the portuguese the port of basrur and th

8/16/2019 The Portuguese the Port of Basrur and Th

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The Portuguese, the port of Basrur,and the rice trade, 1600-50

Sanjay SubrahmanyamDelhi School of Economics

Introduction

Until some years ago, the study of Asian trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries was restricted almost wholly to its luxury commodity aspects. Thisarose quite naturally . ut of the fact that the focus of most historians was theEuro-Asian trade in high value goods, with the intra-Asian trade heing dealtwith only insofar as was necessary to understand its Euro-Asian counterpart.Even in more recent years, when this essentially Eurocentric vision has

given way to the study of Asian trade for its own sake, the emphasis on

pepper, exotic spices, silks and rich textiles has to some extent remained.The humbler commodities that formed the real staple on which the warp andweft of Asian trade in ;h. sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were spun,were relegated to a rice ( i relative obscurity. However studies of certain

aspects of ~-~ian trade in the period, such as the links of the Coromandelcoast and Gujarat with South-east Asia and the Middle East soon brought to

light that even where the trade in textiles was concerned, it was not the rich,high value textiles that were so important as coarse, low-count cottons of.

daily wear and use. This naturally suggested a far more basic interdependenceamong the societies and economies engaged in the trade than had previouslybeen postulated, and it was no longer possible to dismiss the articles of tradeas ’splendid but trifling,’ having little impact on the great mass of the

population and only of interest for a tiny elite segment. A decade ago, Ashin Das Gupta, addressing the medieval section of theIndian History Congress, pointed out clearly that it was not the ’gold cloth’of Gujarat or other exotica on which Asian trade in the period was founded.Besides 1’&dquo;

Ifntingout the

importanceof the

relativelycoarse textiles of mass

consumption in the trade, he went on to add, significantly:

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Professors Dharma Kumar and Om Prakash for numerous

helpful comments and suggestions or. the paper. I would also like to express my deep gratitudeto Professor Jos6 Leal-Ferreira (Jr.) for his invaluable assistance. Any errors of fact or

interpretation that remain are, naturally, my sole responsibility.


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It is well to remember the trade in foodstuff which was an important partof maritime trade in the middle ages. Bengal and the Konkan coast were

grain exporting areas, and besides feeding deficit pockets in the Indiancoast, the grain reached Aden and Hormuz in the west, and Malacca inthe east by way of regular commerce.

I

Of course, scarcely any serious discussion of the Asian trade is conducted

any longer in terms of this ’splendid but trifling’ conception mentionedearlier. However, when the basic commodities that were traded are referred

to, it is manufactures-and more specifically, textiles-that have tended tooccupy the centre of the stage. A fair number of studies over the last fifteen

years have concentrated on this range of commodities, whereas one has to

search hard (and possibly in vain) for any corresponding studies of the tradein foodstuff from the two conspicuous rice exporting areas mentioned by Ashin Das Gupta-Bengal and the Konkan (or Kanara) coast.

Other areas in the pre-modem world have been studied, in contrast, with

greater attention being devoted to the grain trade. For instance, Braudel’sclassic study of the Mediterranean is rich in this respect. Commenting on the

relative importance of different trades, he notes:

The pepper and the spice trade was one of luxury foodstuffs, and thenames associated with it are those of the great merchant families of the

sixteenth century: the Affaitati, the Ximenez, the Malvenda, the Welsersand the Fuggers. The grain trade, although less spectacular, representedan enormous volume of business. As well as the several main supplyroutes, it fed a network of secondary arteries and capillaries which itwould be most unwise to dismiss lightly

2

In the Asian case, we are yet to understand the working of even the main

supply lines, let alone the secondary networks. The study of what M.N.Pearson has termed the ’glamour routes’-the conspicuous routes on whichthe high value commodity movements were earned on-still exercise a greatfascination, as do Great Merchants, Great Ships and Great Ports.

It is instructive to note that even where necessary commodities (as opposedto luxuries) are concerned, there are somewhat different implications

dependingon whether one is

referringto the

exportof

agricultural goodsor

that of manufactures. The extensive literature on the manufacture and

export of textiles from India, and more specifically, the Gujarat, Coromandeland Bengal regions, has often had underlying it, rightly or wrongly, a

conception of a passive and relatively unchanging agrarian hinterland in

1 Ashin Das Gupta, Presidential Address to the medieval section of the Indian History

Congress, 38th Session, 1974, p. 6.2 F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of PhilipII(tr. Sian

Reynolds, London 1972), Vol. 1, p. 570.


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which the thriving centres of textile production are possessed of an enclave-like character. In this commonly held view then (to which there are some

important exceptions in the literature),’ the links of the export trade tobroader economic processes was strictly limited. In some formulations, ithas even been suggested that the manufacturing sector was a sterile sector

(in the sense of the French physiocratic literature), serving little purposeother than to facilitate the import of bullion to satisfy the needs of a narrowelite class.

It would not be possible to adequately discuss these broader questions

here,but a brief comment is in order with

respectto the rather different

implication when one discusses the trade in agricultural commodities. For a

region to support a regular export of foodgrains, there must not only be aconsistent surplus of production over consumption in that region but also amechanism for the mobilisation and marketing of that surplus. In some

pre-modem economies, including certain portions of India in the pre-Britishperiod, it has been suggested that at leabt a part of the trade in foodgrainswas carried on by the state, with the state collecting the surplus by way of theland tax and other taxes, and proceeding to participate in the trade in the

commodity.’ Alternately, the state’s demand for land revenue could, even if it were

expressed in cash, cause the forced sale of foodgrains to meet the demand.For this to happen, the existence of a market by which the surplus in graincould be transformed into cash would be necessary. This sort of ’forced

commercialisation’ hypothesis is frequently encountered in the literature onthe Mughal state and economy. If however, in the pre-modem Asian

economy, producers are seen to be voluntarily marketing grain quiteindependently of the state’s demand for revenue, one can talk of a buddingcommercialisation in agriculture, the implications of which would be ratherdifferent from those of the ’forced commercialisation’ model mentioned

earlier. Even if the importing areas were usually urban centres, as indeedone would expect them to be, the trade in foodgrains would be seen to be

closely linked with the state of the agrarian economy of at least the exporting3 For the protagonists of this viewpoint see T. Raychaudhuri, Jan Company in Coromandel

(The Hague 1962), as well as his essay ’The Asiatic Mode of Production and India’s ForeignTrade in the Seventeenth Century,’ in Essays in Honour of S.C. Sarkar (New Delhi 1976),pp. 839-46. Other examples include Mihir Rakshit, The Labour-SurplusEconomy (New Delhi

1982), Chapter 4. Important exceptions include Om Prakash, ’Bullion for Goods: InternationalTrade and the Economy of Early 18th Century Bengal,’ Indian Economic and Social HistoryReview, Vol. 13, 1976, and more recently, Frank Perlin, ’Proto-Industrialisation and Pre-Modern South Asia,’Past and Present, No. 1, 1983.

4 It has been suggested that this was true of seventeenth century Golconda. See Joseph. J.

Brennig, The Textile Trade of17th Century Northern Coromandel (unpublished Ph.D. disserta-tion, University of Wisconsin 1975). There is some evidence, as yet unutilised, to suggest the

same for Madurai in the seventeenth century in the Portuguese records.5 A classic example is of course Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (Bombay

1963).


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disproportionate emphasis. While this is a hazard that one faces while usingall European records of the period in the study of Asian history, it would bewell to bear it in mind.

The Agrarian Setting

The port-town of Basrur lies in the modem district of South Kanara in thelatitude of 13°37’ North. The port itself no longer functions, and the sea-bome trade in its immediate vicinity has been largely carried on over the last

centuryand a half from the

port of Coondapoor,located some six kilometres

to the west of Basrur. A brief description of the terrain is in order here as an

understanding of the rice trade is scarcely possible otherwise. The modemdistricts of North and South Kanara lie on a narrow strip of land between theWestern Ghats and the Arabian Sea, on the south-west coast of India. The

width of the coastal strip rarely exceeds fifty kilometres and is frequentlymuch narrower, particularly in North Kanara.The districts themselves are formed by a laterite plateau, atop a granite

bed, a plateau that has been worn into numerous valleys by the action of the

myriad rivers that flow down from the Western Ghats into the Arabian Sea.The flow of these rivers waxes and wanes with the annual monsoon cycle,but their relatively insignificant individual size is more than compensated for

by their number: there are rivers practically every few kilometres along the

length of Kanara. The river valleys are the scene of the rich cultivation ofrice that occurs in the region; outside of them, the level plateau produceslittle except scrub and grass. The upper reaches of the valleys and the regionsfurther inland, along the slope of the Ghats, are heavily wooded, so that the

region has always had an extremely high ratio of wooded to cultivable land.

The cultivable land, which is a rich laterite, is particularly productive in thelower reaches of the valleys, closer to the coast. It is in these lands that themost prosperous cultivation of rice is to be found. In South Kanara itself, the

region north of the Chandragiri river is more hospitable for rice cultivationthan that south of it. Basrur thus lies in the middle of some of the most

productive rice land in India.’

