The Portuguese, the port of Basrur,

and the rice trade, 1600-50

Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Delhi 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. This
arose

quite naturally .

ut

of the fact that the focus of most historians was the

Euro-Asian trade in high value goods, with the intra-Asian trade heing dealt
with 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 and
weft of Asian trade in ;h. sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were spun,
i relative

However studies of certain

the links of the Coromandel
coast 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 interdependence
among the societies and economies engaged in the trade than had previously
been postulated, and it was no longer possible to dismiss the articles of trade
as splendid but trifling, having little impact on the great mass of the
were

relegated

to a rice

obscurity.

aspects of ~-~ian trade in the period, such

as

population and only of interest for a tiny elite segment.

A decade ago, Ashin Das Gupta, addressing the medieval section of the
Indian 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; Ifnting out the importance of the relatively coarse textiles of mass
consumption in the trade, he went on to add, significantly:
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 gratitude

Acknowledgements:

to Professor Jos6 Leal-Ferreira

(Jr.)

for his invaluable assistance.

interpretation that remain are, naturally, my sole responsibility.

Any

errors

of fact

or

434
It is well to remember the trade in foodstuff which was an important part
of maritime trade in the middle ages. Bengal and the Konkan coast were
grain exporting areas, and besides feeding deficit pockets in the Indian
coast, the grain reached Aden and Hormuz in the west, and Malacca in
the 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 mentioned
earlier. However, when the basic commodities that were traded are referred
to, it is manufactures-and more specifically, textiles-that have tended to
occupy 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 trade
in 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, Braudels
classic 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 the
names associated with it are those of the great merchant families of the
sixteenth century: the Affaitati, the Ximenez, the Malvenda, the Welsers
and the Fuggers. The grain trade, although less spectacular, represented
an enormous volume of business. As well as the several main supply
routes, it fed a network of secondary arteries and capillaries which it
would be most unwise to dismiss lightly2

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 which
the high value commodity movements were earned on-still exercise a great
fascination, as do Great Merchants, Great Ships and Great Ports.
It is instructive to note that even where necessary commodities (as opposed
to luxuries) are concerned, there are somewhat different implications
depending on whether one is referring to the export of agricultural goods or
that of manufactures. The extensive literature on the manufacture and
export of textiles from India, and more specifically, the Gujarat, Coromandel
and 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

38th Session, 1974, p. 6.

Congress,
2

F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of

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

Philip II
(tr. Sian

435

which the thriving centres of textile production are possessed of an enclavelike character. In this commonly held view then (to which there are some
important exceptions in the literature), the links of the export trade to
broader economic processes was strictly limited. In some formulations, it
has even been suggested that the manufacturing sector was a sterile sector
(in the sense of the French physiocratic literature), serving little purpose
other than to facilitate the import of bullion to satisfy the needs of a narrow
elite class.
It would not be possible to adequately discuss these broader questions
here, but a brief comment is in order with respect to 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 a
consistent surplus of production over consumption in that region but also a
mechanism for the mobilisation and marketing of that surplus. In some
pre-modem economies, including certain portions of India in the pre-British
period, it has been suggested that at leabt a part of the trade in foodgrains
was carried on by the state, with the state collecting the surplus by way of the
land tax and other taxes, and proceeding to participate in the trade in the

commodity.
Alternately, the states 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 grain
could be transformed into cash would be necessary. This sort of forced
commercialisation hypothesis is frequently encountered in the literature on
the Mughal state and economy. If however, in the pre-modem Asian
economy, producers are seen to be voluntarily marketing grain quite
independently of the states demand for revenue, one can talk of a budding
commercialisation in agriculture, the implications of which would be rather
different from those of the forced commercialisation model mentioned
earlier. Even if the importing areas were usually urban centres, as indeed
one 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 exporting
3
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 Indias Foreign
Trade 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-Surplus Economy (New Delhi
1982), Chapter 4. Important exceptions include Om Prakash, Bullion for Goods: International
Trade and the Economy of Early 18th Century Bengal, Indian Economic and Social History
Review, 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.
17th Century Northern Coromandel (unpublished Ph.D. dissertaBrennig, The Textile
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

Trade of

1963).

