Pepper was the cornerstone of Malabar’s prosperity: what the Persian Gulf today is to oil, Malabar was to pepper, with similarly mixed blessings for the region and its residents. The plant that bears the spice, Piper nigrum, is native to the jungles that cloak the lower slopes of the Ghats, a climbing vine that thrives in the dappled light, shade, heat and wet of the tropical undergrowth. Though it has long since been transplanted around much of the tropical world, connoisseurs of the spice claim that Malabar still produces the finest. Like practically every other aspect of life in Malabar, pepper’s cycle of harvest and trade moves to the seasonal rhythms of the monsoon (the word derives from the Arabic mawsim, ‘season’). In late May or early June the rains sweep in on a front of gusty south-westerlies from the Arabian Sea: the ‘burst’. Over the next few months the first blooms appear on the pepper vines as the upper slopes of the Ghats are drenched in a daily Wagnerian deluge of inky clouds and crashing thunderstorms. By September, the rain falls less heavily, and the clouds and mists boil away up the valleys and gorges. A long, sultry heat descends on the hills. In November, the winds flip 180 degrees, blowing mild and dry out of the north-east as the hot air of the central Asian summer is sucked southward, down the subcontinent from the Himalayas, across the Indian plain to the ocean. In this hot, dry atmosphere the pepper berries cluster and swell; their pungent, biting flavour ripens and deepens. By December they are ready for harvest. Walk any distance in rural Malabar before the return of the monsoon and you are likely to have to make a detour to avoid a patch of peppercorns left out to dry in any space available.
Thanks to the combination of spice and monsoon, when Malabar first emerges into history the coast was already a crossroads frequented by traders and travellers from around the Indian Ocean world. The spices were the end, the monsoon winds the means. There were communities of Chinese and Jews here from the early centuries AD, the latter constituting one of the oldest Jewish communities outside the Middle East. Long before then there had been visitors from Mesopotamia: pieces of teak – another attraction of the coast – were found by the archaeologist Leonard Wooley at Ur of the Chaldees, dating from around 600 BC.* By the time of Christ, when da Gama’s native Portugal was a bleak and barren wilderness of Lusitanian tribesmen peering out on the sailless waters of the Atlantic, Greek mariners were arriving in Malabar in such numbers that one recherché Sanskrit name for pepper was yavanesta, ‘the passion of the Greeks’. Thanks largely to its vegetable wealth Islam was established here from the seventh century onward; Indian Muslims thriving, settling and converting over half a millennium before their Moghul co-religionists stormed down from central Asia. Even in da Gama’s day there were a handful of intrepid Italian merchants who had arrived by the long and dangerous overland route from the Levant. When da Gama dropped anchor Malabar was the most important link in a vast and vastly profitable network, and had been so for centuries.
For those who profited thereby da Gama’s arrival represented an almighty spanner in the works; for the Portuguese, a coup de théâtre. Now for the encore. Surviving the voyage out was one thing, but the Portuguese had still to find their way through the perilous shoals of Malabar politics, in which respect they were utterly in the dark. It seems that da Gama had expected to find in India a situation similar to that the Portuguese knew from their trading voyages to West Africa, where they could barter trinkets of low value for stellar returns, and so was taken aback to find the rich and sophisticated Indians demanding payment in gold and silver. As with Columbus’s experience in the Americas, his misconceptions had tragicomic results. On his march into Calicut to meet its ruler, the Zamorin, da Gama was so overwhelmed by the proliferation of peoples and religions, and so confident of finding the eastern Christian lands of Prester John, that he mistook a Hindu image of Devaki nursing Krishna for a more familiar mother-and-son pairing. Though puzzled by the teeth and horns on some of the statues of the ‘saints’, he promptly fell to his knees and thanked the Hindu gods for his safe arrival.
