8

Treasure and Spice

As the testimonies of Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo show, the world of Indian Ocean trade survived the Turko-Mongol shock even if the relative importance of Indian merchants declined thereafter. The Mongols managed to extend their influence over Champa but when they tried to extend it to Japan and Java, they were rebuffed. Meanwhile, the steady decline of the Sri Vijaya in Sumatra meant that Java became the centre of political power in the region. Under the vigorous leadership of Kertanagara, the Javans extended their control over nearby islands like Bali and Madura. This expansion was briefly interrupted by a civil war when Kertanagara was assassinated by a vassal who usurped the throne in 1292.

The murdered king’s son-in-law, Kertarajasa, was organizing a revolt against the usurper when a Mongol fleet arrived from China with a large expeditionary force. Kertarajasa entered into an alliance with them and used them to recover the throne. If the Mongols were expecting the new king to become a grateful tributary, however, they were mistaken. Kertarajasa next turned on the foreigners and drove them away. He also established a new capital at Majapahit, the name by which his empire would be remembered.

Kertarajasa would be succeeded briefly by a son who died without issue, so the crown passed to his eldest daughter and her line. In medieval Java too, the matrilineal succession was important, but it was probably more like the Kakatiyas of south India, the female line being used when the direct patrilineal line did not produce a suitable male heir. Note how this is quite different from a purely patrilineal system where, in the absence of a son, the throne would pass to a nephew or male cousin even if distantly related.

Around 1350, Kertarajasa’s grandson Rajasanagara (also known as Hayam Wuruk) came to the throne. His long rule is remembered as the ‘golden age’ of the Majapahit empire but it was really his prime minister Gaja Mada who was the driving force. Under Gaja Mada’s guidance, the Majapahit established direct or indirect control over much of what is now Indonesia. It was perhaps inevitable that the Javans would come in conflict with the newly established Ming dynasty in China who had evicted the Mongols and were now actively expanding their zone of influence.

The Chinese initially tried to establish independent relations with the smaller kingdoms of Sumatra, perhaps justifying it as a continuation of the old relationship between the Song and Sri Vijaya. The Majapahit, however, became alarmed when the Chinese sent an embassy to crown the ruler of Malayu in 1377. This was clear interference in the Majapahit sphere of influence, and would have been seen as an attempt to create an alternative power centre. The Ming ambassadors were diverted to Java and killed. This resulted in a distinct cooling of diplomatic relations, and trade between China and South East Asia declined.¹ In fact, when the Ming emperor ordered his vassal, the Thai king of Ayutthaya, to inform the Majapahit about his displeasure at the decline in trade, the Javans responded by tightening their hold over the old Sri Vijaya capital of Palembang. This is the background to the great voyages of Admiral Zheng He.

The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, a new Ming emperor came to the throne and took the title Yongle (meaning Lasting Joy). At the very beginning of his rule, he decided to fund a series of grand voyages meant to project China’s power in South East Asia and in the India Ocean rim. One cannot see them as voyages of exploration since Chinese ships had been visiting these parts for centuries. Rather, they were an attempt to display geopolitical reach and to establish a tributary system with the Ming at the apex.

Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese fleet would make seven voyages that would visit Sumatra, India, Sri Lanka, Oman and the eastern coast of Africa. No one who saw the fleet would have been left unimpressed. Leading the expedition were large junks called ‘treasure ships’ that had nine masts and were 400 feet long (i.e. 122 metres). To put this in context, Columbus’s flagship, Santa Maria, was only 85 feet long (i.e. 26 metres). They carried costly cargoes of porcelain, silk, lacquerware and other fine objects to be exchanged in trade or as gifts for local rulers. Accompanying the giant treasure ships were hundreds of smaller vessels including supply ships, water tankers, warships and so on. In total, as many as 27,000 sailors and soldiers would have been involved in each voyage.²

The admiral who helmed these voyages was the unlikeliest person to lead such an expedition—a Muslim eunuch of Mongol origin called Zheng He who began life in landlocked Yunnan! He had been captured as a young boy when the Ming were evicting Mongols from the province and was castrated before being presented as a servant to a prince. A bond of trust must have developed between the two boys because when the prince became Emperor Yongle, he put the young eunuch in charge of the Treasure Fleet.

The first fleet of 317 brightly painted ships set sail in the autumn of 1405 from Nanjing with a total crew of 27,000 men. It made its way through South East Asia and stopped at Java where Zheng He avoided any direct confrontation with the Majapahit. This was his first voyage and he probably wanted to gather information. The sheer size of his fleet was enough to awe the locals. He also avoided Palembang, the old capital of the Sri Vijaya, where a notorious Chinese pirate had established himself after evicting the Majapahit governor. The Treasure Fleet next made its way across to Sri Lanka. Zheng He noted the internal politics of the island but did not linger long before heading for the Indian port of Calicut. It had emerged as the largest port on India’s west coast after Muzeris had been destroyed by a flood in 1341. Here the Chinese spent several months trading their silks and porcelain for black pepper, pearls and other Indian goods. The fleet then headed back home. Off Sumatra, however, they engaged and destroyed the fleet of the Chinese pirate who had occupied Palembang. The survivors were taken back to China and executed.

