Portuguese Trade Research Articles

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century. By A. R. Disney. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (Harvard Historical Series No. 95), 1978. x, 220 pp. Map, Appendixes, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. $15.00.

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century. By A. R. Disney. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (Harvard Historical Series No. 95), 1978. x, 220 pp. Map, Appendixes, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. $15.00.

The great war and Chewa society in Malawi

The Chewa of Malawi's central region have proved to be a most resilient people. Their political structure has always tended to disintegration, in part owing to the dual clan, matrilineal nature of chiefly succession. This situation was complicated in the nineteenth century by challenges to Chewa political and economic power from various African forces, most notably Ngoni and Yao settlers and Swahili traders. Since the 1880s the Chewa have also had to contend with the growing involvement of European missionaries and government officials in their affairs. ' Yet through all of this the Chewa have not only survived, but have also spread their influence throughout present day Malawi. Although much Chewa political power -was undermined by the Ngoni and the Yao, a significant remnant of Chewa authority was preserved by the chieftanship of Mwase Kasungu. Using their position astride trade routes with Lake Malawi and beyond, successive Mwases were able to forge alliances alternately with Swahili and Portuguese traders and to resist the pressure of Ngoni raids. As the major outpost of resistance to the Ngoni, Mwase Kasungu's territory became a refuge for Chewa displaced in areas to the south. The full assertion of British power, however, upset the delicate balance which the Mwases had so carefully worked to maintain, leading to their decline. In the pax Britannia which followed, the Chewa were nonetheless able to reassert their cultural dominance over central Malawi.

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century. A. R. Disney

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsTwilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century. A. R. Disney T. Bentley DuncanT. Bentley Duncan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 51, Number 4Dec., 1979 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/242017 Views: 9Total views on this site Copyright 1979 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Aquatic turtles of Amazonia: An endangered resource

Turtles have long served man as an important food resource in Amazonia. During the colonial period, Portuguese traders disturbed nesting beaches on a large scale in search of eggs which were converted into oil for cooking and lighting. Exploitation was increasingly intense by the end of the 19th century and turtle populations had declined drastically. Although legislation has been passed to protect them, enforcement is lax and turtles face increasing pressure from man not only for food but as a result of habitat disturbance.

A. R. Disney: Twilight of the pepper empire. Portuguese trade in southwest India in the early seventeenth century. (Harvard Historical Studies, XCV.) ix, 220 pp., map. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. £12.95, $18.50.

A. R. Disney: Twilight of the pepper empire. Portuguese trade in southwest India in the early seventeenth century. (Harvard Historical Studies, XCV.) ix, 220 pp., map. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. £12.95, $18.50. - Volume 42 Issue 3

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century.

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century.

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century. By A. R. Disney. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. Pp. 227. $18.50.

Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century. By A. R. Disney. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. Pp. 227. $18.50.

Reviews

LUITPOLD WALLACH. Diplomatic Studies in Latin and Greek Documents from the Carolingian Age. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 1977. Pp. 396. Reviewed by Leslie W. Barnard ANGUS MACKAY. Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000–1500. London: The Macmillan Press 1977. Pp. xii, 245. Reviewed by P.E. Russell G.R. ELTON. Reform and Reformation: England, 1509–1558. New History of England, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1977. Pp. 423. Reviewed by D.L. Potter A.R. DISNEY. Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1978. Harvard Historical Series XCV. Pp. X, 220. Reviewed by C.R. De Silva W.A. SPECK. Stability and Strife: England 1714–60. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press 1977. Pp. 311. Reviewed by R.M. Hatton DAVID GILLARD. The Struggle for Asia 1828–1914: A Study in British and Russian Imperialism. London: Methuen & Co. 1977. Pp. 214. Reviewed by Rose Louise Greaves D.C.M. PLATT, ed. Business Imperialism, 1840–1930: An Inquiry Based on British Experience in Latin America. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1977. Pp. x, 449. Reviewed by Richard Graham WARREN I. COHEN. The Chinese Connection: Roger S. Greene, Thomas W. Lamont, George E. Sokolsky and American-East Asian Relations. New York: Columbia University Press 1978. Pp. x, 322. Reviewed by Akira Iriye CALVIN D. DAVIS. The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference: American Diplomacy and International Organization, 1899–1914. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1976. Pp. ix, 398. Reviewed by Warren F. Kuehl SOLOMON WANK, ed. Doves and Diplomats: Foreign Offices and Peace Movements in Europe and America in the Twentieth Century. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press 1978. Pp. xii, 303; CHARLES DE BENEDETTI, Origins of the Modern American Peace Movement: 1915–1929. Millwood, NY: KTO Press 1978. Pp. xvi, 281. Reviewed by Robert H. Ferrell GERALD J. BENDER. Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality. Berkeley: University of California Press/London: Heinemann 1978. Pp. xxviii, 287. Reviewed by Douglas L. Wheeler ESMONDE M. ROBERTSON. Mussolini as Empire-Builder: Europe and Africa 1932–36. London: Macmillan 1977. Pp. 246. Reviewed by Alan Cassels CHARLES w. SYDNOR, JR. Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933–1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1977. Pp. xvi, 346. Reviewed by Robert Koehl RICHARD K. BETTS. Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1977. Pp. 292. Reviewed by Robert Vogel REG CARR. Anarchism in France: The Case of Octave Mirbeau. Montreal and London: McGill-Queen's University Press 1977. Pp. xii, 190. Reviewed by John C. Cairns ANNE ORDE. Great Britain and International Secuiity, 1920–26. London: Royal Historical Society 1978. Pp. viii, 244. Reviewed by Sally Marks GABRIEL GORODETSKY. The Precarious Truce: Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1924–27. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press 1977. Pp. xiii, 289. Reviewed by Richard K. Debo

Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea

Portuguese trade and society in China and the South China Sea, c. 1630–1753, is a topic that attracts little interest among European Expansion and East-Southeast Asian historians. This is unfortunate, since a great deal may be learned about early Sino and Southeast Asian-European relations by analysing Portuguese society in Macao and its diplomatic and economic relations with the Ming-Ch'ing dynasties and with the states within and bordering the South China Sea trading complex. Previous research was preoccupied with the nature of European colonial rivalry and comparisons between differing colonial systems; lamentably, it demonstrated litte interest in examining in detail the institutions of Portuguese society in Macao and their interactions with European and Asian society in a regional context. My research in this field began while an undergraduate honours student at Stanford University in 1971, was stimulated while a Master's degree student in Southeast Asian Area studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1976, and should be completed in early 1980 when submitted as a doctoral dissertation at Trinity College, Cambridge University.

The Use of Two Polymorphic Systems, Nectary Fringe Hairs and Corky Alleles, as Indicators of Phylogenetic Relationships in New World Cottons

An earlier study (Stephens and Phillips 1972) showed that primitive cultivars of Gossypium barbadense L., native to the Americas, could be subdivided into two geographical groups: one west of the Andes which is polymorphic for the corky alleles, cky and ck0, and the other, east of the Andes, which approaches monomorphism for cky, All races of G. hirsutum L., except race maarie-galante, are monomorphic for ck0. In the present study an almost identical grouping is found to hold for the presence or absence of fringe hairs on the floral nectary. The western group of G. barbadense is polymorphic for fringe hairs and the eastern group monomorphic for absence of fringe hair. Virtually all forms of G. hirsutum are monomorphic for presence of fringe hairs. The trivial and inconspicuo,us nature of the fringe hairs makes it difficult to imagine that they have any strong selective value. The corky alleles have no apparent phenotypic expression except in the rare cases where mixed plantings of G. barbadense and G. hirsutum race marie-galante have been established and followed by interspecific hybridization. Both characters, therefore, would seem to provide useful indicators of racial phylogenies. Applying this concept to primitive forms of G. barbadaense now established in Africa, India, and Polynesia, it is found that most of them belong to the eastern group with respect to fringe hairs and corky alleles. This finding is consistent with the commonly held but unsubstantiated opinion that they were introduced over the old Portuguese trade routes from Brazil and the West Indies and not via the old Spanish trade route (Mexico, Guam, Philippines). The origin of modern annual forms of G. barbadense is obscure. The origins of the Sea Island cottons can be traced back only to mid-18th century in the seaboard colonies of North America, and the Egyptian cottons to the early 19th century in the Nile Delta. The Sea Island cottons have the eastern pattern of fringe hairs and corky alleles, contrasting sharply with the Egyptian cottons which have the western pattern. The possible implications of these findings are discussed.

