eastern India, which otherwise had to be taken around the southern coast of India and then a long way up the west coast to Bombay. Ceylon was once the “rice bowl of Southern India”.4 Although its position as a rice exporter was lost, rice continues to be an important crop, being the staple food of the Sri Lankans. The Dutch ensured that the price of rice remained low; it affected the cost of living allowances and wages paid to their servants.5 With respect to other cash crops – pepper, areca nut, coffee, coconut, cardamom – the Dutch interfered with the free market and artificially set a low price by government regulations and prescriptive buying. On arrival at the port of Mokha in the 17th century, the Dutch and the British upset the monopoly of the coffee growing areas of the Red Sea and its cultivation was extended to Ceylon, Java, the Caribbean and South America.6 Dutch attempts at growing coffee tended to be casual and undeveloped. Sinhalese villagers worked on these plantations initially under RƗjakariya, by which people provided a service for the king under a system of compulsory service (literally meaning ‘king’s duty’).7 Duties performed depended on the caste affiliation of a person. Plantations, however, led to shortages of labour, and the plantation owners, anxious to keep the cost of labour low and to maximise their profits, looked more and more to an immigrant labour force. The British were able to draw on a pool of seasonal labourers from South India who worked in Sri Lanka during the harvesting season but returned to India after that. In 1828, the first group of Indian labourers were brought to Ceylon by George Bird (an army officer), the pioneer coffee plantation owner and Sir Edward Barnes

4

K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 37. 5 S. Arasaratnam, `Elements of Social and Economic Change in Dutch Maritime Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1658-1796’, in Indian Economic and Social History Review XXII: I, 1985, 49. 6 K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, 359. 7 E.F.C. Ludowyk The Story of Ceylon, London: Faber & Faber, 1962, 191.

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(Governor of Ceylon from 1824 to 1831), who also owned a coffee plantation. The change from subsistence agriculture to a plantation economy occurred between 1834 and 1835.8 Developments in the British era were not driven by Whitehall or Westminster, however. They were uncoordinated private European enterprises which could claim government support. Today tea, coconut and rubber are the main plantations. Tea was first introduced around 1840 when some 200 plants were received from India. The variety grown in Ceylon is indigenous to Assam.9 By the end of the 1850s, Sri Lanka’s coffee plantation was flourishing and it continued to do so for another twenty years.10 In the late 1870s, Ceylon’s economy was transformed by coffee as a large scale crop. But it suffered from a blight – Hemileia vastatrix. Cinchona and tea started to replace coffee, tea replacing coffee by the 1920s.11 Rubber was introduced to Ceylon in 1877, and from 1883 it was planted as a commercial project.12 Transformations during the colonial era involved moving from an agrarian to a plantation economy. The Sinhalese had been agriculturalists traditionally and not traders, but this changed with their exposure to westerners. As Europeans searched for soldiers and workers locally, the previously established caste system was disrupted. Together with the emergence of a new set of entrepreneurs and plantation owners, a new elite emerged. Some of the island’s infrastructure, educational establishments, public buildings, railways and several main roads are linked to the British period although these were constructed to entrench colonial authority and to enhance private enterprise in the transition to a plantation economy. Tangible legacies of colonial rule are impossible to ignore but what of the intangible heritage of this bygone era? In the rest of this paper, I will consider the spillovers of trade and commercial activities into culture. These aspects usually escape the historian concentrating on events and archival sources. When writing contemporary history, concerning the near past and the present, non-tangible everyday realities should also be taken into consideration. 8

Ludowyk, The Story of Ceylon, 1962, 190. C.F. Whitaker, “The Tea Industry”, in Ceylon – Its History, People, Commerce, Industries and Resources, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1924. 10 P. Peebles, The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon. London & New York: Leicester University Press, 2001, 57. 11 F.A. Stockdale, “Ceylon Agriculture”, in Ceylon – Its History, People, Commerce, Industries and Resources. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications.1924 12 Whitaker, “The Tea Industry”, 1924. 9

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Trade Contacts and Cultural Effects Linking trade and culture is not as easy as it seems. Chaudhuri wrote about personal identities and social affiliations which are inherent in what people ate, the way they dressed and in the houses that they dwelled.13 He refers to the rice-eating communities who, however, remained divided by language, religion, culture and ethnic identity. There is difficulty in defining what is meant by culture, involving rival definitions between different disciplines and individual perceptions, in setting priorities between say, language, religion, art, food, clothing, cuisine, and in specifying the intangible qualities associated with cultural behaviour. Using culture in a broad sense to encompass significant patterns of behaviour and thought characteristic of a whole people, and concentrating on language and music, I will argue that they have been the widest legacies of Portuguese involvement in the country.14 Surprisingly, given three waves of colonial rule, it seems to be the Portuguese who were the first in, who left the strongest imprint on local values and mass culture. Ceylon’s importance to the three colonial powers who occupied it in the early modern and modern periods has differed throughout the centuries. Though cinnamon was the most important commodity and renowned to be the best in the world at that time, there were other commodities that attracted foreign traders: elephants, pearls, precious stones. Whilst gold and silver mines existed in Ceylon, it is better known for pearls and gems (sapphires, emeralds, rubies) and precious stones (topazes). Chaudhuri points out that Ceylon’s cinnamon became highly sought after when the people of the Indian subcontinent, and those in Persia and the Arab world developed a taste for spices.15 Cloves, nutmeg and mace from the Indonesian islands (Moluccas) added spice to the Perso-Arabic cuisine. Sri Lankan cinnamon reached west Asia through Arab traders before the arrival of the Portuguese.16 The Portuguese seized the cinnamon monopoly from the Arabs and through trade got entangled in politics and governance in Sri Lanka. 13

Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe, 1990, 151 A. Kuper, Culture: The Anthropologists’ Account. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999, 16. 15 Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, 20. 16 S. Arasaratnam, “Ceylon and the Indian Ocean Trade: 1500-1800”, in A. Das Gupta & M. N. Pearson India and the Indian Ocean 1500-1800, Calcutta: Oxford University Press.1987, 225. 14

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Ironically, the Portuguese presence is associated with proselytising and forced conversions to Catholicism, but had there not been Portuguese intervention, the island’s socio-religious composition would anyway have been drastically altered. The Portuguese were able to hold off the Islamic wave that swept over South Asia and Southeast Asia. Colonisation has anyway not rocked the Buddhist and Hindu base of the island. Although Catholics are the largest group of Christians today the Buddhists are the majority with a large number of Hindus and Muslims . The Portuguese maintained a form of indirect political control over the island through nominal indigenous rulers.17 Ceylon was divided into kingdoms at that time – Kǀtte, Kandy and Jaffnapatam. The king of Kǀtte, however, had suzerainty over the other kingdoms. In 1551, when DharmapƗla, the grandson of King BhuvanekabƗhu VII of Kǀtte became king, the Portuguese were essentially in charge. BhuvenekabƗhu was a vassal to the Portuguese but he resisted conversion and remained a Buddhist. DharmapƗla, however, converted, breaking a centuries-old tradition and was baptised Don Juvan DharmapƗla. The Portuguese period in Sri Lanka is taken to be from 1505 to 1658. In Asia generally, Portuguese enclaves were in coastal areas, but in Ceylon this pattern was not observed. Fortresses were also built inland and the Portuguese intended taking over the entire island, a plan which did not come to fruition. Their presence also brought about important maritime changes. Colombo, for example, emerged as the principal port of the island; better access to the interior may have been a reason for its selection.18 Geiger points out that in medieval Ceylon, wholesale and overseas trade was conducted by Arab merchants.19 Several Arab-Muslim merchants settled down in Ceylon, and a third became landowners and agricultural workers, while another part of the Arab-Muslim influx became shopkeepers. He points out that there was no caste of merchants in Ceylon equivalent to the Indian Vaishyas and adds that the reason for this was that the trade in Ceylon was in the hands of Moors and Afghans. Afghani moneylenders, although there were only a few thousand of them, nevertheless made an impact on the island’s economy. Ceylonese of lower

17

Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, 74. N. Perera, Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998, 26. 19 W. Geiger, Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times, ed. H Beechert, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1960, 109. 18

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socio-economic groups were fearful of the Afghans to whom they became victims when they were in financial need. A caste-based society is not compatible with Buddhist philosophy, which influences the outlook of most Sri Lankans. Nevertheless, caste exists as a carry over from Indian society and social organisation. But the Sri Lankan caste system is linked to the trades performed and not to notions of purity and pollution, as in India. Geiger remarks that, the Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle), a PƗli chronicle of the early kings of Ceylon, seldom refers to caste. Lay society was divided into kulƯnƗ (people of good family) and hƯna (people of lower classes).20 Originally, the nobility and those connected to the ruling elite were called kulƯnƗs. European contact upset the caste-based system of social organisation and the tasks performed by various groups changed. The Portuguese were opposed to the idea of caste and gave no recognition to the system nor observed any of its restrictions.21 In the National Archives in Kew, London, I found a letter dated 21st June 1818, from J. Atkinson (Collector) written from the Caltura Catcherry (Kalutara Kachcheriya, the main government office that deals with regional matters) to R Boyd Esq (Commissioner of Revenue, Colombo) explaining that the various castes in the district and the tasks they performed had existed before Europeans visited the Island.22 He wrote that the Portuguese derived greater advantage from the service of the low castes than the British, by exacting with more rigour the obligations which custom of a very remote date rather than any defined laws had imposed. In 1604, however, Rodrigo Mendis, a Portuguese Captain of the Cinnamon Department, had formed a body of 48 Lascoreens (‘native’ soldiers) for his guard, out of the sons, brothers and descendants of Dooreas (Duraiyas headmen). They had been the first warriors known among the Dooreas. Later on, Anthony Mendis Maha Vidana (chief village official with constabulary services) of the Chalias (Salagamas or cinnamon peelers) had asked the Dutch Governor, Van der Meyden (1653 to 1660 and 1661 to 1663) to increase their number from 48 to 100 out of his relatives, the cinnamon peelers. This illustrates how the caste system continued to change even during the Dutch era (1658 to 1796). The Chalias, though producers of the Island’s most important crop, did not benefit from economic returns under the traditional system of service

20

Geiger, Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times, 25. S.G. Perera, History of Ceylon for Schools: Parts I & II 1505-1911. Colombo: Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd., 1932, 190. 22 National Archives, Kew, CO 59/27. 21

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tenure.23 Although they were not mobile in Sri Lankan society, they were able to climb up within the hierarchy established by the Chalias. There were Kurundahalias (cinnamon peelers), Ilandarias (security men) and Duraiyas (Headmen). The Dutch attempted to restrict this movement in order to maintain their labour force but Chalias became pioneer cultivators of cinnamon as a plantation crop. Interactions between important caste groups – Chalias – and the Dutch reveals the impact of economic forces on society. A caste-based society was a hindrance to the mobility of the labour force and the Dutch incurred problems in engaging agricultural and artisan labour.24 The relationship between caste and occupation was consequently relaxed. Arasaratnam also draws attention to Dutch land policies when both Sinhalese and Tamil elite in maritime areas were able to acquire ownership and control of land and labour.25 The Dutch, however, were not able to gain control of the areas under Portuguese rule easily. Fortresses were lost and gained over several decades before the Portuguese were finally defeated in Mannar and Jaffnapatam in 1658. When Portugal was beginning to lose her possessions in the East Captain João Ribeiro, who served in the campaigns, advised the Portuguese King to withdraw all his forces in the region and to place them in Ceylon.26 He prophesised that by this strategy, the Portuguese could at least be assured of a stronghold in Asia – Ceylon. This was not to be, but Portuguese cultural imprints were to remain deeply embedded in Sri Lankan socioculture and not to be obliterated by the other Europeans who followed them to the Island. Portuguese-Sri Lankan interactions have caught the attention of several historians.27 In what follows, I will identify transformations in Sri Lankan music and language, areas often overlooked by historians. 23

S. Arasaratnam, Elements of Social and Economic Change in Dutch Maritime Ceylon, 45. 24 Arasaratnam, Elements of Social and Economic Change in Dutch Maritime Ceylon, 48. 25 S. Arasaratnam, Ceylon and the Dutch, 1600-1800: External Influences and Internal Change in Early Modern Sri Lanka. Aldershot: Variorum, 1996, x. 26 P. Pieris, (trans). Ribeiro's History of Ceilão, Lisbon, 1836. Colombo: Apothecaries Company Ltd Printers, 1909. 27 T. Abeyasinghe. Portuguese Rule in Ceylon 1594-1612. Colombo: Lake House Investments, 1966; T. Abeyasinghe. Jaffna under the Portuguese. Colombo: Lake House Investments, 1986; C.R. de Silva, The Portuguese in Ceylon 1617-1638. Colombo: H.W. Cave & Company, 1972; C.R. de Silva, Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives. UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2009.

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Transformations in Popular Music The Portuguese affinity for music is well-documented in the 16th century battle at El Ksar El Kabir in Morocco. At this important battle, where Dom Sebastião lost his life leaving Portugal without an heir, no less than 10,000 guitars were found among the dead soldiers.28 Through their unusual love for music, the Portuguese found a point in common with the Ceylonese, who also had an affinity for music. Even though the cultural distance between the Portuguese and the locals was wide, music helped to narrow the gap. Music is a powerful weapon which transcends racial, linguistic and other divides, and gave the Portuguese a space to engage with the “oriental others”. Nacca (dancing), gƯta (songs) and vƗdita (instrumental music) were important forms of entertainment in medieval Ceylon.29 Even queens were praised for their singing and dancing; RupƗvati, the consort of King ParakramabƗhu, is an example.30 Bards or professional singers were employed to sing the king’s praises. Music, song and dance were not, however, limited to the upper crust. Kulatilleka draws attention to the indigenous forms of song in the country such as Seepada, which expressed the hopes and despairs of the folk.31 There were Vannam (dance solos influenced by South India), daru nelavili (lullabies), nelum gee (transplanting songs), pel kavi (watch-hut songs), karaththa kavi (carters’ songs), pƗru kavi (boatmens’ songs) and bambara kavi (wild honey collecting songs). Sri Lankans were not therefore lacking in musical traditions, but most importantly, the Portuguese encounter introduced harmony, a new dimension. Whilst melody and rhythm are essential components of all types of music, harmony, where several notes are played simultaneously, was not a characteristic of Sri Lankan music. Through playing chords on the guitar, the Portuguese introduced a characteristic of western music to Sri Lanka. In medieval Ceylon, there were five musical instruments: panchangaturiya – sankha (trumpet), tƗla (cymbal), vƯna (lute), vƝnu (flute) and

28

Tomás, Boletim de Bibliographia Portugueza, no. 10. 1879, 168. 29 M.B. Ariyapala, Society in Mediaeval Ceylon. Colombo and Kandy: K V G de Silva, 1956, 258. 30 Geiger, Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times, 1960, 63 31 C. de S. Kulatillake, Metre, Melody and Rhythm in Sinhala Music. Colombo: Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, 1976 and ibid. A Background to Sinhala Traditional Music of Sri Lanka. Colombo: Department of Cultural Studies, 1976.

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drum.32 Conches were played both in battle and during festivities. Drums were popular and according to Geiger there were more than sixty types, with single or double heads, small or large, beaten by the hand or with sticks.33 The violin (ravukiñña in Sinhala), European trumpet, western side-drum and accordion were introduced by westerners as is depicted in a 19th century mural in the PurvƗrama Viharaya in Kathaluwa (Galle district, Southern Province).34 How were the Portuguese able to make an enduring impression on Sri Lanka’s music? Even after the Dutch displaced the Portuguese from the island, the Portuguese cultural traits continued through the mestiços and mestiças (children of unions between Portuguese and Sri Lankans). The Portuguese descendants (called ‘Portuguese Burghers’ nowadays), as reservoirs of Portuguese music, have held on to ballads, albeit fragments due to the centuries that they have been sung through an oral tradition. The Portuguese Burghers have retained their ancestral identity to-date. What differentiates them from other Sri Lankan Catholics today are the Portuguese music and linguistic legacies which they have held on to for centuries. In 1883, Sir Richard Otley, Chief Justice of Ceylon, defined a Burgher as someone with an European ancestor on the paternal side. In order to distinguish between those of Portuguese and Dutch ancestry, the terms Portuguese Burgher and Dutch Burgher are used. A form of music called Kaffrinha is also associated with the Portuguese. Africans were called cafres (from the Arabic word qafr meaning non-believers) by the Portuguese.35 Together with -nha, the Portuguese diminutive, the word kaffrinha rings out the Afro-Portuguese components in this music. Yet another form of music and song, VƗda Baila (debate songs) was in vogue even during the early 20th century, and attracted crowds who came to be entertained by these song competitions and to support their idols. These songs are akin to Canto ao desafio (challenge songs), an art form that is also known in Portugal and Brazil. These bailas are composed on the spot in response to being provoked by an opponent. Those who are skilled in this art form are not many now but recently I interviewed Sumathipala Perera, one of the foremost VƗda Baila singers. He has established a society of artists which is determined to preserve this style. More importantly, they are teaching children VƗda 32

Geiger, Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times, 1960, 63. Geiger, Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times, 1960, 63. 34 C. de S. Kulatillake Ethnomusicology and Ethnomusicological Aspects of Sri Lanka. Colombo: S Godage & Brothers, 1991, 74-75. 35 S. de Silva Jayasuriya An Anthology of Indo-Portuguese Verse. Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001. 33

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baila, which is encouraging, because the genre will continue into the future. After regaining independence in 1948, at a time when the Sri Lankans were searching for something new, another form of music – Chorus Baila – evolved. Its composer, Ollington (Wally) Bastianz was a policeman who used his musical talents to educate and guide the public on road safety, on the vices of gambling and the value of adhering to traditional customs. Considering the history of Sri Lanka’s music, I would argue that Portuguese ballads, Kaffrinha and VƗda Baila would have influenced Bastianz in composing the new form of Baila. Mixing the European concept of harmony with the characteristic African cross-rhythms and Sri Lankan music, Bastianz swept the post-independent nation off their feet. The media helped the popularity of bailas and they also became known by those in rural Sri Lanka. Dance is generally associated with music and song. Dancing girls traditionally entertained the courtiers and dance was an integral part of festivities. In Sri Lanka, music was played or heard on festive occasions and even on a daily basis. Dancing, however, was mainly theatrical. There were dancing halls (ranga mandulu) and dancing women (nalu genu).36 Being a predominantly Buddhist country, dance did not exist as a form of worship except among the Hindus. There were many forms of folk dance – lee keli (stick dance), kalagedi natuma (pot dance) – but baila provides the music for dancing at social gatherings. Baila music and singing brings everyone to the dance floor. Baila is a form of music, song and dance today.

Culture Contact Mirrored in Local Languages Pre-colonial Sri Lanka was linguistically exposed to eastern languages: PƗli, Sanskrit, Tamil, Arabic, Persian, Malay. One of the major influences of European contact was the interlingual flows between the local languages and Portuguese, Dutch and English. Introduction of new concepts and goods by the Europeans are mirrored in the lexicon of Asian languages. The Goan linguist, Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, who was the Vicar-General in Sri Lanka at the end of the 19th century, noted that next to Konkani, Sinhala had the most number of words adopted from Portuguese.37 Given that Portuguese 36 M.B. Ariyapala, Society in Mediaeval Ceylon. Colombo and Kandy: K V G de Silva, 1956, 268. 37 Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, Portuguese Vocables in Asiatic Languages. Trans: A X Soares. Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1936; ibid. Glossário Luso-Asiatico. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1919-21.

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contact did not last very long, this is surprising. Portuguese Burghers had a major role in transferring Portuguese words into local languages – Sinhala and Tamil. Being Indo-Portuguese speakers in a multilingual setting, they would have engaged in code-switching and code-mixing, linguistic strategies employed by bilinguals. 38 The evolution and durability of Indo-Portuguese, a creole language whose lexifier is Portuguese, enhanced linguistic transmission. Dutch attempts to root out this language failed. Ironically, Indo-Portuguese became the language of Dutch children whose mothers were mestiças. Previous attempts at bringing Dutch women from Holland as wives for Dutchmen had failed. Indo-Portuguese not only became the language of communication between the Dutch and the Sri Lankans, but it also served as the language spoken between Dutch and English officials and between the early British officials and the Sri Lankans.39 More importantly, words adopted from Portuguese into Sinhala and Tamil have become engrained and are in day-to-day use.40 Even after independence, when a tendency to reject all things foreign was the fashion, borrowed Portuguese words maintained their currency and vogue. We must take into account items of food such as pƗn meaning bread in both Sinhala and Tamil (from Portuguese pão), viscǀtu in Sinhala and viscoittu in Tamil for biscuits (from the Portuguese word biscoito), items of clothing such as sƗya in Sinhala and sayai in Tamil (from Portuguese saia meaning skirt), sapattu in Sinhala and sappƗttu in Tamil (from Portuguese sapato), architectural features such as janƝlaya in Sinhala and cannal in Tamil (from the Portuguese word janela meaning window), sƗlaya in Sinhala and cƗlai in Tamil (from the Portuguese word sala meaning hall), almƗriya in Sinhala and alumƗri in Tamil (from the Portuguese word armário meaning almirah), bankuva in Sinhala and vanku in Tamil (from the Portuguese banco meaning bench), mƝsaya in Sinhala and mesai in Tamil (from the Portuguese word mesa meaning table), vegetables and fruits such as annasi in both Sinhala and Tamil (from the Portuguese word ananas meaning pineapple), gǀva in Sinhala and kovi in Tamil (from the 38

S. de Silva Jayasuriyaa. The Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Empire, London: I. B. Tauris, 2008. 39 S.G. Perera, History of Ceylon for Schools: Parts I & II 1505-1911. Colombo: Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd., 1932, 303. 40 De Silva Jayasuriya, Tagus to Taprobane: Portuguese Impact on the Socioculture of Sri Lanka from 1505 AD. Colombo: Tisara Prakasakayo, 2001; De Silva Jayasuriya “Persisting Portuguese Linguistic Imprints in India and Sri Lanka”, in The Portuguese in the Orient, Kandy: International Institute for Ethnic Studies 2010. O.M. da Silva, Fidalgos in the Kingdom of Jaffnapatam (Sri Lanka: 1543-1658), Colombo: Harwoods Publishers, 1994.

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Portuguese word couve meaning cabbage) and pipiñña in Sinhala and peppini in Tamil (from the Portuguese word pepino for cucumber) words relating to music and instruments such as baila in Sinhala and vaila in Tamil (from Portuguese bailar meaning to dance), ravukiñña in Sinhala and ravukiññai in Tamil (from Portuguese rabeca meaning fiddle or violin; the Portuguese diminutive nha) and tambǀruva in Sinhala and tamperu in Tamil (from the Portuguese word tambor meaning drum), personal names PƝduru (Sinhala) and Peturu (Tamil) (from the Portuguese Pedro for Peter), surnames such as Souza (Portuguese Sousa), Pieris (from Portuguese Pires), de Mel (from Portuguese de Mello) and titles such as Dona, Dom and Siñño (from Portuguese Senhor meaning ‘lord’). Whilst the borrowed words indicate new concepts or objects introduced by the Portuguese in some instances, the local words were replaced by their Portuguese synonyms. Sinhala words became confined to the literary and formal language. For example: Portuguese Bastão Escola Janela

Sinhala Borrowing Bastama Iskǀlaya Janelaya

Sinhala Synonyms Sarayatiya PƗsela Kavuluva

Meaning Walking stick School Window

Concluding Remarks European engagement in Indian Ocean trade brought about changes to the existing patterns of commerce which had been guided by the natural rhythms of the monsoon, interlocking the trade in the region. It was not simply a matter of exchanging cross-continental trading partners, for European presence was felt in other areas such as the political and cultural life of the Asians. To sum up, the influence of British culture is confined to the Anglicised elite, who lived in urban areas. While the Dutch left an impression in the legal field and the British made an impact on the plantation sector, transport system and education, it was the Portuguese who made the widest imprint on culture. This has been partially occluded by the two other European powers, who followed the Portuguese. Moreover, Portuguese music and linguistic flows have become part of everyday life and are taken for granted as being “home-grown”. The most important of the three colonial powers was perhaps surprisingly, the Portuguese. Through music and language, they have affected a large number of Sri Lankans, across the social spectrum. Portuguese linguistic impressions are embedded in the lexicon of the local

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languages. They have become part of day-to-day Sinhala and Tamil particularly in the colloquial language. Baila has become the most popular form of music in Sri Lanka. The Portuguese, who were the first Europeans to make contact with Sri Lankans, made the most enduring and constitute the deepest impact on the island’s socioculture. Effects following on from trade, linked to three colonial waves, have brought on several changes. We therefore see differences in the pattern of cultural conquest. The impressions made by Westerners on Sri Lanka together exemplify how Indian Ocean cultures were transformed during the process of European trade expansion overseas.

CHAPTER EIGHT A LIST OF SPICES KNOWN AND USED IN EUROPE DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, THEIR PROVENANCE, COMMON NAMES AND ASCRIPTIONS STEFAN C. A. HALIKOWSKI SMITH

Kirti Chaudhuri produced a number of formidable lists amongst his academic works which have proved of invaluable assistance to later generations of scholars. Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell had once observed that ‘nothing is harder than to find intelligible explanations of the distinction between the numerous varieties of cottons, formerly exported from India to Europe, under a still greater variety of names’.1 Where, then, should one start deconstructing diplomatic correspondence, which stipulated that ‘as a symbol of our thanks we will reciprocate by sending four chitas de Masulipataõ, and one white cloth of Pafsatã to the Most Illustrious Senate’?2 The answer is Appendix 4 of The Trading World of Asia where Chaudhuri, in characteristic understatement, explains that ‘the following list is by no means exhaustive’.3 Building on a lifetime of research in the Indian Office Archives, Chaudhuri was able to draw on specific source material that could help the reader, and to which he ventured etymological guesses regarding the terms’ origins. In what follows I have attempted to do the same with regard to that 1

Henry Yule & A.C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: the Anglo-Indian Dictionary, entry for ‘Bafta’, Wordsworth Editions, 1996, 47. 2 ‘Carta q. o Barcalaõ de Siam mandou p.a o Senn.o’, Arquivos de Macau, August 1929, vol. 1, no. 3, 163-164. 3 Kirti N. Chaudhuri, ‘The Grouped List and the Glossary of Indian Textile Types’, The Trading World of Asia, Cambridge: C.U.P., 1978, 500-505.

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nebulous group of products known as ‘spices’ over the early modern period. Many of these goods and their uses can only strike us today as bizarre in the extreme and not easily identifiable as those same ‘spices’ we use as simply culinary condiments on today’s dinner tables. Other historians have attempted similar lists4, some going so far as producing specific dictionaries.5 But often the term’s sheer range of historical meaning goes ignored by historians, who project today’s understanding of the term on to the past6, while others steer their lists to specific audiences or regions.7 It is hoped that readers will find what I have collected below as the most specific and full list of early modern spices on the European market. *** Agaricum (‘geseubert’). A white, light coloured fungus, Boletus igniarius (easily flammable) growing on the larch and used as a styptic (checking the flow of blood by causing the blood-vessels to contract); also ascribed ‘operazioni mirabili nelle febbri lunghe e nel modificare i sensi’.8 Grew in the mountains of the Trentino; according to Hakluyt was imported from Germany.9 Almonds, fruit of Amygdalus communis L. and widely cultivated across the Mediterranean. The German market tended to be supplied by the produce of Apulia, traded across Venice, while almonds of Provence, Barbary and Valencia were picked out in handbooks of trade. Generically used against trouble with the heart, spleen, liver and kidneys. Otherwise, 4 Andrew Dalby, Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices, London: British Museum Press, 2002; Joanna Brierley, Spices: The Story of Indonesia’s Spice Trade, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press South-East Asia, 1994. 5 J. Worth Estes, Dictionary of protopharmacology: therapeutic practices, 1700– 1850, Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1990. 6 Franco Brunello, Marco Polo e le merci dell’Oriente, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1986. 7 Robin Donkin, Between East and West: the Moluccas and the traffic in spices up to the arrival of Europeans, Philadelphia, Pa. : American Philosophical Society, 2003. 8 Arnaldo di Villanova, Il libro sul modo di conservare la gioventù e ritardare la vecchiaia, Genova: Scientia veterum, 38, 1963. 9 Castore Durante, Herbario Nuovo, Rome: B. Bonfadino e T. Diani, 1585, 9; Richard Hakluyt, ‘A declaration of the places from whence the goods subscribed doe come’, in The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation, London: Everyman's Library edition, 1926, vol. III, 341-.

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‘eaten before drinking they prevent drunkenness and anxieties, and they cure freckles’.10 Widely used in conjunction with other simples (vinegar, honey). The carminative oil was considered to appease ear-ache. But also a cheap and common comestible, typically in combination with rice. Besides being used in cooking, they were often blanched and served as dessert with dried fruits. Aloe. Different aloe drugs were extracted from various species of the Aloeaceae family (arborescens, ferox, perrey, soccotrina, vulgaris). Sixteenth century records reveal an aloe hepatica, sometimes also known as the ‘secondo aloè’, from the East Indian Jafarad aloe and which caused Boccaccio’s Calandrino to cry tears as big as hazelnuts for its quite intolerable taste (le lagrime che parevan nocciuole sí eran grosse); aloe socotrina (secutrina) from Socotra; and aloe caballina (cavallino), considered the least precious, either a residue after cooking or perhaps a falsification.11 That of Socotra was highest esteemed, worth at least four times that of Bengali, Cambay or other Indian aloes.12 Arab and European sources also prized Khmer aloewood.13 Also mentioned are the washed drug aloe lota and, in the case of the German Liber de naturali facultate – das arzinbuoch Ypocratis, Cape aloe (Aloe ferox), which grew in South Africa.14 Heyd suggests that inferior qualities of aloe were grown in Spain 10

Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis.Series Nova 2644 der Österreischischen National Bibliothek, ed. F. Unterkircher, Graz: Codices selecti phototypice impressi, 1967, 18v; Péter Melius, Herbárium, ed. Attila Szabó, Bucureúti: Kriterion, 1978, 142. 11 Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca, Torino: Einaudi, 1980, sixth tale (novella) of the eighth day, 941; Friedrich A. Flückiger & Daniel Hanbury, Pharmacographia: a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin met with in Great Britain and British India, London: Macmillan, 1874. 12 Socotra was thus inevitably associated with aloe cultivation in the western mind, see Giovanni da Uzzano, Pratica delle mercatura, in Gian Francesco Pagnini del Ventura ed. Della decima e di altre gravezze,imposte dal comune di Firenze, della moneta e della mercatura de' Fiorentini fino al secolo XVI, Lisbon & Lucca, 1766, t. 4, 18, 48, 74, 112, 114, 192 [there is a digital copy of this work online courtesy of the Hathi Trust at http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008610179]. 13 Ibn IyƗs, Histoire des Mamlouks circassiens, Cairo: Publications de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, tr. Gaston Wiet, 1945, t. II, 414; Henry Yule & A.C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: the Anglo-Indian Dictionary, London: J. Murray 1903, 144. 14 text repr. by P. Piper in Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie, 13 (1882), 466-76.

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and Greece, in southern Italy and Malta.15 From aloe, and especially the South African varieties, a yellow liquid can be extracted from the leaves, which produced the characteristic bitter, purgative drug Aloe arborescens used in the preparation of remedies designed to stimulate the appetite and fortify the organism generally (tonic).16 It was probably part of this reasoning that aloe wine was considered a thickener of hair texture. A base to the vast majority of perfumes and ointments in use in the Indian Ocean, and considered by Pires a stimulant, carminative and tonic, perfumed rosaries were worked from this wood.17 Also exploited as an anthraquinone, that is, serving to prepare colorants. Alum, a white mineral salt (a sulfate of aluminium and potassium) used in medicine and dyeing, as a mordant for dyes like madder that cannot otherwise be fixed. The Lüneburger Inventar distinguishes between Alumen combustum (dry alum), Alumen plumosum or plumeum (feather alum), so called for its elongated appearance, but brittle and considered of inferior quality, and Alumen saccharinum (a mixture of alum, sugar - or rosewater - and egg-whites), common in tariff books. The Sibiu pharmacy inventory of 1580 mentions Alumen crudum. Thomas Hariot speaks of ‘roche allum’.18 The product was principally traded by the Venetians from the mines at Phocea in Smyrna and on the Black Sea coast; though smaller and less refined deposits were exploited at Kypsella and in Thrace, especially at Maronia. There was also alum de Bolcan, the alum of the Lipari islands, as mentioned in Pegolotti. The Levantine trade in alum was greatly setback by the discovery in 1462 of the Tolfa deposits in the Papal States, subsequently known as alluyn romse, or Roman alum, considered 20% superior in quality, but the Hamburg list of 1592 mentions German alum 15

Wilhelm Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge, repr. Amsterdam: A.M. Hakkert, 1967, vol. II, 564. 16 Eva Criúan, Materia Medica de Transylvanie, Cluj Napoca: Muzeul National de Istorie a Transilvaniei, 1996, probably from Péter Melius, Herbarium, Bukarest: Kriterion, 1978, 192. 17 Garcia da Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ., ed. Sir Clements Markham, London: Hakluyt Society, 1913, vol. I, 70-1; ibid., ed. Conde de Ficalho, Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 1891-95, note in v. II, 64-65. 18 Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. London, 1588, 11.

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alongside that of Mafferon. Amber, a fossilised, clear, yellowish-brown resin of an extinct species of pine, Pinites succinifera, sold as two variants, album and citrinum. Widely used for ornamentation, amber was sculpted into crucifixes, buttons, rosaries and incorporated into quality furniture. Ambergris, also known as Ambrachan, or Ambra (Pg.) Succinum orientale or Poma ambra, a wax-fat substance, which in hot water produces a musky-resinous smell, and is formed in huge concretions in the final stretch of the intestine of the sperm whale (Physeter catodon, Linn. or Phyceter macrocephalus), and expelled. It was collected from the coastline, where it was washed up, both at Ossónoba in the Algarve, Setúbal, and along the Spanish coast, though superior substances were widely imported from the eastern coastline of Africa, from the Cape up to the Red Sea, and from outlying archipelagoes such as the Maldives, Laquedives and Nicobar Islands.19 Three qualities were distinguished: light grey, the most precious, dark grey and then black. They were used medicinally as a stimulant against hysteria, were widely employed in perfumes and to embalm people of rank. Drunk in a cordial as an antidote to poison. Ammoniacum, a gum traded as Ammoniacum album and A. purpureum.20 The product of insect punctures principally occurring on Dorema ammoniacum, which grows from Persia to India. The gum was used in scent, incense and medicine. Anacardium, or Anacardi (Anacardium occidentale, L. Cashew); see Cagiers. Anise (Aniseed). Seeds of Pimpinella anisum L. used in food-flavouring 19

Duarte Barbosa, Livro em que dá relação do que viu e ouviu no Oriente, Lisboa: Agência Geral das Colónias, 1946 ed. Augusto Reis Machado, 207 [copy online at http://purl.pt/435]; Alberto Iria, O Algarve e os Descobrimentos, 2nd vol. of Descobrimentos Portugueses: documentos para a sua história, ed. João Martins da Silva Marques, Lisboa: Instituto de Alta Cultura, 1956, 206, 207, 238, 271, 409; Isaac H. Burkill, Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula, London : Crown Agents for the Colonies, 1935, 2 vols., entry for ‘ambergris’. 20 Alphita (of Salerno), published in Salvatore de Renzi, Collectio Salernitana, Napoli, 1852-9, vol. III, 271-322.

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(in liquors such as anisette and absinth), and employed in meat jellies, as a condiment and in medicine. Grew in the eastern Mediterranean (Syria, Egypt and Crete) and traded as Annys oosters; a Spanish product was also in circulation. A stimulant, carminative and galactagogue; used for stomach and throat relief.21 Antimony, a chemical element (Sb), prepared as the white of antimony carbonate (Cerussa Antimonii Alba Veneta), ‘grea[t]ly commended against the dropsye, the French pockes, melancholie, and diuers other diseases, which it cureth by purging’.22 Preparations of antimony were a standard Paracelsian remedy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were fashioned into cups which when left with wine, produced a tartar emetic (potassium antimony tartrate).23 Archil (or orchil, in Portuguese urzela), a reddish dye (but blue in alkaline pH areas) obtained from lichens of the Roccella and Lecanora genera. The fortunes of orchil are closely tied up with the Florentine family of the same name, Rucellai, one of whose thirteenth-century forebears - so the legend goes - discovered the dye while travelling in the Levant and applied it to wool mixed with urine.24 Archil was found in abundance on rocks and cliffs in the Portuguese mid-Atlantic archipelagos, figure in Dom Henrique’s will, and continued to be exploited with substantial exports for centuries. Later attempts were made to cultivate it in the Canary Islands as an alternative, like woad, to eastern supplies of indigo, but a harsh climate and the fact that the islands were still not fully subdued as late as the 1490s meant that the enterprise met with difficulties and little success.25 Of very 21

John Gerard, The Second Booke of the Historie of Plants, London: 1597, ch. 397. Timothy Bright, A Treatise, wherein is declared the sufficiency of English medicines for cure of all diseases, cured with medicine, London: Henrie Middleton, 1580, 42. 23 see the picture of such in Abraham Wolf, A History of Science, Technology and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries, re-issued Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999, 439. 24 Gabriella Contorni & Leandro Maria Bartoli, Gli Orti Oricellari a Firenze:un giardino, una città, Firenze: Edifir, 1991, 4; Annette Kok, ‘ A short history of the orchil dyes’, The Lichenologist, 3, 1966, 248-272. 25 Peter Russell, ‘Price Henry and the necessary end', in Portugal, Spain and the African Atlantic, 1343-1490: chivalry and crusade from John of Gaunt to Henry the Navigator, Aldershot: Variorum, 1995, 10; David Abulafia, ‘L'Economia italiana e le economie mediterranee ed atlantiche', pre-circulated paper for Italia all' fine del 22

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low light fastness, archil was better used in combination with other red dyes to darken the shade and produce violets (even if only temporarily).26 Arsenic. The Sibiu Inventory of 1580 mentions arsenicum album (arsenic acid) and a. citrinum (an ‘auripigment’). Asafoetida, a gum-resin extracted from Ferula narthex Boiss. and allied umbelliferous plants such as Ferula assa-foetida L., Ferula foetida Regel, growing in the Levant, Iran and Central Asia (Afghanistan and northern India-Pakistan or ‘Lahor’ as was commonly written). The sap hardens into a resinous gum with an extremely strong, somewhat repellent alliaceous (onion-like) odour (known in German as Teufelsdreck, or ‘dirt of the devil’). If eaten as food in Iran, in the Occident more typically a repository of medicinal virtues; on this point, Orta contradicts Ruelius to affirm that ‘everybody writes about it as never letting the member down’.27 Asphaltum Lignum, a kind of vegetal tar or liquid pitch (pece liquido) commonly from Syria or Judea. Used against rheumatism and tuberculosis by way of fumigation; externally applied against the spastic state. Auripigmentum, see orpiment. Although a dye from a naturally occurring compound of arsenic, auripigmentum was often mistakenly understood to be ‘(fine) gold beaten in masse’, see entry for gold. Azurite, also known as azzurro dell’Allemagna or citramarinum, and by Agricola as Berglasur. A basic carbonate of copper, 2CuCO3.Cu (OH)2, incorporated into a mixture of melted wax, resins and oils and kneaded in a cloth under a dilute solution of lye until washed out, azurite was the most important blue pigment in European medieval painting. Hungary was the principal source of azurite until the mid-seventeenth century, when Medioevo, conference organised at San Miniato, settembre 2000, 10. The difficulties facing archil cultivation in the Canary Islands did not prevent 8 Spanish harvesters brought to the Cape Verde Islands in 1731 from reaping a cargo of 500 quintals, Maria Olímpia da Rocha Gil, ‘A economia dos Açores nos séculos XV e XVI’, in Luís de Albuquerque ed., Portugal no Mundo, Lisbon: Publicac޽}es Alfa, 1989, I, 226. 26 Annette Kok, ‘A short history of the orchil dyes’, The Lichenologist, III (1966), 248-72. 27 Orta, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, vol. I, 76. 86.

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supplies were cut off by the Turks.28 Balm, see Balsam. Balsam, or sometimes just balm. A generic for the white, aromatic liquid flowing from one of a number of ‘diuers trees growing in the Indies’, tending to go red and solidify. The most renowned balsam was said to come from a cultivated grove at Matarea ‘five Lombard miles’ east out of Cairo and watered by a miraculous source, but despite von Harff's proclamation that ‘this balsam grows in no part of the earth only in this place so far as I have heard’, the product came from across Arabia; it was distinguished between Opobalsamum, a product of direct incisions into the tree, Carpobalsamum, the fruit extract and, less commonly, Xylobalsamum, understood to be either the wood itself or else an extract from the branch.29 Balsam was used in religious worship, baptismals and in Holy Oils. It was used medicinally to treat wounds and conserve corpses and, following the theory of signatures, as a tranquilliser and to banish all clouds and storms from the mind with the purpose of attaining mental peace and serenity.30 Basil (Ocimum basilicum, L.). Resolves ‘superfluities’ (superfluitates) of the brain. The Tacuinum Sanitatis considered it was most widely found regionibus orientalibus.31 Bastard (Flat) Sea Holly, or Eryngium planum L. This root appears in the Braúov inventory of 1576. Imported into England. Perhaps it was an Alpine plant - Gerard tells us that the plant was sometimes named Alpinum Eryngium. The same considered that ‘they have as yet no vse in medicine, and are neither vsed to be eaten’, but would consider them of hot vertues; Melius ascribes the thistle diuretic properties, and uses in disease of the

28

Arthur P. Laurie, The Pigments and Mediums of the Old Masters, London: Macmillan 1914; Joyce Plesters, ‘Ultramarine Blue, Natural and Artificial', in Ashok Roy, Artists' Pigments, A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Oxford: O.U.P. 1993, 38-9. 29 Arnold von Harff, The Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff, Knight from Cologne, through Italy, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia, Nubia, Palestine.. (1496-99), trans. M. Letts, London: Hakluyt Society, repr. Liechtenstein: Kraus Ltd., 1967, 127. 30 Abraham Cowley, Plantarum, the third and last volume of the works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, including his six books of plants, London: J. Tonson, 1721 248-9. 31 Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis, XXXVI r.

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spleen and of the liver.32 Bdellium, an aromatic gum resin identified with that of Balsamodendron Mukul Hooker. Mentioned in the Bible as provenant from the land of Havilah ‘compassed’ by the River Phison (associated with the Ganges); in early modern times imported from Arabia Felix, Mecca and the Holy Land.33 ‘Of a sweete smell and bitter taste. It hath vertue to mollifie and ripen hard swellings, and is good against the stiffnesse of sinewes or other parts, and against the biting of venomous beasts’.34 Timothy Bright suggested it was oft counterfeited with gooms; seems to have been a substitute for myrrh.35 Bees-Wax, bleached (Cera alba) and unbleached (Cera flava); the Sibiu inventory of 1580 mentions a Cera rubra. Widely used in various preparations, plasters, unguents etc. Dioscorides recommended its use in eruptions and, as a fumigation, in the treatment of hysteria, skin problems, tumours and as a diuretic. Mixed with quince juice, administered against dysentery.36 Benzoin, belzuinum, benjoim or gum Benjamin. Known in early modern medical texts as As(s)a dulcis. One of a number of resinous balsams, used medicinally and as incense, obtained by wounding the bark of certain tropical Asian species of Styrax, especially S. benzoin Dryander. First appearing in travel literature and in customs records around the midfifteenth century, the gum-resin was largely familiarised by the Portuguese, even if it continued to arrive in Italy through the Levant.37 Two varieties, a white and black, one brought to Calicut from Pegu, the other from Sumatra 32

John Gerard, The Historie of Plants, 1597, vol. II, chap. 469, 1003; Melius, Herbárium, 182. 33 Genesis, ii, 11-12. 34 John Bullokar, An English Expositor: teaching the interpretation of the hardest words in our language, London: John Legatt, 1616, in Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) database at http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/ [URL accessed 11 June 2011]. 35 Bright, A Treatise, wherein is declared the sufficiency of English medicines, 12. 36 Wolfgang I. Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main: Govi, 1968, vol. I, 28-9. 37 see Bartholomeo di Pasi, Tariffa de pesi e mesure correspondenti dal leuante al pone[n]te : da vna terra a laltra e a tutte le parte del mondo : con la noticia delle robe che se trazeno da vno paese per laltro.. . Venezia: Bindoni, 1521, 62.

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and Java. The former was the best, with its almond scent (also known as Belzuinum Mandolalo), also accredited with smelling of daisies or, according to Pyrard de Laval, vanilla, and from ‘Sian and Baros’; the other dark and worth only half the price and from Sumatra. Also reported to grow on the east coast of North America.38 Important product in the manufacture of medicines. One variant had to be burned rather than used in its natural state (‘Belzuinum burned, from Bonnia’). The resin is principally two alcohols combined with cinnamic acid and free cinnamonic and benzoic acids, and was used in the treatment of coughs, to ease ulcerated lungs, to cure asthma, and as an antiseptic. Enjoyed a further role as an antidote to poisons. Betel, or bastard pepper (Piper betle L., or Chavica betel). Although producing a fruit ‘of the taste of Pepper, yet very pleasant to the palate’, this epiphyte was better known for its leaves, which were chewed in the mouth rolled up with a variety of other ingredients, most commonly the areca nut, alongside whose palm this epiphyte was often purposefully planted. It grew along the Indian littoral, but in the Moluccas equally, where it was chewed with wild nutmeg.39 The betel was of a bitter taste recognised to stave off bad breath, accompanied by a strong stimulating effect that Orta declares a sexual excitant. The masticant was also used to relieve heartburn, to keep hunger and thirst at bay, and to help memory. The habit was acquired by the Portuguese but not exported beyond the Levant, though it was ascribed qualities and degrees and most likely therefore adopted by ‘Empiricke Phisitions’ in Europe.40 Bezoar Stone (Lapis Bezoar Orient). Oval concretions, compounds of lime and magnesium phosphate, found in the stomachs of certain herbivorous mammals, Orta suggested the ‘Persian buck’, the Capra segragus and Antilopa dorcana of the Caucasus, Persia and India 38 Roteiro que em descobrimento da Índia pelo Cabo da Bon Esperança fez em 1497, eds. D. Kopke & António da Costa Paiva, Porto: Typographia commercial portuense, 1838, 89-90; Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ., I, 84; Hakluyt, ‘A declaration of the places’, vol. III, 342; ‘Samuel Mace's Voyage to the coast south of Cape Hatteras', in New American World. A Documentary History of North America to 1612, ed. David B. Quinn, London: Macmillan, 1979, #780, 162. 39 Details in Vitorino M. Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial, Lisboa: Editorial Presenc޽a, 1982-1985, vol. II, 203; Hubert Jacobs, A Treatise on the Moluccas (c.1544). ., Rome : Jesuit Historical Institute, 2001, 43. 40 Gerard, Herball, or Generalle Historie of Plants, London: 1597, ch. 147, 1357.

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(commonly ‘Tartaria’), but domestic European deer equally. The `stone of Malaca' came from the ‘bilious bladder’ of the porcupine; while later, according to José de Acosta, bezoars were brought from South American species such as the Peruvian goat (Guanacos, Pacos, Vicugnes and Taragues), while Monardes preferred the ‘stone of caymans’ (from the crocodile) or the stones of manatee heads (lamantin) and of the shark (tiburon).41 An ancient Indian drug, known equally to the Arabs, the bezoar stone only entered the European pharmacopeia in the sixteenth century. Considered a prized antidote to poison and plague and internal ailments supposedly caused by toxic substances.42 Other recipes ascribed the bezoar, once reduced to powder, as profitable to those suffering nervous disorders. Bhang, or Indian hemp. Could be found in the apothecary shops of Seville, and was used as an aphrodisiac and stimulant, and in larger doses as a narcotic and hallucinatory drug.43 Blueberries (Vaccinium Myrtyllus), the fruit but also the leaf. Blue bice, an artificial basic carbonate of copper of approximately the same chemical composition as azurite, a pigment with strong associations to Bremen blue, or bleu de cendres. Bolus, mineral silicates, particularly of aluminium (aluminium oxide) extracted from argillaceous earth such as china clay. Of the many variants, the most commonly cited is Bolus armena(-icus), the red earth of Armenia, though the Leipzig retail market regulations speak of yellow earth (gelbe Erde). Borax, or sodium borate, which was extracted from certain Tibetan lakes and was used as a tincal or flux in goldworking and other metal trades, ‘to lute glasses’, as well as medicinally at different times as a sedative, 41

Joseph Acosta, ‘Of the Bezoars Stone', in Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen & others . ., Glasgow: MacLehose, 1905-07, vol. XV, ch. 42, 145-. 42 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, vol. I, 21-22. 43 Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965-93, vol. II, 11.

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anodyne, refrigerant, febrifuge, antispasmodic, astringent, diuretic and emollient, as a ‘great opener of obstructions of young women’ etc.44 Known vaguely by Orta, if found widely at Calicut, where it had come down from Cambay and Lahore, and bought in small quantities by the Venetians in Alexandria as cakes (pate), whence it was taken back to the lagoon city for purification and distribution across Europe.45 Brazil-wood, or verzin(-o/i), also pau brasil pg., the heartwood of Caesalpinia sappan, C. echinata etc. Similar to red sandal-wood in colour to the point of confusion.46 Grew in Tennasserim (Burma) as well as Ceylon and in India, the best of which could be found around Quilon and took it name from it (Verzino colombino, or cholomni). Brazil-wood featured prominently in the returns from Vasco da Gama’s fleet of 1503 and was collected by the factor at Cochin subsequently. ‘True’ brazil-wood of the species Cesalpina brasiliensis (C. echinata)?, the species richest in colouring matter, was discovered in abundance in the Portuguese South American territory of this name, especially Pernambuco, and was leased in commerce from the Crown from 1502. It seems to have been transplanted to São Thomé during the second half of the sixteenth century; Hakluyt suggests curiously that ‘verzini’ was otherwise found in China.47 A species of brazil-wood had nonetheless existed in near-reach of Europe, typically north-western Africa or the Levant, from where it was actively exported by the thirteenth century at the latest. A similar heartwood - exploited for identical functions to brazil-wood - was extracted from American logwood Haematoxylin campechianum, which Columbus was quick to recognise. He was subsequently commanded by Ferdinand and Isabella to ‘bring yearly from the Island of Hispaniola 111 quintals’, and Las Casas confirmed that Columbus ‘brought their Highnesses an abundance of dyewood’.48 44

Worth Estes, Dictionary of Protopharmacology; John Woodall, The Surgions Mate, or Military and Domestique Surgery, London: Rob. Young, 1639, 251. 45 Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ., 1895, I, 277ff.; Marino Sanudo, I Diarii. ., ed. R. Fulin, Venezia : Visentini, 1879-1903, t. XXXII (of 58), 438-9, (1522). 46 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ., II, 283, 188-89; Francesco di Balducci Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. Allan Evans, Cambridge: Mass. 1936, 361, 377. 47 Hakluyt, ‘A declaration of the places from whence the goods subscribed doe come', The English Voyages.., v. III, 341. 48 ‘Royal Mandate Ordering Restitution to the Admiral’ & extract from Las Casas in

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Brazil-wood was cut into billets for freight, and was best sought heavy and hard. It was exploited for its red dye, prized for the rose tones it imparted upon cloth, miniatures and manuscripts, by rasping the wood to a coarse powder, sprinkling with water and leaving to ferment for several weeks. Medically brazil-wood was applied as an astringent, as were its flowers. The wood, too, once stripped of the bark and sapwood, was used in furniture and marquistry. Brimstone, see sulphur. Cagiers, or Anacardium, colloquially the faua de Malaqua. From the dried bean an oil is extracted that ‘hath a causticke or corosiue qualitie & it taketh away warts, breaketh apostumes & preuaileth against leprie, Alopecia, and easeth the paine of the teeth, being put into the hollownes thereof’. Grew in ‘most parts of the East Indies’, commonly Malabar, Cambay and the Deccan, and according to Hakluyt, even the Maldives.49 Calambac, a type of agarwood or dark resinous heartwood that forms in Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees growing in south-east Asia. The sixteenthcentury Dominican Gaspar da Cruz noted its export from Champa; the Confucian poet Ch’en Wei-sung suggests calambac ‘as tall as a man’ was brought to the Chinese court by the Portuguese.50 Calamus. Calamus aromaticus, c. odoratus, sweet calamus or sweet cane (calamus means cane in Latin). Conventionally ascribed to Andropogon Schoenanthus, the sweet-scented lemon grass of Malabar.51 Sixteenth century commentators, for example, inform us that calamus grew especially in Dabul and Chaul.52 But a number of historical botanists have Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison, New York: Heritage Press, 1963, 301-302. 49 Gerard, The Third Booke of the Historie of Plants, 1597, ch. 151. 50 Charles R. Boxer ed., South China in the sixteenth century, being the narratives of G. Pereira, Fr. G. da Cruz, Fr. M. de Rada, London: Hakluyt Society, 1953, 59; John E. Wills, Embassies and illusions: Dutch and Portuguese envoys to Kang-hsi, 1666-1687, Harvard: East Asian monographs, 1984, 81. 51 There is a further lemon grass, or Cymbopogon citratus, known in India as Indian verbena, whose characteristic lemon taste comes from its citric content. 52 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, II, 315; Nycolão Gomçallvez, Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, ed. Adelino de Almeida Calado, Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1957, 54-55.

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protested, claiming that calamus was too widely available for it to have been the Andropogon. They prefer Acorus aromaticus, the Linnean Acorus calamus or sweet flag, which naturally grew right across the northern hemisphere’s temperate band, and was clonally introduced from Turkey around 1550 and naturalised about 1660. Hakluyt, writing in 1589, suggests it was imported from Constantinople; Thomas Thomas, in 1587, suggests Arabia.53 There were two different species, then, in circulation, one indigenous, one imported from India, probably the ‘calamus verus’. It was prized for its outstanding aroma, which is said to be close to that of the rose; its knotted stalk was cut, dried and reduced to a powder, an ingredient in the most precious of perfumes. As a pulped stalk, considered to be an antidote to poison and an aperient.54 Camphor (traditionally Cinnamomum camphora, although Ptak suggests three distinct species).55 A whitish, translucent, crystalline volatile substance, chemically it belongs to vegetable oils and has a bitter, aromatic taste and character. Common camphor (C10H16O) is prepared by distillation and sublimation from Camphora officinarum, a tree indigenous to Java, Sumatra, Japan and other lauraceous trees growing equally in China and Borneo.56 The Portuguese came to know of one species, Dryobalanops aromatica Goertn., which grew on Sumatra and Borneo, and which was sent on, via Melaka, to India. By the time of Orta, the Dryobalanops of Borneo was extremely highly prized and worth as much as a hundred times that of the Chinese; consequently, it became a mixer for specific blends.57 The cheapest on the market at Calicut was sold in bars, 53

Kurt Rüegg, Beiträge zur Geschichte der offizinellen Drogen Crocus, Acorus calamus und Colchicum, Dissertation Basel, 1936; David J. Mabberley, The PlantBook. A portable dictionary of the higher plants, Cambridge: C.U.P. 1986, 7. 54 The Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice etc. ed. Rawdon Brown, London : H.M.S.O., 1864, vol. I, 67. 55 Roderich Ptak, ‘Camphor in Eastern and South-east Asian trade, c. 1500’, in Anthony Disney and Emily Booth (eds), Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, 142-166. 56 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, I, 151 ff. 57 Carolus Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem, quibus animalium, plantarum, aromatum, aliorumque peregrinorum fructuum historiae describuntur, Raphalengii: 1605, 161; Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. 1c; Cesare Federici. Viaggio di M. Cesare de i Fedrici nell'India Orientale et oltra

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and had been ordered from China for the Portuguese; the most expensive was eaten or used to treat the eyes, against bleeding from the nose, heating of the liver and acute fevers.58 Canafistula or Canaficiers (Cassia fistula, L.), the ‘Pudding Pipe’ tree. References to canne in returning cargoes is more likely to be canafistula than, as Greenlee is keen to interprete, bamboo.59 This pod, blackened when ripe, encases a sweetish, lightly purgative pulp. While found in abundance in Egypt (‘Turkey’) - von Harff observed them growing in the walled gardens of Alexandria - as well as parts of the Levant, from where they plied the Levantine route into Europe, the Portuguese took to exporting that which they discovered between Cannanore and Diu.60 Canafistula was also known to grow plentifully in Java, though it is not known to what degree it was exploited, and in Brazil, where it was gathered freely by the expedition of 1501-02 (‘& qui trovãmo canna fistula molto grossa e verde e secca i cima delli arbori’).61 Horse cassia (Cassia grandis) growing in the West Indies was understood by Peter Martyr to be ‘the fruit or spice which the apothecaries call cassia fistula’ and was rated as one of the ‘valuable products from the New World’.62 Used as a strong laxative, and to ‘purify’ the blood and bile at times of high fever. As well as the pulp, it seems the seed was also used and ascribed great medicinal

l'India, Venezia, 1587, trans. as The voyage and travaille into the East Indies, London: R. Jones & E. White, 1588, 38. 58 Duarte Barbosa, Livro das cousas da Índia, Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, s.d., cód. 299, f. 14; Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis Series Nova 2644 der Österreichen National Bibliothek, 94r. 59 see, for example, ‘Letter of Amerigo Vespucci to Lorenzo de' Medici’, Beseguiche, 4 June 1501, published in The Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India, ed. William B. Greenlee, London: Hakluyt Society ser. II, vol. LXXXI, 1938, 159-. 60 Nycolão Gomçallvez, Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, 54; Barbosa, Livro em que dá relação do que viu e ouviu no Oriente, 164. 61 Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental, ed. Armando Cortesão, London: Hakluyt Society, 1944, 513; Thomaz Oscar Marcondes de Souza, Amérigo Vespucci e suas viagens, S. Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras,, 1949, 270. 62 Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis et Orbe Novo Decades Tres, Basel, (1533) repr. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966, trans. by Richard Eden as The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India, London 1555, 42; see also Mario José Sturla, The Forgotten Colony: Spanish Colonial Challenges on the Island of Hispaniola, 15161586, M.A. thesis presented at Brown University, 2003, passim.

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value.63 Canica. A kind of wild cinnamon growing on Cuba but its taste is more like cloves than cinnamon. Also used in medicine; sold well ‘in the Spanish islands’. 64 Capers (Capparis spinosa L.), cultivated and growing wild across the Mediterranean, but commonly imported from Alexandria, for floral buds pickled as a relish. As well as the bud, it seems the thick bark covering the root (corticis) was much used to combat ‘hard spleenes’ and to expel ‘thicke and grosse humours’, and to clean old sores, flush out worms (when taken with vinegar) and against tooth-ache.65 Much used in cooking for sauces. Caraway (Carum carui), its small fruits or seeds yield a volatile oil, and are considered aromatic and carminative and widely used for flavouring cakes, sweetmeats etc. Also considered a hair restorative.66 Widely traded up and down the Rhine in the sixteenth century, though in origin Apulia provided caraway seeds for the German market, where known as venezianischer Kümmel.67 Cardamom, fruit of Elettaria cardamomum L. and sometimes loosely applied to Aframomum & Amomum species such as A. verum (registered as Ammomi in 16th century inventories). Grew in the area between Cannanore and Chale near Calicut, but more profusely still in the mountainous Kourg 63

K.S. Mathew, Portuguese Trade with India in the Sixteenth Century, New Delhi : Manohar, 1985, 130 & da Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India., vol. I, 194. 64 Jacques Savary, The universal dictionary of trade and commerce, translated from the French of the celebrated Mosieur Savary, Inspector-General of the manufactures for the King, at the Custom-House of Paris: with large additions and improvements, incorporated throughout the whole work; which more particularly accomodate the same to the trade and navigation of these kingdoms, and the laws, customs, and usages, to which all traders are subject, London : printed for John Knapton, 1757, vol. I, 446. 65 Gerard, The Historie of Plants, 1597, vol. 2, ch. 317; Melius, Herbárium, 152. 66 Encyclopaedia of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer, New York: Scribner, 13 vols. 1982-89, cited under ‘Herbs'. 67 Philip Braunstein, ‘Wirtschaftliche Beziehungen zwischen Nürnberg und Italien im Spätmittelalter', in Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte Nürnbergs, vol. I, (1967), 389.

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and Wynad districts of the Ghats. Some was taken from Bengal.68 There are apparently two kinds of cardamom, big and small, or in Pegolotti’s terminology, cardamoni salvatichi and domestici.69 It seems to have been commonly used as a condiment, but also medically as an appetiser, a strengthener of the stomach and aid to digestion, a relief from wind and aid to unblocking the liver. Also a comforter of the womb and to bring on menses; a strengthener of the mind and a countermeasure to epilepsy and frenesy. Carobs, or locust-beans, also known as St. John’s bread, pods of Ceratonia siliqua L. full of juicy pulp containing sugar and gum (tragasol, a tragacanth substitute). Used as fodder and alcohol source, seeds a coffee substitute, formerly sold as sweets and used as weights, also yielding a diabetic flour, timber for furniture etc.70 Cassia or Cassia ligneae (also known as Chinese or bastard cinnamon, or xilocassia). This is one of the great botanical faux amis, in that this coarse bark was taken from one of the poor brothers of Ceylon cinnamon (Cinnamomum aromaticum Nees) that grew in Malabar, southern China and Burma in the sixteenth century and is not in any way connected with the Cassia genus of the Leguminosae family (though was this too a spice, and might it have arrived from Gran Cayro as Hakluyt records). By cinnamomum crassius, Conti meant cassia, and Barbosa cannella selvatica and c. trista; others, such as John Russel, author of the fifteenth century Boke of Nurture, simply call cassia canelle. The Grete Herball speaks of two variants, one that is ‘lyke cynamum / drawynge to colour of russet and hath a sharpe sauour’, the other unsatisfactorily ‘also toward russet or gray and hath in partes dyvers coloures’.71 Dragendorff considers cassia a 68

Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, I, 174 & Nycolão Gomçallvez, Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, 54. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, III, 341- suggests Amomum was brought from China; might he have been mistaken? 69 Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, 211, 296. The small cardamomum might be a successful case of import substitution, for Hakluyt recorded its commercial provenance as Barcelona, The Principal Navigations, v. III, 342. 70 N. Winer, ‘The potential of the carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua)’, The International Tree Crops Journal, 1 (1980), 15. 71 ‘Carta de Jeronimo de Santo Estevam', printed by Valentim Fernandes in 1502 in Marco Polo - O Livro de Marco Polo, and re-ed. Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira, Lisbon: Oficinas gráficas da Biblioteca nacional, 1922, fl. 95v; Livro de Duarte

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product of Cinnamomum pauciflorum nees, distinguished by its thicker bark, obtained from the periodic surgery of the branches of this tree, and cassia’s stronger, coarser flavour than cinnamon; today it is conventionally accorded Cinnamomum aromaticum Nees, and also known as C. cassia.72 The bark tended to be used as a cheaper substitute of cinnamon; Linschoten suggests it was worth only 1/5 that of the cinnamon of Ceylon. More specifically, it served as a general diuretic and against dysury (difficulty in urinating) to ‘disperse the humours’, as a fragrance against ‘stenche of the mouthe and armeholes’ and, as with many aromatics, to act upon the brain in cases of epilepsy or fainting. Also, for the general benefit and removal of obstructions in a number of organs - the liver, stomach, heart, spleen, kidneys, bladder and ‘mylt’. Also applied to cold stomachs, to bring on the menses and strengthen the womb.73 The dried cassia buds were also marketed as a spice. Cassumunar (also known as yellow zedoary and curcuma aromatica), another species of the Curcuma genus, exploited for its aromatic tuberous root, which was also known generically as wild ginger. Castor, a musk secreted by the European beaver (Castor Biber L.) common in Muscovite Rus and the wilder forest reaches of Germany (Scythia), but increasingly imported from further east, from Siberia.74 A long standing medicine used as an anti-hysteric, anti-epileptic, against cholera and feverish illnesses, and to combat urinary afflictions.75 Castor bean, from the tropical plant. Laxative properties; use of oil to cure itching, sores, and herpes when applied as a plaster; pounded leaves used to heal external ulcers.76 Barbosa, II, 228; Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, Lisbon: 1891-95., v. II, 206. 72 Georg Dragendorff, Die Heilpflanzen der verschiedenen Völker und Zeiten Ihre Anwendung, Wesentlichen Bestandtheile und Geschichte. Ein Handbuch für Ärtze, Apotheker, Botaniker und Droguisten, Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1898, 239. 73 ‘Cassea lignea vel xilocassia', The Grete Herball. . whiche geueth parfyt knowlege and vnd[er]standyng of all maner of herbs, London: Treueris, 1526, cap. xcii. 74 Hakluyt, ‘A declaration of the places’, v. III, 342. 75 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, I, 28. 76 Adamus Lönitzer (Lonicerus), Kreütterbuch: new zugericht, von allerhand Bäumen, Stauden, Hecken, Kreutern, Früchten, unnd Gewürtzen (..) mit vilen newen Kreutern, Frankfurt am Main: Egenolff, 1557.

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Cat’s eyes (olhos de gato, Pg.), any of certain gems having a chatoyant opalescence, especially chrysoberyl, found in Ceylon.77 Ceruse, see White Lead. Chalk, or Creta alba, a calcium carbonate. Also Creta cimolia, or cimolite, a product of Greek Antiquity mentioned by Pliny the Elder. A number of chalk beds were laid down across western Europe in the Cretaceous age, the best for artists’ use being considered the ‘Champagne chalk’ from northern France. As a powder, chalk was used as a pigment to whiten garments, but also as bulking agent for other coloured paints. Primed with lead white by Dutch painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to make loot wit, a ceruse or Spanish white.78 Levigated chalk was used as a mild abrasive for polishing gold and silver. China root. This is the root of Smilax china, L., a thorny creeper growing in thickets in China, Japan and the provinces of north-eastern India.79 Also thought to grow (wishful thinking) by the first explorers on the east coast of America.80 Described by Orta as a root ‘eaten in China cooked with meat as we do with turnips. It is a shrub of 5-6 ft. high, root about 1 ft., one thick root and one thin. The leaves are shaped like young orange leaves’.81 It was also eaten raw, and was widely used as an aphrodisiac, an alterative and a sudorific, not just in the relief of venereal diseases, especially syphilis, but also for scrofula and paralysis. Emperor Charles V urged Vesalius to administer it to relieve his ‘gout’, probably a euphemism for syphilis, as its regimen was less rigorous and privatory as the standard treatment with guaiac. The Portuguese only seem to have got to know it 77

‘Viaggio di Geronimo da Santo Stefano e di Geronimo Adorno in India nel 149499', ed. Prospero Peragallo, Rome: Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana 38, 1901, 9. 78 Johannes A. Van de Graaf., ‘Betekenis en toepassing van ‘Lootwit' en ‘Schelpwit' in de XVIIe-Eeuwse Nederlandse Schilderkunst', Bulletin de l'Institut Royal du Patrimonie Artistique, vol. 4, (1961), 198-201. 79 Hakluyt probably confused the root for the wood when he spoke of Lignum de China, The Principal Navigations, v. III, 342. 80 ‘Samuel Mace's Voyage to the coast south of Cape Hatteras', in New American World a documentary history of North America to 1612, ed. David B. Quinn, London: Macmillan, 1979, #780, 162. 81 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. Goa: Joannes de Endem, 1563, vol. II, 259-270.

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around 1535 from Chinese traders active at Goa. It was received in Europe ‘with high praises in irregular circles’, i.e. those circles where venereal diseases were prevalent. Several treatises were written on it including the first part of Andreas Vesalius’ Epistola rationem, modumque propinandi radicis Chymae decocti, quo nuper invictissimus Carolus V. imperator usus est, Venice (1546), in reply to Roelants, his friend and city physician of Mechelen.82 It does not figure in Gerard’s Herbal, but was sent back to Lisbon from Goa over the seventeenth century.83 Most remarkably, modern analysis has suggested that `the drug is not known to contain any substance to which its supposed medicinal virtues can be referred.84 Cimolite (see chalk). Cinnabar (Cinnabaris nativum), the red crystalline form of mercuric sulfide found widely, but not abundantly, across the world; sometimes confused with the spice known as dragon’s blood, principally Draecaena cinnabari q.v., so that crystalline cinnabar indicated as cinnabaris metallica. Frederick Ruysch (1638-1731), Professor of Anatomy in Amsterdam and celebrated for his vascular injection technique, used a combination of wax, resins, talc and cinnabar to permeate the vascular system.85 Cinnamon, bark of Cinnamomum verum, J. Presl. also known as C. zeylanicum, and a number of other species such as C. burmannii and C. iners that grew widely across the interior of India.86 Columbus discovered the canella or white cinnamon (Cannella winterana) of the West Indies, which Monardes wrote of as ‘Cinnamon of our Indias’.87 Ceylon cinnamon 82

Benjamin Farrington, ‘Vesalius on China-root: extracts from the letter of Andrea Vesalius to Domenus Joachim Roelants, written in Ratisbon, 13 June 1546, trans. from Latin’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, vol. 25, pt. I. 83 ‘Lista que o Sr. Conde de Linhares Viso Rey da India mandou fazer’, Monções do Reino, Historical Archives, Goa, L13B, 409v. 84 Flückiger & Hanbury, Pharmacographia, 649. 85 Iain Bamforth, ‘Bodyworlds / The Plastinators', The London Review of Books, 19 October 2000, 34-35. 86 Ibn Battuta, Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, trans. C. Defrémery, Paris: Impr. Impériale, 1874, vol. IV, 99. 87 George Griffenhagen, ‘The Materia Medica of Christopher Columbus', Pharmacy in History, (1992), 34, no. 3, 133; Nicolás Monardes, Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestra Indias Occidentales, que sirven al uso de medicina.., Seville:

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was universally acclaimed as the better; at the time of Garcia d’Orta, 400 lbs. of that of Malabar was worth one ducat, whereas ten ducats bought only 100 lbs. of that of Ceylon.88 Widely used as a germ-killer, aromatic and medicine: a mild relief for the stomach and to cool off the pain of the colic; to remove bad oral smells; a menstrual regulator when drunk with myrrh; a diuretic (increases urine output), but also an anti-diarrhoetic and relief for wind; an antidote against deadly poisons; used to bring old men out of ‘dead swounds’, in other words against fainting; thought to sharpen the sight, strengthen the liver and stomach, improve circulation and ‘comfort the hart’; as a healing ointment or salve for external wounds, cracked lips and rotting gums, good for sunburn; as a ‘water’ for hastening childbirth and to increase sperm; an appetisant and digestant.89 Orta reminds us that beyond its medical functions, cinnamon was a fine culinary seasoning (boa para te˜perarem os comeres), whilst the coarser pieces of bark, when boiled with its fruit (could this be the fleur de cammelle referred to in the mid-fifteenth century Ryght good lernyng?), yield a fragrant oil. Civet, see Musk. Clove, the dried bud of Syzygium aromaticum, L. It grew almost exclusively on the ‘cinco ilhas do Cravo’ in the Moluccas (Tidore, Moti, Makian, Batjan, Ternate).90 Used for aching and infected teeth and to heal fresh wounds91 and stop the flow of blood; ‘to comfort the sinewes’ and Alonso Escrivano, 1571, trans. as Joyfull Newes Out of the Newe Founde Worlde by John Frampton, London:Willyam Norton 1577, Third Book, fol. 88. 88 Carolus Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem,, 168 ff. 89 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ., 131 ff.; John M. Riddle, ‘The Introduction and Use of Eastern Drugs in the Early Middle Ages', Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 49, (1965), 649; Jacques Brosse ed., A rota das especiarias, Lisbon: I.N.A.P.A., 1989; John Fitzherbert, Third Booke of Husbandrie, London Edward White, 1598, ch. 40. 90 O Livro de Duarte Barbosa, Lisbon: Academia das Ciências (in Collecção de Noticias para a Historia e Geografia das Nações Ultramarinas que vivem nos Dominios Portugueses.), 1812, vol. II, 228; Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation, vol. III, 341; Gabriel Rebello, Informação das cousas de Maluco (1561-69), in Artur .Basilio de Sá ed., Documentação para a História das Missões do Padroado Português do Oriente, Insulíndia, 1954-58, vol. 3, 363. 91 Daniel Sennert, Opera, Lugduni (Lyon): Ioannis Antonii Huguetan & Marci

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‘the naturall parts’ generally, particularly the giddiness of the head [headache] and weak sight, but also the heart and stomach; as a preventative for catching colds; against diarrhea; in emplasters for ‘dropsy’.92 Widely used on the womb against ‘passions de la matrice’, and suffocation (hysteria) and miscarriage specifically.93 Orta, on the other hand, was not particularly enthusiastic of cloves’ medicinal properties, and thought them better off in cooking.94 Cloves were frequently used in aromatic drinks.95 The leaves of the clove were also traded, and some oil was extracted from the bark.96 Cocculus indicus, or Indian berry, the seeds of Anamirta cocculus, Wight & Arn. Used against skin and nervous problems, it is also a dangerous alkoloid parasiticide, the picrotoxin used in barbiturate poisoning. Cochineal, a dye from the cochineal insect (Dactylopius coccus, formerly Coccus cacti), a parasite of the nopal cactus of the West Indies and Mexico. Discovered in 1512, it took about forty years from reaching Spain (1523-6) to displace kermes, whose colouring agent (carminic acid) it shares, as it contained more dye, and was even more in demand after the use of a tin salt brightening the colour had been discovered.97 Coconuts, known colloquially as Nuces Indici, fruit of Cocus nocifera L. Antonii Ravaud, 1650, vol. I, 798; vol. 2, 369; vol. III, 850. 92 J. Fitzherbert, Third Booke of Husbandrie, ch. 44, 130; M.S. Ogden ed., The Liber de diversis medicines in the Thornton manuscript, London: Early English Text Society, no. 207, 1938, 33. 93 Michele Savonarola, Libreto de tutte le cosse che si magnano; un opera di dietetica del sec. XV, ed. Jane Nystedt, Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 13, 1988, 162-165. 94 Orta, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, Edinburgh: R & R Clark, 1913, 219. 95 Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Traducción Española de un manuscrito Anónimo del siglo XIII sobre la cocina Hispano-Magribi, Madrid: Maestre 1966, 267. 96 Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, 135, 229; Friedrich A. Flückiger, ‘Die Frankfurter Liste', Archiv der Pharmazie, 201, (1872), II, 38; John Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, Edinburgh, 1820, vol. 3, 414. 97 Raymond L. Lee, ‘American Cochineal in European commerce, 1562-1625', Journal of Modern History, 23, (1951), 205-24; John Munro, ‘The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour’, Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe, Essays in memory of Prof. E.M. Carus-Wilson, London: Pasold Research Fund and Heinemann, 1983, 64-5.