Along the length of the Kanara coast, numerous estuaries are to be found,created by the simultaneous entry of several rivers into the sea in one

vicinity. Many of the prosperous Kanara ports of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries were located in such estuaries. From north to south theyincluded Mirjan, Honawar, Barkur and Mangalore.’ In the case of Basrur,

6See the entry for South Kanara district in the Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XV (Oxford1908), pp. 355-61, as also Edward Thornton, A Gazetteer of the Territories under the Government

of the East India Company, Vol. 2, in 4 volumes (London 1854), pp. 15-16, Gazetteer of theSouth Canara District (Madras 1938), and the classic early nineteenth century account,F. Buchanan, Journey from Madras through the Lands of Mysore, Kanara and Malabar, 3volumes (Madras 1908), particularly, Vol. 3, pp. 1-150.

7 See M.L. Dames, ed., The Book of Duarte Barbosa (London, Hakluyt Society 1918),

Vol. 1, pp. 185-95.


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the rivers Kolluru, Chakranadi and Maladi flow into the sea in the estuary of

Coondapoor.8 The river system that is formed in the region is a complex one,as the map indicates, but it ensures plentiful irrigation for the hinterland ofthe port. The port of Coondapoor mentioned earlier, lies at the mouth of the

estuary, on its southern side, the northern side being formed by the peninsulaof Gangolli. The town of Basrur itself lies some kilometres upriver from theestuary, on the southern bank of the Haladi.

The economy of the region centred largely around the cultivation of rice,both its finer and coarser varieties. Besides this crop, coconut palms were

also found in large numbers close to the coast, so that coconuts, coir andother products of that useful tree were also abundantly available on the coastin the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Besides, small amounts of pulses,black and green gram and sugarcane were grown. In the areca gardens of the

upland, and in the wild forests of the slopes, pepper was also found, both inthe natural state as well as cultivated. While pepper was an importantproduct of Kanara in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularlywhere the Portuguese were concerned, one should not exaggerate its

importance. Even before the regressive measures taken by the ruler of

Mysore, Tipu Sultan, to discourage the cultivation of pepper in Kanara inthe eighteenth century, the pepper production of Kanara was a mere fractionof that grown south of Mt. Eli. in Malabar. The most important crop was atthat time, and even today, rice. As late as 1925-26, rice accounted for asmuch as 75-80 per cent of total land area cropped in the Coondapoordivision of South Kanara.9

The cultivation of this rice in the river valleys depended on the harnessingof the water in the streams that wound their way from the Ghats to the sea

through the valleys. The best rice fields in these valleys were those on levelwith the channel itself, which were fed by it during the first crop season ofKartika (May to October) by opening and closing small apertures in theembankments of the stream. During the second crop season of Sugge(October to January), small dams were thrown across the streams at intervals,and by this means the level of water m the stream was maintained to providea second rice crop, and on occasion even a third, in the Kolake crop season

(January to April). These superior lands were usually termed baylu lands.The second grade of land, termed majelu, was on the level immediately

above that of the stream, in the valley. Here the water for the second croprequired the use of the picottai or hand-scoop, or some other form of water

transport. Finally, the lowest grade of lands were those on the slopes of the

valley, being cut in terraces on the hillside. These gave only one crop of riceand were dependent on rainfall for their water, supplemented, on occasion,

by jungle streams. This third category oi land, called bettu, was scarcely in8 In some of the older accounts, it is mentioned that five rivers enter the Coondapoor

estuary. This is because the Maladi and the Chakranadi bifurcate further inland9

Gazetteer of the South Canara District, op. cit. , pp. 24-25 of the Statistical Appendix.


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use in the

regionuntil the nineteenth

century,as the

highland to man ratio

until that period ensured that such marginal lands were not pressed intoservice. The method of transplantation of seedlings was used only on the

baylu lands, whereas most other lands grew their rice using sprouted seedthat was prepared in straw bags. Even on the superior lands, the rice grownin the second and third crops was not cultivated by transplantation. As aresult of the use of sprouted seed, the rice of the second crop was of inferior

quality and largely used for home consumption.’°°

During the period of ascendancy of the Vijayanagar empire, from the late

fourteenth century onwards, a large proportion of the richer rice lands,those in the parts of the valley downriver near the coast, were in the hands ofBrahmin settlements or agraharas, usually those populated by Kannada-

speaking Saiva Brahmins. These Brahmins, ritually prohibited from culti-

vating the land or handling the plough themselves, made use of other labour,usually hired labour, for the purpose.&dquo; These arrangements persisted intothe early nineteenth century, when Francis Buchanan visited the region.Besides commenting on the relatively high proportion of lands in Brahminhands in the region, Buchanan also remarked that the wages paid to hired

labour in the region were higher than in almost any other part of South Indiatoured by him.’2 Besides hired labour, the use ofbonded labour was far from

uncommon, and even the few Portuguese who were settled in the region inthe late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries seemed to have favouredthis mode of cultivation. The caste composition of the region was in keepingwith the nature of cultivation arrangements, so that corresponding to therather high proportion of Brahmin land-owners in the locality, the Holeyas,a caste of agricultural labour, and the Billavas, a caste of toddy-tapperswhoalso doubled as agricultural labour, accounted for a significant proportion

(18 to 20 per cent in the late nineteenth century) of total population.’3Inland, and away from the narrow strip of Brahmin settlements along the

coast, the land was held and cultivated by the Bants, a caste of ’clean’Sudras. Still further inland, skirting the Ghats, forms of slash-and-bumcultivation were practised by tribal populations, which survived well into thenineteenth century. Settlement types also varied as one proceeded from the

coast to the interior; whereas the coastal strip of agraharas were of semi-

compact settlements, the more loosely conglomerated hamlet-type dominatedthe

upperreaches of the river

valleys, finally giving wayto

dispersedsettle-

ments on the slopes of the Ghats. 14 We have already remarked on the strong

10 See The Book of Duarte Barbosa, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 185, 192-93. Also F. Buchanan,

op. cit., Vol. 3, pp. 35-38." K.G. Vasantha Madhava, ’Land Control and Caste Structure in Coastal Karnataka,’

Indica, Vol. 19, No. 1, March 1982, as also Buchanan, ibid.12 Buchanan, ibid., p. 37.13 See Imperial Gazeneer of India, Vol. XIV, op. cit., n. 6, pp. 358-60.14

National Atlas of India, Southern India Plate 294, Village Types (Calcutta 1979).


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hold of Saiva Brahmins on coastalcultivation by the sixteenth century. Thisdoes not mean that other groups were wholly excluded, and small groups of

Saraswat Brahmins were also to be found in the possession of land-

particularly to the south, near Mangalore. Upto the seventeenth century,the region around Mangalore preserved a slightly different character fromthat to the north, owing to the enclave of Jains resident there, who looked toSravanabelagola for spiritual purposes and to the Jain ruler of Bangher, aprincipality operating under the aegis of Vijayanagar, for material benefits.There were several flourishing Jain mathas in the area, which both possessedtracts of land and had, quite often, the rights to revenue collection given tothem in addition. They were thus the counterparts of the Hindu templesalong the rest of the coast which, as elsewhere in the Vijayanagar empire,were of some importance in preserving the social and economic, as well asthe religious, fabric of the region. In this southern part of Kanara, a proportionof the chief cultivating caste, the Bants, were also converts to Jainism.

15

While the region’s agriculture was, in the last analysis, dependent on themonsoon, and on the monsoon-fed rivers that criss-crossed the coastal strip,it was far more secure than the monsoon-dependent agriculture of most

other parts of southern India. The variation in rainfall still preserved a

respectable level of annual precipitation, even in years of a weak monsoon. A crisis in agriculture on this account was almost unknown in the centuriesafter 1500, and even the widespread famines of the late 1540s and early1630s, which assumed disastrous proportions elsewhere in India, left the

region almost unscathed. However, in the eighteenth century, there isevidence of a fairly serious epidemic, which combined with the very rarefamine that occurred in 1727 left the region quite thinly populated. The

region’s geographicallocation

(particularlythe barrier of the Ghats to the

east) discouraged extensive population movements, and in the melee of

migratory movements that characterised Vijayanagar, the region remainedsomewhat aloof. Equally, the possibilities ofmigratory responses to a reduc-tion in population on account of some catastrophe were limited. &dquo;’

Before concluding the section, it would be necessary tomake at least somemention of the incidence and collection of land revenue in the region.During the heyday of Vijayanagar (from the late fourteenth to the latesixteenth centuries), the region was nominally governed from the western

viceroyalty seated at Srirangapatnam. By all accounts, the control ofVijayanagar over the petty principalities along the west coast, such as

Bangher, Ullal, Gangolli, Bhatkal and Gersoppa, was rather limited. These

principalities were controlled by local rulers, who had hereditary claims overthe local overlordship and paid tribute to Vijayanagar. The actual collectionof land revenue was left to them, with the imperial authority only concerningitself directly with two taxes-the customs of the ports and the tolls on the

I

15 Vasantha Madhava, op. cit., n. 11, pp. 19-20.16

Imperial Gazetteer, Vol. XIV, op. cit., n. 6; also Buchanan, op. cit., Vol. 3, pp. 35-40.