436
and one would have to take cognisance of this interaction. This
in
would, turn, move one away from the usually held notion of a burgeoning
manufacturing sector in the midst of an agriculture in stasis. To capture the
totality of this interaction between agricultural exports, exports of manufactures, the manufacturing sector and the agrarian economy is surely an
ambitious enterprise and considerably beyond the scope of this paper. This
paper contents itself with explicate&dquo; the working of one cog in the larger
wheel of the trade in foodgrains, namely the rice trade from the Kanara port
of Basrur in the first half of the seventeenth century.
This trade was carried by three entities who can at least notionally be
separated from one another. These were the administration of the Portuguese
Estado da india, private Portuguese and mesti~o traders, and finally, the
Kanarese and other Asian merchants. While notionally distinct, the operations
of the three overlapped in fact to a large degree, as we shall be at some pains
to point out. That it is possible to study Basrur in the period at all is due to
the considerable interest evinced by Portuguese officialdom in Goa and
even Lisbon, in the part. This interest has left, as a residue, a considerable
corpus of records concerning the port in the period we are concerned with
here. However, viewing the port and activities in and around it through the
eyes of the Portuguese, it is only natural that Portuguese activities, as well as
activities and events that infringed directly on their interests should receive

region,

437

disproportionate emphasis. While this is a hazard that one faces while using
all European records of the period in the study of Asian history, it would be
well to bear it in mind.
The Agrarian

Setting

The port-town of Basrur lies in the modem district of South Kanara in the
latitude of 1337 North. The port itself no longer functions, and the seabome trade in its immediate vicinity has been largely carried on over the last
century and 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 modem
districts of North and South Kanara lie on a narrow strip of land between the
Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, on the south-west coast of India. The
width of the coastal strip rarely exceeds fifty kilometres and is frequently
much 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 of
rice that occurs in the region; outside of them, the level plateau produces
little except scrub and grass. The upper reaches of the valleys and the regions
further 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 the
lower reaches of the valleys, closer to the coast. It is in these lands that the
most prosperous cultivation of rice is to be found. In South Kanara itself, the
region north of the Chandragiri river is more hospitable for rice cultivation
than 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 seventeenth centuries were located in such estuaries. From north to south they
included Mirjan, Honawar, Barkur and Mangalore. In the case of Basrur,
6
See the entry for South Kanara district in the Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XV (Oxford
1908), 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 the
South Canara District (Madras 1938), and the classic early nineteenth century account,
F. Buchanan, Journey from Madras through the Lands of Mysore, Kanara and Malabar, 3
volumes (Madras 1908), particularly, Vol. 3, pp. 1-150.
See M.L. Dames, ed., The Book of Duarte Barbosa (London, Hakluyt Society 1918),
7

Vol. 1, pp. 185-95.

438
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 of
the 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 peninsula
of Gangolli. The town of Basrur itself lies some kilometres upriver from the
estuary, 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 and
other products of that useful tree were also abundantly available on the coast
in 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 in
the natural state as well as cultivated. While pepper was an important
product of Kanara in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly
where 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 in

the eighteenth century, the pepper production of Kanara was a mere fraction
of that grown south of Mt. Eli. in Malabar. The most important crop was at
that time, and even today, rice. As late as 1925-26, rice accounted for as
much as 75-80 per cent of total land area cropped in the Coondapoor
division of South Kanara.9
The cultivation of this rice in the river valleys depended on the harnessing
of 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 level
with the channel itself, which were fed by it during the first crop season of
Kartika (May to October) by opening and closing small apertures in the
embankments 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 provide
a 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 crop
required 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 rice
and were dependent on rainfall for their water, supplemented, on occasion,
by jungle streams. This third category oi land, called bettu, was scarcely in
8

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 inland
9
Gazetteer of the South Canara District, op. cit. , pp. 24-25 of the Statistical Appendix.

439

in the region until the nineteenth century, as the high land to man ratio
until that period ensured that such marginal lands were not pressed into
service. The method of transplantation of seedlings was used only on the
baylu lands, whereas most other lands grew their rice using sprouted seed
that was prepared in straw bags. Even on the superior lands, the rice grown
in the second and third crops was not cultivated by transplantation. As a
result 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 of
Brahmin settlements or agraharas, usually those populated by Kannadaspeaking Saiva Brahmins. These Brahmins, ritually prohibited from cultivating the land or handling the plough themselves, made use of other labour,
usually hired labour, for the purpose.&dquo; These arrangements persisted into
the early nineteenth century, when Francis Buchanan visited the region.
Besides commenting on the relatively high proportion of lands in Brahmin
hands 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 India
toured by him.2 Besides hired labour, the use of bonded labour was far from
uncommon, and even the few Portuguese who were settled in the region in
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries seemed to have favoured
this mode of cultivation. The caste composition of the region was in keeping
with the nature of cultivation arrangements, so that corresponding to the
rather high proportion of Brahmin land-owners in the locality, the Holeyas,
a caste of agricultural labour, and the Billavas, a caste of toddy-tappers who
also doubled as agricultural labour, accounted for a significant proportion
(18 to 20 per cent in the late nineteenth century) of total population.3
Inland, 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-bum
cultivation were practised by tribal populations, which survived well into the
nineteenth century. Settlement types also varied as one proceeded from the
coast to the interior; whereas the coastal strip of agraharas were of semicompact settlements, the more loosely conglomerated hamlet-type dominated
the upper reaches of the river valleys, finally giving way to dispersed settlements on the slopes of the Ghats. 14 We have already remarked on the strong
use

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,
cit., n. 6, pp. 358-60.
14
National Atlas of India, Southern India Plate 294, Village Types (Calcutta 1979).

op.

