"Spices, Christianity, and Extreme violence": 1498 Vasco da Gama anchored his ships in Calicut on Malabar Coast of India, a haven of peaceful trade, to only two years later slaughter, destroying houses and killing inhabitants, Portuguese terror started

We took a ship from Mecca in which were 380 men and many women and children, and we took from it fully 12,000 ducats, with goods worth at least another 10,000. And we burned the ship and all the people on board with gunpowder. – A Portuguese companion of Vasco da Gama, 1502.

On 20 May 1498, Vasco da Gama anchored his ships just north of Calicut on the Malabar Coast of India. These were the first ships to reach India from Europe. Calicut was a haven of peaceful trade for the ships of the many nations that came to purchase India’s spices. Only two years later the Portuguese would capture those ships, slaughter their crews, train their cannon on Calicut, destroy its houses and kill its inhabitants. The Portuguese terror would have started.

The Indian Ocean was not unexplored territory. Vasco da Gama’s achievement had been in finding the route from Europe around the tip of Africa – an achievement that would transform the trade between Europe and Asia. Once he had reached the Indian Ocean he was in a sea that had been traded on for at least two thousand years. Spices from India were well known in Europe. They were much in demand, especially pepper, but they had usually come by sea to the northern ports of the Indian Ocean and then been taken overland.

Pepper had been used in ancient Egypt as a part of the armory of spices used to embalm its rulers. The mummy of Ramesses II, who died in 1213 BC, is in the Cairo Museum. X-ray examination has revealed a peppercorn stuffed and sealed into each nostril. Pepper was the most important item imported from south India by the Greeks and the Romans. It is mentioned by Aristotle and was recommended by the famous physician Hippocrates, when mixed with vinegar and honey, as a cure for an infected uterus. Much of this pepper probably traveled through Egypt, which came under Greek control in the fourth century BC. It seems to have been used solely as a medicine until the Roman emperor Augustus started to use it as a condiment. It was during his reign that the Romans annexed Egypt in 30 BC. The Romans transformed the trade across the Arabian Sea. In the middle of the first century they had become acquainted with the details of the monsoon – already well known to the Arabs – and had built large ships to travel directly from Egypt to southern India. The Romans destroyed the principal Arab trading center of Aden and made treaties with the smaller ports on the Arabian coast so that they could dominate the spice trade. 

It was not only goods of Indian origin that went from Malabar to Europe. From well before Roman times, there had been a flourishing trade in spices and other goods between south India and the East. Indian spices were exported to China. Spices from Indonesia, such as cloves and nutmeg, came to India. Quantities of these were then shipped onwards to Arabia and Europe. The spices from India were a heavy drain on the Roman exchequer. 

Much of our knowledge of the trade routes between Egypt and the Malabar Coast comes from the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. It describes the journey from the Red Sea to several western Indian ports, stretching from the mouths of the rivers Indus and Narmada, all the way down the coast to Muziris – which ‘abounds in ships sent there with cargoes from Arabia, and by the Greeks’ – and beyond:

They send large ships to these market towns on account of the great quantity and bulk of pepper and malabathrum [cinnamon leaf]…They make the voyage to this place in a favorable season and set out from Egypt about July.

The trade between the Romans and the Malabar Coast continued for hundreds of years. As Rome declined, however, the trade diminished. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the trade with India reverted to the Arabs. They dominated the trade of the Arabian Sea until the arrival of the Portuguese. 

Chinese ships were regular visitors to India until the mid-fifteenth century. The fleets were controlled by the eunuch faction at the Chinese court. When this lost power, the new favorites forbade all foreign voyages. Two travelers whose writings were known in medieval Europe were the French Dominican missionary Jordanus and the Italian Franciscan missionary Odoric of Pordenone. Both visited Malabar in the early fourteenth century. Jordanus wrote detailed descriptions of life in Quilon, where he wanted to set up a mission, with accurate descriptions of its spices:

Ginger is the root of a plant that hath leaves like a reed. Pepper is the fruit of a plant something like ivy, which climbs trees, and forms grape-like fruit like that of the wild vine. This fruit is first green, then when it comes to maturity it becomes all black and corrugated as you see it.

He also urged the Pope to establish a Christian fleet on the Indian seas.

