Pepper (11 page)

The spread of pepper in Sumatra, the world's sixth-largest island, mirrored the seemingly insatiable demand for the spice in Europe and the expanding market for Indonesian pepper in China. The total quantity of pepper shipped to Europe reached a peak of some fourteen million pounds in the 1670s, nearly double the amount from earlier decades. By this time, pepper was mainly shipped via the Cape of Good Hope, which had finally replaced the traditional Muslim trade route through the Levant. Total exports of pepper from Southeast Asia ebbed somewhat by the turn of the eighteenth century, but soared to thirty million pounds by the turn of the nineteenth century and to fifty million by 1900. Some 80 percent of this pepper came from Sumatra. Through the years, Sumatrans adapted to the market by clearing more forest for pepper gardens, and moving their gardens once the soils were exhausted. Historian Anthony Reid estimates that roughly 7,600 square kilometers, or about 1.6 percent of the land, were cleared of forest to make way for pepper during the centuries when Sumatra was the leading producer of the spice. Today, grasslands cover the land where pepper gardens once flourished.

The craze for black pepper in Europe transformed the fortunes of Sumatra.

*   *   *

On February 13, 1601, four ships—the
Red Dragon
, the
Hector
, the
Susan
, and the
Ascension
—set out from Woolwich on the Thames River bound for Aceh. Led by the six-hundred-ton
Dragon
, the small fleet was the first of the English East India Company. James Lancaster, a respected seaman who had fought against the Spanish Armada and had successfully raided Portuguese ships in a Brazilian port, was in charge. But until then, neither Lancaster nor any other English captain had much luck charting a safe course to the East Indies. An expedition Lancaster had joined ten years earlier met with disaster, and he and his surviving crew had been brought back as castaways to England. In 1596 another attempt was made under a different captain, but all the boats and men were lost. Meanwhile, the Dutch, financed by companies that would soon unite as the VOC, had successfully reached Bantam, the pepper port on the northeastern end of Java, and left merchants there and at Aceh and other ports in Indonesia.

More than twenty Dutch ships had been outfitted for Asia, and those that returned brought back fully laden cargoes of pepper and other spices. Probably all of the Dutch merchants and captains had studied Jan Huyghen van Linschoten's enormous
Itinerario
, published in 1596, the fruit of this Dutchman's years of service in Goa, India. A comprehensive merchant and seafaring guide to Asia, Linschoten's tome enticed traders with vivid accounts of abundant pepper along the Malabar Coast of India, and Java especially, where “… there is much pepper, and it is better than that from India or Malabar, so much that yearly one should be able to load four or five thousand quintals of pepper, Portuguese weight.”

The fear that the Dutch would dominate the pepper trade once again spurred English merchants in London to press their cause with Queen Elizabeth for an expedition to the East Indies, despite the dismal track record of previous voyages. She finally agreed in 1600, and the East India Company was chartered. The merchants raised money for the expedition, and Lancaster became one of the first directors of the fledging mercantile company, which would later embody the British Empire. He wisely hired John Davis as the pilot on the
Dragon
. At the time, Davis was the only living English navigator who had been to the East Indies. Although he is mentioned very briefly in the surviving narratives of the voyage, Davis must have been indispensable.

The voyage didn't have an auspicious beginning. Lancaster's fleet lingered for weeks in the Thames and the Downs (an anchorage off the southeastern coast of England) because the small, unstable ships could not maneuver without favorable winds. Their progress was stalled again around the equator by adverse winds, although they did overtake a Portuguese ship and plunder her, taking away a “hundred sixe and fortie buts of wine, an hundred threescore and sixteene jarres of oyle, twelve barrels of oyle, and five and fiftie hogsheads and fats [vats] of meale, which was a great helpe to us in the whole voyage after. The generall divided these victuals indifferently to all the ships; to every one his proportion without partialitie.” Nevertheless, the crew paid a heavy price for the delays. It took seven months for them to reach Table Bay in South Africa, and by that time scurvy had taken its grisly toll. The surviving men were so weak they could barely handle the sails or throw down an anchor. Merchants, who considered themselves above sailors, had to pitch in. In three ships, merchants took turns with the topsails, a job normally reserved for common mariners.

