The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [97]
The Moroccan crusade in the final decades of the fifteenth century was to set the pattern for Portugal's behaviour in later conquests much further afield. Many of the young knights – the noble fidalgos – received unforgettable lessons in plundering, raping and killing without mercy. They came to accept that the lives of Muslims, men, women and children alike, counted for nothing because they were the foes of Christendom.22
Diffie and Winius put it in a wider context of disregard and contempt for all non-Christians, but at the end again point to Morocco as the formative experience: 'it is wise to remember that Europeans of the age were almost completely without feeling for non-Christian peoples and had little interest in or understanding of cultures other than their own. For the Portuguese especially, nearly a century of vicious fighting in Morocco had brutalised attitudes'.23 So also with L.F. Thomaz. He notes numerous European precedents for Portuguese actions in the Indian Ocean area, such as privateering to Ceuta and further south. North African precedents were taken around to Asia. 'As Morocco was used as a military training ground for young Portuguese noblemen, most of the captains who served in India had substantial experience of marauding activities and considered these as honourable, worthy of reward from the king, and even of religious merit.'24
We can use the concept of a frontier society, so fruitful in North American and Australian historiography, to illuminate the Portuguese experience in Asia. The setting, surrounded by 'teeming hordes' of 'natives', contributed to make Portuguese society in general rough, violent and extravagant. In the Portuguese settlements this was exacerbated by an unusually high proportion of soldiers and sailors in the total population. These men were usually discharged and left without pay during the monsoon months when sea patrols were impossible, and at these times especially Goa and other areas were notoriously dangerous.
The strains inherent in a frontier society, and particularly the need for solidarity among the greatly outnumbered Portuguese, was most clearly seen in the way deserters were treated. In 1512 Bijapur attacked Goa. They were beaten off, and had to surrender nineteen Portuguese deserters who had fought for them. Albuquerque had promised not to kill them. He kept his promise, 'but I ordered their noses, ears, right hands and left thumbs to be cut off, for a warning and in memory of the treason and evil that they did.' On this same occasion Albuquerque had another captured renegade burnt alive. Possibly such draconic punishments were not inflicted later, yet certainly many sixteenth century Portuguese authors commented unfavourably on the large number of former soldiers or householders who had chosen to leave Portuguese areas, and more importantly those who had become renegades, that is had not merely left but now provided military service to enemies of the state.25 True that it is here a matter of violence to fellow Portuguese rather than to Asians, but this merely reinforces how violent this society was, whether to each other or to the Asian 'Other'.
To complete this study of violence we need to consider piracy, which was prevalent in the Indian Ocean both before and after the arrival of the Europeans. We have already noted piratical activities by some of the Portuguese. In Bengal a ballad went,
The dreaded Portuguese pirates, the Harmads, were constantly watching the movement of these [grain] boats [in the delta], stealthily following them through the nooks of the coast. They plundered the boats and assassinated their crew, and the boatmen and captains of the seaside trembled in fear of the Harmads.26
They were followed by other Europeans.