The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [95]
To investigate the legitimacy of this claim, we need to consider whether there had indeed been any previous attempt to establish control, sovereignty, or even just suzerainty over the Indian Ocean. And we need to decide whether or not the copious violence which the Portuguese used to enforce their aims was new in the ocean.
The juridical matter is rather complicated. When the Portuguese sailed into the Indian Ocean in 1498 they carried with them baggage from the Mediterranean, such as the Roman claim to Mare Nostrum, and generally a tendency towards thalassocracy. As Mollat noted, from very early times in Europe 'the domination of the sea was a natural objective of maritime cities.'16 In 1498 they entered a body of water which was almost completely mare incognita to them. They also implicitly considered it to be mare liberum, that is, as Barros noted, a sea space which had not been claimed by any previous state or other body. The distinction between mare clausum and mare liberum was set out by Grotius in the early seventeenth century, acting as a supporter of Dutch pretensions at sea. However, the notion of mare clausum can be traced back to the mid fifteenth century. The key question in evaluating Portuguese claims is to decide whether control over the Indian Ocean had already been parcelled out among the existing maritime powers, or was it a free international highway? Alexandrowicz finds that there was freedom of navigation on the high seas. Grotius ridiculed the Portuguese claim that they had now occupied the high seas, for many others had sailed over it before them. Yet Grotius seems here to be setting aside the Portuguese claim that while certainly people had travelled over the sea before 1498, no state had claimed either sovereignty or even suzerainty. Thus, he said, the Indian Ocean before Europeans entered was res communis, that is open to all.17 This has a nice echo of the modern concern with the notion of the sea as the last of the Commons.
If this be accepted, then it has to be argued that the Portuguese claim had, in their eyes, some validity; there was no preceding right of passage claimed so they could do it, and if necessary use force. There was a juridical vacuum which they could fill if they chose, which they did thanks to their own notions as set out above.
The second area of controversy concerns the existence, or prevalence, of state violence in the Indian Ocean before the Portuguese arrival. We discussed this matter at some length in the previous chapter (see pages 97–9). To sum up, there certainly had been violence at sea before the Portuguese arrived. Piracy was very widespread indeed, and took a heavy toll on merchant shipping. We will say more about this presently. There even are a few instances of Asian states at this time or in the past using sea power, such as Srivijaya, and the Cola state. However, it does not seem that any of these powers had very effective navies. We should see their maritime efforts as being completely adjunct to their land ones: their navies were only auxiliaries to their armies. Similarly, the controllers of the various port cities, such as Calicut, Melaka, Cambay, Hurmuz, made no attempt to force ships to call to trade. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the Portuguese introduced state controlled violence into the Indian Ocean.
Some Portuguese violence was not directly done by the state, but was tacitly accepted. Professor Thomaz wrote that,
Whereas the chief aim of the system of control set up by the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean was attained only in parts, its by-products seem, on the contrary, to have developed beyond all expectation. We refer mainly to extortion, bribery, peculation and piracy. The Bay of Bengal, which lay virtually out of reach of the Portuguese authorities, was the ideal ground for such activities.18
He sees