Publication Date
2009
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The city of Calicut (Kâlikkôtu or Kozhikode), on the coast of Malabar, earned great importance in the 15th century as the main trading port in the region. Malabar is bordered to the west by the Indian Ocean and to the east by the Western Ghats mountain range, which isolates the coast from the interior of the subcontinent. Calicut is the city where the expedition of Vasco da Gama disembarked in 1498 (at the precise location of 11º 15' N, 75º 45' E); however, in the following decades Calicut became the main focal point of the opposition to the Portuguese presence in India.
This area was characterized by the existence of small mercantile Hindu kingdoms, which were important agents of the spice trade. Being a region that produced spices, namely pepper and ginger, their markets regularly received other Asian products, such as Ceylon cinnamon and fine spices from the Malay Archipelago. By doing so, Calicut assumed an important role in the concentration and redistribution of spices, thus attracting Arab and Persian merchants in search of these products.
Calicut stood out among the cities of the region. Its rise began in the middle of the 14th century when it became a major commercial hub of Malabar, and in the 15th century when it benefited from the decline of rival ports Cranganore, Eli and Kollam and held a leading position in the region because of the spice trade.
At its peak, Calicut was a cosmopolitan city, and it profited mainly from the presence of the Muslim mercantile communities that had control over the port and trade in the city. Trade and navigation were entrusted to foreigners because of a religious impediment that limited sea voyages to upper caste Hindus. Thus, despite holding the title of Zamorin (Saamoothiri), or "King of the Sea," the Raja of Calicut did not participate directly in the administration of the port or commerce. He just collected the resulting fiscal benefits.
The Muslim merchants established a symbiotic relationship with the Zamorin. The merchants were granted religious freedom, and judicial authority was controlled by leaders of the two Muslim communities: the Mappilas and Pardesis. The first, who were named by the Portuguese as "Local Moors," were the offspring of marriages between Arab or Persian merchants and local women, usually from lower castes. This native community of Muslims, descendant of those marriages, was in charge of the mid-range and intra-Asian trade and was excluded from the lucrative spice trade of the western Indian Ocean. This latter trade was controlled by the Pardesis, or "Moorish from Mecca," who were Egyptian, Arab or Persian merchants who had settled in the city and were accumulating wealth and privilege with this arrangement.
There were other communities of Islamic merchants. Significant among them was the Chetti community, a caste of Hindu merchants from Coromandel. In the 14th century, a Chinese community also had an important role in the trade of the city, but its members gradually left.
In spite of its importance and size, with several warehouses, temples and mosques, the city was not fortified and its port was quite inhospitable. Vessels frequently had to anchor in neighboring ports, such as Pantalayini-Kollam or Kappatt. It was in this latter port that the armada of Vasco da Gama anchored on May 20,1498. The captain responsible for reaching India arrived in Calicut guided by a Muslim navigator from Malindi, located on the coast of East Africa.
Vasco da Gama's stay in Calicut was marked by misunderstandings, as the Portuguese assumed that the Zamorin and most of his vassals were Christian. In spite of this misunderstanding, which was never rectified, Vasco da Gama was initially well received. However, he soon felt the opposition of the Pardesis, who saw the Portuguese as potential rivals in the spice trade. This hostility and widespread rejection of Portuguese products in the markets of the city forced the Portuguese fleet to sail without great results.
In 1500 a new and more powerful armada, led this time by Pedro Álvares Cabral, was sent with the purpose of establishing a permanent trading post in Calicut. Despite some initial success, including the establishment of the trading post, the difficult relations with the Muslims soon degenerated into open conflict. The trading post was attacked and destroyed, and most of the defenders died in combat, including the factor, Aires de Correia.
Aware that the Zamorin was not a Christian sovereign, that India was not Christianized, and given that the trading post had been destroyed, Pedro Álvares Cabral left the port of Calicut, but not without first bombarding the city for a few days. The Portuguese fleet ended up heading toward Kochi (Cochin), where the local Raja, seeing an opportunity to challenge its rival Calicut, permitted the installation of the Portuguese trading post.
The latent conflict between the Portuguese and Calicut, along with another failure in the attempts to negotiate, triggered another bombardment of the city in late 1502, this time from an armada commanded by Vasco da Gama.
Facing the possible loss of his dominant position in Malabar, the Zamorin ordered a military attack on Kochi. This conflict lasted until the end of 1504 when the Portuguese-Kochi defenders, commanded by Duarte Pacheco Pereira, received help from the armada led by Lopo Soares de Albergaria and afterward were able to defeat the enemy for good.