Except for this skirmish, the first voyage had been one of information gathering. From now, the Chinese would use the Treasure Fleet to move the chess pieces on the geopolitical landscape of the Indian Ocean. The second voyage set sail after only a few months. Its purpose was to return various ambassadors to their home countries but also to install a new ruler in Calicut.³ The ruler of Calicut, drawn from the matrilineal Nair warrior clan, was known as the Lord of the Seas or Samudrin (often misspelled as Zamorin). The Chinese records suggest that they succeeded in installing their candidate. Although Indian sources are less clear about Chinese involvement, we know that during this decade the Samudrins of Calicut expanded their power at the expense of rivals like Cochin (Kochi) and it is possible that Chinese support had something to do with it.

It was also on the second voyage that the Treasure Fleet visited Thailand. In the early fifteenth century, the Chinese were looking to strengthen the Thai as a way to further weaken the declining empire of Angkor.

The chronicler Ma Huan who accompanied the Treasure Fleet on its voyages has left us some amusing anecdotes about local social attitudes. He tells us that the Chinese envoys really enjoyed their Thai sojourn because the women, including married ones, were quite happy to eat, drink and sleep with them without restraint. In fact, the Chinese found that husbands were pleased when they slept with their wives as they took it as a compliment saying, ‘My wife is beautiful and the man from the Middle Kingdom is delighted with her.’ The mystery is how the ship captains managed to convince the sailors who went onshore to return to their ships.

Ma Huan also writes that the Chinese were initially puzzled when they heard a gentle tinkling sound whenever upper-class Thai men walked about. They learned that there was a custom of inserting hollow tin and gold beads into their foreskin and scrotum. The hollow beads had tiny grains of sand that made the tinkling sound. Ma Huan wrote that it looked ‘liked a cluster of grapes’ and was ‘a most curious thing’. One can only be grateful that this custom died out and did not survive to become a modern fashion craze.

Over the next few voyages, we can see that Zheng He became increasingly confident as he gained experience. His fleet sailed widely from Bengal to the Swahili coast of Africa and then to the port of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. He also intervened systematically in local political rivalries where the opportunity presented itself in order to place compliant rulers on the throne. For instance, when the admiral visited Sri Lanka during the third voyage, he found that the island was in a state of civil war. The Chinese would capture at least one of the claimants to the throne and take him back to Nanjing to meet the Ming emperor. It appears that the sacred Tooth Relic was also taken to China. Both would be sent back to Sri Lanka as part of a plan to ensure Chinese influence over the island. The Chinese would similarly intervene in a war of succession in the kingdom of Samudra in Sumatra. However, the intervention with the most far-reaching historical implications was the support for the new kingdom of Melaka (also spelled Malacca) as a counterweight to the Majapahit of Java.⁴

The founder of Melaka was a prince called Parmeswara who claimed descent from the Sri Vijaya. He initially attempted to set up his base in Singapore but later decided to shift further north due to local rivalries and the continued fear of Javan attacks. The Chinese would provide him with systematic support from the very outset and we know that Parmeswara made at least one trip to China in order to personally pay obeisance to the Ming emperor. Interestingly, Melaka was now encouraged to convert to Islam. Although Zheng He and many of his captains were Muslim, this should be seen mainly as a geostrategic move to create a permanent opposition to those troublesome Hindus of Java. It was probably also intended to create a permanent schism within Indic civilization and prevent a future anti-Chinese geopolitical alliance. Whatever the original motivations, Melaka prospered under Chinese protection while the Majapahit were steadily pushed back. This is the origin of the steady Islamization of South East Asia.

Meanwhile, back in China, the Treasure Fleets caused great excitement when they returned with ambassadors, goods and stories from faraway lands. The items that attracted the most curiosity, however, were giraffes that were seen as the ‘qilin’, mythical beasts that are considered sacred by the Chinese. The appearance of a qilin was seen to herald an age of prosperity and poems were written dedicated to the emperor and the giraffes. Problems were brewing, however, for Zheng He. The Confucian mandarins were increasingly suspicious of the power being accumulated by the eunuch lobby. So after Yongle died in 1424, the mandarins would steadily undermine the navy which was controlled by the eunuchs. After one last voyage in 1431–33, the treasure ships were allowed to rot and the records of the voyages were deliberately suppressed.

China would withdraw into an isolationism from which it would emerge only in the second half of the twentieth century. For a while it may have seemed that the Indian Ocean would revert to the Arabs but, as often happens in history, the flow of events took an unexpected turn due to the arrival of a completely new player—the Portuguese. Their arrival sped up the dissolution of an old order that was already crumbling.

The End of an Era

The voyages of the Treasure Fleet may have stopped after 1433, but they had set in motion a chain of events that would fundamentally change the dynamics of South East Asia. As already mentioned, the Chinese had helped Melaka emerge as a rival to the Majapahit empire. A Muslim alliance led by Melaka was soon encroaching into western Java and the empire would steadily lose control over its spice ports. Although the Majapahit would hold on to their heartlands in eastern Java till the end of the century, they were now clearly in decline. As the empire crumbled, many members of the Javan elite accepted Islam. Those who refused to convert, withdrew to the island of Bali in the early sixteenth century, where they have kept alive their culture to this day. Small Hindu communities have also survived in Java such as the Tenggerese who live in inaccessible villages in the volcanic highlands around Mount Bromo.⁵

The kingdom of Angkor, meanwhile, was under pressure from incursions by the Thai. The Thai were originally from southern China (Yunnan/Guangxi) but slowly encroached into the northern fringes of the Khmer empire. By the middle of the fourteenth century, they had established a new capital at Ayutthaya (named after Ayodhya in India), not far from modern Bangkok. It is well worth a day trip although overrun by tourists. When I first visited the place in the early nineties, it still had a rustic feel and one could cycle alone among the rice paddies looking at semi-abandoned sites.