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Grew in plenty between Cannanore and Vilinjan in the South, and widely traded by the Portuguese as c(h)opra, or dried coconut.98 Gerard nevertheless is keener to believe that the majority that reached Europe came rather from the West Indies and the Central American littoral. He limits himself to describing Indian medicinal and practical uses of this plant, but suggests that making drinking cups from the kernel, garnished with silver, had reached England.99 Colocynth, also known as Coloquintida, bitter apple or ‘vine of Sodom’, marketed as the dried pulp or seeds of Citrullus colocynthis Schrader. Cultivated and naturalised in Mediterranean North Africa, Cyprus and India, colocynth had been used as a strong purgative since Assyrian times.100 Copra, see Coconut. Coral, of which Corralia alba (Madrepora occulta L.) and Corralia rubra (Gorgonia nobilis). Although for the Middle Ages, Heyd could speak of coral as ‘amongst the goods the West had to offer the Orient’, being widely farmed in the western Mediterranean off Ceuta and Portugal and in the waters around Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, entries in Hakluyt speak of ‘Corall of Levant’, exported via Malabar, and Corrallina, from the Red Sea.101 Some branches of coral were presented to Albrecht Dürer as a gift by Damião de Góis, treasured for its ‘exceptional beauty’.102 Used against boils and furuncles, proto-inflammatory abcesses (flegmons), eye problems, spleen diseases and for urine retention, a heart tonic, against haemorrages and epilepsy. One of the key constituents of Raleigh’s Great Cordial. Sometimes used as a substitute for calcium carbonate, and 98

Pires, The Suma Oriental, 83; Arquivos Nacionais da Torre do Tombo [hereafter A.N.T.T.], Lisbon Chancelaria de D. Manuel, Liv. 38, fl. 125r.-126r. 99 Gerard, The Third Booke, ch. 134. 100 H.A. Hoppe, Drogenkunde: Handbuch der pflanzlichen und tierischen Rohstoffe, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter & Co., 1958, 89. The plant has been specifically addressed by Pierre Cuttat, Beiträge zur Geschichte der offizinellen Drogen Semen Lini, Fructus Colocynthidis, Radix Saponariae, Diss. Zürich, 1937. 101 Wilhelm Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge, Leipzig: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1886, vol. 2, 609; for European coral, see Paul Masson, Les Compagnies du Corail, Paris: Fontemoing, 1908, 196. 102 Marcel Bataillon, ‘Le Cosmopolitisme de Damião de Góis’, in Études sur le Portugal au temps de l’humanisme, Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1952, 129.

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ascribed deficient children.103 Coral was used as a charm against the ‘evil eye’ and, as such, was commonly hung around the necks of children. As a protection against evil, coral can be found on pictures of the Christ child.104 Coriander (Coriandrum sativum), seeds of. Native to the eastern Mediterranean where cultivated in large quantities as far back as the Mycenaean age. Widely used as a condiment, considered to aid digestion and fortify the stomach, used against worms. Also used for flavouring wines, preserves and even meat dishes. Bright considers the Coriander of Ethiopia to be the best.105 Co(a)rnelian, a red or reddish variety of chalcedony, used in jewelry. 851 kg were registered on a Lisbon-bound fleet of 1518.106 Correcte. The Oxford English Dictionary is forced to acknowledge that this medicinal herb cannot be easily identified.107 Costus. Root of Aucklandia costus, Falc.; Carmélia Opsomer prefers Saussurea lappa (Decaisne) C.B. Clarke. Exported from Cambay but thought to have come from the basin of the Indus. Available as costus amara(us) and costus dolce (dulcis), the latter from Costus speciosus of Cambay and Sindh, which reached Europe via Hormuz and Aden, this spice was ascribed powerful curative properties as an expectorant, and anti-asthmatic, as a diuretic. Used against afflictions of the spleen, repository of melancholy, and against ailments of the womb provoked by cold, notably sterility. Costus was occasionally burnt as incense, and was widely available through the Middle Ages, even in Anglo-Saxon England.108 103

Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 33-34. George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, Oxford: OUP: 1971. 105 Melius, Herbárium, 194; Bright, A Treatise, wherein is declared the sufficiency of English medicines, 12. 106 Geneviève Bouchon, Navires et Cargaisons retour de l'Inde en 1518, Paris: 6RFLpWpd'histoire de l'Orient, 1977. 107 Adam Moleyns, The Libelle of Englishe Polycye, 1436, ch. 7, ‘The commodites and nycetees of Venicyans and Florentynes with there galees’. 108 Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, 135, 296, 300; Thomas O. Cockayne, Leechdoms, wordcunning, and starcraft of early England, London: Holland Press, 1961, v. II, 238, 276. 104

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Cottons, from India and the Levant. Indian light cottons were introduced to the European market by the Portuguese during the sixteenth century; they had previously been imported from Cyprus, Little Armenia and Syria, especially the cities of Hamah and Aleppo, around which the plant was intensively cultivated, but also in central Syria around Damascus.109 Imported in many different forms; as raw cotton, cotton thread, unworked coloured cloth (Tapeten), fine white cotton fabric known as sinawoffen and pombale, and other woven materials such as carmole, spica, nirbit and affron worked at Cambay.110 46 quintals of cloth were exported by the Portuguese in 1518.111 Cow-hides (Endeghi.. zurli), from North Africa. Cubeb Pepper, fruit of Piper Cubeba L. A creeper similar to the pepper plant that grew in Java, Borneo and Sumatra; Hakluyt would like to think it came from China. The dried unripe fruit was known as fructus carpesiorum and used medicinally to ‘strengthen a weake and windy stomach’ and in disease of the bladder and urinary passages; it was often presented confected so as to overcome the sharp and bitter taste of the drug, and later to flavour cigarettes.112 Cumin, seeds of Cuminum cyminum, used as a flavouring in cakes, cheeses, liquors, curried sauces. Pegolotti ascribes its provenance to Puglia, Spain and, ambiguously, Cerinchan. Might this be a source in Morocco, Spain or Ethiopia as a document discovered by Gilliodts Van Severen from 1371 and a comment from Guicciardini would suggest?113 109 on this, see Lodovico Barthema, Itinerario del venerable varon micer Luis patricio Romano: enel qual cueta mucha parte dela ethiopia Egipto, Seville: J. Crõberger, 1520, trans. into English and edited by L.D. Hammond as Travelers in Disguise: narratives of eastern travel, Camb., Mass: Harvard U.P., 1963. 110 Driffas von Kaufmannschaft (1514/5), and Buch über Handelsbräuche - Der Quartband von 1506, in Karl O. Müller, Welthandelsgebräuche (1480-1540), Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag, 1934, 165, 193, 203. 111 A.N.T.T. Núcleo Antigo, no. 705. 112 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas e cousas mediçinais, I, 288; Hakluyt, ‘A declaration of the places from whence the goods subscribed doe come’, 341; William Langham, The Garden of Health containing the sundry rare and hidden vertues and properties of all kindes of simples and plants, London: T. Harper, 1633, 175. 113 Jacques Mertens, ‘Des Bonnes Épices au Bon Poids', in Saveurs de Paradis. Les Routes des Épices, Catalogue to Exhibition held 27 March-14 June 1992, Brussels,

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Hakluyt prefers Balsara, or Basra, which would have been marketed at the great Levantine emporia frequented by Italian, particularly Venetian merchants. The Hamburg commercial register suggests Sicily; Abulafia suggests neighbouring Malta was a standard supplier in the Middle Ages. In any case, cumin was a popular and inexpensive spice over the course of the period in question, much used as a flavouring for poultry. Cypress nuts of the Cupressus species used against all issues of blood (‘laske and bloudie flixe’), ulcers and polyps.114 Also used to produce a scented oil. Dates, commonly from Arabia Felix and imported through Alexandria.115 With the Portuguese Cape route, Indian dates (tâmaras da Índia) from the date palm reached the European market. Used medicinally as the base to the popular electuary diaphoenicum. Datura, or thorn-apple, or strammony (Datura stramonium, L.). A powerful intoxicant, used in medicine as an analgesic and antispasmodic, that entered the European pharmacopeia possibly during the sixteenth century and for sure by the time of the Thirty Years War, whether from Russia and central Asia, or from Mexico. Datura remained a subject of considerable interest to botanists and illustrators of botanical books.116 Used in the Indian Ocean world by women ‘to trick those who commanded them’.117 Demnar, from Siacca (Siac River) and Blinton.118 Diagredye, or Diagrydium or Diakrydium, from the same family as

Caisse Générale d’Épargne et de Retraite, 1992, 94. 114 Gerard, The Third Booke, ch. 42. 115 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, v. III, 343. 116 see, for example, Mina Bacci & Anna Forlani. Mostra di disegni di Jacopo Ligozzi (1547-1626), Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1961, fig. 6; Hans P. Duerr, Dreamtime: concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987, 76-9, Plate 16. 117 Voyage de Pyrard de Laval aux Indes orientales (1601-1611), Paris: Chandeigne, 1998, vol. 2, 632-3. 118 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries, v. III, 342.

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scammony and frequently substituted for the same.119 Diasprum viride, from Cambay. Could this be the Diosporon of Pliny, though this would appear, through Gerarde’s interpretation, to be a very common plant, growing everywhere. Dittany, a wild herb formerly supposed to be of medicinal value. Traded as Dictamnum album, from Lombardy. Dragon’s Blood. Several reddish resins used in varnishes etc., from Draecaena cinnabari, D. draco, and D. ombet, a palm family indigenous to South-East Asia. Hakluyt specifies Socotra, though the latter species grows in the Canary islands, Madeira, North West Africa and in Portugal, where Hieronymous Münzer marvelled at one in 1494.120 Medicinally, an astringent, used also in the manufacture of the dye cinnabar, and lacquer.121 Earthworm, Lumbricus terrestris L. In western pharmacopeias of the 16th-18th century figure as diuretics, anti-spasmodics, diaphoretics (inducing sweat), against gout, and specifically against arthritis and scurvy.122 Salmon thought that aqua et spiritus lumbricorum was excellent against consumptions, against jaundice, obstructions of the gall, hectic fevers and most diseases of the head and brain.123 119

Flückiger, ‘Die Frankfurter Liste', 49; ibid., ‘Das Nordlinger Register. Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Pharmacie im 15 Jahrhundert ', Archiv der Pharmazie, 211 (1877), 17 (also published in Flückiger, Documente zur Geschichte der Pharmacie, Halle, 1876). 120 Hieronymous Münzer, Itinerarium sive peregrinatio excellentissimi viri artium ac utriusque medicinae Doctoris Hieronimi Monetarii de Feltkirchen civis Nurembergensis, trans. & commentary by B. de Vasconcelos, in O Instituto, Coimbra (1930), 4a série, vol. 9, número 5, 554-5; Cadamosto witnessed the export of ‘dragon’s blood’ from Madeira in the mid-fifteenth century, Giovan Battista Ramusio, Primo volume delle Navigationi et Viaggi, Venice: Giunti, 1550, 105-6. 121 Mabberley, The Plant-Book, 193 thinks D. cinnabari is indigenous to Socotra; for function, see Karl Heinz Bartels, Drogenhandel und apothekenrechtliche Beziehungen zwischen Venedig und Nürnberg: das Eindringen italienischer Elemente in die deutsche Apothekengesetzgebung, Frankfurt am Main: Govi-Verlag, 1966, 70, §42; Jane Pearson, ‘Dragon’s Blood’, The Horticulturalist, vol. 11, number 2, Spring 2002, 10-12. 122 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 48-49. 123 Pharmacopoeia Londinensis or the New London Dispensatory, ed. William Salmon, London: T. Dawks, T. Basset, J. Wright, and R. Chiswell, 1682.

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Ebony, used extensively in such guises as the housing to reliquaries and for small house altars, its black colour thought to provide an aethetically pleasing foil to silver. Augsburg was the leading centre of ebony craftsmanship at the time (late sixteenth and seventeenth century); one of the largest collections in the world is the Ecclesiastical Treasury in Vienna. Elephant’s tusks or, as recorded by Pegolotti, denti di Liofante. See ivory. Enblici, or Emblic myrabolan (Phyllanthus Emblica L.).124 To be found in Thailand and the Malay peninsula, also known as Indian gooseberry. Of great importance in traditional Asiatic medicine, not only as an antiscorbutic, but also in the treatment of diverse ailments, especially those associated with the digestive organs. Epithymum, or Dodder, an epiphyte growing upon thyme, imported from Crete. According to Gerard, this Galenic simples ‘helpethe all the infirmities of the milte: it is a remedie against obstructions and hard wennie swellings: it taketh awaie olde head aches, the falling sicknesse, madnesse that commeth of melancholy, and especially that which proceedeth from the spleene and parts thereabout: it is good for those that haue the French disease, and such as be troubled with contagious vlcers, the leprosie, and the scabbie euill’.125 Erva lombr(o/i)gue(i)ra (Pg.), a herb that grew in Hormuz and Cambay, and was exported to Malabar, where bought in relatively abundant quantities by the factor at Cannanore.126 It appears subsequently at Antwerp alongside other Portuguese spices in 1517.127 Might this have been the erva Malavar, used, in Orta’s 27th Colloquy, in a compound against dysentery (as camaras): a type of dog-bane (Holarrhena antidysenterica, R. Brown)?128 124

British Library, Egerton MS. 747, fol. 35. Gerarde, Herball or General Historie of Plants (The Second Book), 1597, ch. 166. 126 Nycolão Gomçallvez, Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, 55-56; A.N.T.T., Chancelaria de D. Manuel, Liv. 36, fl. 13r. 127 ‘Carta de Francisco Pessoa e Ruy Fernandez a D. Manuel', 24 March 1517, A.N.T.T., Corpo Cronólogico, I, doc. in m. 21. 128 The Grande Enciclopédia Portuguesa-Brasileira is on the wrong trail when it suggests Abrótano-macho or Artemisia variabilis, growing spontaneously in the Douro and Beira regions of Portugal; and equally Arapacaba, or pinkroot (also Indian 125

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Euphorbium, the gum and dried resin of Euphorbia resinifera Berg. Brought principally from Libya and the coast of Barbary, but growing rather in the mountainous interior, the latex of all species is toxic (‘it burneth the mouth extremely’), but when diluted and compounded made into a plaster against ‘all aches of the ioints’, used to restore speech when applied to the nape of the neck and to combat baldness and ‘scurfe and scales of the head’.129 Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.), whose fragrant seeds a carminative, aphrodisiac and used against worms; Melius suggests they possessed mild laxative and emetic properties, and were used to clean the head.130 Boissonnade suggests that fenugrec from the Ile-de-France or the south of France was used as a dyestuff.131 Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Miller, or F. officinale). Seeds used as an aperitif, a carminative and to settle the stomach, to counteract dropsy, increase a woman’s milk and was a remedy for mistiness of the eyes and worms in the ears. In Piers Plowman’s ‘The Confession of Gluttony’, a ‘farthing-worth of fennel seed’ is recommended for fasting days; apparently, it helped drinking on an empty stomach.132 Otherwise, the best was considered ‘fresh from the vegetable garden’ (melior est recens domesticus). Native to the Eastern Mediterranean, but spread widely across Europe adapting to local climates.133 Figs, fruit of Ficus carica, a comestible. The figs of Málaga became famous in northern Europe in the fifteenth century as this was a convenient market on the sea route from the Mediterranean up to the Low

pink), the root of Spigelia anthelmica Lin., a vermifuge, toxic in doses above 3 g. but growing in Central America, the West Indies and Brazil. 129 Gerard, The Second Booke, 1597, chap. 476; there is an illustration in the Egerton 747 manuscript, British Library, fol. 34v. 130 Attila Szabó, ‘Étude et note à l'herbarium de Melius’, in Melius, Herbárium, 411; Gerard, The Second Booke, 1597, 229. 131 Prosper Boissonade, ‘Le mouvement commercial entre la France et les îles britanniques’, Revue historique, t. CXXXIV (1920), 3. 132 Piers Plowman: The B Version, edited by George Kane and E. T. Donaldson, 1975, Pasus 5 & 6, ln. 305. 133 Zach. C. PanĠu, Plantele cunoscute de poporul român, Bucureúti:Casa s޽coalcher, 1906, 176; Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis, 41v.

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Countries.134 Often traded in frails, that is rush baskets of no fixed size. Frankincense, sometimes known by its Latin name thus (see also the entry for olibanum), whose precious gum, yielded as a milky liquid hardening to a yellow colour, was burned as incense. Larousse suggests it came principally from the Boswellia carteri, a plant growing wild in Arabia, Socotra and Abyssinia - having disappeared from Europe in classical times - and in the Terebinth family. Like myrrh, the gum was exported to the Malabar coast, from where it was exported to Portugal. Used to clear eyesight, close raw wounds, cleanse ulcers, helped against loose stomachs. Galangal, Galingale or Siamese ginger, a rhizome of Alpinia Galanga Willd. or Alpinia officinarum scented like ginger. Tended to be traded either as a heavy and a lighter sort, though Portuguese commentators speak of three variants: a standard variety that grew in Mangalore and Chaul (and could be found traded at Goa and Cochin), while the small variety grew in China and the big in Java. It was the Chinese one that the Portuguese prized, as had been the case previously, though the Javan was also traded.135 Apparently, the galingale that had the reddest violet colour when cut was the better, while it should be heavy and firm to the knife and not light, like dead wood. Used in medicine as a general tonic (for digestion, weak stomach and flatulence, as well as fainting and strengthening the mind) as well as condiment and source of essential oil.136 Galbanum, a Persian gum of medicinal application derived from Ferula galbaniflua, F. gummosa and F. rubricaulis and investigated by Boissier (1810-1885). Rawdon-Brown considered galbanum to have been ‘much used by women’. Gallnut, or just galls, excrescences provoked by the sting of the gall wasp (Cynips tinctoria) on the leaves of certain types of oak; Chinese gall (Gallae sinensis) are created by lice acting on the leaves of sumac(h). 134

David Abulafia, L'Economia italiana. Clusius, Exoticorum libri decem.; Gasparo Balbi, ‘Viaggio', in Theodor de Bry, Indiae Orientalis, Pars septima, Nauigationes duas [Georgio Spilbergio & Casparo Balby], Francofurti : Typis Wolffgangi Richteri, Anno 1606, 39. 136 Wilhelm Stieda, Hansisch-venetianische Beziehungen im 15. Jahrhundert, Rostock: Druck der Universita‫ޠ‬ts-buchdruckerei von Aldler's erben, 1894, 97; Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, ed. Ficalho, 1895, I, 353 ff; Gomçallvez, Livro que trata das cousas da India e Japão, f. 14v. 135

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Commonly listed are Gallae di Soria (Syria), also traded as Aleppo galls, and those of Istria and Puglia, as well as Greece; the Frankfurter Liste mentions Galli Romani, while the Dispensatorium of Valerius Cordus speaks of Galla siccida (asiatica), by which is meant the Chinese variant. Hakluyt adds galls from Cambay and Bengal. Widely available at Alexandria, where the best were chosen for their heaviness and greenish colour. Their pleasing symmetry meant they were often used as ornaments, but more importantly, whilst full of tannin, with astringent qualities, they were used in medicine, often ground into a powder. Also used in the production of ink.137 Garlic. Garnets (garnadas Pg.), deep-red, transparent vitreous mineral considered a gem, typically from Ceylon.138 Gentian, Gentiana lutea. Indigenous to Europe. It was the root, or a preparation of it, that was traded and used as a tonic. Ginger, a rhizome of Zinziber officinale. Commentaries distinguish between beledi (beledin, belendyn) ginger, which grew in the vicinity of Calicut and the interior (Hakluyt mentions Cambay), and dely ginger, which was to be found between Mount Deli and Cannanore. Also mentioned is imber di Bulli (probably the Ginger Dabulin, from Dabul and not, as Bartels contends, from Puglia, or, as Lane suggests, coated or dressed ginger), Sorati (from Surat and not, as Bartels contends, Syria), Ma(o)rdassi (‘from Mordas within Cambaia’, and not ginger of a ‘biting’ taste as Lane proposes) and Mechin (also meykyn, from Mecca but probably Arabia more generally). A tariff list of 1512 mentions Ingwer cholobyn, known in Italian texts as colombino, from Kollam, green ginger preserved in syrup, white dried and candied ginger, and red, coloured ginger. Of the unworked gingers, beledi ginger was considered the best; 137 ‘Recettes pour faire de l'encre d'Albus Porzellus, maître d'écriture à Milan’, in Mary P. Merrifield, Original treatises dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth centuries on the arts of painting: in oil, miniature mosaic, and on glass: of gilding, dyeing, and the preparation of colours and artificial gems, London: J. Murray, 1849, 289 ff. 138 ‘Viaggio di Geronimo da Santo Stefano e di Geronimo Adorno in India nel 149499', 9.

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previously the accolade tended to go to Meccan or ‘string’ ginger.139 Beledi ginger also grew in Bengal, where it was prepared as a conserve (probably the afore-mentioned green ginger).140 Meykyn ginger was considered as a product of inferior quality, and might have been the dogginger (zenzero canino) that appears in Florentine receptaries (ricettari) of the fourteenth century; Pegolotti concurs in suggesting it was small and hard to cut.141 Ginger had principally a culinary use, and figured in nearly every fifteenth century recipe of the English court: gingerbread was a favourite of Elizabeth I, and was eaten as a conserve with sugar, esteemed by the Portuguese as an achar (pickle), a delicacy.142 In medicine, it was chiefly ascribed generic usages, although it helped to combat ‘slymy humours’ in the stomach (the Salernitan school texts suggest ‘humores siccat’), to warm the body and aid digestion, to `comfort the liver' and keep flatulence at bay.143 Syrup of ginger was recommended to be taken on long trips so as to settle the stomach ‘if it should be upset by excessive vomiting.’144 Used on the respiratory tract, particularly against the cough, and for the heart in cases of syncope. A common aphrodisiac (‘Atque sitim pellit, iuvenes quoque cogit amare’).145 Henry VIII recommended its use against the plague. Glass. Despite production in a growing number of European cities, most famously Venice, oriental glass enjoyed a great reputation. Goblets, 139

Margaret Wade Labarge, ‘The Spice Account', in History Today, (1965), vol. XV, no. 1, 32. 140 The Book of Duarte Barbosa - an account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their inhabitants, (1518) trans. and ed. by M. L. Dames, London, 1921, vol. II, 228; Tomé Pires, Suma Oriental, 83. 141 Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, 360; though, to be fair, after exemplary textual exegesis (of Avicenna and Mathe Selvaticus), M. Pastore Stocchi concludes that ‘zenzero del cane' was most probably a cheaper false ginger and probably hydropiper (Polygonum hydropiper), though also confused with Polygonum pathifolium, ‘Altre annotazioni', in Studi sul Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca, v. VII, Firenze: Sansoni, 1973. 142 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, Ficalho ed. (1895), vol. II, 5. 143 Michele Savonarola, Libreto de tutte le cosse che si magnano), 162-165. 144 Santo Brasca, ‘Advice to Pilgrims', (1480), trans. by Aubrey Stewart as The Wanderings of Santo Brasca and Felix Fabri, ed. for the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, (1892-7). 145 De Renzi, Collectio Salernitana, t. V, 33.

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bottles, and glass plates decorated in the Damascan style formed part of the material patrimony of Charles V.146 Spanish documents mention glass vases or cups with the epithet irake or iraga, suggesting glass from Iraq, produced at Kadesia on the Tigrus.147 Goat’s Blood (Sanguis Hirci). An ancient prescription against dysentery and hydropsy (an over-accumulation of serum in the abdomen). Gold, not to be confused with the dye auripigmentum. Damião de Góis speaks of ‘gold and silver vases, admirably worked’ (vasos de oiro e prata, admiravelmente trabalhados) as an export of the Indies; gold thread was also fine woven into silks; gold powder (oiro em po) was mentioned by Azurara from 1442, but was also bought at Melaka if provenant from the Sumatran port of Macabó.148 Gold was also used in the preparation of ‘potable gold’, a Paracelsian tonic taken for the prolongation of life, and was relatively common in pharmacopeias of Arab medical derivation, such as the Antoditarium Nicolai.149 Grana or granum, a scarlet colorant extracted from the dried bodies of a type of female cochineal scale insect (Coccus ilicis), but also variably classified Kermes ilicis and Kermes vermilio (formerly Kermococcus vermilius) and widely acclimatised in southern Europe, across Provence, Languedoc, Spain and into north Africa (grana di Berberia); also central Italy and Greece (‘Romania’), especially the Peloponnese. Corinth and Patras were great markets, as Hakluyt would concord (grana di Coronto). Typically found in the ilex or evergreen oak. The term grana refers to the dried insects’ appearance, which could be taken for wheat: Pietro Casola at Corfu in 1497 describes a ‘harvest’ of grana, as if it were wheat; otherwise, 146

Inventaire du mobilier de Charles V, roi de France, ed. Jules Labarte, Paris: Impr. nationale, 1879, 240 ff. 147 Reinhart Pieter Anne Dozy & Willem H. Engelmann, Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe, Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1869, 287 ff. 148 Damião de Góis, ‘Descrição da Espanha' in Opúsculos Históricos, Porto: Livraria Civilizac޽mo, 1945, 119; Azurara is cited by Pierre Chaunu, European Expansion in the Later Middle Ages, Amsterdam : North Holland, 1979, 120; The Book of Duarte Barbosa., 207. 149 Nicholas of Salerno, Antoditarium Nicolai, Venice: 1471, repr. and ed. by Dietlinde Goltz, Mittelalterliche Pharmazie und Medizin: dargestellt an Geschichte und Inhalt des Antidotarium Nicolai; mit einem Nachdruck der Druckfassung von 1471, Stuttgart: Wiss. Verl.-Ges, 1976.

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the identification of grana with tiny insects or worms is the source of the word vermiculum, or vermilion.150 The use of grana disappeared over the 1540s, probably as brazil wood from both sets of Indies flooded the market.151. Grapes, fruit of Vitis vinifera, specified in the 1572 Tariffa as ‘klein weinbeer aller sort’, namely red grapes (uva passa rossa) and Dalmatian grapes (uva schiava), from Crete (di Candia), as well as Aegean varieties (suciria, secia and le panto). Dried, as raisins, thought to be good for pains in the bowels, strengthening the liver and stomach, accelerating fat formation and produing good blood.152 Grease of goat and deer, used in the preparation of plasters.153 Guiacum, Pockhaudt or Lignum Guajaci (Guajacum officinalis). Gerard suggests that this ‘Indian’ plant was known as Lignum sanctum ‘whereof our bowles and phisicall drinkes are made’; Bright suggests that, together with salsa parilla, used to combat French pocks, or syphilis.154 Dürer took some, calling it ‘French wood’, to combat fever.155 At first, physicians nearly suffocated their patients by following the practice of the Indians who used its smoke as a medicinal fumigation. Later pharmacists made a decoction for internal administration by boiling a pound of the wood raspings in ten pints of water. Guaiac acted as an expectorant, with the reasoning that a patient would spit up the noxious infection in the pints of saliva that were expelled after taking guaiac.156 150

Margaret Newett ed., Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1497, Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1907. 151 Angela Orlandi, ‘Zucchero e Cocciniglia dal Nuovo Mondo, Due Esempi di precoce diffusione', Prodotti e Techniche d'Oltremare delle Economie Europee, secoli XIII-XVIII, Atti della XXIX Settimana di Studi, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica Francesco Datini, Prato,ed.Simonetta Cavaciocchi, Firenze: Le Monnier, 1998. 152 Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis, 5r. 153 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 29-30. 154 Bright, A Treatise, wherein is declared the sufficiency of English medicines, 32; Gerard, Herball, 1309. 155 Albrecht Dürer, ‘Nuremberg to the Netherlands, 1520-1', in J.G. Links, Travellers in Europe private records of journeys by the great and the forgotten : from Horace to Pepys, London: Bodley Head, 1980, 117. 156 Alfred W. Crosby Jr., ‘The Early History of Syphilis: A Reappraisal', in Crosby,

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Gum arabic (Acacia senegal Willd.) etc., growing in arid, tropical Africa typically Senegambia (Hakluyt indicates Zaffo); used for lozenges, gum sweets, adhesives particularly in the textile industry, inks, watercolours and medicine.157 Gum seraphic, an aperient. Gummi Elemei, from Carium sp. Gummi Sandaraca, also known as Gum Juniper. Probably the gum of Callitris quadrivalvis, a native of North-West Africa, a kind of Juniper tree which when ingested flushes out worms, ‘staieth the menses, and haemorrhoides’; otherwise used in the preparation of spirit varnish and pounce. Sandarac is recorded in ancient texts as present in sacred groves, and has been translated as Tetraclinis articulata by J. Donald Hughes, who is otherwise confused by the qualifying denomination citrus ascribed by Pliny the Elder and other Latin authors.158 Gummi Sarcocollae, or gum of bastard wild poppy. Imported from Persia - Pires suggests Arabia Felix - and used in plasters, heals wounds and stops secretions from the eyes.159 The Columbian Exchange: Biological Consequences of 1492, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973, 122-164. 157 Jean Barbot, A description of the coasts of North and South-Guinea; and of Ethiopia Inferior, vulgarly Angola: being a new and accurate account of the Western Maritime countries of Africa. In six books; containing a geographical, political, and natural History of the Kingdoms, provinces, common-wealths, territories, and islands belonging to it. Their product, inhabitants, manners, languages, trade, wars, policy and religion. With a full account of all the European settlements; ... And a new relation of the Province of Guiana, and of the great rivers of Amazons and Oronoque in South-America. With an Appendix; being a general account of the first discoveries of America, in the fourteenth century, and some observations thereon. And a geographical, political, and natural history of the Antilles-Islands, in the North-Sea of America, London: Messrs. Churchill, 1732, 45. 158 Gerard, The Third Booke, 1597, chap. 53; J. Donald Hughes, ‘Europe as Consumer of Exotic Biodiversity: Greek and Roman Times', paper circulated at The Native, Naturalized and Exotic: Plants and Animals in European History, an environmental history workshop organized at the HEC Department and the IUFROForest history Group, 20-21 April 2001, Istituto Universitario Europe, Fiesole, Italy, Table 1. 159 Gyula Orient, Az erdélyi és bánáti gyógyszerészet története Cluj-Kolozsvár :

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Gypsum, hydrous calcium sulphate, used as a plaster to set bones (the plaster of Paris), to dress land and crops and, as attested by the Italian author Armenini in 1586, used by Dutch painters in admixture with lead white as a pigment. Also used for making the ground coat or preparation layer of panel paintings, particularly in southern Europe.160 Henna, the flower of Lawsonia inermis, also known as camphire. Hermodactylis, a root ‘very white within and without, not wrinkled at all, but full and smooth, of a meane hardnes’. Powdered into flour, and used in compound medicines ‘against al paines in the ioynts’, gout, schiatica etc. Gerard, writing 1597, had not determined which plant this root came from, but citing Valerius Cordus, ascribes it to a ‘certaine wilde Saffron’ not known to him; it was not to be confused in any case with the white English meadow Saffron.161 Honey, an indigenous substitute to sugar, and widely traded across northern and eastern Europe, while the honey of Narbonne was imported into the Levant.162 Hypericum, the seeds of St. John’s woort (Hypericum perforatum L.). Used in the Dioscoridian tradition against sciatica and against the spitting out of blood from the lungs and bronchi (hemoptysy); used against liver trouble, bilious bladder and as anti-spasmodic.163 Hypocystis (Cytinus hypocistis L.), the hardened juice of Hollie Roses. Considered a ‘sure remedie for all infirmities that come of fluxes’, a good mixer for treacle and liver and stomach tonics.164 Minerva Ny., 1926, 107. 160 Johannes A. van de Graaf, ‘The Interpretation of Old Painting recipes', Burlington Magazine, 104, (1962), 471-75. 161 Bright, A Treatise, wherein is declared the sufficiency of English medicines, 15; Gerard, The First Booke, chap. 82. 162 as we can see from the Katzenelnbogener Rheinzollerbe, 1479-1584, in 3 Bde., Wiesbaden: Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Nassau, XXV, 1981; see also Eva Crane, The Archeology of Bee-Keeping, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984; Abulafia, L'Economia italiana, 16. 163 Gerard, The second Booke, ch. 150; Melius, Herbárium, 277; Attila Szabó, ‘Étude et note à l'herbarium de Melius', in Péter Melius, Herbárium, 424. 164 Gerard, The Third Booke, ch. 3.

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Incense, a generic for a number of resins concreted from the white, milky sap of certain Boswellia species and other resinous plants equally, for example, the Tarinah incense of a brownish colour mentioned by Marco Polo.165 The southern coastal areas of Arabia Felix, such as the Mahra district, was the land of incense par excellence, but we have reference equally to incenso greschesco, incenso di Romania etc.166 There were a number of blends made, often from a base of storax liquida and Arabian incense. Used for fumigation, primarily as liturgical accompaniments. Indian tin, or calay, mined in the Malay peninsula and purchaseable at Malacca.167 Judged by Barros as finer than European tin, calay was an experimental metal sought by European chemists and alchemists and prized for a number of properties, particularly its combustibility.168 Indigo, also known simply as ‘Indisch’, marketed in Antwerp as ‘Azure, or Indiã colour called of the Portuguese Anil’.169 A dyestuff of that colour and of the same chemical basis as woad, extracted from certain species of the Indigofera genus, principally I. tinctoria L., that was a grass ‘like rosemary’ cultivated in Gujurat, from Sindh to the Gulf of Cambay, and picked when going to seed; challenged by the discovery of abundant supplies at the end of the 1550s in Spanish America.170 On the medieval 165

Le Livre de M.P.; rédigé en français sous sa dictée en 1298 par Rusticien de Pise, ed. Pauthier in 2 parts, Paris: 1865, 665. 166 Livro de Duarte Barbosa, 292, b; Relazione di Leonardo da C.M. alla Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia sopra il commercio dei Portoghesi nell'India dopo la scoperta del Capo di Buona Speranza (1497-1506), published in Archivio Storico Italiano, no. 10, Firenze, (1845), 26. 167 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations., III, 341. 168 cited by Sebastião R. Dalgado, Glossário Luso-asiático, Coimbra: Academia das Sciências 1919-21, I, 179; Andreas Libavius, Commentariorum alchemie Andreae Libavii Med. Doct. pars: continens tractatus quosdam singulares ad illustrationem eorum potissimum, quae libro alchemiae secundo habentur difficiliora laboriosioraque , quaeque plurium simul artium adminiculo indigent, & veluti ex multis constituta, peculiarium scientiarum dignitatem & nomen merentur, Francofurti ad Moenum: 1606, pt. II, bk. I, ch. 8. 169 Lodovico Guicciardini, A Description of the Low Countreys and of the prouinces thereof, gathered into an epitome out of the historie of Lodouico Guicchardini, London: Peter Short for Thomas Chard, 1593. 38v. 170 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, I, 86; Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, v. III, 342; The Voyage of François Pyrard de Laval, to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil, trans. into English

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market, Persian and Egyptian varieties nestled alongside ‘Baghdad indigo’, which a Catalan buyer in 1385 declared was ‘the best of all’. Shipped and marketed in the form of cubes, or small cakes, from which sprang the misunderstanding amongst purchasers that they were handling a mineral rather than plant product.171 A strong signifier of luxury, indigo played an important role next to dyeing in the paintings of the Italian Quattrocento. Challenged by several false indigos derived from mulberries and blueberries. Ireos Florentinae, the root of Iris Florentina L., Flower de-luce of Florence, widely available for making ‘sweete waters, powders and such like’, used widely in cosmetics (e.g., toothpaste) and pharmacologically as an expectorant, emetic and catarrhic.172 The oil of white lilies was used against ‘malignant fever’ in the case of the Tuscan plague epidemics of the seventeenth century.173 A principal ingredient also in scented cushions emblazoned with family arms.174 Ivory of African elephant, known as Elephantes Tooth or Dente d’Abolio, from Mozambique and Melinde, sold as shavings (rasura), in Pegolotti's time, at the markets of Alexandria, Acre and Famagusta. Considered an astringent and coolant, but also decorative.175 Ivy (Hedera helix), whose gum was used to kill nits and lice and as a depilator.

by Albert Gray, London: Hakluyt Society, 1887-90, v. II, ch. VI, 308. On Spanish indigo (añil), see Eufemio Lorenzo Sanz, Comercio de España con América en la época de Filipe II, Valladolid Servicio de Publicaciones de la Diputacion Provincial, (1979), t. I, 589-92. 171 D. Abulafia, ‘I prodotti industriali: il Medioevo', paper circulated at Prodotti e Techniche d'Oltremare delle Economie Europee, secoli XIII-XVIII, XXIX Settimana di Studio, Prato, 14-19 April, 1997, 5. 172 Gerard, First Booke, ch. 35; PanĠu, Plantele conoscute, 231; Evdochia Coiciu & Gabriel Rácz,, Plante medicinale úi aromatice, Bucureúti: Acad.R.P.Române, 1962, 349-51. 173 Carlo Cipolla, Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth Century Italy, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981, 109, footnote #47. 174 Simon Barbe, Le Parfumier François qui enseigne toutes les manières de tirer les Odeurs des Fleurs, et de faire toutes sortes de compositions de Parfums, Lyon: chez Brunet, 1693. 175 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 35-36.

A SAMPLE OF COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ACROSS THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD, TAKEN BY K.N. CHAUDHURI BETWEEN 1985-95. COURTESY OF K.N. CHAUDHURI, THE SEA & CIVILISATION : A VISUAL ARCHIVE, FIRENZE : SCHIFANOIA, 2003.

Figure 17. Shibam at sunset (Yemen).

Figure 18. Al Mukalla harbour (Yemen).

Figure 19. Janjira Sea Fort (India).

Figure 20. Sanaa House (Yemen).

Figure 21. Janjira lateen rigged boats (India).

Figure 22. Bangkok Floating Market (Thailand).

Figure 23. Yazd Great Mosque (Iran).

Figure 24. Nara temple (Japan).

Figure 25. Sulawesi seascape (Indonesia).

Figure 26. Dhow shipyard, Viraval Kutch (India).

Figure 27. Basra house on Shatt al Arab (Iraq).

Figure 28. Sulawesi Prahus in Harbour (Indonesia).

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Juniper Berries, made into a widespread drink in Bohemia guaranteeing ‘woonderfull good health’; as a decoction against the cough and ‘against poysons and pestilent feuers’.176 Kermes (from which derives the word crimson), Rotholz (Ger.). Also known as cocole, a lively red colorant or dye extracted from the dried body of a type of asiatic scale insect, Porphyrophora hameli or polonica, more commonly classified these days as Margarodes polonicus. Traditionally exported as a ‘Pontic good’ from Armenia, kermes appears in Europe from the late fourteenth century, where it was also sold by German and Polish merchants at the Fondacho dei Tedeschi.177 Widely confused with grana, it would have been - in Luca Molà’s analysis - kermes which Matthew of Miechów (Maciej Miechowski) suggests ‘abundat tota terra Russiae’ and was widely traded by the Genoese via their Crimean colonies until their downfall.178 Kermes was also known as the ‘Polish berry’, for the roots of a small plant (Scleranthus perennis) cultivated in central and Eastern Europe; but the hameli species’ habitat is rather that of the wild grasslands of the Caucasus, Anatolia and Persia. Heyd doesn’t believe that kermes was distinct from grana, but l’Arte della Seta in Firenze (beginning XVth century) suggests that chermisi sold at a much higher price (as much as twice) than grana; it was the most expensive of the red pigments and ‘was synonymous with princely luxury, heir to the ancient Roman and Byzantine purple’.179 176

Gerard, The Third Booke, chap. 53. Maurice Lombard, ‘Caffa et la fin de la route mongole', Annales, no. 1, (1950), 100-103. 178 Maciej Miechowski, Sarmatia asiana atque europea, in Ioan. Pistorius, Corpus historiae polonicae: hoc est, Polonicarum rerum Latini recentiores & veteres scriptores quotquot extant, Basel: Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1582, I, 141. For the confusions with grana, see Dominique Cardon, ‘Le vers du rouge. Essai d'entomologie historique', Cahiers d'Histoire et de Philosophie de Sciences, 28, (1990), 1-178; John H. Munro, ‘The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour', in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe. Essays in Memory of Prof. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ed. N.B. Harte & K.G. Ponting, London: Heinemann Educational, 1983, 13-70. The most available synthesis is Luca Molà, The silk industry of Renaissance Venice, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, 108-. 179 Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Age, vol. II, 608-9; Girolamo Gargiolli, l'Arte della Seta in Firenze trattato del secolo xv, Firenze : G. %DUEqra, 1868; L. Molà, The silk industry of Renaissance Venice, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 177

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Lacre, Laccha, alaqueca, lac or shellac. This was an insect resin secreted by any of the subfamily Lacciferinae, such as Kerria lacca (Kerria chinensis), but especially Laccifer (Coccus) lacca on soapberry and acacia trees (Butea monosperma, Cajanus cajan, Schleichera oleosa & Ziziphus mauritiana), but especially the ‘Sacred Fig’ (Ficus religiosa, Linn.) found in India, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.180 Between 17-90.000 insects are needed to produce one pound (lb.) of shellac, which is collected in June and November. Shellac is lac that has been melted and strained through canvas, spread, cooled and reduced to a thin crust. Pegolotti suggests the market offered lacca cotta (probably shellac) and lacca cruda.181 The resin was used as a sealing wax for letters and official correspondance, and was collected in Diu, Malabar, Bengal, Pegu, ‘Balagvate’ (Balakot, near present-day Karachi), Sumatra and elsewhere, including Africa (cera berberisca), where the insects typically infested teaks, acacias and ficus.182 Lacre was thus often recorded as wax (cera) in primary documentation, but given its reddish hue, was also used as a dyestuff (indeed to Bartels, lac’s primary qualities are those of a Farbstoff). Stick lac was ground to produce a lac dye. Otherwise, the Countess of Leicester’s account book is suggestive of the large quantities of wax that were needed in a medieval household, if not for sealing correspondence and acting as some sort of authentication, then for domestic lighting and religious services.183 Lac sulphuris, or precipitated sulphur. A Paracelsian product, there was a long dilemma as to whether to include this product in the Pharmacopeia Londinensis or not. La(b)danum, an aromatic gum secretion from the leaves of the rockrose plant Cistus ladanifer L., growing across the Mediterranean, and in Cyprus and Crete particularly (other sources cite Syria and Arabia). Used in plasters and against bronchial illnesses; further ‘being anointed on the head with oyl of Myrtles, it strengthens the skin, and keeps hair from falling off’; its scent is used equally in scenting soaps and deodorants.184 Same, if University Press, 2000, 111. 180 Mabberley, The Plant-Book, 311. 181 Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, 297. 182 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ., II, 29 ff. 183 Wade Labarge, ‘The Spice Account', 37-. 184 Thomas Blount, Glossographia, or a Dictionary Interpreting all such Hard Words, whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Teutonick, Belgick,

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slight, qualities as opium. In 1797 the artist William Hodges was suspected of overdosing on laudanum; the Scottish poet James Thomson killed himself in 1882 with laudanum ‘so as to drug disappointment’.185 Lapis Aetitaes (probably also Haematites), mentioned in Braúov inventory of 1576. Probably the lapis haematidis, or bloodstone, used as an anti-haemorraghic and imported from Germany? Lapis Hyacinthi Orientalis, or jaçintos (Pg.). Amethyst of various colours (Braúov, 1576), typically found in Ceylon. Lapis Judaicus (probably Zudassi) & Lyncis, a chalk stone of petrified fossils, if recent then likely to be aragonite, otherwise calcite, from ‘Zaffetto’. Lapis lazuli (lazzudis), a bright ultramarine blue semi-precious stone from the Orient, commonly Persia and Armenia, and most famously the ancient quarries at Badakshan, in what is now Afghanistan, described by Marco Polo.186 Venice continued to dominate distribution - Nicholas Hilliard, the sixteenth-century miniaturist, remarked upon the ‘ultremaryne of Venice’.187 Ground up to make ultramarine paint, a greatly prized colour and hallmark of the Renaissance Italian style in painting.188 It was even used to decorate food dishes.189 In north European countries, the mineral British or Saxon; as are now used in our refined English Tongue. Also the Terms of Divinity, Law, Physick, Mathematicks, Heraldry, Anatomy, War, Musick, Architecture; and of several other Arts and Sciences Explicated. With Etymologies, Definitions, and Historical Observations on the same. Very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read, London: Thomas Newcomb, 1656, in Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) database at http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/ [URL accessed 11 June 2011]. 185 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, London / Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1928, 106. 186 The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo, trans. John Frampton and N.M. Penzer , London: A. and C. Black, 1937, 58. 187 Nicholas Hilliard, A Treatise concerning the Arte of Limning, ed. P. Norman, in The Journal of the Walpole Society, 1, (1912), 33. 188 Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge, vol. 2, 653-54; see Daniel V. Thompson, The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting, New York: Dover, 1936. 189 Allen Grieco, The Meal, London: Scala Books, 1992.

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was less common. Boltz in his Illuminirbuch remarked that lazuli was seldom seen in Germany, and Dürer was put off by its expense.190 Lapis magnetis, lode-stone (iron oxide). Lapis xalaminaris, a carbonate of zinc (Sibiu, 1580). Laqueca (Alequeca); today called limodra. Found at a place called Limadura in Gujurat. It had the power to stop the flow of blood.191 Latton, from China, ‘a fine kind of brasse’ (1599). Lemons (Citra) (Citrus limon, medica L.), of which the peel was used to combat poisoning and bites; melancholy more generally and good for the flow of bile.192 Typically imported from Zante and Cephalonia, though at Bruges, Pero Tafur observed lemons of Castile.193 Lignum aloes. It was from Aquilaria malaccensis (Jean Baptiste Lamarck, 1744-1829), also known as Aquilaria agallocha Roxb., colloquially aloewood, calambac, eaglewood or lign-aloes, that this most precious of drugs stemmed. A product of the East Indies, principally Cambodia (but also Assam and the right bank of the Brahmaputra), Java and Sumatra, aloe was derived from the decaying heartwood saturated with a concentrated resin buried in wet ground and allowed to rot a little.194 This resin formed the basis of incense, which, when distilled, was used in scent, as a colorant and in medicine. Dioscorides speaks of such a resin, though it was the Arabs who introduced lignum-aloes into materia medica.195 Tended to be 190

Albrecht Dürer, Schriftlicher Nachlass, Hans Rupprich ed., Berlin: Deutscher Verein fu‫ޠ‬r Kunstwissenschaft, 1956, vol. 1, Letter no. 19, 73. 191 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, II, 222, 230. Entry as ‘Limatura d'oro puro' in Il Dispensario di Valerio Cordo. Opera à Speciali necessaria per comporre i Medicamenti, e conoscere i semplici: Con la dichiaratione che gli accommoda alle Infermità, Venezia: Moretti, 1590. 192 Melius, Herbárium, 129; Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis, 19r. 193 Pero Tafur: travels and adventures, trans. & ed. M. Letts, London: Routledge, 1926, 56. 194 these are Heyd’s estimations of provenance. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, v. III, 342 prefers Cochin, China and Malacca. 195 Dioscorides, De materia medica, Facsimile published by Graz: Akademische

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used medicinally as a cathartic (relief of tension), but also for diseases of the head; other sources suggest the resin was used for disinfecting (wounds) and as a laxative.196 Lignum aloes was treated as one of the most exclusive woods used in carpentry.197 Lime flowers, used against colic and dysentery. Used externally against burns.198 Linen. Widely produced in Europe, though higher quality fabric, produced in fine, threaded cloth, was Egyptian (from the Nile delta, north of Cairo), exported via Alexandria. Linseed oil, extracted from the seeds of Linum usitatissimum, today a drying oil used in food-processing, paints, varnish, printing inks, waterproofing, soaps etc. Seems to have been chiefly a Mediterranean crop, though common enough in Transylvania too (lenmag olaÿ).199 Liquorice, probably the ‘Sugo di Requillicie’ Hakluyt refers to, both the root and the juice of Glycyrrhiza glabra L., apparently growing indigenously but imported equally from Arabia Felix. Used against the rough harshnes of the throte and brest’, laid on wounds and for relief of the stomach, and ‘a singular good remedy for a pin and a web of the eie’; similarly, thought to `open constipation of the alimentary ways and of the reins’.200 The juice of liquorice, together with ginger and other spices, was made into ginger bread, sold by apothecaries against the cough and other infirmities of the lungs and chest. The root was both decocted and finely Druck und Verlaganstalt, 1965-70, vol. 3, 22; see also Isidore of Seville, Etymologirum, trans. in 2 vol. bilingual edition as Etimologias, ed. José Oroz Reta & Manuel A. Marcos Casqyero, Madrid: BAC, 1983, 17.8, 9, 28. 196 Lydgate and Burgh’s Secrets of Old philosoffres; a version of the ‘Secreta secretorum’ by Aristotle. Ed. Robert Steele. In Early English Text Society, no. 66, London: Kegan Paul, Paul Trench & Trübner 1894, 54, Line 1682; Criúan, Materia Medica de Transylvanie, 74. 197 Inventaire du mobilier de Charles V, roi de France, ed. Jules Labarte, Paris: Impr. nationale, (1879), 233 ff. 198 Melius, Herbárium, 147. 199 ‘Bornemissza gazdasági naplói (1667-1690)', in Béla Szádeczky ed., Apafi Mihály fejedelem udvartartása, Budapest: A M. Tud. Akademia Ko‫ޠ‬nyvkiadohivatala, 1911, vol. 1. 200 Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis, 42r.

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powdered.201 Litharge, or Lithargyrum (see under White Lead). Lizard dung. Used to clear the eyes. Long Pepper, fruit of the shrub Piper longum L. and, after the nineteenth century classification, allied species known variously as Chavica Roxburghii Miq. Miquel, Chavica officinarum and Piper officinarum CDC.202 For a long time, it was considered an item of luxury, though by the nineteenth century it had long been neglected outside traditional Indian medicine and only the Dutch were reputed to import it. Hakluyt suggested it was exported from Bengal and Malacca; Hobson-Jobson suggests it was more widespread. The tiny black fruits are accredited with a distinctively strong, but sweet taste. According to the Tariffa of 1572, the fruits were traded as ‘dimestigo’ and ‘salvadigo’, perhaps to be understood as an opposition between cleaned and rough; other pharmacopeias distinguish between ‘album’ and ‘negrum’. Mace, the outer frond-like covering, or aril of the nutmeg Myristica fragrans, (q.v.). Commended against ‘the spitting of blood and bloody fluxes’; against poor digestion due to a preponderance of cold humours, such as stomach aches caused by phlegm; prepared as an oil, mace was thought to offer general relief for the stomach, the heart, womb and nervous agitation and hydropsy of the brain.203 Madder, or Madderwort, known as xaia (Pg.) (Rubia tinctorum). The basic indigenous European pigment for the colour red, and which was cultivated especially intensively in Holland and France well into the seventeenth century. Malabathrum, or the Indian Leafe. Reputed to grow in Arabia and 201

Gerard, The Historie of Plants, 1120. the first is in John Lindley, The treasure of botany: a popular dictionary of the vegetable kingdom; with which is incorporated a glossary of botanical terms, London : Longmans, Green, and Co.: 1866; the last is from Hobson-Jobson (1994 repr.). 203 Fitzherbert, Booke of Husbandrie, 127; Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, 36. 202

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Cambay; used to warm and comfort the stomach, against sore eyes and kept moths and other insects away from clothes stored away.204 Duarte Barbosa, and the author of the Sommario, thought Folio Indio to be little more than the leaf of the climbing pepper, betel. This was a long-standing fallacy that we find going back to Simon Januensis and the dictionary of medicine and botany entitled Clavis sanationis, though Orta reminds us that Avicenna treated Folium indii and betel separately. At the same time, a botanical investigation of the time ascertained that the Folium Indii of the medieval pharmacopeia, and a standard constituent of the theriac compound, was in fact the leaves of a certain vulgar species of cinnamon, after Royle held to be the Cinnamomum tamala and C. albiflorum, widely used as a stimulant across southern Asia and commonly found at Goa or Cochin.205 Malachite, verde azzurro, or green chrysocolla, a basic carbonate of copper mined in Hungary and elsewhere but also, according to Agricola, washed ‘from ancient tunnels’ and deposited as a sediment in lakes at Neusohl in the Carpathians.206 Malachite served as a pigment in both egg tempera and oil medium. Malagueta, so-called ‘wegen seines vielen Saamens’, or Grains of Paradise, seeds embedded in the russet coloured fig-like fruit of Aframomum meleguet(t)a (Roscoe) Schumann, of the Zingiberaceae family. Grew in West Africa along the Grain Coast, between Liberia and Cape Palmas. Transplanted to Brazil, where competed with indigenous species of malagueta da terra (Capsicum conoides) as a purgative. It was given to black workers in the diamond fields when suspect of having hidden stones inside their bodies.207 In Europe, primarily of culinary 204

Gerard, The Historie of Plants, II, ch. 143. Garcia da Orta, Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum apud Indos nascentium historia[..]ante biennium quidem Lusitanica linqua per dialogos conscripta /D. Garcia ab Horto, proregis Indie޳ medico, auctore : nunc YHUzSULPm Latina facta, & in epitomen contracta j Carolo Clusio Atrebate, Antwerp: Plantin Press, 1967, cap. XIX ‘De folio’, 94; Amatus Lusitanus, In Dioscorides Anazarbei de medica materia libros quinque enarrationes, Venetiis : Scotus, 1553, 23. 206 Georgius Agricola, De Natura Fossilium, 215, cited in Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, trans. Herbert Clark Hoover & Lou Henry Hoover, New York: Dover Publications, 1950, 584, fn. 15. 207 Charles R. Boxer, Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750. Growing Pains of a Colonial Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962, 218. 205

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application, in the spiced wine hippocras, for example. Considered ‘hoote and moyst’ and praised consequently as ‘good for the stomake and the head’, but also tooth-ache thought to have been provoked by phlegm affecting the gums.208 Manna. Various edible materials, some of plant origin and usually sweet, often exudations following insect attack, like honeydew but set hard. The precise identification of manna in accordance with classical description remained a frustrated botanical objective of the first half of the sixteenth century. Modern commercial sources include Fraxinus ornus or manna ash, and it is also collected from certain Tamarix species, especially T. mannifera that is found from Iran to Arabia, Hammada salicornica, Larix decidua etc. PanĠu suggests it was used as a purgative especially for children.209 Marking nut, fruits of Semecarpus anarcardium. Taken from the East Indies; used as a skin stimulant (Hautreizmittel) and technically, the unripe fruit, when mixed with lime, provides a black resinous sap used as an ink or dye on linen; the green fruit can be used in bird-lime and in tanning , etc. Massicot, Bleigelb or giallolino, ‘yeallowe of the Flaunders fornace and of Almany’, a lead-tin oxide formed from calcination and used as an opacifier for glass and in ceramic glazes, and as a yellow pigment in the paintings of the Old Masters.210

208

Casparus Bauhinus, Neu vollkommen Krauterbuch. Mit schoenen und kuenstlichen Figurenaller Gewa‫ޠ‬chs der Ba‫ޠ‬umen, Stauden und Kra‫ޠ‬utern, so in denen Teutschen und Welschen Landen, auch in Hispanien, Ost- und West-Indien, oder in der Neuen Welt wachsen, deren ein grosser Theil, eigentlich beschrieben, auch deren Underscheid und Wu‫ޠ‬rckung, sambt ihren Nahmen in mancherley Sprachen angezeigt werden, derengleichen vormahls nie in keiner Sprach in Truck kommen (...), Basileus: 1672, 1319; John Russell, Book of Nurture, c. 1460, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, repr. London: Roxburgh Club, 1876, 126; Andrew Boorde, The fyrst boke of the introduction of knowledge or, A dyetary of helth made in Mountpyllier (1542), repr. London: Early English Text Society, 1870. 209 PanĠu, Plantele cunoscute de poporul roman, 175. 210 R. Haydocke, A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintings, Carvinge & Buildinge Written First in Italian by Jo: Paul Lomatius Painter of Milan and Englished by R. H. Student in Physik, Oxford: Josephus Barnes, 1598.

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Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus, L.). A resin from the lentisk plant widely imported from the eastern Mediterranean during the Middle Ages, but associated particularly with the Greek isle of Chios, and used for chewing since the time of Theophrastus. Thus it was considered generally a tonic, and specifically useful in quelling halitosis and as a filler for caries. But it was also widely employed in healing oils, as a treatment for diarrhea, and as a specific against cholera.211 In the artistic realm, used for varnishes, especially oil-pictures. Available in pharmacies as white (albi) and red (rubri). Mella, from Romania. According to Estes, this was ‘a mixture of active drug ingredient(s) with honey’.212 Minium, mennig, or red lead, most famously from Vetruvius. The Greeks confused this with cinnabar; both were used in the manufacture of the artist’s pigment, vermilion. Mirabolans (Myrobalans), also Fabia Syriaca (see Enblici). A small, plum-shaped seeded fruit ‘good to be eaten ... and sweet in taste’ from certain species of Terminalia tree: the Lüneburger and Nürnberger Inventar record mirabolani citri(ni) from T. citrina, m. (negri vel) chebuli and m. Indi(-ci) as the ripe and unripe fruits of T. chebula (Gaertner) Retz. and the gourd shaped m. bellarica from T. bellirica, (Gaertner) Roxb. Mirobolani emblica are the round fruit from Phyllanthus emblica. Portuguese commentators refer to the mirabolan as growing wild on ‘a great tree cal[-]led also Lotos’ and found widely in the jungles of Malabar, Dabul, Cambay, Vijayanagar, the Deccan.213 They were exported dried or in conserve (Pliny refers to myrobalanum nuts) and took their place in the European pharmacopic tradition from the time of Constantinus Africanus 211

Guido Ruggiero, ‘The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini: Male, Signs, and the Everyday World of Pre-Modern Medicine, American Historical Review, volume 106, number 4 (2001), 1149. 212 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries. ., v. III, 343; Flückiger & Hanbury, Pharmacographia, London: Macmillan, 1879, 161-63; Worth Estes, Dictionary of Protopharmacology. Therapeutic Practices, 127. 213 T. Pires, The Suma Oriental, 83 and Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, v. II, 154; Thomas Thomas, Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Anglicanae, 1587; Bartels, Drogenhandel und apothekenrechtliche Beziehungen zwischen Venedig und Nürnberg, 71, §50 thinks that the mirabolanum fruit was also yielded by Euphorbiaceae growing in the East Indies.

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and the Salernitan school.214 They were used as a digestive and, possibly, eaten as a dessert fruit. Mabberley suggests the dried fruit were used in tanning, the high tannin content (32%) giving a soft, mellow leather.215 Bartels contends that they were used until the nineteenth century as a mild laxative.216 Mummy. Mostly hardened embalming fluid of human corpses, principally asphalt (Pegolotti) or pitch. An ancient recipe of Egyptian mummies (mumia vera) that arrived in Europe through the Arab pharmacopeia and from where the valuable exhumations continued to be imported, there was a lively but illicit trade in the bodies of recently deceased. Used as a constituent in plasters and in the purification of the blood; more generally associated with the universal healing remedy, its weight was considered equivalent to that of gold.217 Musk, or almíscar in Pg. Odorous secretions excised from the prepucial glands of the male almiscareiro (Moschus moschiferus L.) and from the perineum (‘musk pods’) of a number of mountain goats of the Viverrídeos family, especially the Viverra zibetha L. of the southern Asia highlands, brought to Malabar by sea from the north-west part of China, Tibet and Pegu.218 There was also the Civettictus civetta Schreb. of Africa, more commonly known as gato-de-algália (or lagaia) from which the perfume known as algália was procured and whose trade had been leased out by the 214

Constantini Africani (…) : Opera, conquisita undique magno studio iam primum typis evulgata praeter paucula quaedam quae impressa fuerunt (…); librorum aegrotis et medicis utilissimorum maximeque necessariorum catalogum haec pagina uersa et prima epistola demonstrabunt, Basilae: Petri, 1536, vol. I, 345. 215 Mabberley, The Plant-Book. A portable dictionary of the higher plants, 573. 216 Bartels, Drogenhandel und apothekenrechtliche Beziehungen zwischen Venedig und Nürnberg, 71, §50. 217 Karl Ernst Meier, ‘Engelbert Kaempfer: Über die echte Mumie’, in Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medicin und der Wissenschaften, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Vrlg. 30, 1937/1938, 62-69; Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 53-54; Karl Dannenfeldt, ‘Egyptian Mumia: the 16th century Experience and Debate’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 1985, 163-80. 218 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, II, 42; Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque (seguidas de documentos que as elucidam), ed. A. de Bulhão Pato, Lisbon: 1884-98, vol. I, 125; Diogo Kopke & António da Costa Paiva eds., Roteiro que em descobrimento da Índia pelo Cabo da Bon Esperança fez em 1497, Porto: Tip. Comercial Portuense, 1838, 89.

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Portuguese even under the reign of Afonso V.219 This was a trade, however, often little understood by travellers of the period, who ascribed the musk to boils produced on the flanks of gazelles as a result of ‘the superfluity of blood’.220 But algália was also common across Asia, and particularly in India.221 The perfume was sold either in powder made from the dried secretion or indeed as retained in their umbellical sacks. Algália was used in western medicine and to treat horses; musk was used against weak hearts, to cure children of colic, and against impotence (Ohnmachten) and, according to Shakespeare’s King Lear, ‘to sweeten the imagination’.222 Mustard. Boccaccio mentions ‘tall mustard (..) which is unfriendly to the nose but useful for clearing the head’.223 Myrrh, a brownish-yellow oleo-resin exuded by Commiphora myrrha, it was brought to the Malabar coast and especially Cambay from Arabia, but also from the lands of eastern Africa, and from there was exported to Portugal.224 Used as an odorific, but also as a tonic and an antispasmodic. Nard. Unclear whether the plant known as Indian nard (anarcado, Pg., nardum Lat.) is a different plant from spikenard. One source suggested that many different varieties of this latter plant exist, some of which later flourished in the West Indies. Mabberley counter-asserts that there is only one species of Nardostachys. Nard, of which the spikes and leaves were prized for their scent, may be Nardus stricta L. or mat grass indigenous to 219

see A.N.T.T., Chancellaria de Afonso V, L. 21, fl. 56. The Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff, Knight from Cologne, through Italy, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia, Nubia, Palestine, Turkey, France and Spain, which he accomplished in the years 1496 to 1499, ed. Malcolm H.I Letts, repr. Nendeln, Liechtenstein, Kraus Reprint, 1967, 179; Gaspar da Cruz’s account is also to be considered ‘erroneous’, see C.R. Boxer ed., South China in the Sixteenth Century being the narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar de Cruz, O.P., Fr. Martin de Rada. O.E.S.A. (1550-1575), London: Hakluyt Society, 1953, 76. 221 The voyage of François Pyrard of Laval, v. II, ch. VI, 309. 222 Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, ed. Ficalho, 1895, I, 70-71; António Nunes, ‘Livro dos pesos, medidos e moedas' (1554), in Subsídios para a história da India Portugueza, ed. R.J. de Lima Felner, Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1868, 14. 223 Giovanni Boccaccio, Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, eds. Vittore Branca, Armando Balduino, Pier Giorgio Ricci, Milan: Mondadori, 1964, 745. 224 Gomçallvez, Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, 55-56. 220

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western Asia, and growing on drier moors and poor grazing. But Mabberley misinterprets the nature of the spike, which is an offshoot from the rhizome. Riddle insinuates that a Gallic nard existed as a substitute; in Roman times it was the Valeriana Dioscoridii of Thrace.225 The only covering explanation here can be that the Nardostachys genus was very close to that of Patrinia within the Valerian family, of which 15 species exist in Europe.226 Nigella (Nigella sativa L.), of which the seeds, particularly when drunk with wine, a tested diuretic, intensifying lactation and the provoking the menses. Used to flush out worms and to drive out catarrhs and colds. Not sure if it was imported, or whether it had been domesticated as Gerard would suggest.227 Nutmeg, the seed contained within the fruit of Myristica fragrans Houtt. Used as a fumigant, for good breath, against cold stomachs and livers, bad digestion, particularly due to flatulence, and against sea-sickness; closes the stomach and halts diarrhoea; their hot properties thought to strengthen sight and the brain (the intellect) and memory; used against facial blemishes, such as moles, and to ‘add outward Lustre to the Face’.228 Considered in certain quarters as a cure against bubonic plague. Often added to ale in powdered form.229 They are products of the Banda islands, although feral species are said to exist in the Moluccas proper, Halmahera,

225

Andrew Dalby, Dangerous Tastes, 86-9; John M. Riddle, ‘The Introduction and Use of Eastern Drugs in the Early Middle Ages', Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 49, (1965), 193, footnote 5; Pliny, Historia Naturalis, lib. XXVI, vol. IV; ‘Letter of Tomé Pires to D. Manuel from Cochin on 27 January 1516’, A.N.T.T., Corpo Cronológico, pte. I, m. 19, no. 102. 226 Mabberley, The Plant-Book. A portable dictionary of the higher plants, 390. 227 Melius, Herbárium, 197 & Gerard, The Second Booke, ch. 427. 228 Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ., Ficalho ed. 1895, vol. II, 81 ff.; Bartholomew L. de Argensola, The Discovery and Conquest of the Moluccas and the Philippines, containing, their history, ancient and modern, natural and political; their description, product, religion, government, laws, languages, customs, manners, habits, shape, and inclinations of the natives. With an account of many other adjacent islands, and several remarkable voyages through the Streights of Magellan, and in other parts, London: s.n. 1708, 60. 229 The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson, 2nd edition, London: Oxford University Press, 1957, 165.

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Ceram, Buru and western New Guinea.230 ‘Long nutmegs’ were also traded, as were the flowers (Muskatenblumen).231 Occuli Cancrorum, concretions in the stomach of the sweet-water crayfish; a constituent of certain powders, classically recommended against rabies, consumption, bladder stones and cancer.232 Olibanum (Boswellia carterii), from luban (Arabic). A frankincense native to Arabia and Somaliland. Olives, fruit of Mediterranean growing Olea europaea, commonly that of Seville. Olive oil, extracted from fruit of Olea europaea. Often indicated in German sources as venedisch Öl, though largely produced in Apulia specifically for export.233 Thought to ‘mollify the belly’ and kill worms and good for nutrition by ‘strengthening the stomach and gums’.234 The Transylvanian ÉrtelmezĘ kéziszótár draws attention to worthless, badquality wood oil to be used rather for medical and healing purposes; on this point the Codex Vindobonensis concurs.235 Onions. Op(p)opanax, ‘a yellow gummie iuice’ of Opopanax Chironium, though there is some confusion whether this should be Chiron's or Hercules Alheale. Although Mathiolus confirmed that the plant grew in several parts of Italy, the Venetian ‘liquor’ of the same name was taken from Alexandria, Syria, Persia and Greek Arcadia.236 230

Orta, Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, 1895 ed., II, 81 ff; Thomas Pennant, The view of the Malayan Isles, New Holland, and the Spicy Islands, London: J. White, 1800, 234. 231 Willard Hanna, Indonesian Banda colonialism and its aftermath in the Nutmeg Islands, Philadelphia : Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978, 80. 232 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 25. 233 Bartels, Drogenhandel und apothekenrechtliche Beziehungen zwischen Venedig und Nürnberg, 73, §76. 234 Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobonensis, 91v. 235 Emese Bálint, Transylvanian Spices in 1595, Central European University, Budapest (Position Paper), 2000, 2. 236 Gerard, The Second Booke, 851; Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages,

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Opium, a concreted syrup of dried latex obtained by lancing the immature fruit capsules of Papaver somniferum Linn, common across the Orient imported by the Portuguese from Cambay - and particularly good, Bright tells us, from Apulia. A powerful and addictive drug, containing around 25 different alkaloids especially morphine (9-17%), used as an analgesic, narcotic as well as a poison for those seeking to commit suicide and, as we are informed by Cesare de Fedrici, a way of prolonging the sexual act.237 Pharmacopeias divided the product into Opium thebaicum (from Egyptian Thebes), tranense, oppimiconium (‘miconis’) and quirinacium. Orchil, see Archil. Orpiment or Auripigmentum, a compound (a naturally occurring sulphur) of arsenic formerly used as a yellow dye, known as ‘King’s yellow’ in pharmacy and an artists' pigment; imported from ‘manie places in Turkie’.238 Ossa de Corde Cervi, the vertical bone of the deer’s heart. Used as a common antidote to poison, also as an anti-epileptic and heart tonic.239 Paper. Abulafia uses the example of the twelfth century Genoese notary, Giovanni Scriba, to demonstrate the Ashtor thesis: luxury goods that had once been imported into Europe from the Levant came to be substituted by local manufactures which, by the end of the Middle Ages, were being actively exported into the Levant. Thus it was that while Scriba wrote his acts on paper imported from Alexandria, by the fifteenth century paper of Fabriano was being imported into the Levant.240 Parsley. Pearls, or Margaritarum orientales, produced by Mytilus margatitiferum L., fished from offshore Ceylon, Cochin China (Hainan) and in the Red traffiques and discoveries, v. III, 342. 237 Ramusio, Navigazioni e Viaggi & con molti vaghi discorsi, da lui in molti luoghi dichiarato, & illustrato (...), repr. Milan: Einaudi, 1978-88, t. III, ff. 394v-5 & 396v. 238 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries, v. III, 343; see British Library, Egerton 747 ms., fol. 9 for detail. 239 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 55. 240 Abulafia, L'Economia italiana e le economie mediterranee ed atlantiche, 16.

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Sea (Dahlak) and Persian Gulf (Bahrain). Pires suggested the whitest pearls came from China, the best from Ceylon (fished from Cail, in the Ceylonese straits) and the roundest from Bahrain. Diogo do Couto confirmed that ‘the true oriental peals’ are from Bahrain.241 Often refined and pierced in the cities of the Middle East. Those of the Persian Gulf were probably the most common in Europe, though the inventory of Charles V suggests pearls came even from Scotland!242 Used in compositae such as Confectio Diamargaritarum, Elect. de gemmis, Conf. Cordialis, Pulv. epilepticus, Pulv. contra abortum etc.243 There was a large trade in pearls across Venice.244 Mother-of-pearl was widely incorporated into furniture, such as in trunks (cofres de nacar y bentalles de todos), while seed-pearls (aljofar) were often set together with gems, as recorded in the Spanish Memoria de las Mercaderías que entran en el Reyno. .245 Pepper (Piper nigrum). Picked as unripe green berries from the vine, which are then fermented after being left in the sun for up to a fortnight to dry and blacken. Pepper was also grown in Canara and extensively in the Indonesian archipelago, in Java, Sumatra and Sunda, as well as around Malacca on the Malay peninsula, but even if it was ‘larger and fairer’, the 241

Diogo do Couto, Da Asia, Lisboa: Na regia officina typografica, 1778, vol. 2, Década VII, Livro VII, ch. XI, 152-53; see also The book of Duarte Barbosa : an account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their inhabitants, London: Hakluyt Society, 1918, vol. 1, 81-2. 242 Léon de Laborde, ‘Inventaire des meubles et joyaux du roi Charles V (21 janvier 1380)’, in Revue archéologique, 1850, 55, 507. 243 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 50; Pires, The Suma Oriental, App. 1, 517. Hakluyt suggests pearls were from Balagvate (almost certainly Balakot, near Karachi, see S. Durante, ‘The Utliization of Xancus Pyrum (L.) at Shahr-I Sokhta: Further Evidence for Cultural Relations between India and Iran in 4th-3rd millennium B.C.’, in Johanna Engelberta Lohuizen-De Leeuw ed., South Asian Archeology, papers from the third International Conference of the Association of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, held in Paris, Brill: 1979, Figure 2, 30. 244 see the chapter devoted to pearls in the ‘Welthandelsgebräuche' of the Paumgartner, ed. K.O. Müller, Welthandelsgebräuche, V, 33-34. 245 Francis Brumont, ‘El comercio exterior castellano a mediados del siglo XVI: un memorial "de las mercaderías que entran en el reyno”’, in Hilario Casado Alonso ed., Castilla y Europa. Comercio y Mercaderes en los siglos XIV, XV y XVI, Burgos: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Burgos, 1995, 179-190. More generally, see Robin A. Donkin, Beyond Price. Pearls and Pearl-Fishing: Origins to the Age of Discoveries, Philadelphia: American Philological Society, 1998.