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highways connecting the ports to the imperial city of Vijayanagar. Even inthese, the imperial interest was limited to ensuring that the commercial linksto the seaboard were not harmed. Under such a loose regime, local landrevenue administration was autonomous to a high degree. A large proportionof the lands directly abutting the coast, which belonged to the agraharas, aswell as those of the temples and other religious institutionswere lightly taxedor even exempt from tax. Where taxes were collected, it is difficult to

conclude much concerning the proportion of gross or net output that wascollected. While scriptural precepts on these subjects did exist, in theabsence of

frequentmeasurement of land

holdings,or their

productivity,one can only conclude that ad hoc rates were in force, based on the principlesof collective bargaining. One must remark, however, that the complaints ofexcessive extortion-so common elsewhere in India in the period-arenever made by contemporary observers in relation to this region.&dquo;From the late sixteenth century, the Nayaks of Ikkeri, in the Shimoga

district of modem Karnataka, emerged as a strong regional power in thewake of the defeat of the Vijayanagar empire at the hands of the Deccansultanates. Their control over the Kanara coast by the early seventeenth

century was strong, and they succeeded in undermining the semi-autonomousrulers along the coast, who had been tolerated under the earlier regime. Notmuch is known of the administration of land revenue under their regime, butthe evidence that exists points to the fact that their rule did little to alter localinstitutions, and, if anything, strengthened the hand of the Saiva communities

along the coast. It would appear then, that the coastal region of Kanara,unlike other prosperous agrarian regions such as the Godavari and Krishnadeltas in the seventeenth century, escaped the rigours of a harshly extractiveand demanding state system and land revenue collection machinery.’8

The Evolution of the Kanara Trade in the Sixteenth Century

In the early sixteenth century, on the arrival of the Portuguese on thewestern coast of India, the trade of the Kanara coast was largely centredaround the port of Bhatkal, north of Basrur.’9 This port was connected to

the imperial capital of Vijayanagar, several hundred kilometres inland on

" On the system followed by the Vijayanagar empire in the Karnataka region, see

N. Venkataramanayya, Studies in the History of the Third Dynasty of Vijayanagar (Madras1935), pp. 164-85, as also Madhava, op. cit., n. 11. More recent work on Vijananagar, such asthat of Burton Stein, eschews discussion of land revenue burden almost wholly.

18 On Ikkeri, see K.D. Swaminathan, The Nayaks of Ikkeri (Madras 1957), which, however,is rather poor where economic history is concerned. On the Godavari and Krishna deltas theclassic account is of the Englishman Methwold in W.H. Moreland, ed., Relations ofGolcondain the Seventeenth Century (London 1931).

19 See The Book of Duarte Barbosa, op. cit., Vol. 1, n. 7, pp. 187-91. Also the account

published by Luciano Ribeiro, ’Uma Geografia Quinhentista,’ Studia, No. 7, January 1961,

pp. 240-41.


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the banks of the Tunghabhadra, by a direct road passing through a gap in theGhats. This was the road that most foreign travellers visiting the imperialcapital took to approach that city, and Bhatkal appears to have been thenormal port ofdisembarkation to proceed in that direction. To the north andsouth of Bhatkal were numerous ports such as Ankola, Mirjan, Honawar,Baindur, Basrur, Barakur, Mangalore and Kumbla. These ports were largelyports of call in the coasting trade, which dealt in rice and coconuts, coir,pepper and other products that were carried in open craft along the length ofthe western coast of India. Rice was the most important commodity carriedin this coastal trade, at least in terms ofvolume, and the types of rice differed

depending on the port of export. The hinterland of the ports north ofHonawar produced very little rice, and exported only marginal quantities.The central Kanara ports such as Bhatkal, Basrur and Barkur were exportersof fine white rice, while the more southerly ports-such as Mangalore andKumbla-largely exported coarse red and black, as well as broken rice. Therice was carried both to the south (to those parts of Malabar south of

Cannanore) as well as to the north Konkan, and to the Persian Gulf and eventhe Red Sea ports.2° Most of these Kanara ports were really engaged in theshort-distance and

coasting trades,and it would

appearthat the

longerdistance oceanic trade was relatively centralised and carried on from Bhatkal.To carry on a certain kind of trade, it was necessary that a port satisfy

certain requirements; not every port could support a large flow of trade in

high-value commodities. The orientation of Bhatkal was towards the PersianGulf and the Red Sea and the exchange of commodities on which the linkwas based was the following. Pepper from the hinterland as well as pepperfrom north Malabar seems to have passed through this port on its way tothese two destinations. Together with this, some textiles and iron, presumably

transported from across the Ghats, as iron was not produced in Kanara,were carried, together with rice and some other provisions. The ports of theRed Sea and Persian Gulf were (and indeed still are) extensively dependenton imports for their food supply. To sustain such knots of population as

Hormuz, Muscat, Jeddah or Mokha as enclaves in such a barren hinterlandwould scarcely have been possible otherwise. To be sure, the Kanara portswere not the sole source of food supply to these ports, as the rice from East

Africa and even Iraq played a role in the provisioning of these urbancentres. This is a trade that has as yet not been adequately explored in the

literature’The imports into Bhatkal from the two regions that it traded with, the Red

Sea and the Persian Gulf, were such as necessitated a close link between the

20 Ibid., particularly Ribeiro, pp. 240-43.21 Some questions could be raised on the extent of dependence of the Red Sea ports on

external supplies, but to answer these would prove impossible at the moment. On the spread of

ricein the old world and east Africa, Andrew M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the EarlyIslamic World (Cambridge 1983), pp. 15-20.


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importing port and a large centre of consumption. Horses, imported for usein the cavalry, were naturally to be carried, by and large, to the imperial city,where the court took an active interest in fostering the trade. Other goodsimported included silks, aromatics, and other luxuries, once more calling forthe existence of a high income consuming class, such as could be found onlyin a city as large and prosperous as Vijayanagar. Finally, a diversity ofmetals, including gold, lead and copper were imported from the MiddleEast. At least two of these, gold and copper, were crucial for the working ofthe monetary system of the empire. 22

In the first decades of the sixteenth century, immediately on their arrivalon the Indian ocean scene, the Portuguese made serious attempts at policingand choking off links between the south-west coast of India and the Red Sea.In these early decades, their endeavours were at least partially successful asis shown by the declining availability of spices in the eastern Mediterranean.Some control was also attempted, with a lesser degree of success, on thetrade with the Persian Gulf. This policy of the Portuguese Estado da india,which was mainly aimed at shipments of pepper and spices, resulted in adecline in the trade from Calicut and Cannanore to the Middle

East, thougha growing body ofwork has come to suggest that this situation was reversedfrom the middle of the sixteenth century.23 The impact of these fluctuationson the fortunes of Bhatkal have yet to be examined, as scholars have rather

underestimated the importance of this port, neglecting it for Goa on the one

hand, and the Malabar ports on the other.In character, Bhatkal in the early sixteenth century was a fairly cosmo-

politan port, dominatedby Mapilla merchants where the seaborne trade wasconcerned, but also containing a large Hindu trading community and a

sizeable group of Jain traders as well. However, in Portuguese eyes it wasstrongly identified with the ’Moorish’ merchants from Arabia and con-

sequently treated with scarcely concealed hostility. Already, in the firstdecade of their presence off the west coast, the Portuguese began demandingtribute in the form of rice from the merchants of the port. They maintained a

factory in the port for the collection of this tribute, and the issuing of cartazesto shipping from the port. Several skirmishes between the Portuguese andthe merchants of this port are known to have occurred in the course of the

century, including one in 1542, when there was a pitched battle between the

22 The Vijayanagar monetary system was based on the minting of gold coins(Varahas,Pratapas) and copper coins(Kasu), with silver playing a very unimportant role.

23 The decline and subsequent revival of the Red Sea route is the subject of several recentworks. For example, see V. Magalh&amacr;es Godinho, Os descobrimentose a economia mundial,

segunda ediç&amacr;o, 4 volumes (Lisboa 1981-83), Volume 2, pp. 128-34, besides which there is theclassic work of Braudel, F.C. Lane and others. That the Portuguese tried quite hard to block theroute in the early years of the sixteenth century can scarcely be denied, even if the nature of the

system made leakage inevitable. On the latter aspect, see Luis de Albuquerque and Inácio

Guerreiro. Khoja Shams-ud-din, Comerciante de Cananor na 1 a metade do seculoXVI (Paperpresented at the second international seminar on Indo-Portuguese History, Lisboa, 1980).


