The Indian Ocean (36 page)

We have then a mix of prejudice and interaction, or antipathy and interbreeding. The Persian envoy Sulaiman reminds us of something else, namely that cross-cultural understanding was hard to achieve. We described how the first Africans and Asians to see Europeans found them to be bizarre creatures indeed, yet so did Sulaiman nearly two hundred years later. In Chennai, once he had got ashore, he was taken to an English party which was held to celebrate the coronation of James II in 1685. He found the whole experience extremely curious. The English did not take off their shoes, they sat on chairs rather than carpets, they had their dogs with them, and there were women present. This bit at least he liked:

Surely such women must be encouraged. Their beautiful straight backs sway like cypress trees and bring a rush of sap into the dry garden of the old lover's hearts. The rose-red glimmer of their cheeks, cheeks like those of heaven's Houris, sparked new life in the breasts of the company of friends. Thus the light of their beauty was admitted and they participated in the festivities despite the fact that they were women.

As the party got going,

the mart of hugs and kisses began to warm up. Everywhere slim-waisted women were being embraced while faces grew red with the rose-coloured wine. The festivity reached such an intensity the veils of modest restraint were on the verge of bursting into flame and burning away. It is another of their fixed rules that the degree of friendship one has for a person is expressed by the amount of affection one shows that person's wife. . . . when a [dance] turn was well done they plucked throat-burning kisses from one another's honeyed lips.
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This discussion of interaction leads us easily into a discussion of continuing structures in the Indian Ocean from 1500 to 1750. We have provided copious data already to show a minimal European impact in many areas: in the next chapter we reverse the focus and look from within the ocean rather than focusing on the activities of Europeans, their successes and failures.

These Europeans, the estado, the companies, and the private traders, operated in a complex and confusing commercial milieu, one with which they often had trouble coming to terms. The intricate patterns of Indian Ocean trade required much study and accumulation of knowledge. In 1703 in Surat a Dutch merchant warned his superiors that the bazaar market was risky indeed, for

the bazaar [market] prices are diverse, for they differ not only from day to day, but from hour to hour. Also they differ as to the merchant with whom one is dealing for one has here – as in other places – large dealers, maritime traders, small merchants, shopkeepers and many different kinds of hawkers. One merchant is able to sell one pound [about half a kilogram] or less, another one maund [one maund is about 35 Dutch pounds], the third ten and the fourth 100 and so unto 1000 and 100,000. So one can well imagine the differences in bazaar prices if they have to fetch a profit from one trader to the next.
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We quoted the important VOC governor Coen on the country trade, which he hoped his company could enter (see pages 150–1). Things were much the same even later in the eighteenth century: there was still a complex kaleidoscopic world of trade for the Europeans to try and enter. James Forbes wrote of Mumbai in the 1770s how

Bussorah, Muscat, Ormus, and other ports in the Persian Gulph, furnished [Mumbai's] merchants with pearls, raw silk, Carmenia wool, dates, dried fruits, rose water, attar of roses, coffee, gold, drugs and honey. A number of ships annually freighted with cotton and bullion to China, returned laden with tea, sugar, porcelains, wrought silks, nankeens, and a variety of useful and ornamental articles. From Java, Malacca, Sumatra, and the eastern islands, they brought spices, ambergris, perfumes, arrack, and sugar: the cargoes from Madagascar, the Comorro isles, Mozambique, and other ports on the eastern coast of Africa, consisted chiefly of ivory, slaves and drugs: while the different parts of India produced cotton, silk,

Figure 3
Surat in East-India. Produced by Raspischen (Publishers),
c
. 1836. © National Maritime Museum, London

muslin, pearls, diamonds, and every precious gem; together with ivory, sandal-wood, pepper, cassia, cinnamon, and other luxuries. This valuable commerce was carried on by vessels belonging to the European or native merchants settled in Bombay; totally independent and unconnected with the trade of the East India Company.
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The great port cities reflected this variety, being still home to a vast array of merchants from many parts of the world. The Jesuit Manuel Godinho was in Surat in 1663, and found

over a hundred thousand: white Mughals, Indian Muslims, all types of pagans, Christians of various nationalities and, in fact, people from all over the world who have either settled in Surat or have come to the port on business. In Surat we find Spaniards, Frenchmen, Germans, English, Dutch, Flemish, Dunkirkians, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Swedes, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Tartars, Georgians, Scythians, Chinese, Malabaris, Bengalis, Sinhalese, Armenians and an endless variety of other strange barbarian people.

As for its trade,

Foreign vessels visiting the port are countless. At any time of the year one may find in Surat ships bound for China, Malacca, Achin, Macassar,
Moluccas, Djakarta, Maldives, Bengal, Tenassserim, Ceylon, Cochin, Cannanore, Calicut, Mecca, Aden, Suez, Mogadishu, Kishm, Muscat, Madagascar, Hormuz, Basra, Sind, England, and so on, to any place one may think of.
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We can now turn to a description of continuing structures of trade in the Indian Ocean. Lancaster, on the first English expedition to the east in 1591–92, moved from one economic world to another as he proceeded up the East African coast, just as had Gama a century earlier. In the extreme south he commented on 'certaine blacke salvages, very brutish'. The English bought an ox for two knives, a heifer for one knife, and some for even less. Then they got to Great Comoro and a more familiar and sophisticated world. 'Their king came aboord our ship in a gowne of crimosine [crimson] satin, pinked after the Moorish fashion downe to the knee; whom we entertained in the best manner, and had some conference with him of the state of the place and marchandises.'
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'Asians' also were well aware of differences, in ways which make clear there is no such thing as an 'Asian' at this time, or indeed any other time. The Persian ambassador Sulaiman was intrigued by some islands in the Bay of Bengal:

One of the many strange islands which we passed on our voyage [from Siam back home to Persia] was the island of Andaman. This island is flourishing and extremely green and here lives a group of cannibals who have long teeth like dogs. The teeth of these savages are so long that they project from their mouth, but otherwise their bodies are like human beings. As for their dress, they are content to wear nothing more than the leaves of trees to cover their loins. If anyone has the misfortune of falling into their hands, they carry off the poor man and eagerly devour him. For this reason people do not visit Andaman and not many details are known about the island or the inhabitants.

