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A Note on Portuguese Reactions to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice Trade and the Rise of Atjeh, 1540–1600

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

C. R. Boxer
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Extract

No reputable historian nowadays maintains that the Portuguese 16th- century thalassocracy in the Indian Ocean was always and everywhere completely effective. In particular, it is widely accepted that there was a marked if erratic revival in the Red Sea spice-trade shortly after the first Turkish occupation of Aden in 1538, though much work remains to be done on the causes and effects of this development. The Portuguese reactions to the rise of Atjeh have been studied chiefly in connection with the frequent fighting in the Straits of Malacca; and the economic side of the struggle has been less considered. The connection of Atjeh with the revival of the Red Sea spice-trade has been insufficiently stressed; though Mrs. Meilink-Roelofsz and Dr. V. Magalhaes Godinho have some relevant observations on this point in their recent and well documented works (Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago, 1500–1630, The Hague, 1962, pp. 142–46; Os Descobrimentos e a Economia Mundial, Vol. II, Lisboa, 1967, pp. 111–171). The purpose of this paper is to amplify the facts and figures which they give there, in the hope that someone with the necessary linguistic qualifications will be incited to make complementary researches in the relevant Indonesian, Arabian, or Turkish sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian History , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , September 1969 , pp. 415 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1969

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References

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17. Meilink-Roelofsz, M. A., Asian Trade and European Influence, pp. 134–135, 363Google Scholar. Mrs. Meilink-Roelofsz's tentative identification of “Assi” (mentioned in the Venetian source) with Atjeh is confirmed by reference to Serjeant, R. B., Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast, p. 110Google Scholar, where the Ashī of the contemporary Arabic chronicles is identified as Atjeh.

18. D. Antāo de Noronha, the Viceroy of Goa, writing to the Crown in December 1566, stated that 20,000 or 25,000 quintals of pepper were leaching the Red Sea annually in Atjehnese and other Muslim ships, whereas the Portuguese Indiamen were only carrying 10,000 or 12,000 round the Cape of Good Hope to Lisbon (da Silva Rego, A., Documentação. India, X, 1566–1568, pp. 157–58, 160, 163Google Scholar; De Sá, A. B., Documentação. Insulíndia, III, 1563–67, pp. 172–177).Google Scholar

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23. de Lemos, Jorge, Hystoria dos cercos que em tempo de Antonio Monis Barreto, Governador que foi dos Estados da India, os Achens e Jáos puzeram à fortaleza de Malaca, sendo Tristao Vaz da Veiga Capitāo della (Lisboa, 1585)Google Scholar, Macgregor, J. M.'s article in JMBRAS, XXIX (1956), pp. 5–21Google Scholar; Ehrhardt, Marion, Urn Opúsculo Alemāo do século XVI sobre n história portuguesa do Oriente (Frankfurt am Main, 1964)Google Scholar, for details of the naval actions and sieges of Malacca in 1570–1580.

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27. Iohn Hughen van Linschoten, his Discours of Voyages into ye Easte and West Indies (London, 1598), fls. 32–33Google Scholar. I have modernised the spelling in the extract in the text. Linschoten was Secretary to the Archbishop of Goa, 1584–88.

28. Jorge de Lemos, Hystoria dos cercos (Lisboa, 1585), Part III, fls. 1–64 for the above and for what follows. Lemos also served as Escrivão da Fazenda or Secretary of the Treasury at Goa in the 159O's.

29. “… que se pode bem paragonar com a Inglaterra, de que as escripturas tanto falam” (Cercos, fl. 61). Perhaps “Inglaterra” is a slip of the pen for some biblical land of milk and honey.

30. For discussion as to what was meant by “the strait of Singapore” in the 16th century, see Gibson-Hill, in JMBRAS, XXVII (1), pp. 163–214Google Scholar, and Macgregor, in JMBRAS, XXVIII (2), pp. 95–96n.Google Scholar

31. “Derrotero y Relacion que don joan ribero gayo obispo de Malaca hizo de las cosas de achen para El Rey Nuestro Senōr”, d. Malacca, 1584, for which see my article in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 04, 1950, pp. 40–41.Google Scholar

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34. Reigned c. 1588–1604, and not to be confused with his earlier and near namesake, ‘Alā'al-Din Ri'āyat Shāh al-Kahhār, c. 1537–1571, according to the table given in the latest (1960) edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam, I, 743.Google Scholar

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39. Beschrijvinge vande Straten ofte engten van Malacca ende Sunda met haer omligghende Eylanden/Bancken/Ondiepten ende Sanden, reproduced in facsimile on p. 32 of Collectie Dr. W. A. Engelbrecht. Lof der Zeevaart, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Maritiem Museum, Rotterdam, 1966–1967.Google Scholar

40. For lancharas and other types of ships used by the Atjehnese in the 16th-century, see de Eredia, Godinho's “Description of Malacca, Meridional India, and Cathay”Google Scholar, as translated and annotated by Mills, J. V. in JMBRAS, Vol. VIII (Singapore, 1930), pp. 36–38, 158–162.Google Scholar

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43. Temple, R. C. (ed.), Travels of Peter Mundy, III, 1634–1638, Part II, p. 338 (London, Hak. Soc, ed. 1919)Google Scholar. The Portuguese made extensive use of Indian shipwrights in their yards at Goa, Cochim, and Damāo, as the English did later at Bombay, where Governor Oxenden wrote as early as 1668: “here are many Indian vessels that in shape exceed those that come, either out of England or Holland”. Foster, W., ed., The English Factories in India, 1668–1669 (Oxford, 1927), p. 80.Google Scholar