As the Dark Ages gave way to the Middle Ages, the demand in Europe for spices increased. In early medieval Europe, spices were so expensive as to be the preserve of the very rich. They were used by monarchs and prelates to impress. In 1256, the Scottish king, Alexander III, visited Henry III of England and celebrated the Assumption at Woodstock with a great feast that used fifty pounds weight each of ginger, cinnamon, and pepper. As the Middle Ages progressed, the price of pepper dropped, opening up consumption to a larger class of the moderately wealthy. It has been said that the phenomenal demand for spices, particularly pepper, was because of the putrid food served up to the medieval populace. It seems unlikely that this was a major factor since the link between stinking food and disease was well known. More likely it was used to mask the pervasive taste of the vast amounts of salt used to keep food through the winter months. Most importantly, it was used because it was the fashion – used at first by the rich for ostentation and then imitated by others as the prices fell. Whatever the motive, the demand was huge.

Spices continued to flow into Europe only after massive profits had been creamed off by Muslim rulers and traders. For, although the Venetians dominated the spice trade within Europe, the Arabs controlled the sea trade to the source in Malabar.

Two European merchants, Afanasy Nikitin and Niccolò de' Conti, who traveled to India in the fifteenth century, brought back useful information about its riches and trade. Nikitin was a merchant who left Russia in 1468 and went to the Sultanate of Bahmani in southern India, where he stayed for three years ‘The land is overpopulated with people, but those in the country are very miserable, while the nobles are extremely opulent and delight in luxury.’ In addition, he visited Cambay, Dabul, and Calicut:

The country produces pepper, ginger, color plants, muscat, cloves, cinnamon, aromatic roots … and every description of spices, and everything is cheap, and servants and maids are very good.

Vasco da Gama’s vessels left Portugal on 8 July 1497, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and sailed up the east coast of Africa to Malindi. From there, with the help of a pilot given to them by a local ruler, they had taken the wind to southern India. It took only twenty-three days to cross from Africa to Malabar.

Vasco da Gama commanded a flotilla of three ships and a store ship, with a total complement of about one hundred and seventy men. The ships were small by modern standards and even by the standards of the time. Da Gama’s own ship, the São Gabriel, was the largest. It carried six sails on three masts but had a total length of only eighty-four feet. The large forecastle and tall stern made the ship relatively high. This height gave additional range to its twenty cannon. The ship was unwieldy but powerful.

The fleet carried a few convicts who had been purposely taken to do dangerous tasks. One of these, probably a converted Jew who knew Arabic, was ordered ashore to seek information. After landing, he was taken to meet two Muslim traders. They were from Oran, on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, and were reported to have surprised the visitor with a greeting in Castilian:

‘The devil take you! What has brought you here?’

To this the convict replied:

‘Christians and spices.’

The Portuguese had a long history of conflict with Islam. The Muslims of North Africa had finally been driven out of Portugal in 1249, but out of adjacent Spain only in 1492. Meanwhile; the rise of the Turkish Empire in the eastern Mediterranean had continued apace. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 deeply alarmed all of Christian Europe. Portugal was strongly Catholic and saw the battle between Christianity and Islam as a battle between good and evil.

From the twelfth century onwards, rumors had circulated in Europe of Christian empires in the east. An emperor, Prester John, who was reputed to be descended from the Magi, was said to be the overlord of many other eastern Christian kings. These rumors were probably fuelled by the existence of a real Christian kingdom in Ethiopia. In the early fifteenth century the Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator sponsored a series of voyages along the West African coast to find a river route to the kingdom of Prester John. Although unsuccessful, these led to the expedition, under the command of Bartholomew Dias, which had found the southern tip of Africa. This discovery inspired the king of Portugal to despatch Vasco da Gama further east. Little is known about da Gama’s background or why he was chosen. He seems to have been born in a tiny village of fishermen on the southwest coast of Portugal where his father, who was a knight in the service of a duke, was the civil governor. In 1492 Vasco da Gama had been sent by the king of Portugal, John II, to seize French ships that were attacking Portuguese shipping. It is presumed that his conduct recommended him to the king. Vasco da Gama’s birth year is unknown, but he was probably under forty when he left for the East.