With the tacit support of the Ming Treasure Fleet, the Thai would become increasingly aggressive and in 1431, they would sack Angkor. The great city would be abandoned although a much-reduced Khmer kingdom would survive. The Thai, however, would absorb many elements of the culture of Angkor. This is why much of what is now considered traditional Thai art and culture is of Khmer origin.

Even as the Khmers were getting pushed aside by the Thai, their traditional Cham rivals were facing an existential threat. For centuries, the kingdom of Champa had covered the southern half of Vietnam just as the kingdom of Dai Viet (literally Great Viet) had covered northern Vietnam. When Zheng He was embarking on his voyages, the Ming were simultaneously invading Dai Viet. Although initially defeated, the Vietnamese kept up a guerrilla war that the Ming soon found too expensive to sustain. The Chinese were eventually squeezed out in 1428. The Viet spent the next couple of decades rebuilding their economy but in 1446 they invaded Champa and briefly held its capital. In 1471, they returned in even greater force. Records suggest that 60,000 died in a last stand and that 30,000 captives were carried away (including the royal family).⁶

Thus ended the kingdom of Champa that had lasted for one and a half millennia. It has left behind many enigmatic temples strewn across southern Vietnam. Sadly the most important temple cluster in My Son was heavily damaged by American carpet bombing during the Vietnam War and, despite being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, there is relatively little left to see. A small Cham community survives in Vietnam although many converted to Islam in the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, the tiny Balamon–Cham community (numbering around 30,000) still preserves a form of ancient Shaivite Hinduism in remote villages in southern Vietnam. As we sipped strong local coffee at a Ho Chi Minh City cafe, Prof. Sakaya, himself a Cham Hindu, told me that it is their belief that when they die, the sacred bull Nandi comes to take their soul to the holy land of India.⁷

Again, the question arises—why did these long-surviving Indianized kingdoms in South East Asia simultaneously collapse? Chinese intervention may have played a role but it is arguably not the full story. By studying tree rings, researchers have found evidence that severe droughts and floods may have caused the complex hydraulic networks of Angkor to collapse in the fifteenth century.⁸ Java and Champa were also rice-based societies and it is likely that they too suffered from the same climatic fluctuations. Thus, it is possible that nature had a role to play in the collapse of these kingdoms.

Vasco’s Cannons

One of the intriguing aspects of the medieval world is the success with which the Arabs blocked information about the Indian Ocean from reaching the Europeans. Despite the accounts of occasional European travellers like Marco Polo, there was so much misinformation around that it became easy for blatant charlatans like John Mandeville to thrive. Mandeville was an Englishman who left his country in 1322 and returned after thirty-four years claiming that he had been to China, India, Java and other places in the East. He then wrote a book of fantastical tales about one-eyed giants, women with dogs’ heads and two-headed geese. He also embellished the widely held medieval European belief that there was a powerful Christian king called Prester John in India who would be a willing ally against the Muslims. The Europeans lapped up these stories and Mandeville’s book was closely studied by scholars, explorers and kings.

In the fifteenth century, some Europeans began to look for ways to break the Muslim stranglehold on trade with Asia. One option was to find a sea route to the Indies by sailing around Africa. The Portuguese took the lead and began to systematically sail down the west coast of Africa. In 1487, a captain called Bartholomew Diaz finally reached the southern tip of Africa. Most history books give the impression that the Portuguese then waited for a full decade before sending a fleet under Vasco da Gama to further explore the route. Given the importance attached by the Portuguese throne to this project, it is hardly likely that the voyage was casually postponed. Far from it, there is evidence to suggest that the Portuguese followed up Diaz’s discovery with a number of secret voyages to properly document the winds and currents.⁹ After all, the Portuguese were quite suspicious of a certain Christopher Columbus who seemed to be sniffing around for information.

There was another reason why the Portuguese waited. King John II had dispatched two spies disguised as Moroccan merchants to make their way to the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea in order to gather information on what the Portuguese fleet should expect after they rounded Africa. The two spies—Pero da Covilha and Afonso de Paiva—made their way to Aden where they split. The former would criss-cross the Indian Ocean for two years collecting information on various ports and kingdoms. His Arabic must have been very convincing because he would face certain death if discovered. Paiva, meanwhile, made his way inland to Ethiopia in the hope of finding the mythical Christian king Prester John. He would have been disappointed by what he saw. The Ethiopians had been surrounded by the Arabs for centuries and had somehow survived in isolation by retreating into the highlands.