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Malabar pepper was considered better and ‘stronger’, and was thus the standard Portuguese export, even if it cost more.246 Black pepper constituted the major share, as much as 85%, of Portuguese exports from Malabar. Used as an astringent (causes contraction of body tissue) in such cases as dead skin on a wound; an anti-haemorraetic; considered by Theophrastus an antidote; opens the respiratory canals by dispersing phlegm; good for susciting appetite and digestion by way of warming the stomach, dissipating windiness; used against the diseases of the breast, proceeding of cold such as the Ague; an aphrodisiac and stimulant, as well to produce more copious sperm; as a sternutatory, pepper was thought to purge the brain and chase out epilepsy etc. Saint Hildegard, the virtuous Benedictine of the twelfth century, considered pepper ‘a panacea, albeit with the condition that it be used moderately, since it renders men lascivious and leaves the women without defense’.247 As a compound, honey and pepper 248 was considered a treatment for worms. Pilatro, from Barbary. Pine resin, extracted from Pinus silvestris and other species of pine and which was used to treat skin complaints and applied as a plaster for rheumatics. Pistachio, seeds (nuclei) of Pistacia vera, grown widely across the Mediterranean and Near East (Hakluyt recommended Doria) with a similar usage to almonds (blood cleanser; stomach settler).249 Plantain (Plantago lanceolata L.), recorded in Latin inventories as Lingva Ovis. Seeds used for their bitter and astringent properties.250 246

Orta, Coloquios dos Simples e Drogas da India, ed. Ficalho 1895, vol. II, 141. Pires suggests the pepper of Sumatra was ‘nem he da bomdade da de cochim he moõr mais vãa dura menos nom tem a perfeicam do gosto E nom he tanto aRomatico', The Suma Oriental, vol. 2, 398; The Book of Duarte Barbosa, ‘Of Pepper', vol. II, 227-. 247 Jacques Brosse ed., A rota das especiarias, Lisbon: I.N.A.P.A., 1989, 238 248 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. Studies in popular belief in sixteenth and seventeenth century England, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 1971, repr. Penguin: 1980, 212. 249 H.A. Hoppe, Drogenkunde, 300; Melius, Herbárium, 144. 250 PanĠu, Plantele cunoscute de poporul român, 208.

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Plums, both Pflaumen and Zwetschen (damsons). Prunes were a widely exported French product. Plumes, or penacchi, bought by the Venetians at Alexandria. Polish berry, Porphyrophora Frischii Brandt. Is this merely a reclassification, or are there other species that qualify, such as Margarodes polonicus, formerly Porphyrophora polonica? ‘Gorma color est, qui trahit in purpuram et affertur de quadam regione quae Rosia dicitur’.251 Often confused for grana, as for example by Matthew of Miechów, who suggested that the dye ‘abundat tota terra Russiae’ and was widely traded by the Genoese via their Crimean colonies until their downfall.252. Porcelain, produced in China and bought by European at various oriental markets. Martin de Baumgarten bought porcelain plates at Damascus in 1508.253 The Cairo bazaars were well-stocked, but prices were very high. Often given as presents from the sultans of Egypt to European monarchs and statesmen, such as the Doge Foscari in 1442. Cabral’s fleet carried porcelain, and Góis mentions its presence at Lisbon where it apparently sold at the high prices of 50, 60 and 100 ducats.254 Heyd is puzzled by the tax regime which measured imports of porcelain in quintals; he thinks it might be concerned with shells of certain sea molluscs (of the Cipreidi family) of the same name, which Franco Brunello confirms were used as money in certain parts of the Orient. Brunello postulates a further possibility; that porcellana referred to a certain kind of jade or agate from which vases and ornaments were made.255

251

The Montpellier Liber diversarum arcium (14th-15th century), published in Catalogue Général des Manuscrits des Bibliothèques Publiques des Départements. Séminaire d’Autun, Laon, Montpellier, Albi, Imprimerie Nationale: 1849, 756. 252 Miechowski, Sarmatia asiana atque europea, in Pistorius, Corpus historiae polonicae, I, 141. 253 Martin de Baumgarten & Christoph Donauer, Peregrinatio in Aegyptum, Arabiam, Palaestinam & Syriam, Nuremberg: ex officina Gerlachiana, 1594, 112. 254 ‘Letter of Amerigo Vespucci to Lorenzo de' Medici’, Beseguiche, 4 June 1501, published in The Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India, Hakluyt ser. II, vol. LXXXI, ed. Greenlee, London: 1938, 159-; Góis, Descrição de Espanha, 119. 255 Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge, vol. II, 680; Brunello, Marco Polo e le Merci dell'Oriente.

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Porcelette, or the herb purslane (Portulaca oleracea) (porcellana, it.), a low succulent herb, widely distributed through tropical and warmer temperate regions, used in salads and sometimes as a pot-herb, or for pickling. Prunes, see plums. Pulses (Faba vulgaris), seeds of. Commonly eaten, used to ‘binde’ the stomach, in plasters and poultices, and various generic properties. Purslane, see porcelette. Quicksilver (Argento vivo), or mercury. Taken from Trento during the Middle Ages, though Hakluyt suggests it was imported from China.256 Used as ‘a vehement scouring medicine’, or purgative.257 Raspe, imported by the Portuguese as orcil, ‘being an herbe to die with’. Could it be the same as ruvia (see entry)?258 Requitria, from Arabia felix, either a natural or pre-prepared somnifacient, such as the Requies Nicolai, one such concocted by the thirteenth century Byzantine physician of Nicea.259 Rhubarb or Rheum officinale, Baillon, a perennial, medicinal root plant native to western Asia (Persia) and the mountainous Tibeto-Chinese borderlands more specifically; also Rheum palmatum L. Alphita (vide Dispensatorium des Cordus); and finally Rheum rhaponticum L., which Mabberley considers a parent of the domestic rhubarb whose petioles were stewed as pudding from the eighteenth century. False rhubarb - actually it appears to have been wild mulberry (Morinda royac) - was found by Columbus on the island of Amiga, just off Hispaniola.260 It was widely commented how much better the drug travelled by land than by sea, 256

Müller, Welthandelsgebräuche (1480-1540), 26. Bright, A Treatise, wherein is declared the sufficiency of English medicines, 42. 258 Guicciardini, A Description of the Lowe Countreys, 38v. 259 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation, v. III, 341. 260 The Journal of Christopher Columbus, ed. & trans. Cecil Jane, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, c1960, repr. 1989, entries for 30 December 1492, 1 January 1493, 130-1. 257

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entering Europe from Constantinople across its eastern perimeter, although the Portuguese persisted in sending rhubarb to Europe via Canton and Malacca.261 There was a lively public discussion for much of the sixteenth century as to whether rhubarb amounted to the Dioscoridian rhaponticum; some, like Aloysius Mundella (d. 1530) and Andreas Lacuna (1499-1560), identified the rhubarb that was trafficked into Europe with Dioscorides, while others like Thibault Lespleigney and Valerius Cordus didn’t. The Livro da montaria of D. João I advised it to ‘correct the liver’ (correger o fígado); it was also thought that ‘þis medicin profitith gretely to purge and remoue flewme from þe mouth of þe stomake. Hit dryith away e humours of þe bodt, it expellith and remouith fumois and wyndis within the body, it makith þi mouth to be well sauorid, amd all þi persone’.262 In this Regimen Sanitatis, rhubarb was the only one of the simples to be singled out for description. It retained a widespread application for all digestive ailments. Today rhubarb is still administered for its purgative qualities. Rice (Oryza sativa), thought to be good against a burning stomach and dysentery.263 Famously from Milan and Valencia.264 A fourteenth century cookery book suggests that rice should be used as a side dish with meat, or in a blank-manger with chicken meat, milk of almonds and fried almonds. Rice-flower, an East Indian plant and sometimes a wider term of reference to the whole Pimelea genus. Recorded in the medieval ‘London Lickpenny’ as a ware tempting poor Kentishmen to spend their last.265 261

Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, t. II, 275-6; The Book of Duarte Barbosa, 385; Tommaso Alberti, ‘Viaggio da Constantinopoli, (1609-1621)’, in Alberto Bacchi, Scelta di Curiosità Letterarie, inedite o rare dal secolo XIII al XVII, Bologna: Romagnoli, 1889, 17. 262 Livro da Montaria feito por D. João I, Rei de Portugal, ed. Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira, Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1918, Liv. 1, cap. VII, 78; The booke, of the nature of certayn herbes and stones, and of Aristotle's secrets, in Robert Steele (ed.) Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum, London: Early English Text Society Extra Series, 1898, §’Rules of Diet Concerning Food’, 70. 263 Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina Codex Vindobensis Series Nova 2644, 46r. 264 António H. de Oliveira Marques, ‘Um Preçário de Mercadorias e de Câmbios de Hamburgo, do Século XVI', in Portugal Quinhentista: Ensaios, Lisbon: Quetzal, 1987, 75. 265 ‘London Lickpenny', rhyme formerly attributed John Lydgate, in Eleanor Prescott Hammond, English verse between Chaucer and Surrey, New York: Octagon Books,

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Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.), widely used as a condiment, a diuretic, to relieve snake bites, to settle the stomach and clear ictère, a yellowing of the skin due to surfeit of biliary pigments.266 Recommended for baths: ‘Hyt schal the make ly‫ޚ‬t and joly, And also lykyng and ‫ޚ‬owuly’.267 Rosewater. Initially little more than rose petals commonly steeped in water, widespread across Europe for use in cookery and at the table, the term might latterly have got confused with ‘true rose oil’, the attar first described in European sources by Rossi of Ravenna in 1582, an alcoholic solution distilled from the rose essence of damask roses, perhaps grown in the Persian Shiraz, and which was imported into India as we learn from Kämpfer, though not, apparently, immediately imported into Europe.268 Rubies & various precious stones (‘cat’s-eyes’, sapphires etc.), of which the best were to be found in Ceylon; others purchased on the Malabar coast, though Pires reports a mine in the kingdom of Capelãguã, bordering on the kingdom of Arakan and on Pegu. Beyond their value as an ornament, they were commonly ground up to a dust and used against fever but beyond that, they were considered a universal; their medical ascription was derivative from Arab tradition, passed on through such texts as the Antoditarium Nicolai, ‘the more or less official pharmacopeia of the School of Salerno’.269 Ruvia ‘to die withall’, from Chalangi (Jharkand).270

1965, 239. 266 Melius, Herbárium, 267. 267 John Russell, Boke of Nurture (c. 1460), from the Harleian MS 4011 in the British Museum, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, Bungay: Roxburghe Club Publications, 1867, ln. 991. 268 Engelbert Kämpfer, Amoenitate Amœnitatum exoticarum politico-physicomedicarum fasciculi V: quibus continentur variæ relationes, observationes & descriptiones rerum Persicarum & ulterioris Asiæs, Lemgoviæ : typis & impensis Henrici Wilhelmi Meyeri, 1712, 373. 269 Edward Kremer & Georg Urdang, History of Pharmacy, Philadelphia, 1946, 27; c.f. previous authors who believed the author to be French, Ernest Wickersheimer, ‘Nicolaus Praepositus, ein französischer Arzt ums Jahr 1500’, in Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, vol. 5, 1912, 302. 270 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries, 342.

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Saffron or Safflower which was collected principally for its powerful colouring properties from a number of different plants; principally, the orange-red stigmas of two species of crocus (Crocus sativus, Linn. and Crocus clusii) indigenous to Portugal and the Mediterranean basin generally, but cultivated with most success in Tuscany (‘tuschgan’), the best accordint to David Abulafia, Abruzzo (‘zima’), the Marches (‘Safran der Marken’) and across Catalonia (‘ortsafran’) and the north of Spain, from where the South Germans, particularly firms native to Nuremberg, like the Holzschuher, ran a thriving long-distance trade271; and the largely imported thistle Carthanus tinctorius L., indigenous to a wide area stretching from Asia Minor to India, but also occurring subspontaneously in many areas of southern Europe. Dye is extracted from its flowers and its achenes (referred to in historical texts simply as seminis). Saffron was considered an enemy of the sad humours within the early modern pharmacopeia (‘soporiferous medicine’, according to Francis Bacon) even if modern science has established that `it is of no value for any medicinal effects’; in the Tesauro de' remedi secreti, Evonorio Filandro (pseud.) advised, for those tormented by black bile, ‘wine tinged with saffron, which brings joyfulness and chases away melancholy’.272 Hieronymus von Braunschweig, resting more firmly in the realm of medical phenomena, on the other hand, suggested that saffron ‘comforteth the harte/ but it causeth unluste in the stomacke & therefore oughte but a little be put therein/ yet causeth it good blood’.273 It is suggested elsewhere that the oil was used as a preventative for sclerosis of the arteries.274 Saffron was also used widely in perfumery, and even as a relish. Although medieval texts consider saffron an oriental product, I am unsure whether this was genuinely exported from Malabar - it was traditionally exported from Basra and Persia - and whether we are not 271

Luise Bardenhewer, Der Safranhandel im Mittelalter, Bonn: Diss., 1914; also Antonio Petino, Lo zafferano nell'economia del medioevo, Catania: Studi di Economia e Statistica, 1951. 272 The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount of St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, eds. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath, London: Longmans, 1876-83, vol. II, 664; Maria Tscholakowa, 'Studien zur Geschichte der Heilpflanzen: zur Geschichte der medizinischen Verwendung des Safran (Crocus sativus)', Kyklos: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin an der Universität Leipzig, 2, (1929), 179-90. 273 Hieronymus von Braunschweig, A Most Excellent Homish Apothecarye, 1561, reed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1968, 22. 274 Attila Szabó, ‘Étude et note à l'herbarium de Melius', in Melius, Herbárium, 385.

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perhaps confusing things somewhat with turmeric, known as açafrão da terra and, most tellingly, safran des Indes and which was also used to produce a reddish-brown dye. K.S. Matthew suggests that saffron was imported into India, and Heyd confirms that saffron was commonly imported by Cyprus and Egypt from the West, though medieval writers such as Pierre de St. Omer praise highly the saffron of Cilicia and Felix Fabri that to be found in Tarsus (urbs Tharsicas).275 The Hamburg price list of 1592 mentions only saffron from England (Saffraen Engels), though Boissonade suggests that the English themselves preferred to import French varieties, commonly from Anjou, Albi and the Gâtinais, via Bordeaux.276 Sagapene, a gum extracted from the root juice of Ferula, or Fennell Giant. Gerard considered that while sagapene was the gum of Ferula growing in Media, ammoniacum was that from the same plant growing in Cyrene, and galbanum, that growing in Syria. Sagapene was used as a purgative, against all disease of the head (apoplexy, epilepsy), cramps and aching limbs.277 Sal Ammoniac, from Sindh and Cambay, an important ingredient in Paracelsian chemistry.278 An aperient (i.e. a purgative, or laxative). Salt. Considered by Jean Bodin one of the great resources of France, ‘a manna, God-given with little labour’.279 Salt was thought to `grant comfort 275

Mathew, Portuguese Trade with India in the Sixteenth Century, 137; Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge, 668 (drawing from Bartholomeo di Pa(s)xi,Tariffa de pexi e mesure correspondenti al Levante dal Ponente (1503) and the Traité d'Emmanuel Piloti sur le passage en Terre Sainte (1420); Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant, vol. II, 668; Pierre de St. Omer, in Mary P. Merrifield, Original Treatises dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth centuries, on the arts of painting in oil, miniature, mosaic and on glass; of gliding, dyeing and the preparation of colours and artificial gems, London: J. Murray, 1849, 131-33 and Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terræ Sanctæ, Arabiæ et Egypti peregrinationem, ed. Konrad D. Haßler, Stuttgart: Literarisches Verein, 1849, vol. IV, 215. 276 Oliveira Marques, ‘Um Preçário de Mercadorias e de Câmbios de Hamburgo’, 217; Boissonade, Le mouvement commercial entre la France et les îles britanniques, 220. 277 Gerard, The Second Booke, 1597, chap. 411, 898-9. 278 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries, 341. 279 Jean Bodin, La vie chère au XVIe siècle: Réponse de Jean Bodin à Monsieur de

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and the desire to drink and eat and removes abominations’.280 But ‘bay salt’ from Bourgneuf only reached its commanding position on the European market in the fifteenth century (salt from Cyprus and Ibiza, too, travelled internationally in Venetian hands); before then salt was obtained more regionally, in England from the salt mines of Worcestershire, or the simple saltworks along the coast (which relied on the principle of evaporation) such as at Lymington.281 Saltpeter (Sal nitrio), nitrate, particularly nitrate of potassium. Sandalwood. Sixteenth century commentators distinguished three qualities: yellow (citrino), red (rosi) and white (bianchi).282 The closegrained heartwood alone has commercial value, forming from about the tenth year of growth, and obtainable from both trunk, branches and root. Red sandalwood seems to have been stripped from two different trees, Adenanthera pavonina L. and Pterocarpus santalinus Linn., and from factory inventories and returning Portuguese cargoes appears to have been the variety most in demand.283 The Adenanthera, on the other hand, was something of an impostor, and if a handsome, strikingly physically similar wood and accredited the same medicinal values as the ‘real’ sandal above, was otherwise devoid of the other sandals’ colorant or aromatic qualities. The ambiguities seem nonetheless to have been exposed at Calicut, on whose market Adenanthera was worth at the most ǩ of Pterocarpus’ price.284 Conti and Girolamo di S. Stefano both saw red sandalwood on the Coromandel coast heading for the Deccan, but the wood would appear to grow in other parts of Ceylon and India.285 Malestroict, ed. Henri Hauser, Paris: Colin, 1932, repr. of 1568 ed., 13. 280 Raffaele Ciasca, L'arte dei medici e speziali nella storia e nel commercio fiorentino dal secolo XII al XV, Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 1977, doc. XVIII. 281 Wade Labarge, ‘The Spice Account', 36. 282 see, for example, ‘Avviso da Lisbona de dii 15 lu.io 1514 dil carico delle barze venute de India adirita in Veniesia in forticho', in Archivio di Stato di Firenze, and repr. in Gubernatis, Storia dei viaggiatori italiani nelle Indie Orientali, Livorno: F. Vigo, 1875, 380. 283 Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, 377; Flückiger & Hanbury, Pharmacographia, 2 ed. (1879), 199 ff., 599 ff. 284 The Book of Duarte Barbosa, 384-85. 285 Sir Whitelaw Ainslie, Materia indica: some account of those articles which are employed by the Hindoos & other eastern nations, in their medicine, arts and agriculture, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826, vol. I, 385 f.

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The white or Indian sandalwood (Santalum album, Linn) is probably the same Aguila Brava that grew between Melinde and Cape Comorin and in Ceylon, or indeed some other substitute, in light of C.E.C. Fischer’s doubts that Santalum album is in itself indigenous to India.286 Orta himself makes the neat, but only broad, distinction between red sandalwood growing to the west of the Ganges and ‘white and yellow sandal’ beyond the Ganges’.287 Arends-Hickel believes that protracted storage turned white sandalwood yellowish, though this would be hard to square with other reports that the white offered a fainter smell than the yellow.288 Da Orta instead reports that yellow sandalwood was more abundant ‘in parts much exposed to the sun’.289 ‘Sandalwood’ was produced mostly in Coromandel, around Tennasserim, and between eastern Java and Timor. The quality of the wood increases from west to east, which seems to be related to the progressively longer dry season.290 Lesser prized sandal wood was to be found in Java and at Makassar in the Celebes. Ritter suggests that sandalwood of an excellent quality grew in the Ghats.291 Hakluyt distinguished between wild sandalwood, found at Cochin, and domestic sandalwood from Melaka (341). Otherwise, Columbus shipped what he called ‘white sandalwood’ back to Spain from the West Indies, but it was probably torchwood (Amyrid elemifera).292 Two dozen or so species of 286 Cecil E.C. Fischer, ‘Santalum album in India’, in Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Botanical Garden, Kew), no. 5, (1927), 200; Cornelis G.G.J. van Steenis, ‘The native country of sandalwood and teak: a plant-geographical study’, in Handelingen van het achste Nederlandsch-Indish Natuurwetenschappelijk Congres, Soerabaja (1938), 408-9 backs up Fischer, though arguing that sandalwood was probably imported to the Indian subcontinent from the Netherlands Indies rather than at some very early, probably pre-Christian date. 287 Orta, Colloquies on the simples and drugs of India, 1913, 395. Earlier in his book, however, he says that red sandal grows in Tenasserim and Burma, which is corroborated by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, The voyage of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies, ed. Coke Burnell and Tiele, London: Hakluyt Society, 1885, vol. 2, 102. 288 Dietrich Arends, E. Hickel & E. Schneider, Das Warenlager einer mittelalterlichen Apotheke, Ratsapotheke Lüneburg 1475, Braunschweig: Pharmaziegeschichtl. Seminar, 1960, 77. 289 Orta, Colloquies on the simples and drugs of India, 1913, 396. 290 Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, 1820, vol. 1, 419. 291 Carl Ritter, Die Erdkunde im Verhältnis zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen, Berlin: Reimer, 1832, vol. V, ‘Die Indische Welt', 815. 292 George Griffenhagen, ‘The Materia Medica of Christopher Columbus', Pharmacy in History, 34, no. 3, (1992), 139.

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sandalwood, all more or less fragrant (for example, S. freycinetianum, S. pyrularium, and S. marchionense) are also to be found between central Australia and Hawaii, where they were first collected in the late 1770s. Much drawn on medically, powdered and made up into a paste or unguent, usually in combination with other substances, but also as an oil distilled from chips and raspings and especially from chopped roots. Sandal was used as an astringent and tonic, externally as a ‘refrigerant’ so as to lessen fever, internally to purify the blood and to allay sickness. Used to anoint the body and to refresh it, sandalwood featured comestibly in the betel compound of the rich.293 Red sandalwood was used in the preparation of culinary dyes. Scammony or scamonia (Convulvulus scammonia, L.), a powerful and one of the most commonly used purgatives. If the Levant scammony was fetched from the Middle East, northern Syria and Persia in particular (Scammonea di Soria, S. d’Antiochia), but also Turkey (Scammonea turchesca), there also existed an indigenous variant, gallice et anglice scamoyne.294 Imported scammony was often referred to as ‘refined scammony’ to distinguish it from domestic variants. Sebestena (Sebestens), the mucilaginous sweet plum-like fruits of Cordia myxa. While Minta Collins considers it an ‘Asian shrub’, Hakluyt ascribes Sebestens to Cyprus.295 Used in the eighteenth century for hoarseness and cough.296 Senna, the dried leaves or pods (or more specifically siliqua) of Cassia senna, but also of many other genera such as Colutea arborescens, a plant (herba) indigenous to tropical Africa, trafficked through Egypt, with a species growing in Italy (Cassia italica). Gerard indicates that the best was brought out of Alexandria; Hakluyt suggests Mecca; Michiel, Crete.297 A 293

Orta, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, 49th Colloquy, 393-99. Da Uzzano, Pratica delle mercatura, 192. 295 Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals. The Illustrative Traditions, London: The British Library, 2000, 288; British Museum, Egerton 747 MS, fol. 98. 296 William Lewis & John Rotherham, The Edinburgh New Dispensatory: with additions of the most approved formulæ from the best foreign pharmacopoeias ... being an improvement of the New dispensatory, Edinburgh: W. Creech, 1801, Part II, 240. 297 Pietro Antonio Michiel, I cinque libri di piante, codex in Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, transcr. with intro. by Ettore di Toni, Venezia: Carlo Ferrari, 1940. 294

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purgative, chiefly as laxative, the boiled leaves, or more specifically the siliqua, were thought to cure melancholy and cleanse the blood.298 Seems to have been confused with canafistula.299 Seragni, from Persia as Hakluyt observes. Sesame seeds, from Sesamum orientale L. and growing across the Old World tropical and Mediterranean belt. Used for oil and to make the sweet known as halvá. Silks. Silks from China were increasingly re-exported through Portuguese Malabar. Of a cargo exported in 1518, 45 quintals of Chinese silk was included.300 Also traded were the silks of Aden (Atdassetta), from Ardasse in Persia, that of Cannar, a city on the plain to the west of the Caspian, seta cavallina from Kabala, but also seta di Romania and seta turci. After the Turkish seizure of the Black Sea routes, silk came down through Aleppo and Damascus. Matteo da Bergamo speaks of tela tocca, which seems to have been decorated with gold and silver stitching (lames).301 Dante speaks of drappi tartareschi, and Leonardo Olschki goes some way to an investigation of this fashionable phenomenon which smote the patrician classes of Italian cities of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.302 Organsine was some kind of finished product of Vicenza, akin to that of Orso, equally in northern Italy; silk production had spread rapidly from Lucca to other Tuscan cities and to Genoa, which worked fibres imported from Granada and Valencia as seda en madejo, but also from Calabria, and even locally.303 298

Gerard, The Historie of Plants, 1114; Melius, Herbárium, 152. see, for example, the botanical denomination ascribed the illustration of the canafistula in the Secreta Salernitana of Spanish or Provençal provenance, in Wilfrid Blunt, The illustrated herbal, London: F. Lincoln, 1979, 59. 300 A.N.T.T., Núcleo Antigo, no. 705. 301 ‘Letter of 30 March, 1503’ (the short version) published in Voyages de Vasco da Gama. Relations des expéditions de 1497-99, & 1502-03, ed. Paul Teyssier & Paul Valentin, Paris: Chandeigne (1995), 319-340. 302 Dante, Inferno, Canto XVII, 17; for more on Tartar cloths, see Paget Toynbee, ‘Tartar cloths', Romania, XXIX, 1900, 558 ff.; otherwise, Leonardo Olschki, ‘Asiatic Exoticism in Italian Art of the Early Renaissance', Art Bulletin, New York, June 1944, 103. Olschki refuses to go as far as Gustave Soulier, who has suggested that Quattrocento Tuscany was ablaze with the fureur asiatique, Les influences orientales dans la peinture toscane, Paris: H. Laurens, 1924, 321. 303 Oliveira Marques, ‘Um Preçário de Mercadorias e de Câmbios de Hamburgo, do 299

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Silver Leaf (of Cologne), or Argento filado di Colognia. As the moon was identified with the brain in Paracelsian medicine, silver was used against epilepsy and melancholia. Smalt, a ground potassium glass of blue colour owing to a an input of cobalt oxide from the mineral smaltite ([Co,Ni]As3_2) during manufacture. Considered of Near Eastern origin, in common with the development of other vitreous enamel techniques. Possibly from known sources of cobalt ores near Kashan in Iran. Smalt was known to Venetian glassmakers as early as the fifteenth century and produced in the Netherlands in the sixteenth.304 Soap. Venice was considered a reliable provenance, indeed increasingly took over from the famed soap of Aleppo, typically using the same alkalis exported from the Syrian desert and Lower Egypt.305 The Frankfurter Messekatalog lists Sapo gallicus (which may be reference to the soap of Marseille which came to replace that of Aleppo), venetus, belgicus seu niger (perhaps ‘nieder’ i.e. from the Netherlands).306 Soldanella, or Mountain Bindweed (Soldanella alpina L.), a purgative and wound healer growing in the Alps and other mountainous areas, used against ‘hydroptike’ stomachs.307 Spicae Celtici, or Valeriana celtica L. Valerian was advised by Fabio Colonna as a remedy for epilepsy. Spikenard, the prized rhizomes of Nardostachys grandiflora de Candolle (1778-1841), also known as N. jatamansi, a dwarf herbaceous plant of northern Himalayan India, produces an aromatic oil employed in the preparation of a costly ointment known as spikenard, lavender spike, and Século XVI', 218; Abulafia, L'Economia italiana e le economie mediterranee ed atlantiche, 20. 304 Josef Riederer, ‘Die Smalte', Deutsche Farben Zeitschrift, 22, (1968), 387-89; Arthur P. Laurie, The Pigments and Mediums of the Old Masters, London: Macmillan, 1914, 12-16. 305 Eliyahu Ashtor, Levant Trade in the later Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, 1983, 208-9. 306 Dietrich Arends, ‘Pharmazeutischer Großhandel im ausgehenden Mittelalter’, Pharmazeutische Rundschau, no. 1, 1959, 7. 307 Gerard, The Historie of Plants, ch. 293.

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espigua da India to the Portuguese, and presumably, spica indici in Latin. Prized in salves in Roman society, with further applications as an antidote to poison and to cure stones, as well as use in scent-making. Orta tells us that it grew extensively in Chitor, Cambay, Bengal, Mandou and in the vicinity of Mt. Eli; Hakluyt mentions Lahore and Sindh.308 Traded in small measure by the Portuguese (50-400 kg). Spodio di Elefante (eber ustum), the incinerated ashes of elephant bones. Spodium(-o) di can(n)a, or tabasheer, also called bamboo salt, a siliceous (silicon impregnated) concretion, white or translucent, occasionally formed in the joints of the bamboo, Bambusa arundinacea and other Asian bamboos, but commonly imported from Cochin.309 Might this be what Pliny describes as saccharon, ‘a kind of honey that collects in reeds, white like gum, and brittle to the teeth; the largest pieces are the size of a filbert’ and used exclusively for medicinal purposes? Mabberley confirms that tabasheer held an alleged medicinal value; more specifically, as Alpini and Viesling observed: ‘odoratam, facultatis refrigeratoriae, et cor maxime roborantis itidem intelligunt’.310 Not to be confused with generic spodium, or the carbon ash of incinerated animals.311 Sponge (lapis) or Spongea usta, an ancient medicine against gout, a diuretic and absorbant (used against spots and pustules). Sponge carbon, rich in iodine salts, was commonly used as a throat treatment.312 Staphisagrae, or ‘Staues aker’ (Delphinium staphysagris L.). Provokes vomiting; mixed with oil or grease good against lice, scabies and manginess, dulls toothache.313 Stincus Marinus, the dried powder of the Lacerta scincus L. or Cyrenaic (monitor?) lizard found in Egypt and Arabia. Dioscoridian tradition 308

Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India. ed. Ficalho, vol. II, 291 ff. 309 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, v. III, 342. 310 Prospero Alpini & Johann Viesling, Historiae Aegypti naturalis, Leiden: Gerardum Potvliet, 1735, lib. III, ch. VII ‘De Chalchanto, Alumine, Pompholyge, atque aliis metallicis medicamentis, quae in Aegypto observantur’, 150. 311 Criúan, Materia Medica de Transylvanie, 121. 312 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 63. 313 Gerard, Herball, ch. 130.

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prescribed it as an antidote against poison and as an aphrodisiac. Much used in compositae.314 Storax, resin of various species of the styrax plant (Styracaceae genus), which produces a balm. The Nuremberg Obstmarkt-Apotheke and the Frankfurter Liste register only Storax calamitus (calaminthae), that Hakluyt ascribes to Rhodes and ‘Canemarie, within Cara?ania’, the stickshaped resin of the tree Liquidambar orientalis Miller, found across the Levant (note the presence of Storax arabica in other sources). Others cite Storax liquidus(-a), the balm of Liquidambar orientalis also from Rhodes and Storax ruber, a cheaper, reddish type. Sernigi reported seeing storax in Calicut.315 Storax probably also referred to certain compounds, which is why texts 316 like the ninth-century Lacnunga have specific prescriptions for it. These included almea (a type of balsam), yeast, honey and oil which was produced in Aden and shipped into Europe exclusively via Venice; or a compound of black benzoin, powder of sandal and a wood known as agallochum (aguilla, see sandalwood) in Cochin.317 Mabberley suggests that not only is storax an aromatic balsam used medically and in scent, but its properties made it useful as an antiseptic and in combatting skin disease. The Venetian list of spices published by Rawdon-Brown considered storax a tonic and emollient.318 Strammony (see datura).

314

Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 61; Karl H. Dannenfeldt, ‘The Pharmaceutical Scincus (Lizard) of Egypt’, in Cyriac Pullapilly & E. J. Van Kley eds., Asia and the West. Encounters and Exchanges from the Age of Exploration. Essays in Honour of Donald F. Lach, Cross Roads Books, 1986, 105-128. 315 ‘Letter of 10 July, 1499, from Lisbon’, publ. by Carmen Radulet, La prima circumnavigazione dell'Africa, Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 1994, 169 ff. 316 John H. Grattan & Charles Singer, Anglo-Saxon magic and medicine: Illustrated specially from the semi-pagan text "Lacnunga", Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952. 317 Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental, App. I, 517; John Riddle, ‘The Introduction and Use of Eastern Drugs in the Early Middle Ages', Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 49, (1965), 185-98. 318 Mabberley, The Plant-Book, 1986 edition, 336; The Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice etc., 337.

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Sublimat, a corrosive, probably mercury chloride (HgCl2).319 Sugar, from the sugar cane. Gastronomic sweetener and delicacy, but also the principal ingredient of medicinal electuaries, typically restorative. Existed as chucre blanc and chucre brun; another source sub-divides this into red sugar, used for cooking, and black sugar for the pharmacy.320 The Nördlinger Register lists zuccarum Tabarset, penidiarum (quills), farina zuckari (granules), and zuccarum candie.321 The Große Ravensburgische Gesellschaft imported sugar from Valencia across Genoa and from Sicily across Naples. The Hirschvogel bought sugar loaves (apart from molasses the cheapest form of sugar traded) in Venice and polvere de zucchero (the most expensive form of sugar traded) from Cyprus. With the Portuguese, sugar plantations spread across the Atlantic archipelagoes and thence to Brazil. According to the mid-sixteenth century Spanish Memoria de las Mercaderías quen entran en el Reyno, the sugar of Madeira was the best in the world (es la mejor del mundo), whilst that of São Tomé, the Cape Verdes and Brasil was poor quality (bajo), to be refined in Lisbon. Sulphur, or brimstone. Usually means sublimated sulphur, or ‘flowers of sulphur’. Used in the eighteenth century as a cooling cathartic, diaphoretic and resolvent, to counteract the side-effects of mercury and antimony, and applied to skin diseases, such as eczema (‘sawcefleem’).322 Sumac(-h/k) leaves, Rhois coriariae known as Sicilian sumac or Rhois cotini, colloquially Trieste sumac, if it was (also) sought in Cyprus.323 The ground dried leaves formed a very important tanning material for sheepskin etc. in southern Italy (tanning content c. 26%), the dye for Cordoba and Morocco leather. The seeds, ‘eaten in sauces with meate, stoppeth all manners of fluxes of the belly’; in composition, went towards

319

Alice Meyer & Salvatore Orlando, Technisches Wörterbuch / Dizionario Tecnico, 6th edition, Ulrich Hoepli: 1981. 320 Reinhold Röhricht & Heinrich Meisner,’Ein niederrheinischer Bericht über den Orient', Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, (1886), 19, 84. 321 Flückiger, ‘Das Nördlinger Register', Archiv der Pharmazie, 211 (1877), 111. 322 ‘There was no mercury, sulphur or litharge,/ No borax, ceruse, tartar could discharge./ Nor ointment that could cleane enough, or bite, to free him of his boils and pimples white', Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Prologue to the Summoner's Tale’, The Canterbury Tales, end of the 14th century, lines 7-10. 323 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, v. III, 343.

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healing haemorrhoids.324 See also gallnuts. Sweet bay, from the bay laurel (Laurus nobilis). Sweet rush, a rattan (joncus), in Latin juncus odoratus, perhaps indigenous to Europe, that was often confused with the lemon or gingergrasses of Malabar, such as Andropogon Schoenanthus. John Chadwick suggests that the confusion goes back to Mycenaean times; the Linear-B stone tablets speak of ‘both rushes’ (MY Ge 602.5).325 Other names include esquinanthus or Mecca-grass (esquinamte, palha de Mecca or erva de Mascate), and in Asia, cachabar, haxiacacule and alaf.326 One source thinks that botanically this is Andropogan laniger, another Cymbopogum Schoenanthus, Spreng., which grew in Socotra and the three Arabias (Petrea, Felix and Arabia sub Egypt).327 Hippocrates claims was used for toothache, tonic and in dysentery, also the rush-like leaves were spread on hall and church floors and it was used in the ‘oil of holy ointment’ for anointing altars and sacred vessels. It is an effective insecticide and is still important in flavouring European eaux-de-vie. Tafeciras (Pg.), or tapseels. Probably from the Persian tafcilak. A type of cheap striped cotton and silk cloth.328 Tamarind, appreciated for the pulp formed inside the pod of Tamarindus indica, collected across Malabar and Gujurat, but also growing in Tamor Coromandel, and Sunda and which, when ripe, resembles a date. Previously distributed by the Venetians, from a possible source at Basra, it had medicinal value.329

324

Gerard, Herball, ch. 105. John Chadwick, The Mycenaean World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, 119-. 326 Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, II, 311. 327 Pires, The Suma Oriental, vol. 2, 514. 328 Afonso de Albuquerque, Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque seguidas de documentos que as elucidam, Lisboa: Typ. da Academia real das sciencias de Lisboa, 1884-1915, vol. VI, 428; John Irwin, ‘The Indian textile trade in the seventeenth century’, Journal of Indian Textile History, I, 1955, 30. 329 Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, ed. Ficalho, 1895, II, 319 ff.; Pires, The Suma Oriental, 513; there is an image of the tamarind in The Essential Guide to Spices, BBC Magazines, 1996, 54. 325

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Tambac(a). An alloy of zinc and copper, though sometimes used for copper and bronze. A metal greatly prized in Southeast Asia, and used along with gold for the swords of the Ayutthayan praetorian guard, the Braços pintos.330 Tartar (white), or dihydroxybutanedoic acid, a dicarboxylic acid in partially purified form obtained from the by-products of wine fermentation (hence the German name, Weinstein); also known as wine lees, or alum of lees. Used as a mordant in the dyeing industry, but also as a skin-cleanser (see under sulphur).331 Mentioned as ‘amongst the articles of commerce most suitable’ for doing trade in Malabar in Girolamo Sernigi’s second letter of 1499.332 Terebinth, or turpentine, a gum (resin) extracted from the Turpentine tree (Pistacia terebinthus) growing in the Levant, Cyprus and northern Africa and considered by Dioscorides the finest of its kind (turpentine as a generic was taken from a wide number of sources including torchwood, Amyrid elemifera). Typically appears as Venice turpentine.333 Used to ‘looseth the belly, openeth the stoppings of the liuer and spleene, prouoketh vrine, and driueth foorth grauell’.334 Montaigne took some ‘without any reason except that he had a cold’.335 Terra Lemnia(e), associated with Lemnos. A pale, red bolus (‘very viscid, clayey earth’) that effervesces slightly with acids.336 Terra Sigillata. A generic term for a variety of earth tablets, each bearing 330

Stefan Halikowski Smith, Creolization and Diaspora in the Portuguese Indies: the Social World of Ayutthaya, Brill: Leiden, 2011, 195. 331 Girolamo Gargiolli, L'arte della seta in Firenze: trattato del secolo XV, Firenze: G. Barbèra, 1868, 64-5, 70, 138, 156. 332 Carmen Radulet, La Prima Circumnavigazione dell’Africa, Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 1994, 188. 333 see, for example, Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, Pictoria Sculptoria & quae subalternarum Artium (1620), in Ernst Berger, Quellen für Maltechnik während der Renaissance und deren Folgezeit, München: GDW Callwey, 1901. 334 Gerard, Herball, 1597, ch. 79. 335 Michel de Montaigne, The complete works: essays, travel journal, letters, ed. Donald Murdoch Frame London: Everyman Guides, 2003, 1148. 336 The Edinburgh New Dispensatory, ed. William Lewis, Edinburgh: Charles Elliott, 1786, 105.

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a distinctive seal attesting to its place of origin (e.g. ‘Silesian earth’). Thomas Hariot reports on an equivalent of terra sigillata from the New World, used by the locals ‘very much for the cure of sores and woundes’.337 Terra Silesiaca. An alexipharmic, astringent and absorbent clay earth, available in cakes. Discovered by Johann Schulz of Striga.338 Tignames, or elichrysum. A plant the flowers of which used as per wormwood.339 Tincal, almost certainly a resinous gum akin to Tragacantha and Sarcocol. Pires suggests it was found widely in Cambay and Chaul. Tragacantha or Draganti, or Diadragagantum, from Astralagus gummifer. A gum used since Ancient Greece, of which both edible, but chiefly exploited for medicinal application. A gypsum, or sulphate of calcium, was prepared - a kind of plaster of Paris capitalising on the plant’s ‘emplasticke or dawbing qualitie’. Tragacanth was used culinarily to fashion ‘pretie sweete things of pleasure’. Also used as an energising refreshment, and in the preparation of azure blue and gold.340 Grew across Greece, particularly the Morea, and into Turkish Asia; Pires suggests ‘from the kingdom of Mandu and from Delhi’.341 Turmeric, the rhizome of two species of Curcuma, C. domestica and C. longa. Also known as açafrão da terra for yielding a yellow or orange dye formerly used principally as a food colouring, it grew aplenty in Malabar. Turpeth, or turbith, a drug prepared from the (bark of the) root of the East Indian jalap (Ipomoea turpethum). It grew in Cambay, Surat, Diu, Bassein and Mangalore as well as in Egypt; Ruddock suggests the East 337

Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, London: 1588, 11 (‘Wapeih'). 338 Karl Dannenfeldt, ‘The Introduction of a New Sixteenth Century Drug. Terra Silesiaca’, Medical History, 28 (2), 1984, 174-188. 339 Rawdon-Brown, The Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice etc., I, 67. 340 Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen Âge, vol. II, 623-24. 341 Gerard, Herball, or General Historie of Plants, 1148; Pegolotti wrote of a ‘Draganti di Turchia', La Pratica della Mercatura, 294.

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Indies and Formosa.342 The Grete Herball suggests ‘it purgeth flewme and the mouth of the stomake (…) It is also good agaynst y(s)lyake passyon and agaynst podagre gowt’. Otherwise used against worms. Turquoise. A stone from Nixabur province in Persia (cf. lapis lazuli). Tutty, also known as tutenag and pampholix, a crude oxide of zinc adhering in grey or brownish flakes to the flues of furnaces in which brass is smelted, but also occurring in some countries such as Persia, especially the province of Kerman, and India as a natural mineral of zinc, and mined. Orta distinguished three separate types on the Indian market; traditionally, the raw zinc salts were converted into zinc oxide in furnaces in Alexandria.343 Used in salves, pastes and powders for skin problems and to clean and heal flesh wounds and ‘bruses’.344 Unicorum Marinum, the tusk of the narwhal (Monocerus verum). Sometimes interchanged with the horns of the oryx, taken to be those of the mythical unicorn. Ground up or, as we see from the Habsburg treasury, carved into a drinking receptacle, the horn of the ‘unicorn’ was accredited extraordinary properties as a poison antidote.345 The pharmacopeias of the seventeenth century enthusiastically extended the therapeutic applications of ‘unicorn’ and rhinoceros horns.346 But also incorporated into emblems of sovereignty or pastoral office, such as we find in the sceptre of Emperor 342

Gomçallvez, Livro que trata das cousas da India e do Japão, 56-57; Alwyn A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270-1600, Southampton: Southampton University Press, 1951. 343 Orta, Colloquies on the Simples, 451-2; Bartels, Drogenhandel und apothekenrechtliche Beziehungen zwischen Venedig und Nürnberg, §57, 71. 344 Lonicerus (Adam Lönitzer), Kräuterbuch: Zum achten Mal durchsehen, gebessert und gemehret , Frankfurt: J. Saur, 1598, 709; John Minsheu et al., A Dictionarie in Spanish and English, London: E. Bollifant (1599), § ‘Tutía’, 237. 345 Wolfgang Hagen Hein, Illustrierter Apotheker Kalendar (1958, Januar) and, more specifically, Arpád Weixlgärtner, ‘Die weltliche Schatzkammer in Wien', in Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien. Neue Funde und Forschungen, Bd. 2, Wien (1928), 297 ff. 346 see, for example, Nicholas Culpeper, Pharmacopoeia Londinensis or the New London Dispensatory, London : printed by Peter Cole in Leaden-Hall, and at the sign of the Printing-Press in Cornhil, neer the Royal Exchange, 1655, 47; Radulet, La prima circumnavigazione, treats the unicorn as a product of the rinoceronte indiano, 18 .

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Matthias (1557-1619), and frequently in bishops’ staffs. Venus Haire, or Maiden haire (Adiantum Capillus Veneris L.). Gerard records that as well as the domestic species (verus), there was an analogue imported herb species from Syria (Syriaca). Used to loosen the belly, to flush away obstructions such as kidney stones and ‘the Kings euill, and other hard swellings’. Subject to a wave of enthusiasm in seventeenthcentury France following a treatise by Pierre Formi hailing it as a second panacea’. ‘There is no part of our bodies over which it does not have influence, nor illness against which it cannot bring the benefit of its healing powers’.347 Verdigris. The aerugo of Pliny, and verderame or verde eterno of Italian treatises on painting, denoting various blue-green and green corrosion products formed at the surface of copper, copper alloys and copper ores. Used as the principal green pigment in European easel painting from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries; copper resinate, a variant coloured by the copper salts of resin acids, was used as a transparent green glaze. Prepared in wine-growing areas such as Montpellier by burying copper plates together with winemarc in dung so as to cause it to ferment. Marketed as ‘crystallised’, ‘crude’, French etc. Vermilion, a shorthand for vermiculus cinnabaris, an artists’ pigment extracted from the mineral cinnabar (q.v.), whose names are in fact fully interchangeable and can refer to both the natural and the manufactured product. From the seventeenth century, however, vermilion is more frequently referred to than cinnabar.348 Vitriol, any of certain hydrated sulfates or sulfuric acid. Used both as a dyestuff and mordant. Vitriolum album, Galitzenstein or white vitriol is zinc sulfate; Vitriolum Romanum was either a vitriol of iron (Eisenfarbe) or else copper (II) sulfate antahydrate, known as Kupferwasser - there might have been some overlap with green vitriol (ferrous sulphate heptahydrate), with which nuances in the grey-blue range could be achieved. Atramentum nigrum et rubrum was a greyish-black or else 347

Petrus Formius, Traité de l'Adianton ou cheveux de Venus, Montpellier: P. Buisson, 1644, 1. 348 Rosamond D. Harley, Artists Pigments c. 1600-1835, London: Archetype, 2001, 133.

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brownish-red mineral mixture of vitriol. Oil of vitriol or sulphur was used against spotted fevers and the plague; white vitriol water was used to `eat away films’ of eye cataracts.349 Vomiting nuts, Strychonos nux vomica L. whose origins were for long unclear. Gerard suggests they were to be found ‘in the deserts of Arabia, and in some places of the East Indies’, while Hakluyt suggests Malabar. We owe the first accurate description to Valerius Cordus (1515-44). Considered too potent to be administered alone; commonly grated. In small doses, said to be a tonic, diuretic and sometimes diaphoretic and cathartic, and therefore appropriate for treating some fevers, including dysentery. In larger doses, could cause death from respiratory failure. Wax. Red wax was mentioned in the éspicier Pierre Gilles’ inventory (7 August 1358).350 See also Lacre. ‘White Copper’ of China. This cupro-nickel alloy was often confused with tutty (vide) and is thus most likely to have been the zinc oxide Nihil album mentioned in the Sibiu inventory of 1580 and that of Braúov from 1576. Libavius, instead, described the ‘white copper’ as ‘a special kind of sonorous tin’.351 Objects and ingots were imported from China, but the substance’s true nature failed to be discerned by European chemists over the sixteenth century. White Lead (Lithargyrum, or plumbum album). Experts argue as to whether white lead was simply the basic lead carbonate 2PbCO3 (OH)2 or compounded with hydrated oxide of lead, though for our purposes it might be more convenient to see it as a generic beneath which there were variations - Chaucer mentions ceruse and litharge.352 In any case, white lead was the only white pigment used in European easel painting until the 349

Dannenfeldt, The pharmaceutical stincus of Egypt; Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands of Madera Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the natural history of the Herbs and Trees, Four-Footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, &c. of the last of those islands; London: printed by B. M., 1707, vol. 1, 13. 350 Siméon Luce, Histoire de la Jackuerie, Paris: H. Champion, 1894, 249-51. 351 Andreas Libavius, De natura metallorum (1599), as cited by Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. V ‘Chemistry and chemical technology : Ceramic technology’, eds. Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, pt. 2, 227. 352 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Prologue to the Summoner's Tale’, The Canterbury Tales, end of the 14th century, lines 7-10.

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nineteenth century. Most of the white lead (lead white) of European paintings was ground in vegetable drying oil, but there are numerous examples of early Italian panel painting in which pigment was conserved in egg tempera.353 White Pepper, the ripe fruits of Piper nigrum with their pericarp removed. White Sucket, from Sindh, Cambay (Gujurat) and China.354 Woad, or vitrum in Latin, a European herb of the mustard family (Isatis tinctoris), the principal blue colourant in dyeing prior to indigo, yielded from the plant’s leaves, known in the Middle East and common in Europe. Produced in Germany and Poland, but also the famous pastel de Toulouse, whose production Guicciardini estimated at 200,000 bales, also known as guesde or vouede, of which others were produced in Normandy, though that of Terceira in the Azores also circulated widely, such that the Affaitati could sell 16.000 bales in 1543.355 This sales figure is confirmed by independent estimates supplied by the Provedor das Armadas, Pêro Anes do Canto. The Genoese businessman at one time working in Seville, Lucas de Cacena, seems to have masterminded this successful export business, and was rewarded with a title (fidalgo da casa del rei) by Dom João III.356 Wormseed, or Chenopodium ambrosioides. There seems to have been another classification for this plant as Artemisia santonicum and other related species, such as the Levant wormseed (Artemisia cina), which grew as far as Persia. Anthelminthic. 353

Entry in Ashok Roy ed., Artists' Pigments. A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Oxford University Press, 1993. 354 Hakluyt, ‘A declaration of the places from whence the goods subscribed doe come', The Principal Navigations, vol. III, 341. White sucket is not indexed in Gerard, Herball. 355 Lodovico Guiccardini, Belgium Universum seu omnium inferioris Germaniae regionum accurate description tabulis gepgraphicis, Amsterdam: Jansson, 1646, 101, cols. 1 & 2; Wilfrid Brulez, ‘The Balance of Trade of the Netherlands in the Middle of the XVIth Century', Acta Historiae Neerlandica, 4, (1970), 26. 356 Pierluigi Bragaglia, Lucas e os Cacenas: mercadores e navegadores de Génova na Terceira (sécs. XV-XVI), Angra do Heroísmo: Dir. Regional dos Assuntos Culturais, 1994. More generally, Francisco Carreiro da Costa, A cultura do pastel nos Açores – subsídios para a sua história (Ponta Delgada, 1946).

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Wormwood (of the Artemisia genera), grew in Cambay and around Chaul, but a European variant existed equally. Good against indigestion, also a vermifuge and a stimulant used by women; yields a bitter dark green oil used in absinthe.357 Zedoary, the aromatic tuberous root of Curcuma zeduaria (zedoara) Roscoe, which was also known as wild ginger, of an ash colour and sold as long zedoary and round zedoary. These two grew in Malabar, Cannanore, Mangalore, Ceylon, Cochin and China, but also Java, Madagascar and Tibet, whence it was exported into India.358 Was widely incorporated into antispasmodic, aphrodisiac and stimulant compounds (for its heating effects), and for hepatitic disturbances.359 Used to relieve the mercury inhalations of gold-workers, and a common ingredient in food and drinks. Zerumbete. Another species of the Curcuma genus zerumbet (zerumbete, Pg.), which grew in the region of Calicut and Cananore, was exploited for its aromatic tuberous root, which was also known as wild ginger (see also cassumunar, and zedoary). The plant itself was used on occasion, giving ride to taxonomic confusion; distinctions between the species were slim anyway and in English turmeric, zedoary and zerumbete were known as Corcunia (from Curcuma).360

357

Pires, The Suma Oriental, 512; Abraham Cowley, Plantarum, the third and last volume of the works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, including his six books of plants, London: Benjamin Motte, 1721, 287. 358 Sebastião R. Dalgado, Glossário Luso-Asiático, Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1919-21, v. II, 442; Cornelius Wessels, Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, 1603-1721, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services repr., 1992, 228. 359 Schneider, Lexicon zur Arzneimittelgeschichte, 69; Jacques Brosse ed., A rota das especiarias, Lisbon: I.N.A.P.A., 1989, 236-. 360 Orta, Colóquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas mediçinais da India, ed. Ficalho, 1895, II, 367; Hakluyt, ‘A declaration of the places from whence the goods subscribed doe come', The Principal Navigations, vol. III, 341.

PART III: COLONIAL PATHS

CHAPTER NINE ‘THE MOST REVERED AND FEARED KING’: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF THE VICEROYS OF THE PORTUGUESE STATE OF INDIA, C. 1700-1750 JOÃO VICENTE MELO

Introduction Following the Spanish experience in Naples, the Portuguese Crown created the Viceroyalty of the Estado da Índia in 1505 to establish a powerful representation of the monarch in Asia, and offer the network of port cities under Portuguese control a head of command that would provide some strategic and institutional coherence. The Viceroy was designed to be a political agent with quasi-monarchical powers, which allowed him to make economic and military policies, exercise justice, and sign peace treaties on behalf of the King. In most royal instructions to the Viceroys, the King stressed that any act or decision made by a Viceroy was “as if it had [been] done by myself in person, and agreed and signed in my presence”.1 This relationship between King and Viceroy was regulated by the carta de poder, a species of contract that defined the powers and functions that the holder of the post had to respect during his three year long mandate in Goa. The carta allowed the Viceroy to represent the Crown with all the powers of the monarch, especially to declare war and celebrate peace with “all the Kings and Lords of India”. The carta de poder offered the Viceroy vast legislative, diplomatic and military powers, as it was an instrument which transformed him into an emulation or alter ego of the monarch, creating what Max Weber would define as a charismatic leader. For the German sociologist, charisma was a “gift of



1 Quotation from Charles R. Boxer, Portuguese India in the Mid-Seventeenth Century, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980, 9.

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grace” or a supernatural property that allowed individuals to exercise authority and demand obedience.2 The carta de poder and the King’s signature on it was the Viceroy’s “gift of grace”, the elements that had the power to transform a “mere” metropolitan fidalgo or grandee into an alter ego of the monarch, who had the natural right to demand and impose obedience. To consolidate the Viceroy’s charismatic aura and ensure that he would be presented and perceived as the equivalent of a sovereign, the Crown offered to the holders of the post three symbols that would establish an immediate association between the holders of the post and the monarch: the cadeira de espaldas, the bastão de mando and the palio. The cadeira de espaldas was meant to be an equivalent to the royal throne, an imposing and lavishly decorated chair that could only be used by Viceroys (interim governors were not allowed to use it) in public and private ceremonies. The bastão de mando (literally baton of command) was an equivalent to the royal sceptre; it was designed to be the ultimate symbol of viceregal authority and a reflection of the special nature of the post. The palio (canopy) was a symbol of dignity that was exclusive to monarchs and members of the Church elite, and was extended to the Viceroy to demonstrate in all public and private ceremonies in which he took part the authority and power enjoyed by the Viceroyalty. As a representative of the powers and sovereignty of the Portuguese monarchy, the Viceroy became progressively associated with an image of power that was, sometimes, beyond the real influence of the Estado da Índia in the subcontinent. In the Livro das Fortalezas que a Coroa de Portugal tem nas partes da Índia (1635?), Portuguese Viceroys were presented as true monarchs who emulated the Portuguese monarch in Asia. The Viceroys of India are the most revered and feared Kings of the Orient, [including] Moors and Gentiles, because all of them have a friendship with the Kings of Portugal, or are their subjects or vassals and almost all of them pay tributes, with respect to the sea trade of which the Portuguese are lords for the high power of their large fleets of galleys and vessels that impede their [Asians’] navigations and commerce.3

In another work written in 1582, the anonymous Livro das Cidades e Fortalezas, the viceregal office was described “as the most prominent and



2 Max Weber, Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, vol. 3, 1112. 3 Francisco Paulo Mendes da Luz, Livro das Fortalezas que a Coroa de Portugal tem nas partes da Índia, Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Historicos Ultramarinos, 1960, 6.

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authoritative and the most honourable post that any prince of the world could have, because of the greatness and importance of the State [Goa] where the Viceroys are obeyed and revered as Lords of many Kings and Princes, as well as for the power that they have…”.4 However, by the first half of the eighteenth-century the Viceroy’s powerful image was threatened by a spiral of economic and military disasters. The seventeenthcentury campaigns against the Dutch Vereeningde Oost-Indisch Compagnie (VOC) resulted in several territorial losses which ended the Portuguese dreams of establishing a monopoly of the trade in spices and other Asian products. Despite the signs of recovery showed by the Estado da Índia during the last decades of Peter II’s reign, his successor, John V, ruled over another turbulent period for Goa. Setbacks like the disastrous attempts to retake Mombasa in the 1720s and the loss of the lucrative Provincia do Norte to the Marathas in 1739 undermined Goa’s efforts to secure what was considered to be its prestigious position on the Indian political scene. The hardships faced by the Portuguese in India contributed to the widespread perception that the Estado da Índia was a burden for the Royal Treasury. Almost every year Lisbon sent to India men and money to revitalise the Estado, but the increasing competition from the north European companies and the military successes of hostile local potentates such as the Marathas made these “remedies” insufficient. In 1724, the Marquis of Abrantes presented John V with a project to sell the Estado da Índia to the VOC, claiming that this was the only viable way to end the constant expense demanded by Goa and to obtain an important income. Abrantes’ proposal was a drastic reaction to the recurrent catastrophic portraits of Goa which circulated in Lisbon, such as the one made in 1702 by the Franciscan friar António do Rosário who, while comparing Brazil and India, stated that “East India for several years due to sins and injustices no longer is an India; Brazil, for its sugar, [and] the shining diamonds which are shipped in a thousand boxes each year, is the true India and Mina of the Portuguese”.5 Four decades later, in 1745, Thomé Ribeiro Leal, the man who read a welcome speech to the incoming Viceroy Marquis of Castelo-Novo, complained that Goans were “only Portuguese in name” and very distant from their ancestors who were “the terror of all Asia” dominating the seas, conquering cities and destroying

 4

Quoted from António Vasconcelos Saldanha, Iustum Imperium, Lisbon: Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, 2005, 338. 5 Anthony J.R. Russell-Wood, ‘An Asian Presence in the Atlantic Bullion Carrying Trade, 1710-1750’, Portuguese Studies, Volume 17, Number 1, January 2001, 148.

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“with iron and fire everything that opposed Portuguese liberty”.6 Leal’s speech ended with an apology to Castelo-Novo for not being received with “the ostentation deserved by your person, and worth (merecimento)”, as well as an appeal to the Viceroy: “Cast your eyes in the ruin of this City, and the miserable state of its inhabitants, and take the necessary measures for its improvement”.7 Goa could be a burden, but it was a necessary burden as the King’s rejection of Abrantes’ proposal suggested. Diplomats such as Dom Luís da Cunha, who served the Crown as ambassador in London, Paris and The Hague, often pointed out that it was the Portuguese overseas empire that endowed importance to the Portuguese Crown on the European scene, and if in the eighteenth century Brazil was the most profitable colony, Goa was the most prestigious and the one that due to its history and geographical position brought a true imperial aura to the Crown.8 To sell Goa and the other Indian conquistas would therefore be regarded as a demonstration of weakness, a proof of Portugal’s inability to sustain a vast overseas empire which would damage John V’s intention to establish the country as a European power of relevance. But the image of a declining Goa undermined the Crown’s ambitions and offered proof of Portugal’s difficulties to maintain her empire. Before the stagnation of the Estado da Índia and the consequent need to secure the Portuguese Crown’s image as an imperial power in Europe and Asia, Goa was forced to preserve what was considered to be its prestigious position in the subcontinent’s political hierarchy, in spite of the humiliating setbacks suffered in the past decades. Ritual seemed to be the Goan solution to this problem. Pageantry and lavish public ceremonies had been an integral part of life in Goa since the foundation of the Viceroyalty, and were regarded as important instruments which contributed to shape the perception of reality, and which coincided with the Portuguese belief that Indian rulers were obsessed with rituals. In his description of the negotiations established by the Marquis of Castelo-Novo with the Bhonsles of Kudal in December 1746, Monterroio Mascarenhas commented that “Asians are, even more than the Italians, obsessed with ceremonies”.9

 6

Ambrosio Machado, Relaçaõ da Posse, e da Entrada Publica, que na Cidade de Goa o Illustr. E Excell. Senhor D. Pedro Miguel de Almeida, Marquez de CastelNovo, Vice-Rey, e Capitaão General do Estado da India, &c. E Oração, Que Na Sua Entrada Disse Thomé Ribeiro Leal, Lisbon: Officina Sylviana, 1746, 11. 7 Idem, 15. 8 Charles Boxer, O Império Marítimo Português, 1415-1825, Lisbon: Edições 70, 2001, 152. 9 José Monterroio Mascarenhas, Epanaphora Indica, Lisbon 1748, Pt. III, 48.

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The existence of several religious holidays in the Goan calendar, and the presence of the Viceroy, who was regarded as a personification of the monarch, allowed the organisation of an almost permanent ritual display which was often used to eliminate the weak image of the Estado da Índia and persuade the local rulers and the Europeans powers to treat Goa as a relevant actor on the local political scene. By focusing on the ceremonial rules which organised the Viceroy’s life, as well as on his induction and participation in religious ceremonies, this chapter will analyse the contribution of the public image of the heads of the Estado da Índia to the preservation of Goa’s position on the local political scene and promotion of the imperial image of the Portuguese Crown in the eyes of Indian and European powers.

The face of Goa The construction of the public image of the Viceroy began with the viceregal induction, a ceremony which was divided into two moments, the termo de posse and the entrada. In legal terms, the termo de posse was the most important stage of the viceregal ceremonial induction. The ceremony took place at the Franciscan College of Reis Magos, usually three days after the arrival of the new Viceroy, in order to avoid potential problems caused by the existence of two Viceroys. It consisted of the presentation of the Viceroy’s carta de poder and the offer from the Secretario do Estado and outgoing Viceroy of, respectively, the termo de posse (the document which gave the name to the ceremony) and the bastão de mando. Like the carta de poder, the termo de posse was a symbol of viceregal authority. This document which listed the cities, towns, villages, fortresses, ships and soldiers possessed by the Estado, with a detailed description of their present state, was initially designed to introduce the Viceroy to the conditions of the Estado at the beginning of his tenure, but it rapidly became seen as a symbol of the might of the Portuguese in Asia and East Africa,10 a demonstration of the extension of the Portuguese empire and its military power. An important feature of the termo de posse, or entrega, was its audience. At Reis Magos, the new Viceroy was confronted with a group of spectators formed by the religious, military and administrative elites of Goa. In a position of high visibility were the members of the Conselho do Estado, the General-Inquisitor and the Vedor da Fazenda Real, while the “lowest place” was reserved for the municipal senators. On the Epistola

 10

Until the 1750s, Goa controlled Mozambique.

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(to the right side of the altar) “in a place paralleling the Conselho do Estado”, were the royal judges and the Chancellor. Close to them were the prelates (prelados) ranked by order of seniority, while in the main stands of the church were the junior members of the administrative, religious and military apparatus of the Estado da Índia. This selection and rigid ordering of the audience also aimed to introduce the new Viceroy to the men with whom he would work alongside, creating a kind of tableau vivant of the Estado’s organisation, and establishing some similarities with the viceregal induction and the metropolitan Cortes, the main legislative and advisory council of the Portuguese early modern monarchy. Like the French États Généraux, the Portuguese Cortes consisted of a meeting of representatives of the three social orders (nobility, clergy and people) to discuss and decide matters that were outside the monarch’s powers: the acclamation of a new King; the approval of an heir to the throne; and the raising of new taxes.11 Like the Cortes, the audience of the entrega was a mirror of the social organisation of the Estado da Índia. The Bishop, the General-Inquisitor and the clerics who attended the ceremony represented the clergy. The members of the Conselho do Estado, who were all Fidalgos de S. Magestade [His Majesty’s Nobles] and members of the restricted Order of Christ, embodied the best of the Portuguese nobility; while the vereadores (aldermen) and the judges attended the entrega of the Viceroy on behalf of the people. Indeed, the absence of Hindus or mixed raced Indo-Portuguese offered an image of a harmonious European and Christian (Catholic) society which subscribed to Portuguese visions of the empire as a Christian and European enterprise. Like other public entries involving monarchs, the viceregal entrada was designed as the precise moment in which the incoming Viceroy was presented to the population. After the termo de posse and the official departure of office of his predecessor, the new Viceroy was now allowed to enter the city. Since the fixation of the court in Lisbon during John III’s reign, public entries were extremely rare in Portugal, and were an exclusive privilege of the monarch that in this instance was conceded to the Viceroy as the representative of the Crown. The Goan entries had two purposes: to introduce the new Viceroy to the entire city; and to present Goa’s expectations of the new mandate – something which was assured by a public reading or speech, the fala, written by a distinguished Goan. The entrada was also organised to introduce new Viceroys to local rulers. Indeed, most reis vizinhos would send embassies or write letters to

 11

Pedro Cardim, `O Quadro Constitucional. Os Grandes Paradigmas de Organização Política: A Coroa e a Representação do Reino. As Cortes’ in O Antigo Regime, ed. António Hespanha, Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 1993, 146.

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congratulate the new Viceroy for his arrival, paving the way for a new cycle of diplomatic relations. For example, during his first tenure (17171720), the first act of the Count of Ericeira (later Marquis of Louriçal) was to reply to letters sent by the King of Calicut, the King of Tanor and the Nawab of Surat immediately after his public entry.12 Dom Rodrigo da Costa’s diplomatic activities were also extremely intensive after his entry in Goa in 1707, writing several letters to the Rajah of Sonda, the King of Tanor, the vassal dessais of Goa, and VOC officials.13 The ceremony obeyed to a rigid regimento (set of rules) defined by the Crown, which wanted to secure its authority on what was considered to be a transplantation of the Portuguese capital to Asian territory. According to Lisbon’s instructions, the new viceroy should be welcomed by the vereadores of the last two terms and the Ouvidor, if any vereador was unable to attend the ceremony. The vereadores should carry a canopy with six attendants led by Goa’s Procurador with a red pole, and the Chancellor and the Vedor da Fazenda (Administrator of the Treasury), who would carry a silver plate containing the city’s keys. This retinue was completed with the Guarda da Câmara carrying another silver plate with the Gospels and the Livro dos Privilegios (Book of Privileges); the judges and the mesteres (guilds). Following all these figures were “the citizens and [other] persons”.14 The entrada began in front of the Senado da Câmara, the headquarters of the municipality, where “all citizens and noble persons and Procuradores do Povo (the vereadores), would be summoned according to rank”. The viceregal parade also included a more popular or burlesque festival of “dances” and “follies”, which aimed to attract large crowds and capture their attention throughout the ceremony.15 This retinue would leave the Câmara in the direction of the quays, where the new Viceroy awaited. When the final destination was reached,



12 Boletim da Filmoteca Ultramarina Portuguesa, Volume 46, “Carta do governador da Índia, D. Luís Carlos Inácio Xavier de Meneses Para o General de Bombaym”; “Carta do governador da Índia, D. Luís Carlos Inácio Xavier de Meneses Para Bassavea Navarú sarsubedar das terras de Pondá”; “Carta do governador da Índia, D. Luís Carlos Inácio Xavier de Meneses Para Hary Dandda subedar de Bicholim”; “Carta do governador da Índia, D. Luís Carlos Inácio Xavier de Meneses Para o Rey Samory”; “Carta do governador da Índia, D. Luís Carlos Inácio Xavier de Meneses Para o Rey de Tanor”, Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1954-, volume 46, 295-301. 13 Idem, 25, 28, 29, 32, 39, 42. The dessais were semi-autonomous feudatory chieftains obliged to serve their lords during military conflicts.  14 José F. Ferreira Mendes, Crónica dos Vice-Reis e Governadores da Índia, Imprensa Nacional: Goa, 1919, 466. 15 Idem, Ibidem.

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the vereador who was chosen to offer the city’s keys approached the Viceroy, kissed him and declared: “This very noble and always loyal city of Goa gives to Your Lordship the keys of its gates and of the loyal hearts of its inhabitants for with them, and with what they have [may they] serve Our Lord the King and Your Lordship so that Our Lord may grant you many victories and [enable you to render] good services under your government for the [good] of the Holy Faith and the expansion of this state”. Such a speech was intended to remind the Viceroy of his obligations before the Crown, namely to expand the faith and the empire, and to render to the local population “good services”. The description of Goa as “very noble and always loyal” was directed to the population to remind them of their civic and patriotic duties. The speech could be, therefore, interpreted as a contract where both parties (Viceroy and Goa) defined their mutual obligations. This agreement was sealed with the returning of the keys to the municipality by the Viceroy, who would say some words of appreciation. This act of humility was defined by the regimento which stated that after the offer of the keys, “it is usual that the Viceroy takes the keys, and after some words of appreciation to the city, returns them again to the captain”.16 By returning the keys, the Viceroy affirmed his good will towards Goa, as well as the city’s freedom and power – subject to no-one, except the Crown and God. After the offer of the keys, the retinue would continue to the city’s gates, where the Viceroy would listen to a welcome speech, the fala, read by a citizen of importance. The symbolic power of the entrada was focused on the city’s gates. As Arnold van Gennep has pointed out, in cases in which there was what he considered to be a “magico-religious” prohibition on entering a certain place or territory, as happened in the viceregal entry, this was often indicated by signs such as statues, portals or walls which constituted a boundary. St. Catherine’s gate functioned in the entrada as such a portal, establishing a barrier that separated incoming Viceroys from the city. The symbolism of St. Catherine’s gates was reinforced by a statue located in “the place where our victorious weapons commanded by the great Afonso de Albuquerque entered, whose statue adorns the best place of this superb monument”.17 By staging the ceremony in the same place where Albuquerque entered in Goa for the first time, and before his statue, that is his “eyes”, the entrada not only recreated the moment of the conquest of Goa as much as it strengthened

 16

Idem, 467. Francisco Raymundo de Moraes Pereira, Relação da Viagem que do Porto de Lisboa Fizerão os Illmos. e Exmos. Senhores Marqueses de Tavora, Lisbon, 1752, 231-232. 17

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the association between the new Viceroy and Albuquerque. This association between a new Viceroy and the founder of Portuguese Goa was another reminder of the former’s responsibility to continue and preserve Albuquerque’s legacy. After the speech, the same Vereador who offered the keys would approach the Viceroy saying “may Your Lordship render honour and favour this city, due to the custom of making an oath to protect and execute all the privileges, honours and liberties that the King our Lord has given for its merit and services”. The viceregal oath to respect Goa’s royal privileges was a part of the myth of Golden Goa, a moment in which the capital of the Estado da Índia celebrated its majesty and importance. The regimento was particularly concerned with decorative works. The areas crossed by the viceregal parade from the city’s gates to the quays were decorated with arches and flags, while the Viceroy’s Square and the Sabayo Square would be decorated with flags that topped poles adorned with flowers.18 The Goan authorities were instructed to ensure that all ships were decorated with flags and, if they possessed artillery, would participate in the cannon salutes. The armourers should have their front doors decorated with armour, spears, helmets and other weapons. And the windows of the houses should be adorned with tapestries, and the doors covered with flowers “in the richest manner that is possible”.19 The authorities should also choose four citizens, each to lead a company of 50 well-dressed and well-armoured soldiers that would welcome the Viceroy with gun salutes. The members of the goldsmiths’ guild were instructed to be well-dressed and offer some gold to the Viceroy, an obligation that was shared by the cloth merchants and artisans who were ordered to present gifts of fine cloths and crafts. Such gifts were an attempt to demonstrate to the Crown and the rivals of the Estado da Índia the wealth of Goa and how, despite the setbacks suffered by the Portuguese, the city was still as wealthy as in the times of the mythical Golden Goa. Ostentation and conspicuous consumption were considered by the authorities and the population an important instrument to conceal Goa’s “miserable state”. In a relação dedicated to Viceroy Marquis of CasteloNovo, Monterroio Mascarenhas describes his public entry in 1744 as staged in such a lavish way that “with the vision of so many lights [diamonds] and the richness of the attires, it denied the indigence in which this State lives”.20 Ambrosio Machado, who also wrote another account of Castelo-Novo’s arrival at Goa, after describing the naval parade led by the

 18

Ferreira Mendes, Crónica dos Vice-Reis e Governadores da Índia, 469. Idem, Ibidem. 20 José Monterroio Mascarenhas, Epanaphora Indica, Lisbon, 1746, Pt. I, 15. 19

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Viceroy, stated that this festa do mar was so lavish and splendid that “no one could infer the poverty to which the accidents of war had reduced This contradiction revealed by Tomé Gomes Leal’s [Goa]”.21 catastrophism and the lavish display offered by the viceregal induction ceremonies was taken for granted by most Goans, and for the Portuguese Crown which regarded ostentation as a crucial element in safeguarding Lisbon’s interests in India. Six years later, as statement of the recovery of the arms and prestige of the Portuguese Crown, the last Joanine Viceroy, the Marquis of Távora, was received with a display of conspicuous consumption and a military apparatus which expressed an image of splendour and vitality. Távora’s induction, since it was staged during a period of recovery, seemed to be even more lavish than Castelo-Novo’s. One of Távora’s panegyrists, Francisco Raymundo Pereira, mentioned that on the day Távora arrived in Goa, the viceregal manchua was followed by a “shining fleet” (luzida frota) formed by the “fidalguia, Nobility and Officers”.22 A new lavish manchua do Estado was especially built for his entrada, and the marquis of Alorna, to celebrate the entrada of his successor, decorated his accommodation with 60 torches, “a thing that for being rare in the Orient, caused much novelty”.23 And to increase the lavishness of the celebrations for Távora’s induction, between the posse and the entrada the Marquis offered banquets to celebrate his and the King’s birthday.