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townsmen and the Portuguese under the belligerent Martim Affonso deSousa. On this occasion, large sections of the town were destroyed.24 Not-

withstanding all these mishaps, Bhatkal played an important role in therevival of the Red Sea trade after the mid-sixteenth century. A growingpepper trade is reported with Jeddah, and ship arrivals in that port in the1560s included. several from ’Baticala,’ besides the numerous craft from

Achin.25

The decline of Bhatkal can be traced to the late 1560s and must be seen in

the context of internal events in

Vijayanagar.The

abandoningof that

city bythe court in favour of the hill fort of Penugonda after the resounding defeatreceived by the Vijayanagar forces in 1565, signalled a decline in the fortunesof Bhatkal. The port, as we have already stressed, was an important point ofaccess to the sea for the large inland centre of consumption that was

Vijayanagar, and closely identified with the court ofVijayanagar, even if thecoastal regions of Kanara, including Bhatkal, had some degree ofautonomyfrom imperial authority. By the 1580s, barely two decades after the declineof the imperial city, Bhatkal had been reduced in status to a mere rice

trading port, so that the Dutch traveller J an Huyghen van Linschoten doesnot even deign to mention it in his description of Kanara.26 Even the

Portuguese had, by 1590, moved their factor out of Bhatkal and no longercollected their tribute there. The port scarcely rates a mention in the eariyDutch and English exploratory voyages off the west coast in the first decadesof the seventeenth century, and it was only in the 1630s that there was briefrefloresence with the settlement of a factory in the port by the Englishinterloping Courteen’s Association. When the fleet of Captain John Weddell

belonging to the Association berthed at the port, one of the members of the

expedition, Peter Mundy, gathered an impression of a port in an advancedstage of decay, in sharp contrast to the healthy picture presented of the portand its trade in the 1540s by the Portuguese Diogo do CoUto.21

Basrur and the Portuguese _

The decline and practical extinction of Bhatkal occurred together with someother changes in the trade of the Kanara coast in the 1560s, in which the

24 See

Diogodo Couto, Da Ásia, Decada Quinta, Parte Segunda (Lisboa 1974, edicão

Livraria Sam Carlos), pp. 303-8, on the expedition of Martim Affonso.25 See C.R. Boxer, ’A Note on the Portuguese Reaction to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice

Trade and the Rise of Atjeh 1540-1600,’ Journal of South-East Asian History, Vol. 10, No. 3,December 1969, pp. 415-28.

26 The Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies (Hakluyt Society 1885),Volume 1 edited by A.C. Burnell, and Volume 2 by P.A. Tiele. See Vol. 1.

27 On the Portuguese factor at Bhatkal, A.T. de Matos, O Estado da Índia nous anos de

1581-88, Estrutura Administrativa e Economica (Ponta Delgada 1982), p. 171. For Peter

Mundy’s account, see R.C. Temple, ed., The Travels of Peter Mundy (London 1919), Vol. 2,pp. 96-97. Mundy remarks, ’In former times, it seemes this towne hath bin a more flourishing

place, as appeares by the Multitude of ruined walles of hewen squared stone, Dried Welles, themany Pagodes and c. ’Contrast this to Couto, op. cit., n. 24.


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Portuguese had quite a big hand. Already by the mid-sixteenth century, theEstado da india was claiming regular ’tributes’ in the form of rice from three

ports along the coast, Honawar, Bhatkal, and Basrur, and an ambitious

blue-print from 1554 suggested that tribute be gathered from as many asthirteen others, from Ankola to Kumbla.2g This rice was apparently used to

supply Goa, but was not nearly enough, hence the proposal for an increaseddraft. After the debacle of 1565, the Portuguese state found the situation onthe coast propitious for strong action. In late 1567, the Governor Antdo deNoronha mounted a strong expedition against the port of Mangalore, and

the ’Queen’ of Ullal. After prolonged action and considerable bloodshed,the port was taken in early 1568.29 Towards the end of the same year, thenew Viceroy, D. Luis de Ataide mounted a similar expedition against

,

Honawar and Basrur. Honawar was, at the time, also dominated (likeBhatkal earlier in the century) by merchants of Arab origin. However, the

Portuguese fleet encountered little resistance; a small fort already in existencethere was taken over and re-christened Santa Catharina. This being done,the Portuguese fleet proceeded to Basrur.3°We have already noted the existence of relations between the Portuguese

and this port, and the payment of an annual tribute of a certain quantity ofrice by the port annually. This custom of an annual tribute went back to the1540s, in the immediate wake of the punitive expedition of Martim Affonsode Sousa to the Kanara coast in 1542.3’ At that time, to avoid any unpleasant-ness, the port of Basrur had agreed to make a voluntary annual payment ofseven hundred bales of rice, the bale of rice packed full of husked, cleanediice in rice-straw being the standard measure along the coast. This agreementwas subsequently re-negotiated in 1549, and the tribute reduced to fivehundred bales. 12 In

exchange,the

PortugueseEstado

promisedto

protectshipping from the port and to grant cartazes to its ships.These negotiations are interesting for the light that they shed on the

internal administration of B-asrur port. The merchants of the port are

referred to by the Portuguese collectively as the ’chatins de Barcelor’. Thechronicler Couto states specifically that unlike other regions along the coast,the settlers of Basrur ‘governed themselves like a Republic, and paid sometributes to the Raya’ (i.e., Vijayanagar).33 The power in the city is describedas being in the hands of a collective of ’govemadores’ or ’regedores,’ who on

specific occasions, such as the treaty of 1549, appointed agents from themerchant community to prosecute negotiations. This version of the admin-istration of the port is confirmed by a Portuguese description from 1580,

28 See Simão Botelho, O Tombo do Estado da Índia, in Rodrigo José de Lima Felner, ed.,Subsidios para a história da Índia Portuguesa (Lisboa 1868), pp. 246-47.

29 See Couto, Da Ásia, op. cit., n. 24, Decada Oitava, pp. 125-29.30

Ibid., pp. 276-78.31

Couto, Da Ásia, ibid., Decada Sexta, Parte Segunda, pp. 157-59.32 Ibid. The bale weighed 72 lbs or 33 kg.33 Ibid., Decada Oitava, p. 279.


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which states that the port was ’terrafranca governed like a Republic, withouthaving any other subjection nor recognising any form of overlordship savefor a small tribute that is paid to the kings of Narsinga.’34 Thus, not only wasthis port, unlike some of the other ports along the coast mentioned earlier,not perceived by the Portuguese as being in the hands of the ’Moors,’ it also

apparently had certain peculiarities in its form of administration, in contrastto other ports such as Honawar, Bhatkal or Mangalore, which were con-trolled by petty principalities, under the aegis of Vijayanagar.

’

On the arrival of the Portuguese expedition off the port in early 1569, they

discovered a small fort at the mouth of the estuary, where the town ofCoondapoor now stands. This fort was maintained at the expense of themerchant community of the town, and it was from this quarter that the

expedition encountered some little resistance. This was soon extinguished,and the Portuguese found themselves in the possession of one more fort,which they set about strengthening and promptly renamed Santa Luzia.35The location of this fort was good so far as the Portuguese were concerned,commanding as it did the mouth. of the estuary. Since the port was a fewkilometres upriver, the fort was in a position to effectively impede thecommerce of the native town of Basrur. The immediate steps taken by thePortuguese in the aftermath of this successful expedition were to re-

negotiate terms with the principalities along the coast. Fresh treaties con-

cerning tribute payments were signed, involving the delivery of not only ricebut of pepper, at a certain fixed price. Many of these were not worth the

paper they were written on. Together with this, two customs-houses werealso set up on the coast, one in Mangalore and the other in Basrur. While thecustoms-house in Mangalore continued to be in existence until the 1650s,that at Basrur had a relatively short life. In 1570, the Basrur customsamounted to some 5,000 pardaus annually, mainly import duties on horsesfrom Hormuz. Besides a sum of 1,000 tangas (an Indo-Portuguese silver

coin) was collected annually on exports, mainly rice.36Of all the treaties signed about this time-and there were many-only the

’chatins’ of Basrur adhered to their clauses, paying their annual due of rice

faithfully and in contrast to the recalcitrant rulers of Mirjan, Bhatkal orGersoppa. However, these merchants did not hesitate to complain that thePortuguese presence on the coast was ruining their trade, and according tothe

Portuguese, took perverse pleasure in tradingwith

the ’corsairsof

Malabar’. It was a regular Portuguese complaint in the 1580s that the Kanaracoast was a haven for these ’corsairs’ and the large number of river inlets

34 See F.P. Mendes da Luz, ’Livro das cidades e fortalezas que a Coroa de Portugal tem nas

partes da Índia, e das capitanias a mais cargos que nellas há, e a importancia delles,’ Studia, No.6, Julho 1960, p. 42 of the text.

35Couto, Da Ásia, op. cit., n. 24, Decada Citava, pp. 277-78.

36 See J. Aubin, ed., Le ’Orçamento do Estado da Índia’ de Antonio de Abreu,’ Studia, No.

4, Julho 1959, pp. 246-48.


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naturally provided excellent room for manoeuvre for their small craft.&dquo; Bythe 1580s, the customs-house at Basrur had been removed, and this can beseen as part of the attempt to centralise the import of horses from Persia toGoa.38 Even without the revenue of the customs-house, the utility of theKanara forts was undeniable. From the 1560s onwards, Kanara bacame thelifeline of Goa, a region that was dependent to a large extent on outsidesources for its supply of foodstuff. Regular convoys of rice-bearing shipsbegan to traverse the coast from the Kanara ports to Goa, often escorted byships from the Goa fleet. M.N. Pearson notes that the records of these

convoys begin in the 1560s and it has been suggested that prior to this, thebulk of the imports into Goa were carried overland.&dquo; As many as three tofour convoys were organised on occasion to supply the capital of PortugueseIndia. The composition of these convoys, the nature of the merchants whotraded in the food and the role of the Estado.da india and private Portuguese

.

in this trade, are issues that we shall turn to later.