After exploring the Indian Ocean, Covilha made it back to Aden and then to Cairo where he hoped to meet his companion. However, he soon realized that Paiva had died. He was preparing to return to Lisbon when he was contacted by two Jewish merchants carrying a secret message from King John II. The letter specifically asked for details on Prester John’s kingdom. Covilha, therefore, sent back a report on the Indian Ocean ports with the merchants and decided to explore Ethiopia himself. It appears that the spy was now addicted to his wandering life because he even made an unnecessary and risky detour to see Mecca for himself. When he finally reached Ethiopia, however, the dowager Queen Helena refused to let him leave as he had learned too much about the beleaguered kingdom’s defences. Instead he was given a local wife and an estate (although he had a wife and estate back in Portugal) and asked to settle down. Thirty years later, a Portuguese emissary would find Covilha living the life of an Ethiopian nobleman!

After years of preparation, a Portuguese fleet under Vasco da Gama set sail in 1497 for India. Four years earlier, Columbus had returned from his voyage to the Americas but, thanks to all the intelligence gathering, the Portuguese seemed to have been quite confident that they were on the right track. Da Gama’s fleet consisted of three ships—San Gabriel, San Rafael, and the small caravel, Berrio (an additional store ship accompanied them part of the way). They had a combined crew of 180 carefully selected men. The ships were also armed with cannons which were not widely known in the Indian Ocean.

The fleet set sail on 8 July and arrived at the Cape of Good Hope by early November. Although displaced from the rest of Africa by the Bantu, the Khoi-San were still the majority in the southern tip of the continent. They were not impressed by the newcomers and there was a skirmish in which Da Gama was slightly wounded by a spear. A very vindictive man, Da Gama would probably have wanted to exact revenge but there were more important things on his mind. After negotiating stormy waters off Natal, the ships continued north, past the delta of the Zambezi. Here the fleet began to come across Arab dhows and settlements—Vasco da Gama now knew he was in the Indian Ocean!

In order to keep their mission secret, the European interlopers initially pretended that they were Turks and fellow Muslims. The Iberian peninsula had been recently freed from Arab rule and there were several Arabic speakers in Da Gama’s crew. However, the pretence soon broke down and the Portuguese narrowly escaped being ambushed by the Sultan of Mombasa.

The fleet now kept sailing up the Swahili coast but news of their arrival seemed to have travelled ahead of them. Da Gama desperately needed a friendly harbour to replenish supplies and, most importantly, a pilot who could guide them across the ocean to India. At last, he received a friendly welcome at Malindi—the source of one of the giraffes Zheng He had taken to China. The port was also a bitter rival of Mombasa and a Shia outpost in an increasingly Sunni coast.¹⁰ Its ruler had no illusion about Da Gama’s mission but he desperately needed allies. So, it was the Sultan of Malindi who provided Vasco da Gama with an experienced pilot for the crossing to India.

The crossing took less than a month and the fleet arrived at Calicut (Kozhikode, Kerala) on 14 May 1498. The open harbour was filled with vessels of all sizes and the beach was lined with shops and warehouses. When the Europeans arrived, many boats rowed up to sell them coconuts, chicken and other fresh produce. Families of curious sightseers, along with their children, came out to see the ships that looked quite different from those usually plying the Indian Ocean. A crowded street called the Avenue of Trees led to the palace. The ground was strewn with white blossoms from the trees. We are also told that the rich and powerful were carried about in palanquins and were preceded by men blowing a trumpet to clear the way. This may explain why modern Indians love to blow their car horns; it is an assertion of their self-importance. On his way to the palace, Vasco da Gama even stopped to pray at a Hindu temple under the mistaken belief that the Hindus were heretical Christians!

The opulent palace was spread over a square mile and surrounded by lacquered walls. The Samudrin of Calicut received Vasco da Gama in his royal chamber while seated on a green couch below a silk canopy. He was bare-bodied above the waist except for a string of pearls and a heart-shaped emerald surrounded by rubies, the insignia of royalty. Vasco da Gama knelt and presented a letter from King Manuel (John II’s successor). He also laid out the gifts he had brought with him. The Samudrin was evidently not impressed with the gifts but agreed to trade in pepper and other spices in exchange for gold and silver.

The Arab merchants of Calicut were understandably unhappy to see their monopoly being broken. They even arranged to kidnap da Gama before he could return to his ship but the Samudrin intervened and had him freed. The prosperity of Calicut depended on free trade and he had to ensure that the principle was upheld even if he felt uneasy about the newcomers. The Portuguese fleet, however, did not wait for long. After purchasing pepper, they lifted their anchors and headed home. Da Gama wanted to get home as soon as possible to tell his king about his discoveries. He received a rapturous welcome and was showered with honours and 20,000 gold cruzados. However, the human cost of the expedition had been great—two-thirds of the crew had perished during the voyage, including Vasco da Gama’s brother. This did not deter King Manuel from declaring himself ‘Lord of Guinea, and of the Conquest, the Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India’.

Preparations now began for sending a much larger fleet to India. It would have thirteen ships armed with cannons and 1200 men under the overall command of Pedro Alvares Cabral. Despite the loss of some ships along the way, the fleet arrived in Calicut in September 1500 and demanded that the Samudrin expel all the Arabs and trade exclusively with Portugal. The Indians, understandably, were not keen on such an arrangement. While prolonged negotiations were continuing, a large Arab ship loaded with cargo and pilgrims decided to set sail for Aden. Cabral seized the ship and the Arabs retaliated by attacking a Portuguese contingent that was in the city. The Portuguese now seized ten more ships in the harbour and burned their crew alive in full view of the people ashore. Next they bombarded the city for two days and even forced the Samudrin to flee from his palace—a humiliation that the rulers of Calicut would never forget.

