Pepper (31 page)

Andrea Corsali reported in 1515 that there was “as great profit in taking spices to China as in taking them to Portugal.”
Quoted in M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz's masterwork
Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago Between 1500 and About 1630
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962) p. 62.

“… the houses in the town make a good appearance, are built with stone, and ranged in streets, much like our small sea-ports in England.”
Charles Lockyer, “
An Account of the Trade in India
: containing rules for good government in trade,… with descriptions of Fort St. George,… Calicut,… To which is added, an account of the management of the Dutch and their affairs in India,” London 1711, chapter III, pp. 74–75.

Three: Drugs and Souls

Boast no more about the subtle Greek
 … Luís Vaz De Camões,
The Lusíads,
translated by Landeg White, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 3.

“Between the town and the king's palace there is nothing but houses and there is no place in all India
…” François Pyrard,
The Voyage of
, translated by Albert Gray (The Hakluyt Society, 1887; reprinted in the U.S.A. by Burt Franklin, 1964) p. 366.

“… bad order and discipline in the ships; for there was no piety or devotion, but plenty of oaths and blasphemy, disobedience to officers, mutiny and carelessness, and every day quarrelling, assault, thefts, and the like vices.”
Ibid., p. 5.

“… wore their hair long and had no beards except around their mouths. They landed wearing cuirass, helmet and vizor, and carrying a certain weapon (sword) attached to a spear. Once every two years they returned with 20 to 25 ships.”
Quote cited in Carney T. Fisher, “Portuguese as Seen by the Historians of the Qing Court,” in
Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia,
A. R. Disney and E. Booth, editors (Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 308.

“The entire land wished him ill.”
See Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, “The Indian Ocean in World History,” in
Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia,
p. 13.

“And what I want from your land is gold and silver and coral and scarlet [cloth],”
See Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama
(Cambridge University Press, 1997) p. 144.

A Portuguese writer named Figueiredo Falcao, who had access to official records, wrote in 1612 that some thirty-five Indiamen were wrecked in the years 1580 to 1610. Other observers have estimated that between 1550 and 1650, some 130 Portuguese ships were lost either through shipwrecks or enemy attacks.
See C. R. Boxer,
The Tragic History of the Sea
(University of Minnesota Press, 2001) pp. 24–25.

 …
between 1601 and 1620 the English sent out eighty-one Indiamen, the best ships of their time, and only thirty-five of the ships returned to England, a dismal record.
Kenneth R. Andrews,
Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630
(Cambridge University Press, 1984).

The sixteenth day our general departed Bantam and came aboard to proceed on his voyage to the Malucos; this night died Henry Dewbry of the flux … The seventeenth day died of the flux William Lewed, John Jenkens, and Samuel Porter. The Voyages of James Lancaster to the East Indies,
edited by Clements R. Markham (The Hakluyt Society, 1877) p. 19.

Nearly 16 percent of the Jesuits' annual income in the seventeenth century was derived from Eastern spices
 … See Dauril Alden,
The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire and Beyond, 1540–1750
(Stanford University Press, 1996) p. 529.

At the end of his reign, the Ming emperor Zhu Di, an ardent supporter of oceanic trade, suffered a series of calamities that led him to suspend future voyages of the Treasure Fleet.
One of the best accounts of the time when China was a great maritime power can be found in Louise Levathes's
When China Ruled the Seas
(Oxford University Press, 1994).

In practice, many of the Portuguese ships were delayed because of administrative problems, the prolonged wait for a full cargo of pepper, or lack of cash to buy pepper ahead of time.
See C. R. Boxer,
The Tragic History of the Sea
(University of Minnesota Press, 2001) p. 8.

“The Portuguese, as at other places in India, are a degenerate race of people, well stocked with cunning and deceit; instead of that courage and magnanimity their own writings are so full of,”
Charles Lockyer, “An account of the trade in India: containing rules for good government in trade,… with descriptions of Fort St. George,… Calicut,… To which is added, an account of the management of the Dutch and their affairs in India,” London 1711, chapter III, p. 75.