From the longer term point of view, the acquisition of the Kanara fortsalso proved crucial for the Portuguese procurement of pepper. It was notuntil the 1580s and 1590s that the Kanara pepper began to account for a

significant proportion of pepper cargoes on Lisbon-bound Indiamen. Thecollection of pepper from that time on and in the first few decades of the

seventeenth century was largely in Honawar, supplemented by the inferior

pepper of Mangalore. Basrur, however, was scarcely of importance in the

pepper network of the Fortuguese; for them it was the rice port par excellence. After 1600, the importance of these Kanara forts in the Portuguese networkwas enhanced. On the one hand, Honawar became the most importantsource of pepper, with the declining availability of Malabar pepper, and thevirtual loss of the South-east Asian sources.4o Further, with the Portugueseshipping lanes coming under attack from the vessels of the United DutchEast India Company, links between Kanara and Goa, which were relativelyeasy to police and maintain, were of crucial importance for the survival ofGoa. Also, the need to supply other beleagured garrisons in the course ofthe losing war with the Dutch in the period 1600 to 1650 made every sourceof foodstuff a virtual gold mine. The frantic Portuguese attempts to top as

unlikely a source as Golconda, and the port of Masulipatnam, to supplyfoodstuff to Malacca and the forts in Ceylon in the 1630s and the 1640s, and

the extent of concessionsthey

were

willingto offer to this end

(even goingso

37 See M.N. Pearson, Coastal Western India (New Delhi 1981), p. 125, and F.P. Mendes da

Luz, ’Livro das cidades ...’op. cit., n. 34, pp. 40-41 of the text.38 Mendes da Luz, ibid., pp. 42-43.39

Pearson, op. cit., n. 37, p. 77.40 See A. Disney, The Twilight of the Pepper Empire (Harvard 1978), pp. 4-5, passim. For a

contenporary account on the procurement ofpepper in the seventeenth century, see Francisco

da Costa’s account in Documentacáo Ultramarina Portuguesa III, edited by A. da Silva Rego,

pp. 295-379.


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448,

far as to offer a share of the China trade to the Persian merchants and noblesof Golconda) would demonstrate the truth of this.41From about 1600, the shadow of Ikkeri began to loom large in Kanara

politics. Skirmishes between the Nayaks of Ikkeri and the rulers of Gersoppahad already begun in the late sixteenth century.42 Between 1600 and 1620,Venkatappa, the ruler of Ikkeri acquired control over large portions of thecoast and hinterland, defeating and reducing many of the petty coastal rulersin the process, and together with the Wodeyar ruler of Mysore, becomingthe de facto ruler of the western portion of what in 1550 had been

Vijayanagar.43 Having achieved major gains on the coast with the defeat anddestruction of Gersoppa, Venkatappa (1586-1629) made an offer to the

Portuguese Governor at Goa-the prelate D. Frei Aleixo de Meneses-in1608, suggesting that the Portuguese once again set up a customs-house atBasrur. 44 The offer was accepted and a code formulated regulating duties,official perquisites and other details of the functioningof the customs-house. A duty of 6 per cent on all commodity imports from Gujarat, the Gulf,Cochin, and South-east Asia was to be charged, besides a duty of the samevalue on exports both by sea and overland. The instructions given to theofficial in charge of the customs-house make it clear that the estuary was not

large enough to accommodate large ships (naos) and that traffic would

necessarily be restricted to smaller oared ships (navios de remo).In the same year of 1608, another provision was passed stating specifically

that goods leaving Basrur for all parts would be exempt from calling at Goa,unlike ships from other ports along the coast where no Portuguese customs-house existed. It is abundantly clear from the way that the provision wasframed that under normal circumstances, the ’Goa toll’ was taken none too

seriously by shipping. At the time of the setting up of the customs-house, the customs at Goa andCochin were being farmed out together to a combine of two Portuguese, Antonio Gomes de Luas and Doutor Cosmo Gonsalves Freire. The customs

of Basrur were also placed in their hands, and while the administration ofcustoms rested in the hands of state officials, all accountswere to be remitted

to these revenue farmers. Within a few years, the administration of the

customs-house was in difficulties. The factor and the secretary of the fort

began levying unauthorised cesses on shipping and merchandise, prompting

repeated complaints. There were also doubts raised by the revenue-farmerson the veracity of the accounts submitted to them.45

41 Historical Archives, Goa (henceforth HAG), Regimentos e Instruç&omacr;es, No. 4 (1640-46),fl. 11-11v.

42 HAG, Monç&omacr;es do Reino, 2B (1595-1601.), fls 421-23, ’O que dizeis que a Rainha de

Baticala...etc.’

43 See Disney, op. cit., n. 40, pp. 6-7; also Swaminathan, op. cit., n. 18 on the expansion of

Ikkeri under Venkatappa.44HAG, Provis&omacr;es dos Vice-Reis, No. 2, fls 64, 78.

45 HAG, Provis&omacr;es dos Vice-Reis, No. 2, fls 92v, 176v.


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In 1()25, in response to a complaint on the part of the contractors who heldthe customs ot Goa and Cochin, an injunction was passed severely curtailingthe unloading of goods at Basrur. Henceforth, ships from Cochin, China,Malacca, and the ’parts of the North’ were only to unload goods in Goa.Thus, practically all goods on their way to Basrur were to pass, at least in

theory, through Goa. Complaints had also been received that the captainand the factor at Basrur were rather too liberal in granting of cartazes to local

shipping, particularly that belonging to Venkatappa Nayak. These shipsoften used the cartazes on the Mecca run, usually loaded with pepper.4° In

any event, by the mid-1620s, the idea that the customs-house in Basrurwould, in any way, plug the gap caused by the failure of shipping to passthrough Goa was being iooked at with undisguised scepticism in officia!Portuguese circles. This was natural enough as the collections had been

declining steadily at Basrur from 1615 to 1625, without any correspondingevidence of a fall in traffic.

However, one source of revenue that continued to be a steady, if small,contribution to the exchequer was a specific impost placed on the rice

exports from the port. It is evident from the sources that the chief group on

whom this tax’s incidence occurred were the native merchants, or ’chatins’of Basrur. This rice was carried in smail open vessels down the river from the

native town. These boats had to pass the Portuguese fort located at themouth of the estuary and were required to make the payment of the levy atthat point. These boats (variously termed parangues, paros and zambucos)normally sailed in large fleets, and in the 1630s, it is reported that there wereas many as 150 such boats in a single fleet from Kanara to Goa.41 A Dutchfleet coasting the Kanara region at about the same time reported an even

largerfleet of 200 sail. 4!! It was on this trade, or more

specifically,the

portionof the trade that originated from the native town of Basrur (or Barcelore decima as the Portuguese termed it), that a levy existed, charged at the rate offive bazaruco.s (a copper coin) per bale of rice (we have already noted thatthe bale measure was a standard one for rice along the Kanara coast).&dquo;

In the period up to 1628, this levy was collected directly by the PortugueseCrown’s factor at Basrur and expended on the works of fortification andother expenses there. Given the free and easy ways of these factors and

Portuguese officials in the period and the general tendency to regard meumand teum as

much the same, it is quite likely thata

part ofwhat was

collectedwound up in the pockets of the factor and other officials and only a portion46

HAG, Conselho da Fazenda, No. 2(1618-25), fls 270v-271v.47 Antonio Bocarro, ’Livro das plantas das todas as fortalezas, cidades e povoaç&omacr;es do

Estado da India Oriental,’ in A.B. Bragança Pereira, Arquivo Portuguez Oriental, Tomo IV,Vol. 2, Parte 1 (Nova Goa 1939), pp. 283-84.

48 H.T. Colenbrander, ed., Dagh-Register gehouden int Casteel Batavia, Anno 1636 (’s-

Gravenhage 1899), pp. 109-10.49 See Bocarro, op. cit., n. 47, p. 317, passim. For the exchange rate between the buzaruco

and the tanga at the time, I have relied on Godinho, op. cit., n. 23, Vol. 2, p. 47.


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was properly reported. The point to note then is that the figures on collectionson the account of this particular levy can only have been understatements ofthe actual collection, and that it is therefore quite safe to use them in order toset a lower bound to rice exports from the port. The figures of total collection,when divided by the per unit levy gives us the total number of bales passingthrough the customs-house, and we may translate the bale measure into amore modem unit.so .

In 1628, it was decided that the use of Crown officials was a poor way ofgoing about the collection of revenue. In a solution characteristic of theperiod, the impost on rice was farmed out to the highest bidder, with the

proviso that the per unit value of the levy be maintained. For the year1628-29, the highest bid was one of 1425 xerafins. Since the bidder usuallyrecovered the value of his bid and more, we can treat this figure as anotherlower bound for estimating actual collection. This would imply that at least3,500,000 kg of rice was being exported from the port at the time.

Interestingly enough, in the first quarter of the year extending from

March 1628 to March 1629 alone, the actual receipts of the revenue farmersindicate a rice export of 1.16 million kg in that quarter alone. This is

particularly remarkable if one bears in mind that this was not the busiestseason for the export of rice; in fact, the peak season occurred in Octoberand November after the first season’s (Kartika) harvest. Further, it isnoticeable that in the succeeding year, the highest bid is reported to have

gone up to 1825 xerafins. If this may be treated in turn as a lower bound on

collections, it would appear that some 4.5 million kgs of rice, if not more,must have

passed throughthe customs-house.