The King’s alter ego In order to give some credibility to the Viceroy’s royal nature and to the Estado’s claims of superiority, the Crown sought to control every action and gesture made by the Viceroy in his public and private life. Through the definition and establishment of precise rules for the behaviour of Viceroys, Lisbon was able to model the head of the Estado da Índia according to a specific prototype of kingship which would make him immediately accepted and recognised by the Goan population and the local potentates as a legitimate and sovereign ruler, reinforcing the image of the Estado as a part of an imperial power. An important element in the construction of the public image of the Viceroy was the ceremonial rules which sustained his public and private life. Most of these rules were summarized in an undated document entitled Ceremonial de que usaõ os

 21

Ambrosio Machado, Relaçaõ da Posse, 8. Moraes Pereira, Relação da Viagem que do Porto de Lisboa Fizerão, 201-202. 23 Idem, 237. 22

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Senhores V.Reys e Capitaens Generaes da India, which was probably written during the final years of the Viceroyalty of the Marquis of Alorna (1744-50). The Ceremonial consisted of a brief explanation of the rituals that sustained the public image of the Portuguese Viceroys and instructed them how they should act in public and private, and was particularly concerned with the ways in which the Viceroy should address the local nobility, and the members of the Estado’s administration. The Archbishop, the head of the Goan Church and the second public figure of the Estado da Índia, was the only one who enjoyed the privilege of being addressed as Excellencia [Your Excellency] by the Viceroy – a sign of the influence and power of the Church, as well as an element that reflected the image of Goa as the Rome of the Orient. Despite the concession of an honourable title, the Archbishop was relegated to a secondary role in the Estado’s protocol, which transmitted an image of the submission of the Head of the Church to the Head of the State. If the Archbishop wished to visit the Viceroy he first had to send an emissary to arrange a meeting for a convenient time with the Viceroy. When the Archbishop arrived at the palace, the Viceroy waited for him at the first door of the saleta. When both were face-to-face, the Viceroy offered his left-hand to the Archbishop and led him to the saleta, “without any compliment”. Since greetings are an expression and recognition of a person’s identity, the refusal to greet someone might be seen as a statement which rejected any recognition of a person’s claim to a specific position in the social hierarchy.24 The ceremonial instruction to not greet the Archbishop was therefore an indication of the Viceroy’s superiority (as well as the Crown) over the Church. At the saleta, the Viceroy was to be seated in the cadeira de espaldas under a canopy, while the Archbishop had the right to be seated on a cadeira de espaldas outside the canopy.25 Although Viceroys were forbidden to visit members of the local society, they were allowed to dine with the Archbishop, as well as visit him in exceptional cases as when he was sick, to reply Christmas greetings or during “particular businesses” between the Estado and the Church. In each case, the Viceroy had to send a subaltern official to prepare the meeting. This procedure, as the Ceremonial pointed out, was similar to the Archbishop’s obligations before meeting the Viceroy, except in one aspect: “[while] the Archbishop requests an hour from the Viceroy, the



24 Raymond Firth, `Verbal and bodily rituals of greeting and parting’ in The Interpretation of Ritual: Essays in honour of A.I. Richards, ed. J.S. La Fontaine, London: Tavistock Publications, 1972, 2. 25 Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (ACL), Cod. 273 – Ceremonial de que usaõ os Senhores V.Reys e Capitaens Generaes da India, fol.3.

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latter determines the hour when he should make the visit”.26 Whenever the Viceroy participated in religious ceremonies at the Sé, the Archbishop was to welcome him at the main gates, giving his right-hand, while the other clergymen should bow as the Viceroy entered the Sé. Those who had the foro de Fidalgo (noble status) were addressed as Mercê. During public ceremonies in which the Viceroy participated, the fidalgos were to attend the ceremony seated on a low chair (tamborete razo) which was to be located in some inferior place (peor lugar).27 The Crown also instructed Viceroys to treat magistrates and clergymen in the same manner as the fidalgos (se trata como tivessem o foro de fidalgo). Ouvidores and factors should be addressed as Vos, even if they were fidalgos or had served the Estado in important positions (postos grandes). Those who had served the Crown in India in mayores Postos (high ranking posts) and did not belong to the aristocracy were treated by the Viceroy in an impersonal manner, without any particular form of address. A special form of treatment was, however, reserved for the small minority of the Estado’s officials who obtained their posts through inheritance, and to whom was reserved the privilege of being addressed by the Viceroy as Senhoria (Your Lordship), as well as of being seated on a cadeira de espaldas in an inferior place.28 Despite the restrictions imposed on the contacts between viceroys and the local population, the Ceremonial allowed them to be compadres, or godfathers of distinguished persons, but they were not allowed to be present at the baptism, being represented by the Captain of the Guard or another person of distinction appointed by the Viceroy.29 Whenever a person of distinction was sick and the Viceroy wished to visit him or her, the visit had to be made by the Viceroy’s closest aides (the captain of the guard, the manchua’s captain or the lord steward).30 On the King’s birthday, the Viceroy was obliged by the Ceremonial to offer a public banquet to the local nobility [mesa publica a nobreza] – an obligation was also extended to the local nobility, who were instructed to offer food at their table throughout the day – and invite the “persons of great distinction to the same act of hand-kissing [beija-mão]”31, recreating the traditional hand-kissing ceremony that was staged in Lisbon on royal

 26

Idem, fol.3. Idem, fol.1v. 28 Idem, fol.2v. 29 ACL. Cod. 273 – Ceremonial de que usaõ os Senhores V.Reys e Capitaens Generaes da India, fol.3v. 30 Idem.3v. 31 Idem, fol.4v. 27

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birthdays, when the entire court and state apparatus appeared before the King to kiss his hands and congratulate him. The importance of the King’s birthday and its symbolism as part of the Viceroy’s ritual roles was used by most Viceroys to consolidate their image as doppelgangers of the monarch. For example, after officially inaugurated his tenure of office, the Marquis of Alorna chose John V’s birthday for his first public entry into Goa, giving a truly royal sheen to this event.32 The symbolism of the King’s birthday was also manipulated by the Marquis of Távora, who according to Pereira “did not have any hesitation in following the example of his predecessor”.33 Other significant events relating to the royal family were also used as pretext for the exhibition of viceregal power. Viceroy João Saldanha da Gama’s entry, for example, was staged on 13 November, the same day on which the municipality organised luminarias (lantern evenings) to celebrate the birth of the Infante Alexander.34 The rigid rules imposed on Viceroys aimed to protect them from the conflicts involving different local groups of interest and ensure that the Viceroy’s image would be supported by notions of royal dignity and superiority. By reducing the opportunities to interact with the local elites, and establishing precise rules of interaction between Viceroys and the Goan aristocracy, the Crown promoted a distance that aimed to avoid the formation of relations of familiarity between the Viceroy and the fidalguia, which were often feared due to the possibility of the emergence of a viceregal clique that could use its close access to the Estado’s ruler to obtain political and social advantages that would damage the local social and political order. The dangers posed by the local society were addressed by the Count of Ericeira’s instructions to his successor, Francisco José de Sampaio e Castro, who was advised to not trust in anyone – “the men of India, for their most part, to not have any sincerity” – and to favour a life of secrecy to protect his person and the Crown’s interests – “More than any other place, secrecy is the most important thing in India”.35 Like the Weberian charismatic leader, the head of the Estado da Índia needed to live apart from “ordinary worldly attachments and duties”.36 The restrictions and discretion imposed by the Ceremonial created a wall of

 32

Ambrosio Machado, Relaçaõ da Posse, 7. Moraes Pereira Relação da Viagem que do Porto de Lisboa Fizerão, 221. 34 ACL. Cod. 547 – Noticias da India desde a monção de 1723, athe a de 1726, fol. 128v. 35 Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP), FR-1245 Instrucção que deixou o Conde da Ericeira Vice Rey e Capitam General da India A Francisco José de Sampayo e Castro que lhe foy suceder no dito emprego no anno de 1721 Sucessor, fols. 2-2v. 36 Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 3, 1113-1114. 33

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etiquette and precedence which aimed to protect the Viceroy and separate him from the rest of Goan society, contributing therefore to the creation of an image of a ruler whose distance from the public eye was a sign of his power. Distance was also a solution to protect the Viceroy from the ambiguity of being a quasi-monarchical figure, highlighting the different and superior position of the holder of the viceregal post. This distance, or the imposition of limits regarding the Viceroy’s interactional capacity seemed to be concerned in transforming his personality into a sacred thing, as in the Durkheimian perspective, creating the necessary conditions where “one does not violate it nor infringe its bonds”37. The Ceremonial contributed to the creation of a stereotyped image and lifestyle which allowed every incoming Viceroy to exercise his authority, and to be presented to local potentates in the same way as past Viceroys. However, in addition to imposing or creating a lifestyle, the Ceremonial was also an instrument of discipline which aimed to control the actions and personality of the holders of the viceregal post. Indeed, the restrictive nature of most rules led to a depersonalisation of the Viceroy, which forced him to erase his own personality in order to live as an ideal type of the monarch. As Pierre Bourdieu pointed out, delegates or representatives, such as the Viceroy, needed to be modelled according to the figure of the agent who granted them their position, in order to appropriate for themselves the agent’s power. To facilitate the identification between delegator and agent, the former has to “make a gift of his person” to the agent, stating that his existence depends on the agent.38 This role of the Viceroy as a doppelganger of the monarch was consolidated by the Ceremonial de que uzão os VReys quando escrevem aos Reys da Azia (ceremonial to be used by the viceroys when they wrote to the kings of Asia), a type of internal memorandum, or a private instruction manual of Asian foreign relations destined only for the eyes of Viceroys and their aids, which imposed a code of conduct for the dealings of the Viceroy with Indian rulers. One important feature of this document is the concern in presenting the Viceroy with the titles related to the post, as well as those of his aristocratic position. This concern reflects the Crown’s intention to create and propagate a powerful representation of itself. By stressing the titles of the Viceroy as an Indian ruler and a Portuguese aristocrat, the Crown strove to transmit the power and dignity that was associated with the royal position, and reinforce the majesty and importance of the Portuguese monarchy. There was also an intention to

 37

Emile Durkeim, Sociology and Philosophy, London: Cohen & West, 1953, 37. Pierre Bourdieu, Language & Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, 209.

38

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present or diffuse an image of the Viceroy that surpassed its real power in the Portuguese administrative structure, thus suggesting that the holder of the post possessed an almost royal image.

Oriental Rome Religious ceremonies also played an important part in the construction of the Viceroy’s public image. Besides the Corpus Christi procession, the Viceroy took an active part in three other main religious feasts in Goa – St. Catherine’s day, St. Francis Xavier’s day and the feast of the Chagas de Christo (Christ’s wounds). According to sources such as the Epanaphora Indica, these festivities were moments in which high ranking individuals of Goa’s political and social order were brought together. Led by the Viceroy and the Archbishop, the members of the State Council, royal judges, the higher clergy, and the local nobility appeared before the eyes of the city’s population and the foreign communities established in Goa, surrounded by a lavish and pompous ceremonial. However, the importance of the Goan religious festivities was not reduced to the opportunities for conspicuous consumption and ecclesiastic and viceregal display. They were an essential part of one of the most important instruments of Portuguese colonialism – the Padroado Real, or the papal concession to the Portuguese Crown of the monopoly of missionary work in regions allocated to the Portuguese Crown by the treaty of Tordesillas. This monopoly was often used by the Portuguese authorities to secure their presence in regions where Lisbon did not have any formal or effective control. The foundation of the Propaganda Fide in 1622, which was allowed by Rome to act in the regions under the Padroado, was another setback faced by the Estado da Índia in the seventeenth-century. Moreover, the French support for the Propaganda was regarded by Lisbon as a serious menace to the imperial ambitions of the Portuguese in Asia, and the actions of the Propaganda missionaries were often seen as an attack on the interests of the Portuguese Crown. The lavish celebrations of the Goan Church were therefore an attempt to secure the reputation of Goa as an Oriental Rome and the image of the Portuguese overseas dominions as an “emporium of faith and religion being among all nations, the one with the greatest devotion”, as the Brazilian born friar Apolinário da Conceição wrote,39 sending a message to Rome which demonstrated the successful work achieved by Goa for the glory of God and His Church.



39 Quotation from A.J.R. Russell-Wood, From Colony to Nation: essays on the independence of Brazil, London: John Hopkins University Press, 1975, 186.

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The Viceroy’s participation in these ceremonies was a demonstration of the Crown’s commitment to the expansion of Catholicism, as it was an attempt to follow in Goa the sacralization of royal power promoted by John V in Lisbon, allowing the Viceroy to imitate the monarch’s role as the Vicar of God – an image which was often used by the Portuguese authorities to establish a parallel between Portuguese monarchs and the Mughal emperors, who since the reign of Akbar were often presented as spiritual leaders or quasi-divine agents.40 St. Catherine’s day was of special importance to the Viceroy, since she was considered to be the patron saint of the city and the Viceroy. The relationship between St. Catherine’s and the Viceroyalty was forged by Afonso de Albuquerque, who chose that saint’s day to conquer Goa. The success of the Portuguese army during the siege and invasion of the city was associated with St. Catherine’s protection, and Albuquerque made her the patron saint of the city. The saint was celebrated with a procession which crossed the main streets of Goa, led by the Archbishop, who carried a relic of St. Catherine, and was attended by the Viceroy and the Estado’s military and bureaucratic apparatus, besides the high ranking members of the nobility and the clergy. The feast became, therefore, a moment which evoked the foundation of Portuguese Goa, and the city itself as the “Golden Goa” exalted in works of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It was also a moment, which offered the Viceroys an opportunity to create a bond with the city, as well as being an indirect celebration of Albuquerque’s feats, which allowed the Viceroys to establish an association between them and one of the founding fathers of the Estado da Índia. They could present themselves as true successors of Albuquerque not only through the position they held, but by sharing the same devotion to the city’s patron saint. The Marquis of Castelo-Novo, for example, was especially aware of the importance of this day for his public image and was extremely eager to be seen as a pious Goan, by joining the Brotherhood of St. Catherine and participating in its ceremonies during St. Catherine’s eve “dressed with a habit similar to any other brother”.41 The procession of St. Francis Xavier’s day was a different celebration, which used the Apostle of the Orient to exalt Goa’s role as the “Rome of the Orient” and the efforts of the Portuguese Crown to convert Asia to Catholicism. On each 3 December, the Cathedral of Bom Jesus welcomed “all the fraternities, communities, clergymen, cabido[s] (canons)” as well as the members of the municipality, to participate in a procession which

 40

Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 17. 41 José Monterroyo Mascarenhas, Epanaphora Indica, Lisbon: 1746, Pt. I, 33.

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was attended by the Viceroy, the State Council and the royal magistrates. For the Viceroys, St. Francis Xavier’s day was an important opportunity to demonstrate their role as the King’s representative, since they were often asked by the King to kiss the feet of the Saint’s image at the Bom Jesus on his behalf. The Marquis of Castelo-Novo did this nine days after the procession, in a ceremony which was performed far from the public eye, with an audience formed only by the Provincial and “grave priests”, who were the only ones allowed to see the Viceroy and the Archbishop – the two main figures of the Estado da Índia – perform an act of humility. Although there were restrictions concerning the audience, the ceremony was amply announced and mentioned and described in metropolitan works dedicated to India such as the Epanaphora Indica.42 In fact, more than the act itself, what really mattered to the Crown and the Viceroy was the message, the diffusion of the image of a King who was extremely zealous in his religious devotions and duties as the “Vicar of God” or as “God’s lieutenant on Earth”, while the Viceroy demonstrated that he had a close relationship with the head of the empire and was fully entrusted to perform on his behalf an act that had an essentially private nature. During the Joanine years the relationship between King and Viceroy was reinforced in the processions dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The saint’s day was already a part of the popular religious life of the Portuguese world, but by the fact that St. John shared the same name of the King, the day consecrated to the saint was widely celebrated in Portugal and her empire as if it was a second royal birthday. Besides the performance of religious ceremonies – usually a mass and a Te Deum – the day was used to reinforce the importance of acts made by the Viceroy. After the conquests of Alorna, the Marquis of Castelo-Novo chose the 24 June to promote the officers who took part in the campaign, “on behalf of His Majesty” and grant mercês (pensions) to the widows of dead officers.43

The military republic Between the sixteenth and the end of the eighteenth-century war was a constant feature of Goan life. Diogo do Couto in his Soldado Prático (a title that reflects the role of war) described India as a “frontier, where it is always necessary to carry weapons in our hands”.44 In the eighteenth-

 42

Idem, 47. José Monterroyo Mascarenhas, Epanaphora Indica, Pt.. II, 61. 44 Diogo do Couto, O Soldado Prático, Lisbon: Sá da Costa, 1937, 144 43

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century, the Conselho do Estado corroborated this vision, presenting the Estado da Índia as “a military and warrior government”, and the Marquis of Castelo-Novo described it to John V as “a military republic whose preservation depends entirely on our weapons on land and sea”.45 CasteloNovo’s vision of a military republic was supported by the long wars with the Marathas, as well as by the endless skirmishes with minor potentates such as the SarDesais of Sawantvandi and the constant naval combats with the Angrias, which obliged Viceroys to maintain a strong military establishment, which often suffered from lack of funds and men. Despite the military defeats by local and European powers, the military nature of the Estado da Índia was regularly celebrated by Joanine panegyrists, with constant evocations of Afonso de Albuquerque, Francisco de Almeida or D. João de Castro. When the Marquis of Castelo-Novo conquered the territories which would become known as the Novas Conquistas (New Conquests), the glorious times evoked by the panegyrists seemed to be real again. This enthusiasm was reflected in the two triumphal parades offered by the Goan municipality in homage to the Viceroy’s conquests. The organisation of triumphs in Goa was not a complete novelty, but was rare. The first triumphs were organised by Albuquerque and D. João de Castro. Castro’s triumph after the siege of Diu was particularly famous for its pomp and lavish decorations, which were aimed to recreate the Roman triumphal parades. During most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, triumphs became rare due to the setbacks suffered by the Portuguese, and when they were organised they were on a scale far from Castro’s pomp, consisting of small-scale processions which ended at the Bom Jesus, where a mass and a Te Deum were celebrated, like the celebrations arranged by the Viceroy Marquis of Louriçal, when the news of the victory of a Portuguese army led by Manoel Soares Velho over the Marathas reached Goa. The programme of the celebrations included a Te Deum and other events such as luminárias, which included an enthusiastic participation of the population in “those demonstrations of pleasure, offered by victories”.46



45 Charles Boxer, O Império Marítimo Português, 1415-1825, Lisbon: Edições 70, 2001, 139. 46 Anonymous, Relaçam das Victorias Alcançadas na India contra o Inimigo Marata, sendo o Vice-Rey daquelle Estado o Illustrissimo, e Excellentissimo D. Luiz Carlos Ignacio Xavier de Menezes, V. Conde da Ericeira, e I. Marquez do Louriçal. Com huma breve noticia da sua morte, Lisbon: Officina Luiz Jozé Correa Lemos, 1743, 12

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Castelo-Novo’s triumph, however, was staged at a different moment to Louriçal and Castro’s triumphs. After decades of decline and humiliation inflicted by the Dutch and the Marathas, Castelo-Novo’s victories over the SarDesais of Sawantvandi seemed to pave the way to a new period of success. Moreover, Goa needed to erase the widespread image of the decline of the Estado da Índia, which was current in Europe and India. A triumphal parade before the Goan population and the local foreign communities was regarded as an opportunity to restore the prestige of the Portuguese. Castelo-Novo’s first triumph took place on 26 June 1746, one day after St. John’s the Baptist day. The Ceremony was organised by the municipality, “which as the head of the State, wanted to pay its homage to the lord of the Armies for his great victory”.47 Triumphal arches were erected in the streets crossed by the future Marquis of Alorna, which were also “pompously adorned with rich tapestries”. Followed by the fidalguia, nobility and clergy, the Viceroy was received at the city’s gates by two vereadores (aldermen) and two capitaens de mar e guerra, who together with other municipal officials carried a canopy which covered the Viceroy. This retinue stopped at the Bom Jesus, where a mass and a Te Deum were celebrated, and a “panegyric and congratulatory oration” was read by the Archbishop.48 The second triumph, which was staged after the conquest of the fortress of Tiracol, was more elaborate. At St. Catherine’s beach an artificial quay was built and adorned with “precious tapestries from Persia”. Triumphal arches were built on all the streets which led to the Bom Jesus, the final stop of the parade “because it is there that the body of the glorious Patron, and defender of the Estado, St. Francis Xavier, is buried and because the Viceroy considers that his powerful intercession led to the good success of his [Alorna’s] enterprise”. Dancers from Goa and the neighbouring villages were recruited and instructed to make special salutes to the Viceroy during the parade. Two nights of luminárias were also organised by the municipality, and all the ships that were captured during the campaign against the Bhonsles were exhibited at the Ribeira (waterfront) as a prize and proof of Portuguese military and naval power, to be seen by all the inhabitants of the city, Indo-Portuguese and foreigners. 49 The triumphal parade took place on 6 January 1747, a day dedicated to the “feast of the holy Kings from the Orient, who went to adore the true born God”. The date was seen as appropriated by the municipality, since

 47

José Monterroyo Mascarenhas Epanaphora Indica, Pt. II, 59. Idem, Ibidem. 49 José Monterroyo Mascarenhas, Epanaphora Indica, Pt. III, 62-63. 48

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the Viceroy “was an illustrious hero, who came from the Occident to exalt and extend the dominions of his King [and], the cult of the same God, in oriental lands, [and] regions where no temple dedicated to His name had ever been erected for the Catholic cult”. The Viceroy left his palace on the manchua do Estado, which was “brightly adorned”, leading a retinue formed by “many boats of the nobility”.50 When the manchua arrived at the Ribeira, all the ships stationed there saluted the Viceroy with their cannon. At the quay, the Viceroy was welcomed by all the military officers of Goa, 24 guards and one infantry regiment. Then, Alorna and this retinue crossed the streets of Goa in the direction of the Bom Jesus. As in the first triumph, the Viceroy stopped at the first triumphal arch, where the vereadores awaited him to read a speech presenting the city’s gratitude and congratulations for his actions. From this arch as far as the Cathedral, Alorna was taken under a canopy carried by the vereadores and followed by “all the Ecclesiastics and secular nobility”, who were accompanied by an “infinite number of dancers, of different sorts”. 51 All this was watched by an audience who acclaimed and hailed the Viceroy. At the Bom Jesus, a mass and a Te Deum were celebrated, and on behalf of the Archbishop, who was sick, a Jesuit Padre, Manoel de Figueiredo, read a sermon dedicated to the Viceroy’s conquest.52 After the mass, the Viceroy returned to the palace followed by the guards and “all the Nobility”. Throughout the evening most Goans decorated their houses with bright lanterns (viztosas luminárias). Some fidalgos took their baloens (ceremonial barges) to Panelim, carrying musicians and choirs who played serenades, “giving more credit to the satisfaction of this triumph”.53

Final Remarks When in 1716 John V’s ambassador to the Pope, the Marquis of Fontes, made his public entry in Rome, Clement XI and his court were impressed with the three golden carriages which carried the Portuguese diplomats. Each carriage was an allegory of the imperial power of the Portuguese Crown, representing the country’s heroic past of conquest and navigation, the African and Asian continents which were subjected to Portuguese power, and the riches of Portuguese commerce. Rituals and ceremonies, as Clifford Geertz suggested, provide a meta-social

 50

Idem, 63. Idem, 66. 52 Idem, 67. 53 Idem, Ibidem. 51

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commentary, a story a group “tell themselves about themselves”54, and Fontes’ embassy did this. The three carriages were an example of an image that the Portuguese (or the Portuguese Crown) developed of themselves as rulers of a vast and rich empire which was spreading the word of God throughout the world, an image that was registered by a seventeenth-century French traveller who visited Goa who mentioned in his memoirs that the Portuguese said that they constructed their empire with “the crucifix in one Hand, and the Sword in the other”.55 In India, this image was offered by the viceregal public ceremonies. Events such as the entrada, the numerous processions, or Castelo-Novo’s triumphs were especially concerned to resuscitate the imperial myth of Golden Goa, the times when “Asia was a glorious theatre” for the Portuguese, as the Marquis of Castelo-Novo once wrote.56 Before the progressive decline of the Estado da Índia, Goa used its public ceremonies and their lavish decorations, richly clad fidalgos and clergymen, as well as the exhibition of military strength, to control the damage inflicted by rival powers, creating a façade of power, authority and wealth that concealed its economic and military weaknesses and supported the Estado da Índia’s claims to enjoy a superior position on the Indian political scene. The viceregal public ceremonies offered to their audience and performers not only a particular narrative of the Portuguese presence in India, but an illusory or ephemeral sense of continuity from the glorious times of the past. This sense of continuity was focused on the Viceroy who, as the head of the administration of the Estado da Índia, was the main ritual actor in most of the public ceremonies in Goa. Surrounded by symbols of royal power, Viceroys were true emulations of the monarch, as well as symbols of the imperial past forged by Afonso de Albuquerque, Vasco da Gama, Francisco de Almeida and D. João de Castro. Indeed, their actions became quite close to what the American sociologist Erving Goffman called “face-work”, that is the actions that individuals took to project and sustain a certain image of themselves.57 Despite the several setbacks suffered by the Portuguese, Viceroys were obliged to do their utmost to preserve the symbolic capital of the Estado da

 54

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, London: Hutchinson, 1975, 448. Quotation taken from Michael N. Pearson, The Portuguese in India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 132. 56 ACL – Cod. Cod. 552 – Discurso que o Illustrissimo e Execllentissimo Senhor Marquez de Castelo Novo V. Rey Da India Fez no dia 1X de Novembro aos Dezembargadores a primeira vez que foi á Relação, fol. 40. 57 Erving Goffman, Interaction Rituals: Essays in Face-to-Face Behaviour, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2005, 12.  55

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Índia as an imperial power. The Viceroys’ image should not only be that of the King’s alter ego, but the reflection of the greatness of Goa. They were obliged to offer an idealised vision of the Estado da Índia, to incorporate and demonstrate the imperial project and image proposed by the Crown. This concern with the Viceroy’s image is reflected by John V’s decision to grant more privileges to former and new Viceroys in the hope of making the post more prestigious. The Count of Ericeira received the title of Marquis of Louriçal as well as other privileges to his family due to its “merit, and splendour”.58 His successor, the Count of Assumar, received the title of Marquis of Castelo-Novo before leaving Lisbon and, after the success of his military campaigns against the Bhonsles, was rewarded with the title of Marquis of Alorna, after the name of one of the fortresses captured by the Portuguese army. The concession of these titles was mentioned in the panegyrics dedicated to the Joanine Viceroys as having impressed most local rulers, who did not expect the Estado to be governed by talented and worthy men. This strategy seemed to be somehow successful. As Alexandrowicz and Saldanha pointed out, Asian rulers were more eager to accept a relationship of inter-sovereignty with the Portuguese Crown – despite being mediated by a third element, the Viceroy – than to undertake a relationship on the same terms with a commercial company, such as the EIC or the VOC.59 In 1760, the Maratha Peshwa, during a negotiation with the Portuguese, praised the Estado for being ruled by a King that was “a worthy soldier, and not a merchant as the English”.60 Besides the evocation of Goan history and the concern with the Estado’s status before other Indian potentates, these ceremonies transmitted the image that the Portuguese King wished to present to other European sovereigns, supporting Portugal’s claims to be an imperial power. This concern was reflected by the utilisation of European or metropolitan ceremonial models. Indeed, the ritual language of the Estado da Índia was profoundly influenced by the Renaissance and Baroque visions of majesty, triumph, glory, power and fame. The reproduction of the metropolitan

 58

Anonymous, Relaçam das Victorias Alcançadas na India contra o Inimigo Marata, 8. 59 Charles H. Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967, 31; Saldanha, Iustum Imperium, 350. 60 Júlio Firmino Júdice Biker, Collecção de Tratados e Concertos de Pazes que o Estado da Índia fez com os Reis e Senhores com que teve relações nas partes da Ásia e África Oriental desde os Princípios da conquista até ao fim do século XVIII, Vol. VII, Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1885, 198. 

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ceremonies intended to create a link between the populations of the colonies and Portugal, but was also a strategy which aimed to influence the vision that other European nations held of the Portuguese empire, offering an opportunity to send particular political messages to Portugal’s European rivals in India. The European nature of the Goan public ceremonies allowed any European who attended, for example, CasteloNovo’s triumph or a viceregal entry, to recognise the scenarios, allegories and gestures offered by these ceremonies. This need to influence the English, Dutch or French visions of the Portuguese Empire was behind the translations into French and Italian, the two eighteenth-century languages of culture and diplomacy, of the panegyrics dedicated to Castelo-Novo’s victories over the SarDesais of Sawantvandi, an event which the Crown considered to be a turning point for the Estado and suited the Joanine pursuit of prestige and magnificence.61

 61

Relazione Della Conquista Delle Piazze D'alorna, Biciolíno, Aváro, Morli Sataremme, Tiracòl E Rarì, Roma : Stamperia di Generoso Salomoni, 1748; Relation des conquêtes faites dans les Indes par D.P.M. d’Almeida, marquis de Castel-Nuovo, comte d’Assumar, &c. vice roi et capitaine general des Indes. Traduite du portugais de D. Emanuel de Meirelles, qui s’y est trouvé présent, et de l’italien d’un auteur anonyme, imprimé à Rome en 1748, Paris: Imprimerie de Gissey, 1749.

CHAPTER TEN JESUIT ART IN GOA BETWEEN 1542 AND 1655: FROM MODO NOSTRO TO MODO GOANO CRISTINA OSSWALD

Introduction The present article analyses Jesuit art in Goa within two broad frameworks: the Modo Nostro and the Modo Goano. Briefly, Modo Nostro in art can be defined as the general pattern followed by Jesuits in their artistic activities throughout the world. The term Modo Goano obviously defines the art produced in Goa or related to Goa (for instance, Goan artists working outside Goa). My analysis concentrates upon the artistic features (artists, materials, models, chronology, artistic and cultural influences) that together constitute Goan Jesuit art, defined broadly so as to include building function, architecture, sculpture, painting, wood carving, forms of religious celebration. This essay covers approximately the first hundred years of the Jesuit presence in Goa following their arrival in 1542 until 1655. The year 1655 is symbolic in that it was then that the burial chapel of Saint Francis Xavier in the church of the Bom Jesus, Goa, was completed. Moreover, this date is generally held to be a turning point in the evolution of Jesuit art in Goa. The construction of the chapel brought the first period of Jesuit artistic endeavour in the colony to a close as by that time the majority of Catholic buildings were completed. More specifically, I am interested in observing the mutual synergies of influence between the Modo Nostro and the Modo Goano during the first hundred years of the Jesuit presence in Goa. What, on the one hand, were the relative contributions of Jesuit art and artistic conceptions to Goan art? On the other hand, how much did Goa substantively contribute to Jesuit art or even art in general within and, in particular, beyond India? I thus take into special account such factors as the capacity of central headquarters to

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Figure 29. Saint Francis Xavier’s burial chapel with the saint’s tomb by Giovanni Battista Foggini, responsible for the pietra dura altar (1686), and Indian artists (silver shrine of c. 1636), Church of Bom Jesus.

make their decisions work in the far-flung provinces vis à-vis the decisionmaking powers of the local ecclesiastic and political authorities. It is to be borne in mind that on account of the Portuguese Patronage of the Orient (Padroado), the Papacy delegated some of its main duties and privileges to the Crown and its employees. Also fundamental in this regard were the factors working towards centralisation: hierarchy, discipline, absolute obedience to superiors, and a set of rules covering all activities, which, from the inception of the Society of Jesus, were distinctive features of its organisation. At the same time, adaptability to local context, the wellknown Jesuit strategy of accommodation to varying circumstances and places, was a principle likewise fostered from the outset. The success of all artistic endeavour requires favourable legislation and a sufficiency of economic resources. The Jesuits were not alone in the missionary field. In this respect, the role played by Jesuit Goan art depended greatly on the ability of the headquarters to bring about favourable legislation and attract generous patrons. However, over- dependence on



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external power holders could mean that certain structural principles and practices proper to the Modo Nostro were put at risk. This raises the question of whether and to what extent the Jesuits were compelled by secular and ecclesiastical authorities or private patrons to design and ornament their architectural structures according to conventions different from the Jesuit main pattern. .

The Modo Nostro in Goa

Figure 30. Doorway of the second church of the Colégio de S. Paulo Velho (156072), attributed to Martin Ochoa.

India was the first Jesuit province outside Europe, and the oldest Jesuit structures outside Europe were those erected in Goa. Thus, Jesuit buildings in Goa can be considered part of the first proprium domicilium of the Order, as Jesuit architecture in the wider sense dates mainly from the 1580s. Indeed, the original Colégio de S. Paulo (Velho) was built between



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1541 and 1578, and was the first permanent settlement in Goa and in the Orient. It was therefore one of the oldest buildings of the Society anywhere. By way of comparison, their main church, Il Gesù, was built between 1568 and 1575, and the two first Jesuit churches in Portugal, the Igreja do Nome de Jesus in Coimbra and the Igreja do Espírito Santo in Évora were begun around 1559 and in 1566, respectively.1

Figure 31. The Basilica of Bom Jesus, Goa, completed 1605.



1 Fausto S. Martins, Arquitectura dos Primeiros Colégios Jesuítas de Portugal: 1542-1759, Cronologia, Artistas, Espaços, Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade do Porto, 1994, vol I, 52, 224; José Eduardo Reis Coutinho, Sé Nova de Coimbra – Colégio das Onze Mil Virgens- Igreja dos Jesuítas, Coimbra: Paróquia da Sé Nova, 2003, 90.



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As everywhere else, the construction and decoration of Jesuit buildings in Goa were made subject to a complex template of rules and authorities both European and local. The most important decisions naturally fell to the General and the general congregations. More precisely, the General's judgement governed the approval of houses, schools, and universities, and the admission of benefactors to the rank of founders.2 Indeed, the construction of the Professed House with the attached church of the Bom Jesus in Goa was originally an idea of Ignatius of Loyola. It should also be noted that the Third General Congregation (1573) strongly recommended the foundation of professed houses in all provinces.3 Ranking second after the General in the hierarchy of the Society was the Provincial, whose authority covered the welfare of both the personnel and the material resources within a province. This officer was required by the rules to assess the state of all the resources of the province at least once a year and to supervise the commission of any new construction, including structural and artistic features. For example, according to the Memorial for India compiled by Visitor Francisco de Monclaro and containing the prescriptions by General Claudio Aquaviva (1590), the church of the Professed House in Goa was to be solid and comfortable, but not overlavish. The Provincial was encharged to take all further decisions necessary to accomplish this project. Moreover, the provincials decided on the creation of confraternities and on the dedication of altars, thereby contributing to the spread of certain cults and iconographies within the province.4 The other officer having local authority was the Visitor to the provinces, who held the deciding word in artistic matters. Indeed, Visitor Nicolau Pimenta determined the arrangement of the façade of the most important church in Goa: the Bom Jesus. With the exception of the side pillars, this was to be built using the granite stone of the Hindu temples that had been razed to the ground in Bassein. The side columns were to be made of the local reddish stone (known as kankar and easily worked) in order to match the architectural and urban context. The doorways and the

 2

`Constitutions, part IX’, in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, ed. Georg Ganss, St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996, 627, 630, 744. 3 `Third General Congregation (1573), Decree 17 and Decree 21’, in For matters of greater moment, ed. John Padberg, Rome: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 141-143. 4 `Memorial for India compiled by Visitor Francisco de Monclaro and containing the prescriptions by General Claudio Acquaviva (1590)’, in Documenta Indica, ed. Joseph Wicki, Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 1981, vol. XV, 55.



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stone columns were to come from Portugal.5 The Visitor would sometimes bring designs for new houses direct from Rome to the provinces, as happened in the case of the plan for the Professed House in Goa, brought by Alessandro Valignano to India.6 In the late 1560s, it was established that the ground plans would henceforth be formulated in the province, and afterwards be referred to the so-called Consiliarius Aedificiorum, a collaborator of the General in Rome, and a post created at the First General Congregation in 1558. This official was a kind of architect-in-chief, i.e. a combination of architectural and technical advisor, overseer and building superintendent for the whole Order. After eventual correction and approval, the plan was conveyed to the province. Construction could then begin.7 As to Goa, we know that at least two plans – the plan for the construction of the Professed House and the plan of the Noviciate - were drafted in Goa and then sent to Rome for approval.8 The Jesuits preferred to employ their own members in the construction and decoration of their houses. This was due both to economic restraints and the need to build quickly in order to respond to an enterprise rapidly expanding in scale.9 Naturally, this practice ensured that Jesuit houses often bore strong similarities to each other. According to Goan art historian José Lourenço, in addition to the Jesuit emblem IHS, the façades of Jesuit churches in Goa have in common three-part pediments (two voluted sides and a raised centre with a segmentally curved crowning cornice), fan shaped alettes, niched frontons, engaged columns or pilasters. In turn, Franciscan churches distinguished themselves by their use of rococo frontons and cupuliform façades.10 I shall argue that the Jesuits (like the other orders) would deploy their own iconography in order to

 5

`Orders by Nicolau Pimenta, Visitor of India, to the priests of the Professed House in Goa, Goa, June 1597’, in Documenta Indica, 1988, vol. XVII, 8. 6 António Nunes Pereira, A Arquitectura Religiosa Cristã de Velha Goa, Segunda metade do séc. XVI, Primeiras Décadas do século XVII, Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2005, 218-219. 7 Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit art in Rome, 1565 – 1610, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, 31. 8 Cristina Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, Ph.D thesis, European University Institute, 2003, 256. 9 While a total of 26 recruits was made in the 1540s, a record was achieved in 1602, when 62 new arrivals landed in Goa, Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and beyond, 1540-1750, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, 47, 256. 10 José Lourenço, The parish churches of Goa – a study of façade architecture, Goa: Amazing Goa Publications, 2005, 17, 27.



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affirm themselves vis-à-vis other Catholic orders and competitors in the missionary field as well as the local population. In the Orient, both the Jesuits and the regular orders excelled in embellishing their churches with scenic representations of the lives of their founders as well of those of their more illustrious members and martyrs. Examples can be still observed in the Augustinian female Convento de Santa Mónica in Old Goa and in the Franciscan Convento dos Reis Magos in the Peninsula of Bardez. Broadly speaking, the Modo Nostro in art was cosmopolitan in character. The Society of Jesus was the first urban order in the history of the Catholic Church (followed by the Oratorians shortly afterwards). They thus opted to site their settlements within major urban fabrics.11 As well as being the capital of the Portuguese overseas empire and of the Portuguese Padroado, Goa was simultaneously the capital of a Jesuit province, the basic administrative unit of the order. This explains the foundation of a complex structure of interlocking, but semi-autonomous institutions that exemplified the wide-ranging consueta ministeria developed by the Society. With the exception of houses for the practice of the Spiritual Exercises, the Jesuits controlled the whole range of houses appropriate to the Society’s mission in Goa. These amounted to three colleges (1555, 1574 and 1618), the Professed House (1583), the male and female Catechumenates (1553), the Noviciate (1559) and the two houses of recreation. They also had charge of parish churches and an orphanage (1553).12 Whenever possible, the Jesuits founded their settlements at the very heart of towns and cities, near central landmarks or on main roads.13 The purpose of this was to permit strategic access to the seats of religious and civic power, that is to say the cathedral or government palace. By the same token, such houses offered easy access to the populace.14 This being said, in Goa, the Professed House - the main building in any Jesuit province was constructed in a square called the Terreiro dos Galos, used by “the gentiles” or local inhabitants for cockfights but situated in the centre of Velha Goa. On the right, it was bordered by the Estrada Real, which ran

 11

Thomas Lucas, Landmarking, City, Church & Jesuit Urban Strategy, Chicago: Loyola Press, 1997, 36. 12 Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 30. 13 Lucas, City, Church & Jesuit Urban strategy, 148. 14 This concern was expressed by Ignatius as early as 1551 in a letter to his Italian companion Giovanni Pellettier and last edited by Mario Gioia in 1898, Gli scritti di San Ignazio di Loyola, ed. Mario Gioia, Torino: Utet, 1988, 921.



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from Panelim to S. Thiago, and it was surrounded by other important religious facilities such as the settlements of the Misericórdias (1513 or 1514), the Cathedral and the monastery and church of St Francis of Assisi (begun in 1521). Moreover, the Colégio de S. Paulo Novo (1610-1620) was built on the western edge of the Monte do Rosário, in one of the most populated areas of the city. In turn, Rachol, where the College of Salsette (priests’ seminary) was finally located, was the largest town and the most important trading centre on the peninsula of Salsette. In order to translate the concept of utility into practice, Goan Jesuit authorities carefully chose spacious sites able to accommodate new buildings, benefiting from water supplies and from salubrious topographical and climatic conditions. Naturally, economic considerations determined much of what concerned Jesuit building and decoration. For instance, a letter by Secretary Juan de Polanco on behalf of Ignatius of Loyola and dated 1555, advised the Provincial of Portugal, Miguel Torres, to move some students to Thana near Bassein, where land was cheap and the site fresher and healthier.15 The Jesuits were preoccupied with health and letters sent to and from missionaries in Goa abound with references to this topic. Owing to the difficult climate, the founding of hospitals became a prime concern soon after arrival. Accordingly, the first institution the Society founded in Goa in 1551 was a hospital for indigenous people prescribed by the Constitutions for S. Paulo Velho, dated 1546. It was located in front of the College and had two separate infirmaries, one for women and another for men, with an average capacity of forty to sixty indoor patients.16 Builders took special care that the residential areas were well-ventilated and adequately lit. All settlements included at least a garden and/ or an orchard, so that the inhabitants would profit from good air. It was preferred that the bedrooms, and, in particular, the infirmaries had doors opening to the sea coast and/ or to the garden or orchard. To avoid contagion, patients were usually housed in those buildings or parts of buildings least affected by winds and temperatures. Like all Jesuit provinces, Goa had two estates for recreational purposes, one on the Island of Choran. The second site, known as Santana, was located in the western extremity of Goa.

 15

`Letter of Juan Polanco on behalf of Ignatius of Loyola to the Provincial of Portugal Miguel Torres, Rome, 21 November of 1555’, in Documenta Indica, 1954, vol. III, 307. 16 João Manuel Pacheco Figueiredo, `Goa Dourada nos séculos XVI-XVII – O Hospital dos Pobres do Padre Paulo Camerte, um esboço de reconstituição histórica’, Studia, 25 (1968), 126.



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Aesthetics clearly also played a role. In his commentary on the decision reached by the First Congregation of the Province of India concerning the location of the Professed House, the powerful Provincial of India, Alessandro Valignano, argued that the site he proposed was situated not only in the most salubrious part of the city, but also in the most beautiful area.17 For the early Society, aesthetic standards were mainly derived from Italian art. The Society explicitly considered Roman architectural models to embody the supreme criteria of cultural and artistic value. Such statements as “alla usanza di Roma”, “ominamente situato come a Roma, secondo gli punti mandati da Roma”, “traza digna d’architetto romano” were often used to describe and praise the best buildings. The following passage comparing the Colégio de S. Paulo Velho to the Jesuit College of Brera confirms this point: I have encountered a college, which I describe to people who have not seen it, beyond comparison either in magnificence or in beauty to the one in Milan, surrounded by many gardens and various fruits, with a very beautiful and large church, almost like the one in Milan at the College of Brera.18

In fact, many church façades were based upon, or quoted from the architectural treatises by Giacomo da Vignola (Regola delli cinque ordini d’architettura, 1562), Sebastiano Serlio (Tutte l’opera d’architettura et prospettiva, first published in 1537), and Andrea Palladio (Le Antichità di Roma, Roma, 1554 and I quatri Libri dell’Architettura, 1570).19 Along with others, such works were widely disseminated throughout the overseas missions. As to India, in 1567 the Spanish lay brother and artist Martim Ochoa made the following remark in a letter to General Francisco Borgia: Due to the fact that we are so distant from matters of art, I dare to ask you for the two books, one on perspective and another on doors, by Vignola, the architect of Saint Peter, and of some stuccoed rooms that exist in Rome, many of the latter already existing in engravings.20

 17

`Acts of the First Congregation of the Province of India, Choran, 6-18 December 1575’, in Documenta Indica, 1968, vol. X, 235-239. 18 `Letter of Niccolò Spínola to General Everard Mercurian, Goa, 26 October 1578’, in Documenta Indica, 1970, vol. XI, 319. 19 Gauvin Alexander Bailey, “Just like il Gesù: Sebastiano Serlio, Giacomo Vignola, and Jesuit Architecture in South America”, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesum (AHSI), 140 (2001), 245. 20 `Letter of Martin Ochoa to Francisco de Borja’, in Documenta Indica, 1962, vol. VII, 409.



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Some specific features of the Modo Nostro in Goa The distinctive character of the Modo Goano as understood and practised by the Jesuits is without doubt largely indebted to the Modo Nostro. The Society of Jesus was and remains a centralised religious order. As noted above, the most significant decisions were reserved for the headquarters in Rome and, in particular, the General and the general congregations. At the same time, the Society created an extraordinary post, the Visitor to the missions, an official who would inform Rome in great detail of all aspects of the life in the missions and had decisive powers that could overrule decisions taken by the Provincials. The Jesuits were therefore compelled to follow overall a number of general prescriptions in their artistic activity. Nevertheless, one cannot speak of a monolithic conception of religious life. In matters artistic, on the one hand, the Society made no absolute decisions respecting any given architectural or decorative style best suited to its churches. The authorities never actually intended to impose an aesthetic matrix. The initial prescriptions were vague, eschewing the enumeration of detail. They neither prescribed a uniform solution nor did they refuse, a priori, typological and formal experimentation. In fact, they made use of a range of models, both ancient and contemporary, so that their ecclesiastical architecture drew upon the Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque.21 On the other hand, we must recall the international and itinerant character of the Society and its artists, particularly in regard to its missions overseas. Indeed, Italians, Spaniards, French, and Flemish ranked among the more distinguished artists employed in Goa between the second half of the sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth century. Many of these artists had previously worked in a variety of European countries or other missions. Such, for example, was the case with the Florentine painter Bartolomeo Fontebuoni, who was active in the Kingdom of Vijaynagar, before he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Igreja do Bom Jesus.22 This international recruitment had various causes. In the Portuguese overseas possessions, artists from Portugal itself were always scarce in terms of quantity and quality. In fact, for the Provincial



21 Joseph Braun, Die Kirchenbauten der deutschen Jesuiten: ein Beitrag zur Kultur- und Kunstgeschichte des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Freiburg im Breisgau and Rome: Herder, 2 vols, 1908–1910 and Die belgischen Jesuitenkirchen: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kampfes zwischen Gotik und Renaissance, Freiburg im Breigau and Rome: Herder, 1907. 22 Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 268.



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Alessandro Valignano, it was a matter of regret that the Portuguese laymen living in the Orient were mostly soldiers or merchants, and therefore reluctant to take on any kind of manual work. This contributed to a chronic scarcity of European craftsmen needed to implement the large number of secular and religious enterprises then underway in the colonies.23 In particular, the best artists were understandably in high demand, competed over by different missionary stations sometimes in other continents and often commissioned to work for other houses. The Portuguese painter Manuel Álvares, for instance, worked both in Goa and in Brazil. Whilst in Goa, he painted a retable that was taken to Japan by Vice-Provincial Melchior Nunes Barreto in 1554.24 Moreover, the international composition of the artistic labour force reflects the national affinities of the fathers themselves, since from the beginning Society headquarters took great pains to send large numbers of non-Portuguese Jesuits to the Indian missionary field. The intention of this policy was undoubtedly to keep Jesuit missions independent from Portugal and its specific national interests.25 In Goa, the ecclesiastical leadership often took fundamental decisions on art without reference to Rome. Underlying this, the specific rules and instructions which applied to India gave the local priests more powers than their counterparts in Europe. For instance, both Francisco Borja and Claudio Aquaviva authorised the Provincial of India to begin any new building whenever the latter deemed this necessary.26 It is also well-known that practical contingencies (wars, shipwrecks, etc.) interrupted the flow of orders and responses between Rome and Goa. In particular, we know that local leaders often did not hesitate to disobey orders emanating from Rome. This happened in 1583, when, over the construction of the Professed House, the Provincial Alessandro Valignano simply refused to accept the plan approved by Rome, preferring to use a plan brought from Italy by the Chief-Engineer to the Estado da

 23

`Summarium Indicum (changed) by A. Valignano, Shimo (Japan), August 1580’, in Documenta Indica, vol. XIII, 254-255. 24 Sebastião Gonçalves, Primeira parte da História dos Religiosos das Companhia de Jesus, Coimbra: Atlântida, 1962, vol. III, 118-119. 25 In 1555, Ignatius rejoiced in the fact that, although the Italian Provinces had to supply not only themselves with missionaries, but other countries such as Sicily, France, Flanders and Germany as well, the necessary manpower was nonetheless guaranteed, `Letter of Ignatius of Loyola to Miguel Torres, Rome, 21 November 1555’, Monumenta Ignatiana, vol. X, 173. 26 Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 167-168.



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Índia, Giovanni Battista Cairato, and which he adapted to local topographical and climatic conditions.27 Lavishness in both buildings and ceremonial was another form of local transgression that provoked the concern of headquarters. In particular, the Professed House with its adjoining church of Bom Jesus seemed to many Jesuits to be too opulent, imposing and ostentatious, incongruous with the code of poverty required of this kind of institution.28 Moreover, the fact that festivities in Goa ran strictly counter to the writ of Jesuit poverty provoked a deal of official anxiety, illustrated by the quantity of documentation and private letters that constantly urged moderation upon the excessive pomp of religious festivities and processions. Thus, Decree 122 of the Third Congregation for the Province of India (1590) forbade the Goan Jesuits to organise processions (they had introduced the important procession of the Santos Passos in Goa in 1551) unless the General decided otherwise.29 At other times, this disobedience to rules resulted from external pressure. The constant transfer of Jesuit communities to other locations, as well as the need for frequent works of renovation due to insalubrious conditions, show clearly that the local leadership was all too often unable to respond in any adequate way to the centralised precepts concerning health. The Jesuit principle `Non Cantat’ gave way to a local recognition of the usefulness of music in conversion, so that several Goan churches had spacious choirs for priests. The Crown (through its agents) and the Bishop at various times would also intervene, for example, in pressurising the local Jesuit authorities not to abandon their parish churches in Salsette. Hence, these were retained, despite the fact that running them was contrary to the Institute of the Order.30 Finally, the growing Indian character of Jesuit houses was condemned by the more orthodox priests since clearly this compromised the 'purity' of Catholic art. However, while watching the destruction of Hindu temples, Valignano and his associates were unable to restrain their admiration for the beauty of Hindu art. Indeed, as noted before, many Europeans, including the Jesuits, preferred to employ Indian artists, whether converted

 27

Nunes Pereira, A Arquitectura Religiosa Cristã de Velha Goa, 218-219. Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 86. 29 ‘Acts of the Third Congregation of the Province of India with the answers, Decree 12, Goa, October 1588 – Rome, 1590’, in Documenta Indica, vol. XV, 17. 30 Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 102. 28



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or not, on the grounds of their artistic skills alone.31

The Jesuit contribution to the transformation of Goa into a Catholic metropolis Like other colonial empires, the Portuguese empire brought about profound and enduring transformations to the territories it controlled around the world. Goa is a perfect example of how both the urban and social features typical of an Indian city could be changed beyond all recognition, assuming European attributes in terms of planning and construction. The radical metamorphosis of Goa into a European city occurred largely in the sixteenth century. The first great period of construction, which was concentrated on the riverside area, commenced in the late 1520s and continued until the middle of the sixteenth century. In this initial phase, the Portuguese were essentially concerned with defending the conquered site from further attack.32 The second and main period of development took place in the latter half of the sixteenth century, starting under Viceroy D. João de Castro (1545-1548) and lasting until the 1640s-1650s, when Portuguese power began to decline. This period corresponded, in particular, to the great era of religious construction in Goa.33 It was religious art that most inspired the admiration of visitors. Since the town lies mainly in a hollow between high mountains, the religious orders installed themselves on the two hills to the east and west, which were considered the best and most sanitary locations. These religious establishments, commanding the most elevated positions, simultaneously marked the boundaries of the city. For instance, the Englishman Peter Mundy (1608-1667) noticed that “many of the churches, monasteries and colleges were located on the best sites of the city, that is, upon the hills”.34 Another visitor to Goa, the French merchant Pyrard de Laval, was amazed by the great number of religious buildings. To him, there seemed



31 Cristina Osswald, `Die Entstehung des Modo Goano’, in Sendung- EroberungBegegnung, Franz Xaver, die Gesellschaft Jesu und die katholische Weltkirche im Zeitalter des Barock, ed. Johannes Meier, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005, 151. 32 Rafael Moreira, ‘From Manueline to Renaissance in Portuguese India’, Mare Liberum, 9 (1995), 403. 33 Manuel José Gabriel de Saldanha, História de Goa (Política e Arqueológica), New Delhi/ Madras: Asian Educational Services, 1990, 22. 34 The travels of Peter Mundy, ed. Richard Temple and Lavinia Mary Ansley, Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1936, vol. III, 54.



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not a single street or alley without a church or, at the very least, a chapel. He estimated that there were fifty churches and convents in all, only to be exceeded in this by another observer, Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605 – 1689), who listed eighty churches and monasteries at the end of the seventeenth century.35

Figure 32. Pulpit of the church of Bom Jesus with Indian naginis (female snake figures), second half of the 17th century, Indian artist(s).

Lavishness in art was part of the European strategy to transform Goa from a Hindu centre into the Rome of the Orient. Both religious and

 35

Voyage de François Pyrard de Laval aux Indes Orientales (1601-1611), Paris: Chandeigne, 1996, vol. II, 585 and Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, London: Humphrey Milford & Oxford University Press, 1925, 248.



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secular primary documentation agree that priests excelled in furnishing their churches with fine sculpture, woodcarving and painting.36 In addition to imposing façades, many examples of elaborate and polychrome woodcarving in form of altarpieces, chancel arches and pulpits can be still found. Together with the painted cycles in oil, tempera, and fresco, now largely erased or defaced through bad repainting, these woodcarvings would have once created rich visual effects, by their contrast with the stucco-plastered walls. Especially during the period of its greatest splendour, many visitors wondered at the number, monumentality and the sheer wealth of the churches and other religious buildings, at their magnificent exteriors and internal decoration, frequently using the sobriquet “Goa, the Rome of the Orient” or “Golden Goa”. The idea was that the splendour of both the cult and the site was a testament to the piety and devotion of the people. Large, grandiose and well-decorated churches were conceived as the visual counterpart to the indigenous shrines they had either to rival or displace. Clearly, a specifically Christian art and iconography sought to substitute the splendour of the temples it destroyed. The privileged treatment extended by both the Roman and local authorities to the Jesuits enabled them to assume the leading role in the European transformation of Goa. In 1554, with the demarcation of areas to be evangelised by the religious orders, the Jesuits were entrusted with the proselytisation of the largest areas, including the eastern part of the island of Goa, the agriculturally rich peninsula of Salsette to the south, and the smaller islands of Divar and Choran (the second largest island after Goa itself). Immense artistic activity was made further possible owing to the fact the Society was the richest order in the Portuguese empire. No pope is reported to have been directly involved in the patronage of Jesuit art in Goa. Nevertheless, the favour of the papacy was undoubtedly a fundamental factor in this affluence, in allowing visitors to Jesuit churches to profit from special indulgences. This made them particularly attractive as places of worship, and by extension, as repositories of legacies and donations. Such gifts formed a substantial part of Jesuit income, and depended upon an emergent noble class of colonial administrators, and on the growing presence of merchant traders. Furthermore, local communities

 36

Quoting the English traveler Alexander Hamilton from the end of the seventeenth century “Their churches are richly furnished with fine decorations and images”, Alexander Hamilton, A new account of the East Indies, London: Argonaut Press, 1930, 249.



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of converts would also sponsor important artistic undertakings.37 Indeed, Jesuits were the main agents in transforming Hindu Goa into Goa, the Rome of the Orient. In doing so, they certainly constituted no exception to the so-called politics of “tabula rasa” that permitted “the construction of Catholic Goa” on the ruins of the temples previously destroyed by Catholic Europeans. Indeed, they chose to locate their settlements precisely on the sites of former Hindu temples. In less than fifty years after the arrival of Francis Xavier and his companions in Goa in 1542, the Society of Jesus controlled a greater number of buildings of broader architectural variety than all the other missionary orders. These latter were, in fact, aggrieved that the Jesuits ran three houses in the City of Goa alone, the Professed House being located inter cannae.38 In time, the Colégio de São Paulo Velho assumed the character of a frontier marking off the area between Catholic Goa and gentile Goa. Moreover, their colleges, houses and churches were spread over a larger area than those of the other orders, extending from Goa to the Peninsula of Salsette, and to the Islands of Divar, Choran and Juá. Only the Franciscans could rival them in the possession of both urban and rural establishments. On arrival in India, Europeans were confronted with powerful civilisations and well-entrenched religions that expressed themselves in complex and elaborate ritual and ceremonial. These were conducted within imposing religious structures, especially on account of the fact that prePortuguese Goa was an important centre of worship for the Hindus. For that reason, the Catholics competed in devising magnificent ceremonies intended to induce an appropriate sense of numinous awe, persuading neophytes to forget the rituals of their previous religion. The Jesuits shared the idea that conversion should rely to a large extent upon the senses. In a letter dated 1569 and addressed to General Francisco de Borja, Visitor Gonçalo Álvares complained that the ornaments and devotional objects

 37

For instance, a group of converted inhabitants sponsored the painting of a retable for the church of the Noviciate in 1591, `Letter of Fr. Pedro Martins S. J., to Claudio Acquaviva S. J, General, Goa, 7 December 1591’, in Documenta Indica, vol. XV, 734. 38 In 1256, Clement IV laid down that a distance of 300 cannae (one canna averaged around 2.5 meters) should separate the establishment of convents and churches. By the sixteenth century, the measure was standardised to 140 cannae. In 1571, Pius IV conceded the Jesuits the privilege of establishing houses within the minimum distance of 140 cannae (c. 300 m), because it was impossible for the Jesuits to find appropriate locations in the centre of cities, Lucas, Landmarking, 132.



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sent from Europe to stock the sacristies of churches in India were insufficiently decorated to meet local standards. He went on to declare that a degree of external ceremony was essential to put new converts in mind of God.39 Various extraneous customs common to Portugal, even though prohibited elsewhere by the Council of Trent, were permitted in India because they were felt especially useful as incentives to convert. On the desirability of retaining Portuguese customs, Alessandro Valignano made the following observation in a letter to Claudio Aquaviva, dated Cochin, 16 December 1584: And before all else I say that in these parts the matters of these kingdoms of Portugal cannot be judged according to the custom of Rome and of the whole of Italy, where the balls and masks and dances and other similar festivities are very strange in churches, processions and similar public [places], and solemn vows are undertaken by the priests and prelates in their churches, and are put under interdict according to the Tridentine Council. But in these kingdoms of Portugal they are neither forbidden nor considered strange, but in these processions the more solemn they are the more they are accompanied by dances and balls of young men and boys and of giants and other monstrous representations, and also of villains and devils that provoke the laughter of the people. And in India I believe it is even more (…), and thus great castles and boats fighting each other, and great games of fireworks.40

This statement was not simply confined to paper. Goan Jesuits celebrated their main feast-days with great pomp. They excelled in the decoration of the streets and of their churches, using a profusion of assorted branches, richly coloured rugs and cloth from China and Flanders. Moreover, decorative structures or settings, such as pyramids, were set inside or outside churches and marked out the processional routes. The commemoration of their feast days further included versions of theatrum sacrum and processions with allegorical tableaux and music.

The integration of the Modo Nostro into Tridentine Catholicism and its impact upon the Modo Goano The Jesuits voluntarily participated in the main ideological currents

 39

`Letter of Gonçalo Álvares to Francisco Borja, Goa, 5 December 1569’, in Documenta Indica, 1964, vol. VIII, 116. 40 `Letter of Alessandro Valignano to Claudio Acquaviva, Cochim, 16 December 1584’, in Documenta Indica, 1975, vol. XIII, 735.



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affecting contemporary religious life. They not only shared the contemporary “reform of life”, but, more importantly, they were instrumental in its definition and diffusion. In this context, scholars have long recognised the role of the Jesuits in the history of preaching. In 1539, the Institute had listed the “ministries of the word” as the first ministries of the Society, while the Formula of 1550 made a distinction between preaching and lectures among the Ministries of the Word. The Jesuits also emphasised frequent attendance at mass. They were therefore greatly concerned to create the kind of building which would harmonise with the necessities of preaching, i.e. the so-called congregational church. Similar to Il Gesù in plan, Jesuit congregational churches in Goa (as elsewhere) were typically large longitudinal structures with a single nave and intercommunicating side chapels so as to permit optimal acoustics and visibility, as well as the simultaneous celebration of several masses. This arrangement was, in fact, considered by General Borja to be the ideal church plan.41 In Goa, the emphasis given to the “ministries of the word” further encouraged the spread of imposing and profusely decorated pulpits, some of which are still extant. Participation in the confessional was a ministry practised by the Society since the early 1540s. The First Week of the Spiritual Exercises had recommended the sacramental confession of past sins, and thus initiated the practice of general confession. At the same time, the Constitutions listed confession as the pre-eminent sacrament.42 Undoubtedly, this discursive insistence on penance and confession shaped and informed the interior layout of Jesuit churches, which, like the Bom Jesus in Goa, were often equipped with side chapels to serve as confessionals. From the Chiesa di San Fedele in Milan (begun in 1569), the Jesuits further appropriated an architectural model featuring confessional niches, examples of which can also be still found in the Igreja de Santana of Talaulim (end of the seventeenth century) in Goa. Finally, the confessionals themselves became devotional centrepieces to rank with altars as internal church furniture. In the case of Bom Jesus, two main confessionals are given prominence by representing those most emblematic of all Jesuits,

 41

For example, in 1565 Borja recommended Luis Gonçalves that the church of S. Roque in Lisbon was to be of one single nave. This was the plan of the Il Gesù and he considered it the best plan for churches, `Letter of Francisco de Borja to Luís Gonçalves, Tuscany, September 1565’, Sanctus Franciscus Borgia quartus Gandiae dux et Societatis Jesu praepositus generalis tertius/ Epistolae et acta, Madrid: Lopez del Horno, 1908, vol. V, 16. 42 `Spiritual Exercises’, in Ignace de Loyola. Écrits, ed. Maurice Giuliani, Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991, 77-78, and Constitutions, part VII, Chapter 4, 603.



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Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier, figured as penitents.43

Figure 33. Unknown Indian artist(s), High Altar of the Bom Jesus, first half of the 17th century, Goa.

During the sixteenth century, the high altar became the focal point, owing to its new function as the site of the tabernacle and seat of the Eucharist. As the Portuguese Jesuit Luís Fróis commented in a letter to his companions in Coimbra (1552), Rector Gaspar Barzeus had recently commissioned an expensive tabernacle for the Host for the Church of S. Paulo Velho in order to symbolise the special devotion of both the priests and lay people to the Sacrament of the Eucharist. This tabernacle was of solid gold and mounted on the main altar close to the altarpiece. Externally, it was engraved with the Apostles Peter and Paul, with small

 43

Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI), Goa 33, `Extract of the Annual Letter of the Province of Goa’ (1623), f. 594.



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angels in relief set above, holding the instruments of the Passion.44 In the second church of the Colégio de S. Paulo Velho (1560-1572), a “muy alto y fermoso” (a very high and handsome) arch gave access to the high chapel, thereby visually reinforcing it. Also exemplifying the new importance of the Eucharist, a special chapel was completed in1565 in the scholars' garden of S. Paulo Velho, intended to enable the College members, together with noblemen, to receive both the Eucharist and Confession.45 Finally, the Jesuits commissioned lavish programs of decoration for the high chapels of their most distinguished churches in Goa. Examples of such programs are the impressive painted cycles that adorned the high chapel of the Bom Jesus and the still extant cycle in paint and gilded wood on themes from the life of Ignatius of Loyola that decorates the high chapel of the College of Rachol.

The Modo Nostro in Goa: an art in symbiosis One of the most interesting aspects of the Modo Goano is its eclectic character. The Modo Nostro in fact decisively determined the character of the Modo Goano as a unique symbiosis of a variety of religious, cultural and artistic traditions. Both the Modo Nostro and the Modo Goano reflect the influence of Portuguese culture and tradition. Of the multi-national contingent of lay brothers in possession of artistic skills, eighteen out of the thirty-three Jesuit artists working in Goa were Portuguese. However, Spaniards, Flemings and, in particular, Italians ranked among the most talented artists.46 Goan Jesuit churches bear the imprint of Italian Renaissance influence in the form of garlands, friezes with volutes, stylised and flat shells. In particular, the conch-shells or fans framing the gable of the main façade of the Bom Jesus are a Lombard-Venetian motif introduced by Mauro Codussi in the Chiesa di San Michele in Insola (1469-1478), a device that was to become a favourite feature of Jesuit façades. Details such as the linear treatment and the sharp rectilinear division of the façades, the

 44

“Letter of Luis Fróis to the fathers in Coimbra, Goa, 1 December 1552”, Documenta Indica, 1950, vol. II, 461-462. 45 “Letter from Gomes Vaz S.J to Leão Henriques S.J.,Goa, the 29th November 1566”, Documenta Indica,vol. VI, 623, and “Letter of Jorge Caldeira S.J. to the Provincial of Portugal Tiago Mirão, Goa, the 6th December 1565”, Documenta Indica, 1962, vol. VII, 69. 46 Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 261.



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doorways composed of arches flanked by coupled columns, and the occuli (also called bulls-eye windows), all recollect the architectural treatises by Leon Battista Alberti. The alternation of the pilaster and window, the arched window flanked by two smaller upright windows, the semicircular chapels with shell-form coverings, and the use of the Corinthian order in the façades are conventions probably related to the treatises circulating among missionaries by Italian theoreticians such as Vignola or Serlio.47

Fig. 34. Chiesa di San Michele in Insola, 1469-1478, by Mauro Codussi, Venice.

 47

A letter by the Jesuit artist Martim Ochoa to General Francisco Borja dated 12 December 1567, and published in Documenta Indica, vol. VII, 409, reads: “Due to the fact that we are here so far away from things of artistry, I dare to ask you for two books, one on perspective and another on doors, that have been compiled by Vignola, the architect of Saint Peter; and also rooms of stucco houses, of which many are already in engravings”.



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As with most of the other Goan churches, Jesuit churches are in general Mannerist in style. The second church of S. Paulo Velho was, notably, one of the first churches built in Goa to bear the architectural imprint of the new Mannerist language.48 Both its interior and façade are largely drawn from imposing Italian Mannerist models which at the time were considered to set new standards, even in Portugal.49 Following the style of Roman churches, the façade lacked towers.50 There were three doors, the principal portal being framed by a perfect arch flanked by paired Corinthian columns with fluted columns over a common socle and crowned by a classical pediment. The inspiration for this was the triumphal arch in the Istrian city of Pula, a model given widespread recognition by the Bolognese architectural theorist Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1555) in his book Dalle Antichità, Libro Terzo (Venice, 1540). The façade so designed provided a recurrent model for various distinguished Jesuit churches in the Orient, both within and beyond Goa. Some examples would be Santana de Talaulim (Goa); S. Paulo (the present cathedral) in Diu (1602); the Bom Jesus in Bassein (1578); the damaged Igreja de Pedro e S. Paulo (1580) in Chaul; and the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Assunção, better known as the Igreja da Madre de Deus, or Igreja de S. Paulo (1601-1640) in Macao. Flemish taste was also a powerful influence in Goan Jesuit art. Two Flemish lay brothers, Markus Maecht (1526-1597) and Jakob Pavo (d. 1682) ranked among the more distinguished Jesuit painters in Goa. Markus Maecht was commissioned to paint three altarpieces for the second church of S. Paulo Velho between 1570 and 1589, while Jacob Pavo decorated some images for the Bom Jesus around 1653.51 Moreover, the Jesuits excelled in the diffusion of printed images and engravings as agents of propaganda overseas. The vast majority of these were of Flemish origin. In 1590, the Jesuits gained control of the Plantin Press in Antwerp,

 48

Martin David Kowal, “The evolution of ecclesiastical architecture in Portuguese Goa”, in India & Portugal - cultural interaction, eds. Jose Pereira and Pal Pratapaditya, Mumbai: Marg, 2001, 77. 49 The “Annual Letter for the Province of India, 1562”, in Documentação para a História das Missões no Padroado Português do Oriente, ed. Artur da Silva Rego, Lisboa: Fundação Oriente/ Comissão Nacional para a Comemoração dos Descobrimentos Portugueses , 1991, vol. IX, 91 says that the main doorway of the second church of S. Paulo Velho had external and internal framing in the Roman manner thereby following the contemporary trend. 50 Bailey, Art on the Jesuit missions, 130. 51 “Catalogue of the Jesuits at the College of Goa in 1571”, in Documenta Indica, vol. VIII, 421 and “Letter of Lopo de Abreu to General Claudio Acquaviva, Goa, 4 December 1589”, in Documenta Indica, vol. XV, 373.



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one of the most important centres specialising in the production of Counter Reformation prints and engravings. This helps explain the fact that the upper gable of the fourth floor of the Bom Jesus shows the Jesuit emblem framed by ornaments in the manner of Cornelius Bos (1506-55), probably brought to India in the form of engravings issued by the Plantin Press. In time, Goan art gained a stronger Indian flavour. This local influence can be observed both in the structural and decorative aspects of this art. The multiplicity of floors in the façades and interiors mimics Indian concepts of monumentality. Materials such as baked clay for roof tiles, laterite stone (a local porous reddish-coloured stone), termite-resistant woods such as matti, oyster and other sea-shells for use as window panes, and stucco, had all been used for many centuries prior to the arrival of the Portuguese. The Indian love of strong colours was also adopted. This local influence is specially visible in the representation of western figures with Indian physical features and dressed in oriental clothes and turbans. It can also be seen in such typical Indian ornaments as the naga and the nagini (serpent nymphs related to the life of Krishna and protectors of the spring waters), and a recurrent motif in wood carving, the Rose of Iran, rosettes, beaded garlands, and various geometric and vegetal motifs. Concerning the latter, reference must be made to the pot, the lotus, the palm, and the myrobalan.52 It is also strongly present in the widespread adoption of an aesthetic idiom, essentially oriental, characterised by great decorative profusion (denoting a certain horror vacui), and in the flattening and stylisation of motifs.53 The immense effort of construction and decoration undertaken by the Jesuits in Goa was only made possible through the mass employment of local builders, masons, plasterers and other craftsmen and artists. One reason for this use of local labour was that the flow of imported altarpieces and pictures had drastically reduced by the middle of the sixteenth century. The restrictions on supply became so acute that the missionaries sent the untreated panels to Portugal for painting. However, this void lay ready to be filled by the numerous highly skilled craftsmen, organised into hereditary castes. Once discovered, the Europeans did not hesitate to make use of this invaluable resource, and the Jesuits quickly developed the strategy of deploying local architects, artists and artisans in the production of Catholic art. Indeed, their work was often deemed “incomparably better” than that of the Europeans. In 1624, the Jesuits decided to charge an Indian artist

 52 53

Lourenço, The parish churches of Goa – a study of façade architecture, 8. Osswald, “Die Enstehung des Modo Goano”, 141-142.



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with the job of engraving the most important devotional piece in the whole of the Orient: the silver shrine of Francis Xavier, commissioned on the occasion of his canonisation. Indeed, the Portuguese authorities rated the local artists so highly that they commissioned from them pictures and other objects for other Asian cities. As often as not, the local artists were rewarded for their services.54 At the same time, however, authorities were very cautious concerning the introduction of pagan elements into Catholic art. The local headquarters sent various artists to Portugal from the first decades of the sixteenth century, so they could “learn to represent Catholic dogma and doctrine in a correct way”.55 On various occasions, the inhabitants of the conquered lands were forced to build or reconstruct damaged churches.56 Despite all the prohibitions enacted by the First and the Third Councils of the Archdioceses of Goa (held in 1567 and 1585) and various governors, the Fifth Council (1606) was forced to recognise that monasteries and private houses in India were full of images fashioned by non-converted artists.57 The multiplication of edicts attempting to control the production of Catholic art clearly demonstrates an anxiety on the part of the authorities that this production continued largely in the hands of Gentile artists, whose employment in this manner was in principle forbidden. Certainly, the Jesuits were main agents in this policy. They were the principal promoters of specific saints as spiritual patrons of artistic endeavour in India. In particular, they promulgated the medieval story that the Apostle Saint Thomas had gone to India in order to build churches.58

 54

For instance, in the report on the state of the mission from the end of 1545, Vicar General Miguel Vaz informed King D. João III that the “mocadan” (chief) of the painters was making a very good living by painting altar-pieces for the churches of India and for Portuguese households. (Documenta Indica, vol. I, 86) 55 Azevedo, Arte cristã na Índia Portuguesa, 101. 56 According to a text regarding the peace treaties between Governor Lopo Soares and the Queen and other rulers of Coulan, written on 25 November 1516, after the Portuguese conquered the city of Coulan, the local rulers were obliged to sponsor the reconstruction of the destroyed church of Saint Thomas in the place where it had stood before, and to ensure the former lands and rents (Documentação, vol. I, 285). 57 “Acts of the Fifth Council of the Archdiocese of Goa” (1606), in Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, vol. IV, 214-215. 58 All Jesuit chroniclers of the Orient refer to “reliable” information concerning the evangelisation of Saint Thomas in India extracted from local documentary India sources or received orally, Cristina Osswald, Cristina, “A lenda do Apóstolo S. Tomé no Malabar e os Jesuítas entre os sécs. XVI e XVIII”, Brotéria 167 (2008), 140.



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According to a Jesuit chronicle on the Orient by the Portuguese Francisco de Souza, just as Saint Thomas, the Apostle of India, had interceded for the conversion of the masons and carpenters, the Virgin Mary had committed herself to the conversion of painters. Her intention was allegedly to ensure that sacred pictures would depict, and therefore promote devotion and decency in India. So the story goes, the Virgin appeared in a vision to the mocadan (chief) of the painters in India.59 This compact between the Order and its indigenous artists was further underwritten by a common creed: the conversion of the Goan castes of goldsmiths and painters between 1559 and 1560 was mainly due to the efforts of the Jesuits, who had every incentive to catechise the natives they employed as artists in their buildings.