Thus began the European domination of the Indian Ocean. The fleet now headed south for Cochin (Kochi), a rival port that had lived in the shadow of Calicut since the time of Zheng He’s visit. As had happened in the case of Malindi, the Portuguese would exploit a local rivalry in order to establish themselves. Cabral hurriedly loaded his ship with pepper and other spices, made payments in gold coins, and headed home. In order to gauge the potential profits, note that pepper that made its way to Venice by the traditional Rea Sea route would cost sixty to a hundred times its price on the Kerala coast. With the discovery of the new route, it was clear that Venice was ruined.¹¹

Using the profits from these successful voyages, the Portuguese now rapidly scaled up the number of fleets operating in the Indian Ocean. Within a couple of decades they had sacked or occupied many of the important ports in the western Indian Ocean region—Muscat, Mombasa, Socotra, Hormuz, Malacca and so on. Even by the standards of that time, they established a well-deserved reputation for extreme cruelty. For example, when Vasco da Gama returned on a second voyage to Calicut, he refused to negotiate and simply bombarded the city for three days. He also seized all the ships he found in the harbour and their crews—800 men in all. They were paraded on ships’ decks and then killed by having their arms, noses and ears amputated. The body parts were piled into a boat and sent ashore. When the Samudrin sent a Brahmin to negotiate for peace, he was gruesomely mutilated and sent back. His two sons and a nephew, who had accompanied him, were hanged from the mast. In other words, the maritime world of the Indian Ocean rim now experienced a shock similar to what had been experienced by the inland cities of Asia during the Turko-Mongol invasions.

The Islamic world clearly needed to respond and it fell on the Turks to provide a comeback. The Ottoman Turks were the most powerful Muslim empire of that time and had taken Constantinople (i.e. Istanbul) in 1453, thereby ending the last vestige of the Byzantines. Although their military tactics were derived from the Central Asian steppes, they had recently developed naval capability in the Mediterranean. However, they were aware that their galleys were not capable of dealing with the much more demanding conditions in the Indian Ocean. The traditional vessels of the Arabs were also deemed unsuitable as the stitched ships could not take the shock wave from firing cannons. Thus, twelve large warships were custom-built on the Red Sea and fitted out with cannons. Interestingly, Venice provided the Turks with inputs from their spies in Portugal and even put a team of gunners at the Sultan’s disposal. Clearly, economic interests trumped all other differences.

The Turkish fleet sailed down the Red Sea in early 1507 under the command of Amir Husayn and headed for the Indian coast. Together with reinforcements sent by Calicut, the Turks won a battle against a small and unprepared Portuguese fleet anchored at Chaul (near modern Mumbai). The Portuguese were enraged and a large fleet was assembled. The two sides met near the island of Diu, just off the coast of Gujarat in February 1509. In the battle that followed, the superiority of European ship and cannon designs was fully displayed. Within hours, Husayn’s defensive line had been shattered and the Turks were forced to flee. An additional factor that helped the Portuguese was the fact that forces sent by the Sultan of Gujarat remained neutral rather than help their fellow Muslims. The Turkish admiral would complain bitterly about this treachery when he faced the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul.

Despite these victories, the Portuguese were still operating like nomadic pirates and did not have a permanent establishment in the Indian Ocean yet. After another unsuccessful raid on Calicut, it was decided that Goa would be a good place to build a base. Under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese attacked and took Goa from the Sultan of Bijapur in 1510. Albuquerque would boast to King Manuel in a letter:

Then I burned the city and put everyone to the sword and for four days your men shed blood continuously. No matter where we found them, we did not spare the life of a single Muslim; we filled the mosques with them and set them on fire. . . . ¹²

Soon the Portuguese had built a network of fortifications around the Indian Ocean rim from where they controlled their maritime empire. Perhaps the best preserved of these forts can be seen today on the island of Diu. The ramparts offer fine views over the Arabian Sea and an excellent collection of early cannons still stand guard. The fort would fend off a second Turkish attempt against the Europeans in 1538. The only reminder of this second failed attempt is an enormous Turkish cannon that can be seen in Junagarh fort museum on the mainland.

The Swashbucklers

Better technology may partly explain Portugal’s success, but it was also driven by the fact that its expeditions attracted extraordinary adventurers. Often cruel and bloodthirsty, they were also willing to take enormous personal risks. Two such characters were Ferdinand Magellan and Francisco Serrao, close friends who would participate in the first Portuguese attempt to capture Malacca in 1509. Magellan would later become famous for having led the first successful circumnavigation of the globe (although he would be killed in the Philippines and would not complete the voyage himself). Serrao is now almost forgotten but his story is just as fascinating and closely linked to that of Magellan.