440
hold of Saiva Brahmins on coastal cultivation by the sixteenth century. This
does not mean that other groups were wholly excluded, and small groups of
Saraswat Brahmins were also to be found in the possession of landparticularly to the south, near Mangalore. Upto the seventeenth century,
the region around Mangalore preserved a slightly different character from
that to the north, owing to the enclave of Jains resident there, who looked to
Sravanabelagola for spiritual purposes and to the Jain ruler of Bangher, a
principality operating under the aegis of Vijayanagar, for material benefits.
There were several flourishing Jain mathas in the area, which both possessed
tracts of land and had, quite often, the rights to revenue collection given to
them in addition. They were thus the counterparts of the Hindu temples
along the rest of the coast which, as elsewhere in the Vijayanagar empire,
were of some importance in preserving the social and economic, as well as
the religious, fabric of the region. In this southern part of Kanara, a proportion
of the chief cultivating caste, the Bants, were also converts to Jainism. 15
While the regions agriculture was, in the last analysis, dependent on the
monsoon, 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 centuries
after 1500, and even the widespread famines of the late 1540s and early
1630s, which assumed disastrous proportions elsewhere in India, left the
region almost unscathed. However, in the eighteenth century, there is
evidence of a fairly serious epidemic, which combined with the very rare
famine that occurred in 1727 left the region quite thinly populated. The
regions geographical location (particularly the barrier of the Ghats to the
east) discouraged extensive population movements, and in the melee of
migratory movements that characterised Vijayanagar, the region remained
somewhat aloof. Equally, the possibilities of migratory responses to a reduction in population on account of some catastrophe were limited. &dquo;
Before concluding the section, it would be necessary to make at least some
mention of the incidence and collection of land revenue in the region.
During the heyday of Vijayanagar (from the late fourteenth to the late
sixteenth centuries), the region was nominally governed from the western
viceroyalty seated at Srirangapatnam. By all accounts, the control of
Vijayanagar 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 over
the local overlordship and paid tribute to Vijayanagar. The actual collection
of land revenue was left to them, with the imperial authority only concerning
itself directly with two taxes-the customs of the ports and the tolls on the
I

15
16

Vasantha Madhava, op. cit., n. 11, pp. 19-20.

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

441

highways connecting the ports to the imperial city of Vijayanagar. Even in

these, the imperial interest was limited to ensuring that the commercial links
the seaboard were not harmed. Under such a loose regime, local land
administration was autonomous to a high degree. A large proportion
of the lands directly abutting the coast, which belonged to the agraharas, as
well as those of the temples and other religious institutions were lightly taxed
or even exempt from tax. Where taxes were collected, it is difficult to
conclude much concerning the proportion of gross or net output that was
collected. While scriptural precepts on these subjects did exist, in the
absence of frequent measurement of land holdings, or their productivity,
one can only conclude that ad hoc rates were in force, based on the principles
of collective bargaining. One must remark, however, that the complaints of
excessive extortion-so common elsewhere in India in the period-are
never 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 the
wake of the defeat of the Vijayanagar empire at the hands of the Deccan
sultanates. Their control over the Kanara coast by the early seventeenth
century was strong, and they succeeded in undermining the semi-autonomous
rulers along the coast, who had been tolerated under the earlier regime. Not
much is known of the administration of land revenue under their regime, but
the evidence that exists points to the fact that their rule did little to alter local
institutions, 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 Krishna
deltas in the seventeenth century, escaped the rigours of a harshly extractive
and demanding state system and land revenue collection machinery.8
to

revenue

The Evolution of the Kanara Trade in the Sixteenth Century

In the

sixteenth century, on the arrival of the Portuguese on the

India, the trade of the Kanara coast was largely centred
around the port of Bhatkal, north of Basrur.9 This port was connected to
the imperial capital of Vijayanagar, several hundred kilometres inland on

early

western coast of

"

On the system followed by the Vijayanagar empire in the Karnataka region, see
Venkataramanayya, Studies in the History of the Third Dynasty of Vijayanagar (Madras
1935), pp. 164-85, as also Madhava, op. cit., n. 11. More recent work on Vijananagar, such as

N.

that 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 the
classic account is of the Englishman Methwold in W.H. Moreland, ed., Relations of Golconda
in 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.