The following years were marked by local, small-scale conflicts involving Portuguese armadas and Calicut vessels.
During that time, despite these conflicts, the Portuguese tried to establish contacts in the city with some of the Zamorin's relatives, namely Nambiaderim (Nambiyâdiri), the sovereign's nephew and heir, and especially with the Mappila community.
A few years later, large-scale military actions resumed with the appointment of Afonso de Albuquerque as governor-general and the subsequent dispatch of an armada led by Marshal D. Fernando Coutinho with the intention of conquering the city of Calicut. However, the attack, launched on January 3, 1510, turned out to be a huge failure, mainly because of the imprudence of the Portuguese, and the Marshal himself perished in the fighting.
This defeat motivated the Portuguese to seek a diplomatic solution to the long, drawn-out conflict. It was a solution that the Zamorin himself desired. Nevertheless, negotiations were slow. Peace was finally established on October 1, 1513, but only after the poisoning of the sovereign by his heir, an act that was instigated by Albuquerque.
The governor-general sacrificed the preference of the trading posts of Kochi and Kannur (Cannanore), and in this way, Calicut became the main center for supplying spices to the armadas. A fortress was erected to defend this position, and during this period, the Pardesis left the city, as they were ruined by the Portuguese success.
However, peaceful relations with Calicut did not endure because the increasing Portuguese involvement in intra-Asian trade began to antagonize the Mappilas of Malabar. This community, which supported the Portuguese when they concentrated only on the spice trade, now saw the Portuguese as rivals for control of medium-range routes in intra-Asian trade. This led the Mappilas to look for ways to defy the Portuguese, and they collaborated with Gujarati merchants and with pirates who ravaged the west coast of India when confronting the Portuguese interests.
This rivalry culminated in 1525 with the dissolution of peace between Calicut and the Portuguese and with the siege and destruction of the fortress, which marked the end of the Portuguese presence in the city.
The decades that followed were marked by a persistent war on piracy and the fast and maneuverable pirate vessels that obstructed Portuguese navigation. The pirates multiplied their support bases in the ports of Malabar and Kanara (Canara), and they sustained their attacks regardless of the state of relations between Calicut and the Portuguese. These relations had a tortuous evolution, marked by periods of constant conflict interspersed with periods of rapprochement and truce, as the one in 1531, which permitted the construction of a Portuguese fortress in Chaul.
These moments of truce were usually linked to the granting of free trade charters, safe passage to navigate to and from Calicut. An example is the truce of 1555, in which the granting of free trade charters remedied a five-year conflict that had been sparked by a local dynastic dispute.
During a military crisis that devastated the state of India at the turn of the decades (1560-70), the Zamorin took advantage of this weakness and destroyed the fortification of Chaul in 1571.
However, in 1583 a lasting peace was established between the Portuguese and Calicut. This was due to the disagreements that had arisen between the Zamorin and the pirate leaders, who sought to follow an autonomous policy. Pate Kunjali Marakkar stood out among those pirates. He was the commander of the fleets of Calicut, and he proclaimed himself "King of the Muslims of Malabar and Lord of the seas of India." Faced with this threat, the Zamorin sought to approach the Portuguese, and in 1599, an alliance helped to defeat the successor of the pirate, Muhammad Kunjali, who was imprisoned and executed in Goa.
This alliance also permitted the normalization of trade relations and the establishment of Christian missionaries in the territory. But the arrival of rival powers like the Dutch, who throughout the 17th century captured most of the ports of Malabar, led to the gradual withdrawal of the Portuguese in the region and the end of the troubled relations between Calicut and the Portuguese.
Bibliography:
BOUCHON, Geneviéve, "Les Musulmans du Kerala à l'Époche de la Découverte Portugaise", in Inde Decouvérte, Inde Retrouvé, Lisboa, Centro Cultural Gulbenkien, 1999, pp. 23-77. BOUCHON, Geneviéve "L'évolution de la piraterie sur la côte Malabare au cours du XVIe siècle" in Inde Decouvérte, Inde Retrouvé, Lisboa, Centro Cultural Gulbenkien, 1999, pp. 227-237. BOUCHON, Geneviéve, "Calicut at the turn of the sixteenth century", in Inde Decouvérte, Inde Retrouvé, Lisboa, Centro Cultural Gulbenkien, 1999, pp. 279-291. THOMAS, Luís Filipe, "Calecute" in Dicionário de História dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, vol. I, direcção de Luís de Albuquerque e Francisco Contente Domingues, pp. 161-168.