The Modo Nostro and the Modo Goano and their contributions to iconography Descriptions of the favourite decorative themes of Jesuit buildings in Goa suggest that they boasted a rich and varied iconography. Among the myriad devotions honoured and represented in churches, absolute priority was naturally given to the central role of Christocentric devotion and iconography. The local Jesuits usually displayed nativity cribs during Christmas season and at Easter would organise theatre plays and dances representing scenes from the Passion. In particular, they dedicated their main church in the Orient to the name of Bom Jesus. Its original oil ceiling decorated by the Florentine painter Bartolomeo Fontebuoni between 1613 and 1617 depicted the Holy Name of Jesus in the largest central panel surrounded by eighteen panels over the nave together developing a Christocentric cycle depicting various scenes of the life and miracles of the Saviour.60



59 Francisco Souza, Oriente Conquistado a Jesus Cristo pelos Padres da Companhia de Jesus da Província de Goa (1710), Porto, Lello & Irmão, 1979, 157. 60 Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 55.



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Figure 35. Oil painting of Jesuits in Adoration of the Salvator Mundi, Bom Jesus church, Indian artist, first half of the 17th century.

Participants at the First Council of the Archdiocese of Goa in 1567 remarked: “There are more houses honouring the Blessed Virgin Mary in this province then there are feasts celebrating her.”61 This statement clearly demonstrates the importance of the Marian cult in Goa, a cult that was also encouraged by the Jesuits. The variety and importance of Marian devotions and iconography in Jesuit churches can be seen in the dedication of approximately one-third of those in Salsette (seven or eight), to various Marian cults. In 1579, General Mercurian sent a copperplate of the Madonna di San Luca from Rome to Goa, where it was known essentially as “Nossa Senhora das Neves”. Reflecting the importance of this devotion, in 1596 the Archbishop of Goa, D. Aleixo de Menezes, officially recognised the primacy of the Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Neves over the

 61

“First Council of the Archdiocese of Goa (1567), First session, Decree 13”, in Documentação para a História das Missões no Padroado Português do Oriente, 1995, vol. X, 374.



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other churches in Goa. Especially emblematic of this was the increase in Goa of representations of Jesuits venerating the Virgin Mary.

Fig. 36. Oil painting of five Jesuits in Adoration of Our Lady and Saint Catherine, patron of Goa, with two Evangelists, turn of the 17th century, Indian painter, Basilica of Bom Jesus.

The conversion of Saul of Tarsus marks the remote beginnings of the mission to the Gentiles in Christian theological history. Put another way, the figure of Saint Paul often illustrates the missionary vocation within Christian belief. The first Jesuit missionary establishment in the Orient was the Colégio de S. Paulo in Goa. Jesuit colleges in Macao (1590s), Diu (1601), the second college in Goa (S. Paulo Novo, 1618) and many churches throughout the Orient followed soon after and all were consecrated to Saint Paul.62 Particularly telling was the very richly

 62

Osswald, “Goa and Jesuit cult and iconography before 1622”, 159-160.



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decorated panel showing Paul’s conversion, which completely covered the front wall of the apse of the second church of S. Paulo. In the ceiling of Bom Jesus, a panel of Saint Paul immediately followed on from the main panel depicting the Holy Name of Jesus.63 In 1585, the Third Council of the Archdiocese of Goa decreed that Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins should be awarded special veneration in the Archdiocese. Clearly, the Jesuits played the main role in this process. Primary sources are full of references to Jesuit diffusion of the “true relics” of Ursula and the virgins throughout Portuguese territories. The head of Saint Gerasima, in hagiography the sister of Saint Ursula and Queen of Sicily, was transported from Europe to the Church of S. Paulo in 1548. The head of Saint Boniface, captain of the virginal army of the 11.000, was venerated in the same church around 1578. In 1610, the College of Salsette possessed lavishly decorated reliquaries with numerous relics of the virgins and their male counterparts. The Jesuits also sent heads of virgins to Melaka (1576), Japan (1579) and Daman (1581). Moreover, the veneration and iconography of Saint Ursula extended also to non-Jesuit contexts. The celebration of her feast-day (21 October) in Goa involved copious decoration of the city’s streets with assorted branches, alongside richly coloured rugs and cloth, clearly representing episodes of her life and cult.64 Saint Ursula is also depicted in the cycle of female martyrs at the female Augustinian Convento de Santa Mónica. Angels were a recurrent motif in the decoration of both the façades and the interiors of Jesuit and non–Jesuit churches in the Orient. Concerning the former, a side altar of the Noviciate building in Goa was dedicated to the Guardian Angels. The Jesuits fostered this cult in Salsette to the extent that in 1590 the converted inhabitants sponsored an altar in the Igreja do Espírito Santo, Margan.65 Indeed, among the many Jesuit devotions to angels, pride of place goes to the Guardian Angel (Anjel da Guarda). The Ratio Studiorum (main teaching handbook of Jesuit colleges), and many

 63

Osswald, Jesuit Art in Goa between 1542 and 1655: From Modo Nostro to Modo Goano, 98. 64 Cristina Osswald, “The Society of Jesus and the diffusion of the cult and iconography of Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins in the Portuguese Empire during the second half of the 16th century”, in A Companhia de Jesus na Península Ibérica nos sécs. XVI e XVII, espiritualidade e cultura, Actas do Colóquio Internacional – Maio 2004, Porto: Instituto de Cultura Portuguesa/ Centro Inter-Universitário de História da Espiritualidade da Universidade do Porto, 2005, 605-606. 65 “Annual Letter of the Province of India (1590)”, in Documenta Indica, vol. XV, 542.



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congregations operating in Jesuit colleges, propagated this cult with great success.

Fig. 37. Scene of the Life of St. Ignatius, Rachol. Indian artist, first half of seventeenth century.

As noted, Jesuits in Goa assiduously diffused the cult and iconography of the Order’s most illustrious members. Their main college in Rachol, Salsette (presently a seminary for secular priests), was dedicated to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Order. The news of the canonisation of Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, Isidore of Seville, Philip Neri and Francis Xavier arrived in Goa in 1623. One year later, the local church celebrated the event with great magnificence. Five pyramids decorated with emblems and oil paintings were raised in the most central locations, such as the Terreiro dos Vicereis, Bom Jesus, and in front of the two Jesuit



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colleges. Moreover, an engraved altarpiece with Ignatius and Xavier venerating the Virgin Mary was hung in the High Chapel the same year.66 The panels, which still cover the side walls of the same High Chapel and depict scenes from the life of Ignatius, can also be dated from the first half of the seventeenth century, as can the paintings of the sacristy partly ornamented with episodes from the life of Ignatius of Loyola. The process of peripheral influence on the centre caused by global change is nowhere better exemplified than by a Goan figure: Saint Francis Xavier. Due to the fact that he came to embody the ideal missionary, he is one of the more popular saints of the early modern period. Some of the most famous artists, such as Peter Paul Rubens or Bartolomé Esteban de Murillo, contributed to the iconography of this saint. Not surprisingly, the cult of Francis Xavier was especially strong in Goa. Moreover, Goa provided a decisive contribution to both the cult and iconography of Francis Xavier. The first efforts of the Society of Jesus to foster the saint's canonisation took place in Goa. In 1575, participants at the First Congregation of the Jesuit Province of India urged that accounts of episodes and miracles of Xavier be collected and sent to Rome. Three years later, the two Goan Jesuits Manuel Teixeira and Francisco Pérez (both personal acquaintances of Xavier) were instructed to write a biography. In spite of the fact that both biographies remained unprinted until the twentieth century, that of Teixeira had considerable influence on the hagiography and iconography of Francis Xavier, as it provided the most detailed description. Moreover, the portrait of Xavier completed in Goa in 1584 and sent to Rome (remains untraceable) was used as the basis for his effigies. Indeed, the Flemish engraver Theodor Galle (1571-1633) used it for Torsellino’s biography of Xavier that determined the later iconography of this “Goan” figure.67

 66

ARSI, Goa 33.I, Goana Historia, f. 760v, ARSI, Goa 38, Indiar. Orient. Miscell., f. 720; Teresa Albuquerque, Goa: The Rachol legacy, Mumbai: Wenden Offset Pvt Ltd, 1997, 48-49 and Pedro Dias, “Baixos Relevos Maneiristas das Igrejas IndoPortuguesas”, in Actas da Conferencia Internacional Vasco da Gama e a India. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1999, 356. 67 Orazio Torsellino, De vita Francisci Xaverii : qui primus qSocietate Iesu in India, & Iaponia Euangelium promulgauit, Romae : Ex typograpgia [sic] Gabiana, 1594.



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Fig. 38. Martyrs of Salsette, Church of Our Lady of the Martyrs, Goa, 18th century.

Notwithstanding the fact that the five Jesuits martyred in Salsette in 1583 were beatified as late as 1893, they found their way into Jesuit art and devotion immediately after their deaths. In fact, it was a mere two years after these occurred that the Society began to promulgate accounts of their martyrdom. Around 1628, the martyrs were portrayed with other Jesuit martyrs in the Roman noviciate of Saint Andrea al Quirinale, in order to foster emulation on the part of young candidates for the Order. Ten years later, an oil painting depicting their sacrifice was kept at il Gesù, Rome. They were also chosen to decorate the title pages of official lives of Ignatius of Loyola. As a matter of interest, the martyrs of Salsette were represented twice in the official life of Ignatius that commemorated his



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canonisation in 1622.68

Conclusions I hope to have demonstrated here the significant role played by Jesuit art, the Modo Nostro, within and beyond the Goan space. I argue that the Jesuits were principal agents in the formation of the Modo Goano. Being economically and politically the most powerful religious order within the Portuguese empire, they were responsible for a greater number of more prominently sited buildings than their rivals. Often these were both larger and more lavish than the buildings of the other Catholic orders.69 Accordingly, the Goan urban, architectural and decorative panorama was decisively shaped by the local Jesuits. Their role was crucial in transforming Goa from an Hindu city into Goa, the Rome of the Orient, according to Tridentine conceptions. Simultaneously, in formulating a strategy of accommodation to local conditions, they immediately recognised and appropriated the immense artistic resources of Indian art and artists, thereby contributing to a dynamic and creative symbiosis. This was achieved despite the fact that the Jesuits benefited hugely from the contemporary policy of tabula rasa. Indeed, as noted above, most of their settlements were located on the former sites of Hindu temples destroyed by European Catholics. The Province of India was the first Jesuit province overseas. In addition, it was the headquarters of both the Portuguese empire and its missionary enterprise, the Portuguese Padroado, as well as of the Jesuit Province of India. Thus, the city served as a privileged training ground for Jesuit artistic endeavour. The buildings of Goa ranked among the most venerable of Jesuit buildings and the area became a creative crucible of artists, prototypical forms and artistic strategies and iconographies. In particular, Goa was given a central place in Tridentine devotion and iconography on account of Francis Xavier and the five Jesuits who were martyred there in 1583.

 68

Osswald, “Goa and Jesuit Cult and Iconography before 1622”, 167-168. The foundation of the Colégio of S. Paulo Novo (1610-1616) against the will of the local religious and political authorities well illustrates the power enjoyed by the Society of Jesus in Goa. Indeed, local religious and civic authorities approved the college’s foundation only after it had already taken place. Both Viceroy Jerónimo de Azevedo (1612-1617) and the Town Hall granted approval in 1613. The Crown assented even later, in 1617 (Dois compendios das ordens dos padres gerais e congregações provinciais da Provincia dos Jesuitas de Goa feitos em 1640, ed. José Wicki, Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1981, 500).

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CHAPTER ELEVEN ISLANDS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD MALYN NEWITT

Introduction In the Introduction to his book, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750, K.N. Chaudhuri quoted Braudel’s claim that there was an essential unity to the history of the Mediterranean, “that the Turkish Mediterranean lived and breathed with the same rhythms as the Christian”, and he continued, “the historian of the Indian Ocean must ask himself whether a similar claim is valid for the countries bordering that vast ocean.” Numerous historians have set out to answer this question and to emulate, as far as they can, the towering achievement of Braudel. Chaudhuri himself concluded, “the idea of a common geographical space defined by the exchange of ideas and material objects was quite strong, not only in the minds of merchants but also in those of political rulers and ordinary people”.1 Before the coming of the Europeans, the trade of the western Indian Ocean, bounded by the continental land masses of Arabia, Africa and India, was conducted by a maritime community of ship masters, traders and commercial agents who had cultural and kinship ties with all the coastal communities around the ocean and who were often able to establish a high degree of independence from the land-based states of the mainland. This paper will follow E.A. Alpers’s lead and explore the importance of the islands in making this independence possible and in

1

Kirti N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean. An economic history from the Rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 1, 21.

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facilitating the movement of trade.2 It will also look at the way the islands shaped the maritime empires of the Omani and the European powers which tried to control the oceanic space of the Indian Ocean and will argue that the variety of ethnic groups which passed through or settled in these islands set in motion a process of ethnogenesis which created the island cultures that underpinned this independence. The main groups of islands considered are the Maldives, the Mascarenes, the Seychelles, the Comoros and the islands of the Swahili coast, although there are other islands and island groups, for example Socotra, the Chagos and the many small but important islands in the Gulf and on the coasts of India, whose history follows a similar trajectory. Small islands have certain intrinsic characteristics. They have clearly defined borders, which make it relatively easy for the whole of an island to be brought under direct rule from a centre (although this is not invariably the case as the history of the warring towns of the Comoros islands demonstrates). On the other hand islands have built-in separatist tendencies that make it difficult to bring different islands together within a single state system. To compensate for this, the sea provides relatively good communications that can create a wide-ranging network of contacts that are often not available to land-locked continental societies. Although in the early stages of settlement islands attract immigrants looking for virgin land, once a population has become established the confined space of islands results in land shortages and problems in accommodating population growth. In many cases these demographic pressures lead to further emigration and the populations of many island groups (the Comoros and the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic are examples) give rise to diasporic communities which continue to look to their islands of origin for cultural identity and sometimes as places to which to return. In this way the islands can become the focus of an enduring cultural nostalgia and conservatism.3

Island security The western Indian Ocean is governed by the monsoons, which prevent direct voyages in a single season from India or the Gulf to any part of Africa south of Mozambique Island. As a consequence, entrepot ports 2 Edward A. Alpers, ‘Indian Ocean Africa: the island factor’, East Africa and the Indian Ocean, Princeton N.J.: Markus Wiener, 2009, Chapter 3. 3 Many of these themes were discussed in Helen Hintjens and Malyn Newitt eds., The Political Economy of Small Tropical Islands, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1992.

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flourished. Most were located on islands where large cargoes could be landed and broken up for onward distribution on the following monsoon. When European ships began to arrive via the Cape these ports became important for Indiamen ‘wintering’ while they waited for a favourable monsoon to take them further east. Obvious examples are provided by Kilwa, Mombasa. Zanzibar and Mozambique on the coasts of East Africa, Ormuz and Bahrein in the Gulf and sites such Mumbai on the coasts of India. The most significant advantage that these islands possessed was the security they were able to provide for merchants and their shipping since islands, even those which lay only just off shore, were relatively easy to defend against interference from the mainland. Although most such islands remained highly dependent on the mainland communities for labour, food and resources of all kinds, their physical separation allowed them far greater independence than was enjoyed by settlements situated on the mainland coasts themselves. Although there existed many coastal communities in eastern Africa which earned their living from fishing or coastal trade, almost all the large port-towns that were successful in international commerce were located on islands – the decline of towns like Sofala and Melinde showing just how precarious a location sited on the mainland could be.4 The fact that the principal port-towns were sited on islands contributed to their independence not only from the mainland but also from one another. As C.S. Nicholls wrote, “these towns, despite their cultural similarities, were politically independent of one another… such fragmentation had been determined in part by topographical factors, which discouraged the formation of large political units.”5 There has been considerable debate over the extent to which the growth of the urban communities of eastern Africa depended on international commerce. According to Richard Wilding, “few of the Swahili town sites have a good mooring harbour. Many have poor shallow sea approaches often swept by currents or ill protected from storms”.6 These towns, it has been argued, emerged from the economic and social development of the peoples of the African mainland not from seaborne commerce. However, it is important to make a distinction between the large port-towns like Kilwa and Mombasa which were important entrepots 4 For a discussion of this topic, see Michael N. Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders. The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1998, 74-5. 5 Christine S. Nicholls, The Swahili Coast: politics, diplomacy and trade on the East African littoral, 1798-1856, London: Allen and Unwin, 1971, 23. 6 Richard Wilding, The Shorefolk: Aspects of the Early Development of Swahili Communities, Mombasa: Fort Jesus Occasional Papers No 2, 1987, 60.

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in international trade and whose reliance “on the international connection was so complete that when the Portuguese cut the economic lifelines across the ocean the mercantile civilisation suffered a major setback”, as Abdul Sheriff put it,7 and the smaller towns of the littoral. Many of the latter were founded as offshoots of the larger cities and, again according to Wilding, at the very least “have good careening beaches” for small craft and were able to supply the major entrepots with locally produced utilitarian products including pottery, coir, gum, baskets and woven straw articles, cotton and cotton cloth, wood, stone and foodstuffs.8 This role was aided by the fact that the strings of islands lying off the East African coast provided a protected waterway which helped to bind the smaller coastal communities together. As Kenneth McPherson explained, “the shallow, island-protected waterways of the coast provided an ideal communication route for scattered coastal agricultural communities… [and] were further incentives to regular use of the coastal passage, in preference to any land route”.9 Mozambique Island illustrates clearly the advantages enjoyed by such island port-towns as well as the complexity of their relationships with the peoples of the mainland.10 Lying less than a mile offshore, Mozambique 7

Abdull Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, London: Currey, 1987, 15. 8 Malyn Newitt, `The southern Swahili Coast in the First Century of European Expansion’, Azania, XIII (1978) 111-126; and Malyn Newitt, `The Comoro Islands in Indian Ocean Trade before the 19th century’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 89-90, XXIII- 1-2, 1983, 139-165 with the sources quoted. 9 Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean. A History of People and the Sea, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, 23. 10 For the history of Mozambique Island, see Matteo Angius and Mario Zamponi eds., Ilha de Moçambique, San Marino: AIEP Editore, 1999; Eric Axelson, Portuguese in South East Africa 1600-1700, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1960; Eric Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa 1488-1600, Johannesburg: Struik, 1973; Charles R. Boxer, ‘Moçambique Island and the Carreira da India"’, Studia, 8, 1961, 95 – 132; Charles R. Boxer,‘Moçambique Island as a Way-station for Portuguese East-Indiamen’, Mariner’s Mirror 1962, 318; António Durão, Cercos de Moçambique, Lourenço Marques: Minerva Central Editora 1952; Ilha de Todos, Oceanos, No 25, January to March 1996, Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, Lisbon, 1996; Alexandre Lobato, `A Ilha de Moçambique’, Moçambique 42, April-June 1945, 7152; Alexandre Lobato, Ilha de Moçambique Panorama Estético, Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, Lisbon, 1966; Caetano Carvalho Montez, Apontamentos para o Roteiro dos Monumentos Militares Portugueses: Praça de São Sebastião, Monumenta, No 3, 1967, 5-22; Malyn Newitt, `Mozambique Island: the Rise and Decline of a Coastal City, 1500-1700’, Portuguese Studies, 20, 2004, 21-37;

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was situated at the narrowest point of the Mozambique Channel, at the extreme southern point that could be reached in one monsoon by merchants from India. Ships bound for the Comoros and northern Madagascar or destinations further south, and later ships from Europe using the sea-lanes of the Mozambique Channel, found Mozambique Island an essential point of call. It is not surprising therefore that the port developed a ship-building and repair industry which increased still further its importance in the networks of maritime commerce. Mozambique’s situation gave it a high degree of security. It survived the passage of the Zimba in the sixteenth century and was never successfully attacked by any group from the mainland. However, the island location that gave it security from the landward side made it vulnerable to attack from the sea and on three occasions it was besieged by the Dutch as well as suffering attacks by the English and Omani. While maintaining a politically independent existence, looking outward over the Indian Ocean, Mozambique Island was in many respects highly dependent on the mainland: it had no water supply of its own and it relied on the mainland for food and other resources, while much of its commercial importance was derived from the trade in gold and ivory, and later slaves, that was conducted with the peoples of the interior. All the islands on the Swahili coast to some extent shared Mozambique’s experience, though often with a different narrative. Both Kilwa and Mombasa, while being important entrepots in Indian Ocean commerce, had close and often difficult relations with the peoples of the mainland while their elites depended on the mainland for labour and foodstuffs and on the trade in ivory brought from inland.11 These island locations were, of course, vulnerable to attacks from the sea, though it does not appear that such attacks were common before the arrival of the Portuguese. Kilwa was, however, devastated by the Zimba in 1587, its island security being breached when a dissident faction invited in the Malyn Newitt, ‘Mozambique Island: the Rise and Decline of a Colonial Port City’, in Liam M. Brockey ed., Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern World, Ashgate: Farnham, 2008, 105-128; Carlos da Silva Lopes, “Miguel de Arruda e a Fortaleza de São Sebastião de Moçambique”, Primeiro Congresso da História da Expansão Portuguesa no Mundo, 2a secção, Os Portugueses no Oriente, Lisbon, 1938, 22-32; Soveral, Ayres de Carvalho, Breve Esboço sobre a Ilha de Moçambique, Porto: Livraria Chardron, 1887; Ilha de Moçambique em perigo de desaparecimento, Exposição realizada sob o alto patrocínio de Samora Machel e António Ramalho Eanes, Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1983. 11 See discussion in Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders. The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era, 69-73.

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invaders.12 Mombasa, also important in the slave and ivory trade, was successfully attacked from the sea by the Portuguese and the Turks and also suffered the effects of the Zimba whose invasion of the island was facilitated by the Portuguese.13 Mombasa then became a centre for Portuguese maritime commerce until captured by the Omani in 1698. For the Omani the island location of Mombasa was all important. As Abdul Sheriff wrote: with the fragmented commercial economy of the Swahili coast, and with each city-state controlling its own narrow hinterland (…) the Omanis needed control over strategic points along the coast to dominate its trade. Mombasa appeared to be an ideal headquarters with the impregnable Fort Jesus and a secure harbour dominating the northern approaches to the coast.14

The geographical characteristics and location of Zanzibar (today called Unguja) and Pemba has given their history a trajectory which resembles that of the Comoros rather than the other East African islands. The islands lie sufficiently far from the coast (two days sail) not to have the same intimate relationship with the mainland enjoyed by the other Swahili islands, while their larger size (2,643 and 984 sq kms respectively) provided opportunities for the commercial elites to produce their own food and eventually to develop plantation agriculture. Early in the nineteenth century the Omani sultans relocated their capital from Muscat to Zanzibar – the importance of this island lying in its security from mainland disturbances, its ready access to the commercial routes of the western Indian Ocean, its agricultural production and the successful cultivation of cloves as an export crop. Zanzibar became the centre of a maritime commercial empire but also the base for the projection of Omani political power into Africa itself, so that in the early nineteenth century the Omani sultanate became the first of the Indian Ocean maritime empires to establish foreign domination in continental East Africa. The Comoros resemble Zanzibar but with some important differences, again stemming from their geographical location. The islands have often been compared to stepping-stones linking Africa to Madagascar and have 12

For the Zimba attack on Kilwa see Diogo do Couto, Da Ásia, década XI, capitulo VI printed in George M. Theal, Records of South Eastern Africa, Cape Town, 1898-1903, reprinted Struik, Cape Town, 1964, vol 6, 345-348. 13 Charles R. Boxer and Carlos de Azevedo, Fort Jesus and the Portuguese in Mombasa, London: Hollis & Carter, 1960. 14 Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 65.

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provided obvious routes for small sailing craft making short haul journeys as well as commercial centres for transoceanic trade. The traditions of the commercial elites who inhabited the stone towns of the islands recognised clan and religious ties to Persia and the Gulf as well as to the Swahili cities of eastern Africa.15 The islands are diverse in character. Ngazija (Grande Comore), the largest of the islands, has a rugged and inhospitable coastline and no fresh water. It was the island least favoured by international commerce and was seldom visited by large European ships. Maore (Mayotte) on the other hand, surrounded by a barrier reef, provided good protected anchorage for ships able to negotiate the narrow entrances to the lagoon. The islands most favoured by international commerce, however, were Mwali (Mohéli/Mohilla) and Nzuwani (Anjouan/Johanna) both of which had good water supplies and relatively safe anchorages. All of the islands have rich volcanic soils ideal for the development of agriculture but prior to the seventeenth century there was only a limited market for their agricultural products. When the islands first appear in the historical record it is as producers of foodstuffs for a local market supplying regional shipping and the Swahili coastal towns.16 In addition to producing foodstuffs, the Comoros islands had an important role in the slave trade. Slaves, imported from both Africa and Madagascar, were either retained as field labour and slave wives, or were sold on to destinations in India and the Gulf. Islands like the Comoros (and the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic) played a particularly important part in the slave trade. As islands they provide a safe location for slaves to be held prior to onward sale while a process of acculturation took place – the slaves acquiring something of the skills, language and

15

For the traditional history of the Comoro Islands, see Gernot Rotter, Muslimische Inseln vor Ostafrika: Eine Arabische Komoren-Chronik des 19 Jahrhunderts, Beirut: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1976; Georges Boulinier et. al. Islam et Littératures dans L’Archipel des Comores, ASEMI (Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Insulindien) XII (1981); Ben Ali Damir, G. Boulinier and P. Ottino, Traditions d’une lignée royale des Comores, Paris: Harmattan, 1985 which has an extensive bibliography on the traditional histories; I am also grateful to Iain Walker for showing me his unpublished paper ‘The Historical Basis for Diversity, or Mythical Histories and Historical Myths’. 16 Newitt, ‘The Comoro Islands in Indian Ocean Trade before the 19th century’, and the sources quoted therein; Alpers, East Africa and the Indian Ocean, chapter 8: ‘A complex relationship: Mozambique and the Comoros Islands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’.

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religion of the communities where they were held which increased their value in the market.17 Like the other islands under discussion, the Comoros were largely, but not entirely, insulated from mainland political movements and they were always vulnerable to attack from the sea as was clearly demonstrated with the rise of Indian Ocean piracy, when predatory communities located in northern Madagascar (at first European and American renegades and then their Malagasy descendants, the Zana Malata) used their sea power to waylay merchant and pilgrim shipping and to raid the islands for slaves. In the nineteenth century two of the islands were overrun by dissident warlords from Madagascar and their vulnerability to such incursions was reflected in the post-colonial era when on a number of occasions mercenaries were able to reach the islands by sea and bring about violent regime change.18 The stone towns of the Comoros were almost all located near the sea and, like their counterparts on the Swahili coast, were controlled by separate clans each headed by its own ‘sultan’. All the islands had more than one such town and Ngazidja eventually had around twenty. In the relatively narrow confines of these islands the existence of separate towns and ruling clans inevitably created rivalries and contests for power, which frequently spilled over into conflicts between the islands. The historical legacy of this rivalry can be seen clearly in the modern political history of the Comoros which has been marked by endless factional disputes and inter-island rivalries.19 17

For the slave trade of the Comoros, see Gwyn Campbell, ‘Madagascar and Mozambique in the Slave Trade of the Western Indian Ocean 1800-1861’, in William G. Clarence Smith ed., The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century, London: Frank Cass 1989; Gill Shepherd, ‘The Comorians and the East African Slave Trade’ in James L. Watson ed., Asian & African Systems of Slavery, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980. 18 For a recent study of the Betsimisaraka, see Arne Bialuschewski, ‘Pirates, Slavers, and the Indigenous Population in Madagascar, c.1690-1715’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 38, 3 (2005), 401-425 and ‘Pirates, Malata and the Betsimisaraka Confederation on the East Coast of Madagascar in the first half of the eighteenth century’, in Philip J. Havik and Malyn Newitt eds., Creole Societies in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, Lusophone Studies 6, Dept., of Hispanic, Portuguese & Latin American Studies, University of Bristol (Bristol, 2007); Alpers, East Africa and the Indian Ocean, chapter 7: `Madagascar and Mozambique in the nineteenth century: the era of the Sakalava Raids 1800-1820’. 19 For the general history of the Comoros, see Barbara Dubins, ‘A Political History of the Comoro Islands 1795-1886’, unpublished Ph.D. (University of Boston, 1972); Newitt, ‘The Comoro Islands in Indian Ocean Trade before the 19th

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In a world where small boats making short journeys were the mainstay of coastal trade, the islands provided a regular channel of communication between Africa and Madagascar. They formed a corridor for the transmission of animal and plant species and also for the movement of migrants. The southern regions of Madagascar lie outside the reach of the seasonal monsoons and were seldom visited by seafarers before the arrival of Europeans but the north of Madagascar constituted one of the mainland boundaries of the monsoon Indian Ocean. Madagascar had received migrants from Borneo and Java, probably around the eighth century CE but, although a direct ocean crossing from South East Asia was possible, it seems most likely that the migrants arrived by a more circuitous route following the monsoon navigation from India to Arabia and eastern Africa. The Comoros would then have provided the obvious pathway for further migration to Madagascar.20 That the islands provided a conduit for the movement of migrants was clearly demonstrated in the nineteenth century when, as a by-product of the wars in Madgascar, fugitive Sakalava and Merina warlords with their followers arrived in Maore and Mwali establishing new ruling elites and adding a fresh layer to the palimpsest of the islands’ ethnic composition.21 Although the part played by the Comoros in the peopling of Madagascar remains speculative, their role in the spread of Islamic and Swahili influence to the northern coast of the island is well documented. Madagascar was particularly known for the export of slaves, timber and stone (important to island and coastal communities where there was no native sources of stone) and by the early sixteenth century there was a string of port-towns along the north-western coast the population of which was known as Antalaotra and which were ruled by an Islamised merchant elite which had close links with the Comoros.

The Seychelles, Mascarenes and Maldives prior to the coming of the Europeans Before the sixteenth century a network of trade routes directly linked monsoon Africa and its islands to the Red Sea, the Gulf and western India century’, and Jean Martin, Comores: quatre îles entre pirates et planteurs. Tome I, Razzias Malgaches et Rivalités Internationales (fin XVIIIe-1875) 2nd edition, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998. 20 Migrations to Madagascar are most recently discussed in Solofo Randrianja and Stephen Ellis, Madagascar a Short History, London: Hurst. 2009. 21 For details see Dubins, ‘A Political History of the Comoro Islands 1795-1886’.

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with relayed extensions to southern Africa, the Mediterranean, the eastern Indian Ocean and destinations inland on all the continental landmasses. The large ocean-going ships that operated these routes were owned by professional sea captains who had close commercial and family ties with the ruling elites of the coastal cities. These elites provided the services required by international commerce including ship repair, pilots, warehousing and regulations governing the sale of goods. The major maritime routes ran from the Indian coast towards the Gulf and Red Sea and thence to eastern Africa. The predominance of this route is largely accounted for by the importance of Cambay textiles and Persian pottery in the African market. As a result it was rare for voyages to be made directly across the ocean to Africa from India or the eastern Indian Ocean and the mid-ocean islands, although known to navigators, were seldom visited. The Seychelles were known to Muslim pilots as the Zarin islands and the Arabic name of one of the islands, Aldabra (al-Dabaran) has survived in the geographical lexicon, while the Mascarenes are located, apparently with Arabic names, on the Cantino map of 1502 whose author made extensive use of the knowledge of Indian Ocean pilots.22 These islands, however, were too far from the main shipping lanes to be ports of call and too far from the mainland to be sites for commercial port-towns. As a result they were never settled by Islamic maritime communities. The Seychelles did have one product that was highly valued - the so-called coco de mer , which was used in Indian and Chinese medicine and which by the sixteenth century had become an exotic exhibit in the curio cabinets of European nobles. However, the geographical origin of this nut was not known until the eighteenth century and therefore did not bring the islands into the purview of Indian Ocean commerce. Off the western coasts of India and Sri Lanka lie the extensive archipelagos of the Lakshadweep (Laccadive) and Maldive islands. The former, lying close to the coast of Malabar, became an adjunct of the Malabar state of Cannanore and were economically significant for their production of coir. The twelve hundred Maldives islands, in contrast, occupy a vast tract of ocean (90,000 square miles) further to the south. They also were peopled from India and Sri Lanka and their language (Divehi) was linked to Sinhala. However, their geographical location, their products and their religion made them an important part of the commercial 22

Deryck Scarr, Seychelles since 1770, London: Hurst, 2000, 3; however, see Shawkat Toorawa, ‘Imagined Territories in Pre-Dutch History of the South West Indian Ocean’, in Sandra T. Evers and Vinesh Hookoomsing eds., Globalisation and the South-West Indian Ocean, Réduit: University of Mauritius, 2000, 31-40.

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world of the western Indian Ocean. Ships with destinations in Sri Lanka or ports further east had to pass through the archipelago which thus acquired a strategic importance and provided ports of call for oceanic shipping. François Pyrard, who was shipwrecked in the Maldives in 1602, described how, the traffic through the Maldives is great and they are very much frequented for trade purposes. Merchants arrive from every direction, from Malabar, Barcelor, Honavar, Bacalor, Cannanore, Calicut, Tanur, Cochin, Quilon and Kayal; Gujuratis from Cambay, Surat and Chaul; Arabs, men from Bengal, São Tomé and Masulipatam, Ceylon and Sumatra, which bring goods that are highly valued there and in exchange take away those in which the islands are abundant.23

Among these were palm products and cowries. The Maldives was the principal source of cowry shells, which were monetarised in the economies of both India and Africa and were an extremely important item in Indian Ocean trade.24 The islanders had originally been Buddhist but sometime in the twelfth century their rulers had converted to Islam and by the early sixteenth century the islands formed part of the commercial and political network that linked Calicut on the Malabar coast with the kingdom of Kotte in Sri Lanka. This connection made them an important target for the Portuguese who tried, in the end unsuccessfully, to incorporate them into the Estado da Índia.

The Portuguese and Indian Ocean commerce The Portuguese opened a sea route from Europe to Asia in 1497-99 and in 1505 established the Estado da India. Their main purpose was to control the shipment of spices to Europe but, because they had little to bring from home, they had to obtain the products needed to exchange for the pepper and cinnamon by participating in the long established commerce of the western Indian Ocean. Portuguese strategy was to take control of the key island port-towns, which were vulnerable to their sea 23 Xavier de Castro ed., Voyage de Pyrard de Laval, 2 vols., Paris: Chandeigne, 1998, vol 1, 228. 24 Jan S. Hogendorn, ‘A Supply-side Aspect of the African Slave Trade: the Cowrie Production and Exports of the Maldives’, Slavery and Abolition, 2, (1981), 31-52; Ibn Battúta gives a detailed account of the trade in the 14th century, see Hamilton A. R. Gibb ed. and trans., Ibn Battúta Travels in Asia and Africa 13251354, London: Routledge, 1929, 243.

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power and, once captured, were easily defensible, and to make alliances wherever possible with states on the mainland. So Mozambique Island and Kilwa were occupied in 1506, Ormuz in 1515 and Diu in 1536. At first Mombasa was not occupied and instead the Portuguese established an alliance with the nearby sultan of Melinde, but Melinde became increasingly threatened from the interior by Somali, Zimba and Galla – and its inland capital, Gedi, was abandoned early in the sixteenth century, possibly because of water shortage.25 When it appeared that Mombasa might become a base for Turkish commerce raiders, the Portuguese built Fort Jesus in 1593 and persuaded the sultan of Melinde to move his capital there. It is significant that the Portuguese stuck closely to the patterns of trade and settlement that had already been established in the western Indian Ocean. Although Portuguese navigators charted and named the Mascarenes (after Pedro Mascarenhas) and the Seychelles (the Amirante islands being named after the ‘admiral’ Vasco da Gama), they did not occupy either group, and for the same reasons as their Muslim predecessors – the islands were too far from the main commercial routes to serve either as entrepots or as way stations. Nor did they occupy the Comoros with whose inhabitants they were content to trade for provisions and slaves. Nevertheless the Portuguese did alter the trade patterns of the western Indian Ocean in important ways. The East African islands now became nodes in a much greater system that linked Europe to Asia and the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Mozambique Island developed as a major stopping point for fleets sailing between Europe and India (at least a quarter of all ships returning from India stopped there in spite of orders that they should sail east of Madagascar) and the presence of the fleets that ‘wintered’ in Mozambique waiting for a favourable monsoon on the outward journey, substantially increased demand in the local economy.26 The Portuguese also extended their commerce further south than their Muslim predecessors had done, sending annual trading ships to Delagoa Bay to buy ivory. In this way a wide hinterland, that included the Limpopo valley and the Transvaal high veldt, were for the first time incorporated into the Indian Ocean commercial system. The Portuguese also tried to 25

Wilding, The Shorefolk: Aspects of the Early Development of Swahili Communities, 99 26 Thomas Bentley Duncan, ‘Navigation between Portugal and Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Cyriac K. Pullapilly and E. J. van Kley, Asia and the West. Encounters and Exchanges from the Age of Explorations, Notre Dame: Cross Roads Books, 1986; Newitt, ‘The Southern Swahili Coast in the First Century of European Expansion’.

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barter for gold nearer to its source, abandoning Kilwa and establishing trading stations on the Zambesi and eventually a presence at the gold trading fairs themselves. The Portuguese also established settlements in the Querimba Islands, partly to destroy the independence of the Swahili trading towns there and partly to get access to the locally produced cloth that had an important market on the African mainland. The port-town of Ibo rose from obscurity to become a regional centre for Portuguese influence, tapping the ivory and slave trade with the mainland. Ibo lay offshore, like so many of the East African port-towns, and was largely protected from disturbances on the mainland. However, it was vulnerable from the sea and, although the Portuguese built a fort there, the island was attacked in the early nineteenth century by the Betsimisaraka pirates.27 In general, the Portuguese island bases proved very secure. Ormuz was only taken in 1622 when the Portuguese lost command of the sea, while Diu defied many attacks (notably in 1538 and 1546) and remained in Portuguese hands until 1961. Mumbai was only surrendered to the English in 1668 as part of a diplomatic deal and Mombasa with its mainland and island dependencies only fell to the Omani in 1698. Mozambique Island, having defied three Dutch attacks between 1604 and 1608, half hearted attacks by the English and an assault by the Omani in 1671, remained Portuguese until 1975. The continued Portuguese presence in Mozambique Island was to shape Indian Ocean commerce and politics in a fundamental way. The Omani failure in 1671 meant that the influence of Oman never extended south of Cape Delgado, which thus became one of the earliest of modern Africa’s frontiers to be fixed. The Dutch defeats largely account for the VOC adopting what became known as the ‘outer passage’ to the east of Madagascar and founding a maritime empire based on the Cape, Mauritius and Batavia. This route took its ships from the Atlantic to Indonesia south of the monsoon wind system and a long way south of India. Although the Dutch attacked the Portuguese on the west coast of India and in lowland Sri Lanka in 1656-8, the focus of their maritime empire was never in the western Indian Ocean but turned eastwards from Melaka and Java to the Moluccas and Japan. To service this route way stations were sought. In 1636 a settlement was made on the uninhabited island of Mauritius and in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope. Had Mozambique fallen to the Dutch in the early seventeenth century it is likely that the island would have become the main base for the VOC, making the Mozambique Channel the 27

Alpers, East Africa and the Indian Ocean, chapter 7 ‘Madagascar and Mozambique in the nineteenth century: the era of the Sakalava Raids 1800-1820’.

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preferred route to Asia, while the Dutch, with their more evolved commercial capitalism, would have succeeded the Portuguese as the dominant power in the western Indian Ocean. Instead, as the decline of Portuguese military and commercial power gathered momentum, the way was open for the rise of Oman and for the expansion of Indian commercial capital in the eighteenth century.28 The English East India Company (EIC) was, at first, a much smaller operation than that of either the Dutch or the Portuguese. There was a brief period of alliance with the Dutch when the joint Fleet of Defence patrolled the western Indian Ocean between 1619 and 1622, a period which saw the Anglo-Persian attack on Ormuz and the English forcing their way into the Surat trade. This period, however, ended with the Amboyna Massacre of 1624 and, after an unsuccessful foray against Mozambique Island in 1628, the English Company changed its policy to one of uneasy alliance with the Portuguese. Like the Dutch and Portuguese, the EIC was in need of places where it could obtain fresh food and water, land the sick landed and make repairs to its ships. In the first half of the seventeenth century the Company’s ships made frequent use of St Helena, Saldanha Bay in South Africa, and Saint Augustine’s bay in southern Madagascar. In 1635 the Courteen Association received a royal warrant to set up plantations in the Indian Ocean and made unsuccessful attempts to plant settlements on Mauritius (headed off by the Dutch) and the island of Nossi Bé on the north-west coast of Madagascar. None of these proved satisfactory – St Helena was too far from the ultimate destinations and Saldanha Bay and Saint Augustine’s were sited on the mainland and were vulnerable to harassment by the peoples of the interior. Nossi Bé, although an island, was inhabited and the inhabitants proved uncompromisingly hostile.29 After the experience of the Gujurat famine of 1631, the EIC ships increasingly made use of the Comoros and established a working relationship with the ruling elites of Nzuwani and Mwali. The islands ideally served the Company interests. Not only were food and fresh water available but ships could be repaired, the sick landed and dispatches left, establishing the islands as an informal part of the Company’s communications system. With the Comoros as a convenient way station, the EIC ships continued throughout the eighteenth century to use the 28

Pedro Machado, ‘Gujarati Indian Merchant Networks in Mozambique, 1777c.1830,’ Ph.D., University of London, 2005. 29 For these developments, see Malyn Newitt, ‘The East India Company in the Western Indian Ocean in the Early Seventeenth Century’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, XIV (1986), 5-33, and sources quoted.

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‘inner passage’ on their way to India and the Gulf, but the Company never attempted to take over the islands or establish any formal control over them because the ruling island elites remained compliant with the Company’s needs.30 The Portuguese of Mozambique Island also continued to trade with the Comoros for food and slaves and the English presence in no way interfered with this. The island elites for their part saw their traditional commerce expand as the demand for foodstuffs and other services rose and their economy became monetarised through the payments made by Europeans in Spanish silver. However, the growth of dependence on the EIC created problems for the island elites. The fact that the English favoured the port-towns of Mutsammudu (in Nzuwani) and Fomboni (in Mwali) created rivalries with the less popular ports of call and there is some evidence for an increase in inter-island violence during this period.31 Moreover, the inhabitants of Ngazidja remained consistently hostile and discouraged visits by European shipping. More serious was the fact that the passage of EIC ships began to attract pirates. English privateers had operated in the Indian Ocean since the beginning of the seventeenth century and their numbers were swollen in the last quarter of the century by European and American pirates expelled from their Caribbean hunting grounds and by slavers from New England. In the 1690s a New Englander, Adam Baldridge, began the construction of a fortified settlement on the island of Sainte Marie on the north-east coast of Madagascar from which to conduct a trade in slaves and this soon became a base for pirates who preyed particularly on ships in the Mozambique Channel and on pilgrims bound from India to the Red Sea. Where previous European attempts at settlement on Madagascar had failed, Sainte Marie briefly prospered, secure in its island location. The pirates frequently visited the Comoros to sell their plunder and found the lagoons of Maore an ideal location to careen and repair ships and to lie in 30

Ibid and Newitt, ‘The Comoro Islands in Indian Ocean Trade before the 19th century’. There are many accounts of visits made by British ships to the Comoros, but see especially Sir William Jones, ‘Remarks on the Island of Hinzuan, or Johanna’, Asiatic Researches, London, 1807, vol 2, 77-107. 31 For a brief discussion of this issue, see Malyn Newitt, The Comoro Islands, Westview: Boulder Co., 1984, chapter 2. The most graphic account of hostilities between Nzwani and Mwali is contained in Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn, London: Dent, 1972, vol. 2, chapter 1 ‘Of Captain Misson’, 383-418. The widely held assumption that Daniel Defoe was the real author of this book has been challenged by Arne Bialuschewski who claims that Nathaniel Mist was the real author. See Arne Bialuschewski, ‘Daniel Defoe, Nathaniel Mist, and the General History of the Pyrates’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 98 (2004), 21-35.

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wait for merchantmen. The presence of pirates in the Comoros increased the level of violence in the area – the ruler of Maore on one occasion being captured and taken on board a pirate ship before he “ransomed himself for some Silver Chains to the Value of a thousand Dollars, and for what Provision they demanded; and at the setting him ashore, swore Allegiance to them as Masters of the Country.”32 Early in the eighteenth century the EIC began to take active measures against the pirates. The island location of Sainte Marie then proved vulnerable to attack from the sea and it seems that the pirate population decamped to the mainland.33 The campaign to eradicate the pirates had the effect of confirming the Company’s role as protector of the three smaller islands. This role was strengthened when, in the years after 1795, the islands were attacked by Betsimisaraka pirates (led by the Zana Malata, descendants of the pirates of an earlier generation). The sultan of Mutsamudu repeatedly asked for protection and, although James Prior in 1812 asserted that “a few gifts of powder or muskets, from chance visitors, constituted the sum of our assistance till the present moment”34, the EIC found itself drawn reluctantly into guaranteeing the protection of Nzuwani and hence into a more formal protectorate role. In the nineteenth century Nzuwani became a point from which the British could keep a watchful eye on French activity and on the slave trade in the Mozambique Channel and from which the British expeditions to explore the Zambesi could be organised. In 1846 a British consul was placed on the island (just a year after a consul was appointed to Zanzibar), but already by that time British strategic interests in the Indian Ocean were focused on Mauritius, which the British had acquired in 1810, and the importance of Nzuwani to Britain’s global strategy was in decline.35

The French After a number of privately organised trading expeditions, the best known of which was that recorded by François Pyrard which left France in 32

Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, vol 2, chapter 10 ‘Of Captain Nathaniel North and his Crew’, 517. 33 Bialuschewski, ‘Pirates, Malata and the Betsimisaraka Confederation on the East Coast of Madagascar in the first half of the eighteenth century’. 34 James Prior, Voyage along the Eastern Coast of Africa to Mosambique, Johanna, and Quiloa to St Helena to Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco in Brazil in the Nisus Frigate, London: Richard Phillips and Co., 1819, 58-9. 35 Gerald S. Graham, Great Britain and the Indian Ocean 1810-1850, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.

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1601, a French Compagnie des Indes was formed in 1624 to open up trade with India. The subsequent history of the French presence in the Indian Ocean was to be largely determined by the strategic location of the oceanic islands but with the added difference that, unlike the English, Dutch or Portuguese, the French began the commercial exploitation of the products of the islands themselves. Like the Dutch the French preferred the outer passage and in 1643 attempted to found a colony at Fort Dauphin (the modern Tolanagro) in the extreme south of Madagascar. The history of Fort Dauphin, which was abandoned in 1674, illustrates once again the problems faced by merchant elites (whether European or Muslim) in establishing bases on the mainland where they were exposed to the vicissitudes of local politics, and shows why island bases were always preferred, especially ones that were uninhabited. In 1649, with the Fort Dauphin settlement already in trouble, the governor, Etienne Flacourt, began the settlement of the island neighbour of Mauritius which he called Île de Bourbon. In 1691 some rather quixotic Huguenot refugees began the settlement of Rodrigues.36 As rivalry with Britain grew, the French sought a more secure base than that offered by the open roadsteads of Île de Bourbon. Following the 1710 evacuation of Mauritius by the Dutch (whose settlement at the Cape now provided the VOC with all the resources it needed), the new French Compagnie des Indes moved in 1721 to occupy Mauritius, which was renamed Île de France. The French occupation of the Mascarene Islands was first and foremost for strategic purposes. As Megan Vaughan puts it, “Île de France was … never the source of riches represented by the sugar colonies of the Antilles. Its value to the French lay in its geographical position. It was, they liked to think, the ‘key to India’”.37 The island was not only a way station for the supply of French Indiamen but in the eighteenth century became a base for French warships disputing control of the ocean with the British and for corsairs preying on British merchant shipping. It was strategic considerations also which led the famous governor of Île de France, Labourdonnais, to investigate the Seychelles in 1743 and his successor to take formal possession of them in 1756 (though the first permanent settlement dated only from 1770) as a pre-emptive measure against the East India Company.38 The strategic importance of the 36

For this bizarre episode, see A. J. Bertuchi, The Island of Rodriguez, London: John Murray, 1923, chapter 1. 37 Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island. Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius, Durham & London: Duke U.P., 2005, 35. 38 John T. Bradley, The History of Seychelles, Victoria: Clarion Press, 1940, 1820; Scarr, Seychelles since 1770, 6.

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Mascarene and Seychelles islands remained paramount until the end of French rule. In 1799 the French in Seychelles, confronted by armed British warships, agreed to remain neutral during the war and in 1810 Île de Bourbon and Île de France formally surrendered to the British. Until the eighteenth century the Indian Ocean island communities had existed primarily to provide services to the commercial elites. Only in the Comoros had the inhabitants of the islands engaged in production for the market and this was limited to the cultivation of food crops for sale to visiting ships. However, with the establishment of the French in the Mascarenes and Seychelles, islands themselves began to become centres for the production of tropical staples for the world market. The French islands had many advantages over the continental mainland that made plantation agriculture possible. The island locations meant that the slave labour force, in spite of some marronnage, had a stability not found on the mainland.39 At the same time the sea provided a convenient and cheap means of transport to distant markets while the tropical climate and rich soils allowed a range of tropical products to be produced. The French grew coffee successfully in Bourbon and experimented with cotton, spices like cloves and nutmeg and sugar (although the boom in sugar production followed the transfer of the islands to Britain). To supply these plantations with labour new commercial networks had to be created and, as their fortunes in India waned after the Seven Years War, the French began to build a new commercial empire focused on East Africa, Madagascar and the islands. French agents bought slaves from the Portuguese south of Cape Delgado, from the Omani and their allies to the north and from the Merina and Sakalava in Madagascar. The volume of the French slave trade soon began to reach an order of magnitude to be compared with the transAtlantic trade. According to estimates, up to 1810 the French imported 203, 490 slaves. Until 1770 70 per cent of the trade was with Madagascar but between 1770 and 1810 60 per cent came from Africa with Madagascar supplying 31 percent.40 The expansion in the demand for slaves brought 39

For a discussion of marronage, see Edward A. Alpers, ‘Flight to Freedom: Escape from Slavery among bonded Africans in the Indian Ocean World’, in Gwyn Campbell ed., The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, London: Frank Cass, 2004, 51-68; Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island. Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius, especially pp. 4-19 and a contemporary romantic description in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, first published 1787. 40 Figures from R. B. Allen, ‘The Mascarene Slave-Trade and Labour Migration in the Indian Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in Campbell ed., The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, 31-50.

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about a revolution in the supply system of mainland Africa and Madagascar which for centuries had been organised around a fairly consistent but low level of demand from the Gulf, Arabia and India (for example between 1770 and 1786 the Portuguese imported a yearly average of 53 slaves into their colonies in India).41 As the market for slaves grew, the Malagasy, Swahili and Afro-Portuguese middlemen who supplied the trade began to penetrate further inland and to stimulate the ‘production’ of greater numbers of slaves within African and Malagasy society. One dramatic example of this increase in the production of slaves is provided by the maritime slave raids carried out by the Betsimisaraka on the Comoros and the East African coast. However, the growing market for slaves in the Indian Ocean islands was not the sole cause for the spread of piracy, warfare in Madagascar, warlordism in the Zambesi hinterland and the expansion of Islam into the interior of East Africa. A number of other factors have to be considered, including the decade of severe drought in the 1820s which greatly increased instability in mainland Africa and hence the supply of slaves, the growth of demand in the Americas which could no longer be met in the Atlantic as Britain’s anti-slave trade campaign unfolded, the struggle for supremacy between Sakalava and Merina in Madagascar and the significant increase in the demand for slaves within Africa itself, as the market for agricultural produce expanded under Omani auspices. The capture of the Seychelles and Mascarenes by the British appeared to have put an end to France’s Indian Ocean empire, but in the nineteenth century the French sought, with a great deal of success, to rebuild their position as an Indian Ocean power, and once again this was to be based on island possessions. Britain had returned Île de Bourbon to France at the Vienna Peace in 1815 and this island, renamed La Réunion in 1848, became once again a base for the expansion of French economic and political power. Sugar planters from Réunion, looking for other likely islands in which to expand their production, cast their eyes on the Comoros and the islands off the west coast of Madagascar. As in the eighteenth century, strategic considerations combined conveniently with the needs of the planters. In 1843, after a survey by naval officers, the French decided that Maore with its protective reef would be an ideal site to provide a replacement for the naval base that had been lost in Mauritius. In his enthusiasm the French commander, Passot, called it the “Gibraltar of the Indian Ocean”. The French duly made a treaty with the recently 41

Pedro Machado, ‘A Forgotten Corner of the Indian Ocean: Gujurati Merchants, Portuguese India and the Mozambique Slave-Trade, c. 1730-1830’, in Campbell, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, 17-32.

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established Sakalava exile, Andriansouli, who welcomed the protection provided by the French navy for his fragile rule in the island.42 As French planters had also established themselves on Nossi Bé in 1838, France was on course to rebuild its island empire. From Maore, French power was projected to Zanzibar where French and British were soon competing strongly for influence and, when Britain emerged triumphant in that battle, the French turned their attention to the other Comoros islands, which were made French protectorates after 1886, to Madagascar and to commercial penetration of Portuguese Mozambique. The partition of the western Indian Ocean among the imperial powers at the end of the century left the French with the Comoros, Réunion and Madagascar, while Britain retained Zanzibar, Seychelles, Mauritius/Rodrigues and the Maldives which were made a protectorate in 1887. Mainland East Africa itself was partitioned between British, Germans and Portuguese. The rivalry of Britain and France (with the Omani as a not insignificant third party) had been a duel for strategic control as well as for economic gain and capitalist enterprise, and the islands had been the key pieces on the chessboard throughout. It was widely recognised that control of the Mascarenes, Seychelles, Zanzibar and the Comoros, would bring with it control of the Indian Ocean itself. Nor is the game yet played out. In the 1960s Britain planned to maintain a presence East of Suez by building strategic airbases on five of the Indian Ocean islands. This plan was overtaken by the sterling crisis and by Britain’s decision to give up its formal and informal empire in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf. Only the Chagos Islands were retained and leased to the United States. “The locations of the islands were important but the crucial factor in selecting creole islands was that they could be rendered uninhabited and sovereignty retained in them” as Jean Houbert expressed it. The Chagos islands were duly rendered ‘uninhabited’, their inhabitants removed in a final demonstration of imperial heavy handedness. Mauritius and the Seychelles were then made independent.43 The French also granted independence to Madagascar and to three of the Comoros, but unlike Britain, France was determined to remain a power in the Indian Ocean and it was to be a power rooted in the islands as it had been in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1946 Réunion was 42

The classic account of the French occupation of Maore is Alfred L. Gevrey, Essai sur les Comores, Pondichéry: A. Saligny, 1870. See also Dubins, ‘A Political History of the Comoro Islands 1795-1886’. 43 Jean Houbert, ‘The Mascareignes, the Seychelles and the Chagos, Islands with a French Connection: Security in a Decolonised Indian Ocean’, in Hintjens and Newitt eds., The Political Economy of Small Tropical Islands, 64-75.

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granted departmental status as an integral part of France and thus of the future European Union. Maore remained for some years merely a Collectivité Territoriale but in 2009 was allowed to record an overwhelming Yes vote in a referendum on departmental status.44 More significant, but often forgotten, the French retained full sovereignty over the uninhabited Îles Éparses in the Mozambique Channel with the associated territorial waters and ocean bed rights.45 Moreover, as France sought to expand its post-colonial activity in the region, Seychelles and Mauritius witnessed a revival of French cultural influence and both joined the Francophonie – Mauritius in 1970 and Seychelles in 1976. France thus maintained a sovereign presence in the Indian Ocean and remained an Indian Ocean power, being a founder member in 1984 of the Indian Ocean Commission, whose official language is French.

Ethnogenesis and the spread of empire If the story of the Indian Ocean Islands were simply the story of the entrepots of commercial elites and naval bases founded by imperial powers whose ambitions were focussed on the continental mainland, it would be only of limited interest. However, the history of the islands hints at another aspect of empire that is sometimes given less attention than it deserves. The formation of the creole cultures of the Indian Ocean, what Michael Pearson has called the “littoral society”46, has a great historical time depth and can be seen to a greater or lesser extent in almost all the island communities and in some of the mainland regions as well. These creolised populations that came into existence, at first with the multilayered identities common to port-towns world-wide, eventually developed distinct and individual identities of their own, characterised especially by new languages. Although the various cultures of Madagascar might be considered to result from a process of creolisation, and are an amalgam of Indonesian, African and Islamic influences, the most obvious example of a littoral creole society is provided by the gradual emergence of Swahili (including the Comorian variants) as a distinct language and system of cultural 44 Olivier Gohin and Pierre Maurice, Mayotte, Saint-Denis: Université de la Réunion, 1992. 45 These islands are Glorioso, Juan de Nova, Bassas da India and Europa. The Exclusive Economic Zone claimed by France around these islands amounts to 360,000 sq kms 46 Michael N. Pearson, ‘Littoral society: the Concept and the Problems’, Journal of World History, 17 (2006), 353-74.

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relations, drawing on many varied influences from around the Indian Ocean. Although people who acknowledge a Swahili identity and speak the Swahili language are to be found throughout mainland eastern Africa, the essential Islamic component of this identity had its origin in the island trading communities. As Alpers says, “perhaps islands were regarded as particularly nurturing environments for the development of ‘umma or community that lies at the centre of Islamic practice.”47 The towns that grew up on the East African islands and in the Comoros came to be dominated, and in some cases may originally have been founded as their traditions assert, by commercial elites from Arabia or the Gulf and they maintained strong cultural ties with these heartlands of Islam. Moreover the importance of the islands in the commerce of the Indian Ocean continually brought new immigrants from overseas and, as Devleena Ghosh and Stephen Muecke put it, “the role of the merchant as cultural broker enabled engagement and plurality”.48 Among the Islamic centres from which religious and cultural influences spread to the mainland, most commentators recognise the importance of the Lamu archipelago and the Comoros islands.49 The elite families of these islands performed the hajj and religious leaders constantly travelled throughout the Indian Ocean, often (like Ibn Battúta) acting as qadis in the Islamic communities, trying to correct local religious divergence and drawing the ‘creolised’ communities back to mainstream Islam.50 However, these Islamic merchant and religious elites interacted with the continental populations in a pluralistic way. Intermarriage took place with mainland kin groups, slaves were obtained as a labour force and the economies of the towns bound them closely through production and exchange to the inland communities. As a consequence of the interaction over many hundreds of years of the people of the Ocean with the people of the Land, a process of ethnogenesis took place. Gill Shepherd describes the process as it unfolded on the East African coast: 47

Alpers, East Africa and the Indian Ocean, 47. Devleen Ghosh and Stephen Muecke eds., Cultures of Trade: Indian Ocean Exchanges, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, 2007, 7. 49 For example, Randall L. Pauwels, ‘East African Coastal History’, Journal of African History 40 (1999), 285-96; Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 26; Alpers, East Africa and the Indian Ocean, 47. 50 Michael Pearson, ‘Consolidating the Faith: Muslim Travellers in the Indian Ocean World’, in Devleen Ghosh and Stephen Muecke eds., Cultures of Trade: Indian Ocean Exchanges, 10-18; for a discussion of Swahili origins, see Pauwels, ‘East African Coastal History’. 48

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Arabic-speaking seafarer traders married women from coastal East African Bantu-speaking societies. There were never large numbers of such men, and their descendants were far more likely to marry other Swahilis – or other as yet unislamised Africans – than new Arab immigrants, and yet they permanently restructured the world for these descendents of theirs. 51

The term ‘Swahili’ itself, although it was employed by Ibn Battúta in 1331 to describe the coast of modern Tanzania, only came into use to describe the people of the region in the early nineteenth century and even then those who were called Swahili by outsiders continued to call themselves by other names and to recognise strong caste-like distinctions between different social groups.52 The Maldives population also derives its distinctive language and culture from a mélange of Buddhist Sri Lankan and Indian influences, thickly overlaid by Islamic religious ideas and practice. In the fourteenth century Ibn Battúta’s detailed description of the Maldives throws light on the role of itinerant Islamic holy men and on the process of creolisation. Islam, he found, sat uneasily with local custom. “The womenfolk do not cover their hands,” he writes in strong disapproval, “and they comb their hair and gather it at one side. Most of them wear only an apron from their waists to the ground, the rest of their bodies being uncovered. When I held the qádiship there, I tried to put an end to this practice and ordered them to wear clothes, but I met with no success”. As for the process of creolisation, “it is easy to get married in these islands,” he writes disingenuously (and he himself married by his own account at least five women, one of them being the ruler’s mother-in-law). “When ships arrive, the crew marry wives, and when they are about to sail they divorce them (…) The women never leave their country”.53 Pyrard, in his long description of the islands, also tried to come to an understanding of creolisation as a civilising process. “It is believed the Maldives were originally peopled by the Cinghalese (…) but I found that 51

Gill Shepherd, ‘Trading Lineages in Historical Perspective’, in J.C. Stone ed., Africa and the Sea, Proceedings of a Colloquium at the University of Aberdeen March 1984, Aberdeen University African Studies Group: 1985, 153. 52 Thomas Smee, ‘Observations during a Voyage of Research, on the East Coast of Africa, from Cape Guardafui south to the Island of Zanzibar’, Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, VI (1841-44), 23-61; Nicholls, The Swahili Coast, 19, 28-9; Gibb, Ibn Battúta Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, 112. For a recent detailed discussion of the significance of being Swahili, see Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders. The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era, Introduction. 53 Gibb, Ibn Battúta Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, 243-4.

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the Maldivians did not in an way resemble the Cinghalese who are black and ill-formed while they are well formed and proportioned and are little different from ourselves being of an olive colour.” And he goes on, “the location and the length of time have made them more beautiful than those who first peopled the islands” while the large number of foreigners from every part who come there have made the people of Male “more polite, more honest and more civilised”, while those in the southern islands which were less visited are “coarser in their language and conduct”.54 The process of creolisation and ethnogenesis continued during the era of European dominance, suggesting that it had a functional explanation rooted in the distinctive factors of geography, communication, commerce and production that characterise the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese presence along the coast and up the Zambesi valley (in many respects an inland extension of the coast) gave rise to the distinctive creole culture of the Zambesi prazos and their chicunda population, while Mozambique Island, tiny as it was, developed its own creole culture. Henry Salt, describing the island and its immediate hinterland in 1810, commented that, “the people forms a strange mixture of Indian, Arabian and European (…) not blending very harmoniously together.” The population consisted of European Portuguese and “native planters descended from the old settlers (…) old Arab settlers and Banians (…) free blacks and native soldiers,” and he commented on the creole women who resembled the “Dutch planters’ wives in the interior of the Cape” by not wearing stockings and smoking pipes. Meanwhile Salt was served coffee “in a splendid service of pure gold from Sena” and was entertained by Indian nautch girls who danced for the governor.55 The Dutch abandoned Mauritius before a creolised population could take root but in the Cape a number of Dutch creole cultures emerged speaking their own distinctive Afrikans language. Under French rule the Mascarenes and Seychelles also developed a creole language and culture. James Prior, visiting Île de France in 1811, described how “the eye is amused by an infinite medley of complexions (…) the European, Malay, Mulatto, and even Negro, are blended with the Indian – it seems a vast manufactory of animal life – a kind of human chemical laboratory, where Nature tries her hand in forming an amalgam out of many of the different races of mankind.”56 Based originally on the interaction of metropolitan 54

Castro ed., Voyage de Pyrard de Laval, 127. Henry Salt, A Voyage to Abyssinia, and travels into the interior of that country(…), London: Bulmer, 1814, 23, 27, 45, 48, 74. 56 James Prior, Voyage in the Indian Seas in the Nisus Frigate during the years 1810 and 1811, London: Richard Phillips, London, 1820, 38 55

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French influences with the languages and cultures of slaves imported from both Africa and Madagascar, the creole culture received an injection of Indian influence, first from slaves imported from India and then from the Indian contract workers who began to arrive in large numbers in the nineteenth century. The process of creolisation in the French islands was surprisingly rapid. Although these were slave-based societies the racial barriers between slave-owners and people of slave origin very quickly became porous. Île de France, in particular, had a very diverse population which included the soldiers of the garrisons and many French and Indians who left the French settlements in India after the Seven Years War. Megan Vaughan in her detailed study of creolisation in Mauritius emphasised in particular the lack of formal family units both among people of European and of slave descent and the existence of dominant ‘matriarchs’ as heads of family (interestingly also a marked feature of creole societies in the Portuguese Atlantic). She also comments on the uncertain boundaries between maroons, free blacks, adopted children and slaves who were hired out to work in a society where “no one’s identity seems straightforward”.57 It has been suggested that one of the factors contributing to the rapid creolisation of the French islands was the practice of black slave women obtaining manumission by selling sexual favours. As V. Teelock explains, “slave women developed relationships especially with free males and military officers and these connections helped to establish a link between sexual freedom and manumission”. Not surprisingly, from this “sexual freedom” a creole population soon came into existence.58 Once a creole identity and language had begun to be formed, it proved remarkably resistant to other cultural influences absorbing English and Indian and renewed French metropolitan influences. The process that created Swahili, Divehi, Malagasy, Afrikans and the French creole languages and cultures is not just an ethnological curiosity, an example of cultural Darwinism, but is a process that helps explain the dynamics of Indian Ocean politics, including the politics of the European maritime empires themselves. In the history of the Islamic island communities there is a continuous process of societies fragmenting and reproducing themselves, with new communities replicating their parents but at the same time seeking to escape from close parental control. The reason for this process of ‘cell division’ can be found within the societies 57

Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island. Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius, 126. 58 Vijayalakshmi Teelock et al, Marronage and the Maroon Heritage in Mauritius, Réduit: University of Mauritius, 2005, 65.

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themselves where younger branches of ruling or elite lineages were often excluded from power or from the control of land and resources. These sought opportunities for themselves by breaking away and founding new settlements, a process that required territory that was either empty of population or that was not effectively peopled or controlled. In this way successful polities expanded on their frontiers not by imperial design directed from a centre but by a process of spontaneous reproduction.59 Thus Sofala, Angoche and the Comorian towns all had traditions of origin that linked them with Kilwa, just as Kilwa itself had its own traditions of origin in Shiraz. In the nineteenth century the establishment of the Omani sultanate in Zanzibar produced a similar process. With the arrival of the Omani many of the Swahili elite left for other island locations, while the commercial penetration of the African mainland by Zanzibari commercial agents saw the emergence of Swahili ‘sultans’ and ‘jumbes’ inland as far as the African great lakes, a process not planned from Zanzibar but which extended informal Zanzibari influence throughout much of eastern and central Africa.60 The Afro-Portuguese creoles of Zambesia also carved out new polities in the interior and extended Portuguese influence often in defiance of Portuguese metropolitan authority. In the Cape the Dutch creole groups soon escaped the control of Cape Town and sought to replicate Dutch pastoral Calvinism in the interior – producing a number of variants including the Cape Coloureds, the Voortrekkers, the Griqua, the Bastards and many others. How their influence in expanding first Dutch and then British rule in South Africa was brought about, in direct opposition to the desires of the metropolitan centre, has been exhaustively studied. The Zana Malata chiefs of the Betsimisaraka, originating in the pirate communities of the northern Madagascar coast, are another example of an expansive creole group. At first sight the French colonies appear to be exceptions, tightly controlled by the Companies, the royal government and then by their British conquerors, but on closer inspection a similar process of reproduction can also be seen to operate. Thus Bourbon/Réunion was settled as an offshoot from Fort Dauphin, Île de France derived its French population (and embryonic creole culture) from Bourbon, the Seychelles were settled as an offshoot from Île de France and Maore and Nossi Bé by planters from Réunion. This was a process whereby European settler 59

An interesting discussion of this process can be found in the Introduction to Igor Kopytoff ed., The African Frontier: the Reproduction of Traditional African Societies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 60 Nicholls, The Swahili Coast, 27 and for the title of ‘jumbe’ , 38-9.

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communities reproduced themselves and although, in doing so, they sought to reproduce their parent’s culture there were always variants, which rapidly gave rise to distinctive creole identities.

Conclusion This paper argues that the islands are central to any understanding of Indian Ocean history. It was in the islands that the evolution of the Indian Ocean economy from intercontinental exchange to commodity production took place and it was the existence of the islands that made possible the creation of maritime empires with their immense lines of communication. Moreover, the shape that the various empires took, both European and Omani, was determined by the island bases from which they operated and by the tendency of the creole societies, which were formed in the island environments, to fragment and reproduce themselves.

 CHAPTER TWELVE PORTUGUESE COLONIAL CHARITY: THE MISERICÓRDIAS OF GOA, BAHIA AND MACAO ISABEL DOS GUIMARÃES SA

Charles Boxer was the first historian to describe the Misericórdias (lay confraternities under royal protection) and and the Câmaras (municipal councils) as the twin pillars of the Portuguese colonial administration.1 This chapter deals with the Misericórdias as key elements in the political economy of colonial elites. These confraternities extended support to the poor converted populations or to the impoverished colonists, fulfilling an important role in the social, political and economic reproduction of the colonial elites. Highly selective, they helped to design social frontiers between the ruling and the less powerful. Also, as holders of large sums of money, the misericórdias engaged in credit activities. Whether they helped the owners of sugar cane estates in Bahia to invest in sugar production, provided funds to defend the Estado da Índia against the enemies of the Portuguese in Goa, or financed maritime commerce in Macao, the Misericórdias were crucial in the local dynamics of power. The price to pay for the hegemony of the colonial elites was the giving of charity by the members of the misericórdias. In order to understand the diversity of the services and resources provided to the ‘poor’, there is no point in concentrating on administrative or institutional similarities across the empire. The differences between misericórdias relate to specific economic and social contexts. This paper compares the Misericórdias of

 1

Charles Boxer, Portuguese Society in the Tropics. The Municipal Councils of Goa, Macao, Bahia and Luanda, 1510-1800, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.



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three colonial cities of the Portuguese Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I will try to explore the different forms of charity the Misericórdias of Goa, Macao and Bahia engaged in, and relate them to the specific social contexts of each setting and particularly to the political agendas of each Misericórdia. I will elaborate on some of the findings of previous research about colonial Misericórdias and also on fresh, recently gathered information on the Misericórdia of Macao.2 The first assumption I will elaborate upon is that the so-called Portuguese communities in Goa, Bahia or Macao cannot be equalled to the metropolitan urban setting as such. In all of these colonial cities, there were a reduced number of Portuguese-born persons. A mixed population originating in Portuguese men (emigration to the empire was a male phenomenon) or of their “mixed-race” descendants formed the large majority of the colonial population. Macao and Goa had an urban population, which consisted of a Christian minority, within which the Portuguese-born accounted for a small percentage. Colonial Bahia was inhabited by a majority of imported Africans, either African or Brazilianborn, whom we suppose to have been superficially Christianised. Colonial elites spoke Portuguese, were Catholic, but they were mostly multi-ethnic, the product of successive generations of inter-racial crossbreeding and related to other local or imported populations with different levels of integration. In Goa, for instance, there was a Luso-Goan elite, formed by the descendants of the Portuguese male immigrants and local Asian women, and the same can be said about Macao, even if the populations the Portuguese mixed with were from different Asian ethnicities. In Bahia, the Portuguese had children with African imported or Amerindian women, creating a kaleidoscopic variety of mulattoes. In all the three cases studied, we have different colonial societies, where the elites were formed by families of male Portuguese origin that were able to reach a dominant position in such cities, either by wealth or social status. The practices of charity that were performed concerned the reproduction of these elites through money-lending or marriage, or, when directed to the other social and ethnic groups, benefited the fringe population that had to be



2 Isabel Sá, Quando o rico se faz pobre: Misericórdias, caridade e poder no império português, 1500-1800, Lisboa: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1997; Ibid., `Ganhos da terra e ganhos do mar: caridade e comércio na Misericórdia de Macau (séculos XVII-XVIII)’, in Ler História, XLIV, 2003, 45-57. See also, for a general overview of the history of the Portuguese misericórdias, Isabel Sá, As Misericórdias Portuguesas de D. Manuel I a Pombal, Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 2001.



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“included” in order to facilitate cooperation with these colonial elites, or at least make dominance viable. In either case, charity performed a self-help role to the hegemonic groups, as it contributed to keep them in dominating positions as well as to placate social tensions that might emerge between them and the less privileged, or less integrated groups. Before comparing these three colonial cities in what concerns their practices of charity, a brief overview of the misericórdias is given, in order to explain their leading role. Of course, there were other institutions that gave charity to the poor in the Portuguese empire; nevertheless, the misericórdias performed a crucial role in institutional charity.

The Misericórdias in the Portuguese world The Misericórdias were omnipresent in Portuguese urban life, either in the kingdom or overseas, and it is significant that they existed in places that were never under Portuguese administration, such as the misericórdia of Manila, the ones in Japan, or that of Salvador do Congo.3 Also, some misericórdias not only survived under new non-Portuguese rule, but also kept their key features long after the Portuguese were gone. This was the case of Ceuta and Olivença, lost to the Spanish in 1668 and 1801.4 Three main reasons explain the hegemony of the misericórdias (not necessarily in this order): Catholic culture, royal protection and their role in local administration.