The only ship largely unaffected by the disease was the
Dragon
. Lancaster, a veteran of long voyages to the tropics, had taken along “certain bottles of the juice of limons [lemons]” and gave “three spoonfuls each morning” to each man on the ship. By the time the fleet left Table Bay at the end of October, the death toll on the other three ships was horrific—one hundred and five men had died, or more than one-quarter of the crew. But the survivors had rested, and food was obtained for the ongoing voyage from the natives the Englishmen met. Unfortunately, Lancaster's cure for scurvy didn't carry forward on other East India Company expeditions.

Although the ships encountered adverse winds after passing the Cape, they were anchored safely in Antongil Bay near Madagascar by Christmas Day. Here Lancaster traded for provisions while disease claimed the lives of twenty more men in his small fleet. In March 1602, the ships left the bay, and in May reached the Nicobar Islands. In June, sixteen months after leaving England, they finally sailed into Aceh. Scurvy and dysentery had taken many lives, but none of the ships had to be scuttled for lack of crew.

The English found some “16 to 18 ships from many nations” anchored in Aceh, including vessels from Gujarat, Bengal, and Calicut, Pegu, and “Patanyes” (Patani, a port on the east coast of Malaysia). In precolonial, preimperial days, the English were just another group of traders endeavoring to do business with pepper-rich Sumatra. They came as supplicants bearing a letter. Lancaster was entrusted with a lengthy handwritten missive from Queen Elizabeth I to the “great and mighty King of Achem.” The rambling letter, laced with broadsides against the Spanish and Portuguese, the enemy of the English as well as the Dutch, asked for permission to buy the commodities of their land. Nearing the end of her long reign, Elizabeth knew that trade in such a faraway place was a gamble, so she sought to win over the sultan with flattery and endearments. Her letter reflects the mind of a shrewd monarch who acknowledges the paucity of spices and other goods in her own lands compared with the wealth of such products in another, and she is well aware of the hazards of obtaining them.

Elizabeth's letter is a remarkable document that begins with a rationale for trade based on the premise that God decreed that the “good things of his creation,” are dispersed “into the most remote places of the universal world … he having so ordained that the one land may have need of the other; and thereby, not only breed intercourse and exchange of their merchandise and fruits, which do so superabound in some countries and want in others, but also engender love and friendship between all men, a thing naturally divine.” Ironically, the letter frequently states that love will flow from trade. To underscore the notion that the English are trustworthy, she solemnly promises that the dealings of the English merchants “shall be true, and their conversation sure, and we hope that they will give so good proof thereof, that this beginning shall be a perpetual confirmation of love between our subjects on both parts, by carrying from us such things and merchandise as you have need of here.” The wily queen also assures the Acehnese king that the English will be much better trading partners than the Spanish and Portuguese. She notes: “So that your highness shall be very well served and better contented than you have heretofore been with the Portugals and Spaniards, our enemies…”

Soon after Lancaster's little fleet arrived in Aceh, the sultan sent two Dutch merchants to the ships. Luckily, the aged Sultan Ala'ud-din was still reigning and was still interested in the English queen, as he showed during his conversation with John Davis three years earlier. The Dutch merchants told Lancaster that indeed the Queen of England was famous in Aceh for her victories over the Spanish king.

Apparently, Davis's interview with the sultan had made a lasting impression. Lancaster promptly sent John Middleton, the captain of the
Hector
, and four or five others to the sultan to ask for an audience to deliver his letter. The meeting went well. The sultan kindly entertained the men and gladly granted their request. It isn't known why the sultan was so favorably disposed toward these particular English traders, but certainly the enduring enmity of the Acehnese for the Portuguese might have played a role.

On the third day, Lancaster went ashore accompanied by thirty of his men. They met the Dutch merchants, who took them to their house, where they waited for word from the sultan. When the sultan's envoy arrived, Lancaster refused to give him the letter, explaining that it was the custom of his country to deliver such important missives himself. The envoy looked carefully at the seal of the letter, wrote down the queen's name, and quietly left.

