Free Pepper by Marjorie Shaffer Page A

being supplied by ships via the Levant, an indication of the relative inability of Portugal to assert itself in the Indian Ocean and force all trade around the Cape. Muslim merchants, bypassing areas in the Indian Ocean dominated by the Portuguese, simply shipped their pepper to ports on the Red Sea, as they had for centuries, where the spice was taken overland to ports in Syria and Egypt on the Mediterranean and from there to ships that would finally take the spice to Venice.
    There were other holes in the Portuguese net. Muslim traders, too, could bypass the Strait of Malacca altogether by shipping spices from the far eastern Spice Islands through the Strait of Sunda. Consequently, the Portuguese never had complete control of the spice trade, and what they did control was challenged by Arab, Indian, and Malaysian traders—and later by the Dutch and English. Portugal did try to assert its power by setting up a system of passes for all ships sailing the Indian Ocean, but this system was barely functional. Because of the long distances and huge expense involved in shipping spices from India, Sumatra, and the Spice Islands, the Portuguese conducted much of their trade with Asians. Most of the Portuguese ships had Asian crews because there weren’t enough Portuguese sailors. The Portuguese did not dominate the spice trade for a long time. By the early seventeenth century, they were already beginning to lose their footholds in East Asia, and by the 1620s they had already been eclipsed by the far more successful English and Dutch, who accounted for most of the pepper trade. By the time Dampier traveled in Asia in 1688, the Portuguese had lost control of Malacca in Malaysia and of Ternate in the Moluccas.
    Nevertheless, historian A. J. R. Russell-Wood points out that the Portuguese influence was extraordinary. Linguistically, the Portuguese language has had a more far-reaching impact than the Dutch language, even though the Dutch largely usurped the Portuguese in the pepper trade in the seventeenth century. Portuguese was for many years the dominant language in most of the maritime ports of Asia, and vestiges of the language could still be heard in Malacca and along the Malabar Coast in the twentieth century.
    The Portuguese held on to Goa until 1961 and didn’t relinquish their grip on Macao, the little island off the southeast coast of mainland China, until 1999. In the sixteenth century, the Chinese allowed the Portuguese to settle on the island in exchange for their help in defeating pirates. By 1562, historians estimate that Macao had about 800 to 900 Portuguese, and a few modest churches. In his journals, Matteo Ricci, the phenomenally gifted and indefatigable Italian Jesuit who lived in China for twenty-seven years, from 1583 to 1610, described Macao as a place where people gathered “eager to barter for all sorts of merchandise brought from Europe, India, and the Islands of the Moluccas. The prospects of quick fortunes were an enticement to the Chinese merchants to take up residence on the island, and in the course of a few years the trading post began to assume the appearance of a city. Numerous houses were built when the Portuguese and the Chinese began to intermarry, and before long the rock point was developed into a respectable port and a prominent market.”
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    The number of Jesuits who went to Asia was small compared to the number of ordinary people who sailed to the East. The Jesuits were inveterate letter writers, in part because they were obliged to report on their activities, and their words are preserved. But the voices of ordinary people tend to be lost to history. Who would want to venture out on an unknown ocean, surrounded by filth, ragged men, and the prospect of disease? Surely, convicts had little choice in the matter, but families went, too. The voyage to the East must have been especially difficult for the few women who accompanied their husbands to India,