An Edible History of Humanity (10 page)

So why did it take nearly nine years for Portugal to send an expedition to India? Or ganizing a fleet would have taken time,
but Columbus’s discoveries in the Atlantic may also have been responsible for the delay. If he really had found a westerly
route to the east, then going all the way around Africa would be unnecessary. But when Columbus returned from his second voyage
in 1496 with very little to show for it, the Portuguese regained their enthusiasm for an expedition to India around the southern
tip of Africa. The ships sailed the following year. As a chronicler of the time succinctly put it: “In the year 1497, the
King Manuel, the first of that name in Portugal, sent four ships out, which left on a quest for spices, captained by Vasco
da Gama.”

King Manuel was delighted, and was soon styling himself “Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest, the Navigation and the Commerce
of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India.” This was of course an enormous exaggeration, but it left no doubt of his intent:
to wrest control of the spice trade from the Muslims. Manuel spelled this out in a gloating letter to Ferdinand and Isabella
of Spain, in which he explained that his explorers “did reach and discover India and other kingdoms bordering upon it . .
. entered and navigated its sea, finding large cities . . . and great populations among whom is carried on all the trade in
spices and precious stones.” He went on to express his hope that “with the help of God the great trade which now enriches
the Moors of these parts . . . shall in consequence of our own regulations be diverted to the natives and ships of our own
kingdom so that henceforth all Christendom in this part of the world shall be provided with these spices.” Manuel wanted to
establish a Portuguese spice monopoly, in short, ostensibly for religious reasons—though obviously there would be commercial
benefits too.

Yet how could tiny Portugal hope to displace the throng of Muslim ships in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away? Da Gama’s
men had counted “about fifteen hundred Moorish vessels arriving in search of spices” during the three months they spent in
Calicut. But they had also noticed something rather interesting about these ships: they were unarmed. This was standard practice
in the Indian Ocean, where there was no dominant political or military power; even the Muslims were divided into several distinct
communities. Instead what united the region was trade, based around a handful of major ports and a few dozen smaller ones.
In each port traders from different communities could find ware houses to store their goods, banking services, access to local
markets, and often a quarter of the city where their fellows resided and their own laws applied. Ports competed to offer the
lowest tariffs and attract the highest volume of trade. There was a strong sense of reciprocity: If the police in a particular
port mistreated foreign merchants, local merchants were just as likely to complain, since such behavior might lead to retaliation
in other ports and undermine trade, which would be bad for everyone. Occasionally local rulers might try to control trade
within a particular area using force; but all that did was divert business elsewhere. So unarmed trade was the norm.

Portugal could have gone along with this system, paying Asian authorities for the use of port facilities and handing over
tariffs in the usual way. But the Portuguese were used to the way things worked in the Mediterranean, where the use of force
to protect sea lanes, shipping, and trading colonies had prevailed since Greco-Roman times. Besides, Portugal did not merely
hope to participate in the Indian Ocean trade; it wanted to dominate it, and force the Muslims out. All this soon became apparent
during the second Portuguese voyage to India, consisting of thirteen ships under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, which
set out in March 1500, less than six months after da Gama’s return. As the ships headed south and west into the Atlantic they
made an unexpected landfall on the thitherto unknown South American mainland, thus claiming Brazil for Portugal—another unexpected
consequence of the search for spices. One ship went back to Lisbon with the news, while the rest pressed on around the African
coast, arriving in Calicut in September. Hostilities began almost at once: Cabral’s men captured some Muslim ships, and in
response the Muslims seized and killed around forty Portuguese merchants in the town. Cabral responded by seizing more Muslim
ships and setting them on fire with their crews still aboard. Next, his ships bombarded Calicut for two days, terrifying the
inhabitants, before moving on to the ports of Cochin (modern Kochi) and Cannanore (modern Kannur) where the local rulers,
keen to avoid a similar fate, allowed the Portuguese to establish trading posts on generous terms.