442
the banks of the Tunghabhadra, by a direct road passing through a gap in the
Ghats. This was the road that most foreign travellers visiting the imperial
capital took to approach that city, and Bhatkal appears to have been the
normal port of disembarkation to proceed in that direction. To the north and
south of Bhatkal were numerous ports such as Ankola, Mirjan, Honawar,
Baindur, Basrur, Barakur, Mangalore and Kumbla. These ports were largely
ports 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 of
the western coast of India. Rice was the most important commodity carried
in this coastal trade, at least in terms of volume, and the types of rice differed
depending on the port of export. The hinterland of the ports north of
Honawar produced very little rice, and exported only marginal quantities.
The central Kanara ports such as Bhatkal, Basrur and Barkur were exporters
of fine white rice, while the more southerly ports-such as Mangalore and

Kumbla-largely exported coarse red and black, as well as broken rice. The
rice 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 even
the Red Sea ports.2 Most of these Kanara ports were really engaged in the
short-distance and coasting trades, and it would appear that the longer
distance 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 Persian
Gulf and the Red Sea and the exchange of commodities on which the link
was based was the following. Pepper from the hinterland as well as pepper
from north Malabar seems to have passed through this port on its way to
these 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 the
Red Sea and Persian Gulf were (and indeed still are) extensively dependent
on imports for their food supply. To sustain such knots of population as

Hormuz, Muscat, Jeddah or Mokha as enclaves in such a barren hinterland

would

scarcely have been possible otherwise. To be sure, the Kanara ports

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 urban
centres. This is a trade that has as yet not been adequately explored in the
were not

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
21

Ibid., particularly Ribeiro, pp. 240-43.

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

443

importing port and a large centre of consumption. Horses, imported for use
in 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 goods
imported included silks, aromatics, and other luxuries, once more calling for
the existence of a high income consuming class, such as could be found only
in a city as large and prosperous as Vijayanagar. Finally, a diversity of

metals, including gold, lead and copper were imported from the Middle
East. At least two of these, gold and copper, were crucial for the working of
the monetary system of the empire. 22
In the first decades of the sixteenth century, immediately on their arrival
the Indian ocean scene, the Portuguese made serious attempts at policing
and 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 as
is shown by the declining availability of spices in the eastern Mediterranean.
Some control was also attempted, with a lesser degree of success, on the
trade with the Persian Gulf. This policy of the Portuguese Estado da india,
which was mainly aimed at shipments of pepper and spices, resulted in a
decline in the trade from Calicut and Cannanore to the Middle East, though
a growing body of work has come to suggest that this situation was reversed
from the middle of the sixteenth century.23 The impact of these fluctuations
on 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 cosmopolitan port, dominated by Mapilla merchants where the seaborne trade was
concerned, but also containing a large Hindu trading community and a
sizeable group of Jain traders as well. However, in Portuguese eyes it was
strongly identified with the Moorish merchants from Arabia and consequently treated with scarcely concealed hostility. Already, in the first
decade of their presence off the west coast, the Portuguese began demanding
tribute 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 cartazes
to shipping from the port. Several skirmishes between the Portuguese and
the 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
on

22
The Vijayanagar monetary system was based on the minting of gold coins (
Varahas,
) and copper coins ),
Pratapas
Kasu with silver playing a very unimportant role.
(
23
The decline and subsequent revival of the Red Sea route is the subject of several recent
works. For example, see V. Magalhāes Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial,
segunda ediçāo, 4 volumes (Lisboa 1981-83), Volume 2, pp. 128-34, besides which there is the

classic work of Braudel, F.C. Lane and others. That the Portuguese tried quite hard to block the
route 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 seculo XVI (Paper
presented at the second international seminar on Indo-Portuguese History, Lisboa, 1980).