“… being grown rich in trade, they fell to all manner of looseness and debauchery; the usual concomitant of wealth, and as commonly the forerunner of ruin.” Dampier also had heard that in Malacca the Portuguese made use of native women, “such as they liked they took without control.”
William Dampier,
A New Voyage Around the World,
Vol. II, 1685, p. 160. Rare Books and Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library.

“they as little restrained their lust in other places; for the breed of them is scattered all over India.”
Ibid, p. 160.

The voyages were so unpopular that in 1623 it was reported that sailors had to abducted and kept in irons until an India-bound ship had sailed.
See Boxer,
The Tragic History of the Sea,
p. 10.

François Pyrard described a fleet of four carracks, each carrying about a thousand soldiers, sailors, and passengers, which departed Lisbon in 1609. When the ships arrived in Goa, only three hundred men were alive on each of the ships.
Figures cited in Niels Steensgaard's “The Return Cargoes of the Carreira in the 16th and 17th Century,” in
Spices in the Indian Ocean World,
edited by M. N. Pearson (Ashgate Publishing Co., 1996).

Between 1629 and 1634, only 2,495 of 5,228 soldiers who left Lisbon survived the trip to Goa.
M. N. Pearson, “The People and Politics of Portuguese India During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in
The Organization of Interoceanic Trade in European Expansion, 1450–1800,
edited by Pieter Emmer and Femme Gaastra (Ashgate Publishing, 1996) p. 31.

“The country abounds with timber and is fruitful in other respects; the air is wholesome, the heat moderate, and every thing else, as agreeable to European constitutions as can be expected in a climate within 2 deg. 30 min. of the equator.”
Charles Lockyer, “An account of the trade in India: containing rules for good government in trade,… with descriptions of Fort St. George,… Calicut,… To which is added, an account of the management of the Dutch and their affairs in India,” London 1711, chapter III, p. 67.

“This city of Malacca is the richest seaport with the greatest number of wholesale merchants and abundance of shipping and trade that can be found in the whole world,”
gushed Duarte Barbosa, a Portuguese sea captain, in 1517
. Cited in Jonathan Cave's
Naning in Melaka
(Malaysia Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1989) p. 6.

“And the Franks engaged the men of Malaka in battle, and they fired their cannon from their ships so that the cannon balls came like rain
…”
Quote cited in John Bastin and Robin W. Winks,
Malaysia Selected Historical Readings
(Oxford University Press) 1966, p. 36.

“The walls of the fortress are of great width; as for the keep, where they are usually built, you will find few of five storeys like this. The artillery, both large and small, fires on all sides,”
wrote Tomé Pires in
The
Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires
(Laurier Books Ltd., 1990), p. 34.

“Everyone was startled
 …
when they heard the noise, their surprise all the greater because never in their lives had they heard such a sound or seen how the power of gunpowder can lift bits or rock as big as houses.” The Hikayat Abdullah,
Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir, annotated translation by A. H. Hill (Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 63.

“Look there, how the seas of the Orient,…”
Luís Vaz De Camões
The Lusíads,
translated by Landeg White, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 223.

Cloves, saffron, pepper and other aromatic spices were said to have been presented in gold and silver caskets to a bishop in Rome in the fourth century.
Robin A. Donkin,
Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spice Up to the Arrival of Europeans
(American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia) 2003, p. 112.

Portuguese was for many years the dominant language in many of the maritime ports of Asia, and vestiges of Portuguese could still be heard in Malacca and along the Malabar Coast in the twentieth century …
See A. J. R. Russell-Wood's
The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World on the Move
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

“… eager to barter for all sorts of merchandise brought from Europe, India, and the Islands of the Moluccas
…”
China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci, 1583–1510,
translated by Louis J. Gallagher (Random House, 1953) p. 129.