The first Portuguese attack on Malacca ended in defeat and Serrao narrowly escaped with his life thanks to a last-minute rescue by Magellan. Two years later, he returned as part of a large fleet under the personal command of Afonso de Albuquerque. The Malaccans put up a spirited defence but were eventually overcome. Albuquerque then ordered the construction of a new fort on a natural hill overlooking the town; the Dutch would later destroy most of it but the remains of one of its gates survive. Meanwhile, Serrao was made captain of one of three ships sent out to scout the Spice Islands further east.¹³

Although his ship was leaking badly, Serrao somehow made it to the Banda Islands, the world’s only source of nutmegs. While the other ships loaded nutmegs, Serrao purchased a Chinese junk as replacement. It tells us something about the man’s self-confidence that it was manned with a crew of just nine Portuguese and a dozen Malays. On the return journey, however, a storm separated the three ships. Serrao’s junk was blown into a reef and he lost several of his men. The survivors were now marooned on a small uninhabited island with no water. Nonetheless, Serrao kept his cool and took care to retrieve his guns before hiding his men in the undergrowth in anticipation of local pirates who may come to investigate the wreck. Sure enough, a boatload of pirates arrived and, at a pre-decided signal, the Portuguese party rushed to the beach and captured the pirates and their boat.

The survivors now headed for the nearest inhabited island of Hitu. The chiefs of this island were at this time at war with a nearby island and Serrao decided to impress them by joining in a surprise attack. There were only a handful of Portuguese guns, but the defenders were totally unused to them and were routed. Serrao and his band of merry men retuned as heroes to Hitu and their fame spread to nearby islands. While they were celebrating their victory with women and arrack, a flotilla of war canoes arrived with an invitation from the Sultan of Ternate.

The twin volcanic islands of Tidore and Ternate were the world’s only source of cloves but their rulers were bitter rivals. Serrao must have already heard of them and he accepted the invitation. News of Portuguese victories in the Indian Ocean had clearly reached these parts, for Serrao was received like royalty when he reached Ternate. He soon established himself as the Sultan’s right-hand man. When a Portuguese fleet finally reached the island a couple of years later, the captain was amazed at the influential status held by Serrao and by his lavish lifestyle. They seethed in envy at a colleague who they saw as a renegade and deserter who had gone native. For the moment, however, they recognized that Serrao’s unique position was an advantage and he was allowed to continue.

Serrao sent back letters to his superiors as well as to his friend Magellan, whom he urged to join him in the Spice Islands. These letters were what inspired Magellan with the idea that Ternate and Tidore were so far east that they could be accessed easily by sailing west from the Americas. The problem was that the Portuguese authorities were not keen on exploring an idea that could provide the Spanish with easy access to the Spice Islands. So, Magellan took his plans to the Spanish who agreed to fund his expedition.

In March 1521, after sailing around South America and enduring many hardships, Magellan’s fleet managed to reach the Philippines. When the Spanish landed on the island of Cebu, the area was ruled by a Hindu dynasty of possibly Tamil origin. Magellan signed a treaty with Raja Humabon and converted him to Catholicism. This is the basis on which the Spanish would later claim the islands. One of Humabon’s vassal chiefs Lapulapu, however, refused and the Spanish were obliged to demonstrate their military superiority. It is not known why Magellan decided to storm Lapulapu’s island personally but it is possible that he was trying to live up to Serrao’s exploits. In any event, he was surrounded and killed on the beach.

Magellan’s remaining fleet, however, continued on its voyage and a few weeks later anchored at Tidore. Here they heard that Serrao had died a few weeks earlier, possibly poisoned by local rivals. It is amazing how close Serrao and Magellan had come to achieving their rendezvous on the other side of the world. Thus ended a story of friendship and swashbuckling adventure. Only one ship from Magellan’s fleet with twenty-one survivors would make it back to Spain. Its cargo of cloves was valued at ten thousand times what it had cost in Tidore.

In the Name of the Cross

One of the enclaves acquired by the Portuguese during the sixteenth century was Mumbai, then a collection of marshy islands. The sculpted caves of Elephanta Island suggest that the area had been an important commercial hub in the seventh and eighth centuries, but it had since declined. The first Portuguese landing on the islands in 1509 was a brutal raid: ‘Our men captured many cows and some blacks who were hiding among the bushes, and of whom the good were kept and the rest were killed.’¹⁴ Over the next few decades the Portuguese managed to establish a small enclave here. One of its earliest European residents was Garcia da Orta, a physician and naturalist, who would spend decades quietly studying the medicinal properties of local herbs and their use by Indian and Arab doctors. His best-known work is Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, first published in Goa in 1561. The treatise would turn him into a national hero in Portugal. This is ironical as Garcia was living quietly in this remote outpost because he wanted to stay away from the authorities in Lisbon!

In order to understand why, we need to go back to 1492 when the Spanish ended Moorish rule in the Iberian peninsula and ordered the mass expulsion of Jews and Muslims. Those who remained behind were forced to become Christians known as New Christians. However, it was always suspected that these new converts continued to practise their old religion in secret. It was to ferret out these covert Jews and Muslims that the Spanish Inquisition was originally founded. Garcia da Orta’s parents were Spanish Jews who fled to Portugal to escape persecution. Unfortunately, a few years later, the Portuguese too expelled the Jews. Indeed, Vasco da Gama’s voyage had been partly funded by the wealth expropriated from the expelled Jews. The Orta family, however, remained in Portugal by ostensibly converting to Catholicism but they were always afraid of being investigated by the Inquisition.¹⁵

There is evidence that the Ortas continued to practise Judaism in secret and even had secret Hebrew names. Garcia’s secret name was Abraham. This is the real reason that Garcia da Orta was living quietly in Mumbai (incidentally, he refers to the place both as Bombaim and Mombaim in his writings). Over time, he used his contacts in the colonial headquarters in Goa to bring over family members and other New Christians from Portugal. In this way, Goa and other Portuguese enclaves ended up with a sizeable New Christian population. Although there was always an air of uncertainty, things were tolerable till the arrival of Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary, in 1542.