444
townsmen and the Portuguese under the belligerent Martim Affonso de
Sousa. On this occasion, large sections of the town were destroyed.24 Notwithstanding all these mishaps, Bhatkal played an important role in the
revival of the Red Sea trade after the mid-sixteenth century. A growing
pepper trade is reported with Jeddah, and ship arrivals in that port in the
1560s 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 abandoning of that city by
the court in favour of the hill fort of Penugonda after the resounding defeat
received by the Vijayanagar forces in 1565, signalled a decline in the fortunes
of Bhatkal. The port, as we have already stressed, was an important point of
access to the sea for the large inland centre of consumption that was
Vijayanagar, and closely identified with the court of Vijayanagar, even if the
coastal regions of Kanara, including Bhatkal, had some degree of autonomy
from imperial authority. By the 1580s, barely two decades after the decline
of 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 does
not 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 longer
collected their tribute there. The port scarcely rates a mention in the eariy
Dutch and English exploratory voyages off the west coast in the first decades
of the seventeenth century, and it was only in the 1630s that there was brief
refloresence with the settlement of a factory in the port by the English
interloping Courteens 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 advanced
stage of decay, in sharp contrast to the healthy picture presented of the port
and 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 some
other changes in the trade of the Kanara coast in the 1560s, in which the
24
See Diogo do 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
Mundys 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, the
many Pagodes and c. Contrast this to Couto, op. cit., n. 24.

445

Portuguese had quite a big hand. Already by the mid-sixteenth century, the
Estado 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 as
thirteen others, from Ankola to Kumbla.2g This rice was apparently used to
supply Goa, but was not nearly enough, hence the proposal for an increased
draft. After the debacle of 1565, the Portuguese state found the situation on
the coast propitious for strong action. In late 1567, the Governor Antdo de
Noronha 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, the
new Viceroy, D. Luis de Ataide mounted a similar expedition against
Honawar and Basrur. Honawar was, at the time, also dominated (like
Bhatkal earlier in the century) by merchants of Arab origin. However, the
Portuguese fleet encountered little resistance; a small fort already in existence
there 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 of
rice by the port annually. This custom of an annual tribute went back to the
1540s, in the immediate wake of the punitive expedition of Martim Affonso
de Sousa to the Kanara coast in 1542.3 At that time, to avoid any unpleasantness, the port of Basrur had agreed to make a voluntary annual payment of
seven hundred bales of rice, the bale of rice packed full of husked, cleaned
iice in rice-straw being the standard measure along the coast. This agreement
was subsequently re-negotiated in 1549, and the tribute reduced to five
hundred bales. 12 In exchange, the Portuguese Estado promised to protect
shipping 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. The
chronicler Couto states specifically that unlike other regions along the coast,
the settlers of Basrur governed themselves like a Republic, and paid some
tributes to the Raya (i.e., Vijayanagar).33 The power in the city is described
as being in the hands of a collective of govemadores or regedores, who on
specific occasions, such as the treaty of 1549, appointed agents from the
merchant community to prosecute negotiations. This version of the administration 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.

446

which states that the port was terra franca governed like a Republic, without
having any other subjection nor recognising any form of overlordship save
for a small tribute that is paid to the kings of Narsinga.34 Thus, not only was
this 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 contrast
to other ports such as Honawar, Bhatkal or Mangalore, which were controlled 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 of
Coondapoor now stands. This fort was maintained at the expense of the
merchant 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.35
The 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 few
kilometres upriver, the fort was in a position to effectively impede the
commerce of the native town of Basrur. The immediate steps taken by the
Portuguese in the aftermath of this successful expedition were to renegotiate terms with the principalities along the coast. Fresh treaties concerning tribute payments were signed, involving the delivery of not only rice
but 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 were
also set up on the coast, one in Mangalore and the other in Basrur. While the
customs-house in Mangalore continued to be in existence until the 1650s,
that at Basrur had a relatively short life. In 1570, the Basrur customs
amounted to some 5,000 pardaus annually, mainly import duties on horses
from Hormuz. Besides a sum of 1,000 tangas (an Indo-Portuguese silver
coin) was collected annually on exports, mainly rice.36
Of 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 or
Gersoppa. However, these merchants did not hesitate to complain that the
Portuguese presence on the coast was ruining their trade, and according to
the Portuguese, took perverse pleasure in trading with the corsairs of
Malabar. It was a regular Portuguese complaint in the 1580s that the Kanara
coast 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.