At a different level, he was less than impressed with the veneration paid in Sri Lanka to the relic of the Tooth of the Buddha. 'The king of Ceylon and all the Indians living on the island believe in this nonsense and are fervently engaged in idolatry.'
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These are perhaps differences of civilisation, but then we also cannot lump together all Muslims: they were a diverse lot, and even within this broad category they were far from controlling all trade in the Indian Ocean at this time. Hindus from different parts of India, Buddhists from mainland southeast Asia, Armenians, Jews, Christians all shared in the trade. Within the Muslim 'community' there was considerable dubiety expressed by those from the heartland of the Middle East to those on the edges, as in the Malay world, or even in Gujarat. The great navigator Ibn Majid wrote of his ostensible co-religionists in the Malay world that 'They are evil people who follow no rules; the unbeliever marries the Muslim, and the Muslim the infidel woman... they publicly drink wine, and they do not pray
before setting out on a voyage.'
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An unsuccessful Ottoman grandee in 1538 said that the local Gujarati Muslims were very slack: 'at the time of prayer they simply play music; most of them are infidels'.
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To list all the items traded would be a tedious task indeed. We will, rather, concentrate on changes over this period. In all this we need to remember Rene Barendse's advice and take care not to see all change as stemming from the European presence. In very general terms from about 1300 to 1750 long-distance trade was roughly oriented north to south, that is India and China trading manufactured, high value added, goods to the south – East Africa, southeast Asia – from whence came tropical raw materials like slaves, ivory and some gold.

The vast bulk of the trade continued to be in humble products, and usually was left alone by the company level of the European presence: rather it was controlled by local traders, amongst whom were some Europeans. A French account from the 1730s mentions a trade in sugar from Bengal to Surat, taken as ballast and then sent up country, and some also re-exported to Persia and the Red Sea. On the Bengal–Melaka–Surat route opium went out, and sugar and calin came back. Bengal provided rice to both the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, while rice, ginger, coarse piece goods and sugar went direct from Bengal to Mocha in the Red Sea, and sugar and coarse cloth to Basra.
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Most of the port cities not only had a trade in goods which were to be re-exported either overseas or inland, they also imported most of their raw materials and necessities. Hurmuz was an example, albeit an extreme one. It got rice from Chaul and other ports on the Indian west coast, grain from the Punjab via Sind and also from the Persian mainland. Rope, iron and coconuts came from Malabar, wood from East Africa, especially from the Somali coast via the Hadhramaut, and also from Socotra. By this time much of this humble trade was being done in private European ships carrying native cargoes. Below this was an even more humble level, with minor merchants in tiny local vessels chaffering their way up and down the coasts and in the archipelago.

Some of these products came from far inland, or went far inland from the port city nodes. We maritime historians need to remember that the trade by sea was in products which came from the land, and were consumed on the land; the sea trade then is not a thing alone and of itself, it existed to service people who lived on the land, and not necessarily on land located on the coast. As an example, Bandar Abbas in the Gulf was the centre or 'scale' of a vast and variegated number of routes, some maritime linking distant forelands, others by land linking very diverse and often distant hinterlands. From Bandar Abbas caravan routes went off to Kirman and Isfahan, to Mashad, Bukhara and Khiva, and from Yazd to Balkh and to Qandahar, Tabriz, and even on to the Caucuses.
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Other products were legion. We have discussed the spice trade in some detail, but there were trades in other high-value goods too. One example is pearls, which came from both the Gulf around Bahrain, and from the Gulf of Mannar between Sri Lanka and India. These were traded and valued far and wide. According to Sulaiman, our Persian ambassador – though he was hardly a neutral observer – those
from Bahrain were far superior to those from Mannar. 'Unfortunately all other pearls when confronted with the pearl of Bahrain lose their bright countenance out of shame and grief. The jeweller of Time and Chance has relegated these Indian jewels of lesser lustre to a low shelf in the bazaar of happiness.'
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Another preciosity was the trade in a very large and valuable beast, that is the elephant, which were shipped over surprisingly long distances, though not as far as the rhinoceros which the Portuguese brought from India all the way to Lisbon, and then to Italy, where it died before it could be presented to the Pope. The sultan of Golconda had several large ships to bring elephants from Arakan, Tenasserim and Ceylon. Each could carry '14 to 26 of these Vast Creatures. They must of Necessitie be of Very Considerable burthens and built exceedinge Stronge.' A huge supply of plantains was carried to feed the beasts on the voyage. They could be an unruly cargo:

A great Ship of 5 or 600 tunns burthen that belonged to a great Merchant, an Eminent man in Bengala, whose name was Narsam Cawn [Nasib Khan], In her Voyadge homeward from Cehlone, One of theire Elephants not well Secured, did, with all the force he could possibly, run his tooth through the Ship Side in such a measure that they could not keep her free 2 hours longer, and were forced to betake themselves to their great boat, and haveinge faire Weather and not beinge above 30 leags off Shore, they all Saved theire lives.