Translated by: John Starkey
This area was characterized by the existence of small mercantile Hindu kingdoms, which were important agents of the spice trade. Being a region that produced spices, namely pepper and ginger, their markets regularly received other Asian products, such as Ceylon cinnamon and fine spices from the Malay Archipelago. By doing so, Calicut assumed an important role in the concentration and redistribution of spices, thus attracting Arab and Persian merchants in search of these products.
Calicut stood out among the cities of the region. Its rise began in the middle of the 14th century when it became a major commercial hub of Malabar, and in the 15th century when it benefited from the decline of rival ports Cranganore, Eli and Kollam and held a leading position in the region because of the spice trade.
At its peak, Calicut was a cosmopolitan city, and it profited mainly from the presence of the Muslim mercantile communities that had control over the port and trade in the city. Trade and navigation were entrusted to foreigners because of a religious impediment that limited sea voyages to upper caste Hindus. Thus, despite holding the title of Zamorin (Saamoothiri), or "King of the Sea," the Raja of Calicut did not participate directly in the administration of the port or commerce. He just collected the resulting fiscal benefits.
The Muslim merchants established a symbiotic relationship with the Zamorin. The merchants were granted religious freedom, and judicial authority was controlled by leaders of the two Muslim communities: the Mappilas and Pardesis. The first, who were named by the Portuguese as "Local Moors," were the offspring of marriages between Arab or Persian merchants and local women, usually from lower castes. This native community of Muslims, descendant of those marriages, was in charge of the mid-range and intra-Asian trade and was excluded from the lucrative spice trade of the western Indian Ocean. This latter trade was controlled by the Pardesis, or "Moorish from Mecca," who were Egyptian, Arab or Persian merchants who had settled in the city and were accumulating wealth and privilege with this arrangement.
There were other communities of Islamic merchants. Significant among them was the Chetti community, a caste of Hindu merchants from Coromandel. In the 14th century, a Chinese community also had an important role in the trade of the city, but its members gradually left.
In spite of its importance and size, with several warehouses, temples and mosques, the city was not fortified and its port was quite inhospitable. Vessels frequently had to anchor in neighboring ports, such as Pantalayini-Kollam or Kappatt. It was in this latter port that the armada of Vasco da Gama anchored on May 20,1498. The captain responsible for reaching India arrived in Calicut guided by a Muslim navigator from Malindi, located on the coast of East Africa.
Vasco da Gama's stay in Calicut was marked by misunderstandings, as the Portuguese assumed that the Zamorin and most of his vassals were Christian. In spite of this misunderstanding, which was never rectified, Vasco da Gama was initially well received. However, he soon felt the opposition of the Pardesis, who saw the Portuguese as potential rivals in the spice trade. This hostility and widespread rejection of Portuguese products in the markets of the city forced the Portuguese fleet to sail without great results.
In 1500 a new and more powerful armada, led this time by Pedro Álvares Cabral, was sent with the purpose of establishing a permanent trading post in Calicut. Despite some initial success, including the establishment of the trading post, the difficult relations with the Muslims soon degenerated into open conflict. The trading post was attacked and destroyed, and most of the defenders died in combat, including the factor, Aires de Correia.
Aware that the Zamorin was not a Christian sovereign, that India was not Christianized, and given that the trading post had been destroyed, Pedro Álvares Cabral left the port of Calicut, but not without first bombarding the city for a few days. The Portuguese fleet ended up heading toward Kochi (Cochin), where the local Raja, seeing an opportunity to challenge its rival Calicut, permitted the installation of the Portuguese trading post.
The latent conflict between the Portuguese and Calicut, along with another failure in the attempts to negotiate, triggered another bombardment of the city in late 1502, this time from an armada commanded by Vasco da Gama.
Facing the possible loss of his dominant position in Malabar, the Zamorin ordered a military attack on Kochi. This conflict lasted until the end of 1504 when the Portuguese-Kochi defenders, commanded by Duarte Pacheco Pereira, received help from the armada led by Lopo Soares de Albergaria and afterward were able to defeat the enemy for good.
The following years were marked by local, small-scale conflicts involving Portuguese armadas and Calicut vessels.