Catholic charity As confraternities, the misericórdias based their action on the practice of the fourteen works of mercy, which were well known in Portugal already in the first half of the fifteenth century.5 The first printed work in vernacular, a manual of confession designed to guide ecclesiastics, O

 3

Salvador do Congo was the first experience of Portuguese evangelisation in Africa, begun during the last years of the fifteenth century. Its misericórdia was awarded the privileges of the misericórdia of Lisbon in 1617 (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Chancelaria de Filipe II. Privilégios, Livro 5, fls. 121-121 v). 4 Manuel Cámara del Rio, La Santa y Real Hermandad, Hospital y Casa de Misericordia de Ceuta, Ceuta: Instituto de Estudios Ceutíes, 1996; Miguel Vallecillo Teodoro, Historia de la Santa Casa de Misericordia de Olivenza: 15011970, Badajoz: Santa Casa de la Misericordia de Olivenza, 1993. 5 Ivo Carneiro de Sousa, Da Descoberta da Misericórdia à Fundação das Misericórdias (1498-1525), Porto: Granito, 1998, 12.



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Tratado de Confissom, published in 1489, referred to them.6 Their enunciation became particularly incisive during the reign of Manuel I (1495-1521). Manuals of confession and guides for Christian living, synod constitutions, and catechisms all included one or two chapters referring to the works of mercy. It is also the case of the first printed Portuguese catechism, which was included in the constitutions of the synod celebrated in Porto by Bishop D. Diogo de Sousa in 1496.7 The fourteen works of mercy were always listed, and sometimes annotated, in doctrinal texts from the foundation of the first Misericórdia in 1498 to the end of the Council of Trent.8 This demonstrates that the emphasis on good works as agents of salvation was well rooted in Portugal before the Council reaffirmed their importance. Together with prayers (Credo, Ave Maria, Salve Regina, Pater Noster), the seven mortal sins, the Ten Commandments, the virtues and the five senses, the fourteen works of mercy were basic indispensable knowledge not only for the Portuguese, but also for the indoctrinated populations across its empire. D. Manuel I is known to have sent to India and Ethiopia several thousand copies of a Cartinha or Cartilha (manuals designed to teach children how to read and write), which included a brief catechism. That edition or editions (in case there were several of them), did not survive except for a brief extract, which, interestingly, includes the works of mercy.9 The renovated emphasis on the importance of practices of charity in the obtaining of eternal salvation in Tridentine reform reaffirmed the



6 Tratado de Confissom [1489], ed. by José V. de Pina Martins, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1973, 232. 7 Antonio García y García et al eds., Synodicon Hispanum II. Portugal, Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos: 1982, 412-413. 8 Among others, cf. Diogo Ortiz de Vilhegas, Catecismo pequeño, Lisboa: Valentim Fernandes e João Pedro de Cremona, 1504, 44-48; Garcia de Resende, Breve Memorial dos pecados [1521], ed. Joaquim Bragança, Lisboa: Gráfica de Coimbra, 1980, 32-33; Cartinha pera esinar leer. Cõ as doctrinas da prudência. E regra de viver em paz… [1534], facs. edition, Lisboa: Biblioteca Nacional, 1981, n.n.; João de Barros, Gramática da Língua Portuguesa. Cartinha, Gramática, diálogo em Louvor da Nossa Linguagem e diálogo da Viciosa Vergonha [1539], ed. Maria Leonor Buescu, Lisboa: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, 1971, 23-24, Martim de Azpilcueta Navarro, Manual de confessores e penitents (…), Coimbra: Ioannes Barrerius et Ioannes Aluarez H[FXGHEmt, 1552, 411-417; Fr. Luís de Granada, Compêndio de doctrina christã (…), Lisboa: em casa de Joannes Blavio de Agripina Colonia, 1559, 127-130. 9 Isabel Cepeda, `Uma “cartinha” em língua portuguesa desconhecida dos bibliógrafos’, Colóquio sobre o Livro Antigo. Lisboa, 1988: Actas, Lisboa, Biblioteca Nacional, 1992, 79-92.





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centrality of the works of mercy in the Catholic world. In the specific case of the Portuguese empire, the Jesuits were to be of fundamental importance, especially during the first decades of the Society. One of the structuring issues at the origin of this religious order was the systematic practice of the works of mercy.10 This explains not only the attention that St. Francis Xavier dedicated to them in his letters, as well as the Jesuit priests' willingness to help in hospitals and other institutions of assistance in the Estado da Índia. In Brazil, the founding of the Misericórdia of Rio de Janeiro was attributed to José de Anchieta, S.J., albeit erroneously.11 The works of mercy covered practically all grounds of charitable action. One of the basic differences of the Misericórdias, when compared to most of the other confraternities, is their focus on all fourteen works, instead of specialising on one or two of them. In consequence, they cared for people in almost every possible situation of need: the sick poor, beggars, widows, orphans, prisoners and shamefaced poor. The persons to be helped were either institutionalised or were visited in their homes by the brothers of the confraternity. The misericórdias of the empire shared this wide range of charitable practices with their counterparts in continental Portugal. Their members visited jails and provided for the survival of poor prisoners, helped them through their trial in court; ransomed captives of religious war; awarded marriage dowries to poor orphaned girls; and gave free burials to the very poor. All these practices were expensive, either in financial or human terms. They implied high costs (especially hospitals) and diversified tasks. The misericórdias hired personnel to perform low status work and kept the "nobler" activities to the brothers themselves. The latter made a point in not being remunerated and sometimes could spend out of their own pockets, mainly when they took charge of expenses, which were inherent either to their office or social status. The logic of the misericórdias obeyed thus to elementary religious principles that every believer acknowledged; and to rules of voluntary work, which prohibited brothers to work for a salary within the confraternity. In the empire as well as in metropolitan Portugal, the cure of souls was indissociable from the cure of bodies, and the former prevailed over the latter. Any charitable service had a spiritual element. Recipients of charity should live according to the precepts of religion and receive the

 10

John O'Malley, The First Jesuits, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1993, 165199. 11 A.J.R. Russell-Wood, Fidalgos and Philanthropists. The Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Bahia, 1550-1755, London: Macmillan, 1968, 40.



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sacraments. Foundlings were baptized, patients who refused confession were not accepted in hospitals, mass was an obligation for inmates of charitable institutions, and the dying received extreme unction. Care of souls extended to the dead, for whom a variable quantity of masses was celebrated according to their wills. The spiritual component is thus one of the main features of this common culture of Catholic charity.

Royal protection The reason why the Misericórdias were so important institutionally lies in the protection they were awarded by the Portuguese kings from their beginning in 1498. In all the Portuguese territories, we find the will to promote them to the official confraternities of the empire, superior both in prerogatives and competencies to the other local confraternities. The construction process of the misericórdias is closely related to the building of the Portuguese early modern state. At least during the sixteenth century, the strength of the Crown relied heavily on its enrichment through its participation in the profits of the empire.12 The structuring of the misericórdias took place during the height of the wellbeing of the Portuguese crown, during the reign of D. Manuel I (1495-1521). The financial autonomy that the revenues of maritime commerce ensured the Portuguese Crown made possible the patronage of new institutions and the restructuring of old ones. Although the use of the word “reform” can be questionable, it is a fact that during the reign of D. Manuel I significant juridical, administrative, devotional and ritual changes took place.13 On the other hand, the misericórdias benefited from the colonial economy. D. Manuel I gave numerous donations of sugar from Madeira to the ecclesiastical institutions and the misericórdias, and D. João III, to a lesser extent, continued this practice. Due to the accumulation of inheritances, the misericórdias often participated directly in colonial economy. The misericórdia of Lisbon, for instance, was one of the main sugar cane producers in the islands of São Tomé during the seventeenth century, as the owner of several estates.14

 12

Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, `Finanças públicas e estrutura do estado’, Ensaios II, Lisboa: Sá da Costa, 1978, 29-74. 13 For a survey of these and other issues relating to the reign of D. Manuel I, see Diogo Ramada Curto (ed.), O Tempo de Vasco da Gama, Lisboa: CNCDP, 1998. 14 Cristina Serafim, As Ilhas de S. Tomé no século XVII, Lisboa: Centro de História de Além-mar, 2000, 203-204, 212-213, 277.



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The spread of misericórdias was also due to the fact that there was a significant effort on the part of the Crown to publicize the compromissos of the Misericórdia of Lisbon, which were to be the main set of rules to be observed in all these confraternities, albeit locally adapted. The Lisbon Misericórdia elaborated its compromisso in its very first years, and this text was improved until publication in 1516. In 1577 a significant reform took place, but did not last long. The published version of this compromisso, printed in 1600, was replaced nineteen years later with a text that was to last until the nineteenth century, the compromisso of 1618, published in the following year.15 Although the evolution of times required exceptional legislation, both royal and local, all the misericórdias shared these texts of reference, even when they elaborated their own, specific compromissos, as was the case in several metropolitan and overseas confraternities. A flexible combination of central and local directives enabled misericórdias to run themselves autonomously. The latter could also take the form of decisions made by the mesa concerning specific internal affairs, which were not covered by the compromissos. Royal protection did not imply administrative centralisation or close control from the crown, and in general terms, misericórdias were left to themselves. With two exceptions: in situations of crisis the Crown had the right to withdraw money from its coffers, as happened with other institutions that could provide money in emergencies, such as war or a marriage dowry for a princess. Another was when there was information of administrative or financial fraud, which could imply a direct intervention from crown institutions, but significantly not from the Lisbon Misericórdia. The Lisbon Misericórdia - the first to be founded and always considered the most important - was to serve as a reference, but never enjoyed any administrative supremacy over the others. Also, royal officers were instructed not to interfere in the internal affairs of the misericórdias unless they received orders to do so, a rule that provided obvious advantages to the individuals who ran them. Neither electoral procedures nor account registers were systematically supervised.



15 Ivo Carneiro de Sousa edited the first manuscript version of the compromisso of the Misericórdia of Lisbon: `O Compromisso primitivo das Misericórdias Portuguesas: 1498-1500’, in Revista da Faculdade de Letras [Porto], vol. II, Issue 13, 1996, 259-306; O compromisso da confraria de Misericordia. Lisboa: Valentym Fernandez e Harmam de Cãpos, 1516; Compromisso da Irmandade da Sancta Casa da Misericórdia da cidade de Lisboa, Lisboa: Antonio Alvarez, 1600; Compromisso da Misericórdia de Lisboa, Lisboa: Pedro Craesbeeck, 1619.



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The symbiotic relationship between misericórdias, Crown and Empire shared nevertheless the fragmented nature of the early modern state. The misericórdias were not created downwards; the reasons why they multiplied are not exclusively related with royal instructions, or advantages awarded by the crown. The intention of the centre to favour the misericórdias is a fact, but it is also true that local elites agreed with the Crown the conditions of settlement of the confraternity. The advantages were mutual to both sides, since the misericórdias tended to finance themselves through legacies and donations, keeping capital in deposit that could be used, as we shall see, for diversified purposes. The king ensured a paternal benevolent image at minimum expense, whilst local elites negotiated their hegemony, offering resources and charitable services, while keeping discretionary control over them. More than centralisation from the crown, we are in the presence of a chain of negotiation between local and central powers, which in the case of the misericórdias gave rise to a very “successful” and long-lasting institution.

Câmaras and Misericórdias The history of municipal councils shares common ground with the misericórdias, both in Portugal and in its empire. Francisco Bethencourt has affirmed that the extension of municipal councils to all the territories in the empire was the result of an almost spontaneous process that the king only intervened to legitimise.16 The same can be said about the misericórdias; the institutional lexicon seems to have been homogenous in all Portuguese-speaking communities. Both institutions related to the king on a direct basis, and both were crucial in the financing of the crown in case of military need. Both were involved in the same process of eradication of New-Christian membership. It is also acknowledged that there was a predominance of lawyers in the Portuguese municipal councils from 1572 onwards that was not copied in colonial ones.17 The misericórdias seem to follow a similar pattern: some confraternities in Portugal created a special quota for their admission into the confraternity, but this did not happen either in Goa or Macao. In spite of the parallels that can be drawn between the ‘câmaras’ and the ‘misericórdias’, it must be noted that the former existed from the

 16

Francisco Bethencourt, `Câmaras’ in Francisco Bethencourt & Kirti Chaudhuri eds., História da Expansão Portuguesa, Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 1998, vol. 2, 345. 17 Boxer, Portuguese Society, 15.



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medieval period, long before the misericórdias, which were created from 1498 onwards. From the hierarchical point of view, the municipal councils obviously stood above the misericórdias. Some of them, like Goa and Bahia, kept agents in Lisbon and sent representatives to the Cortes (Parliament).18 The misericórdias were never as crucial in local administration as the municipal councils, but they represented control of public charity and could mean access to the confraternity’s money or property to be rented. No doubt the Misericórdias in metropolitan Portugal allowed for the creation of a surplus of possibilities in the exercise of local power. Offices such as that of provedor, escrivão, tesoureiro, or even mesário could rotate or be held alongside municipal ones, and the mamposteiros (official alms collectors) could also benefit from a range of privileges and exemptions.19 Câmaras and misericórdias represented power arenas of the Portuguese who had settled in the colonies and who were often in conflict with royal officials. At the same time, the administration of empire was based upon networks of counteracting information, since most local institutions could write to the king and complain about one another. It is generally acknowledged, though, that the crown recognised the importance of the municipal councils for the stability of colonial administration. Colonial governors rarely dared to maintain open conflicts with the câmaras.20 Although Charles Boxer traced local administration as a dual framework - câmara and misericórdia - local specificities not always conformed to this picture. For instance, on the East African coast during the eighteenth century, the Misericórdias seem to have absorbed until very late the running of the municipalities. In Macao, the creation of the local misericórdia preceded that of the municipal council.21 There were no municipal councils in Japan, but the misericórdias founded by the Jesuits owed their existence to the strategies concerning the evangelisation of the Japanese population, which included the creation of social circles where modes of Christian living could be enacted. The misericórdia of Funai, founded in 1559, had a reduced number of members, recruited among the Christians who lived in the Jesuit mission. Its leading members

 18

Bethencourt, Câmaras, vol. 2, 344. The ruling board of the Misericórdia was the mesa. It was formed by thirteen mesários, among which the provedor (president), the secretary (escrivão) and treasurer (tesoureiro). 20 Boxer, Portuguese Society, 145. 21 Boxer, Portuguese Society, 59. 19



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(mordomos) did not rotate in office, as was the rule in most misericórdias (because there were few members), and kept charge in consecutive years, taking care of the hospital and providing Christian burials to poor catechumen.22

The Misericórdias of Goa, Macao and Bahia Most of the Portuguese territories in the East were obtained through military conquest, undertaken under royal initiative. Portuguese soldiers, when wounded or sick, were attended to in campaign hospitals financed by the king. In India, such hospitals antedated the misericórdias, and were connected mostly to the military action of Afonso de Albuquerque.23 With the settlement of colonists, the misericórdias started to be created in the second decade of the sixteenth century. The misericórdias in Asia maintained a close relationship with the crown that was not to be repeated in any other area of the Portuguese empire. In the first place, the Estado da India regularly financed Asian misericórdias. The budgets of the royal treasury of the `state’ included payments to be converted into alms for the poor by the local misericórdias, or into the regular financing of hospitals. Analysis of the weight of the financial subventions to the misericórdias in these budgets has not been extensive, but evidence points to a figure of one percent. The amount spent on hospital maintenance was higher (could go up to 10-15 percent). Hospitals could be in charge of the misericórdias, but, as happened in metropolitan Portugal, were financially independent.24 The financing of the misericórdias of the Estado da Índia by the Crown (we should note that direct financing was absent in Brazil, where the misericórdias benefited from a percentage of taxes upon consumption) was, in large part, an obligation of the padroado régio (Crown Patronage). Although the misericórdias were lay confraternities under royal

 22

Léon Bourdon, La Compagnie de Jésus et le Japon: la fondation de la mission japonaise par François Xavier, 1547-155 et les premiers résultats de la prédication chrétienne sous le supériorat de Cosme de Torres, 1551-1570, LisboaParis: FCG-CNCDP, 1993, 372-373. 23 José de Vasconcellos Menezes, Armadas portuguesas. Hospitais no Além Mar. Época dos Descobrimentos, Lisboa: Academia da Marinha, 1993. 24 Among other published budgets, cfr. Artur Teodoro de Matos, O Estado da Índia nos anos de 1581-1588. Estrutura administrativa e económica. Alguns elementos para o seu estudo, Ponta Delgada: Universidade dos Açores, 1982 and, edited by the same author, O Orçamento do Estado da Índia de 1571, Lisboa: CNCDP, 1999.



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protection, and did not depend on the supervision of the Roman Church, in opposition to bishoprics, religious orders, and ecclesiastic confraternities, the crown seems to have included their financing among its obligations towards the ecclesiastic institutions of the State. Thus the budgets and the tombos gerais of the fortresses of the Estado da Índia considered the expenses devoted to misericórdias together with the costs of the maintenance of parishes (ecclesiastic revenues, sacristy expenses, etc.), royal hospitals, and other confraternities. We must also consider the hierarchical supremacy of the Goan Misericórdia, which was named "the universal mother of the poor" and "head" of the other misericórdias in the Estado da Índia. It was supposed to supervise all the other misericórdias in the Estado, a situation which did not occur in any other area of the empire. It is also clear that this supervision was not so tight as not to allow the autonomy of other misericórdias in Asia. Here the misericórdia of Goa performed paternal tasks as, for example, sending samples of its compromisso, giving legal advice or distributing banners, bier covers, and other liturgical objects. The king included in his letters to the viceroys very precise instructions about action to be taken concerning the misericórdia of Goa. It was placed under the authority of the viceroy, as any reading of the ‘Livros das Monções’ can demonstrate.25 The fact that the viceroy lived in the city provided the opportunity for closer royal control. He could legislate on his own, or implement new rules originating from the Lisbon misericórdia. Many of the alvarás or decrees issued by the viceroys have survived in the archives of the Misericórdia of Macao.26 The Lisbon misericórdia was invoked when it was necessary to proceed to readjustments in the Goan one.27 The misericórdia of Goa was framed within a network of subordinate relationships, topped by the central powers held in Lisbon, that it in turn enforced on other misericórdias of the Estado da India. The centralism of the Goan misericórdia is confirmed in the seventeenth century during the retraction of the Portuguese empire in the Indian Ocean. When many fortresses changed hands with the enemies of

 25

Raymundo Bulhão Pato & António Rêgo, Documentos Remettidos da Índia ou Livros das Monções (...), Lisboa: Academia Real das Ciências-Imprensa Nacional, 10 vols.,1880-1982. 26 Livro de Registo de Alvarás, Cartas e Provisões Régias, Lisboa, Goa, Malaca, Macau (Historical Archives of Macau, Santa Casa da Misericórdia, cod. 300). 27 Sá, Quando o rico, 174-175, 182.



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Portugal and Spain, the misericórdia of Goa collected the remains of the misericórdias that were being suppressed, and took care of refugees. In spite of the intention to place the Goan misericórdia at the centre of all others in the ‘Estado da Índia’, the limits of centralisation in such a discontinuous territory were obvious. Colonial cities and presídios were often very distant from Goa; the rhythms of departure and arrival of ships, which sometimes made only annual visits, gave any existing institution a great deal of autonomy. The Misericórdia of Macao is a striking example. The municipal council of Macao - the Leal Senado - was to rule over the destinies of the local Portuguese community, with a very tenuous presence of crown directives.28 Its misericórdia was in theory (though not in practice as we shall see) entirely financed by a percentage of the council's customhouse duties. Although the Macanese misericórdia responded to the authority of the viceroy of the Estado da India, and thus to Goa, it possessed its own compromisso, elaborated in 1627, and seems to have had an influence upon other misericórdias in the Far East.29 Nagasaki, for instance, adopted its compromisso instead of the ones from Goa or Lisbon. The oriental misericórdias performed supplementary tasks when compared to those of metropolitan Portugal, namely in what concerned transmission of property working, to a certain extent, in an administrative partnership with the crown institutions. The misericórdia of Goa absorbed some of the roles that were traditionally ascribed to royal officers, such as the provedoria dos defuntos. It received from all over the Estado the inheritances of those Portuguese, who wanted to leave their property to heirs in Portugal. It thus accumulated large sums in deposit, which were transferred to Portugal when reliable information about the legitimacy and whereabouts of the heirs was obtained. This was a reliable service until the second decade of the seventeenth century, when the misericórdias in Portugal started to complain about the long waiting periods before the delivery of capital. Such functions in the transmission of property gave origin to an important correspondence with metropolitan misericórdias. The Misericórdia of Goa centralized correspondence from all the others in the Estado, and then sent it to Lisbon, who would then write to other misericórdias. A similar chain was to be run back to Goa, when the heirs

 28

George Bryan Souza, A Sobrevivência do Império: os Portugueses na China (1630-1754), Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1991, 41. 29 Biblioteca da Ajuda, Série da Província da China (24) – `Compromisso da Misericórdia de Macau, 1627’.



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were discovered and checked up on. It is important to note that the misericórdias in the Atlantic world did not operate in the field of the provedoria dos defuntos, although Portuguese colonists benefited metropolitan misericórdias in their bequests as much as they did in the Estado da Índia. One of the specific features of the Oriental misericórdias was the importance of the ransoming of religious war captives. In Portugal, such ransoms took place in a context of religious war with North Africa and their main goal was to prevent prisoners from apostatizing. They obeyed to the purpose of tracing clear cultural frontiers between Christians and Muslims, and this explains why some ransoms over sacred images were paid. There were some hesitations over the role of the misericórdias concerning such prisoners, but since D. Sebastião the law ascribed the Trinitarians the logistic part of the ransoming.30 The friars travelled to North Africa and negotiated the price for the Portuguese prisoners they held. In Asia, where Trinitarians were absent, the Goan misericórdia negotiated religious war captives' ransoms directly, gathering the money and hiring agents to negotiate in loco. The compromisso of the Macanese misericórdia also included a similar chapter about this function, and it is interesting to point out that, in the Far East, the Portuguese prisoners at the hands of the Dutch were also entitled to help.31 The third specificity of the misericórdias in the East was the vulnerability of their property. In general, both institutions and private



30 From the beginning of D. Sebastião’s reign onwards, the misericórdias were confined to raising funds for general ransoms whenever the king gave orders to do so. Sporadically (at the rhythm with which such general ransoms were organized) the metropolitan misericórdias were asked to give or raise money to contribute to a ransom trip that the Trinitaries were about to undertake. In spite of such laws, nothing prevented the misericórdias from accepting legacies to accomplish this work of mercy. The Lisbon misericórdia, for instance, still spent in 1756 almost six percent of the total money received through pious donations (Marta Oliveira, Justiça e caridade: a produção social dos infratores pobres em Portugal, séculos XIV ao XVIII, Ph. D., Niterói, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2000, 292). Analysis of some of its annual budgets has revealed that in the seventeenth century the institution still awarded ransoms to war captives autonomously, whilst this practice disappeared from book-keeping in the following century (Isabel Sá, ‘Estatuto social e discriminação: formas de selecção de agentes e receptores de caridade nas misericórdias portuguesas ao longo do Antigo Regime’, in Actas do Colóquio Internacional Saúde e Discriminação Social , Braga: Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 2002, 303-334). 31 Biblioteca Pública de Évora, Compromisso da Misericórdia de Goa, 1634, chapter 28; `Compromisso da Miséricordia de Macau de 1627’, Chapter 27.



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persons tended to amass their fortunes in money and commodities. The misericórdias in the East obtained their revenues from several sources, but rarely from landed property. We can include among such revenues the payments of the royal treasury, financial help from the local councils (in the case of Macao) and the deposit of property from the deceased, which, while waiting for the news of certified heirs, could be invested in commerce. The absence of landed revenues was a major difficulty to the misericórdias - and indirectly to the king - since the allowances from the Royal Treasury were not always paid in time. Money-lending became ubiquitous in the misericórdias, even if they shared this feature with many other ecclesiastic institutions. Nevertheless, the law condemned this practice, considering it equivalent to usury. Although frequent and very profitable, money-lending was not backed up by any legal protection. The lack of payment of debts could not easily be solved in court.32 Cases of fraud and insolvency were frequent.33 In the Estado da Índia, the misericórdias' funds circulated in the financing of trade, and maritime commerce involved travel and considerable risks, worsened by the recession of the empire in the first half of the seventeenth century. The funds of the Asian misericórdias were under constant pressure and proved to be more volatile than those of the misericórdias that possessed landed property. As an example, we can quote the case of Salvador. Although its misericórdia also gave out its capital on loan, many times without recovering it, the truth is that it owned numerous rents of urban property and a sugar cane estate which allowed, albeit partially, to dispose of a safe flux of capital. The general evolution of the misericórdias in the East follows closely the decline of the Portuguese empire in the Indian Ocean, not only because of the fall of the Portuguese fortresses from 1610 onwards, but also for the progressive erasing of the misericórdia of Goa. It lost its capacities to assist and staff; its hospitals grew poorer and emptier. In the eighteenth century, the misericórdia of Goa mirrored the decline of the city itself. Although we have lost the archival material that might document the number and types of charitable services performed in the misericórdia of Goa, non-serial sources demonstrate that, as elsewhere in the Portuguese empire, Portuguese-born were preferred over other local groups, and that

 32

Bartolomé Clavero, La grâce du don. Anthropologie catholique de l'économie moderne, Paris: Albin Michel, 1996, 169 and 177. 33 Among other examples, cf. Pato & Rêgo, Documentos Remettidos, t. III, 1885, 66-67, 313-313, 337-338; t. IV, 61, 95-96.



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among the latter, being Catholic was a prerequisite to be entitled to help. Charity became thus, for those who were not born Catholic, a consequence of converting to Christianity. Macao offers a good example. Maritime trade was the only economic activity of Macao. Of the entire Portuguese empire, the city's economy was the most dependent from trade, to the point that no other economic activity was relevant to the city’s survival. All the existing Portuguese institutions in the city, lay as well as ecclesiastic, were involved in commerce. Among the former, we include the Senado (municipal council), which survived from the taxes paid in its customhouse. Among the latter were the religious orders of the city, of which the best-known example is the Society of Jesus, which financed its missionary activity in China and Japan with profits from trade. The organization of commerce seems to have been in the hands of a small group of traders that undertook business at an individual level. Historians have detected the existence of a mercantile elite, which sat in the Misericórdia and the Senado, hand in hand with other secondary and subaltern merchants. In spite of the considerable number of studies about Macao, these elites have not yet been studied in terms of a network of political and economic relations, and other historians have felt the lack of prosopographical studies.34 Most studies, from Boxer to Bryan Souza, have underlined the centrality of the local misericórdia to the circulation of capital placed in maritime trade, but no study regarding the sources that document this financial activity has been undertaken.35 The recent analysis of an account book which covers a period of circa seventeen years during the second half of the eighteenth century - the economic years between 1757-58 and 1774-75- has allowed this gap to be filled, albeit partially. It is the only survivor of the institution's accountancy before 1800, and it uncovers the nature of the activities of the Misericórdia, as well as its inclusion in the peninsula's market economy through the financing of maritime trade.36 The economic and demographic framework of the city during those years must be traced. Two major groups formed the population: the

 34

Jorge Flores, ‘China e Macau’, in António H. de Oliveira Marques ed., História dos Portugueses no Extremo Oriente, vol. I, tome II, Lisboa: Fundação Oriente, 2000, 247-248. 35 Except for António Vale, who studied Macau in the second half of the eighteenth century (Os Portugueses em Macau (1750-1800). Macau: Instituto Português do Oriente, 1997). 36 Historical Archives of Macao, Santa Casa da Misericórdia, cod. 277, Livro da Conta do Risco do Mar e Risco da Terra, 1755-1775.



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Christian and the Chinese. Christians were divided into distinct groups, the Portuguese-born and the filhos da terra (sons of the land), the product of crossbreeding between the Portuguese and a wide range of Asian ethnic groups. Between 1750 and 1780, this group numbered between four and six thousand persons.37 The common denominator between its heterogeneous elements was Christianity. Women outnumbered men, as the widows and orphans were particularly numerous. The city was also home to a large immigrant Chinese population: between 1750 and 1780, this population ranged from sixteen to twenty thousand.38 From the economic point of view, there was a slow recovery of commerce in this period, now driven to the eastern coast of India, Bengal, Malay islands and Timor. The trip to Cochinchina, which had been interrupted in 1750, was recommenced in 1773. Between 1771 and 1774 there were fourteen ships dedicated to maritime trade in Macao, rising to twenty-four by the end of the century.39 The most striking feature of the Macao misericórdia was its involvement in credit activities, to the point where the part of the budget actually employed in charitable activities was substantially inferior to the money invested in maritime trade. The overwhelming circulation of capital in credit suggests the proto-banking nature of the institution and documents the symbiotic relationship between charity and the money market. Officially, the misericórdia was financed by the local council, which gave one per cent of its customhouse revenues to the former. Thanks to this financing, the misericórdia took care of foundlings, which under Portuguese law were at the municipal councils' charge.40 The Senado made

 37

In 1834, the Christian population of Macao’s three parishes – that of the cathedral, St. Lawrence and St. Anthony - totalled 5093 persons, among which were 3793 “whites” (1487 men, 2306 women). The remaining 1300 were slaves (469 men and 831 women). See Anders Ljungstedt, An Historical Sketch of the Portuguese Settlements in China and of the Roman Catholic Church and Mission in China & Description of the City of Canton, Hong Kong: Viking Hong Kong Publications, 1992, 161-164. 38 Susana Miranda & Cristina Serafim, ‘População e Sociedade’ in A. H. de Oliveira Marques ed., História dos Portugueses no Extremo Oriente, vol. II, Lisboa, Fundação Oriente, 2001, 231-242. 39 Susana Miranda, ‘Os circuitos Económicos’, in A. H. de Oliveira Marques (ed.), História dos Portugueses no Extremo Oriente, vol. II, Lisboa: Fundação Oriente, 2001, 276-277. 40 In the case of Macao, though, we must note that there was no contract between the Council and the Misericórdia concerning the rearing of abandoned children. In



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regular payments to the misericórdia, although the sums varied according to the irregular profits of maritime trade. In spite of this, the higher sums of money circulated among traders. There is no doubt that the Santa Casa owed the major portion of its wealth to credit activities. There was a peculiar relationship between regular charity to persons who were in charge of the misericórdia, often as patients in its two hospitals, and the general almsgiving during some moments of the liturgical calendar. The misericórdia organised at least one such occasion during the year, during the Holy Week, and would eventually repeat the event during the feast of the Misericórdia on the Visitation (July 2). These feasts were important to give visibility to the Portuguese community, and affirmed cultural identity by the repetition of the annual rites of the Catholic Church. At first sight, the scale of the services provided by the Macao Misericórdia to the poor is smaller than in other cities of the empire, namely Salvador. Nevertheless, this picture changes if we take into account population figures: Macao counted less than thirty thousand souls, whereas Bahia had more than four times this number of inhabitants. Among the poor needing continuous assistance, foundlings were the most numerous, an average of ninety per month, whilst the Hospital dos Pobres (Hospital of the Poor), and Hospital of S. Lázaro (for lepers) seem to have admitted only a monthly average of thirty patients each.41 The low capacity of these two hospitals seems to have given origin to a relatively stable number of inmates. A word must be said here about lepers, whose existence among the poor helped by the misericórdia is a specificity of Macao. In Portugal, the illness disappeared by the end of the Middle Ages. There is no register that any other misericórdia either in Brazil or in the Estado da Índia ran a specific institution for lepers, although the possibility that they were helped on an individual basis cannot be discarded.

 Lisbon and Oporto, on the other hand, the misericórdias signed contracts with the Councils in which they assumed the responsibilities over foundlings in exchange for their regular financial support by the Council. These contracts gave origin to the creation of separate budgets for the upbringing of foundlings, which was not the case in Macao. 41 The source studied, due to its financial nature, does not give information about the identity of the poor helped as foundlings, sick poor or lepers. According to available information, the first historical reference to the Hospital dos Pobres is from 1591 and the Hospital de S. Lázaro is referred to in the compromisso of the Misericórdia of Macau of 1627. See José Caetano Soares, Macau e a Assistência (Panorama médico-social), Lisboa: Agência Geral das Colónias, 1950, 13,141.



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The misericórdia also gave assistance to prisoners (a few of them, rarely a dozen a year); some were convicted to exile in Timor, and the confraternity financed their trip and provided for their clothing. The number of burials provided for the poor was very low, and most of the deceased died in the institution's hospitals. It comes as a surprise that there were a very low number of marriage dowries amongst the officially registered legados pios, in spite of their omnipresence in the wills and pious legacies of the Christian inhabitants of Macao, but cross-references point to a separate registration of marriages sponsored by the misericórdia.42 There was also a small number of poor regularly assisted with alms, which rarely surpassed a hundred a year. The institution also had the obligation to celebrate masses on behalf of the eternal salvation of its donors. Their number in Macao totalled circa three thousand masses a year (actually, between 1750-3000), which is a low one when compared to other misericórdias. In Goa, more than a hundred years earlier, in 1624, the number of masses said was superior to 6500. In Bahia, at the time the misericórdia obtained a reduction bull in 1739, the masses were over thirteen thousand.43 It should be noted that the chaplains of the Santa Casa of Macao were responsible for only a small proportion of these masses. The majority were celebrated by the religious orders of the city, thus creating the occasion for the sharing of the revenue of the house with other local institutions. Inter-institutional outsourcing might also have been useful in order to avoid potential conflicts between the Misericórdia and the regular clergy. The population that received alms during the Visitation and the Holy Week was incomparably higher than the monthly average of 100 to 120 poor assisted on a regular basis, including foundlings, hospital patients and lepers. The intention of the misericórdia seems to have been that of raising the visibility of events that included the larger Christian population. This did not mean that the confraternity did not operate on a discriminative basis. A hierarchy between the recipients of alms was established, expressed in the sums of money awarded to people in different situations. The main divide was between the members of the Portuguese community and the wider Christian population. The former, in smaller numbers than the latter, received higher sums, but there was also an internal gradation among them. Its hierarchy was the following: the widows of the ruling members of the institution; the widows and daughters

 42

Historical Archives of Macao, Santa Casa da Misericórdia, cod. 302, Legados pios 1592-1840. 43 Sá, Quando o rico, 185; Russell-Wood, Fidalgos and Philanthropists, 103-104.



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of other members; the widows of other men and those persons who were regularly assisted by the misericórdia; the widows of expelled members (the irmãos riscados). Lower sums were allocated to the remaining LusoAsiatic population. It is even possible that almsgiving extended to the nonChristian Chinese residents, as we have no evidence that the Chinese immigrant population was excluded from almsgiving. Registers mention the “daughters of the land”, and the persons who showed up at the institution's door on the day alms were handed out (os pobres da porta). Their number, in contrast, ranged from two to three thousand at each event. These huge charitable events represent the spectacular display of generosity typical of the Baroque. Both the misericórdias of big cities such as Lisbon and Bahia, and provincial towns performed them. The amounts involved in such events are difficult to calculate, since they could be financed by the provedores themselves, and not be inscribed in official accounts, as is the case of Macao. In this specific case, this seems to be the most important feature of the charity practiced by its misericórdia. The conspicuous nature of such general distributions of alms outshines the regular charitable services to the poor. Although meaningful in the context of the city, the number of foundlings, sick patients, prisoners and the like, falls behind the scale of the assistance that was practiced in the cities of the Portuguese world. The effects of conspicuous almsgiving are difficult to establish, but it would not be exaggerated to suggest that they referred to legitimating strategies of the Macanese misericórdia itself, which sought to encompass the whole Christian population of the city. The scale of the sums involved in maritime trade focused the activities of the misericórdia on protobanking activities. The importance of general almsgiving during the Holy Week must have been largely for the sake of ritual. It had little impact on the wellbeing of the individuals who benefited from them, due to the alms’ insignificant value and to their discontinuity, alms-giving taking place only a few times a year. Two features strike one about the Misericórdia of Bahia, when compared to the misericórdias of Macao and Goa: the scale of the charitable services provided, and its involvement with the plantation economy. These differences are especially relevant during the eighteenth century, probably because sources have been better preserved for this period than for the preceding century. The fact that clear data exists for the period from 1765 to 1799 gives this institution a direct comparability with



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the misericórdia of Macao.44 It must be noted at the outset that the population of the city in 1755 was as high as 130.000 persons.45 In opposition to Macao, where there was an imbalance in favour of women (most of them widowed or orphaned), the city of Salvador was inhabited by a majority of men, especially among its white population. The Santa Casa ran only one hospital for the poor (instead of two like Macao), the Hospital de S. Cristóvão, which, in opposition to the Goan hospitals, did not discriminate between its patients according to race, admitting blacks and whites in equal standing. According to RussellWood, the Bahian misericórdia jealously safeguarded its position as the home for the city’s main hospital, preventing other institutions from creating other large hospitals.46 By the end of the seventeenth century, the hospital had 168 beds and admitted more than eight thousand patients in the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, of which nearly 80 percent were men. Besides, the Misericórdia of Bahia ran a retirement house (recolhimento), provided marriage dowries, buried more than seven hundred persons a year, and catered for foundlings. In one respect however, the Misericórdia of Bahia failed to satisfy its members. Until 1775, the cloisters of the confraternity buried brothers, non-brothers and the poor in the same ground. The failure to ensure dignified burial sites seems to have had severe consequences for the confraternity. The members of the Misericórdia preferred to be buried as Dominican, Carmelites and especially Franciscan Tertiaries, because the Third Orders kept suitable funerary sites. The involvement of the Santa Casa with the plantation economy can be observed in relation to the African-Brazilian population. The hospital of Saint Christopher assisted circa forty per cent of non-whites, and the institution buried a mean of nearly six hundred slaves a year during the period between 1765 and 1787. Besides, the house possessed a sugar estate in the Recôncavo47 and used slaves as its labor force. Also, sugar planters, who needed huge investments of capital for processing the crop and then the shipment of sugar, owed corresponding sums that the misericórdia provided on loan.

 44

Hospital patients were surveyed from 1788 to 1799 and buried persons from 1765-1799 (Sá, Quando o rico, chap. 6). 45 Russell-Wood, Fidalgos and Philanthropists, 260. 46 Russell-Wood, Fidalgos and Philanthropists, 270-271. 47 Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society. Bahia, 1550-1835, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.



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There is no doubt that the difficulty in recovering the sums provided on loan was felt since the seventeenth century, but the situation was recognized as particularly damaging to the institution during the eighteenth century. The king was to order a general inspection of its accounts in 1754. Some of the documents that were produced in consequence testify to the centrality of charity in the accumulation of capital. If the institution were to lose importance, people would borrow the money elsewhere. Credit may have harmed the efficiency of charitable action, but it was nevertheless indispensable for the survival of the institution and its hegemonic role among the institutions of the city.48

Conclusions From the doctrinal point of view, the Portuguese misericórdias were rooted in late medieval piety. The fourteen works of mercy were already incorporated in doctrine when D. Manuel I ascended to the throne in 1495. Nevertheless, these confraternities were to institutionalize a coherent programme of charity based on their practice. The misericórdias were convenient to the king and to the local elites. The initiative of their foundation could come from both, but it was always welcome. The king obtained the patronage of charity at a relative low cost, and the local elites benefited from a set of advantages not always related to charitable action. The resources of the misericórdias were an important factor in the reproduction of the social status of their members. In exchange, those elites gave alms and administered charitable institutions, performing voluntary work. The misericórdias thus represented an increased possibility for dialogue and negotiation between local elites and the king. At the same time, the misericórdias took care of the poor, a relatively neutral element in this triple relationship, which, as we have seen, held central power and local elites as its two main poles. The history of the misericórdias in Asia is thus that of the Estado da Índia: once rich and including a core of dynamic fortresses, which related to its capital; in recession after the seventeenth century, when military and economic decline reduced their number and motivated the ruin of Goa itself. Its misericórdia mirrors this recession: from being at the centre in relation to the other misericórdias, it turned into a peripheral institution itself in the eighteenth century. In Brazil, during the same period, the situation of the misericórdias was very different. There were problems,



48 Russell-Wood, Fidalgos and Philanthropists, 339-345 and Sá, Quando o rico, 218-221.



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frauds, and misuse of capital, but the huge sums of capital in circulation allowed these confraternities to keep their local importance, as well as to give relevant assistance to the poor, as was the case of the misericórdia of Salvador da Bahia. As for the misericórdia of Macao, its localization in a unique economic and social context in the Far East brought its pre-banking nature into the open. Compared to Goa, the city was not in decline during the eighteenth century. In spite of the fluctuations of the markets and the political alliances indispensable to the survival of the Portuguese presence in the peninsula, the city managed to count on its misericórdia as a support system both for its poor and for its commercial activities. The study of the misericórdias demonstrates a permanent tension between the interests of the elites and the need to create social consensus through charity; there was an implicit commitment to run assistance institutions and to help the poor, because the misericórdias were created to perform the fourteen works of mercy. The fact that the misericórdias were based not on legal obligation of the well-to-do towards the poor, but on their good will and on the benevolent image they wanted to give of themselves, was both advantageous and negative to them. The elites could run them with a great degree of independence from central authorities and manage resources freely. On the other hand, the negative impact of poor behaviour was to harm institutions like the misericórdias, which relied on the confidence of the population and which could be transformed into pious legacies, which in turn generated wealth. The awareness of the misuse of money, especially on loan, could result in a drop in donations and divert capital to other institutions. It would be exaggerated to state that charity played a secondary role in the misericórdias, because its role was vital for the legitimacy of the institution. No doubt misericórdias can also be seen as agents of imperialism, although we risk ignoring that their behaviour was not substantially different from their metropolitan counterparts. Imperialism is not a specificity of charitable action, but it would be unwise to state that charity did not contribute to political and social domination, whether at home or overseas.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN ‘FLOATING’ EUROPEAN CLERGY IN SIAM DURING THE YEARS IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO THE NATIONAL REVOLUTION OF 1688: THE LETTERS OF THE FRANCISCAN GIOVAN BATTISTA MORELLI, O.F.M STEFAN C. A. HALIKOWSKI-SMITH

The Franciscan missionary Giovan Battista Morelli di Castelnuovo’s letters in the Fondo Principato del Mediceo in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze are considered ‘particularly interesting’ by the ecclesiastical historian Luigi Bressan, and it is a matter of surprise that they pass otherwise unnoticed to scholars working in the crowded historiography of early modern European travel accounts of the Orient and particularly Siam at the time of the ‘National Revolution of 1688’.1 If anything, there is confusion with another friar, apparently a Portuguese Augustinian, Fulgêncio Leitão, who adopted the pseudonym Giovan Battista Morelli to publish a tract in Turin supporting the Restauração.2 While the lives of 1

Luigi Bressan & Michael Smithies, Siam and the Vatican, Bangkok: River Books, 2001, 78. There is a short biography of Morelli in Benedetto Spila ed., Memorie Storiche della Provincia Riformata Romana, Rome/Milano: Tip. Capriolo e Massimino 1890, vol. II, 130-134, and a more accurate one in Georgius Mensaert ed., Sinica Franciscana, Quaracchi-Firenze : Apud Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1961, vol. 6, 1243-1250. Mensaert establishes that Morelli was born in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana (Tuscany) on 7 February 1655. 2 Reduccion y restituycino del reyno de Portugal a la Serenissima casa de Bragança en la real persona de D. Iuan IV, rey de dicho reyno con las razonas y causa de la confederacion: discurso moral y politico, Turin: Iuannetin Pennoto, 1648. For an analysis of this text, see Pedro Cardim, `Portuguese Rebels’ at Münster. The Diplomatic Self-Fashioning in mid-17th century European Politics’, Historiche Zeitschrift, Beiheft nr. 26 (New Series), 1998, 293-333.

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these two Morellis could hardly have overlapped significantly in time (the Portuguese Morelli is thought to have lived c. 1588-1658), there is the possibility that our `Siamese’ Morelli may have adopted the name of someone he regarded as an illustrious precursor. This was quite common within the Church at that time. 3 The latter’s letters, addressed to the King of France and to ‘His Saintliness’ (in other words, the Pope) span the period 1680-1688, and are voluminous, although not always particularly original, covering much of the same ground with less accuracy and depth than other contemporary commentators such as Nicholas Gervaise, or Simon de La Loubère. They nevertheless provide an interesting glimpse of life in the Siamese kingdom where Morelli found himself after failing to enter the Chinese mission field. The period in which Morelli made his visit, moreover, was of crucial importance in Siamese history, a period of remarkable openness to foreigners and the Christian religion, when a Greek First Minister presided over the day-to-day workings of the country, although the clouds were gathering and an end to this colourful period was shortly to be brought about by the so-called National Revolution of 1688.4 His descriptions can thus be emplotted into the already rich descriptions of this ‘calm before the storm’. We would do well, moreover, to bear in mind that some scholars are now starting to question the Jesuit stranglehold on missionary historiography, urging that historians move to focus on the activities of other orders, and particularly the Franciscans, whom the Holy See chose to strengthen the missions in the Far East towards the end of the 1670s. Angela Xavier Barreto most recently made a case for more work to be conducted on the Franciscans in the context of Luso-Indian History.5 3

Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (1457-1526) was one such churchman who spawned many doppelgangers in the following centuries; Juan Maldonado de Alcalá may have been another, see Stefan Halikowski Smith, `”Tempestatem, Quae Cum Adventuro D. Francisco Pallu timero potest”: Jean-Baptiste Maldonado SJ, caught between Loyalties to the Portuguese Padroado and the Political Ascendancy of the Missions Étrangères de Paris in the Siam Mission’, Revista de Cultura [Macao], 34 (April 2010), 47, fn. 7. 4 Some contemporary scholars like Michael Smithies prefer to downplay the significance of this event, preferring talk of a ‘court revolution’. Europeans, however, like the Vicar Apostolic Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix, M.E.P. invariably spoke of ‘la grande revolution’, Description du royaume Thai ou Siam : comprenant la topographie, histoire naturelle, moeurs et coutumes, législation, commerce, industrie, langue, littérature, religion, annales des Thai et précis historique de la mission, Paris : Au profit de la mission de Siam, 1854, vol. II, 194. 5 Angela Barreto Xavier, ‘Itinerários Franciscanos na Índia Seiscentista, e Algumas Questões de História e de Método’, in Lusitania Sacra, 2a. série, 18 (2006), 87-

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The problem posed by `floating’ clergy in the Orient. In many ways, Morelli can be considered as an example of the many ‘floating clergy’ stranded in the Orient, and attempting to convince themselves and the world of the valuable service they were doing there.6 I would like to develop the use of this term in two different directions. First, by referring to the excessive numbers of friars in the East, a source of frequent complaint over the course of the seventeenth century as to the heavy burden monasteries imposed financially on local communities. In Goa alone, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689) could estimate 80 churches and monasteries at the end of the seventeenth century.7 This problem emerged as a consequence of the long-term policy which had encouraged professed clergy to ‘go out to India’, but ‘not to return thence’ which, as the King explained in a letter to the Viceroy in January 1598, was needed as ‘those who take the frock there are deficient in such education and qualities as are required for the improvement of society by their example and conversion.’8 The King’s assessment of the virtuous example of Portugal’s clergy may have been a little optimistic. The Italian traveller Pietro Della Valle suggested in 1623 that half of the total then living in Goa would be sufficient for a city of that size.9 In 1636 a meeting was convened in Goa of the superiors of all the religious orders to discuss the appropriate numbers for such communities, and which priests were to enter which monastery.10 Besides the purposeful ‘Apostles’, keen on 116. Writers like Adriano Prosperi, for example, write about ‘the missionary’ as if he automatically were a Jesuit, see his chapter ‘The Missionary’ in Rosario Villari, Baroque Personae, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1995, 160-195. 6 Stranded in the sense that it was equally, if not more difficult, to be repatriated as a ‘man of the cloth’ than a soldado. In contravention of the policy outlined by the king in his letter to the Viceroy of January 1598, two Franciscans who disobeyed this order, embarking without leave from the Archbishop or their Superior, were put ashore in Brazil as a consequence, The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies (…), Vol. II, 1619 (repr. London: Hakluyt Society, 1887), 184. 7 Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, London: Humphrey Milford & Oxford University Press, 1925, 248. 8 Archivo Português Oriental, Joaquim H. da Cunha-Rivara (ed.), New Delhi : Asian Educational Services, 1992, Fasciculo 3, No. 304. 9 Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle il Pellegrino, descritti da lui medesimo in lettere familiari, Brighton: G. Gancia, 1843, vol. II, 593; cf. The Voyage of François Pyrard de Laval, vol. II, pt. I, ch. VI ‘Of The Archbishop of Goa, the Inquisition, Ecclesiastics, and ceremonies Observed there, with other occurrences’, 88-110. 10 Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Dúvidas e problemas acerca de algumas teses de história da expansão, Lisbon: Edições Gazeta de Filosofia, 1943, 97.

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opening mission-fields as Bearers of the Good News, or anunciadores, and regular clergy, like Jean-Baptiste Maldonado de Mons, who devoted their entire working lives to particular mission fields of the East, in this case Siam, there were many clergy of secondary importance who ‘floated’ between missions, often neither convinced, nor themselves particularly convincing men of the cloth.11 Floating clergy, if unable to find themselves a permanent priory and with strong individual political motivations, could damage existing ecclesiastical structures in the East by discrediting the Church’s good name and fostering a climate of internecine rivalry amongst the different orders.12 While the Propaganda de Fide did its best to carefully select the priests it sent out to the mission fields, sent off with the typical approbation ‘all of tested worthiness and capability for life’ (tutti di sperimentata bontà di vita et habilità),13 European diplomatic embassies from the metropole often speak very disparagingly of the quality of these footloose European clergy, commenting on their moral laxity, and advised against the employment of some of these individuals on Asian embassies to Europe.14 François Bernier advised that ‘they would 11

I distinguish my working concept of ‘floating clergy’ from that of RussellWood, who studies instead the opportunities for professional mobility of the clergy across the Portuguese overseas world, in John Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808. A World on the Move, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998, ‘Servants of Christ’, 87-94. For Maldonado, see Henri Bosmans, `Correspondance de Jean-Baptiste Maldonado’, in Analectes pour server à l’histoire ecclésiastique de la Belgique, 3e S., n° 36, 1910, 39-86; 187-237; Halikowski Smith, `”Tempestatem, quae cum adventuro de D. Francisco Pallu timero potest”, 34-52 12 See, for example, the French Jesuit Fontaney’s arrival in China and the consternation it caused, prompting the Vice-Provincial Intorcetta to confess to his Superiors in Rome ‘I do no know if there has ever been a time when this ViceProvince has faced such serious affairs as those which have transpired during my time governing’, see Liam Brockey, Journey to the East. The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, 159-160. Other disagreements ended in physical violence, as was the case between the Jesuits and the Missions Étrangères de Paris in Siam, and particularly in neighbouring Cambodia, see François Ponchaud, La cathédrale et la rizière: 450 ans d’histoire de l’église au Cambodge, Paris: Fayard, 1990, 47-48. 13 See, for example, Archivio Storico della S. Congregazione di Propaganda Fide, Rome, Acta, 61, 30 July 1691, n. 19, c. 5v. 14 Ambassador Pero Vaz de Siqueira, who visited Siam in 1684, for example, found Constâncio Jorge da Silva ‘a priest whose lifestyle was found to be too strange by his flock due to the liberty he professed and practised much to the discredit of the Ecclesiastical State’, Leonor de Seabra ed., The Embassy of Pero Vaz de Siqueira (1684-1686), Macau: Instituto Português do Oriente e Fundação Oriente, 2005, fl. 251.

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be better off cooped up in their convents than coming here and making a mockery (momerie) of our religion, and whom from their ignorance, jealousy, libertinage and abuse of their authority and character scandalise the laws of Jesus Christ’.15 Dismissals were more rare, but they did occasionally occur. Francis Xavier dismissed at least three Goan friars in 1552 on the pretext that they had not been well-trained, leaving their colleges back in Europe ‘with much fervour, but without experience’. At this point, the offended parties sometimes chose to return to Rome to vindicate themselves and seek redress. This was the case with António Gomes S.J., who unfortunately died en route in a shipwreck.16 Secondly, we can detect ‘floating’ clergy at particular and specific points in the East, frequently passing through Siam en route to one of the more important mission fields like China, a mission field described by Jacques de Bourges as ‘this great mission, where what is at stake is the conversion of an empire which surpasses Europe in grandeur and which one can assume to contain more than two hundred million souls, without even including the neighbouring kingdoms, which are very considerable’.17 For Fray Pedro de Ayaro, China was ‘the dessert’ (postre), and an objective for which men of the cloth would subject themselves to humiliation, such as ‘selling themselves as slaves (...) so that in this way they could enter China’.18 Priests who stopped in Siam en route to China include Jean de Fontaney, Antoine Thomas and Nicholas Rougemont, Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Gerbillon and Claude de Visdelou, though the price exacted by a Siamese king ‘piqué d’astrologie’ on this last group was that P. Louis Le Comte should remain.19 Here in Siam, the institutional complex of the 15 François Bernier, Voyage dans les États du Grand Mogol, Paris: Fayard 1981, 218-9. 16 Ines Županov, ‘Fervours and Tropics: A Jesuit Missionary Career in India (António Gomes, 1548-1554)’, in Missionary Tropics. The Catholic Frontier in India (16th-17th Centuries), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c. 2005, ch. 3. 17 Jacques de Bourges, Relation du Voyage de Monseigneur l’évêque de Beryte, vicaire apostolique du royaume de la Cochinchine, par la Turquie, la Perse, les Indes & jusqu’au royaume de Siam & autres lieux, Paris: Denys Bechet, 1666, 3. 18 Cited in Johannes Beckmann, ‘China im Blickfeld der mexicanischen Bettelorden des 16 Jahrhunderts’, in Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, 19, (1963), 8192, 195-214. 19 Noël Golvers, François de Rougemont, S.J., Missionary in Ch'ang-Shu (ChiangNan), Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999; Henri Bernard, ‘Le Voyage du Père de Fontaney’, in Bulletin de l’Université Aurore, vol. 3, number 2 (1942), 227-276, who mentions his encounter with Morelli on his 1687 journey to China and after a series of ill-fated attempts to leave Siam on poorly fitted ships heading for Macao; for Thomas, see Louis Pfister, ‘Notes biographiques et bibliographiques sur les

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free-standing church of São Paulo, Jesuit residence (domus) and college (collegium), built around 1656 thanks to the contributions of the Siamese Catholic Isabel Rajiota, formed an important ensemble, which acted as a magnet for passing Europeans. The annual Jesuit mission report of 1686, for example, underlined the Jesuit complex’s importance as the ‘stopping point’ (escala) for all the missions in the ‘Sinic archipelago’, which only mirrored an observation made by Jean Baptiste Maldonado five years earlier in 1681, namely that ‘the kingdom of Siam is already like a metropolis for the missions of the Propaganda’.20 Further, at least for the period prior to the Siamese Court Revolution of 1688, individuals made their way from as far afield as Macao to receive ‘sacred orders’ for the priesthood in Siam, whilst failing missions, such as that in Cochinchina in the mid-1660s, bailed out to take refuge in Siam. All told, this was a pulling power that the Missions Étrangères de Paris, Morelli’s hosts in Siam, who had developed their own headquarters in Ayutthaya in fields to the south of the Chao Phraya River, and which they named the St. Joseph Settlement, were keen to emulate.21

Jésuites de l’ancienne mission de Chine’, in Variétés sinologiques [Shanghai], no. 59, 1932, Note 183. See also ‘Copia di un Cap.º di una lettera scritta da Monsig. Lodouico Vescouo in Siam al P. Antonio Thomas della Companhia di Giesu, questi anno 1685 il qual Cap.º euenuto da Macao in lingua Portoghese e qui si è tratatto nell’Jtaliana. [fl. 763]’, Cod. 49-V-19, Biblioteca de Ajuda, Lisbon; Père Joachim Bouvet, Voiage de Siam du Père Bouvet, ed. Janette C. Gatty, Leiden: Brill, 1963. 20 ‘A Missão do Reyno de Siam’, in Breve Notícia das Missoens que a Companhia de Jesus tem nas partes do Oriente, 1686, fol. 250 (Biblioteca de Ajuda, Lisbon, Códice 49-V-34); `Lettera 209 di G.-B. Morelli’, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, f. 1605. `Letter of Jean-Baptiste Maldonado S.J. to one of the assistants to General Gian Paolo Oliva from Siam’, dated 16 November, 1681 [in Latin], Correspondance de Jean-Baptiste Maldonado de Mons, Missionaire belge au Siam et en Chine au XVII siècle, ed. Henri Bosmans, Louvain: Imp. Van Linthout. 1911, 50-52. 21 François Pallu, ‘Additions aux Instructions qui ont été données aux missionaries écclesiastiques envoiés dans la Chine, la Cochinchine et le Tonkin, pour se conduire dans leur voyage et dans tous les lieux de leur mission, principalement dans le Tunkuin, faites à Ispahan et achevées le 10 septembre 1662’, in Archives des Missions Etrangeres, Paris, vol. CXVI, 169 (also in Adrien Launay, Lettres de Monseigneur Pallu : pcrites de 1654 j1684. Paris: Indes savantes, c2008., t. I, 1017).

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Figure 39. A missionary in the Orient. From Usage du royaume de Siam en 1688, s.l./ n.d. Manuscript from the Département des Estampes de la Bibliothèque Nationale de la France, OD-59-PET FOL.

Morelli is an example of a ‘floating clergyman’ who not only ended up in Siam, but drifted away from his home order – that of the Franciscans – to the Missions Étrangères de Paris. It is not sure where he stayed whilst in Siam, but it was almost certainly at the Residence in the St. Joseph settlement, and so his loyalties must have been swayed by the generous patronage offered to him there. From his writings, it is clear that Morelli preferred (and was not deterred from) assimilating to local ecclesiastical structures, rather than awaiting instructions from the head of the overseas provinces in the East based in Daugim in Old Goa, or operating within the strictures of the Franciscan Province of San Gregorio. Morelli’s language

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uses the first person plural to refer to himself as one of the M.E.P. in the context of the ‘beautiful church’ built entirely at the King of Siam’s expense (Lett. 209). Such perfidy should, one imagine, merit immediate expulsion from the priest’s order, yet we find other precedents for the M.E.P. requesting, and receiving, priests from the Franciscans. Luiz Madre de Deus, a Portuguese who came from Manila in 1670, is another case in point. He had an interesting career with the M.E.P., teaching in their college, but also winning fame as a medical specialist whom the King of Cambodia was keen to appropriate.22 Phaulkon explains on one occasion how Madre de Deus ‘only escaped expulsion from his charge and from his Order by reason of the protection he enjoyed from Your Holiness [Pope Innocent XI] and His Superior in Rome’.23 But what about Morelli? On another occasion, Morelli describes how the King invited him, the Vicar Apostolic Mons. D’Argoli, who was the Franciscan Bernardino della Chiesa, and two other M.E.P. fathers to come to Louvò (LopburƯ) where ‘he immediately prepared for them a house, sending them on different occasions to design it with royal financial support, if they might wish to stay with him a while, and to build them a church with a Residence just for them, but that he (Della Chiesa) was not willing to accept’. This would appear to be the ‘house in another place, donated by the King’ mentioned in Letter 209. Della Chiesa may have 22

Luigi Bressan thinks that Madre de Deus was another of those Franciscans who failed to enter the China mission, Siam and the Vatican, 76. The historian of the Franciscan province of San Gregorio Magno, Fr. Félix de Huerta, sees Madre de Deus as a stalwart of the Franciscan church in Mergui, Estado JHRJUifico, WRSRJUifico, HVWDGtstico, KLVWyrico-religioso, de la santa y DSRVWylica provincia de S. Gregorio Magno : de religiosos menores descalzos de la regular y Pis estrecha observancia de N.S.P.S. Francisco, en las islas Filipinas : comprende el Q~mero de religiosos, conventos, pueblos, VLWXDFLyn de estos, Dxos de su IXQGDFLyn, tributos, almas, producciones, industrias, cosas y casos especiales de su DGPLQLVWUDFLyn espiritual, en el $UFKLSLplago Filipino, desde su IXQGDFLyn en el Dxo de 1577 hasta el de 1863, Binondo : Imprenta de M. Sanchez y Ca., 1865, §63, 413-4. He should not be confused with Manuel da Madre de Deus, who was the guardian (Guardião) of the Convent of Nossa Senhora dos Anjos in Maca, see Manuel Teixeira, ‘Os Franciscanos em Macau’, in Victor Sánchez & Cayetano Fuertes, España en Extremo Oriente, 1578-1978, Madrid: Publicaciones Archivo Ibero-Americano, 1979, 577-643. 23 ‘Letter from C. Phaulkon to Pope Innocent XI’, dated 2 January 1688, formerly in the French Foreign Office archives on the Quai d’Orsay, now probably in the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de la Courneuve. Repr. in Edward W. Hutchinson, ‘The French foreign mission in Siam during the 17th century’, Journal of the Siam Society, 1933, vol. 26, 1-71.

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been dreaming about getting to China, rather than building up a Franciscan mission in Ayutthaya, so often in the past destroyed, but his lack of authority over his confrères, even as Bishop of Argolis, is palpable. Morelli remains, then, in many ways a better informant on events touching the M.E.P. community than on his own order.24

Towards a History of the Franciscan Overseas Province of San Gregorio Magno. What, then, the Franciscan Order thought of these floating clergymen and their cohabitation with members of other Orders is a good question. Missions were prescribed in Chapter 12 of the order’s founding charter (regola) following St. Francis’ own trip to the Holy Land in 1214, and have been considered ‘the show-case (vanto maggiore) of the Orders Minor’, with their own Apostolic provinces like that of S. Gregorio, in which Siam lay. In all likelihood, however, the Order was enfeebled in this period, probably a victim of the divisions of the still ongoing bitter dispute between Observants (of which a powerful splinter group the Frati della piú stretta osservanza, or Riformati, constituted half the Observants in Italy) and Conventuals, who considered themselves the original stock of the order and had officially seceded by decree of Pope Leo X in 1517. While in Spain and Portugal the sub-order of Discalced Franciscans was popular (sometimes referred to as Pasqualini, after their prime instigator), the order was also threatened by new rivals such as the Capuchins.25 The Franciscans never fielded a very impressive, or permanent presence in Siam, although 24

For early and unsuccessful Franciscan attempts to open a mission in Siam, see Fr. Félix de Huerta, Estado JHRJUifico, WRSRJUifico, HVWDGtstico, KLVWyricoreligioso, 371; Lorenzo Pérez, 'Origen de las misiones franciscanas en el Extremo Oriente', Archivo Ibero-Americano, continuacion, año 3, no. 13 (enero-feb 1916), 80-106; Ibid., 'Origen de las misiones franciscanas en el Extremo Oriente', conclusion, año 3, no. 18 (nov-dic 1916), 401-20; Argoli’s letters from Ayutthaya are to be found in the Archivio della Propaganda Fide, Rome, `Scritte delle Indie Orientali’, vol. 3, fol. 152; and many are repr. in Georgius Mensaert et al., Sinica Franciscana, vols. 6 & 6A. 25 John R.H. Moorman, History of the Franciscan Order, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, ch. 43; Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages., trans. F.I. Antrobus, London: K. Paul 1899, vol. 11, 530-531; Herbert Holzapfel, The History of the Franciscan Orders, Teutopolis, Illinois: St. Joseph Seminary, 1948; see also the entry on the Franciscans (Frati Minori) in Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma : Fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 1950, vol. XVI, 349.

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they arrived early in what turned out to be an unsuccessful mission from the Spanish Philippines in 1583, subsequently establishing themselves to the north of the ‘campo’, founding the Convento da Madre de Deus, with its church or chapel, made of wood, impermanent and, by Morelli’s time, abandoned.26 His colleague Luiz de la Madre de Deus was, for example, buried in the Dominican church.27 Walter Rossa has more generally identified what might be called opposing Franciscan and Jesuit ‘territorial patterns’, namely that whilst the former tried to keep some distance from urban centres, the latter always tried to be one of the most active urban elements. Although it is not sure that this distinction applies here, if only because the Portuguese were not at liberty to choose where they settled but were obliged to cohabit the same ‘campo’, even within the confines of this circumscribed donation, the Franciscans seem to have deliberately chosen a location away from the hustle and bustle of the river wharves, on to which the Church of São Paulo opened, the point of departure for any official delegation or procession to the Siamese court.28 Another important distinction from the Jesuits was that the Franciscans did not actively missionize, but believed in letting the converts come to them of their own volition. Franciscan historians nevertheless took up their pens to defend themselves against Giovanni Pietro Maffei’s criticisms that they left no time for active missionary work, limiting themselves to conducting funerals and saying Requiem masses.29 26

During the reign of Naresuan (1590-1605), the Portuguese Franciscan André do Espírito Santo managed to obtain the authorization to build a church of `stone and lime (cal)’, but it is not clear that this plan ever came to fruition, Fr. Paulo da Trindade, Conquista espiritual do Oriente (…) repartida em três volumes, ed. Félix Lopes O.F.M., Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1962-67, Part III, 463. 27 Huerta, Estado JHRJUifico, WRSRJUifico, HVWDGtstico, KLVWyrico-religioso, 414. 28 Walter Rossa, Cidades Indo-Portuguesas contribuic޽}es para o estudo do urbanismo portugue‫ޛ‬s no +LQGXVWmo Ocidental, Lisboa : &RPPLVVmo Nacional para as Comemorac޽}es dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1997, 93. António Soares’ report of 1721, for example, details how Macanese embassies proceeding to court audiences would start their formal procession at the Church of São Paulo. 1721/06/30. ‘Carta que o Padre António Soares de Companhia de Jesus escreveu do Sião para o Leal Senado, a dar conta do que se passou nesse reino com a embaixada portuguesa liderada pelo capitão Manuel de Vidigal Gião’, in Arquivos de Macau, vol. I, no. 3 (August 1929), 157, 161 & 3rd series, vol. VI, no. 1 (July 1966), 30-33. 29 Leonhard Lemmens, O.F.M., Geschichte der Franziskanermissionen, Münster in Westfalen: Aschendoff 1929, 109. A host of these Franciscans then immediately

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It was perhaps a result of their conscious distancing that the Franciscans were often treated by the Siamese with suspicion and expelled from the kingdom, as happened to one early arrival, Fra’Andrea.30 It was also a ‘weak arm’ rather than a ‘strong arm’ strategy of presence, as fielded by the Jesuit order. Otherwise, the Franciscans were renowned for their worship of the Cross, and were referred to as ‘Fathers of the Seraphic family’ or Serafici, following a common early modern soubriquet for St. Francis.31 It is unlikely that the religious intolerance embodied in the work of one of the most visible Franciscans in the Portuguese Orient, Fr. Paulo da Trindade, author of the vitriolic Conquista spiritual do Oriente (published between 1630-6), was generic to the order: his involvement in the Bardez brothers’ expulsion order served amidst unpleasant circumstances (quezílias) in 1630, and his later position as Deputy to the Inquisition in Goa, marks him out as a fractious and highly political Jeremiah.32 For Trindade, missionary work was regarded as a ‘most fierce’ spiritual war on ‘Oriental idolatry’ so as to ‘despoil it of its raiments and rich jewels, wreck many of its houses, prohibit its feasts, stop its ceremonies, banish its priests, deprive them of their vast income, and deliver many thousands of souls from their power’.33 Generally, however, like the Jesuits, the Franciscans established in the East were firm believers in accommodatio, and soon gave their services in the local language.34 left Siam (1582) at the outset of the Pegu-Siamese wars, making their way to Japan. The Spanish Franciscan Marcelo Ribadeneyra, author of Historia de las islas del archipiélago y reynos de la gran China, Tartaria, Cuchinchina, Malaca, Sian, Camboxa y Iappon, y de los sucedido en ellos a los religiosos descalços, Barcelona: Graells & Dotil, 1601, 163 ff. relied on these fugitives for the sections of his work relating to Siam. Maffei’s criticisms are contained in his Historiarum Indicarum, Antwerp: ex officina Martini Nutij, 1605, Bk. 12 and were denounced particularly vigorously by Trindade (see below). 30 Giovanni Filippo Marini, Delle Missioni de’ padri della Compagnia di Gesù nella provincial di Giappone, Rome 1663, here translated by Cesare Polenghi in Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 95, 2007, 53. 31 Marini, Delle Missioni de’ padri, 53; Pietro Antonio Ribetti da Venezia, Giardino Serafico Istorico fecondo di Fiori e Frutti di Virtù di Zelo e di Santità nelli trè Ordini Instituiti da S. Francesco, Venice: Domenico Lovisa, 1710, 2 vols. 32 Trindade, Conquista espiritual do Oriente. See also Mathias A. Mundadan, ‘Church and Missionary Works in Indo-Portuguese History’, in John Correia Afonso ed. Indo-Portuguese History. Sources and Problems, Bombay / Oxford: O.U.P., 1981, esp. 13. 33 Trindade, Conquista spiritual, ch. 66, ‘Da supersticiosa e diabólica idolatria dos brâmanes e mais gentios da Índia, e da variedade e vaidade de seus falsos deuses’. 34 Trindade, Conquista spiritual, vol. II, 216 ff.

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The small Franciscan community that had not immediately left at the outset of the Siam-Pegu wars, got ill, been recalled to Macao, or been killed either in the Burmese war of 1594, or by unreceptive Malays en route in Cambodia, petered out due to unpropitious political circumstances.35 Another group of Spanish Franciscans returned to Siam in 1670 (Fr. Luiz de la Madre de Deus and Fr. Angelo de Albano), and again in 1686 under P. Antonio Santo Domingo. All of them, however, rapidly moved on to other mission fields, including Mergui and the Nicobar islands, which saw a large number of gentiles converted and won the applause of the order’s supporters for the mission field’s isolation and demanding living condition.36 Morelli makes no mention of his confrères’ visit in his papers, perhaps because of the divisions that segregated different strands of the order, as we can observe with the different churches to the ‘Spanish’ Franciscans in seventeenth-century Florence. Otherwise, the Franciscans seem to have been particularly active in establishing missions in some of the port cities and outlying areas away from the centre of power in the country: in Mergui, Junkseylon (Phuket) and in Phitsanulok. In this, Morelli’s mission seems to have concurred with the Order’s direction. The mission in Junkseylon was established in 1699, just as the rest of the country was being purged of its European population (remarkably, the founding documents do not even mention the tumultuous political events going on in the kingdom) and comprised about five missionaries engaged in teaching, instructing, administering the sacraments, maintaining dispensaries, and rescuing slaves, whilst also ministering to prisoners, especially during the Anglo-French wars, and Burmese invasions of Siam. Other proposed missions, such as at Kedah, failed to get off the ground. We know about the Order’s activities from periodic reports of the Franciscan Provincial Superiors.37 35

Huerta, Estado geográfico, topográfico, estadístico, histórico-religioso, 371, 609; Ribadeneira, Historia de las Islas del Archipielago y Reynos. 36 Relación del P. António de Santo Domingo. Su viaje a las Islas de Nicobar, y su regresso a las Islas Filipinas, Manila: July 1691 (there is a summary of this rare text in John S. Cummins, `A Spanish Sidelight on “Siamese” White and Francis Davenport’, in Journal of South-East Asian History, Volume 5, Issue 2,1964, 129132); Lemmens, Geschichte der Franziskanermissionen, 1929, 110; Spila, Memorie Storiche della Provincia Riformata Romana, vol. 2, 137. 37 Achilles Meersman, ‘The Franciscans in Junk-Ceylon, Kedah and Mergui’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 56, 4, (1963), 439-462; P. Giuseppe Abate, ‘Missioni Francescane italiane in Oriente’, in Rassegna italiana del Mediterraneo, vol. XXXI, 1923, which is concerned with the missions dependent on the Franciscan presence in Constantinople.

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Journey to the East, and dreams of achieving missionary fame in China and then Pegu. Morelli set off for the Orient from Venice in the train of Fr. Bernardino Della Chiesa, the Franciscan Superior of the monastery at Orvieto, who had been recruited by François Pallu, one of the great organizing forces of the Missionaires Étrangères de Paris, as Titular Bishop of Argolis and Vicar Apostolic of Fukien.38 His company included other Franciscan companions, Frs. de Nicolai, de Albano, Brollo, and a layman named Baretta. The group proceeded to Basra (from which Morelli’s first letter was sent), and thence to Surat in 1680. Here, he explains, where a solid Franciscan base had already been established, the Monseigneur de Heliopolis François Pallu decided that it was ‘expedient’ to send only a handful of missionaries to attempt to enter China, given that entry was so difficult, and that they should split into smaller groups. At this point, Della Chiesa went with two other companions to Banten in Java, whence they hoped to make their separate trip to China, but instead suffered shipwreck. Meanwhile, Pallu travelled with Morelli and Padre Angelo at the end of April 1682 in a small vessel that the French Compagnie des Indes Orientales was sending to Tonkin, so as to transport a missionary as Ambassador to the King of Tonkin together with rich gifts ‘to soften the heart of that King so that he would not persecute the religion’.39 Morelli describes his journey in some detail; and which we can set alongside a number of other such sources, including the trip of both François-Timoléon de Choisy, and the Abbé de Lionne, later Bishop of Rosalia.40 As Alain Forest explains, the journey was often the most important feature of the missionary narrative in that they: seemed to constitute for our missionaries the essence of the foreign, what is worthy of recounting. Here, the distance between the two worlds seems to become concentrated, not into civilisational differences, but into the difficulties and perils of communication between these worlds. In the same way, the journey appears as a kind of initiation, a rite of passage between 38

Anastasius van den Wyngaert & Georgius Mensaert, Sinica Franciscana vol. V, `Relationes et Epistolas Ill.mi D. Fr. Bernardino della Chiesa, O.F.M.’, Rome: apud Collegium S. Antonii, 1954. 39 Louis Baudiment. François Pallu, principal fondateur de la Societé des Missions Étrangères (1626-1684), Paris :Gabriel Beauchesne et ses fils, 1934. 40 Godefroy-Philippe Jumeau, Le Journal de Voyage au Siam de l’Abbé de Lionne, suivi de mémoires sur l’affaire (Études et documents, 13), Paris: 92-Colombes, 2001; François-Timoléon de Choisy, Journal du voyage de Siam, ed. Dirk Van der Cruysse, Paris: Fayard, 1995.