After a while, the Englishmen were startled by a great noise from many trumpets and drums. They looked outside and saw six huge elephants and a large crowd of people approaching. His transportation to the palace had arrived. “The biggest of these elephants was about thirteen or fourteen feet high, which had a small castle, like a coach upon his back [a howdah], covered with crimson velvet.… In the middle thereof was a great basin of gold, and a piece of silk exceedingly wrought to cover it, under which her majesty's letter was put.” Lancaster was mounted upon another elephant and he and his men, and the great crowd of townsfolk, went off to the sultan's court. The letter had become an occasion for a merry procession.

At the court Lancaster delivered the letter and some presents from the queen: a silver basin and cup; fine daggers; an embroidered belt to hang a sword in; and a plume of feathers, the gift most pleasing to the sultan. Then the festivities began with a banquet where meat was served on golden dishes. Even though Islam forbids wine, the sultan drank a rice wine called arak during the meal. This wine was “as strong as any of our aquavita: a little will serve to bring one asleep.” With the sultan's permission, Lancaster diluted his own wine with water. Afterward, “damsels” danced to music, “and these women were richly attired and adorned with bracelets and jewels; and this they account a great favor, for these are not usually seen of any but such as the king will greatly honor.”

Whether the merchant who had witnessed these events felt anything as he watched these women dance, we will never know. Like most merchants and captains who kept journals, this anonymous diarist kept his feelings to himself, though he dutifully noted what had transpired. All of the captains and other ranking crew members of the Company's voyages were instructed to document their experiences to benefit others on later expeditions. These men knew that their journals weren't private, and they carefully avoided emotional embellishments.

Lancaster left the feast carrying presents from the Sultan Ala'ud-din Syah: a fine white calico robe “richly wrought with gold”; an ornate Turkish belt; and two creeses, the distinctive daggers worn everywhere in Aceh. The first official encounter between the English East India Company and the sultanate of Aceh had ended with a satisfying exchange of gifts. The gold threaded calico robe must have been especially beautiful.

Sultan Ala'ud-din soon granted the English request for free entry into the port, along with custom-free trade and other provisions, but the crafty sultan did not allow the English to build a factory—a trading agency, and warehouse—in Aceh, nor did he sign an exclusive trade treaty with the English. Perhaps the sultan had heard through the Indian Ocean grapevine of Muslim traders that the Portuguese had set up factories along the southwest coast of India and had used these facilities to establish territorial strongholds. His reluctance to afford foreigners a permanent base of operations in Aceh was prophetic: The northernmost region of Sumatra remained an independent kingdom until almost the end of the nineteenth century.

Although the English were disappointed with the sultan's decision, they could not afford to belabor their case and began the business of buying pepper, the reason why they had traveled to the East Indies. Two problems immediately arose: There wasn't enough pepper to fill their ships, and the spice was far more expensive than what John Davis had told them it would be. Worried, Lancaster hatched a plan with the sultan to plunder Portuguese ships in the Strait of Malacca to find additional goods for his ships. Before sailing, Lancaster dispatched the
Susan
to Priaman, a pepper port on the west coast of Sumatra, and he left some merchants in Aceh to continue buying the spice that was available.

In early September, the
Dragon
,
Ascension,
and
Hector
, along with a pinnace and a Dutch ship that wanted to join the adventure, set out for the Strait of Malacca. Reaching the waterway, they came upon a large Portuguese carrack, the
Santo Antonio
, bound from India to Malacca. Ordnance was exchanged, but the big ship couldn't fend off her many pursuers, and the Portuguese surrendered. She was loaded with calicoes, rice, and other goods, and carried more than six hundred men, women, and children. The English unloaded the prized calicoes, which were eagerly sought in the Indonesian archipelago and could be traded for pepper, and the rest of the goods, but left the passengers and crew alone. Lancaster returned to Aceh in late October, where he found that his merchants had been well treated and had bought enough pepper, cinnamon, and cloves to almost fill the
Ascension
.