Alternately,if the bidders

were aware of what actual collections had been the previous year (i.e.,1628-29) and were bidding on that basis, one may treat our last figure as anestimate of the exports in that year. It is also observable that the dimensionsof this annual figure jell fairly well with the quarter’s export figure of 1.16million kg cited earlier. 51

50

HAG, Monç&omacr;es do Reino 13a (1629-30), fl. 22v, 102-102v.51 There are, ofcourse, problems in comparing the two figures, seeing the different ways in

which they have been derived.


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451

These figures would obviously demonstrate that the rice trade from the

port of Basrur alone was of considerable dimensions. To give the figurescited in the foregoing a more accessible dimension, it may be mentioned thatthe average per head consumption of rice in India is about 200 kgs a year.This would imply that an export of the order of 3.5 million kgs a year wouldbe sufficient to keep some 15,000 persons supplied. The question naturallyarises in such a context of where this rice was bound for. The Portugueseseventeenth century chronicler Antonio Bocarro informs us that the chief

destinations were Goa, Malacca, Muscat, Mozambique and Mombassa. Itwould not be possible to treat of all these links, since information is onlyavailable on some. The link with East Africa and Mozambique in particularis one that is almost completely shrouded in darkness. Further, it is clear thatBocarro was being selective in his description, and had a tendency to placean emphasis on those links which directly concerned the Portuguese. Linkswith other parts of the Persian Gulf, and also with the ports of the Red Sea

which might well have continued from the previous century, remainunstated.52

However, a few links in the network of trade are particularly clear and weshall

developthem,

attemptingat the same time to set out the entities

involved in the trade and their motives. To begin with the link to Goa, anestimate for the 1630s provided by Antonio Bocarro tells us that the value ofthe rice carried from all of Kanara to Goa in the main annual convoy (which’carried rice collected from the main harvest) was worth some 300,000

xerafins.53 There is some ambiguity involved when one attempts to convertthis into quantities, since it is unclear whether this was the value of the rice at

procurement price in Kanara, or whether it was the value of the shipmentwhen sold in Goa. If the former, we get an estimate of 18 million lbs (or 8

million kgs),one

that agrees with thatof M.N. Pearson. If

the latter,we

have an estimate of some 12 million lbs or 5.5 million kgs. One is inclined to

support the latter as being more plausible, since Bocarro’s information is farmore likely to have referred to sales in Goa than purchases in Kanara.

However, even this lower figure considerably exceeds what we have estimatedas the probable outflow from Basrur in any one year, and it is worth stressingthat Goa was only one of several destinations to which Basrur exported rice.

Hence, it would follow that the Basrur-Goa flow was only a fraction (thoughperhaps a sizeable one) of the total Kanara-Goa flow. This is apparent from

other evidence as well which suggests that the rice convoy referred to earlier

52 It is not clear whether the numerous ’Malabarese’ vessels mentioned by the early Dutchand English fleets in the Red Sea were from Kanara ports. There was a tendency at the time touse the term Malabar loosely, and even Ikkeri is sometimes referred to as in Malabar. See n. 83below.

53 See Pearson, op. cit., n. 31, p. 11; also Bocarro, op. cit., n. 41, p. 284. On prices in Goa atthe time, Teotonio R. de Souza, Medieval Goa (New Delhi 1979), p. 172; for the Kanara

prices, HAG, Conselho da Fazenda No. 3 (1627-31), fl. 89v.


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452,

was made up of ships from a large number of Kanara ports, with a fair

proportion coming from Baindur, Barakur and Mangalore as welt. 54Since we are viewing the trade through the prism of Portuguese records,

not all the participant groups can be done justice in our treatment. We have

aiready noted the existence of three sets of interests in the rice trade. To

recapitulate briefly, these were first, the native traders settled in the town ofBasrur, referred to by the Portuguese as ‘ch=irins de Barcelor,’ second, theamall community of Portuguese and mestiyo elements, both settled in Kanara

(and particularly in the vicinity of the Portuguese fort of Basrur), and third,the officialdom of the

PortugueseEstuuo clu india based in Goa. While the

first two groups were involved in the trade largely out of commercial

considerations, the motives of the Estudo were dominated by the strategicrather than the commercial. On, sever al occasions in the first half of the

seventeenth century, the state thus took a direct part in the proceedings,

primarily to ensure the supply of foodstuff to Portuguese forts and possessionsin various parts of Asia to ensure their survival in the face of the Dutch

enemy. Llsually, this meant the despatch of a sum of money from Goa to the

Portuguese captain of the fort of Basrur. The captain would then procure the

rice, freight out a vessei from either a local Asian merchant or a Portugueseprivate trader, and despatch the rice to its destination. On some rareoccasions, there is evidence of the use of Portuguese state vessels, belongingto one or the other of the armadas, for carrying the rice. This was the

exception rather than the rule and was usually done when the armada itself,while on its way to some destination, had to be provisioned. These requisitionson the part of the Estado were normally made in the winter months when therice market was most plentifullv supplied, and we have several examples ofthis in the 1620s and 1630s. These were mainly to Portuguese fortresses

under imminent threat of attack, or under seige from the Dutch or someother party. Besides, Goa itself was on several occasions supplied in part

using this method, as the administration apparently believed in the creationof a sort of buffer stock in anticipation of any crop failure or other calamity.We may note some examples of the rice movement on account of the

Estado. In November 1627, for instance, an order for some 200,000 kg ofrice was placed for Goa and money despatched to Basrur for the purpose 55

A similar order was olaced in November 1629 for more or less the same

quantity.56In 1630, some 130,000

kgswere

procuredfrom Basrur, a similar

quantity from Mangalore, besides some amounts from Bardes and Salsette,all for the supply of Goa.s’ We may treat all these imports as stabilising

54This is apparent from the Dutch report cited in n. 48 above as well as in the instmctions

issued to the Kanara escort fleets. For the latter see HAG, Regimentose Instrucoes series, e.g.,No. 3 (1636-40), fls 51v, 93, No. 4 (1640-46), fls 5-5v, 19-19v, passim.

55HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1627-31), fl. 4v.

56Ibid., fl. 95v.

57Ibid., fls 117v-118, fl. 122v.


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measures taken by the administration of the Estado, keeping in mind the

gathering storm of the agricultural crisis of the early 1630s.The other area that the Estado’s administrators were anxious to keep well

supplied was their fort in Muscat in the Persian Gulf,. This anxiety isunderstacidable in view of the loss of Hormuz in the early 1620s, and the

strong presence of the companies in the area, which prompted, among other

things, the stationing of a Portuguese armudu under Ruy Freire de Andradein that vicinity. We have several instances of orders being placed for goodsintended to victual the Muscat fortress. In 1629, a large order of over

500,000kg

was

placed bythe administration with Vithala Nayak, a Saraswat

merchant who also had participated actively in cther ways in the economy of

Portuguese India, holding as he did, some of the Goa ’rendas’ on more thanone occasion.5&dquo; Again, some 115,000 kgs were hastily put together in early1631 for despatch from Basrur to Muscat in the pinnace of one Antonio de

Serra Marchdo, in response to urgent demands from the garrison there.&dquo;Besides the rice carried to Muscat and Goa on state account in what was,

strictly speaking, not a purely commerciai enterprise, certain other semi-official arrangements existed as well. An appointee to the post of Captain of

the Basrur fort, Martim Teixeirade Azevedo,

when about to assume hisportin 1632, asked as a perquisite of office, that he be permitted to send two

pinnaces each year during the duration of his captaincy, from Basrur to

Muscat, loaded with rice. He was allowed to do so, subject to two conditions.

Firstly, that he agree to send a minimum of four thousand bales (approxi-mately 130,000 kg) each year; this was to ensure a minimum supply to the

garrison there. Secondly, that he make his purchases at Basrur only after thestate had made all purchases on its own account in that region. This was

clearly a condition aimed at ensuring that de Azevedo’s purchases did not

push up prices, thus rendering the Estado’s procurement that much moreexpensive.&dquo;° The state’s own despatches during the average year at that time

(in 1632-33 and 1633-34, for instance) amounted to some 65,000 kg for thefort at Muscat, so that the state and Teixeira de Azevedo between them sent

200,000 kg of rice to that fort annually, for the provisioning of the garrisonand the crews of the ships stationed there.

Teixeira de Azevedo apparently did not possess any shipping of his ownand we find him in 1633, for example, freighting the pinnace of one Miguelde Rego, probably one of the few Portuguese settled near Basrur, in order to

make his annual delivery to Muscat.6’ The arrangement that was apparentlyfollowed was that, on delivery, Teixeira de Azevedo would receive the

purchase price of his cargo plus a certain mark up on account of freight and

other expenses. On paying off de Rego, or the owner of the ship that he was

58 Ibid., fl. 89v.59 Ibid., fl. 131v.60HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1631-37), fl. 47v, 51.

61Ibid., fl. 64v.


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freighting in the particular instance, he would be left with a small sum, hisneat profit. In effect, the grant de Azevedo received in 1632 gave him the

right to be the sole private supplier of rice to the garrison of Muscat (inaddition to which there was of course, the state’s own direct procurement).Before him, we are told that this grant was customarily made to one or theother of the native merchants of Basrur. However, the rice carried both byde Azevedo and on account of the Estado’s direct procurement was intended

solely for the provisioning of the garrison. ’rhe trade to the town proper ofMuscat was distinct from this, and the parallel trade might well have been ofmore considerable dimensions.