This was, however, an isolated and definitely unwitting display of religious tolerance. With da Gama regarding himself as every inch the righteous crusader, and out to garner profits no matter the means, Indo-Portuguese relations were practically bound to get off to a rocky start. In his first meeting with the Zamorin, da Gama promptly set about aggravating an already fraught situation with a mixture of religious bigotry and peevish ignorance. The truculent tone of the new arrival might have been calculated to cause offence. The Zamorin was a civilised and sophisticated ruler used to receiving traders from around the Indian Ocean world and one, moreover, most definitely unused to the tepid tribute and paltry gifts – honey, hats, scarlet hoods and washbasins – offered by the Portuguese. Who were these uncouth newcomers that they should treat him, the Lord of Hills and Waves, like some naked barbarian chieftain?
On all sides there was confusion, misunderstanding and suspicion. Da Gama was briefly detained ashore, further fuelling his already ripe paranoia over the ‘dog-like’ behaviour (perraria) of the Indians. On board the Portuguese vessels there was a steadily mounting nervousness that the Moors had poisoned the Zamorin’s mind. These fears were justified, if self-fulfilling: it was after all only rational for the Moors, sensing an opportunity to nip this new threat in the bud, to have encouraged the Zamorin to imprison or indeed execute the ungracious newcomer.
The Zamorin, however, hedged his bets. He granted da Gama’s men freedom to trade, and through the months of July and August they carried on a desultory exchange in an atmosphere of mutual recrimination and distrust. After a summer of escalating tension, da Gama sailed for Portugal in bad odour, leaving a mood of foreboding behind. As he raised anchor, he angrily threatened a group of Moorish merchants, warning them that he would soon be back. He had every reason to be as good as his word, for he left with the fruit of the summer’s efforts, a respectable cargo of spice.
Unlike Columbus’s altogether less convincing souvenirs from the Indies, there was no doubting da Gama’s evidence. But spices aside, exactly what else he had found would not be perceived for several years. In his report to the king, da Gama painted a somewhat distorted picture. Even now he was convinced that Hinduism was a heretical form of Christianity. After two months in the country, he seems to have concluded that the unmistakable polytheism he had seen was some sort of misconceived Trinity. But what was clear to all was the prospect of great things to come, and King Manuel was not one to shirk such a golden opportunity. The doubters’ faction at court and the voices of caution had been silenced. The way to India and its riches lay open. Preparations were immediately put in place for a second, larger fleet.
It sailed on 8 March 1500 under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral, his thirteen ships and more than a thousand-strong crew dwarfing da Gama’s scouting trip of three years earlier. If da Gama’s mandate was reconnaissance, Cabral’s was empire-building. Once in India some of the uncertainties and anxieties of the first voyage soon crystallised into ruthless imperial intentions. (En route to India Cabral discovered Brazil – another unforeseen consequence of the search for the Indies.) Arab and Gujarati traders, Jews and Armenians already established in the trade – all were infidels, ergo enemies. Contrary to a long-cherished notion of liberal and nationalist Indian historians, the Portuguese were not the first to bring violence to the ocean, but they certainly did so with unprecedented expertise. They were moreover the first to claim ownership over more than a localised corner of its waters, and to do so in the name of God. When Camões versified his countrymen’s feats he had Jupiter, in a Virgilian touch, dispense imperium to the conquering Portuguese: ‘From the conquered riches of the Golden Chersonese, to distant China and the farthest islands of the East, the whole expanse of the ocean shall be subject to them.’ And this, substituting ‘God’ for ‘Jupiter’, was exactly how King Manuel saw matters. On the king’s orders, Cabral was to seize control of the spice trade by any means necessary. Portugal’s work was God’s work.
For a time, it looked as if God was indeed on their side. Da Gama had made the gratifying discovery that Arab traders had no answer to the fearsome naval artillery of the Portuguese. Now it fell to Cabral to flex his muscles. On his arrival in Calicut he demanded that the Zamorin expel all Muslim merchants, which naturally the Zamorin refused to do. Calicut’s prosperity, after all, was built on the twin pillars of free trade and respect for foreign shipping.