35
Couto, 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.

447

naturally provided excellent room for manoeuvre for their small craft.&dquo; By
the 1580s, the customs-house at Basrur had been removed, and this can be
seen as part of the attempt to centralise the import of horses from Persia to
Goa.38 Even without the revenue of the customs-house, the utility of the
Kanara forts was undeniable. From the 1560s onwards, Kanara bacame the
lifeline of Goa, a region that was dependent to a large extent on outside
sources for its supply of foodstuff. Regular convoys of rice-bearing ships
began to traverse the coast from the Kanara ports to Goa, often escorted by
ships 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, the
bulk of the imports into Goa were carried overland.&dquo; As many as three to
four convoys were organised on occasion to supply the capital of Portuguese
India. The composition of these convoys, the nature of the merchants who
traded 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 forts
also proved crucial for the Portuguese procurement of pepper. It was not
until the 1580s and 1590s that the Kanara pepper began to account for a
significant proportion of pepper cargoes on Lisbon-bound Indiamen. The
collection 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 network
was enhanced. On the one hand, Honawar became the most important
source of pepper, with the declining availability of Malabar pepper, and the
virtual loss of the South-east Asian sources.4o Further, with the Portuguese
shipping lanes coming under attack from the vessels of the United Dutch
East India Company, links between Kanara and Goa, which were relatively
easy to police and maintain, were of crucial importance for the survival of
Goa. Also, the need to supply other beleagured garrisons in the course of
the losing war with the Dutch in the period 1600 to 1650 made every source
of foodstuff a virtual gold mine. The frantic Portuguese attempts to top as
unlikely a source as Golconda, and the port of Masulipatnam, to supply
foodstuff to Malacca and the forts in Ceylon in the 1630s and the 1640s, and
the extent of concessions they were willing to offer to this end (even going so
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 of pepper in the seventeenth century, see Francisco
da Costas account in Documentacáo Ultramarina Portuguesa III, edited by A. da Silva Rego,
pp. 295-379.

448,
far as to offer a share of the China trade to the Persian merchants and nobles
of Golconda) would demonstrate the truth of this.41
From about 1600, the shadow of Ikkeri began to loom large in Kanara
politics. Skirmishes between the Nayaks of Ikkeri and the rulers of Gersoppa
had already begun in the late sixteenth century.42 Between 1600 and 1620,
Venkatappa, the ruler of Ikkeri acquired control over large portions of the
coast and hinterland, defeating and reducing many of the petty coastal rulers
in the process, and together with the Wodeyar ruler of Mysore, becoming
the 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 and
destruction of Gersoppa, Venkatappa (1586-1629) made an offer to the
Portuguese Governor at Goa-the prelate D. Frei Aleixo de Meneses-in
1608, suggesting that the Portuguese once again set up a customs-house at
Basrur. 44 The offer was accepted and a code formulated regulating duties,
official perquisites and other details of the functioning of 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 same
value on exports both by sea and overland. The instructions given to the
official 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 customshouse existed. It is abundantly clear from the way that the provision was
framed 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 and
Cochin 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 of
customs rested in the hands of state officials, all accounts were 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-farmers
on the veracity of the accounts submitted to them.45
41

Historical Archives, Goa (henceforth HAG), Regimentos e Instruçōes, No. 4 (1640-46),

fl. 11-11v.
42
HAG, Monçōes 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.
44
HAG, Provisōes dos Vice-Reis, No. 2, fls 64, 78.
45
HAG, Provisōes dos Vice-Reis, No. 2, fls 92v, 176v.
...

449

In 1()25, in response to a complaint on the part of the contractors who held

the customs ot Goa and Cochin, an injunction was passed severely curtailing
the 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 captain
and the factor at Basrur were rather too liberal in granting of cartazes to local

shipping, particularly

that

belonging

to

Venkatappa Nayak.

These

ships

often 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 Basrur
would, in any way, plug the gap caused by the failure of shipping to pass
through 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 corresponding
evidence 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 taxs 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 the
mouth of the estuary and were required to make the payment of the levy at
that point. These boats (variously termed parangues, paros and zambucos)
normally sailed in large fleets, and in the 1630s, it is reported that there were
as many as 150 such boats in a single fleet from Kanara to Goa.41 A Dutch
fleet coasting the Kanara region at about the same time reported an even
larger fleet of 200 sail. 4!! It was on this trade, or more specifically, the portion
of the trade that originated from the native town of Basrur (or Barcelore de
cima as the Portuguese termed it), that a levy existed, charged at the rate of
five bazaruco.s (a copper coin) per bale of rice (we have already noted that
the 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 Portuguese
Crowns factor at Basrur and expended on the works of fortification and
other expenses there. Given the free and easy ways of these factors and
Portuguese officials in the period and the general tendency to regard meum
and teum as much the same, it is quite likely that a part of what was collected
wound up in the pockets of the factor and other officials and only a portion
46

HAG, Conselho da Fazenda, No. 2(1618-25), fls 270v-271v.

Antonio Bocarro, Livro das plantas das todas as fortalezas, cidades e povoaçōes 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 (s47

109-10.
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.

Gravenhage 1899), pp.