Old Christian Merchants and the Foundation of the Brazil Company, 1649

F EW STEREOTYPES of Luso-Brazilian history have endured more tenaciously than the concept of the merchant as Jew, crypto-Jew, or foreigner. The association of the mercantile profession with New Christians has been particularly strong for the seventeenth century, with the terms burguesia and cristdos-novos often being used interchangeably in works about that period.' The political, social, and religious factors which contributed to the concentration of New Christians in commerce are familiar and need not be elaborated here. The converse theoretical explanation is that Portuguese gentiles (or Old Christians) abandoned the field to the interlopers because of their inability or unwillingness to compete with the New Christians' supposed racial aptitude for trade and their clannish favoritism in business practice. As commerce became ever more linked in the popular mind with the despised crypto-Jew, fear of guilt by association increased the aversion of Old Christians to the mercantile arts, ultimately leaving Portuguese trade in the hands of the New Christians. To contemporaries the problem appeared so compelling that in 1629 D. Felipe IV called a council of ecclesiastics and jurists to consider measures for dealing with the New Christians, whose monopoly of trade allegedly caused prices to soar thus sucking all the money from the populace,

Brideservice, Residence, and Authority among the Goba (N. Shona) of the Zambezi Valley

IntroductionThe Shona-speaking complex of tribes covers most of present day Southern Rhodesia, stretching to the Zambian border along the Zambezi River and into Mozambique in the north and to the Indian Ocean in the east. The Korekore group is the major northern division of the Shona-speaking peoples. The original Korekore appear to have been a band of Karanga invaders from the south who entered the middle Zambezi Valley in the fifteenth century and established the Mwene Mutapa confederacy. Today the Korekore group occupies an area extending south from the Zambezi between longitude 28° and longitude 33° east, including the low-lying valley floor and the middle and high veldt or plains to the south where most of the population is concentrated (Garbett, 1966). The valley floor in this region has been considered a poor habitat by African and White settlers alike. The climate is generally poor, there are few cattle because of the tsetse fly, the area is economically undeveloped, and the population is sparse and scattered. Because of their poorer habitat the valley dwelling Korekore have come to be distinguished from their more fortunate highland neighbours to the south and are disparagingly known as Goba or poor lowlanders. In times past they have also been known as Banyai or vassals to the stronger Shona chiefs on the more populous cattle-rich highlands, and also as Chikunda or followers of the Portuguese and half-caste traders operating along the Zambezi in the nineteenth and earlier centuries. This historical background of changing political relations symbolized by changing ethnic identities will be described elsewhere (Lancaster, n.d.).

The Early History of the Sultanate of Angoche

The sultanate of Angoche on the Moçambique coast was founded probably towards the end of the fifteenth century by refugees from Kilwa. It became a base for Muslim traders who wanted to use the Zambezi route to the central African trading fairs and it enabled them to by-pass the Portuguese trade monopoly at Sofala. The Portuguese were not able to check this trade until they themselves set up bases on the Zambezi in the 1530s and 1540s, and from that time the sultanate began to decline. Internal dissensions among the ruling families led to the Portuguese obtaining control of the sultanate in the late sixteenth century, but this control was abandoned in the following century when the trade of the Angoche coast dwindled to insignificance. During the eighteenth century movements among the Macua peoples of the mainland and the development of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean laid the foundations for the revival of the sultanate in the nineteenth century.

The websites of Portuguese trade unions: surfing for rights?

Studies on industrial relations in Portugal have not paid much attention to the roleof the latest information and communication technologies. In seeking to help fillthis gap, this article characterises the use of the Internet by Portuguese trade unions,by presenting a typology of theirwebsites and determining whether there arestatistically significant associations between that typology and each union’s membershipof the main national confederations. The authors base themselves on theprinciple that the fragmented nature of the trade union structure in Portugal leadsto different communication strategies. The conclusion sets out a number of hypothesesthat may help explain the results of the present study.