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two states, by which the European clerk became transformed into a missionary of Asia. If the journeys and adventures are worthy of recounting, neither the decor of the worlds where one arrives nor the conditions of life of far-away humankind seem to unsettle (dépayser), or be worth detailed description.41

Morelli describes how the vessel in which he travelled coasted along the Malabar coast right up to the island of ‘Zeilim’ (Ceylon), which is opposite the point of that territory; and on the May 9 the boat turned again to the East, leaving Ceylon behind on the left, and the Maldives on the right at 5 degrees north of the equator. The boat crossed the mouth of the Gulf of Bengal in eight days, and on the day of Pentecost the large island of Sumatra was to be seen, the day before many other different islands were to be seen. On that island, they are almost all Muslim, and there are very few Christians, and this island forms a strait with the Melakan landmass, which is difficult for navigators due to the many sandy areas that there are; and one month was spent in passing it. The Melakan straits have many beautiful small islands, but not inhabited, full of trees, with many fruits. Turtles are to be had of enormous sizes here; some of them cannot be carried by ten, even twelve men. During the night they go on land of those islands to lay their eggs, and the sailors catch them and take them off as supplies for the ship, which last for many days as is our hardship, and these animals can stay alive for 15 or 20 days without eating, and more besides. At the end of this strait there are a number of islands set one next to the other so that one can be a little frightened getting a ship through. Here live certain people whose entire wealth consists of a small boat on which the entire family dwells, living off fishing and fruits of those islands, all naked and black. They come to ships that pass, carrying fish and fruit in great quantity in order to have [buy] a piece of cloth with which to cover their 42 fronts. In this country the days neither get longer no shorter due to the proximity to the equator, being no further than a half a degree distant, and all of this is due to living at the centre of the earth. On the 17th of June our captain turned the voyage towards Siam, and where [in Tonkin?] we found Monsig. di Metellopolis, Vicar Apostolic of this kingdom [Louis Laneau], who was going to Cochinchina to consecrate 41

Alain Forest, Les Missionaires français au Tonkin et au Siam (XVII-XVIII siècles). Analyse compare d’un relative success et d’un total échec, Paris: Harmattan, 1998, vol. III, 83. 42 Morelli is here talking of the Orang Laut, see Leonard Andaya, Leaves of the Same Tree: Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008, ch. 6.

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Chapter Thirteen an Apostolic Vicar of that kingdom, and where the affairs relating to the Christian religion are prospering, the missionaries there are already celebrating the ecclesiastic ‘ship’ publicly, and one of the nephews of the King is Christian and he has a public church in his palace . Having arrived in the principal city there, we found Monseigneur Aurense, Vicar Apostolic of Tonkin [Pallu], already prepared to return to his mission [China], with whom we were constrained to go, in company with three others, and one person who travelled as Ambassador. We left on 15th July and until the tip of Cambodia we were becalmed, a few days afterwards with favourable winds we started sailing and having passed the kingdoms of Cambodia and Champa, we went past Cochinchina always in sight of land, where we were attacked by four large boats full of Chinese corsairs, 43 two of which were fitted out as merchant seamen. One remained as chaplain of the vessel, and I stayed on as secretary of the Ambassador. How many accidents have occurred as a result of diabolic dealings to impede the religious practice of those most evil enemies of the Christian religion!

Although left unclear, Morelli and his group did stop in Tonkin. At one stage, he points out that he could not stay here due to the ongoing persecution of Christian missionaries and laws which prevented the outward recognition of Christianity as being ‘contrary to the laws of the kingdom’. He nevertheless recognised the ‘most numerous’ community of Christians, which he estimated at 180.000, although ‘destitute of priests, because up till now they have not been permitted, nor one allowed to remain in the kingdom’.44 This figure concurs remarkably with the 188.037 converts to Christianity stipulated by the historian Charles Boxer, although other contemporary estimates put the figure higher still.45 Nor was China a possibility, a mission field whose entry Morelli judged ‘molto difficile’. He had been denounced as a ‘heretic’ by the Portuguese authorities, who were otherwise banning entry to missionaries who could not attest to having Lisbon as the point of their departure for entry into the mission-fields of the East, even though the Mendicants had

43

Other sources suggest that the battle raged for three hours and that the Captain himself was killed, Spila, Memorie storiche, vol. II, 131-2. In Spila’s understanding, the ‘seamen’ was the dress consequently adopted by the missionaries rather than the camouflage of the pirates. 44 Spila, Memorie storiche, vol. II, 132, 45 Charles R. Boxer, Portuguese India in the mid-seventeenth century, 15; in The Siam Dossier at the Oriental Library, Tokyo, `Letter of P. Pedro Martyr to P. Guy Tachard of 2 January 1688’, 75/6 a figure of 300.000 souls for the Tonkin mission is brought forward.

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obtained papal support to enter the Padroado in the 1630s.46 Problems also stemmed from the Chinese side; missionaries needed to obtain a license from the Chinese authorities, which was no easy feat. Between 1552 and 1583, 32 Jesuits, 24 Franciscans, 2 Augustinians, and 1 Dominican tried to obtain a license to preach in China, and all failed.47 Others, like the French Jesuit Fontaney, Philippe Couplet, and the M.E.P. missionary Artus de Lionne, did however successfully penetrate the China mission in this period, following personal intercession on the part of powerful Jesuits at the court like Father Adam Schall, who directed the Imperial Observatory at Beijing.48 His next logical step was to move on to Siam after a month-long journey, with the idea of studying the Chinese language, as Mgr. della Chiesa was doing, although the friars traditionally trained their men for this purpose in Formosa (Taiwan), or amongst the large Chinese community in Manila.49 Ayutthaya became the hub for his next proposed mission-field, that of Pegu. In Siam, François Pallu (1626-84), later the first Vicar Apostolic to reach China, actively beseeched floating clergy, like the Italian Franciscans Angelo di Albano and Morelli, to come and join the French mission.50 The backdrop to this request was the deepseated rivalry between the long extant Jesuit community and the newly 46 `Letter of King, dated 20 March 1685’, published in Charles R. Boxer ed., ‘Correspondencia trocada em 1685-6 entre El Rei D. Pedro I e o Visorey do Estado da India D. Francisco de Tavora, Conde de Alvor, sôbre o Padroado Portuguez na China’ in Boletim Eclesiastico da Diocese de Macau (Set.-Oct., 1937), 9; Henri Chappoulie, Aux origines d’une église. Rome et les missions d’Indochine au XVII siècle, Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1943–48, 2 vols. 47 Repertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800, ed. Joseph Dehergne S.J, Roma : Institutum historicum S.I. ; Paris : Letouzey & $Qp, 1973), 325; Pascuale M. D’Elia, Fonti Ricciane: Documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci e la storia delle prime relazione tra l’Europa e la Cina (1579-1615), Roma: Libreria dello Stato, 1942-49, vol. I, 139-142, n. 5. 48 Jerome Heyndrickx, Philippe Couplet S.J. (1623-93), the man who brought China to Europe, Nettetal: Steyler, 1990. 49 James S. Cummins, ‘Two Missionary Methods in China’, Mendicants and Jesuits’, in España en extremo oriente, Filipinas, China, Japon : presencia franciscana, 1578-1978, eds. Víctor Sánchez, Cayetano S. Fuertes, Madrid : Publicaciones Archivo Ibero-Americano, 1979. The article is also reproduced in James S. Cummins, Jesuit and Friar in the Spanish Expansion to the East, London: Variorum 1985, 82. 50 Spila, Memorie Storiche della Provincia Riformata Romana, vol. II, 130-137; Ribetti da Venezia, Giardino Serafico, vol. I, 109. For a biography of Pallu, see Baudiment, François Pallu.

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arrived Missions Étrangères de Paris, who sought to displace rival orders in the region, or at least subsume them under the authority of the newly created Vicariates Apostolic that Rome had been persuaded to sanction. Problems however dogged the recruitment of teaching staff at the French college and fresh missionaries to the East more generally. From 1668, the order was looking to French religieux to join them in Siam.51 Various ad hoc solutions were the only solution. In 1670, the Vicar Apostolic Lambert de la Motte had sent M. Bouchard to Manila requesting aid from the orders ‘which had residences there’, especially the Dominicans and the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God, and a Franciscan, Father Luiz de la Madre de Deus, came to teach the second-year class in the Siamese seminary.52 Other than Madre de Deus, the only other trawl was a Dominican who was a chargé of a neighbouring parish to Ayutthaya. Later that decade, Pallu managed to persuade bigger names to join them in the East, like Fr. Bernardino della Chiesa, as we have seen. Consequently, between 1682 and 1686, Morelli helped the French mission in Siam by attending to the faithful from Pegu, who formed a substantial exiled community in Ayutthaya. According to the French Jesuit du Jarric, they were as many as 100.000 strong, their quarter marked on Dutch city plans of the period such as the river map in François Valentijn.53 The ‘Pegusche Campo’ was populated by Mon migrants who had arrived in the wake first of the rebellion against the manpower demands of Nandabayin, and then the Burma-Siam wars of the latter half of the sixteenth century, and particularly the final decade of the seventeenth century, when the entire kingdom suffered utter destruction and depopulation leaving, in the words of one contemporary account, ‘a greater silence on earth than human thought can imagine’.54 Dwelling a considerable distance from Ayutthaya itself, far closer indeed to Bangkok, or above LopburƯ, where they devoted themselves to agriculture – growing 51

‘Lettre Circulaire à tous les Ecclésiastiques de France’, dated 4 September 1673 and sent to M. de Bretonvilliers, Supérieure de St. Sulpice, Paris, Archives des Missionaires Étrangères (A.M.E.P.)., vol. 118, 552; more generally, Baudiment, François Pallu, 209. 52 See Pallu’s ‘Lettre aux Procureurs’, dated 4 August, 1671, sent from Madagascar. 53 Pierre du Jarric, Histoire des choses plus memorables advenues tant en Indes Orientales, que autres pais de la descouverte des Portugais, Bordeaux: Millanges, 1608-14, vol. I, 623, 626. 54 ‘A Brief Account of the Kingdom of Pegu’, trans. from the Portuguese by A. MacGregor, I.C.S., Retd., with a note by D.G.E. Hall, Journal of the Burma Research Society, 16, 2, 99-138.

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rice paddies, engaging in the thatch (attap) and firewood trades, firing bricks for the production of Martaban pots - they were considered so poor that they were not able to erect their own temples.55 Phaulkon’s Memorandum of 1688 mentions Morelli’s work, calling him a ‘Franciscan from Rome’ and to whom ‘spiritual control’ of the village of Sancok/Samkok was delegated. Here it was hoped he would oversee the rebuilding of the church there so as to not leave the Christians ‘completely destitute’. The Memorandum hints at Morelli’s provisory role, mentioning that ‘his place should be taken by another’.56 At the end of his letter dated 20 September 1686 Morelli describes himself as ‘preparing to leave for the far corner of the Kingdom of Siam where it borders Pegu, and where they say there are many settlements where there are no pagodas and where they do not want any; they have another type of religion than the cult of the devil.’ He was planning to travel there with an unnamed French missionary and was in high hopes of ‘fruit, although there is no certainty given the distance and the small amount of commerce with those parts’. The reference to a companion may well relate in some way to what became the mission of two M.E.P. priests, Fathers Jean Genoud and Jean Joret, sent to the Pegu mission-field from Ayutthaya in 1689, where they too had ended up in 1687 after their mission station in Cambodia was destroyed by invading Annamites.57 The Peguan ambassador in Ayutthaya had apparently responded to the ‘services rendered his compatriots [in Ayutthaya] by the preachers of the western religion’ by inviting two such priests to Pegu.58 Joret and Genoud’s overt missionizing was ultimately met with torture (supplice) and drowning in the Irrawaddy in 1693, although they managed to erect a church and a hospital in Syriam.59 In reality, Morelli accompanied the unnamed ‘Frenchman’ to ‘the borders of the kingdom of Siam’, but there his companion became ill, and 55

A Traveller in Siam in the Year 1655. Extracts from the Journal of Gijsbert Heeck, trans. Barend Jan Terwiel, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2008, 51; Robert Halliday, `Immigration of the Mons into Siam’, 50th anniversary edition of the Journal of the Siam Society, 1954, vol. 1, 76. 56 Extracts of this document are reproduced in Bressan, Siam and the Vatican, 104107. 57 Jean Joret, ‘Lettre de Siam aux Directeurs des Missions Étrangères’, dated 23 November 1683, Archives des Missions Étrangères (A.M.E.P.), vol. 858, fol. 576. 58 Adrien Launay, Histoire générale de la Societé des Missions-Etrangères, Paris: Téqui, 1894, vol. I, 370-372. 59 Cf. the entry on Jean Genoud in Historisches Lexicon der Schweiz at http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/index.php (accessed 18 July, 2010).

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was forced to return. Tales of overland travel in this part of the world, such as that made by Fontaney, Bouvet, Gerbillon and Visdelou, who struggled back to Bangkok after shipwreck off Cambodia in July 1686, suggest that indeed conditions on the road were often life threatening.60 Meanwhile, dates suggest that the Pegu mission idea was probably Morelli’s, although his failure saw him passed over – or excused - in favour of Genoud and Joret.61 From this episode, we can see that Morelli was a bit of a dreamer, perhaps a little delusional, as well as an adventurer. He dreamt of being ‘a preacher of the Gospel to those people’, and becoming the prospective author of a Relatione of the little visited country of Pegu, with ‘all the other countries of the region, which I have visited’, Morelli explains, ‘[having been] greatly overrun by Europeans’. We encounter other such individuals in this period, men like Louis Chevreuil in Cambodia.62 Their character type seems to have flown in the wind of conventional wisdom, which stipulated: The ideal man (...) should be healthy, energetic, pious, sound in his theological learning, and with linguistic talents. In character, a missionary must be calm, urbane, modest, long-suffering; for the Chinese [the same could be said to apply to the Siamese] are converted through the eyes, not through the ears, by good example, not argument. Above all, volunteers

60

Louis D. Le Comte, Un -psuite j3pkin. Nouveaux Mémoires sur l’état present de la Chine, 1687-1692, Paris: Phébus 1990, 32. 61 Adrien Launay, Mémorial de la Société des missions étrangères, vol. 2. Paris: s.n., 1916; see also the entry on Jean Genoud in Historisches Lexicon der Schweiz. Earlier Franciscan missions to Pegu such as that of a Frenchman Bonferre in the 1550s had failed, Giovanni Pietro Maffei, Le istorie dell’Indie Orientali, tradotte di Latino in Lingua Toscana, da F. Serdonati; con una scelta di lettere scritte dell’Indie, etc. Fiorenza: F. Giunti, 1589. 62 For Chevreuil, later sidelined in the Ayutthayan mission, the Directors responding to his letters by informing the Bishop that they found his ‘spirit fatigued by the tribulations he had endured’ and elsewhere the Bishops of Heliopolis and Béryte concluding that everything he reported [in his Relation] amounted to ‘a pure illusion and a veritable chimera, that God had permitted to test the fidelity of his servant’. See, for example, Chappoulie, Aux origines d’une église 1943, 176 ff.; Françoise Fauconnet-Buzelin, Aux Sources des Missions Étrangères, —Pierre Lambert De La Motte (1624–1679), Paris: Edition Perrin, 2006, 223, note 13. Having read one of Chevreuil’s letters in the Biblioteca de Ajuda, Lisbon, Cod. 49-V-16, fl. 300v, it has to be said that his rhetoric obscures any kind of easily won meaning from his writing.

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must be realists – over-scrupulous romantic dreamers, would-be mystics and saints are best left in their priories.63

In one of his letters, Morelli excoriates, recognising that ultimately perhaps he was not ‘too able at pursuing tiresome (travagliose) journeys’. He also does not appear to have mastered any of the Oriental languages which might have been of use to him, despite Pope Paul V’s upbraiding of all religious superiors that schools of foreign languages be instituted for those sent to the mission fields abroad, and indeed the Franciscans very own missionary college in S. Pietro in Montorio in Trastevere, where Morelli’s colleagues like Padre Mauricio da Lucca dutifully studied.64 While some of his letters are in Portuguese, it is not sure how comfortable he even felt with Latin. While it made sense that his Florentine letters be written in his mother tongue, Italian, it is a fact that the letters and works of north European missionaries of the period are all in Latin.65 Competence in languages was not, however, always a prerequisite for a successful preaching career in the overseas mission fields. There are plenty of examples of famous preachers summoned to mission fields where they did not possess the linguistic faculties to relate to their audience, but had instead to draw on the ‘theatrical resources’ available to them, as was the case with Paulo Segneri’s trip to Bavaria.66 As a self-professed adventurer, he nevertheless provided suitable companionship for Fra Angelo Albano, the first European to later enter Laos alongside an unnamed French missionary, and seems to have missed the lack of communication with Albano after his departure (Lett. 276) and suffered consequently from a sense of directionlessness (‘io non ho avuto altra determinazione, dove debba andare’).67 The mission field of Pegu may have held a particular position amongst zealots of his day: an Annual Letter of the Jesuits of 1643 explains how: 63

Cited in Cummins, ‘Two Missionary Methods in China’, 81. Arduino Kleinhans, Historia studii linguae arabicae et collegii missionum O.F.M. in conventu ad S. Petrum in Monte Aureo Romae Erecti, Quaracchi presso Firenze: Collegio di S. Bonaventura, 1930, 96-99; ‘Fondazione del Collegio di Missionari in S. Pietro in Montorio’, in Spila, Memorie Storiche, vol. II, ch. 2; more generally Kieran McCarty, `Apostolic Colleges of the Propagation of the Faith- Old and New World Background’, in The Americas, vol. 19, no. 1, July 1962, 50-58. 65 See Correspondance de Jean-Baptiste Maldonado; M. Neijens, ‘Twee Brieven van Pater Philippus Couplet, S.J. Missionaris in China en diens Betrekkingen tot de Oost-Indische Compagnie’, in Studia Catholica, vol. III, 1926-27, 35-135. 66 Adriano Prosperi, ‘The Missionary’, in Rosario Villari, Baroque Personae, 185. 67 Morelli, Lettera 209; see also Spila, Memorie storiche, vol. II, 132. 64

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Chapter Thirteen If in our Colleges of Europe there are found Fathers and Brothers of our Company, who, full of fervour, desire in imitation of St. Paul to live crucified to the world, there is no need for them to go and seek the cross in Japan or in China. Let them come merely to this Province of Cochin, where they will find a perpetual cross in the exile and slavery of Pegu. There, life is spent in the midst of countless venomous snakes, and tigers so bold that they are not afraid to enter the houses and seize the inmates.68

Pegu was apparently a mission-field with other particular problems to address. In a long section on demon worship, Morelli writes how ‘that [Peguan nation] worships the demon with a very special rite, and they make sacrifices and offerings to him. In all of their houses, there is a place, a bit like an altar, where they push forward several small pots, one to the demon of the house, another to the demon of the town, another to the demon of the river, another to the demon of the forest, and whenever they have to do something like take their boat and fetch some wood, they make offerings to the demon of the wood, whom they believe dwells within that [cooking] pot’.69 Morelli’s imagination here, as elsewhere, is fertile ground, but probably feeds off comments on Burmese demonolatria made as far back as Gaspare Balbi in 1590.70 Otherwise, Devil worship, or confronting ceremonies where gentiles impersonated the devil, had been an issue European missionaries were confronted with from early on, as the letters of Manuel de Moraes in 1547 testify to.71 For Jesuits, possession was one of two things. On the one hand, it could be the work of a trickster, who intentionally fooled ignorant people for money. The guidebook for missionaries Monita ad Missionarios calls these tricksters ‘monkeys of God’ (singes de Dieu) and admonished them for ‘pushing men insidiously (...) to turn away from worship of a God invisible to [worship] of inert 68

L. Besse & H. Hosten eds., ‘Fr. Manoel da Fonseca in Ava (1613–52), in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XXI, 1925, ‘Fr. Manoel da Fonseca in Ava’, 36. 69 Archivio di Stato, Firenze, Lettera 276, filza 1606. This refers to the prominent nat worship in Burma, see Melford Spiro, Burmese Supernaturalism, New Brunswick: Transaction Publications, 1996. 70 Gaspare Balbi, Viaggio all’Indie Orientali, di G.B. Gioilliere Venetiano, nel quale si contiene quanto egli in detto viaggio ha veduto per lo spatio di nove anni consumati in esso dal 1579 al 1588, Venezia: appresso Camillo Borgominieri, 1590. Further editions were published in German in Frankfurt (1605), in Latin (again in Frankfurt, 1606), and a summary in English by Samuel Purchas (1625). 71 `Manuel de Moraes to the members in Portugal’, Cape Comorim, December 15, 1547 in Archivium Romanum Societatus Iesu, Rome, N.N. 66, vol. I, f. 226v. See also Maurice Collis, The Land of the Great image. Being Experiences of Friar Manrique in Arakan, Maidenhead: Faber & Faber, 1943, ch. 6.

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idols, tools of their making, their predictions and their advice’.72 On the other hand, possession might also be a downright diabolical intervention. One of the most important activities, according to missionary letters, was exorcising demons from newly converted Christians, neophytes, catechumens and those non-Christians who came to ask for ‘medical’ help, and constitutes the subject of key testimonies and depositions leading to Francis Xavier’s beatification.73

Morelli’s Siam In Albrecht Meier’s Methodus describendi regiones published in Helmstedt in 1587, the German author offers an orderly listing of the various points a writer of the period had to keep in mind in presenting his public with a picture of another world.74 The topics should include customs, social practices, economic exchanges, systems for administration of justice and the collection of taxes, holidays, rites and ceremonies, pastimes and entertainments, amongst other things. Morelli was already in some ways ahead of this genre, and in many conforms rather to the prototype of the seventeenth-century ‘naturalist traveller’ we come to expect from reading his ecclesiastical peers in the East like Jean-François Gerbillon and Nicholas Gervaise, particularly on subjects like natural occurrences like floods and winds. Morelli is very credulous when it comes to Siamese herbs and their magical properties, although he claims to leave aside ‘things, of which I do not have experience’.75 Probably, like his contemporary Christoforo Borri in Cochinchina, Morelli found much to

72

François Pallu & Lambert de la Motte, Monita ad Missionarios, trad. Albert Geluy, Paris: Publ. des Archives de la M.É.P., 2000, 68. 73 Ines Županov, ‘Drugs, Health, Bodies and Souls in the Tropics: Medical Experiments in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 39, 1 (2002), 1–43, 15-18, 25; Monumenta Xaveriana ex autographis vel ex antiquoribus exemplis collecta. Scripta varia de Sancto Francisco Xaverio, Madrid: Imp. Lopez del Horno, 1912, vol. 2. 74 An English translation came out two years later: ‘Certain briefe and speciall instructions for gentlemen, merchants, students, souldiers, mariners etc. employed in services abrode’ trans. Philip Jones, London: s.n, 4to, 1589. 75 For Gerbillon, see Jean-Baptiste du Halde, S.J. Déscription Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, et Physique de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise, 4 vols. The Hague: Henri Scheurleer, 1736; Nicholas Gervaise, The natural and political history of the kingdom of Siam, A.D. 1688, Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998.

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admire about local herbal medicine.76 One root, when eaten, is supposed to provide energy sufficient to march for 15 days without tiredness or need to eat anything else. Another root, which can be found in Pegu, and known by the Portuguese as bode supposedly dispels bad omens, although it has a bad smell, similar to a goat’s, amongst other virtuous properties. Another curious story he relates (Lett. 276, Filza 1606) concerns: a gift sent from Cambodia to the King of Siam, which was a root formed of two human figures intertwined, as if embracing each other. And they say that there are virtues in them, that if any great ill is to befall the kingdom where the root is, then they will disunite, and in fact some time before the Makassarese revolt Phaulkon came one Sunday to hear the mass and said: “Our figurine has come apart, some ill is to befall Siam”. And after the Makassarese were destroyed, those figurines did not return to their original state and re-unite, from which a new ill fortune was expected. And the fortune-tellers of the King, who every year are supposed to provide the King with a prophecy for the following year, said that it was going to be a dangerous year, but that if the King survived it, he would live a long time thereafter.

This was ginseng, one of the eleven distinct species of slow-growing perennial plants with fleshy roots belonging to the Panax genus in the family of Araliaceae, even though botanical wisdom today holds that Panax vietnamensis is the southernmost ginseng to be found, growing in Vietnam.77 The Chinese term for the root ‘rƝnshen’ literally means ‘manroot’, referring to the root’s characteristic root shape, resembling the legs of a man. Morelli also likes to dwell on the ‘horrendous’ superstitions of the Siamese, like that of burying a pregnant woman who was still alive under the threshold of each entrance gate into the city, ‘and numerous people told me this as something that was true, and at present is still practised, the King building the walls of the city anew’. While this purported tradition was something well known amongst commentators on Siam, its veracity has not been suitably established.78 76

Olga Dror & K.W. Taylor eds., Views of Seventeenth Century Vietam. Christofor Borri on Cochinchina and Samuel Baron on Tonkin, Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006, 40, 119. 77 Herbal medicine: expanded Commission E monographs, ed. Mark Blumental. Newton, MA: Integrative Medicine Communications, 2000. See the entry for ‘ginseng’. 78 See, for example, Father Barthélemy Bruguière, ‘Notices of the Religion, Manner and Customs of the Siamese’, Chinese Repository, vol. 13, no. 4, April 1844, 169-217.

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However, he did have a good grasp of both the international political situation, and the perils facing the current administration. He described contemporary events in China, namely the take-over of the Qing dynasty (Il Tartaro), and its consequences: the flight of five or six thousand men, with all of their family and households, so as to not to live under the empire (...) These people went to Tunkin first of all, then Cochinchina so as to have a place where to live, but the King there not wanting to concede they went to Cambodia, which is a kingdom that is very free, and without encountering any resistance they went straight to the capital city, and according to those who brokered the peace, they seized the city, the King escaping into the outlying jungle with all inhabitants, although we still do not know with what conclusion’ (209, 4th page).

Elsewhere, Morelli comments on recent foreign affairs, including the ‘most cruel persecutions against the Christian religion in the Empire of Japan’. He also dwells on the Makassar Revolt.79 Morelli’s take on this event is that it was motivated by: a ferocious people, and treacherous, who conspired to take over the royal palace in Siam, and declare the brother of the King the new monarch, and slaughter all Christians one hour prior to midnight, which was the time assigned for the execution. But the plot was discovered, and the city [immediately] armed and the roads [guarded], in Siam [here meaning Ayutthaya], as well as in Louvò where the King was at the time. The 79

For other descriptions of the revolt, see Christian Pelras, ‘La conspiration des Makassar à Ayuthia en 1686 : ses dessous, son échec, son leader malchanceux. Témoignages européens et asiatiques’ in Archipel, 1998, vol. 56, no. 1; and S. Halikowski Smith, ‘No obvious home: The flight of the Portuguese “tribe” from Makassar to Ayutthaya and Cambodia during the 1660s’, International Journal of Asian Studies 7, 1 (2010), 9. Interesting primary accounts, include the report by Père de Fontaney, in Guy Tachard, Voyage de Siam des pères jésuites, envoyez par le roy aux Indes & à la Chine. Avec leurs observations astronomiques . . .; [Second voyage du père Tachard et des jésuites envoyez par le roy au royaume de Siam, contenant diverses remarques d’histoire, . . .]. Paris: 1686–89, vol. II, 97128; 1688 Revolution in Siam. The Memoir of Father de Bèze S.J., ed. Edward W. Hutchinson, Hong Kong: H.K. University Press, 1968, 58; Muhammad RabƯ’ ibn Muhammad IbrƗhƯm, The ship of Sulaiman [Safinah-i SulaymƗnƯ] wr. 1688, repr.

London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1972 136-138; Samuel White, `Letter of September 1686’, in John Anderson, English intercourse with Siam, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co.,1890, 289.

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Chapter Thirteen people of Champa, which was in on the plot, asked for and was granted pardon, while the diehard Makassarese were surrounded in their houses, part of whom were killed together with ther leader, while others surrendered. During that combat six Englishmen died alongside four Frenchmen, as well as many Siamese.

Morelli goes on to describe Constance Phaulkon, ‘a gentleman of Cephalonia in the service of the King’. Whiel he recognised that Phaulkon was ‘currently the second-in-command of the country behind the king’, he had a very prescient sense of the weakness of Phra Narai’s regime, and where the external challenges to its authority lay: ‘We are waiting for next year, when there will be a new ambassador coming from France, with a certain number of soldiers for the security of the King. We are worried likewise that he greatly fears the Talapoins (Buddhist monks), and not without reason, because as they are in such numbers, and so esteemed by the populace, it would not be difficult for them to scheme and solicit support, and in this way they are the only ones in a position to seize control over the kingdom.’80 Morelli was otherwise no supporter of the Dutch, although he recognised their recipe for success. ‘Every day’, he writes, ‘they are more and more the Lords of the Indies, already almost all of the best things are in their hands’.81 He comments on how they took over, their strategies of destroying the nutmeg and clove plantations in excess of their requirements ‘so as to create dearth, and and earn money from the little stock rather than the abundant stock [that remains], they adopt any policy they can which serves to destroy the other European nations, and which leaves them alone, going so far as to produce false navigational charts so as to cheat the others’ (Lett. 276, filza 1606). Morelli’s letters were addressed to a number of recipients. Il Giardino Serafico contains a letter from Morelli written in Siam towards the end of 1682 addressed to Mons. Tommaso Retano, Vescovo di Adria, and others

80

‘Breve relattione della Religione di Siam, e circonvicini Regni, Conforme io ho appresa, e da I loro libri’, dated 20 September, 1686, Siam, Lett. 276; cf. Simon de La Loubère, ‘Concerning the Origin of the Talapoins and of their Opinions’, A New Historical Relation, of the Kingdom of Siam by Monsieur De La Loubère, Envoy Extraordinary from the French King, to the King of Siam, in the

years 1687 and 1688, ed. David Wyatt, OUP: Singapore, 1986pt. III, ch. XXIII. This sounds like a line from Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Receuil de plusieurs relations et traitez singuliers et curieux, Paris: Chez Gervais Clouzier, 1681, Part V, ch. 3, ‘Histoire de la Conduite des Hollandois en Asie’. 81

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have ended up in the collections of the Propaganda Fide in Rome.82 While a few of the letters in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze were addressed to Cosimo III the Grand Duke of Tuscany, they were not prescriptive state documents like Filippo Sassetti’s letters to the ruling Tuscan authorities a hundred years earlier. With their richness of natural observation, Morelli may have been trying to imitate the scientific reports the Jesuit Michał Boym had sent to Grand Duke Ferdinando II, promoter of the Florentine Accademia del Cimento.83 The Grand Duke Cosimo III was known to be a curioso, to whom Father Salvatore Galli, the Superior of the Theatines in Goa, sent pots of interesting plants, like an Arab jasmine (Jasminium sambac) in lime pots.84 Morelli’s letters were, however, principally general descriptions he sent to a variety of important personages, attempting to curry favour both with the King of France, and on another occasion with ‘His Saintliness’, in other words, the Pope.85 In many ways this is surprising, as this was not a period when Tuscany was closely allied to France but rather a fief of the Holy Roman Empire. Morelli may have prided himself on his internationalism, but probably simply felt the winds of power in that part of the world were blowing towards the French, whom he heartily wished ‘every tranquillity, that you may carry victory over your enemies and lead a long life full of prosperity’.86 Morelli also felt it part of his role to send ‘some small thing of particular interest from these parts’ to his self-appointed patrons, a gesture which he may have been copying from the Siamese monarch himself, who saw it as past of his paternal role to provide his visitors from far afield with some sort of memento.87 In 82

Ribetti da Venezia, Giardino Serafico Istorico, vol. 1, 109-113. ‘Lettera del P. Michel Pietro Boym Gesuita Missionario nell’Indie Orientali, scritta ad Serenissimo Granduca Ferdinando II’, in Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, Notizie degli aggrandimenti delle scienze fisiche in Toscana nel corso di anni LX del secolo XVII, Firenze: Bouchard, 1780, tomo II, parte I, 244 ff. 84 Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri, Giro del Mondo del doctor D. Giovanni Gemelli Careri, Napoli: Giuseppe Roselli, 1699-1700, vol. 3, 122. 85 Lettere Edite E Inedite Di Filippo Sassetti ed. Ettore Marcucci, Firenze: F. Le Monnier, 1855; Barbara Karl, `“Galanterie di cose rare…”: Filippo Sassetti's Indian Shopping List for the Medici Grand Duke Francesco and His Brother Cardinal Ferdinando’, in Itinerario (2008), 32:23-41; Harold Acton, The Last Medici, London: Macmillan 1980. 86 This is how he addresses Letter 210. 87 Cf. the reception in ‘Levau’ (Lopburi), for example, where J.B. Maldonado was given a large, golden crucifix ‘in recognition of the good services that he had rendered [the King] the previous year in Macao’, `Letter of Jean François Gerbillon, Siam, 18 June, 1686’, extract repr. in ‘Le Voyage du Père de Fontaney’, Bulletin de l’Université Aurore, vol 3, no. 2 (1942), 257-8. 83

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Morelli’s case, this might have been ‘a cross, or some other metalwork which was unique to the realm, such as something the ancients called auricalco, a blend of copper and gold but which was worth a good deal more than silver’,88 although in the end he was not able to deliver, his excuse being the ‘extreme poverty in which he found himself’. Was this instead a coded request for money and material support? Morelli also signed off in a trope of humility, by excusing himself for the possibility that he ‘might not be considered skilful in writing a report worthy of Your Person’. His letters were received meanwhile from ‘In C.ne di Firenze’, as we see indicated on the letters, suggesting he took his orders from back home, and it was presumably through their mediation that he expected his observations and opinions to be delivered to the plenipotentiaries at Rome and Paris. The Franciscans were quite a powerful presence in seventeenthcentury Florence in the age of Cosimo III (1670-1721), whose reign was marked by the search for magnificence and imbued with religious zeal. The Franciscan base was the church and monastery of Santa Croce, but also the Convento di San Salvatore di Ognissanti, from 1561, while the original San Salvatore al Monte, outside the city walls, passed to another Spanish branch of the Franciscans, the Discalced Franciscans, or Scalzetti.89 A number of Florentine Franciscans went on high-profile international missions in precisely the same period as Morelli, such as Padre Mauricio da Lucca, sent as a Prefetto Apostolico to Tripoli on the basis of his abilities as an Arabic scholar.90 Judging from the fact that Morelli’s oeuvre is to be found uniquely in manuscript form, and in the 88 Morelli is referring here to Tambac, an alloy of gold and copper produced as the separation of metals was not known to the Siamese, see Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive, eds. Henry Yule & A. C. Burnell, New York: Humanities Press, 1968, 929. Otherwise, Burmese gold ornaments, such as the earrings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, were dipped in tamarind juice to give a copper-like sheen and were commonly worn by adults of the royal family, see Choodamani Nandagopal, ‘Burmese Jewellery from the Collection of the V & A’, in Donald M. Stadtner ed., The Art of Burma. New Studies, Mumbai : Marg Publications, 1999, 126. 89 ‘Pianta della Città di Firenze, 1690’, in Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte, Carte sciolte, c. 2. 90 Marco Lenci, ‘Padre Mauricio da Lucca, Missionario Francescano O.F.M., Prefetto Apostolico a Tripoli dal 1691 al 1698’, in Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. 148, issue 3 (1990), 613-646; Anna Maria Amonaci, ‘Per una Storia del primo chiostro del Convento di San Salvatore di Ognissanti a Firenze’, in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, vol. 82, Issue 1/2, (1989), 42-104.

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Archivio di Stato in Florence, it is highly unlikely his letters even found their way to the major European centres of influence. Here again we are presented with tangible indications of Morelli’s delusional tendencies, a twist on the ‘delusions of grandeur’ modern psychologists are well informed of.91 One of the controversial episodes he relates was the swearing of the Oath of Loyalty, a signed oath with respect to ‘all the orders that are proclaimed by the Holy Congregation in Rome’. This instruction from the Holy See – issued in 1680 - had arrived on the back of almost twenty years of feuding between the different orders in Siam for primacy, and continued to generate controversy from all sides. Acting to instruct the Jesuits and other recalcitrant orders in the East to submission, most – led by G.B. Maldonado and followed by other Jesuits in the Mission like Manuel Suarez – acquiesced, although a number of clergy like the Augustinian Peter Martyr ‘later on (…) repented of his submission and now [sic] sometimes denies that he took the Oath; at other times he says that he was intimidated into taking it’. The French Vicar Apostolic Louis Laneau first suspended, then excommunicated that priest, but was prevented ‘by reason of the troubles of that time from giving effect to a similar sentence of excommunication against the others’, and that Martyr and his colleague ‘were therefore suspended with penalties to be incurred for violating [that suspension]’. Laneau continues: ‘The aforesaid Peter Martyr now admits all of them to the sacraments, and even entrusts his parish duties to these excommunicated and most ignorant priests.’ Martyr was an important individual, named Vicar and Commissioner of the Sacred Office (Inquisition) over the Padroado by the Vicar General in Goa, and not just one of those `odd and somewhat deranged men’ mentioned in Siqueira’s diplomatic report, which recommended he be excommunicated `immediately to Solor or Timor’.92 But the Oath was also prejudiced by political differences which erupted between Rome and Paris, and only served to compromise the French side. Concretely, this was a rebuke Bishop Laneau received from Rome for his lack of zeal in administering the oath of allegiance to the Apostolic Vicars on recalcitrant clergy in his See. But this was not sloth; the terms of the oath, which had been drawn up in Rome to reinforce the Vicars Apostolic’s authority, had

91

Rebecca Knowles & Simon McCarthy-Jones, Georgina Rowse, `Grandiose delusions: A review and theoretical integration of cognitive and affective perspectives’, Clinical Psychology Review 31, 4 (2011), 684–696. 92 Seabra, The Embassy of Pero Vaz de Siqueira , fl. 235.

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caused offence to Laneau’s sovereign Louis XIV on the grounds that the French king wanted to appoint the missionaries himself.93 On this clearly sensitive and controversial topic, one might have expected Morelli’s loyalties or feelings to come out, but it is not the case. He limits himself to an interesting factual report illustrating the divisions over this issue, and the volte-face of the Dominicans (who had previously gone along with their Jesuit co-religionists in Siam as Père de Bèze’s Mémoire relates): as for the obligation and disciplining (rigori), which His Saintliness has imposed on their General in Rome [referring here to the Jesuits], they will receive an express instruction to make the oath, and they did so, with four Dominicans as well as the Franciscans, the Augustinians with some other Dominicans, all in all 24 [clergy] abstained from swearing the oath, and abandoned all their daily tasks of being missionaries.

*** Morelli’s letters, although to be considered interesting, do not carry information about Siam we cannot find elsewhere and certainly do not contain the penetrating insights, detail and tight structure we can find, say, in Simon de La Loubère.94 For the eighteenth-century author Cornelius de Pauw the reason for this lies with the missionary training: ‘Their youth is entirely devoted to theology, the most useless thing in the world for a traveller’. De Pauw may have allowed his Enlightenment prejudices speak a little too freely, but constitutes nonetheless an interesting perspective.95 Morelli’s letters otherwise begin with generics: the topographical particulars of Ayutthaya, the abundance of fish and houses made from bamboo (‘thick sticks in which these countries abound’). As an Italian, Morelli is an acute observer of food : ‘All these countries have neither bread, nor wine, nor olive oil, the only food is rice. Many types of fruit are to be found, but all different from our own, only oranges and lemons are similar, of which can be found several with greater breadth than a flask; the oil is made from nuts, which is a species singularly large, but at the 93

Virgile Pinot, La Chine et la formation de l’esprit philosophique en France, Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1932, 58; also Edward W. Hutchinson, ‘The French foreign mission in Siam during the XVIIth century’, in Journal of the Siam Society, vol. XXVI, pt. 1 (1933). 94 Simon de La Loubère, Du Royaume de Siam, Amsterdam: suivant la copie imprimee jParis. Chez Abraham Wolfgang, SUps de la Bourse, 1691. 95 Cornelius de Pauw, Défense des Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains, Berlin: G.J. Decker, 1772, 198.

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root of things, there is no comparison here with olive oil; trees and plants are all different from our own’. Elsewhere he writes: ‘The continuous heat in these parts make this country tiresome (travaglioso); as regards food, nothing can be preserved, although salted, things start to rot, and in the midst of salt worms are born and you can imagine if this happens to salt what is the situation with meats, or other things, which rot from within, which has happened to me too. The quantity and diversity of little animals that Asia generates is incredible, according to the winds’. He then goes on to describe the annual floods (inondattioni), before tackling education. ‘In these parts (...) the sciences are supported (bandite), and other liberal arts, as in Europe, singing, theatre and other distinguished works are not recognised; beauty in dress, gardens and recreation, as well as tonics are not to be had here. Men and women go around naked, and men do not have beards. The country abounds in serpents and in the forests, of which there are many in this realm, they say that there are some of unnatural size’.96 One of the aspects best covered by Morelli’s letters deals with the problems of the missionary drive: how the Siamese were not only reluctant to convert, but even then were loath to come to Church. ‘The people of this kingdom’, Morelli explains, ‘are little disposed towards [our] religion, and if some of them receive it, they are not very good Christians, [the missionaries] finding it difficult to get them to come to church even once a week’ (Lett. 213). This had quite a dispiriting effect on the missionaries themselves (was he thinking of himself?). A good number of us missionaries flee, because we come to know their hypocrisy; in this people there is no profit for the Christian religion, and what is most terrible of all is that although several of them convert, almost none of them end the story well, or else they revert to their initial state, or they end up in crime (mala vita), or it happens that they move off the radar. They convince themselves very easily and they fall for absurdities, and falsities of their books, the foundation of their religion, and to turn them towards the truth the more they become proud and supercilious, and will not allow themselves to suffer being convinced by us, and to be found out is to be envied, disseminating various things amongst the population, only hunger appeases them. Amongst the things they say is that our God is that of Tenabob, the younger brother of their God, of whom they say that as a punishment for pursuing their God he has now gone down to Hell, nailed to a cross, and they say that it is His image that we now worship, 96

Cf. Gervaise, who writes of some snakes twenty feet long and 1½ feet in diameter, although too easily seen to be particularly dangerous, The Natural and Political History of the Kingdom of Siam, 29.

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In another place, Morelli points out that although in numbers the Christian converts were ‘very great’, they lacked the zeal one would encounter in Tonkin or Cochinchina.98 Response to missionization was gendered: for the women, conversion was ‘tiresome’ (travaglioso), as it impinged on their sense of reservedness. Their houses, for example, were built without windows, and they were accustomed to never leaving home. Once married, they no longer spoke to men, not even their own brothers, and when they did have occasion to speak, it was always with the shoulders turned. Men were not allowed to touch women, which led to problems in the baptism and giving extreme unction to the dying, despite introducing a kind of silver thimble (stilo d’argento) with which to go about these tasks.99 There was no chance, Morelli concluded, that they would come to Church on a daily basis after they reached adolescence (Lett. 277). Whilst he was under no illusions as to what an uphill struggle winning souls for the church was going to be in the Siam mission-field, he cherished - like the M.E.P. - hopes that the King might himself convert and thus provide an example to the rest of his people. He writes: ‘The only hope resides in the King, who, if he converted, all would convert, as he is adored and feared like a God, and nobody dares to contradict his word, things are currently in a state which I cannot really develop. The King gave his word to have him taught our religion, even though it has now been a year since he observed this.’100 97

In a letter of P. Pedro Martyr to P. Guy Tachard of 2 January, 1688 in the Siam Dossier (75/6) at the Oriental Library, Tokyo, a figure of 300,000 souls for the Tonkin mission field is brought forward. 98 Morelli estimated from letters he had received that in Cochinchina, and especially in Tonkin, as many as 5000 individuals were baptised over the course of the first year of the mission. In the second year, without that year yet being completed, 4500 were baptised. 99 Morelli, Lettera 277, dated London, 2 April 1688. 100 Morelli does not thus hone his advice as carefully as La Loubère, who concluded that ‘the true secret of insinuating into the mind of these people, supposing one has not the Gift of Miracles, is not directly to contradict them in anything, but to show them as at unawares, their Errors in the Sciences, and especially in the Mathematickes and Anatomy, wherein they are most palpable’, in A New Historical Relation, of the Kingdom of Siam by Monsieur De La Loubère, ch. XXV, ‘Diverse Observations to be made in Preaching the Gospel to the Orientals’, 142.

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One of the incidents on this subject which Morelli relates surrounded Mgr. de Metellopolis’s departure on a Visitation to Cochinchina. The King called Bishop Laneau to give him a cross that he had ordered manufactured, but asked the Monseigneur to explain all that it signified. For a whole hour, the Bishop explained the mystery of the Holy Cross to the King (Lett. 209). That night, the King saw the crucifix in the middle of an altar surrounded by numerous candles (Lett. 276, filz. 1606). On another occasion, scribes for the order translated ‘certain books in the Siamese language, which deal with God and religion, and which this Vicar Apostolic had composed’, in order to provide the King with stimulating reading ‘if God deigned to touch (toccarli) their [sic] hearts’. These were presented ‘in an elegant design’, and the King started to read these texts in the presence of the Vicar Apostolic. Morelli nevertheless recognised that the country itself had a very well established institutionalised religion. One of the documents in the archival collection is entitled ‘Brief Relation of the Siamese Religion, and of Neighbouring Kingdoms, According to What I have Learnt, and from their Books’ (dated 20 September, 1686). His description proceeds: ‘In this kingdom, temples dedicated to the Gods are to be found (...) and each one has a convent attached, for the religiously inclined, under the obedience of a Superior’. He describes the temples and praises their ‘singular beauty, and value’, and the monks who live off alms and tend to the buildings. When it comes down to the particulars of the Theravada strand of the Buddhist religion, he prefers to evade the subject (‘from the outside it appears that they live normally well, the superstitions are many and of various kinds, and it would be tiresome (saria longo) to recount them here’). Moreover, Morelli, unlike Gervaise, probably had neither the language nor the knowledge to develop this line of pursuit. However, he recognises that ‘all said and done, they do not make sacrifices to the idols’ (Lett. 209). These are brief and very summary descriptions that reveal the very superficial and bigoted opinion of most Christian missionaries. In another section of his letters, Morelli expresses his candid opinion as to institutional religion in Siam. ‘Because from all of this canaille, there is little more than eating, drinking and sleeping, and cheating the ignorant populace with their hypocrisy. It is upsetting to me on such an occasion, not to be in my mission-field’ (Lett. 277). ‘Hypocrisy’ is here an interesting accusation, something of a refrain even, in that there is considerable latitude in how that term might have been interpreted by contemporary European religious observers. But rather than an indictment of heathen religions being ‘false’, something which zealous anunciadores felt went so far as to mean that talapoins, bonzes and mandarins were

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themselves somehow cognizant of the falsity of their beliefs, scholars such as Joan Pau Rubiés would prefer to interpret this term as meaning some kind of ploy to simply extort money from the believing, or else indicative of a general divergence between professed ideals and actual behaviour.101 Morelli describes the King and Siamese absolutism in terms both of harsh punitive regimes and ritual submission of the populace. ‘The King’, he writes, ‘makes himself an absolute lord, both over the population as well as over that which his vassals possess’. ‘He is just with his rulings’, Morelli goes on, ‘but very cruel in his punishments; burning, frying, or feeding [the convicted] live to his tigers (...) Even the greatest mandarins of the realm are not free of beatings with the stick’.102 At one point, Morelli praises the King’s officials while criticising the pretension of the monarch: [The Barcalang] receives the [foreign] nations that come to the realm favourably, giving all the means to survive and on a daily basis comes up with new inventions and policies so as to stabilise and render the realm 103 beautiful; [and there are] different rulers who render tribute to Siam. He [the King] has started to adopt the title of Emperor, although his forces are not equal to those of the smallest prince in Italy, this population here being base and totally ignorant of the art of warfare. He sent some years ago ambassadors to the Pope, and to the King of France, but because he has not heard any news up until now two other mandarins are to be sent to see what has happened, but in all of this is to be recognised Reason of State and not religious zeal and making friends with France can be attributed to the fact that he wants to be able to stand freely from the Dutch, who are 101

Personal communication of 6 May, 2010. These are standard lines of argument, see for example Alexander Hamilton. A Scottish Sea Captain in Southeast Asia, 1689-1723, ed. Michael Smithies,Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 172-3. The late sixteenth century atrocity of ‘frying twenty Portuguese in coconut oil’, described by Capitan Pedro Sevil de Guarga’s Conquista de Champan, Camboja, Siam, Cochinchina y otros paises de Oriente, Valladolid (1603), republished in Antoine Cabaton, ‘Le mémorial de Pedro Sevil de Guarga à Philippe III’, in Bulletin de la commission archéologique de l’Indochine, Paris: 1914–16, 1–102 was remembered fearfully ninety years later by Marcel Le Blanc, History of Siam in 1688, ed. Michael Smithies, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003, 74. Loubère refers to the beatings by the Portuguese ‘Bastinado’, and describes how it was meted out to Agi Selim, the Siamese ambassador to Persia, A New Historical Relation, of the Kingdom of Siam by Monsieur De La Loubère, 110. 103 For a fuller description of this important official’s function, see A New Historical Relation, of the Kingdom of Siam by Monsieur De La Loubère, Part III, ch. IX, ‘Of the Barcalon and of the Revenues’. 102

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increasing in strength almost every day, and they make their power felt (danno disteso) here beyond all measure.

In another document, Morelli presents the King of Siam in a different light, highlighting his ‘greatness and magnificence’ and suggesting that ‘after the Emperor of China, and the Great Mogul, [he] is to be held as the Most Magnificent’.104 In this unnumbered letter, pride of place goes to the pomp and ceremony when the king goes out by river, which is followed by ‘the singular submission of the population in his presence’ (document attached to Letter 276). ‘There are great multitudes of Muslims in this kingdom with all the poison of their false religion.105 Up until now they were greatly protected by the Barcalang, who is the first official in this kingdom, but since he has just died, his place has been filled, although nothing has been declared to that end, by a Venetian of Greek origin, who came to these parts as a young man with the Englishmen; from there, and slowly and making all the right moves (portamenti), such as his deep-seated familiarity with the King, and in the last few days he has been promoted, attributed the title of Oprà, which is like a Count in our society, or perhaps a Marquis, and they have given him three lands; all of this busy conducting all the business of the king, as the Barcalang did. This damned race of Mohammetans will not cease to grow, and already at present the large debts they owe the King have been taken off their shoulders, and they serve the King as his soldiers. As the King is revered by this population, they will strive to be superior in their worship [of him] to the Christian population; when the king passes by, all flee, and if [they cannot succeed] in this flight, then they throw themselves on to their knees, with their hands together, and their head prostrated against the earth and three times they worship him. And in his presence nobody, although the highest official of the realm, can present themselves in any other way than with their hands together, and with their head almost making contact with the ground, nor does anyone dare to look him in the face.

104 Alfons van der Kraan concludes for the period to 1650 that Siam was far from the top of the Company’s list of priorities, and certainly well below such potentates as the Moghul Emperor of India, the Emperor of China and the Shogun of Japan, Van der Kraan, ‘The Rijckloff van Goes Mission to Siam, 1650’, in Itinerario, vol. 22, part 2 (1998), 49. 105 Michel Gilquin, The Muslims of Thailand, Bangkok : IRASEC / Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005.

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Morelli, like many European visitors, dwells on Siamese elephants and the particularities of the hunt. The king was reported to maintain a multitude of elephants: On a daily basis he hunts them, but they are not sufficiently trained for the purposes of war, he only keeps them like this for displays of greatness, and without any profit’. Whilst in Louvò with the Bishop Vicar Apostolic, Morelli reports how he was ‘invited on several occasions to witness the hunt from the compound (steccato) where he himself watches it, and where the grandees and chief mandarins are, and this reveals the honour and respect, which he holds towards the Vicar Apostolic. The elephant hunt is conducted in the following way: several herds of female elephants are sent into the forest, so that if any male elephant runs into them, he immediately pursues them to the point that he will no longer make off.106 Those delegated to conduct the hunt go around the forest blowing a great horn, which when heard by the females, bellow in reply, being thus accustomed, and the male elephant which has joined them breaks off, and thus they arrive at the point where the hunt is to take place.107

Another failure: Morelli and the Phaulkon mission to Venice and Rome, 1686-1693. Whilst dreaming of rooting out demonic aberrations and becoming the principal rapporteur of an otherwise overlooked Pegu mission, thereby achieving some sort of lasting fame for himself, Phaulkon apparently personally interceded and asked Morelli to travel on state business to Venice, perhaps to promote trade with the Venetian Republic, encouraging merchants to come to Siam.108 In fact, Bressan believes Phaulkon had another purpose: to intercede with the Senate there for the sake of his family (presumably his remaining family in Cephalonia; we know from 106

Other European commentators like Cristovão da Costa were keen to uphold the ‘chaste, jealous and ill-disposed to adultery’ nature of the animal, see Trattato di Christoforo Acosta Africano medico, e chirurgo. Della historia, natura et virtue delle droghe medicinali, & altri semplici rarissimi, che vengono portati dale Indie Orientali in Europa (Venice: F. Ziletti, 1585), 326-32. 107 Ralph Fitch’s account describes how the cow elephants were smeared with a special ointment to attract the males, in Cecil Tragen, Elizabethan Venture (London: H.F. & G. Witherby, 1953), 112-13; see also the account by Cesare Fedrici in Purchas his Pilgrimes, Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905-7, vol. X, 122. 108 Della Chiesa’s ‘Epistola ad D. Paulum Micheli’, dated 2 December 1682, describes how Phaulkon ‘desires that Venetian merchants come to do business, to serve him being his kinsmen’, Sinica Franciscana, vol. 6, 459.

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Forbin that he still had a brother alive in 1695).109 Morelli was then expected to continue to Rome, presumably to brief the Curia on matters relating to the missions. Phaulkon’s was an invitation Morelli admitted ‘he could not refuse’ and so prepared himself for an immediate departure, agreeing to carry letters for the Dutch factory. Letter 277 is largely concerned with the journey he consequently made in a ‘large, English boat’, first to Melaka, where he arrived on 30 December 1686, staying there for ten days. Using Anthony Farrington’s index of ships owned and commissioned by the East India Company, it is possible to trace Morelli’s return to the ship Herbert, originally built for the Turkey trade, with three decks and a crew of between 130 and 150 souls, and belonging to one Edmund Uredale.110 From Alexander Hamilton’s A New Account of the East Indies, we know that the Herbert was sent to the Bar of Siam in 1685 alongside the smaller Prudent Mary ‘to frighten the Siamese’.111 Although the ship’s journal unfortunately comes to an end on 24 February 1686, we know that the ship sailed from Batavia on 8 July 1686, to Melaka on 20 December 1686, to Acheh on 22 March 1687, and thence to Benkulen (21 April), Silebar (6 June) and finally Plymouth (29 January 1688), all of which accords with the few details Morelli leaves regarding his voyage.112 Whilst spending ten days in Melaka, Morelli noted how ‘the inhabitants’, he explains, ‘still continue to hold the Catholic religion, despite the continuous persecution which the Dutch wreak on them, obliging them to get married and baptise their children in their churches’. Other scholars have commented on what amounted here to a paradoxical situation here characterised by official condemnation and unofficial toleration of the Portuguese minority population.113 Morelli compared this treatment with that meted out to other minorities; he saw a mosque here for the Muslims and a temple for the gentile Chinese: where they carry out their devotions and sacrifices publicly with open doors and candles lit in front of the idols: only the Catholics are persecuted and only they are prohibited from having priests, and churches, or exercising whatsoever function at the risk of great punishments being 109

Bressan, Siam and the Vatican, 78; The Siamese Memoirs of Count Claude de Forbin, 1685-88, ed. Michael Smithies, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1996, 15. 110 Michael Smithies thinks the captain was Henry Udall, rather than Edmund Uredale, Alexander Hamilton. A Scottish Sea Captain, 160, Note 1. 111 Alexander Hamilton. A Scottish Sea Captain, 160. 112 Anthony Farrington, Catalogue of East India Company ships' journals and logs, 1600-1834, London: British Library, 1999. 113 William Herbert Cecil Smith, ‘The Portuguese in Malacca during the Dutch period’, Studia [Portugal], 7 (1961), 105.

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Chapter Thirteen inflicted on their priests and householders responsible for private rites. What has happened here in present times is that there was a hidden priest, who was discovered in the temple, and had celebrated mass in a private house. They came to arrest him, but he jumped out of a window and fled in a Portuguese boat, which was just passing by. There is another hidden priest, who flees from one place to another so as to help those poor Christians, and another Jesuit father was held prisoner for months for confessing an ill individual. Portuguese ships which pass by are obliged to pay a 10% duty on everything they transport.

Here the news was received that two large Dutch warships with large numbers of people aboard sailed against Siam, one of which ran aground although everyone was saved.114 Whilst in Acheh (or as Morelli has it, Ascinin), his next port of call, a ship from Siam arrived with a letter from one of his missionary friends, describing the development of political events back in Siam. Of primary note was an exam that the King of Siam ordered all his ‘priests’ sit, having started to read the Christian scriptures in the company of the Vicar Apostolic, but struggling to understand ‘certain things’. The King was taken aback by the Vicar Apostolic’s polite indication that ‘it would be difficult to find a Talapoin who could explain this perfectly’, and reacted out of ‘shame’ in a bid to raise the quality of the indigenous priesthood and overturn the Vicar Apostolic’s low opinions. Morelli considered this good news in that many of these ‘priests’ profess, but do not understand the language of scripture, Pali (‘as Latin is amongst us’). From Acheh, and thereafter almost certainly Banten, Morelli returned on a ‘magnificent journey’ via the Cape of Good Hope, Saint Helena (where he notes there was no Portuguese presence whatsoever), Ascension Island, Plymouth and thence to London. Of his journey, he says rather little: above all, the company on board ship was not to Morelli’s liking: ‘worse than the gentiles; I would rather spend a year amongst the heathen than two days amongst people of this nation, of whom the Apostle prophecied accurately when he said: ‘Inimici crucis Christi, quorum finis interitus, quorum Deus venter est’.115 Morelli, perhaps after so many 114

A rumour was going around `spread by the French’ that the VOC was hatching a plot against Siam as a result of a diplomatic storm over the nature of Siak’s vassalage. The rumour proved unfounded even if it nevertheless warranted a Siamese diplomatic visit to Batavia in 1686, Bhawan Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya. Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, c. 1604–1765, Leiden: Brill, 2007, 132. 115 `For there are many whom I have often described to you, and I now even with tears describe them, as being enemies to the Cross of Christ’ (Inimicos crucis

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months at sea, and happy to be back in Europe, took an instant like to Plymouth, although the city had passed over its golden age in Elizabethan times, and now constituted an unusual stop for E.I.C. ships, the company more commonly sailing directly to and from the Thames.116 Morelli expresses regret that there were no painters which, if it had been Italy, would have set to painting the ‘everyday women of this place, with their capes as if Franciscans, and a hood in a similar material, with straw hats, or or ‘sharply rising wool’, of a cubit’s height, with pipes in their mouths, smoking tobacco in the street, with their dress up as high as the middle of their leg, and that above open and folded behind in a no less curious fashion’.117 The last letter that we have from Morelli from the Archivio di Stato and where all this is described is from London, dated 2 April 1688. Here he remained for some time, waiting for Fr. Charmot, to whom the greater part of Phaulkon’s presents to the Serenissima had been entrusted. However, it seems that the English capital treated him more favourably than it did the Augustinian friar and Morelli’s fellow traveller in the Orient, Sebastian Manrique, who was murdered there twenty years previously, apparently by his Portuguese servant albeit in unclear circumstances, his body placed in a box and thrown into the Thames.118 Charmot only arrived eight months later, having lost all his gifts en route. Morelli then went to Paris in February 1689 to buy replacement gifts, but in November learned of Phaulkon’s death. Morelli’s mission had been overtaken by events and by the time he stepped on to the European continent, the Siamese National Revolution had swept away the political chessboard in whose interstices Morelli had been acting (Lett. 277). What was Morelli now to do with his life? Christi, quorum finis interitus, quorum deus venter est), Philippians, iii. 18 (Weymouth New Testament). 116 Michael Oppenheim, The Maritime History of Devon, Exeter: University of Exeter, 1968. 117 Cf. portraits of Dorothy Pentreath, the last monoglot Cornish speaker, 1775– 1777 in Matthew Spriggs, ‘Pentreath , Dorothy (bap. 1692, d. 1777)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14692, accessed 17 Aug 2011]. As for the smoking, Cecilia Fiennes who travelled through Cornwall during 1695 noted in her journal ‘the custom of the country, which is a universal smoking, men, women and children have all their pipes of tobacco in their mouths and so sit round the fire smoking’, in ‘Through England on a side saddle by Celia Fiennes, 1695’, in Early Tours in Devon and Cornwall ed. R Pearse Chope, 1967, 124. 118 For Manrique, see Maurice Collis, Land of the Great Image, London: Readers’ Union/Faber & Faber, 1946, 246-7.

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Back to the Orient and, thanks to his books, on to the New World Like the other famous European nuncius to Siam of this period, Guy Tachard, S.J., who found himself unnoticed on his return to Europe, preferring late in life to hold on to dreams of his self-importance on the Oriental political stage, Giovan Battista Morelli chose to return to the Orient rather than returning to his religious community in Florence.119 Spila has found a ‘prolix’ letter of Morelli dated 15 December 1694, describing his departure from Livorno on 14 April 1693, and his voyage via Aleppo to China by way of the land route. He could only post this letter on 12 February 1695 due to ongoing war and political turmoil between Arabs and Persians. A copy of this letter was sent on to the Propaganda Fide on 10 May 1696. He made it to Canton, from where he dispatched another letter dated 18 November 1695, addressed to the Procuratore Generale delle Missioni in Rome, explaining his journey from Surat (which he left on 17 March 1695) and his arrival in Canton on 17 August. He writes of his colleagues Mons. D’Argoli, Francesco da Leonessa and Basilio da Gemona della Provincia di Venezia, who were in Nankin, healthy and safe, and where they had built a church.120 Other letters unearthed by Georgius Mensaert reveal that Morelli made it back to Siam on two occasions, in 1699 and 1706, to confront a now greatly changed environment, where monarchs with very different priorities held sway.121 His letter to the Vicar Apostolic Maigrot in Fukien of 10 January 1699 sadly tells nothing of this chapter, whilst that of 30 April 1707 is only an excerpt included by Bishop Della Chiesa in one of his missives.122 Otherwise, Morelli’s frenetic travelling does not seem to have abated. He is the author of a little known religious text published in Mexico in 1710, D.O.M. Luzeiro evangelico que mostra à todos os christaos das Indias orientais o Caminho vnico, seguro, & certo da recta fè, para chegarem ao porto da salvação eterna, ou instrvcção dos principais artigos da religiao christao controvertidos. The book was apparently written to fortify the faith of the Roman Catholic Eurasian communities at such places as Madras, Melaka, Batavia, Bengal and Ceylon at a time it was being called into question by Calvinist Dutch or Danish Lutheran pastors, who pushed for the creolised masses to renounce their church. 119 Michael Smithies, ‘Tachard’s Last Appearance in Ayutthaya’, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland (Third Series), 12 (2002), 67-78. 120 Spila, Memorie Storiche, 133. 121 Mensaert et al., Sinica Franciscana,, vol. VI, 1248-1311. 122 Mensaert et al., Sinica Franciscana, 1961, vol. VI, 1367-8.

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Morelli tried hard here to defend the cult of saints and images from Protestant attacks, by arguing that they were merely vehicles for the contemplation of a greater entity, God. Accompanying notes indicate that the book was written in S. Thomé de Meliapur, dedicated to a Portuguese military officer at Manila in 1709, and printed in Mexico at the Convento Grande de San Francisco. This latter was the first and at one point most important of the religious complexes of New Spain, although suffering the greatest setbacks both in terms of lack of recruits, a political shift towards the non-monastic orders, and strain between its eclectic Spanish, castizo and mestizo constituents during the first decades of the 1700s.123 Latin American scholars keen to establish the first Portuguese language book printed in Hispano-American only make misguided speculation as to the author’s identity, Laurence Hallewell thinking it issued from ‘a father in Spanish Mexico’, with José Barboza Mello quick to claim it as ‘the second Brazilian book ever’.124 Morelli may have chosen to spend some time in the more stable missions in Coromandel away from the turbulent and trying conditions in Ayutthaya, like Jean-Baptiste Maldonado S.J. did between 1691-4. Thereafter, we know little regarding his movements: Morelli died on 8 September 1716, Spila’s valediction a somewhat perfunctory farewell, his death marking ‘the recompense for so many sacrifices undertaken for the spread of the Catholic Faith’. To conclude, G.-B. Morelli’s letters are an interesting and engaging set of reflections culled from at least four years in Siam at a critical juncture in its history. Given the abundance of systematic and serious surveys of the kingdom in this period, it is hard to find great novelty in Morelli’s work. Rather, it is from the circumstances of his visit, his apparent switching of orders and the detail in his description of the conversion process, as well as his dreams of missionary glory, together with the lack of exposure to the Franciscan order in the historiography of this topic, that

123

Elsa Malvido, ‘Los Novicios de San Francisco en la Ciudad de Mexico: la Edad de Hierro’, in Historia Mexicana, vol 37, 4 (1987), 699-738; Carmen de Luna Moreno, ‘Alternativa en el siglo XVIII: Franciscanos de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de Mexico’, in Archivo Ibero-Americano, vol. 52, Issue 205/208, Feb. 1992, 343-371; Jim Norris, After ‘The Year Eighty’: the Demise of Franciscan Power in Spanish New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M. : University of New Mexico Press, c2000. 124 Laurence Hallewell, O Livro no Brasil: sua história, São Paulo: Edusp, 2005, 84; Barboza Mello is cited in Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Issues 314-15 (1979), 52, cf. Nelson Werneck Sodré, Historia da imprensa no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro: Mauad Editora Ltda, 1998 18.

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the unpublished papers of this Florentine Franciscan missionary are of value to the reader.125

125 Further research into the Florentine Franciscans can be conducted in the Archives of the Frati Minori della Toscana, Via A. Giacomini, 3, Florence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF KIRTI N. CHAUDHURI

Chaudhuri, K.N. ‘Historical Re-thinking in and out of Classrooms’, Quest [Calcutta], July/September 1960, 47-54. —. The development of the English East India Company, with special reference to it's trade and organisation, 1600-1640, Thesis (PhD) University of London, 1962. —. `The East India company and the export of treasure in the early seventeenth century’, Economic history review, 2nd series. New Series, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1963), 23-38. —. The English East India Company; the Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600-1640, London: F. Cass, 1965. Repr. London: Routledge, 1999. —. `India's Foreign Trade and the Cessation of the East India Company's Trading Activities, 1828-40’, Economic History Review, Vol. 19, Issue 2, (August 1966), 345-363. —. `Treasure and trade balances: the East India company's export trade, 1660-1720.’ Economic History Review, 2nd series. New Series, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Dec., 1968), 480-502. —. `India's international economy in the nineteenth century: an historical survey’, Modern Asian Studies, 2, (1968), 31-50. —. (edited) The Economic Development of India under the East India Company, 1814-58: a Selection of Contemporary Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. —. The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. —. `Some Reflections on the Town and Country in Mughal India’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1978), 77-96. —. with Clive Dewey (eds.). Economy and society: essays in Indian economic and social history. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979. —. `Markets and traders in India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Economy and society: essays in Indian economic and social history (op. cit.), 143-162. —. `The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760. A review of reviews’, South Asia Research [London], Vol. 3 , No. 1 (May 1983), 10-17.

378

Bibliography

—. Trade and civilisation in the Indian Ocean an economic history from the rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. —. `Ajia Boekiken Ni Okeru Zenkindai Kara Shokuminchi Boeki e no Tenkan, 1700-1850 nen Hitotsu no Kaiyaku’, Shakai-Keizai Shigaku (Socio-Economic History), Vol. 51 Issue 1, (February 1985), 1-17. Chaudhuri, K.N.C. Asia before Europe economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. —. `Tides of History? The Indian Ocean Societies’, History Today, July 1992, Vol. 42 Issue 7, 48-50. —. ‘From the barbarian and the civilized to the dialectics of colour: an archaeology of self-identities’, in Society and ideology : essays in South Asian history : presented to Professor K.A. Ballhatchet, eds. Kenneth, Peter Robb, K. N. Chaudhuri, and Avril Ann Powell, Delhi ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1993, 22-49. —. `The Unity and Disunity of Indian Ocean History from the rise of Islam to 1750: the Outline of a Theory and Historical Discourse’,.Journal of World History, Vol. 4, Issue 1, (March 1993), 1-21. —. `Undivided Time in Undivided Space, the Problematic of "Polyphonic History" (Europe and Asia 1500-1800)’, Common Knowledge, 2, no. 3 (1994), 24-43. —. From the Atlantic to the Arabian Sea: A Polyphonic Essay on History. Firenze: Schafanoia/Stamperia Valdonega, 1995. —. `The structure of the Indian textile industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Tirthankar Roy ed., Cloth and commerce: textiles in colonial India, New Delhi: Sage, 1996, 33-84. —. with Francisco Bethencourt, HLVWyria da H[SDQVmo portuguesa, Lisbon: Circulo de Leitores, 1998, 5 vols., repr. 2000. —. `Surat Revisited A Tribute to Ashin das Gupta, Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient, Vol. 43 Issue 1, (February 2000), 18-22.

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Published interviews Chakrabarti, Ranabir. `Indian History and the Indian Ocean’, Calcutta Historical Journal, 14 (1-2), July 1989-June 1990, 78-83. Rocha, Rui, `O tempo lento do Índico’, Expresso Revista, Lisbon, Saturday, 3 August 1991.

Artistic works Chaudhuri, K.N.C., The Dream of the Unicorn in the Year of *HQHYLqve. Firenze, With Cartière Enrico Magnani, and Stamperia Valdonega. 1996. —. The Landscape of the Corvo. Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, with Cartiere Sicars, 1998. —. A Mediterranean Triptych: Venezia, Islam and the Desert. Firenze, with Giulio Giannini & Figlio, Officina Fiesolana, and Cartière Enrico Magnani, 1998 —. Sacrifice. Schifanoia, Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, 2000. —. Venezia: The Apotheosis of Antigone. Schifanoia, Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, 2000. —. Interlace: Variations on Ornamental Space. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2001. —. Polyphony: A New Work. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2002. —. Veneto 2003, Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, 2003. —. Sea & Civilisation: A Visual Archive. 2 vols. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2003. —. Notre Dame Sous La Neige: The Story of an Avalance [sic]: A Graphic Fugue in Counterpoint. Schifanoia, Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, 2003. —. The Images of a Lagoon. Schifanoia, Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, 2003. —. Capri: Resurrection of the Drowned Aphrodite. Schifanoia, Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, 2003. —. Avignon in July: A Midnight and Two Afternoons in the Life of Lady Valentine Georgina Saville. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2004. —. Cleopatra in Tripolitania: An Imaginary Text in Images. Schifanoia, Firenze: K.N. Chaudhuri, 2005 —. Tree of Blood. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2005. —. Tango in Santelmo. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2005. —. Roman Mediterranean & the Passion of Perpetua. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2006. —. A Las Cinco de Tarde. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2006. —. Sanctuary: A Summer in Rome. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2006.

380

Bibliography

—. Forms of Perception: Point Straight Line Curve Solid Monochrome Colour. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2006. —. Bodas De Sangre = Blood Wedding. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2006. —. Jaguar of Chaco: The Recollections of a Wandering Cat. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2007. —. Four nights in Tunis. An audio play on CD, London, June 2007. —. Twelve Days of Summer in Benito Juarez. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2008. —. The Downfall and Redemption of Dr. John Faustino. Firenze: Schifanoia, 2009.

CONTRIBUTORS

Gwyn Campbell is Canada Research Chair in Indian Ocean World History at McGill University, Montreal. Early books include Missionaries, fanompoana and the Menalamba revolt in late nineteenth century Madagascar (OUP: 1988) and An economic history of Imperial Madagascar 1750-1895: the rise and fall of an island empire (C.U.P., 2005). He has recently edited The Indian Ocean Rim : southern Africa and regional co-operation (Routledge, 2003), Abolition and its aftermath in the Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia (London: Routledge, 2005) and Children in Slavery through the Ages (Ohio University Press, 2009). Dr. James Kaye lectured at the Johannes Kepler University Linz at the Centre for Social and Intercultural Competence and was the recipient of a Fondazione Famiglia Rausing research grant for the project ENATS (The Emigration and Levy of a Nation in Two States) at the Swedish Institute in Rome, 2009-10. His expertise was in historiography, photography, and comparative discourses of modernity, community, as well as conceptual history. He was tragically killed in a boating accident in February 2011. Andreu Martinez s’Alos Moner is currently research fellow at the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian Studies, University of Hamburg. He has a doctorate from the European University Institute, Florence with a thesis on the Jesuit Mission in Ethiopia, 1557-1632 and is currently preparing an edition of primary sources on the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia and a prosopography of 16th and 17th-century Ethiopia. Tudor Parfitt is Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at SOAS. The books which touch on the Indian Ocean World are an academic travel book Journey to the Vanished City (London, 1997) and The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002). His engagement with geneticists has produced a number of articles which cast new light on the movement of peoples in the Indian Ocean region. João Paulo Oliveira e Costa has a Doctorate in History and is Full Professor at the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is also Director of the Centro de

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Contributors

História de Além-Mar, and Board Member of the Centro de Estudos de Povos e Culturas de Expressão Portuguesa. He directs two internationally ranked academic journals, the annual Anais de História de Além-Mar (CHAM) and the Bulletin of Portuguese Japanese Studies (CHAM), which comes out once a semester. Stefan Halikowski Smith is Senior Lecturer in History at Swansea University. He has completed a monograph entitled Creolization and Diaspora in the Portuguese Indies. The Social World of Ayutthaya, 16401720 (Brill, 2011), and edited a Special Issue of Itinerario in 2007 devoted to thematic essays on Portuguese colonialism in South Asia in the early modern period. Francesc Relaño completed his Ph.D. at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and went on to publish The Shaping of Africa: cosmographic discourse and cartographic science in late medieval and early modern Europe (Ashgate, 2002). At present, he is Professor at the ESCEM Business School (Tours-Poitiers, France). Maria Cristina Osswald holds a Ph.D from the European University Institute. She is Visiting Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Educación à Distancia, Madrid and post-doctoral researcher at the Universidade do Minho. She is working on a book on Jesuit everyday life in Portugal, India and Brazil, 1500-1800, and has co-authored Com-paixão, A Virgem e as Santas Mulheres (Esposende, 2005). Leonard Andaya teaches at the University of Hawaii, where he has been professor of Southeast Asian History since 1993. He has written extensively on the early modern history of Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia. Recent publications include The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (Uni. Of Hawaii Press, 1993), A History of Malaysia (Macmillan 1982, repr. 2001), and Leaves of the Same Tree: Trade and Ethnicity in the Straits of Melaka (Uni. of Hawaii Press, 2008). Dr. Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya is Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, a member of the UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Slave Route Project (Paris) and its elected Rapporteur. She has written five books and edited two others, most recently African Identity in Asia (Markus Wiener, 2008).