Xavier, later to be canonized as a saint, is known today in India for the numerous Jesuit schools and colleges named after him. However, it was he who invited the Inquisition to Goa before leaving for Malacca. When the Inquisition arrived in Goa, the vast majority of the local population practised Hinduism and there were numerous temples dedicated to goddess Shanta-Durga. Egged on by the Jesuits, the Portuguese would destroy hundreds of temples. Thousands of Hindus would be killed or forcibly converted to Christianity. Many small children were forcibly taken away and baptized.¹⁶ The remains of destroyed temples can still be seen in Goa, some with churches built over them. In recent years, a handful of these temples have been rebuilt by local Hindus. One example is the Mahalasa Narayani temple in the village of Verna, which was destroyed in 1567 and was rebuilt in 2000–05 (incidentally the site also has a large stone carving of a female figure that may date back to the Neolithic age).¹⁷

The Inquisition soon turned on the communities of Syrian Christians who had lived peacefully on India’s west coast for over a thousand years before the arrival of the Portuguese. Their ancient rituals were condemned as heretical and they were forced to accept Latin rites; many of their books and records composed in Syriac were burned.¹⁸ Not surprisingly, the Inquisition also began to scrutinize the New Christians. Many would be tortured and killed including Garcia da Orta’s sister Catrina who was burned at the stake as ‘as an impertinent Jewess’ in 1569, a year after Garcia’s death. Her husband confessed under torture that the famous physician had kept ‘the Sabbath on Saturday’. It is a reflection of the vindictiveness of the Inquisition that Orta’s remains were dug out of his grave and burned, and the ashes thrown into the Mandovi River.¹⁹

Vijayanagar—The City of Victory²⁰

When the Portuguese first arrived in India, most of the northern and central parts of the subcontinent were ruled by Muslim rulers of Turkic, Afghan and Persian extract (although there remained several pockets of resistance such as the kingdom of Mewar). The southern half of the Indian peninsula, however, was home to a remarkable Hindu empire remembered today by the name of its capital—Vijayanagar. Built on the banks of the Tungabhadra River, it was then the largest city in the world. Both Calicut and Cochin were nominally the vassals of the kings who ruled from this city.

The city had been established in 1336 by two brothers Hukka (also called Harihara) and Bukka in the aftermath of the Delhi Sultan’s raids that destroyed the old kingdoms of southern India. It is said that Hukka and Bukka had been captured and forcibly converted to Islam but had later escaped and reverted to Hinduism. They now began to gather together and organize the shattered remains of the defeated armies. Very soon they were able to establish control over a sizeable kingdom.

According to the traditional founding myth of Vijayanagar, the two princes were out hunting near Hampi when their hunting dogs gave chase to a hare. Just when it seemed that the hare was cornered, it suddenly turned around and attacked the hounds who fled in disarray. When the brothers related this story to their spiritual guru, Vidyaranya, they were told that it was a sign that this was a favourable site for their capital city.²¹ While this legend may not be literally true, there were other good reasons for choosing the site. As anyone who has visited Hampi will know, it is a strange landscape of rocky outcrops and low hills. Hukka and Bukka would have realized that this terrain was their best defence against Turkic cavalry. Moreover, the area had a special place in the Hindu imagination. Just across the river is Kishkindha, home of the monkey kingdom mentioned in the epic Ramayana.

Many foreign visitors have left us eyewitness accounts of how the city looked in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Abdul Razzaq, an envoy from the Timurid ruler of Persia, wrote that the city had seven concentric walls that enclosed a vast area. The area between the first and third walls was semi-rural with cultivated fields and gardens. Between the third and the seventh were homes, grand temples, workshops and bustling bazaars. At the centre was the royal citadel that contained the palace and the grand assembly hall. Razzaq tells us that rock-cut aqueducts and canals brought water from the river to the palace complex. The remains of the city at Hampi are truly spectacular and are comparable to those at Angkor, except that the dense Cambodian jungle is replaced here by gigantic rock outcrops littered across the landscape. A fair amount of agriculture continues to be practised within the UNESCO World Heritage Site, in many cases using the medieval canal system. The visitor will have little difficulty recognizing many of the features described by Abdul Razzaq and other travellers.

Once the Portuguese established themselves on the Indian coast, a number of Europeans also visited Vijayanagar and have left us detailed accounts. These include horse traders Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz who wrote about Vijayanagar under Krishnadeva Raya, arguably the greatest of its rulers. They describe the grand feasts, dancing and ceremonies that accompanied the Mahanavami festival. They also describe life in the court. Interestingly, Nuniz tells us that women ran the show within the palace complex including:

women who wrestle, and others who are astrologers and soothsayers; and women who write all the accounts of expenses that occurred inside the gates, and others whose duty is to write all the affairs of the kingdom and compare their books with the writers outside; women also for music who play instruments and sing. Even the wives of the king are well versed in music.²²

We also have a description of the larger-than-life personality of Krishnadeva Raya. Paes tells us that he was a fitness fanatic:

he takes in his arms great weights made of earthware, and then, taking a sword, he exercises himself with it till he has sweated out all the oil, and then he wrestles with one of his wrestlers. After his labour, he mounts a horse and gallops about the plain in one direction and another till dawn, for he does all this before daybreak.

