The Indian Ocean (32 page)

The reasons for this comparative failure have been much debated. Earlier British writers said it was hardly surprising that this happened, for the Portuguese were corrupt, inefficient, racially mixed, cruel, and Catholic! Of course this is nonsense. Several more cogent factors can be isolated. First is simply the vast and unachievable nature of their aims. They were trying to control a huge maritime space, as any glance at a map will make clear. The population of Portugal around 1600 was about 2,000,000, while Akbar ruled an empire of over 100,000,000. Some Mughal cities had populations of 500,000. Goa in 1600 totalled 60,000, of whom 1,500 were Portuguese and mestiços (people of mixed blood). In the last quarter of the sixteenth century there were about 14,000 to 16,000 Portuguese beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In short, one basic reason for the Portuguese failure was simply a lack of people.

This meant that they consistently had to take account of facts on the ground which constrained them very severely. For example, the King of Malindi was not always as loyal as they hoped, and he had to be allowed to continue his own trade with Gujarat, although this undermined Portuguese control in the south. On the East Africa coast the Portuguese always had to be concerned to conciliate local rulers, whether it be those in the immediate hinterland, or the far distant ruler of the Mutapa state, to whom the Portuguese paid the
curva
, or a form of tribute, in order to be allowed to trade in his territories.

Sometimes the Portuguese were hampered by their lack of knowledge, and new conditions which affected them. An example of each is gold, and disease, in both cases in relation to East Africa. As to the former, the Portuguese thought that gold on the plateau must come from great mines, just as silver came from Potosí. If they could find the mines they would be able to control them and monopolise gold exports. Dos Santos described well their disappointment once they realised the true situation:

When the Portuguese found themselves in the land of gold they thought that they would immediately be able to fill sacks with it, and carry off as much as they chose; but when they had spent a few days near the mines, and saw the difficulty and labor of the Kaffirs, and with what risk and peril of their lives they extracted it from the bowels of the earth and from the stones, they found their hopes frustrated.
39

Gold was mined and washed only as a part-time occupation by the Shona, being done more or less on need when cloth was desired. The activity was very dispersed; there was no central mine that could be controlled, and nor could the actual producers be forced to mine full-time and provide large quantities. Couto
recognised this, in a somewhat back-handed way. 'As the Kaffirs are numerous, they always obtain a great quantity [of gold] although they are by nature so indolent that when they have found sufficient to buy two pieces of cloth to clothe themselves, they will not work any more.'
40

As for new conditions, while the Portuguese adapted to some parts of this new environment, such as the monsoon pattern, in other areas they found it difficult. The best example is disease, which laid a heavy toll indeed on Portuguese manpower. This was made worse by Portuguese clothing and diet. Mozambique Island in particular was notoriously unhealthy, with literally hundreds dying in its hospital. The building of this hospital had been seen as a prime necessity even as the fort was being built in 1507, yet the mortality rate was very high.
41
Nor were other areas much better. In 1528 Nuno da Cunha's fleet travelled up the east coast. He was on his way to India to be viceroy. He left 200 sick Portuguese in Zanzibar so they could recover. Then he wintered in Mombasa with a force of 800 men. Of them 370 died during the 'winter' months.
42
Ironically, it seems that the Portuguese suffered more from African diseases than did Africans from European ones. Certainly the arrival of the Portuguese did not unleash the devastating epidemics which resulted from the arrival of Europeans in Oceania and the Americas. Most East Africans seem to have had some immunity to Eurasian endemic strains. This may have been a result of the movement south of Bantu people, or the penetration of immunity from the coast to the interior. It seems that East Africa was more closely connected to Eurasian, or perhaps in this context Afrasian, disease pools than were the Portuguese.

Portuguese efforts were not helped by what seems today to be inefficiency, and even corruption. Peculation was rife in the state; every office holder expected to make large profits from his three-year term. It is a question of whether corruption is the correct term to use, for ideal standards of official conduct today are hardly an appropriate measure to assess the standards of the Portuguese, or anyone else, in this early modern period. However, there is no doubt that Portuguese officials very often engaged in conduct which was highly detrimental to the interests of the state. It could be that the underlying cause here, while in part to do with pre-modern notions of appropriate official behaviour, was also a result of the way the Portuguese presence was by no means a monolith. Rather, there were various layers and interests, many of them in competition with official policy, and among these were even the officials themselves quite often. Officials had to serve the king and his trade, but had also to think of their own trade, for most of the time their pay for a post included extensive trade privileges. In 1604 an official decree complained of this, noting that the captains of Mozambique too often ignored their obligations to guard the fortress and instead spent their time up the Zambezi river looking after their own trading interests. Then the captains were faced with householders in the forts, who all traded, and then again by transfrontiersmen (more correctly transfrontiersfolk, for some were women) who were completely outside the system.

The captains of Diu frequently took bribes in return for allowing 'illegal' trade. One even sold off cannon from the fort to enemies of the state. The prevailing attitude was well expressed by a newly appointed captain of a fort, who visited a
religious house to say goodbye. One of the clerics counselled him: 'Be content with what is yours, favour the poor, and do justice.' The captain retorted that he fully intended to get all he could, as did all the others, 'because I am not going to my fort for any other reason than to come back rich.' The great chronicler Diogo do Couto summed up the state of the administration late in the century when he wrote 'for the king's property to increase, it should pass through few hands, and the fewer hands of officials it has contact with the greater will be its increase.'
43