Following Columbus’s discovery of the way to the New World, Spain, and Portugal – the two great European naval powers – concluded the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The Pope's blessing divided the world into two spheres of influence – the Spanish and the Portuguese. The dividing line was demarcated about 1,000 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, which lay off western Africa. Territories west of that line went to Spain; east of it to Portugal.

The king of Portugal hoped to ally with the successors of Prester John to fight Islam. If it was also possible for the Portuguese to buy spices, this would be especially welcome – for the spice trade would bring wealth to Portugal, and simultaneously deprive the Muslims of one of their main sources of revenue. 

The Hindu ruler of Calicut, the Zamorin, was away from the city when the Portuguese arrived, but agreed to meet Vasco da Gama on his return. He also sent a pilot to take the flotilla to a safe anchorage at Pantalayini Kollam, fifteen miles to the north. It was from there, a week after reaching India that Vasco da Gama finally stepped ashore.

Da Gama and his dozen companions were met by a representative of the Zamorin and an armed retinue. They then proceeded by palanquin, watched by crowds of curious onlookers, towards Calicut. Halfway there, they stopped for a meal at a local noble’s house, and then proceeded by boat on a backwater to the city. After disembarking, they were taken to a temple.

It is quite clear from an account written by one of da Gama’s men that the temple was Hindu. It notes that the priests wore threads across their upper bodies and that ‘saints were painted on the walls wearing crowns. They were painted variously with teeth protruding an inch from the mouth and four or five arms.’ Nevertheless, Vasco da Gama and his men were so expecting to find Christians, even if deviant, that they thought they were in a church. They fell on their knees and prayed. They also took away ‘some white earth which the Christians of this country are wont to sprinkle on the forehead and chest, round the neck and on the forearm’. Incredibly, Da Gama and his men continued to believe they were in Christian territory, under a Christian king, for the whole of their time in India. They would return to Portugal to affirm this to their own king.

The Portuguese were taken through Calicut with pomp, accompanied by drums and trumpets. The roofs and balconies were thronged with spectators. There was such a crowd at the entrance to the palace that scuffles broke out and several bystanders were injured.

Within the palace, they found the Zamorin reclining on a couch of green velvet under a gilt canopy. He held a gold spittoon in his left hand and was being served with betel nut from a huge gold basin. He offered the Portuguese food – bananas, and jackfruit – and then asked da Gama to explain his mission to a courtier. Vasco da Gama insisted that as he was the ambassador of the king of Portugal, he could only deal directly with the Zamorin. The Zamorin then listened as da Gama told him that in Portugal:

There reigned a king now whose name was Dom Manuel, who had ordered him to build three vessels, of which he had been appointed captain-major, and who had ordered him not to return to Portugal until he had discovered this King of the Christians, on pain of having his head cut off. That two letters had been entrusted to him to be presented in case he succeeded in discovering him, and that he would do so on an ensuing day.

As the Zamorin was a Hindu and da Gama knew nothing of the local language, da Gama’s words were presumably corrupted in translation.

Da Gama did not return the next day for he was involved in acrimonious discussions with the Zamorin’s ministers concerning the gifts he intended to present. They laughed when they saw the washbasins, hats, casks of oil, honey, and cloth he had brought from Portugal. They told him these were unacceptable presents and that he should give gold or nothing.

The following day, Vasco da Gama met with the Zamorin. It was a strained encounter for the Zamorin was unable to reconcile to da Gama’s boasts that he came from a rich country with the absence of any gifts. He did, however, allow one of the letters carried by da Gama, which had been written in Arabic, to be translated to him. Perhaps mollified by the flattery it contained, he gave da Gama permission to land the sample goods his ships were carrying and to sell them.

The Portuguese returned to Pantalayini Kollam, where was then more tension. The Zamorin’s officials feared that if they allowed the Portuguese to return to their ships they might depart without paying port dues; the Portuguese feared that they were being held as hostages. After two days, matters were resolved when the Portuguese landed some merchandise as surety and da Gama and his companions were allowed to return to their ships.

Calicut and its adjacent coast were predominantly Hindu but also housed many Muslim merchants. Some were visitors from Arabia, others were Moplas, Indians who claimed descent from thirteen Arab merchants who had settled on the nearby River Beypore in the ninth century. Calicut itself was not a particularly good harbor. It had become the chief port of the Malabar Coast by guaranteeing safe and cheap facilities to all traders, irrespective of their nationality or religion.