The Portuguese Factory and Trade in Pepper in Malabar during the 16th Century

The Portuguese Factory and Trade in Pepper in Malabar during the 16th Century

Cultural Fusion: A Case Study of St. Martin Island in the Bay of Bengal

This paper is based on my fieldwork on St. Martin Island in 1962, as a member of an expedition sponsored by the Society of Natural Sciences, East Pakistan. St. Martin is a coral island in the Bay of Bengal, about twenty-five miles southwest of Teknaf, at the southernmost point of the Chittagong district in East Pakistan, and forty miles west of Akyab in Burma. The island's area is nine square miles; it has a population of 927. My research approach was primarily ethnographic. I tried to tap the documentary sources such as collective administrative reports of the District Magistrates on different sections of the district population to the Governor of Bengal and the reports of Subdivisional Officers to the District Collector; and then I correlated my fieldwork findings with them. At the outset I had to learn to understand the island dialect which is a curious mixture of Arakanese (a Burmese dialect) and Chittagonian (a Bengali dialect). I selected five informants on the basis of their individual reputation of being honest, straight-forward persons. I recorded their life histories and then randomly interviewed a cross-section of the island population in order to cross-verify the information provided by the informants. St. Martin Island, first located and named by the Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century, is locally called Jingira. It was settled in 1880 by fourteen families. The men of these families were from the Chittagong hill tracts in the southern part of East Pakistan, while their wives were from the Kachin area of highland Burma. The Gazeteer of the District Magistrates does not say how this came about. Originally, fourteen men from the Chittagong hill tracts banded together and went to highland Burma in search of fortune. They married girls of the Kachin tribe, which was against the Kachin tribal rules. Consequently, the couples were ousted from the Kachin area. Travelling home by boat, they took shelter on an island to escape a bad cyclone. They named the island Jingira, which literally means chained from harm, and liked it so much that they never cared to leave for the mainland.

The Value of Imported Ceramics in the Dating and Interpretation of the Rhodesian Iron Age

Since the start of archaeological investigation in Rhodesia, isolated sherds of imported Chinese ceramics have been found in the important Iron Age ruins of Zimbabwe, Khami and Dhlo Dhlo. More recently, abundant finds of both Chinese and European glazed wares have occurred in excavations of early Portuguese trading stations within Rhodesia. All such imports are here redescribed from an examination of the finds and from a detailed study of the early excavator's reports. As a result, some important early misdescriptions and misunderstandings become apparent. The dating evidence provided by the imports is therefore also re-examined.Very rare sherds of Chinese celadons are virtually the only imported ceramics found in the later deposits at Zimbabwe, and at five other sites. These may be correlated with finds from J. S. Kirkman's excavations in trading settlements of the East African coast, and are dated certainly earlier than the sixteenth century. The finds from four other sites, the most important being the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins, consist mainly of Chinese blue-and-white porcelains and their European imitations. They correlate well with finds not only from the seventeenth and early eighteenth century Portuguese trading stations in Rhodesia, but also with finds from contemporary deposits at Fort Jesus, Mombasa. The precise dating of the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins within this period, as suggested by the imports, shows Khami to belong to the early seventeenth century with Dhlo Dhlo a century later. The divergence between the Khami, Dhlo Dhlo and Portuguese imported ceramics and those of Zimbabwe is sufficiently striking to suggest strongly that Zimbabwe was of negligible trading power by the time the Portuguese penetrated the interior in the sixteenth century. Evidence bearing on this, particularly from the 1958 Zimbabwe excavations, is discussed in detail.Glass beads and glass are the only other imports to survive in Central African archaeological contexts and are of considerably less chronological value than the ceramics. They are, however, also considered, as are the pattern and extent of the trade with the interior evidenced by these imports.

Portuguese attempts at Monopoly on the Upper Guinea Coast, 1580–1650

Between 1580 and 1640 the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns strengthened the commercial partnership which previously existed with respect to the supply of Guinea slaves to the Spanish Indies. The conduct of the slave trade on the Upper Guinea Coast involved the active participation of the African chiefs, as well as the services of a considerable number of resident Portuguese traders, known as lançados. Before 1640, while Iberian unity prevailed, the main source of discord in the area lay in the fact that the Spanish slave ships, with the help of the lançados and the chiefs, were able to disregard the regulation that all ships loading slaves on the Upper Guinea Coast should pay duties at Santiago (Cape Verde islands), which the Portuguese used as the hub of their administration. After 1640 the restored Portuguese monarch attempted to exclude Spain from the commerce of the Upper Guinea Coast, and in the process, alienated the lançados and the African chiefs.

The Mbundu and Neighbouring Peoples of Central Angola under the Influence of Portuguese Trade and Conquest, 1483–1790

The Mbundu and Neighbouring Peoples of Central Angola under the Influence of Portuguese Trade and Conquest, 1483–1790