On the rare occasions when vessels bound for Goa from Lisbon carried women, there were no more than twenty.
See C. R. Boxer,
Women in Iberian Expansion Overseas, 1415–1815
(Oxford University Press, 1975) p. 67.

“old servant who built a pinnace in the Somers Islands, and is known to be very skilful, and willing to go and live in India for seven years with his two sons.”
Great Britain. Public Record Office Calendar of State Papers, 1618–1621 (London: Longman, Brown, Green).

“… an Englishwoman Married to a Portugall Mestizo of some quallity, are well to live, and have beetweene them one pretty boy.” The Travels of Peter Mundy,
Vol. III, Part I (The Hakluyt Society, 1919; reprinted in 1967 by Kraus Reprint Limited) p. 141.

Margaret Reymers who dressed in men's clothes and enlisted as a soldier
 … J. S. Stavorinus,
Voyages to the East Indies
, translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798, and reprinted by Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1969, Vol. I, p. 195–197.

Another woman who disguised herself as a man was named Dona Maria Ursula de Abreu e Lencastre.
See C. R. Boxer,
Women in Iberian Expansion Overseas, 1415–1815
(Oxford University Press, New York, 1975) p. 80.

“… two silk garments made, one for formal visits, and the other for ordinary wear
…” Quote from Ricci's journal is cited in John D. Young's
East-West Synthesis: Matteo Ricci and Confucianism
(University of Hong Kong, 1980) p.16.

“… had all the Marks of Distinction … which … Envoys of the court … have in this Empire; our Countrymen were not a little surprised when they saw him…”
Excerpt from a letter written by Jesuit Father de Premare to Father De La Chaize, confessor to his majesty King Louis XIV, Canton, Feb. 17, 1699. Jesuits. Edifying and curious letters of some missioners, 1707, p. 107. Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division. Astor, Lenox, and Tiden Foundations.

A French Jesuit named Father Pelisson, who was based in Canton, describes a cruel persecution that he had learned about from a Spanish Jesuit named John Anthony Arendo …
Father Pelisson's letter to Father De La Chazie, December 9, 1700. Jesuit Letters from the missions. Travels of the Jesuits. 1743, p 19. The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

Four: Golden Elephants

“The Situation of the Port of Achen is admirable, the Anchorage excellent, and a healthful Air along the Coast.”
Excerpt from a letter written by Jesuit Father de Prémare to Father De La Chaize, confessor to his majesty King Louis XIV, Canton, Feb. 17, 1699. Jesuits. Edifying and curious letters of some missioners, 1707, p. 96. The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

“At first appeared to me like the landscapes framed by the Imagination of some painter or Poet…” Letter by de Prémare,
p. 98.

“… lieth well to answere to the trade of all Bengala, Java, and the Moluccas, and all China … to the decrease and diminishing of all Portuguals trade, and their great forces in the Indies.” The Voyages of James Lancaster to the East Indies,
edited by Clements R. Markham (The Hakluyt Society, 1877) p. 82.

“garden of pleasure.” The Voyages and Works of John Davis
(The Hakluyt Society, 1877) p. 146.

“pleasing and fertile … Of pepper they have exceeding plentie, Gardens of a mile square.”
Ibid., p. 146.

“plentie of Gold and Copper Mines, divers kinds of Gummes, Balmes, and many kinds of Drugges [spices], and Indico.”
Ibid., p. 147.

“The Ayre is temperate and wholsome, having everie morning a fruitfull dew, or small raine.”
Ibid., p. 147.

“built in a wood, so that wee could not see a house till we were upon it. Neither could wee goe into any place…”
Ibid., p. 147.

Cornelis Houteman's infamous first voyage
is described in Giles Morton's engaging book
Nathaniel's Nutme
g (Penguin, 1999), paperback edition, pp. 58 to 65.