Besides Goa and Muscat, it has already been mentioned that the Estadode india also occasionally made purchases of rice at Basrur for other desti-nations. In 1634, for instance, besides what was sent to Goa and Muscat, a

consignment of unstated dimensions was procured and despatched to the

Portuguese forts in Mozambique from Basrur. 1>2 In early 1635, for the

provisioning of the state’s armadas which were outward bound from Goa tovarious destinations in Asian waters, a large order was placed for rice withthe Kanarese merchant Rama Kini, who apparently procured the rice in part

from Mangalore, his domicile, and in part from Basrur.&dquo;&dquo; In spite of thisservice that he rendered, the unfortunate Kini and his brother were both

sentenced to death by the Portuguese authorities in 1638, and their goodsconfiscated, for the crime of trading with the Dutch! Unfortunately, we do

not know if this sentence was in fact carried outs In the following decadeand up to 1650, occasional consignments of rice were also sent from Basruron the Estado’s initiative to Ceylon and Malacca, two of the major theatreswhere hostilities with the Dutch were being carried on. In 1639, when theDutch assault on the latter city was being pressed, a single consignment of

some 650,000 kgs was sent.65 A smaller consignment to Ceylon in 1644contained some 17,000 kg.66 It is noticeable from the records of the periodthat this was a crucial period in the Luso-Dutch struggle, and one of the

aspects that might repay future research could well be the search for supplyregions to keep garrisons alive and prolong the struggle. Portuguese relationswith Golconda in the period, for instance, are mainly concerned with the useof the northern Coromandel ports to supply rice to Ceylon, and other

places. 67

62Ibid.,fl. 88v.63

Ibid., fl. 170; see also fls 144-144v on the relations between the Portuguese and a few

powerful Kanarese merchants (such as, Vithala Nayak, Rama Kini, etc.). Pearson has com-

mented on this and related issues in his stimulating essay, ’Banyas and Brahmins: Their Role in

the Portuguese Indian Economy,’ in his Coastal Western India, op. cit., n. 37.

64HAG, Livro de Segredos, MS. 1416, fl. 25.

65HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1637-43), fl. 50v-51.

65HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1643-47), fl. 81.

67Ibid., fl. 133-134v. On the search for other sources of rice, see HAG, Regimentos e

Instruç&omacr;es,MS 1422, fl. 25, as well as n. 41.


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455

Besides the Estado, we have mentioned two other groups who played a

role in this trade, and we shall turn to the first of these, the Portuguese andmesti~o private traders. Amongst those were the Portuguese settlers wholived just outside the fort of Basrur, who had married locally (or at leastco-habited with local women), living off both trade and the cultivation ofsome rice fields and coconut-palms which they had of their own. Thesecusados (who numbered some thirty-five families in the 1630s), also possessedtheir own shipping in the form of some seven or eight galliots of around 300khandis burthen, using which they carried on their own trade.&dquo; When notloaded with goods

belongingto their owners, these

galliotswerc

freightedout either wholly or in part by the owners to individual merchants, or to theEstado for its garrison-supply operation, or even to the officials of theEstado when they wanted to take a hand in the private trade. The relativelysmall size of these ships, and indeed of all ships that plied the port of Basrur,is explicable in terms of the nature of the Coondapoor estuary, which thoughwide was shallow, not permitting large ships to enter it. Besides trading in

rice, these traders also took a hand in the trade in other commodities thattook place from this port. It would appear that the port also was an exporterof coir and small amounts

of pepper,as

wellas

fair quantities of saltpeter,an

essential ingredient in the making of gunpowder, iron, imported from overthe Ghats via the Haidergarh pass, and even a small amount of fine textiles

(bethilles), whose use was particularly favoured in the Persian Gulf region. 69Where rice itself was concerned, it must be noted that there were roughly

two kinds of rice that were chiefly exported. The one carried in the largestquantities was locally termed jirigai in south Kanara, and it was a small-

grained, white variety, usually grown in the first crop season of Kartika (Mayto October) on the superior lands. The tribute annually payable by the

native merchants of Basrur was in the form of this variety of rice. The othervariety that was carried, though to a far lesser extent than the jirigai, wastermed amutti-a coarse, black-grained type.7o Some information exists onthe price of jirigai in various regions which may be utilised to further our

understanding of the economics of the trade. In the 1650s, the price at which

jirigai could be bought in Kanara was 8 xerafins a khandi. In contrast, thesame rice was sold in Goa at 12 xerafins a khandi, and in Muscat at 15

xerafins.&dquo; Since export duties in Kanara were not uniform irrespective of

68 SeeBocarro, op. cit.,

n.

47, pp. 317-18;also

HAG,Conselho da Fazenda

(1631-37),fl. 88v, passim.69 See Bocarro, ibid. Bethilles were, in fact, extensively exported from northern Coromandel

to the Persian Gulf at this time. For further details refer, for example, to Om Prakash, The

Dutch Factories in India, 1617-23 (New Delhi 1984), pp. 38, passim.70 On these types of rice; an excellent description is contained in Buchanan, op. cit., n. 6,

Vol. 3, p. 38.71 For the price of the rice in Muscat, see Bocarro, op. cit., n. 47, p. 71. The other prices have

already been referred to in n. 53 above. It would be interesting to calculate the average time

taken to sail from Basrur to Muscat, Goa and other destinations. We do know that the sailing


24/30

456

destinations in the 1630s, we may not directly conclude that thepricedifferences reflect, in large measure, the high component of transportation

costs in determining prices. One might argue, however, that given the freeflow of goods and bullion, one factor maintaining a wedge between therelative price of the one and the other in two places would be the cost oftransportation. Also, using these prices alone, it would not be possible tounderstand the profit and loss calculations involved in the movement of say,300 khandis of rice in a shipload, as a large number of costs (such as, wagespaid to mariners, the cost of maintenance of the ship and so on) remain

imponderables. One may rest content with stating that the profits on a singlevoyage (given the order of gross profit obtainable from the price differentials),could not have been very large if rice alone were carried. A frequentlyobserved pattern was to use the rise as ballast, while carrying other more

profitable goods as well. This ballast function could as well be performed bysaltpeter, another of the commodities exported from Basrur.

The ’Chatins’ and the Trade of Basrur

The nature of the records available to us are somewhat limited in the lightthat they shed on the trade carried on by the Asian merchants, here the’chatins’ of Basrur. We have already noted some information that is available

concerning this enigmatic community in the sixteenth century. The evidenceof some Portuguese observers suggested a prosperous, merchant-dominatedtown, which enjoyed a good deal of autonomy from imperial authority at thetime of Vijayanagar. The evidence also suggested a fairly strong form of

corporate organisation within the town, with a collective which empoweredmerchants from the

communityto

negotiatewith outsiders. The

Portuguesechronicler Couto, whom we have quoted earlier, is emphatic on all these

aspects, and the contrast between the other Mapilla dominated ports alongthe Kanara coast, such as Honawar and Bhatkal, and Basrur-which was

perceived by the Portuguese as a Hindu merchant dominated port-isclear. 11

Unfortunately, little has survived of the history of the town itself, thoughwe do know that it was in a flourishing state even as late as 1800, after whichit fell into decline.73 By 1900, it comprised no more than two thousand souls

and was described at that time as ’once a large walled town with a fort and atemple’.&dquo; Couto suggests that before the sixteenth century, it had once been

time from Muscat to Quilon in the fourteenth century was a month, from G.F. Houran, Arab

Sea-faring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Princeton 1951), p 74. Also see n. 77 below on the chungam on rice exports to Muscat.

72See, for example, Couto, op. cit., n. 24, Decada Oitava, pp. 276-80.

73 At the time of Buchanan, for example, it still carried on a healthy trade in rice. See

Buchanan, op. cit., n. 6, Vol. 3, p. 105.74

Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. VII, op. cit., n. 6, p. 106.


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an

enormously flourishing town, goingon to state that ’there were

amongthem in olden times men who were so rich that many spoke in terms ofbahars of pagodas (i.e., the varaha, the most common Vijayanagar goldcoin), each bahar being four quintals.

’7S In the 1630s, Bocarro describes it as

a prosperous town, able to support a fair-sized import of pearls, rubies,precious and base metals, in addition to horses and elephants, which were

presumably used by either the local rulers, or more probably by the Ikkeri

Nayaks and even perhaps in the courts of Mysore and the other inland

kingdoms.’6 The extent of this trade in war-animals via Basrur ought not to

be exaggerated, and one is a bit sceptical about the extent of Basrur’sconnections with the inland courts.

After the extension of the power of Ikkeri’s Nayaks over the Kanara area,it is not clear what the equation of the town and its inhabitants with the newrulers was. It seems that the degree of autonomy that had existed under

Vijayanagar was not preserved wholly, as is apparent from the fact that in

1608, Venkatappa offered the Portuguese a customs-house in the area,declaring at the time that it was under his jurisdiction. One cannot imaginethat the merchants of Basrur could have been particularly happy at thismove. While it was a minor concession for the Nayak to temporarily appeasethe Portuguese, the customs-house was a far more serious matter where thetown’s settlers were concerned.