Finally, can one mount a counter-factual case that the Portuguese would have done better to engage in peaceful trade? There is adequate evidence that the initial Portuguese demands for control and even monopoly went quite contrary to accepted practice in the Indian Ocean. We have earlier written extensively about how trade was conducted before the Portuguese (see pages 97–9), and can merely add here a little detail from East Africa. There is some evidence that trade there was in something like a state of nature when the Portuguese arrived. Barros claimed that when Gama reached Mozambique he was greeted by a native of Fez, who said the custom of the sultan 'was when strange ships arrived to send and enquire what they sought; and if they were merchants they might trade in that country, and if navigators bound to other parts he provided them with whatever was to be had there.'
44
Four years later, in Sofala, the Portuguese claimed that they wanted peace and friendship, and to be treated like all other merchants in this port. The ruler replied that this was quite acceptable. All merchants were welcome, as he derived much profit from them. The Portuguese were welcome to trade on the same terms as everyone else.
45

Godinho has discussed this matter in his magisterial work. He says that in 1501 and 1502 the Portuguese got access to the gold trade of Sofala without using violence. But beginning in 1505, with the arrival of Viceroy Almeida with his very militant instructions, this all changed for the worse, and the policy became one of loot and plunder, compulsion and forced monopoly.
46
The reasons are various, but one problem was that in East Africa the Portuguese claimed that there was serious opposition to their presence from Kilwa and Mombasa. This however was a matter of chickens coming home to roost, for the ruler of Kilwa had been influenced by Muslims from Calicut, who had told him of the barbarities the Portuguese had inflicted on this Indian port city.
47

Even at the time some contemporary Portuguese commented on this strange mixture of trade and violence. One simply noted that 'war is contrary to trade', another, a Venetian on Cabral's voyage in 1500, said, 'If you wish to trade you do not rob competitors' ships', and in 1532 a noble noted that 'To trade and fight are more opposed than the north and south poles.'

Sometimes Portuguese violence was clearly counter-productive. They produced one inveterate opponent in the ruler of Cannanore after they sewed up his nephew and six others in a sail and threw them overboard to drown. According to one contemporary the tyranny of the Portuguese captain of Diu caused a frontal attack on the fort from the neighbouring state of Gujarat. 'The captain of the fort caused the siege of Diu because he behaved so badly to the king of Gujarat and the local Muslims that if they had been Christians they would have had good cause to become Muslims.'

It is probable that the Portuguese could have traded on a basis of equality in all the major Asian port cities. As we noted, these thrived by welcoming all, and providing facilities for trade. Certainly existing traders would have competed hard, but on past performance it seems unlikely they would have been the first to use force. As for the rulers, initially they, before Portuguese intentions became clear, were happy to welcome them as another group of foreign merchants come to trade and so increase their customs receipts.

Peaceful trade would have had economic consequences, apart from the obvious moral ones. The huge expense of the fleets and forts would have been avoided. A Venetian ambassador as early as 1525 noted the consequences of the huge expenditure on military and naval matters:

Having had information concerning the affairs of Portugal, I believe first of all, as has been affirmed to me by men most familiar with the kingdom, that that King has a far smaller sum of money than is commonly believed, for he spends a very large sum in maintaining that voyage to India, and the needs of the various fortresses and diverse fleets, which cost him a considerable amount of money....
48

The Portuguese could have sat in Calicut, just as the Middle Eastern merchants, the pardesi, did and not have to go to southeast Asia. Or they could have followed the very successful Dutch model of the seventeenth century. The Dutch East India Company certainly used force in the Maluku Islands in order to get a monopoly on fine spices, but they made more money from more or less peaceful involvement in the 'Country Trade'. Indeed the Portuguese did this to an extent. If we look at areas where the Portuguese were more successful, these turn out to be the same as areas where there was less crown interference and consequently much less use of violence. Leaving aside the intercontinental trade, much local country trade in Asia made large profits both for the Portuguese state and for private Portuguese. The voyages between Japan and China, and on to Melaka and India, made vast profits, and these were not based on the sort of exclusionism characteristic of the carreira back to Portugal. In many ways the Asian empire operated independently of the metropole, self-financing and self-controlled. Right outside of it thousands of private Portuguese trafficked more or less successfully as part of the rich warp and weft of traditional Asian trade, participating on a basis of equality with the vast array of others engaged in the same sorts of trade, with no particular advantages or disadvantages.

It is even likely that if the Portuguese had achieved a monopoly on the supply of spices to Europe, this would have caused little concern or interest amongst Asian traders. Muslim merchants would have continued to trade with their co-religionists from the Malukus to Egypt, retaining control of some 90 per cent of the total trade in spices, for Christian Europe consumed less than 10 per cent of total production. But alas, this strategy of peaceful mercantile competition was never tried, for the reasons outlined above (pages 120–2) relating to Portuguese aims, and
Portuguese preconceptions. There was, given these, no option but attempts at monopoly based on violence.

Not everyone will accept these arguments about the basic flaws in Portuguese designs. Nevertheless, it is interesting that many Portuguese in effect acted in the same way as I have argued the state should have; in other words, they 'went native' and operated quite happily and profitably
outside
the Portuguese system, and
within
the existing indigenous one. We will come to this matter of accommodation and mingling presently, but first we must introduce the northern Europeans.

The Portuguese claimed, or at least their poet Luís Vas de Camões claimed, that Gama sailed through seas never before sailed. This was true enough if one follows a passage from Lisbon around the Cape of Good Hope to about the modern Delagoa Bay, but not from there on across the Indian Ocean. So also with the Dutch. They followed the Portuguese. Their novelty consisted in their 'discovery' of the roaring 40s and fearful 50s in the southern ocean. Once they were established in Indonesia they soon learnt to keep south of the Cape, and scream across the southern ocean to the west coast of Australia, then head north to Indonesia. This route had never been sailed before, except possibly by Indonesians returning from Madagascar, but we noted earlier that this claim seems to be quite fanciful (see pages 60–1).