The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [100]
However, it was not just spices that were traded between Asia and Europe in the sixteenth century. Another very important product was bullion. The Spanish in the Americas exported large amounts of gold across the Atlantic to Iberia from early in this century, and from mid century even vaster amounts of silver, especially from the incredibly rich mine at Potosí in Peru. Much of this bullion flowed through Europe and so on to the Indian Ocean and Asia. However, again the Portuguese and the Cape route were far from being dominant in this trade. It is clear that much more bullion came into the Indian Ocean area via the Red Sea than came around the Cape of Good Hope. There certainly was a vast drain of bullion from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, but most of this was not handled by the Portuguese, a matter we will return to presently.
To modern eyes and susceptibilities the official claims and actions of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to represent a presence which is more or less totally reprehensible, not in any way to be condoned or justified. They found a peaceful open trading system, and tried forcefully to monopolise some parts of it and control and tax the rest. It looks like a black, completely unacceptable, picture.
Yet the reality on the ground, or at sea, was very different. As we noted, the Portuguese were in Asia to buy spices cheap and sell them dear in Europe, thereby undercutting the traditional Mediterranean route. To forbid this trade to all others was one thing, and in any case this effort met with little success, as we saw. But the Portuguese still had to be able to buy the spices themselves, for they monopolised, partially, sea trade only, and not land trade, let alone production. Nor did they have the domestic resources to be able to send large amounts of money out from Portugal. This requirement, to find money to pay for the spices, meant that the Portuguese were soon intricately linked into the country trade of Asia.
East Africa provides an excellent case study of this matter. The Portuguese quickly found out that a commodity which could be used to pay for the spices was available in East Africa, namely gold from the Zimbabwe plateau. If they could secure supplies of this, or better still a monopoly, then payment for spices would be no problem. But it soon also became apparent that gold had to be paid for too. It could be acquired only in exchange for goods, and not Portuguese goods either.
Similarly with East Africa's other prized export, ivory. Here the Portuguese had no hope of controlling supply, for elephants were hunted in very far-flung areas. However, perhaps they could block its export. But they still had to be able to pay for it. The only items in demand on the plateau and elsewhere were beads and cloths from Gujarat; these were the traditional trade items which the producers of gold and ivory wanted, and here, as in so many other areas, the Portuguese then had to fit in to existing patterns. A continuing supply of Gujarati cloths to East Africa was essential in their wider designs. Thus were the Portuguese immersed in an intricate web of country trade in the Arabian Sea, in this case cloths from Gujarat to exchange for gold and ivory which then could pay for spices which then could be extracted from the Indian Ocean network and sent outside it to European markets.
A more detailed analysis area by area confirms this overview, and also shows a considerable variation in Portuguese policies, and successes, over the sixteenth century. In particular, later in the century the concern was more to encourage and tax trade than to restrict it too rigorously. Most recent studies stress that increasingly during the century the Portuguese looked to trade rather than conquest, that they became immersed in Asian life and economics, while the connection