The Muslim traders were extremely hostile to the Portuguese. It may be that they had already learned of the several clashes between da Gama’s fleet and their fellow Muslims on the African coast, but they were also fearful that they would lose their monopoly of the lucrative spice trade. The Portuguese, of course, had no love for the Muslims. The result of this mutual hostility was that the Portuguese merchandise found no buyers among the Muslim trading community at Pantalayini Kollam. 

On 13 August 1498, nearly three months after his arrival, Vasco da Gama sent some presents to the Zamorin and announced that he wished to leave for Portugal. He suggested that if the Zamorin sent some emissaries with him, he himself would leave behind some Portuguese men who were looking after the unsold merchandise. The Zamorin then demanded the customary port dues on the landed goods. Fearful that da Gama would abscond, he put guards on the Portuguese men ashore and prohibited any boats from going out to the Portuguese ships.

Some merchants, however, ignored the Zamorin’s edict and went out to trade with the Portuguese. Da Gama seized eighteen of them as hostages. At the end of complicated negotiations, an exchange of hostages and the return of Portuguese goods were agreed. The Zamorin also sent a note to be carried to the king of Portugal:

Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of your household, came to my country, whereat I was much pleased. My country is rich in cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, and precious stones. That which I ask of you in exchange is gold, silver, corals, and scarlet cloth.

The Portuguese did not honor this agreement. Leaving some of their merchandise behind, they set sail for Portugal on 29 August 1498 while still holding six of the Indian hostages. The following day, their fleet was becalmed off Calicut. About seventy of the Zamorin’s boats came out to attack. The Portuguese kept them at bay with cannon until a fortuitous thunderstorm erupted and they managed to escape.

In March 1500, only six months after Vasco da Gama’s return, a Portuguese fleet of thirteen powerfully armed ships sailed for India. This fleet was under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral and it was dogged by misfortune. Some ships were blown off course to South America; four ships sank in a storm at the tip of Africa and all on board were lost. The remaining six ships anchored off Calicut on 13 September 1500. The Zamorin, a successor to the ruler who had met Vasco da Gama mindful of the power of the expedition, allowed the Portuguese to set up a trading post, or ‘factory’.

Once again, however, there were disputes between the Portuguese and the Arabs. These were exacerbated when the Portuguese claimed they had been given the sole right to buy pepper. Events came to a climax when the Portuguese seized an Arab ship in the harbor. A riot ensued and thirty or forty Portuguese were killed. Cabral then ordered his fleet to bombard Calicut. He also seized some of the ships in the harbor, took their goods – including three elephants, which were later killed and salted for the homeward journey – and slaughtered their crews. The bombardment of the city lasted two days. Many of its wooden houses were destroyed, and many of its inhabitants were killed. Fortunately for the people of Calicut, however, the violent recoil of the guns began to damage Cabral’s ships. He was forced to suspend hostilities and left.

Cabral then sailed one hundred miles south to Cochin. The Raja of Cochin was a rival of the Zamorin of Calicut, and he saw advantages in being hospitable to the Portuguese. He allowed them to buy spices and establish a factory. Within a fortnight, Cabral’s ships were almost fully loaded. Then came news that the fleet of the Zamorin of Calicut was moving down the coast to attack. Cabral hurriedly slipped away by night.

Cabral reached Lisbon on 31 July 1501. Although only five of the original thirteen ships had returned from India, the spices they carried were valuable enough to more than pay for the losses incurred. The Franciscan friars who had traveled with the expedition had discovered the difference between Hindus and Christians. Cabral advised the king that, since there were no Christian kings to make alliances with (although in places there were Syriac and other Christians, and two Christians from Cranganore had traveled to meet Cabral), the Portuguese would need to come to an accommodation with the Hindu rulers of the Malabar Coast.

Cabral had seriously ruptured relations with the Zamorin of Calicut. He had, however, made allies of the Raja of Cannanore and the Raja of Cochin. While Calicut lacked a proper harbor, that at Cochin was superb. In addition, Cochin had better communications with the pepper country. Moreover, the Raja of Cochin was mindful of the superior strength of Calicut and keen to align with the Portuguese. Cochin was set to become Portugal’s most important base in Malabar.