49

450

properly reported. The point to note then is that the figures on collections
the account of this particular levy can only have been understatements of
the actual collection, and that it is therefore quite safe to use them in order to
set 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 passing
through the customs-house, and we may translate the bale measure into a
more modem unit.so
was
on

In

1628, it

was

decided that the

use

of Crown officials

was a

poor way of

going about the collection of revenue. In a solution characteristic of the

period, 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 year
1628-29, the highest bid was one of 1425 xerafins. Since the bidder usually
recovered the value of his bid and more, we can treat this figure as another
lower bound for estimating actual collection. This would imply that at least
3,500,000 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 farmers
indicate 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 busiest
season for the export of rice; in fact, the peak season occurred in October
and November after the first seasons (Kartika) harvest. Further, it is
noticeable 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 through the 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 an
estimate of the exports in that year. It is also observable that the dimensions
of this annual figure jell fairly well with the quarters export figure of 1.16
million kg cited earlier. 51
50

HAG, Monçōes do Reino 13a (1629-30), fl. 22v, 102-102v.

There are, of course, problems in comparing the two figures,
which they have been derived.
51

seeing the different ways in

451

These

figures would obviously demonstrate

that the rice trade from the

of considerable dimensions. To give the figures
cited in the foregoing a more accessible dimension, it may be mentioned that
the 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 would
be sufficient to keep some 15,000 persons supplied. The question naturally
arises in such a context of where this rice was bound for. The Portuguese
seventeenth century chronicler Antonio Bocarro informs us that the chief
destinations were Goa, Malacca, Muscat, Mozambique and Mombassa. It
would not be possible to treat of all these links, since information is only
available on some. The link with East Africa and Mozambique in particular
is one that is almost completely shrouded in darkness. Further, it is clear that
Bocarro was being selective in his description, and had a tendency to place
an emphasis on those links which directly concerned the Portuguese. Links
with other parts of the Persian Gulf, and also with the ports of the Red Sea
which might well have continued from the previous century, remain
unstated.52
However, a few links in the network of trade are particularly clear and we
shall develop them, attempting at the same time to set out the entities
involved in the trade and their motives. To begin with the link to Goa, an
estimate for the 1630s provided by Antonio Bocarro tells us that the value of
the 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 convert
this 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 shipment
when sold in Goa. If the former, we get an estimate of 18 million lbs (or 8
million kgs), one that agrees with that of 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 Bocarros information is far
more likely to have referred to sales in Goa than purchases in Kanara.
However, even this lower figure considerably exceeds what we have estimated
as the probable outflow from Basrur in any one year, and it is worth stressing
that 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 (though
perhaps 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

port of Basrur alone

52

was

It is not clear whether the

numerous

Malabarese vessels mentioned

by

the

early

Dutch

and

English fleets in the Red Sea were from Kanara ports. There was a tendency at the time to
use the term Malabar loosely, and even Ikkeri is sometimes referred to as in Malabar. See n. 83
below.
53
See Pearson, op. cit., n. 31, p. 11; also Bocarro, op. cit., n. 41, p. 284. On prices in Goa at
the 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.

452,
made up of

ships from a large number of Kanara ports, with a fair

proportion coming from Baindur, Barakur and Mangalore as welt. 54
Since 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 of
Basrur, referred to by the Portuguese as ch=irins de Barcelor, second, the
amall 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 Portuguese Estuuo 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 strategic
was

rather 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 possessions
in 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 Portuguese
private trader, and despatch the rice to its destination. On some rare
occasions, there is evidence of the use of Portuguese state vessels, belonging
to 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 requisitions
on the part of the Estado were normally made in the winter months when the
rice market was most plentifullv supplied, and we have several examples of
this in the 1620s and 1630s. These were mainly to Portuguese fortresses
under imminent threat of attack, or under seige from the Dutch or some
other party. Besides, Goa itself was on several occasions supplied in part
using this method, as the administration apparently believed in the creation
of 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 of
rice 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.56 In 1630, some 130,000 kgs were procured from 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
54

This 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, Regimentos e Instrucoes series, e.g.,
No. 3 (1636-40), fls 51v, 93, No. 4 (1640-46), fls 5-5v, 19-19v, passim.
55
HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1627-31), fl. 4v.
56

Ibid., fl. 95v.