During that time, despite these conflicts, the Portuguese tried to establish contacts in the city with some of the Zamorin's relatives, namely Nambiaderim (Nambiyâdiri), the sovereign's nephew and heir, and especially with the Mappila community.
A few years later, large-scale military actions resumed with the appointment of Afonso de Albuquerque as governor-general and the subsequent dispatch of an armada led by Marshal D. Fernando Coutinho with the intention of conquering the city of Calicut. However, the attack, launched on January 3, 1510, turned out to be a huge failure, mainly because of the imprudence of the Portuguese, and the Marshal himself perished in the fighting.
This defeat motivated the Portuguese to seek a diplomatic solution to the long, drawn-out conflict. It was a solution that the Zamorin himself desired. Nevertheless, negotiations were slow. Peace was finally established on October 1, 1513, but only after the poisoning of the sovereign by his heir, an act that was instigated by Albuquerque.
The governor-general sacrificed the preference of the trading posts of Kochi and Kannur (Cannanore), and in this way, Calicut became the main center for supplying spices to the armadas. A fortress was erected to defend this position, and during this period, the Pardesis left the city, as they were ruined by the Portuguese success.
However, peaceful relations with Calicut did not endure because the increasing Portuguese involvement in intra-Asian trade began to antagonize the Mappilas of Malabar. This community, which supported the Portuguese when they concentrated only on the spice trade, now saw the Portuguese as rivals for control of medium-range routes in intra-Asian trade. This led the Mappilas to look for ways to defy the Portuguese, and they collaborated with Gujarati merchants and with pirates who ravaged the west coast of India when confronting the Portuguese interests.
This rivalry culminated in 1525 with the dissolution of peace between Calicut and the Portuguese and with the siege and destruction of the fortress, which marked the end of the Portuguese presence in the city.
The decades that followed were marked by a persistent war on piracy and the fast and maneuverable pirate vessels that obstructed Portuguese navigation. The pirates multiplied their support bases in the ports of Malabar and Kanara (Canara), and they sustained their attacks regardless of the state of relations between Calicut and the Portuguese. These relations had a tortuous evolution, marked by periods of constant conflict interspersed with periods of rapprochement and truce, as the one in 1531, which permitted the construction of a Portuguese fortress in Chaul.
These moments of truce were usually linked to the granting of free trade charters, safe passage to navigate to and from Calicut. An example is the truce of 1555, in which the granting of free trade charters remedied a five-year conflict that had been sparked by a local dynastic dispute.
During a military crisis that devastated the state of India at the turn of the decades (1560-70), the Zamorin took advantage of this weakness and destroyed the fortification of Chaul in 1571.
However, in 1583 a lasting peace was established between the Portuguese and Calicut. This was due to the disagreements that had arisen between the Zamorin and the pirate leaders, who sought to follow an autonomous policy. Pate Kunjali Marakkar stood out among those pirates. He was the commander of the fleets of Calicut, and he proclaimed himself "King of the Muslims of Malabar and Lord of the seas of India." Faced with this threat, the Zamorin sought to approach the Portuguese, and in 1599, an alliance helped to defeat the successor of the pirate, Muhammad Kunjali, who was imprisoned and executed in Goa.
This alliance also permitted the normalization of trade relations and the establishment of Christian missionaries in the territory. But the arrival of rival powers like the Dutch, who throughout the 17th century captured most of the ports of Malabar, led to the gradual withdrawal of the Portuguese in the region and the end of the troubled relations between Calicut and the Portuguese.
Bibliography:
BOUCHON, Geneviéve, "Les Musulmans du Kerala à l'Époche de la Découverte Portugaise", in Inde Decouvérte, Inde Retrouvé, Lisboa, Centro Cultural Gulbenkien, 1999, pp. 23-77. BOUCHON, Geneviéve "L'évolution de la piraterie sur la côte Malabare au cours du XVIe siècle" in Inde Decouvérte, Inde Retrouvé, Lisboa, Centro Cultural Gulbenkien, 1999, pp. 227-237. BOUCHON, Geneviéve, "Calicut at the turn of the sixteenth century", in Inde Decouvérte, Inde Retrouvé, Lisboa, Centro Cultural Gulbenkien, 1999, pp. 279-291. THOMAS, Luís Filipe, "Calecute" in Dicionário de História dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, vol. I, direcção de Luís de Albuquerque e Francisco Contente Domingues, pp. 161-168.
Translated by: John Starkey
Image credit
Manuel Magalhães