Krishnadeva Raya was also a vigorous military leader and personally led several campaigns against the Deccan Sultans. The Portuguese horse traders were awed by the sheer size of the Vijayanagar army. Interestingly, we are told that the armies both of Vijayanagar and of the Deccan Sultans included significant numbers of European mercenaries who were valued as gunners and musketeers. Although not explicitly mentioned, we know that these armies would also have included units of African slave-soldiers. Muslim rulers had long used slave-soldiers but it appears that Vijayanagar and the Portuguese also adopted the practice. A few of them like the Ethiopian-born general Malik Ambar would rise to hold high office. The descendants of these Africans survive today as the tiny Siddi community in Karnataka, Hyderabad and also in Gujarat. They usually adopted the culture of the rulers they served—so, in the former territories of the Vijayanagar empire they are now mostly Hindus while further north they are mostly Muslims or Christians. Recent genetic tests have confirmed that Siddis are mostly derived from the Bantu-speaking people of East Africa.²³

Unfortunately, the great city was sacked and abandoned just a few decades after Krishnadeva Raya’s death. In 1565, a grand alliance of all the Muslim sultans marched against Vijayanagar. After a closely fought battle at Talikota, 100 kms north of the city, the Vijayanagar army was forced to retreat. The generals decided to withdraw south rather than protect the capital and its formidable defences were not put to the test. The largest city in the world was savagely pillaged for six months and never recovered. A much-diminished kingdom survived for several decades after this catastrophe but the authority of the king steadily faded away.

In 1639, a later king called Sriranga Deva Raya would grant permission to Francis Day of the English East India Company to build a trading station on a small strip of land at a fishing village called Madraspatnam. The English would build a fort called Fort St George on this strip of land. The king ordered the new settlement to be named after himself as ‘Srirangarayalapatanam’ (or City of Sri Ranga Raya) but the local Nayak, chieftain, ignored declining royal authority and named it after his father as Chennapatanam or Chennai, the city that we know today.²⁴ Who knows, if Vijayanagar had won the Battle of Talikota, we would be calling it Srirangarai! Of course, the wheels of history may have rolled in a completely different direction and the city may never have been built.

The Warrior Queens of Ullal

The Portuguese had had a hot-and-cold relationship with Vijayanagar but the empire’s decline opened up large sections of the Indian coast for exploitation without restraint. Even before the battle of Talikota, the Portuguese had been sniffing around for a base on the Kanara coast (this is the stretch between Goa and Kerala). Their efforts were thwarted, however, by the remarkable warrior queen of the tiny kingdom of Ullal near Mangalore. She belonged to the Chowtha dynasty that were of Gujarati Jain origin but had adopted the matrilineal customs of the region. Tradition decreed that a king’s successor was his sister’s son but Thirumala Raya did not have a nephew. So, he decided instead to train his niece Abbakka to succeed him. Although she married the ruler of nearby Mangalore, she stayed back in Ullal as its ruler.²⁵

In 1555, the Portuguese sent a fleet under Don Alvaro da Silviera to subdue Mangalore and Ullal. Although Rani Abbakka and her husband may have had strained relations, they seem to have jointly fended off the attack. Both kingdoms were nominally feudatories of Vijayanagar and the Portuguese decided not to press the issue and agreed to a truce. However, they decided to try their luck once again after Vijayanagar was defeated at Talikota. A large fleet was dispatched from Goa in 1567 under the command of General Joao Peixoto. The city of Ullal and the palace were captured, but the queen managed to stay hidden in a mosque. She then gathered 200 of her men and organized a counter-attack in which scores of Portuguese, including Peixoto, were killed. Abbakka now chased the survivors back to their ships where Admiral Mascarenhas was also killed.

Over the next fifteen years, Abbakka seems to have held the Kanara coast with the help of an alliance with the Samudrin of Kozhikode to the south and the Sultans of Bijapur to the north. It must have rankled the Portuguese that they had been beaten by a woman. They waited for their chance and returned in 1581 with the help of her husband’s nephew who had become the ruler of Mangalore. This time Ullal was sacked and Abbakka was killed in battle. However, her daughter and then her granddaughter would keep up the resistance for the next four decades using light coastal vessels to strike at the larger European ships. They were the last known users of fire arrows in naval warfare.

There is surprisingly little written by scholars about the three queens although their exploits are well remembered in the oral histories of the Kanara coast and are recounted in numerous folk songs and in dance-theatre. The problem is that the folk tales often fuse the exploits of the three queens into one character that makes it difficult to work out the actual chronology. The warrior-queens are also mentioned in a few European accounts such as those of Pietro Della Valle but again we have only scraps of information that have not quite been pieced together. So, a full history of the remarkable queens of Ullal is yet to be written.²⁶