Six months after Cabral’s return, Vasco da Gama set sail again for Malabar. He left Portugal on 10 February 1502 with fifteen ships and was joined by another five ships while off East Africa. Now that it was clear that there were no powerful Christian kingdoms in Malabar, the motive for the voyage was largely commercial. This expedition, nevertheless, had been despatched by the king of Portugal himself, for he was determined that the commerce with India would remain a Crown monopoly.

Sailing down the Malabar Coast, Vasco da Gama’s fleet intercepted the Miri, a ship carrying pilgrims returning from Mecca. When the Portuguese boarded the ship, some rich merchants tried to make a ransom deal with da Gama, but he refused. Some valuables were handed over to the Portuguese and they also seized some of the ship’s stores. After these had been offloaded, Vasco da Gama ordered his men to set fire to the Miri. Her crew and the pilgrims managed to put out the flames, but da Gama’s men returned to torch the ship again. One Portuguese eyewitness described how the women waved their jewelry, offering it up in exchange for their lives, and held up their babies ‘that we should have pity on their innocence’. Another Portuguese eyewitness gave the bare facts:

We took a ship from Mecca in which were 380 men and many women and children, and we took from it fully 12,000 ducats, with goods worth at least another 10,000. And we burned the ship and all the people on board with gunpowder.

The Portuguese fleet then anchored off Calicut. The Zamorin, remembering the damage Cabral had inflicted on his city and knowing what had happened to the Miri, sent a message offering peace. In reply, da Gama demanded compensation for the goods Cabral’s men had lost and the expulsion of all the Arabian traders. The Zamorin replied, reasonably enough, that it was Calicut that had suffered the most and that the treasure from the Miri was worth far more than the goods that the Portuguese had lost. He ignored the demand to expel the many thousand Arabs. Da Gama then announced that, unless the Zamorin met his conditions, he would bombard Calicut the next day.

The Portuguese had captured a number of small boats and their crews. At midday on 1 November 1502, they began to hang their prisoners. Thirty-four sailors were executed. As the dead men were taken down, their hands, feet and heads were cut off. These body parts were then piled on a boat, which was floated into the harbor together with a message saying that the actual killers of Cabral’s men could expect an even crueler death. The truncated bodies of these innocents were then thrown into the sea so that the tide would carry them ashore. The bombardment of Calicut then began.

Da Gama received a message from the Raja of Cannanore. It seemed that an Arab merchant had left the port without paying dues. Da Gama sent one of his ships to intercept the absconding merchant, who then paid what was owed, but cursed the king. The Portuguese then flogged him until he fell unconscious. He was then sent back to his ship with his mouth gagged and stuffed with excrement and bacon.

At Cochin, Vasco da Gama went out of his way to establish good relations with the raja. The Muslim merchants, well aware of what had happened in Calicut, were hostile. Da Gama ingratiated himself with the Hindu ruler and further alienated the Muslims by saving a cow. Some Muslims had sold a cow for slaughter to some of the Portuguese. The Hindu raja protested to da Gama. When the Muslims returned to sell another cow, da Gama arrested them and gave them up to the authorities. They were then executed.

Da Gama did not, however, confine his barbarities to the Muslims. While he was still at Cochin, a Hindu priest arrived with a message from the Zamorin of Calicut. After being burnt with red-hot embers, he confessed to being a spy. He then offered to commit suicide. Da Gama declined the offer, saying that he needed a messenger to take a reply to the Zamorin. The Brahmin was then sent back to Calicut. His lips had been cut off and his ears replaced with ears taken from one of the ship’s dogs.

Da Gama sailed on to Cannanore. There he loaded spices, and left behind more of his men to operate a factory and buy more spices for the future. He also left behind five ships under the command of his uncle, Vincente Sodré, to guard both the factory at Cannanore and that at Cochin. On 28 December 1502, Vasco da Gama left for Portugal.

Vasco da Gama would return briefly to India in 1524 as viceroy. He died after only three months and was buried in the church of Santo Antonio, later renamed after St Francis, in Cochin. His body was returned to Portugal in 1539.

Source:

The Theft of India - The European Conquests of India, 1498–1765 | Roy Moxham