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Malyn Newitt taught at the universities of Rhodesia and Exeter, where he was Deputy Vice Chancellor. From 1998 until he retired in 2005 he was Charles Boxer Professor of History at King’s College London. He has specialised in Portuguese colonial history and written twelve books, most recently War, Revolution & Society in the Rio de la Plata (Oxford, 2010). João Vicente Melo is a doctoral student at Swansea University, having completed an M.A. at Goldsmiths, University of Lisbon. His dissertation is on the diplomatic contacts between Goa and other Asian powers in the first half of the eighteenth-century, and an article with the first results of his research will be published by the Presses Universitaires de l’Université de Provence in 2011. Isabel dos Guimarães Sá teaches Early Modern European History at the History department of the University of Minho. She has researched widely in the fields of History of Portugal and its empire from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries concerning the areas of religion and family history, and has written several books on the Portuguese Misericórdia confraternities. William G. Clarence-Smith is Professor of the Economic History of Asia and Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He edits the Journal of Global History and has written on commodities, labour, diasporas, and Islam, with particular reference to Africa and Southeast Asia. His latest book is Islam and the abolition of slavery (London, 2003).

INDEX

Accademia del Cimento, 361. Acosta, José de (1539-1600), 164. Adonara (Indonesia), 3. Afar warriors, 9. Affaitati family of merchantcapitalists (Cremona), 229. Afghanistan, 38-45, 48, 146-47, 161. Badakshan, 195. Kandahar, 42. Africa, xiv, xx, 22, 65, 86, 89, 91101, 105, 151, 159, 166, 177, 181, 188, 189, 192, 194, 199, 202-3, 217, 224, 236, 287-290, 292-3, 295-299, 304-9, 311-2, 315, 322, 326, 333. Barbary Coast, 156, 179, 182, 187, 208. Grain Coast, 199. Great Lakes region, 100, 312. Agaricum, 156. Agricola, Georgius (1494-1555), 161, 199. Agriculture, 113-4, 144, 292-3, 304, 352. Albano, Fr. Angelo de, O.F.M. (fl. 1670-c.1685), 347-8, 351, 355. Alberti, Leon Battista (1404-72), 275. Albuquerque, Afonso de (14531515), 5, 70, 239-40, 247, 249, 252, 323. Alcohol, 164, 171, 212. Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), 62. Alighieri, Dante (1265-1321), 218. Almeida, Francisco de (c. 14501510), 249, 252.

Almeida, Manuel de (1580-1646), 22. Almonds, 156, 208, 211. Aloe, 157-58, 196. Alum, 158-9, 224. Alvares, Francisco (c. 1465-1541), 6. Álvares, Gonçalo (Visitor to the Indies missions), 270. Álvares, Manuel (Portuguese artist b. 1520 working in the colonies), 265. Amber, 134, 159. Ambergris, 159. Amboyna Massacre (1624), 300. America, 46, 65, 71, 73, 164, 166, 173, 177, 191, 225, 294, 301, 305, 308-9, 343, 375. Amerindians, 42, 315. Ammoniacum, 159, 214. Anchieta, José de (1534-97), 318. Andrade, António de (led mission to regain a Christian foothold in Ethiopia in 1630s), 23-4. Andriansouli (19th century Malagasy chief), 306. Aniseed, 159. Antimony, 160, 222. Antiquity, 35, 39, 173, 189, 193, 203, 225, 264, 361. Anti-Semitism, 45-6. Antwerp, 182, 191. Plantin Press, 276. Aquaviva, Claudio S.J. (15431615), 259, 265, 271. Arabian Peninsula, xvii, 5, 40, 8990, 162-3, 168, 180, 184-5, 18991, 194, 197, 198, 200, 203,

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds 205, 210, 220, 223, 227, 287, 295, 305, 308, 310. Mecca, 116, 163, 185, 217, 223. Medina, 50. Arabs, 4, 45, 97, 141, 145, 146, 151, 157, 165, 187, 196, 202, 205, 213, 297, 312-3, 374. Archil, 160-1, 206, 210. Architecture, xx, 255, 257, 264-7, 274, 277-8. Areca nut, 143. Armenia, 4, 96-7, 101, 165, 178, 193, 195. Armenini, Giovanni Battista (15301609), 189. Arquico (Red Sea area), 14, 20. Arsenic, 161, 206. Asafoetida, 161. Ashtor thesis, 206. Asiatic Society of Bengal, 37. Asphalt, 161, 202. Atlantic Ocean, xi, xvii-xviii, 72, 222, 288, 293, 298-99, 304-5, 311, 326. Atlas Miller, 72. Augustinian Order, 261, 282, 336, 351, 363-4, 373. Australia, 76, 77, 132, 136, 216. Arnhem Land, 131. Gulf of Carpenteria, 131. Tasmania, 76. Austria Vienna, 181, 305. Avicenna (c.980-1037), 198. Ávila, Teresa of (1515-82), 283. Azurara, Gomes Eanes de (c.14101474), 187. Azurite, 165. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626), 213. Baldridge, Adam (fl. c.1685-97), 301. Bahrein, 90, 206, 289. Bajau people, 111, 129-30. Balbi, Gaspare (c.1550-1721), 356. Balboa, Vasco Núñez de (c.14701519), 69.

385

Balm (Balsam), 162, 221. Bamboo, 169, 220, 364. Banks, Joseph (1743-1820), 76. Bantu, 309. Barbosa, Duarte (d.1521), 171, 198. Barnes, Sir Edward (Governor of Ceylon, 1824-31), 144. Baroque, 253, 264, 332. Barreto, Melchior Nunes (15201571), 265. Barros, João de (1496-1570), 67, 191. Barukh, Isaac Hayyim (Founder of the ‘Society of the Founders for the Flag of Israel’), 47. Barzeus, Gaspar (1515-1553), 273. Basil, 162. Battle of El Ksar El Kabir (Morocco), 149. Baumgarten, Martin von (14731535), 209. Bay of Bengal, 143. Bdellium, 163. Bees-Wax, 163. Benedictines, 208. Bene Israel, 49-50. Bene Menashe, 50. Benjamin, Israel ben Joseph (181864), 48-9. Ben Yiju, Abraham (12th century merchant), 34. Berbers, 69. Bergamo, Matteo da (Italian trader on Vasco da Gama’s second fleet to India, 1502), 218. Bermudez, João (Portuguese physician, later Patriarch), 6-7, 14. Bernier, François (1625-88), 34, 339. Betel, 164, 199. Bèze, Père Claude de S.J. (165795), 364. Bezoar Stone, 164-5. Bhang, 165. Bhonsles of Kudal, 235, 250, 253.

386 Bible, 35, 49, 163. Binding, xxi. Bird, George (Sri Lankan coffee plantation owner, fl. 1820-62), 143. Black Sea, 158, 218. ‘Black Ship’ (kurufune), 52, 59. Blaeu, Joan (1596-1673), 76. Bloodstone, 195. Blueberries, 165. Blue bice, 165. Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313-1375), 157, 203. Bodin, Jean (1530-96), 214. Bokhara, 38, 41, 43, 87-88, 102. Boltz, Valentin (1515-1560), 195. Bolus, 165, 224. Borax, 165. Borgia (de Borja), Francisco (151072), 263, 265, 270, 272. Borneo, 120, 129, 168, 179, 295. Borri, Cristoforo S.J. (1583-1632), 357. Bos, Cornelius (1506-55), 277. Botany, 180. Bouchard ,Gabriel M.E.P. (163682), 352. Bourdieu, Pierre (1930-2002), 245. Bourdonnais, Bertrand-François Mahé de La (1699-1753), 303. Bourges, Jacques de, M.E.P. (16341714), 340. Bouvet, Joachim S.J. (1656-1730), 340, 354. Boxer, Charles (1904-2000), xii, 314, 322, 328, 350. Boym, Michał S.J. (1612-59), 361. Brass, 196, 226. Braudel, Fernand (1902-85), xi-xiii, xvii, 106-7, 287. Braunschweig (Brunschwig), Hieronymus von, 213-4. Brazil, 62-3, 65-71, 73-5, 77, Figure 5, 150, 169, 199, 222, 234-5, 246, 265, 315, 321, 323, 330, 334, 375.

Index (Salvador de) Bahia, 314-5, 327, 330. Casa de Recolhimento, 333. Hospital de S. Cristóvão, 333. Misericórdia, 332-4. Recôncavo, 333. Monte Pascoal, 66. Porto Seguro, 63, 65-66, 68. Rio de Janeiro, 318. Brazilwood, 67-8, 166-67, 187-8. Bright, Timothy, (c.1551-1615), 163, 178, 188, 205. Britain, xii, xx-xxi, 43, 98, 116-17, 121, 123, 141-44, 147, 151, 153, 162, 177-8, 186, 214-5, 255-6, 301-6, 315, 350, 363, 371-3. Colonial Office, 143. Countess of Leicester’s medieval account book, 194. Courteen Association, 300. East India Company, xii, 111, 121, 143, 253, 300-3, 371, 377. English language, 311. King Henry VIII (1491-1547), 186. London, xii, xxi, 39, 211, 235, 372-3. Lymington, 215. Plymouth, 372-3. Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), 41, 186, 373. Scotland, 207. Thames River, 373. Worcestershire, 215. Brollo da Gemona, Basilio (16481704), 348, 374. Bronze drums (moko), 132, 134-6. Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God, 352. Bruce, James (1730-94), 27. Bruges, 196. Buchanan, Claudius (Vice-Provost of the College of Fort William, 1799-1808), 37, 41.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Buddhism, 37, 124, 135, 146-7, 151, 297, 309, 360, 367. Bugis people (Indonesia), 110-11, 116-17, 127, 131-2. Bulgaria, 88, 97. Bullion, 104. Bungaya Treaty, 117, 119. Burial, 91, Figure 29, 255, 318, 323, 331, 333, 345. Burma (Pegu), 3, 50, 108, 133, 135, 163, 171, 194, 202, 212, 347-8, 351-4, 358, 370. Arakan, 212. Irrawaddy River, 353. Martaban pots, 353, 366. Mergui, 347. King Nandabayin (1535-1600), 352. Syriam, 353. Tennasserim, 166, 216. Burton, Richard (1821-1890), 95. Byzantium, 88, 193. Cabral, Pedro Álvares (1467/8c.1520), 63-66, 71, 209. Cacena, Lucas de (16th century Genoese entrepreneur), 229. Cagiers, 159, 167. Cairato, Giovanni Battista (fl. 158096), 266. Calambac, 167. Calamus, 167-8. Cambodia, 108, 157, 194, 196, 347, 350, 353-4, 358-9. King of, 343. Camel-hair, 90. Caminha, Pêro Vaz de (c.14501500), 63, 75. Camphor, 168-9. Canafistula, 169, 217. Canica, 170. Cantino planisphere, 65, Figure 5, 296. Canto, Pêro Andes do (Provedor das Armadas, Azores), 229.

387

Cape of Good Hope, xi, 64, 70, 72, 159, 180, 289, 299, 303, 310, 312, 372. Capers, 170. Capitalism, xiv, 300, 306. Capuchin Order, 344. Caraway, 170. Cardamom, 143, 170-1. Caribbean (West Indies), 89, 143, 169-70, 174, 176-7, 203, 187, 301. Carmelites, 333. Carobs, 171. Casola, Pietro (1427-1507), 187. Cassia, 118, 169, 171-2, 217. Cassumunar, 172. Castanhoso, Miguel de (arquebusier, historian), 8. Caste system, 144, 146-8, 277. Castor, 172. Castro, D. João de (1500-1548), xiii, 249-252, 254, 267. Caucasus, 164, 193. Central (Inner) Asia, 43, 87, 96, 99100, 161, 180. Cerqueira, D. Luís, S.J. (15521614), 56-7. Chagos Islands, 288, 306. Chalk, 173-4, 195. Chamberlain, John (19th century Baptist missionary), 42. Champa, 167, 350, 360. Charles V, Emperor (1500-1558), 173, 186, 207. Charmot, Nicholas M.E.P. (16551714), 373. Charms, 177. Chaucer, Geoffrey (c.1343-1400), 228. Chaudhuri, K.N. (1934-), xi-xxii, 33, 84, 103, 106-7, 135-6, 141, 145, 155, 287, 377-80. Chevreuil, Louis, M.E.P. (c. 162793), 354.

388 Chiesa, Bernardino della, Bishop of Argolis, O.F.M (1644-1721), 343-4, 348, 351-2, 374. China, xiii-xiv, 33, 40, 53, 60, 103, 105, 108, 110, 112, 116, 121, 123-25, 129-31, 136, 141, 166, 168, 171, 173, 179, 184, 196, 202, 206, 209-10, 218, 228-30, 271, 299, 328, 332, 335, 340, 343, 347, 351, 354, 356, 359, 362, 366, 369, 374. Amoy, 130-31. Beijing, 351. Canton, 130, 211, 374. Formosa, 225, 351. Fujian, 53. Fukien, 348, 374. Han emperors, 112. Nankin, 374. Qing dynasty, 359. Sung dynasty, xiii China root, 173-4. Choisy, François-Timoléon de, S.J. (1644-1724), 348. Christianity, xiv, 42, 118, 237, 281, 328-9, 321-2, 331, 337, 349-50, 357, 359, 362, 365-7, 369, 372. (Guardian) Angels, 282. Apostles, 273, 279, 338, 372. baptism, 369, 371. burials, 255, Figure 29, 318, 323. catechism, 317. Confession, 57, 183, 272, 274, 317-19. cult of saints, 375. Eucharist, 54-55, 273-4. God, 43, 59, 134, 239, 246-8, 250-2, 271, 356, 365-7, 375. Gospel, 238, 354. Hell, 365. Holy Week, 330-2. Jesus Christ, 46, 177, 279, 282, 340, 372. Mass, 14, 19, 55, 248-51, 272, 319, 331, 345, 358, 372.

Index missionary strategy, 16, 21, 146, 265, 281, 345-57, 365-67. Passion (Mystery of the Holy Cross), 274, 279, 367, 372. Pentecost, 349. prayers, 317. Sacraments, 59-60, 272-3, 319, 347, 363. salvation, 317, 331. scriptures, 372. Virgin Mary, 280-1, Figure 36, 280-1, 284-5. works of mercy, 316-18, 334-5. Christendom, 33, 246, 287. Church, 37, 51-2, 56, 223, 233, 242, 246, 261, 272, 324, 330, 337, 339, 365-6. excommunication, 60, 363. Inquisition, 236, 346, 363. mission fields, 256, 261, 265, 340, 343, 370. missionaries, 246, 270, Figure 39, 281, 284, 286, 328, 3367, 345-6, 348-9, 351, 353-4, 357, 364-5, 372, 375-6. Oath of Loyalty, 363. Cinchona, 144. Cinnabar, 174, 181, 201, 227. Cinnamon, 145, 147-8, 170-2, 17475, 199, 297. Cinnamon peelers (chalias), 147-48. Circumcision, 16, 18, 35, 48. Climatic threats, 357, 365. Cloth (cottons), 84-93, 96-7, 101, 103-4, 119, 122-23, 130, 134, 155, 167, 178-9, 197-8, 223, 290, 299, 304, 349. Cloves, 109, 111-12, 118-19, 130, 136, 145, 170, 175-6, 292, 304, 360. Cochinchina, 53, 206, 329, 341, 349-50, 357, 359, 366-67. Cochineal, 176. Coconut, 143-44, 176-7, 290, 296, 367.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Codussi, Mauro (c.1440-1504), 274, Figure 34. Coffee, 143-44, 171, 304, 310. Cold War, xv. Colocynth, 177. Colonial charity, 314-335. Colonial elites, 314-6, 334-5. Colonization, 142, 146. Colonna, Fabio (1567-1640), 219. Columbus, Christopher (14511596), 66, 69, 166, 174, 210, 216. Comoros Islands, 288, 291-5, 298, 300-2, 304-8, 312. Conçeição, Frei Apolinário da, O.F.M. (1692-1760), 246. Congo, 316. Constantinus Africanus (1017-87), 201. Conti, Niccolò de’ (1385-1469), 171, 215. Cook, James (1728-1779), 76-7. Copper, 134, 161, 165, 199, 223, 227-8, 280, 362. Coral, 131, 177-78. Cordus, Valerius (1515-1544), 184, 190, 211, 228. Coriander, 178. Cornelian, 178. Coptic church, 4. Correia, Gaspar (1492-1563), 68. Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1642-1723), 361-2. Costa, Alvaro da (Portuguese soldier at Ethiopian court), 18. Costa, D. Rodrigo da (Governor of Estado da Índia, 1686-90), 238. Costus, 178. Cottons (see cloth). Counter-Reformation, 277. Couplet, Philippe, S.J. (1623-93), 351. Couto, Diogo de (1542-1616), 12, 206, 248. Covilhã, Pero da (c. 1460->1526), 5.

389

Cowrie shells, 297. Credit activities, 86, 96-7, 104, 119, 314, 329-30, 332, 334. Creole / creolisation, 3, 306-13, 374. Créquinière, Sieur de la (18th century author on India), 35, 37. ‘Il Cretico’ (Giovanni Matteo), 64. Ctesias (of Cnidus), 62. Cuba, 170. Cubeb pepper, 179. Cultural Darwinism, 311. Cumin, 179-80. Cunha, Dom Luís da (1662-1749), 235. Customary law, 134, 142, 147. Cypress nuts, 180. Cyprus, 88, 177-178, 194, 213-4, 217, 222, 224. Famagusta, 192. Da Lucca, Mauricio O.F.M. (fl. 1691-8), 355, 362. Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo (19th century Vicar-General in Ceylon), 151. Dalrymple, Alexander (1737-1808), 76. Dampier, William (1651-1715), 77. Danakil desert, 23. Dates, 180, 223. Demnar, 180. Demon worship, 356-7. Denmark, 116, 123, 374. Dependency theory, 84. Desert, xix. Dessais (of Sawantvandi, nr. Goa), 238, 250, 254. Diaspora, xiv, 3-4, 14, 26-8, 29, 43, 86, 94, 288, 291, 295, 315. Dioscorides, Pedanius (40-90 A.D.), 163, 190, 197, 211, 220, 224. Diosporon, 181. Diplomacy, 4, 44, 141, 155, 232, 235, 238, 251, 254, 256, 299, 339, 363, 377. Dittany, 181. Djihad, 6-9.

390 Dodder, 182. Dominican order, 118, 167, 333, 345, 351-2, 364. Dragon’s Blood, 174, 181. Drama, xxi-xxii. Drought, 305. Dubois, Abbé (18th century Catholic scholar and missionary), 36-7. Dürer, Albrecht (1471-1528), 177, 188, 195. Du Jarric, Pierre, S.J. (1566-1617), 352. Durkheim, Emile (1858-1917), 245. Dyes/dyeing, 67, 85-6, 89-90, 94-5, 102-3, 158, 160-1, 166-7, 176, 181, 183, 187, 191-4, 197, 200, 206, 209, 213, 214, 217, 222, 224-5, 227-9. East Asia, 98. Ebony, 181. Economic history, xii, xv. Education, 114, 153, 338, 365, . Egypt, 89-90, 92, 97, 99, 100-1, 160, 169, 191, 197, 202, 206, 209, 213, 217, 219, 220, 223, 225. Alexandria, 89, 166, 169-70, 180, 184, 192, 197, 205-6, 208, 217, 226. Cairo, 97, 162, 171, 209. Matarea, 162. Suez, 7, 306. Thebes, 206. Elephant tusks (ivory), 108-9, 13236, 145, 182, 192-3, 291-2, 2989. Emigration, 2. Enlightenment, 364. Entrepot trade, 53, 291-2, 298, 307. Estado da Índia, 2, 232-54, 265, 297, 314, 318, 323-27, 330, 334, 337. Ceremonial de que usaõ os Senhores V. Reys e Capitaens Generaes da India, 241-245.

Index Ceremonial de que uzaõ os V Reys quando escrevem aos Reys da India, 236-7, 245. Conselho do Estado, 236-7, 249. King’s birthday celebrations, 241-4, 248. Livros das Monções, 174, 324. Novas Conquistas, 249. Senado da Câmara (Municipal Headquarters), 238, 314, 321-3. Vedor da Fazenda Real (Administrator of the Treasury), 236, 238. Viceroys, 232-55, 324-5, 338. viceregal induction, 236-241, 251. Ethiopia, 2-33, Figures 1-3, 48, 923, 98-9, 103, 178-9, 184, 317. Abbay River, 28. Adal, Sultanate of, 6, 11. Agäw tribe, 13, 23. Adwa plateau, 12. Amharic, 16, 18-19. Baher nagash, 8, 12, 25. Berbera, 23. Dämbeya, 24. Debarwa, 14. Ennarya, 27. Fremona, 12, 20, 22-3, Figure 1. Gondar, 27, 29, 99. Gorgora, 20, 22. Negus Fasilädäs (1632-67), 2426. Negus Yohannes (1667-1682), 26. Negus Gälawdewos (15401559), 10-12, 14, 18. Negus Lebnä Dengel (14971540), 6. Negus Minas (1559-1563), 12, 15, 18. Negus Naod (1494-1508), 5. Negus Sarsa Dengel (15631597), 15.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Negus Susenyos (1607-1632), 15, 24. Oromo tribe, 11. Oydemir Pasha, 12. Patriarch of, 6-7. Queen Mentewab (1706-1733), 27. Qwälläla, 20, 22. Se’elä Krestos (younger brother of Susenyos, d. 1636), 19. Sennar, 26-27. Taqussa, 20. Tegray, 16, 23. Solomonid state, 4, 6, 9. Zara Yaeqob (1434-1468), 5. Ethnogenesis, 288, 307-13. Euphorbium, 182. Eurocentrism, xiii-xiv. Europe / Europeans, xi-xii, xiv, xxi, 2, 4-6, 9, 13, 15, 19, 27, 29, 335, 49, 55-7 60, 62, 66, 69, 8792, 98, 101, 103, 108-9, 111-2, 116, 123, 136, 141-2, 144, 1478, 150-1, 153-7, 161, 164-6, 169, 172-3, 177-8, 180, 183-7, 189-91, 193, 195, 197-9, 201-2, 204, 206-7, 209-14, 221-3, 2279, 234-7, 249-50, 253-4, 257, 259, 264-71, 272, 282, 286-9, 291, 293, 294-8, 301, 303, 307, 310-3, 336, 339-41, 347, 349, 354-6, 360, 362, 365, 367, 369, 373-4. eastern, 190, 193, 229. maritime empires, 313. north, 190. south-eastern, 187-8. Fabri, Felix (1438/9-1502), 214. Faitlovitch, Jacques (activist for the Black Jews of Ethiopia), 48. Fedrici, Cesare de (1521-1601), 106. Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1610-70), 361. Fennel, 183. Fenugreek, 183.

391

Fernandez, Manuel S.J. (15261583), 17. Figs, 183. Figueiredo, Melchio S.J. (c. 15301597), 52. Finé, Oronce (1494-1555), 73-75, Figure 10. Fishing, 289, 349. Flacourt, Étienne de (1607-60), 303. Flanders, 264, 271, 276, 284. Fletcher, Giles (16th Century Envoy of Queen Elizabeth at the Court of Muscovy), 41. Flores (Indonesia), 3. Flour, 171, 190. Foggini, Giovanni Battista (16521725), Figure 29. Fontaney, Jean de, S.J. (1643-1710), 340, 351, 354. Fontebuoni, Bartolomeo (1576/71625), 264, 279. Foodstuffs, 290-1, 293, 301-4, 307, 349, 364. Forbin, Claude de, (1656-1733), 371. Formi, Pierre (c.1600-1679), 226. Foundlings, 319, 329-33, 335-6. França, Affonso de (Portuguese military captain), 12. France, xx, 35-6, 73-4, 89-90, 103, 123, 173, 183, 198, 208-9, 214, 226-7, 237, 246, 248, 252, 254, 256, 264, 266, 302-7, 310-12, 337, 350-6, 360-1, 363. Albi, 214. Anjou, 214. Avignon, xi, xv. Bay of Bourgneuf, 214. Champagne, 173. Compagnie des Indes Orientales, 303, 348. Gâtinais, 214. Île de France, 183. King Louis XIV (1638-1715), 361, 368. Languedoc, 187.

392 Marseille, 219. Narbonne, 190. Normandy, 229. Paris, xx, 225, 235, 237, 362-4, 365-6, 373, 376. Provence, xx, 156, 187. Toulouse, 229. Franciscans, 58, 234, 236, 260-3, 270, 333, 336-38, 342-48, 3513, 355, 362, 364, 373, 375-6. Conventuals, 344. Discalced, 344, 362. Observants, 344. Province of San Gregorio, 342, 344. S. Pietro in Montorio missionary college (Trastevere), 355. Frankincense, 183-4, 205. Fróis, Luís S.J. (1532-1597), 60, 273. Fugger family, 69. Funeral ceremonies, 91. Gabriel, João (an Ethio-Portuguese guide and mission-helper) 22. Galangal, 184. Galbanum, 184, 215. Galla people (Ethiopia), 298. Galle, Theodor (1571-1633), 284. Galli, Salvatore, C.R. (d. 1697), 361. Gallnut, 184-5, 222. Gama, Christovão de (c. 1516-42), 23. Gama, Estevão da (Governor of India), 7. Gama, João Saldanha de (Viceroy of India), 244. Gama, Vasco da (c.1460/9-1524), 166, 252, 298. Garlic, 185. Geertz, Clifford (1926-2006), 251. Genoud, Jean, M.E.P. (1650-93), 353. Gentian, 185.

Index Gerard, John (1545-1611/12), 162, 174, 176-7, 181-2, 188, 190, 204, 214, 217, 226-7. Gerbillon, Jean-François de, S.J. (1654-1707), 340, 354, 357. Germany, 66, 71, 74, 156-8, 170, 172, 193, 195, 201, 205, 213, 229, 306, 357. Augsburg, 181. Bavaria, 355. Ravensburg, 222. Leipzig, 165. Nuremberg, 71, 213. Rhine, 170. Gervaise, Nicholas (1662-1729), 337, 357, 367. Ghosh, Amitav (1956-), 34. Ginger, 172, 184-6, 197, 222, 230. Ginseng, 358. Glass, 165, 186, 200, 219. Goa, xi, 7, 24, 58, 151, 173-4, 184, 199, 232-242, 244-74, 276-86, 314-5, 321-7, 331-5, 338, 340, 342, 344, 361, 363. Archbishop of Goa, 58, 242-3, 246-8, 250-1, 280. Archdioceses (1567, 1585), 278, 280, 282. Basilica of Bom Jesus, 247-51, 255, 259, 264, 266, 272, Figure 29, 274-77, 279, 2813, Figures 32, 33, 35, 36. Colégio de S. Paulo Velho, Figure 30, 257, 262-3, 270, 273-4, 276, 281-2. College of Rachol, 274, 283. College of Salcette, 262, 266, 269-70, 280, 282-3. Convento de Santa Mónica, 261, 282. Daugim, 342. Divar, Island of, 269-70. festivities in, 249-51, 266. Hospital dos Pobres do Padre Paulo Camerte, 262.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Igreja do Espírito Santo (Margan), 282. Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Neves, 280. Igreja de Santana of Talaulim, 272, 276. Island of Choran, 262, 269-70. Misericórdia, 262, 315, 325-7. Panelim, 251, 262. Peninsula of Bardês, 261. Professed House, 259-61, 263, 265-6, 270. Provincia do Norte, 234. religious ceremonies, 236, 243, 246-8. Santos Passos procession, 266. St. Catherine (gate / beach / day), 239, 246-7, 250, Figure 36. St. Francis Xavier’s Day, 246. St. John the Baptist Day’s processions, 248, 250. Terreiro dos Vicereis, 283. Goat’s Blood, 187. Goffman, Erving (1922-82), 252. Góis, Damião de (1502-74), 177, 187, 209. Gold, 11, 76, 94, 145, 161, 165, 173, 187, 202, 218, 223, 225, 230, 251, 273, 291, 299, 310, 362. Goldsmiths, 240, 279. Gomes, António S.J. (fl. 1548-54), 340. Gothic, 264. Grañ, Ahmad (1507-43), 7-8, 10, 14. Grana, 187, 193. Grapes, 56, 188. Grease, 188, 220. Greece, 88, 96-7, 101, 158, 184, 187, 200, 205, 225, 337, 369. Aegean, 88, 188. Arcadia, 205. Cephalonia, 196, 360, 370. Chios, 200.

393

Corfu, 187. Corinth, 187. Crete, 160, 182, 188, 194, 217. Lemnos, 224. Morea, 225. Patras, 187. Rhodes, 221. Thessaly, 88-89, 97, 102. Thrace, 158, 203. Zante, 196. Guiac, 173, 188-89. Guicciardini, Lodovico (1521-89), 179, 229. Guinea, 2, 65. Guitars, 149. Gum (Arabic, Benjamin, turpentine etc.), 159, 161, 163, 171, 182-4, 188, 194, 205, 214, 220, 224-5, 290. Gypsum, 189, 225. Habsburg family, 226. Hadrami (Yemen), 102. Hakluyt, Richard (c.1552/3-1616), 156, 166-8, 177, 179, 181, 1845, 187, 188, 197-8, 208, 210, 216, 218-9, 228. Hamilton, Alexander (c. 1688c.1733), 371. Harff, Arnold von (1471-1505), 162, 169. Haro, Cristobal de (Spanish merchant banker), 69. Hariot, Thomas (c.1560-1621), 158, 224. Hassnain, Prof. F.M. (Director of Kashmiri National Museum), 46. Hawaii, 216. Haya tribe (African Great Lakes region), 95. Hemp, 86. Henna, 190. Hermodactylis, 190. Higgins, Godfrey (19th century Theosophist), 38-9.

394 Hilliard, Nicholas (c.1547-1619), 195-6. Hinduism, xii, 37, 146, 151, 237, 259, 266, 270, 272, 286. Hippocrates (c. 460-370 B.C.), 223. Hirschvogel (patrician family of Nuremberg), 222. Holy Roman Empire, 361. Homem, Lopo (16th century Portuguese cartographer), 72, Figure 9. Honey, 149, 157, 190, 201, 208, 220-1. Hong Kong, xi. Horn of Africa, 5, 93, 100. Horn of the ‘unicorn’, 226-7. Horses, 43, 104, 127-8, 203. Hospitals, 57-8, 262, 318-9, 323-4, 327, 330-1, 333, 353. Hungary, 48, 161, 199. Hypericum, 190. Hypocystis, 190. Ibn Battuta (1304-1368/77), 92, 308-9. Idolatry, 43, 150, 346, 374. Import substitution, 86, 88. Incense, 124, 159, 163, 178, 183, 190-1, 196. India, xii, xiv, 5-6, 14, 21, 23-5, 33, 37, 39-41, 43, 46-9, 62, 64, 70, 74, 87, 89-90, 92, 95-6, 100, 103-5, 116, 123-25, 136, 14143, Figure 19, Figure 21, 147, 155, 157, 159, 161, 164-66, 168, 173-4, 176-8, 180, 182, 188, 191, 194, 198, 203, 211-13, 215, 219, 225-6, 230, 232-4, 236-7, 241-5, 248, 250, 252-7, 259-60, 263, 265-67, Figure 32, 270-1, 277-79, Figure 35-37, 284, 2868, 291, 293, 296-8, 301, 303-5, 309, 311, 317, 323, 329, 338. Agra, 39. Assam, 144, 196. Barcelor (Basrur), 297.

Index Bassein, 225, 259, 262, 264, 276. Bengal, xii, 3, 38, 91, 157, 170, 185-6, 194, 198, 220, 297, 329, 349, 374. Bombay (Mumbai), 33-4, 47-9, 143, 292, 302. Calicut, 75, 163, 165, 168, 170, 185, 215, 221, 230, 238, 297. Cambay, 157, 166-7, 168, 170, 178-9, 181-2, 184-5, 191, 198, 201, 203, 205, 214, 219, 225-6, 229, 296-297. Canara, 207. Cannanore, 169-70, 176, 182, 185, 230, 296-297. Cape Comorin, 215. Chaul, 167, 184, 225, 229, 276, 297. Cochin, 49, 166, 184, 199, 216, 220-1, 230, 271, 297, 356. Coromandel, 84, 91, 101, 116, 215, 223, 375. Dabul, 167, 185, 201. Daman, 282. Deccan, 36, 167, 201, 215. Delhi, xii, 39, 42, 225. Diu, 169, 194, 225, 249, 276, 281, 298-9. Ganges (River), 49, 163, 216. Ghats, 170, 216. Gujurat, 94, Figure 26, 191, 196, 223, 229, 297, 300. Honavar (Kannada), 297. Indus River, 178. Kashmir, 34, 38-40, 46. Kayal, 297. Kerala, 34, 40, 50. Kolkhata, xii, 47. Kollam, 185, 300. Konkani, 151. Laccadive Islands, 296. Madras, 36, 49, 142, 374. Malabar, 49, 60, 167, 171, 174, 177, 182, 184, 194, 201-3,

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds 207, 212-3, 218, 222-4, 225, 228, 230, 296-297, 349. Mandu, 225. Manipur, 50 Mangalore, 34, 184, 226, 230. Masulipatam, 155, 297. Mizoram, 50. Moguls, 46, 369. Oude, 39. Pondicherry, 36. São Tomé (de Meliapur), 297, 375. Sindh, 178, 191, 214, 219, 229. Sonda, 238. Surat, 133, 185, 225, 238, 297, 300, 348, 374. Tanor, 240. Tiracol, 250. Vijayanagar, 201, 264. Indian berry, 176. Indian Ocean world, xi-xiii, xv, xvii, 84-5, 102, 105, 107, 136, 141, 153, 158, 180, 287-8, 290-2, 294-6, 297-300, 302-8, 310-11, 313, 324, 327. Indian Office Archives, London, 155. Indian social habits, 36-7. Indian tin (calay), 191. Indigo, 90, 191-2, 229. Indonesia, 3, 107, 108, 110-17, 11920, 122-27, 129, 135-6, 145, 207, 299, 307, Figure 13. Aceh, 116, 123, 129, 133, 3712. Adonara, Island of, 132-33. Ambon, 109, 116-17, 121. Aru-Kai archipelagos, 118, 131, 134-35. Bali, 108, 123. Banda, 112-13, 115, 118-19, 123-24, 128, 204. Bantaeng, 112-13, 115. Banten, 116, 121, 123, 129, 348, 372. Benkulen, 371.

395

Birdshead Peninsula (Irian Jaya), 108-9, 119-121, 12627. Buton, 131. Ende (Flores), 127. Flores, 117-18, 121, 125, 127, 132, 134. Gebe, Island of (Gamrange), 119. Gowa-Tallo Kingdom, 111, 113-17, 119, 122, 125, 127. Halmahera, 109, 119, 122, 127, 204. Jambi, 123, 126. Japara, 121. Java, 70, 110, 112-14, 118, 120, 123-24, 129-31, 134, 143, 163, 168-169, 179, 184, 196, 207, 216, 230, 295, 299, 348. Karaeng Patingalloang (17th century Chief minister of Gowa-Tallo), 115, 118, 123. King Tunipalangga of Gowa (c. 1546-65), 114-15. Kingdom of GorontaloLimbotto, 129. Kingdom of Majapahit, 112-13. Lamaholot culture, 132-34, 136. Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa Tenggara), 108, 110, 113, 119, 120-1, 123, 125-7, 130. Maba (Halmahera), 119. Madura, 113. Makassar, 108, 110-32, 134, 136, 217, 358-60. Maluku Islands, 109, 112, 116, Figures 14, 15, 16, 145, 164, 175, 204, 299. Mataram, 116. Minankabau, 114. Palembang (Sumatra), 126. Patani, 113-14, 119, 123. Raja Ampat Islands, 109, 119, 121, 127. Raja Nuku (Tidore), 121.

396 Sabu, Island of, 127-28. Seram (Ceram), 109-110, 116, 118-22, 126, 205. Siang (South Sulawesi), 112-13. Sikka people, 134. Silebar, 371. Solor, 3, 117-18, 132, 134, 363. Sula Islands, 119. Sulawesi, 111-12, 117, 119, 121, 122, 125-27, 129, 216, Figure 25, Figure 28. Sumatra, 126, 163-4, 168, 179, 187, 194, 196, 208, 297, 349. Sumba, 127-28. Sumbawa, Island of, 122. Sunda, 108, 207. Surabaya, 113, 121. Tanimbar (or Timorlaut) Islands, 118, 129, 134. Ternate, 117-19, 126-7. Tidore, 109, 119, 121, 126-7. Tobunku (South Sulawesi), 122, 129. Togia Islands, 127, 129. Iran (Persia), 3, 41-2, 86-7, 89-90, 96-102, 104, 125, 141, 145, 151, 159, 161, 164, 184, 189, 192-3, 195, 200, 205-7, 210, 212, 214, 217-9, 223, 225-226, 229-30, 250, 277, 293, 296, 300, 374. Ardasse, 218. Hormuz, 178, 182, 289, 298300. Kashan, 219. Kerman, 226. Media, 214. Shah ‘Abbas I (r. 1587-1629), 104-5. Shah Ismail I (r. 1502-24), 3. Shiraz, 312. Iraq, xiv, 90, 186. Baghdad, 90, 191. Basra, 90, 179, 213, 223, 348, Figure 27. Kabala, 218.

Index Kadesia, 186. Mosul, 90, 101. Ireos Florentinae, 192. Iron (goods), 119, 122-23, 130, 131, 195, 227, 235. Isidore of Seville (560-636), 283. Islam (Muslims), xii-xiv, xv, xix, 40-43, 48, 96-7, 102-3, 121, 146, 235, 290, 295-298, 303, 305, 310-12, 326, 349, 369, 371. Hajji, 301, 308. Mohammed, 41. qadis (judges), 308-9. Islands & coastal communities, 287313. Israel (Holy Land), 43-7, 161, 163. Acre, 192. Italy, 4, 158, 163, 185, 187, 190, 205, 217-8, 222, 228, 235, 2634, 265, 271, 274, 276, 344, 364, 368, 373. Abruzzo, 212. Apulia, 156, 170, 179, 184, 205. Bologna, 276. Brera, 263. Calabria, 218. Corsica, 177. Dalmatia, 188. Fabriano, 206. Florence, xii, xx, 160, 192, 336, 347, 355, 362, 374, 376. Convento di San Salvatore di Ognissanti, 362. San Salvatore al Monte, 362. Santa Croce, 362. Genoa, 193, 206, 218, 222, 229. Istria, 184, 276. Lipari Islands, 158. Livorno, 374. Lombardy, 181, 274. Le Marche, 212. Lucca, 218. Milan, 211, 263, 272. Naples, xx, 222, 232. Orso, 218.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Orvieto, 348. Rome, xx, 4, 58, 242, 246-7, 251, 260, 263, 264-5, 26871, 280, 284-6, 340, 352-3, 362-6, 370-1, 374. Salerno, 212. Sardinia, 177. Sicily, 4, 177, 179, 222, 282. Trentino, 156, 210. Trieste, 222. Turin, 336. Tuscany, xvii-xii,192, 212. Venice, xix, 64, 156, 158, 166, 170, 174, 179-80, 186, 193, 195, 205-9, 215, 219, 22124, 274, 276, Figure 34, 348, 369-70, 372-3, 374. Vicenza, 218. Ivy, 192. Jacobovici, Simcha (Emmy awardwinning film-maker), 44. Japan, 24, 51-2, 54, 59, 168, 173, Figure 24, 265, 282, 299, 316, 322, 356, 359. Battle of Sekigahara, 52. churches in, 54-5. civil war, 52. Funai, 322. Hirado, 51. Kyushu, 51. Nagasaki, 51-2, 54, 56, 58, 59, 61, Figure 4, 325. Church of Nossa Senhora do Monte, 59. Hospital of Santiago, 58. port life, 60-61. procession of the Corpo de Deus, 59. Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), 52, 54. Tokugawa Hidetada (15791632), 52. Tokugawa Hideyoshi (1536/71598), 56. Yokoseura, 51-52.

397

Jesuits, 10, 12, 14-5, 18-25, Figure 1, 255-89, Figure 36, 318, 322, 337, 341, 345-6, 348-9, 351-2, 355-6, 361, 363-4, 372. accomodatio, 16, 346. art, 255-286. Consiliarius Aedificiorum, 260. General of the Company, 17, 57, 259-60, 263-4, 266, 270, 272, 280, 364. impact on marriage patterns, 1618. interpreters, 22-23. ‘Ministries of the Word’, 272. missions, 4, 13-14, 16, 19, 21, 24, 28, 51, 54-6, Figure 2, 341, 345. music, 266, 271. Provincials of the Company, 55, 57, 248, 259, 262-5. Visitors to the missions, 55, 259-60, 264, 270. Jewelry, 178. Joret, Jean, M.E.P. (1656-93), 353. Judaism, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44, 49-50, 103. Jewish tribes, 33-34, 37-40, 424, 47-50. Jewish merchants, 141. ‘New Christians’, 28, 321. Juniper berries, 189. Kenanaya community (Kerala), 50. Kenya, 96. Lamu, 96, 308. Melinde, 192, 215, 289, 298. Mombasa, 92, 234, 289, 291-2, 298-9. Kermes, 176, 193. Korea, 53. Koteada Yasutsune António (early Hirado convert to Christianity), 51. Labdanum, 192. Labour relations, xi, 38, 84, 86, 101104, 143, 148, 293.

398 coercing workers, 104, 125-6, 136, 304, 308. guilds, 101. Lacquer, 181, 194. Lacuna, Andreas (1499-1560), 211. La Loubère, Simon de (1642-1729), 337, 364. Lambert de la Motte, Pierre (Bishop of Beirut, M.E.P.) (1624-79), 352. Landed property, 327. Laneau, Louis, Monsig. de Metellopolis, M.E.P. (1637-96), 349, 363, 367, 370, 372. Laos, 194, 355. Laquedive Islands, 159. Lapis lazuli, 195. Las Casas, Bartolomé de (c. 14841566), 166. Latin, 16, 19, 54, 61, 75, 189, 355, 372. Lawyers, 321. Lead, 173, 189, 198, 201, 228. Leather, xx, 95, 179, 201, 222. Le Comte, Louis, S.J. (1655-1728), 340. Leitão, Fulgêncio (c.1588-1658), 336. Lemon, 196, 222, 364. Lemos, Gaspar de (one of Cabral’s captains), 63, 65. Lepers, 330-1. Lespleigney, Thibault (1496-1567), 211. Libavius, Andreas (1555-1616), 228. Libya, xx, 182. Cyrene, 214. Tripoli, 362. Lignum aloes, 196. Lima, Rodrigo da (Portuguese fidalgo), 6. Lime flowers, 197. Limodra, 196. Linen, 86, 89, 197. Linseed oil, 197.

Index Lionne, Abbé Artus de, M.E.P. (1655-1713), 348, 351. Liquorice, 197. Livingstone, David (1813-73), 105. Lizard dung, 197. Long-distance trade, xii, xiv,141-2, 154, 213, 289-90, 295-7, 313, 327-9, 332, 370. Loyola, Ignatius of (1491-1556), 259, 262, 274-5, Figure 37, 2835. Lutheranism, 374. Machira cloth (African cotton homespun), 94-5, 105. Macao, 52, 57, 59-60, 119, 155, 276, 281, 314-5, 321-5, 327-33, 335, 341, 347. Hospital de S. Lázaro, 330. Hospital dos Pobres, 330. Leal Senado, 325, 328-35. Misericórdia, 314-5, 321-5, 329-335. Mace, 109, 111-12, 119, 123, 126, 130, 136, 145, 198. Madagascar, 74-5, 91-2, 95, 97-9, 103, 230, 291, 292-5, 298-301, 303-307, 311-2. Betsimisaraka, 99, 299, 302, 305, 312. Fort Dauphin, 303, 312. Malagasy, 311. Nossi Bé Island, 300, 306, 312. Saint Augustine’s Bay, 300. Sainte Marie Island, 301-2. Madder, 158, 198. Madeira, 69, 74. Madre de Deus, Luiz, O.F.M. (1673-1689), 343, 345, 347, 352. Maecht, Markus (1526-97), 276. Maffei, Giovanni Pietro, S.J. (15331603), 345. Magellan (Magalhães), Fernão de, 72-73, 75. Maghrib, 89, 97.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Mahavamsa (PƗli chronicle of early kings of Ceylon), 147. Maigrot, Vicar Apostolic of Fujian (1652-1730), 374. Malabathrum, 198. Malachite, 199. Malagueta, 199-200. Malay world, 60, 110, 112-19, 121, 123, 126, 131, 151, 182, 191, 207, 310, 329, 347. Johor, 113-14, 123. Kedah, 347. Kingdom of Srivijaya, 112. Pahang, 113-14. Maldonado de Mons, Jean-Baptiste (1634-99), 339, 341, 363, 375. Maldive Islands, 142, 159, 167, 288, 295-297, 306, 309, 349. Divehi language, 296, 311, 314. Male, 310. Malta, 158, 180. Mamluk Egypt, 9. Mandarese people (South Sulawesi), 110-11. Mandeville, John, 40. Manna, 200. Mannerism, 264, 276. Manrique, Sebastian (O.E.S.A.) (fl. 1629-1669), 373. Marathas, 234, 249-50, 253. Marini, Gerolamo (author of world map), 68. Marking nut, 200. Marriage, 8, 16-7, 113, 135, 315, 318, 320, 331, 333, 371. Martyr, Pedro d’Anghiera (14571526), 169. Martyr, Peter O.E.S.A. (Vicar and Commissioner of the Sacred Office, fl. 1687-1692), 363. Martyrs of Salsette, 285, Figure 38. Marxist history, 101. Mascarene Islands, 92, 288, 295-6, 298, 303-6, 310. Mauritius (Île de France), xi, 92, 299-300, 303-7, 310-1.

399

La Réunion (Île de Bourbon), xi, 92, 303-7, 312. Mascarenhas, José Freire Monterroio (1670-1760), 235, 240. Massawa (Eritrea), 8. Massicot, 200-1. Massoi bark, 109, 119-121. Mastic, 200-201. Mathias, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (1557-1619), 226. Mathiolus, Pietro Andrea (1501-77), 205. Matsuura Takanobu, (1529-1599), 51-52. Medicine, 125, 130, 158-60, 162, 164, 170, 172, 175, 180, 182, 184, 185-6, 188, 190, 196, 198, 203, 210, 213, 218, 220-2, 225, 296, 346, 358. Mediterranean, xi, xiv, xvii, xix-xxi, 5, 107, 156, 160, 170, 177-8, 183, 190, 194, 197, 200, 205, 208, 212, 218, 287, 296. Melaka, 3, 69-71, 73, 112-13, 115, 118, 123, 127, 129, 164, 167-8, 187, 191, 198, 208, 211, 216, 282, 299, 302, 349, 371, 374. Melius, Júhasz Péter (1532-72), 162, 183. Mella, 201. Mendes, Bishop Afonso (fl. in Ethiopia, 1622-32), 23. Mendis (Rodrigo & Anthony), 147. Menezes, Dom Aleixo de (15591617), 280. Mercator, Gerardus (1512-1594), 75. Mercurian, Everard (1514-80), 280. Merina tribe (Madagascar), 99, 295, 304-5. Mesquita, Diogo de S.J. (15511614), 55. Métissage (racial mixing), 2, 13, 150, 315, 329, 332-3, 374-5.

400 Mexico, 56, 176, 180, 374-5. Benito Juarez, xxi. Michiel, Pietro Antonio (15101576), 217. Middle East (Levant), xii, xiv, 86, 98-101, 105, 112, 158, 160-1, 163-4, 166, 169, 177-9, 190, 206-7, 213, 217, 219, 221, 224, 229. Miechów, Maciej of (1457-1523), 193, 209. Minium, 201. Mirabolan, 182, 201-2, 277. Missions Étrangères de Paris, 341-4, 351-352. Monita ad Missionarios, 356-7. Mokha, 143. Monardes, Nicolás Bautista (14931588), 165, 174. Monclaro, Francisco de, S.J. (Visitor to the Indies from 1592), 259. Money, 60, 209, 234, 314, 320, 322, 325-7, 329-31, 334-5, 356, 360, 362, 368. Money-lending, 146, 315, 327. Monsoons, xiii, 153, 288-89, 291, 295, 298-9. Montaigne, Michel de (1533-92), 224. Montalboddo, Francazano da (editor of first collection of travel accounts), 66. Moore, George (19th century author on the lost tribes of Israel), 37. Moraes, Manuel de (fl. 1543-53), 356. Morelli di Castelnuovo, Giovan Battista, O.F.M. (1655-1716), 336-76. D.O.M. Luzeiro evangelico, 374-5. Morocco, xx, 149, 177, 222. Moveable type, 58, 288-291. Mozambique, 94, 97, 105, 192, 28891, 298-302, 306-7, 310, 312.

Index Angoche, 312. Cape Delgado, 299, 304. Delagoa Bay, 298. Îles Éparses, 307. Limpopo valley, 298. Sena, 310. Sofala, 93, 289, 312. Mulatto, 310, 315. Mummy, 202. Mundella, Aloysius (Professor of Medicine in Padua, d. 1530), 211. Mundy, Peter (1608-67), 267. Münzer, Hieronymous (1437/471508), 181. Murayama Toan António (Daikan of Nagasaki), 56. Murillo, Bartolomé Estebam de (1618-82), 284. Musk, 159, 172, 175, 202-3. Mustard, 203. Myrrh, 163, 84, 203. Myrepsos, Nicholas (late 13th century physician of Nicea), 210. Nard (spikenard), 203. Nebuchadnezzar (c.634-562 B.C.), 40-41. Neri, Saint Filippo (1515-95), 283. Netherlands, xx, 59, 77, 110, 111, 116-21, 124-26, 128, 133-34, 141-43, 147-48, 151-2, 183, 198, 219, 250, 254, 291, 299300, 303, 310, 312, 326, 352, 360, 368, 371-2. Calvinism, 312, 374. creolised groups in South Africa, 312. Dutch exploration, 77. Dutch painters, 173, 189. The Hague, 235. navigational charts, 360. trade blockades, 116. Vrijburgers, 142. New Guinea, 73, 76, 119, 204. New Zealand, 76.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Newen Zeytung auss Pressilg Landt (1515), 68-70, 73, 75. Nicobar Islands, 159, 347. Nicolai da Leonissa, Giovanni Francesco, Bishop of Berytus & Vicar Apostolic of Hu-Quang, O.F.M. (1656-1737), 348, 374. Nigella, 204. Nomadism, xx. Noronha, D. Garcia de (Governor of India), 7. Nutmeg, 109, 111-12, 118-19, 123, 126, 130, 136, 145, 164, 204, 307, 360. Nyamwezi tribe (Tanzania), 95, 97. Occuli Cancrorum, 204-5. Ogasawara Ichian (governor of Nagasaki), 53-4. Oil, 157, 161-2, 167-8, 172, 175-6, 180-1, 192, 197-200, 205, 21213, 216, 218-221, 223, 227-9, 269, 279, 283, 285, 364. Olibanum, 183, 205. Olives, 205, 364. Oman, 90, 95, 99, 288, 291-2, 299300, 304-6, 312-3. Muscat, 292. Omura Sumitada Bartolomeu (15331587), 51-2. Omura Yoshiaki Sancho (15681615), 54. Onions, 161, 205. Opium, 195, 205-6. Oppopanax, 205. Oratorian Order, 261. Orpiment, 161, 206. Orta, Garcia de (1501/2-68), 161, 164-6, 168, 173-6, 184, 198, 215-6, 219, 226. Ortelius, Abraham (1527-98), 75, Figure 11. Oviedo, Bishop André de (d. 1577), 18, 22. Pacific Ocean, 69, 77. Páez, Pedro S.J. (1564-1622), 19, 21-22.

401

Painting, 55, 161, 189, 192, 195, 200, 227-8, 255, 264, 269, 2747, 279, 283-5, 287, 373. Paiva, António (16th century merchant of sandalwood in Melaka), 113. Pakistan, xii, 45-6, 49, 161. Balakot, 194. Baluchistan, 45. Lahore, 39, 166, 219. North-West Frontier Province, 45. Peshawar, 41. Palestine, 99. PƗli, 147, 151, 372. Palladio, Andrea (1508-80), 263. Pallu, François, Vicar Apostolic of Tonkin, M.E.P. (1626-84), 348, 350-2. Palm products, 100, 164, 180, 277, 297. Papacy (Holy See), 256, 269, 337, 361, 363-4, 368, 371. Paper, xix, 206, 363-4, 368. Papua New Guinea, 108. Paracelsus (Philip von Hohenheim) (1493-1541), 187, 194, 214, 218. Parrots, 62-68, 71, 74. Parsley, 206. Pasio, Francisco S.J. (1554-1612), 54-55. Pathans (Pashtun), 44-46. Pauw, Cornelius de (1739-95), 364. Pavo, Jakob (d. 1682), 276. Pearls, 145, 206. Pegalotti, Francesco Balducci (fl. 1310-1347), 158, 171, 179, 182, 186, 192, 194, 202. Pepper, 108, 126, 143, 164, 179, 198, 207-8, 228, 297. Pereira, Duarte Pacheco (14691533), 67, 72. Pérez, Francisco S.J. (16th century biographer of Francis Xavier), 284.

402 Perfumery, 158-9, 163, 168, 202-3, 212, 219, 221. Persian Gulf, 99, 206-7, 288-9, 293, 295-6, 301, 305-6, 308. Peru, 56. Phaulkon, Constance (1647-88), 337, 343, 353, 360, 370-1, 373. Philippines, 53, 119, 121, 129, 345. Manila, 56-8, 116, 120, 316, 343, 351-2, 375. Photography, xviii-xxi. Pilatro, 208. Pimenta, Nicolau S.J. (1546-1614), 259. Pine resin, 208. Pious legacies, 331, 335. Piracy, 294, 299, 301-2, 305, 312, 350. Pires, Tomé (c.1465-1524/40), 158, 189, 206, 212, 223, 225. Pistachio, 208. Plague, 165, 186, 192, 204, 227. Plantain, 208. Plantation agriculture, 143-44, 148, 295, 336. Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), 173, 181, 189, 220, 227. Plums, 208-9, 217. Polish berry, 193, 208-9. Polo, Marco (c.1254-1324), 190, 195. Pope Clement XI (1649-1721), 251. Pope Innocent XI (1611-89), 343. Pope Leo X (1475-1521), 344. Pope Paul V (1552-1621), 355. Popular Music, 149-151, 153. harmony, 149. Kaffrinha, 150. Chorus Baila, 151. VƗda Baila, 150-1. Porcelain, 134, 209. Portugal, 2, 7-8, 13, 15, 17-18, 25, 56-7, 60-1, 63-65, 67-8, 70, 95, 105, 112, 116-18, 123, 133, 141-42, 145-6, 148-153, 163-4, 168-9, 173, 176-7, 179, 181-2,

Index 184, 186, 191, 201, 203-4, 206, 208, 211-2, 214-5, 220, 233, 235, 237, 248, 253-4, 258, 260, 262, 264-5, 271, 276-8, 288, 292, 294-6, 300-4, 308-9, 316-8, 321-3, 325-6, 330, 338, 344-6, 350, 358, 371-3, 375. Alexandre of Portugal (172328), 244. Algarve, 159. Câmaras (Municipal Councils), 314, 321-3, 329. carta de poder, 232-5. cartilhas (manuals of reading and writing), 317. Ceuta, 177, 316. Coimbra, 258, 273. Cortes (Parliament), 237, 322. Count of Ericeira (Marquis of Louriçal) (1689-1742), 238, 246, 249-50, 253. customs, 271. Elmina, 234. Évora, 258. expansion and discoveries, 2, 28, 51, 63, 71, 142, 239, 247, 251. identity, 2-4, 15-16, 24, 28-29, Figure 3, 150. language, 19. Dom Henrique (1394-1460), 160. King Afonso V (1432-1481), 202. King Manuel I (1469-1521), 2, 63, 68, 317, 319, 337. King João I (1385-1433), 211. King João II (1455-95), 5. King João III (1502-57), 2, 13, 229, 239, 319. King João V (1689-1750), 2345, 244, 247, 249, 251, 253. King Pedro II (1648-1706), 236. King Sebastião (1554-78), 149, 326.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Lisbon, 15, 57, 63, 68, 174, 178, 209, 222, 234, 237-8, 241, 243, 246-8, 253, 319-20, 322, 324-5, 332, 350. Livro das Cidades e Fortalezas (1582), 233. Livro das Fortalezas que a Coroa de Portugal tem nas partes da Índia (1635), 233. Marquis of Abrantes (16761733), 234-5. Marquis of Alorna (1688-1756), 241-2, 244, 246, 248, 250-1, 253. Marquis of Castelo Novo (16881756), 234-5, 240-1, 24750, 252-4. Marquis of Fontes (1676-1733), 251-2. Marquis of Tavora, Francisco de Assis (1703-59), 241, 244. Mid-Atlantic islands, 160, 181, 222, 229, 288, 300, 319, 372. Misericórdias (lay confraternities), 57-8, 262, 314-35. Olivença, 316. Padroado Real, 246, 256, 261, 286, 323, 351, 363. Porto, 317. presídios (fortresses), 52, 146, 148, 236, 250, 253, 324-5, 327, 334. Provedoria dos defuntos (Office responsible for repatriating estates of the dead), 325-6. Restauração (Restoration in 1640), 336. São Tomé e Principe, 166, 222, 319. Setúbal, 159. trade, 97. Tratado de Confissom (1489), 317. Pottery, 290, 296.

403

Precious stones, 145, 172, 185, 195, 207, 209, 212, 234, 240. Precipitated sulphur, 194. Printing, xix-xx. Prior, James (c.1790-1869), 302, 310. Prisoners, 318, 326, 331-2, 347. Priuli, Girolamo (1476-1547), 64. Procuratore Generale delle Missioni, 374. Propaganda Fide, 246, 339, 341, 360, 374. Ptolemy (c. 90-c. 168), 66, 72. Pyrard de Laval (c.1578-c.1623), 163, 267, 297, 302, 309. Pulses, 209-10. Purslane, 210. Quicksilver, 210. RƗjakariya, 143. Rajiota, Isabel (Catholic benefactor in 16th century Ayutthaya), 341. Ramayana, 124. Ransoms of war captives, 128, 133, 302, 318, 326. Red Sea, xiii, 5-7, 14, 89, 143, 159, 177, 206, 295-6, 301. Reformation, 33. Retano, Bishop Tommaso of Adria (fl. 1667-1677), 360. Religious worship, 37, 162, 246-8. Renaissance, 67, 77, 195, 253, 264, 274. Requitria, 210. Rhenius, C.T.E. (19th century English missionary), 37. Rhubarb, 210-11. Ribeiro, Captain João (fl. 1641-59), 148. Rice, 92, 119, 122-23, 125-6, 143, 145, 157, 211-12, 353, 364. Rice flower, 211. River Plate Estuary, 69, 71. Rodrigues, João ‘Tçuzu’, S.J. (1561/2-1633), 54, 59. Roelants van Mechelen, Cornelis (1450-1525), 174.

404 Romania 187, 191, 201, 218. Braúov, 162, 195, 228. Sibiu, 228. Transylvania, 197, 205. Rosemary, 191, 211-2. Rosewater, 212. Rossi, Girolamo (1539-1607), 212. Rougemont, François de, S.J. (162476), 340. Rubber, 144. Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640), 284. Rumphius, Georg Eberhard (16271702), 122. Rushdie, Salman (1947-), 34. Russia, 45, 87-8, 90, 172, 180, 193, 209. Crimea, 193, 209. Siberia, 172. Ruvia, 210, 212. Saffron, 190, 212-4. Sagapene, 214. Saint Boniface, 282. Saint Gerasima, 282. Saint Hildegard of Bingen (10981179), 208. Saint Paul, 281-2, 356. Saint Thomas of India, 278-9. Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, 282. Sakalava tribe (Madagascar), 295, 304-6. Sal Ammoniac, 214. Salmon, William (1644-1713), 181. Salt, 158, 176, 214-5, 220, 226-7, 365. Salt, Henry (1780-1827), 310. Saltpeter, 215. Samaria, 41-2. Samarkand, 41-2, 96, 101. Sampaio e Castro, Francisco José de (1675-1723), 244. Samuel, Jacob (19th century missionary), 42-3. Sandalwood, 109, 111, 116, 122-5, 127, 136, 215-7, 221.

Index Sanskrit, 151. Santo Domingo, P. Antonio, O.F.M. (fl. 1684-91), 347. Santo Stefano, Girolamo di (traveller to india c. 1499), 215. Sassetti, Filippo (1540-88), 361. Scammony, 180, 217. Schall von Bell, Father Johann Adam (1592-1666), 351. Schöner, Johannes (1477-1547), 7173, 75. Schulz of Striga, Johann (16th century mineralogist), 225. Scriba, Giovanni (12th century Genoese notary), 206. Sculpture, 255, 269. Sea cucumber, 108, 111, 122-24, 130-32, 136. Sebestena, 217. Segneri, Paulo, S.J. (1624-94), 355. Senegal, 2. Senna, 217. Seragni, 218. Serlio, Sebastiano (1475-1554), 263, 275-6. Sernigi, Girolamo (1453->1510), 221, 224. Sesame seeds, 218. Seven Years War (1756-63), 304, 311. Seychelle Islands, 288, 295-6, 298, 301, 303-7, 310, 312. Sierra Leone, 2. Silk, 59, 86, 88, 90-1, 96, 187, 218. Silver, 55, 145, 173, 177, 181, 187, 218, 238, 256, 278, 301-2, 362, 366. Siqueira, Ambassador Pero Vaz de (fl. 1684-1703), 342, 363. Slavery, xi, xviii, 102, 108, 109, 111, 116, 119-23, 125-28, 136, 291-5, 298-9, 301-2, 304-5, 308, 311, 314, 333, 340, 347, 356. manumission, 311, 347. marronnage, 304, 311. Slovakia

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Neusohl (Banská Bystrica), 199. Smalt, 219. Soap, 219. Soares, Mauriçio (ministered in 16th century Ethiopia), 21. Socotra, 157, 181, 184, 223, 288. Soldanella, 219. Somalia (Somaliland), 92, 97-99, 102, 205, 298. Benadir Coast, 92. Mogadishu, 92. Sousa, D. Diogo de (c.1461-1532), 317. Sousa, Gaspar de (Portuguese captain), 10. South Africa, xv, 157-58, 300, 312. Afrikans language, 310-11. Saldanha Bay, 300. Transvaal, 298. South America, xxi, 68, 74-5, Figure 6, 143, 164-6, 191, 375. Tierra del Fuego, 73. South Asia, xi-xiii, 84-9, 91-4, 96, 98, 101, 103-5, 145-6, 199, 202. South China Sea, 131. Southeast Asia, 3, 85-86, 98, 100, 103, 108, 110, 112, 120-1, 134, 136, Figure 13, 146, 167-8, 181, 223, 295. Souza, Francisco de (Jesuit chronicler, fl. 1710), 279. Spain, 60, 69, 116, 157, 159-60, 176, 179, 187, 196, 207, 213, 216, 232, 263-4, 274, 301, 316, 325, 344-8, 350, 362, 375. Canary Islands, 160, 181. Cordoba, 222. Catalonia, 191, 213. Gibraltar, 69, 305. Granada, 218. Hispaniola, Island of, 166, 210. Ibiza, 214. King Ferdinand of Castile (1452-1516), 68, 166. King Philip II (1527-98), 338.

405

Queen Isabella (1451-1504), 166. Seville, 165, 205, 229. Valencia, 156, 211, 218, 222. Spice Islands, 69. Spices / Spice Trade, 76, 85, 108-9, 112, 115-16, 118-21, 123, 130, 145, 155-230, 234, 297, 304. Spikenard, 203, 219-20. Spodium, 220. Sponge, 221. Sri Lanka (Ceylon), 141-54, 166, 171-2, 174-5, 185, 195, 206, 212, 215, 230, 296-7, 299, 302, 309, 349, 374. Burghers, 142, 150, 152. Colombo, 146-7. Don Juvan DharmapƗla (154197), 146. Kathaluwa, 150. King BhuvanekabƗhu VII of Kǀtte (r. 1521-51), 146. Kingdom of Kǀtte, 146, 297. Kingdom of Kandy, 146. Jaffnapatam, 146. Sinhala, 148, 150-4, 296, 309. Trincomalee, 143. Staphisagrae, 220. Stincus marinus, 221. Stone, 223, 225, 259-60, 277-290, 293-4, 296, 298. Storax, 221-2. Suarez, Manuel, S.J. (1614-92), 363. Sublimat, 221. Sudan, 26 Sugar, 158, 171, 186, 190, 221-2, 234, 303-5, 318-9, 336. Sugar cane estates, 314, 319, 327, 333. Sulphur, 167, 194, 206, 222, 224, 227. Sultan of Mutsamudu (Madagascar), 302. Sumac, 184, 222.

406 Swahili Coast, 92, 288-9, 291-5, 299, 305, 307-9, 311-2. language, 305, 311. Querimba Islands, 94, 299. Pate, 93. Sofala, 93. Sweet bay, 222. Sweet rush, 222-3. Swords, 121-2, 223. Symbols of power, 233. Syria, 39, 49, 88-89, 97, 99, 112, 160-1, 177-9, 184-5, 194, 205, 214, 217, 219, 226. Aleppo, 89, 101, 179, 184, 2189, 374. Damascus, 179, 186, 209, 218. Hamah, 179. Tabasheer, 220. Tachard, Guy S.J. (1651-1712), 374. Tafur, Pero (c.1410-1484), 196. Tajiks, 45. Tamarind, 223. Tambac, 223. Tamil, 151-3. Tanzania, 95, 309. Kilwa, 289, 291, 298-9, 312. Pemba, 292. Tapseels, 223. Tartar, 160, 223-4. Tartary, 41-42, 164. Tasman, Abel Janszoon (1603-59), 76-77. Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste (16051689), 268, 338. Tea, 121, 144. Teixeira, Manuel S.J. (16th century biographer of Francis Xavier), 284. Terebinth, 184, 224. Terra Australis Incognita, 72-7. Terrae (medicinal earth tablets), 225. Textile technology, 97-8, 188. ground loom, 99. pit looms, 98-99. Saxon spinning wheel, 98.

Index spindle wheels, 98. wooden blocks, 100. Thailand (Siam), 53, 60, 108, 123, 182, 194, 223, 336-37, 340-1, Figure 22, Figure 39, 343-47, 349, 351-4, 358-61, 364-375. Ayutthaya, 223, 341, 344, 3513, 359, 364, 375. Church of São Paulo, 341, 345. Convento da Madre de Deus, 345. Jesuit residence, 341, 343, 345. St. Joseph Settlement, 3412. Bangkok, 352, 354, Figure 22. Barcalang (Minister of foreign nations), 368-9. Chao Phraya River, 341. elephants, 369-70. Junkseylon (Phuket), 347. King Phra Narai, 360, 368-9. LopburƯ (Louvò), 343, 352, 359, 370. Makasserese Revolt (1686), 359-61. National Revolution of 1688, 336-7, 341, 373. Phitsanulok, 347. Sancok / Samkok, 353. Siamese absolutism, 368-9. Talapoins, 360, 367, 372. Thatch, 353. Theatine Order, 361. Theophrastus (c.371-c.287 B.C.), 200, 208. Thévenot, Melchisédech (c.16201692), 34, 77. Thomas, Antoine S.J. (1644-1709), 340. Thorn-apple, 180, 221. Tibet, 39, 43, 47-8, 165, 202, 210, 230. Lhasa, 48. Tignames, 225.

Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds Timber, 171, 295. Timor, 3, 108, 118, 124-25, 129, 131, 134, 216, 329, 331, 363. Tincal, 165, 225. Toland, John (18th century historian of philosophy and religion), 35. Tonkin, 348-50, 359, 366. Christian population of, 350. Torrès, Cosme de, S.J. (c.15101570), 57. Torres, Luis Váez de (c.1565-fl. 1607), 76. Torres, Miguel (1509-93), 262. Torsellino, Orazio (wrote biography of Francis Xavier in 1594), 284. Tortoiseshell, 111, 119, 122, 124, 129-30. Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), 69, 246. Trent, Council of (1545-63), 271, 286, 317. Trindade, Fr. Paulo da, O.F.M. (1570/1-1651), 346. Trinitarian Order (f. 1198), 326. Tumakkajananngang Ana’bura’ne (guild manager in Makassar), 115. Tunisia, xx. Tunis, xxi. Tupiniquim Indians, 63. Turkey, 39, 168-9, 206, 217-8, 225, 287, 371. Anatolia, 88-89, 101, 193. Bursa, 88, 102. Cilicia, 213. Diyarbakır, 96. Istanbul (Constantinople), 89, 97, 104, 168, 210. Izmir, 96 Ottoman Turks, 7, 9, 87-90, 96, 101, 103, 162, 292, 298. Sultan Abdülhamit I (r.17741789), 104. Sultan Selim III (r.1789-1807), 104. Tarsus, 214, 225.

407

Turmeric, 213, 225, 230. Turpeth, 225. Turquoise, 226. Tutty, 226. Udall, Henry / Uredale, Edmund (17th century ship captain), 371. Ulama (clerics), 97. ‘Umma (Muslim community), 308. Usury, 327. Uzbeks, 45. Vaishyas, 146. Valentijn, François (1666-1727), 77, Figure 12, 352. Valerian, 204, 219. Valignano, Alessandro S.J. (15391606), 55, 58-60, 260, 263, 2656, 271. Valle, Pietro della (1586-1652), 338. Van Gennep, Arnold (1873-1957), 239. Vasconcelos, D. Diogo de (Captain Major of Macao, 1605-11), 60. Velho, Manoel Soares (18th century general of the Marquis of Louriçal), 249. Venus haire, 227. Verdigris, 227. Vesalius, Andreas (1516-64), 173-4. Vietnam, 134, 358. Annamites, 353. Champa, 114. Vignola, Giacomo da, (1507-73), 263, 275. Visdelou, Claude de, S.J. (16561737), 340, 354. V.O.C. (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), 76, 111, 116-19, 122, 125, 130, 133, 142, 234, 238, 253, 299. Batavia (Jakarta), xi, 120-21, 123, 129, 142, 299, 371, 374. Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen, 118.

408 Governor (of Ceylon) Adriaan Van der Meyden (16531660, 1661-3), 147. Vespucci, Amerigo (1454-1512), 66. Vitriol, 227. Vomiting nuts, 227-8. Waldseemüller, Martin (c. 14701520), 65, 66, 68, 71, Figures 68. Admiral’s Map (1513), 66. Carta Marina (1516), 66, 68. Cosmographiae Introductio, 71. War, xv, 14, 33, 49, 51-3, 70, 87, 126, 128, 133, 180, 232, 241, 248-9, 265, 288, 295, 304-5, 311, 318, 320, 326, 346-7, 352, 368, 370, 372, 374. Wax, 111, 116, 159, 161, 163, 174, 194, 228. Weber, Max (1864-1920), 232, 244. Wheat, 187. White sucket, 229. Wine, 158, 160, 199, 204, 213, 224, 227, 364. Woad, 160, 191, 229-30. Wolff, Joseph (19th century Lost Tribes hunter), 41.

Index Wood, 54-5, 88, 97-8, 100, 108, 115, 158-62, 167, 184, 188, 197, 215-6, 221, 255, 274, 277, 290, 345, 356. Woodcarving, 271, 279. Wool, 86, 89-90, 101, 103. Worms, 170, 178, 183, 187, 189, 204-5, 208, 225, 365. Wormseed, 230. Wormwood, 230. Xavier, St. Francis (1506-52), 2468, 250, 255, Figure 29, 270, 273, 278, 283-4, 286, 318, 340, 357. Yadavas, 47. Yemen, 90, 97, 99, 102, Figure 17, Figure 18, Figure 20. Aden, 178, 218, 221. Zambesi, 95, 105, 299, 305, 308, 310, 312. Zanzibar (Unguja), 95-6, 289, 292, 302, 306, 312. Zedoary, 172, 229-30. Zerumbete, 230. Zimba people (East Africa), 291-2, 298. Zimbabwe, 94. Zinc, 196, 223, 226.