Still later in the century, in the 1630s, we are informed that the Ikkeri

Nayaks had placed the region under the charge of a ‘tanadar,’ who apparentlyhad at least some control of his own over the riverbome traffic. In the late

1620s, this official’s duties also extended to the collection of a newly imposedchungam or toll which the Nayaks had decided to impose on the rice export,

particularlythat to Muscat.&dquo; From all

this,one

mayconclude

then,albeit

without any great degree of certainty, that the Ikkeri regime probablycurtailed some of the autonomy enjoyed by the town-dwellers in the previouscentury; in the absence of information of any detail, one cannot conclude

much more.

The Portuguese records also provide us some odds and ends referring toindividual merchants of the town and it is to that we shall now turn. In the

early years of the century, there is very little such information. In fact, wehave a single record dating from December 1602, by which the Portuguese

Viceroy, Aires de Saldanha, is seen to have issued a cartaz to one PorseaChatim, a native of Basrur, to enable him to send a ship of his to Hormuz in

January of the following year, to supply that fort-which was at that time

75Couto, op. cit., n. 24, Decada Oitava, p. 279.

76 See Bocarro, op. cit., n. 47, pp. 316-18. A curious aspect is that once the horses were

landed at Basrur, often there was some difficulty in getting rid of them, indicating, perhaps,inadequate linkages with the inland courts.

77 See Júlio Firmino Judice Biker, ed., Colecç&amacr;o de Tratados e Concertos de pazes, 14

volumes (Lisboa 1881-87), Vol. 1, pp. 270-72.


26/30

458

under attack, or under threat of attack, from the land side.78 The ship wasnaturally to be laden with rice from Basrur. We may note that unlike the

supply missions of the Estado studied in some detail earlier, this was a purelycommercial enterprise on that part of the Kanarese merchant. The name ofthe merchant is too distorted to allow for restoration, and his surname maybe loosely construed to imply that he was a Hindu, and ofa caste regarded bythe Portuguese as a trading caste. Almost two decades later, in 1621, we have further records of cartaz

issuals, in the particular instance to one Sandegaro, also Chatim, once again a

native of Basrur. 79 The navicert in this instance was to permit the merchantto send his ship to a somewhat unusual destination, Bengal. To the Portuguese,Bengal meant either Hughli or Chittagong, more commonly the former

port. This particular piece of evidence is striking as we have no otherevidence thus far ofa trade between Basrur, the port of departure mentioned,and Bengal. Further, the ship was a large one, of 800 khandis burthen, andcarried 30 sailors besides 40 ’Malabaris,’ from the region of Calicut and

Tanur, besides over a hundred passengers who were individual merchantswith their retinues. The ship was armed and carried some fifteen pieces of

artillery, and was commanded by one Cotta Muxa, a Mapilla. The cartazdemonstrates some of the classic characteristics of the period; a ship owned

by a Hindu merchant, but whose nakhuda was a Muslim, on which space was

freighted by a large number of small merchantsr-the pedlars of van Leur,and more recently, Steensgaard. While we have no information on thenature of the cargo of this ship, one can be reasonably certain, given the

destination, that rice did not form a substantial proportion.It would appear that the craft used on the coastal runs~for instance,

between Basrur and Goa-were rather smaller in size from the one

mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, we have little evidence on the ownershipof either these craft or the goods despatched in them. It would be foolhardyto conclude from the small size of individual craft that individual merchant

capitals were small, as we do know that some of the merchants who had atleast some interest in the rice trade (such as, Rama Kini and Vithala Nayak)were men of considerable means. The rice trade from Kanara to Goa is a

particularly interesting one, in which all three elements that we have de-lineated (the Estado’s administration, private Portuguese, and the native

merchants ofBasrur) played a role. Where the last group was concerned, theenterprise was largely a commercial one, with the profit-motive the operativeone, though as we know some portion of the rice was carried as tribute.Elements of coercion on the part of the Estado did play a role in the trade,

78 See HAG, Provisões dos Vice-Reis, No. 1 (1600-6), fl. 107. In modern Portuguese, theword ’chatim’ had come to mean ’a crooked merchant,’ vide James L. Taylor, Harrap

Portuguese-English Dictionary (London 1970), p. 152. This naturally reflects Portugueseprejudices as much as the morals of Indian traders.

79 See HAG, Livro de Consulta, MS 1043, fls 65-65v.


27/30

459

but we must not overstate their importance. The merchants were apt to use

various forms of protest if coerced excessively. On more than one occasion,the supply to Goa declined dramatically when Kanarese merchants and

shippers responded to the extortionate behaviour of the Portuguese captainsof the fleet which escorted them to Goa, by simply boycotting that route in

part or wholly, causing a food supply crisis in Goa. In the 1630s, theadministration of the Estado actually held an enquiry into the decline in food

supply that had occurred and, as a result, several persons who had commandedthe escort fleets were chastised.8°

In 1646, a similar situation appears to have arisen owing to the excessively

extortionate behaviour of the Portuguese Captain of the Basrur fort, DuartePeixoto da Silva. The administration in Goa was consequently presentedwith a petition signed by the ’people of Barcelor, Christian and Gentio’. Inthis petition, it was stated that this extortion had grown so excessive that ithad forced many merchants to leave Basrur for other places, including’many Brahmins who were the principal merchants and who had capitalwhich they (i.e., the petitioners) could avail of in any necessity’.8’ The

signatures appended include those of such persons as Narayana Balo, ShivaBalo, Timmayya Sinai, Damu Balo, Coqumalo, Sandopor, Bala Nayak,Sante Komatti and the widow of Chenayya Komatti, among others. Some ofthese names are so distorted as to be unidentifiable, but at least two com-

munities can be identified. One of these are the Saraswats, with their caste

names such as Sinai and Nayak. The mercantile activities of the Saraswats inthe Kanara region and even in Goa have been substantially documented inthe past, and it would appear that the reference in the petition to the’Brahmins who were the principal merchants’ could only be to this community.The other community that is identifiable comes as something of a

surprise-theKomatti Chetties. The activities of this

group,whose

originsare in the northern Coromandel, are reported as stretching in the directionof central and southern Coromandel in the seventeenth century, and their

trading interests also extended into South-east Asia. 12 However, to findthem in the Kanara region would be evidence that the mobility of this

community might have been somewhat greater than had been suspected,although there is no evidence from elsewhere to suggest that they were quiteas mobile as other mercantile communities of the period-such as, the

Gujarati vanias, the Persians or the Armenians. We do find small pockets of

this community in the region even as late as the nineteenth century.Finally, a brief note is in order on the involvement of the Ikkeri Nayaks

themselves in mercantile activity. That these Nayaks directly participated in

80HAG, Monções do Reino, 21B (1640-41), fl. 417.

81HAG, Regimentos e Instruções, No. 4, MS 1421, fl. 110.

82 The activities of the Komatti Chetties on the Coromandel coast are referred to in almost all

the standard works on seventeenth century Coromandel trade. See, for instance, Brennig,

op. cit., n. 4.


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trade is clear and evidence exists of cartazesbeing passed

to enable their

ships to sail to the Red Sea in particular. Itwould appear, however, that for a

variety of reasons, these ships were normally operated from Bhatkal, whichin many ways was still identified in the seventeenth century as a port

relatively free from Portuguese interference.83 On occasion, these shipsappear to have used Basrur; and we find that in the altercation between the

Portuguese and Virabhadra Nayak of Ikkeri, in the early 1630s, one of the

spoils taken by the former were two ships belonging to the Nayak, which hadbeen off Basrur. Not much more is known about the Nayak’s shipping, or

about the extent and ownership of the capital that was sunk in these mercantileventures.84 We may, however, add these princes to the fairly long list ofseventeenth century Indian potentates who were involved in directly tradingoverseas, together with the Mughal Emperor, the Sultans of Bijapur and

Golconda, and the Malabar kings.

. Conclusion

From the 1620s onwards, the Portuguese were expelled from place after

place in coastal Asia, with monotonous regularity. In a few cases, such as

Hormuz, the local ruler had a hand in the expulsion, although a good part ofthe credit went to the Companies. In the long procession of disasters fromSiriam in 1612, through Hormuz, Malacca, Ceylon and Cochin, the expulsionfrom Kanara in the 1650s was an added mortification. The English and the

Dutch, settled at Rajapur and Vengurla respectively, had already diverted a

good part of the Kanara pepper into their own hands by the 1640s. Hence,after the Portuguese expulsion, these companies did not immediately seek

to replace themon

the Kanaracoast.

Itwas

onlyin

1668 that the V.O.C.established a factory at Basrur to procure rice to supply its strongholds atCochin and elsewhere.85 This factory lasted a quarter of a century and a

study of its working and of the rice trade from Kanara in the latter part of theseventeenth century might be attempted from the Dutch records.To conclude this paper, it would be useful to recapitulate briefy. This

study has been concerned with the port of Basrur on the Kanara coast in theseventeenth century. The port lay in the midst of some of the most prosperousrice producing land in India. The agrarian economy was dominated on the

one hand by communities of Saiva Brahmins and their institutions, particularly83 This is evident from the fact that whenever the Nay

the portuguese the port of basrur and th

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