Cabral’s ships then headed back to Portugal, laden with spices. His arrival in July 1501 was greeted with jubilation in Lisbon
and dismay in Venice. “This was considered very bad news for Venice,” noted one chronicler. “Truly the Venetian merchants
are in a bad way.” For as well as bringing the first big shipment of spices around the Muslim curtain to Europe, the Portuguese
also seemed to have disrupted the Red Sea supply. In 1502 Venetian ships arriving in the Mamluk ports of Beirut and Alexandria
found that there was very little pepper to be had, causing prices to rocket and prompting some observers to forecast the ruin
of Venice. The number of galleys in its merchant fleet was reduced from thirteen to three, and rather than sending its fleet
to Alexandria twice a year, as had previously been the custom, Venice started sending the fleet every other year instead.

This set the tone for the Portuguese efforts to control Indian Ocean trade; any ship or port without a cartaz was deemed to
be fair game, local rulers were intimidated into trading on terms generous to the Portuguese, and violence was used arbitrarily
and unsparingly. Further expeditions were sent by King Manuel with orders to establish bases in key locations and harass Muslim
ships traveling between India and the Red Sea, so that “they are not able to carry any spices to the territory of the [Mamluk]
sultan and everyone in India would lose the illusion of being able to trade with anyone but us.” Portugal took Goa, on India’s
west coast, in 1510, making it its main base in the Indian Ocean, and the following year took Malacca, the main distribution
point for nutmeg and cloves from the mysterious spice islands, the Moluccas, which lay farther east. Soon afterward a Portuguese
expedition finally reached those islands, which had been sought for so long, and informal trade relations were established.
Nutmegs and mace were to be found on the nearby Banda islands.

The Portuguese had found the very sources of the spice trade, but their plan to take control of Europe’s spice supply from
the Muslims ultimately failed. The Indian Ocean was simply too big. At best, Portugal controlled some 10 percent of the Malabar
pepper trade and perhaps 75 percent of the flow of spices to Eu rope, but its attempts to blockade Muslim shipping were never
more than partially effective, and by 1560 the flow of spices taken by Muslim traders to Alexandria had recovered to their
previous levels. But even though Portugal failed in its efforts to establish a spice monopoly, it did succeed in defining
a new model for European trade in the East, based on monopolies and blockades enforced by armed ships from a network of trading
posts, which was quickly adopted by its European rivals. Appropriately enough, the rivalries between these emerging colonial
powers centered on the Moluccas themselves.

Spices helped to lure Columbus westward, where none were to be found, and da Gama eastward, where they could be found in abundance.
And as if to crown their achievements in establishing new sea routes, spices also inspired the first circumnavigation of the
earth. In 1494 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which included a simple way to divide up the new lands
reached by their explorers. They ruled a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, halfway between the Cape Verde islands
off the African coast (which were claimed by Portugal) and Hispaniola (which Columbus had just claimed for Spain). Any new
lands to the west of the line, it was agreed, would belong to Spain, and those to the east would belong to Portugal; the opinions
of the inhabitants were considered to be irrelevant. It subsequently transpired that part of South America, unknown at the
time of the treaty, lay to the east of the line, but the agreement clearly stated that it belonged to Portugal, so Portuguese
it became. It all seemed very neat and tidy until the Portuguese reached the Moluccas, on the other side of the world. Which
side of the line were they on? The 1494 treaty had not specified a dividing line in the Pacific, but the logical way to draw
one was to extend the Atlantic meridian right around the earth—in which case, Spain suspected, the spice islands might fall
into the hemisphere it considered its property. A Spanish expedition was duly dispatched to establish the precise location
of the spice islands and claim them for the Spanish crown.

Oddly enough the expedition was led by a Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, who had fallen from favor in the Portuguese
court, renounced his nationality, and offered his services to Spain instead. His ships headed west across the Atlantic in
1519 and were the first to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the passage now known as the Strait of Magellan, at
the southern tip of South America. Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines in 1521 when he intervened in a dispute
between two local chieftains, but the expedition sailed on and reached the Moluccas.