57

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

453

by the administration of the Estado, keeping in mind the

of
the agricultural crisis of the early 1630s.
gathering
The other area that the Estados administrators were anxious to keep well
supplied was their fort in Muscat in the Persian Gulf,. This anxiety is
understacidable 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 Andrade
in that vicinity. We have several instances of orders being placed for goods
intended to victual the Muscat fortress. In 1629, a large order of over
500,000 kg was placed by the 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 than
one occasion.5&dquo; Again, some 115,000 kgs were hastily put together in early
1631 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 semiofficial arrangements existed as well. An appointee to the post of Captain of
the Basrur fort, Martim Teixeira de Azevedo, when about to assume his port
in 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 (approximately 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 the
state had made all purchases on its own account in that region. This was
clearly a condition aimed at ensuring that de Azevedos purchases did not
push up prices, thus rendering the Estados procurement that much more
expensive.&dquo; The states own despatches during the average year at that time
(in 1632-33 and 1633-34, for instance) amounted to some 65,000 kg for the
fort 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 garrison
and the crews of the ships stationed there.
Teixeira de Azevedo apparently did not possess any shipping of his own
and we find him in 1633, for example, freighting the pinnace of one Miguel
de Rego, probably one of the few Portuguese settled near Basrur, in order to
make his annual delivery to Muscat.6 The arrangement that was apparently
followed 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
measures

taken

storm

58
59
60
61

Ibid., fl. 89v.

Ibid., fl. 131v.
HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1631-37), fl. 47v, 51.
Ibid., fl. 64v.

454

freighting in the particular instance, he would be left with a small sum, his
neat 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 (in
addition to which there was of course, the states own direct procurement).
Before him, we are told that this grant was customarily made to one or the
other of the native merchants of Basrur. However, the rice carried both by
de Azevedo and on account of the Estados direct procurement was intended
solely for the provisioning of the garrison. rhe trade to the town proper of
Muscat was distinct from this, and the parallel trade might well have been of
more considerable dimensions.
Besides Goa and Muscat, it has already been mentioned that the Estado
de india also occasionally made purchases of rice at Basrur for other destinations. 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 states armadas which were outward bound from Goa to
various destinations in Asian waters, a large order was placed for rice with
the 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 this
service that he rendered, the unfortunate Kini and his brother were both
sentenced to death by the Portuguese authorities in 1638, and their goods
confiscated, for the crime of trading with the Dutch! Unfortunately, we do
not know if this sentence was in fact carried outs In the following decade
and up to 1650, occasional consignments of rice were also sent from Basrur
on the Estados initiative to Ceylon and Malacca, two of the major theatres
where hostilities with the Dutch were being carried on. In 1639, when the
Dutch 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 1644
contained some 17,000 kg.66 It is noticeable from the records of the period
that 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 supply
regions to keep garrisons alive and prolong the struggle. Portuguese relations
with Golconda in the period, for instance, are mainly concerned with the use
of the northern Coromandel ports to supply rice to Ceylon, and other

places. 67
62
Ibid.,
fl. 88v.
Ibid., fl. 170;

see also fls 144-144v on the relations between the Portuguese and a few
Kanarese merchants (such as, Vithala Nayak, Rama Kini, etc.). Pearson has commented 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.
HAG, Livro de Segredos, MS. 1416, fl. 25.
64
HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1637-43), fl. 50v-51.
65
HAG, Conselho da Fazenda (1643-47), fl. 81.
65
Ibid., fl. 133-134v. On the search for other sources of rice, see HAG, Regimentos e
67
Instruçōes, MS 1422, fl. 25, as well as n. 41.
63

powerful

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 and
mesti~o private traders. Amongst those were the Portuguese settlers who
lived just outside the fort of Basrur, who had married locally (or at least
co-habited with local women), living off both trade and the cultivation of
some rice fields and coconut-palms which they had of their own. These
cusados (who numbered some thirty-five families in the 1630s), also possessed
their own shipping in the form of some seven or eight galliots of around 300
khandis burthen, using which they carried on their own trade.&dquo; When not
loaded with goods belonging to their owners, these galliots werc freighted
out either wholly or in part by the owners to individual merchants, or to the
Estado for its garrison-supply operation, or even to the officials of the
Estado when they wanted to take a hand in the private trade. The relatively
small 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 though
wide 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 that
took place from this port. It would appear that the port also was an exporter
of coir and small amounts of pepper, as well as fair quantities of saltpeter, an
essential ingredient in the making of gunpowder, iron, imported from over
the Ghats via the Haidergarh pass, and even a small amount of fine textiles
(bethilles), whose use was particularly favoured in the Persian Gulf region. 69
Where 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 largest
quantities was locally termed jirigai in south Kanara, and it was a smallgrained, white variety, usually grown in the first crop season of Kartika (May
to 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 other
variety that was carried, though to a far lesser extent than the jirigai, was
termed amutti-a coarse, black-grained type.7o Some information exists on
the 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, the
same 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
See Bocarro, 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

456
destinations in the 1630s, we may not directly conclude that the price
differences reflect, in large measure, the high component of transportation
costs in

determining prices. One might argue, however, that given the free
goods and bullion, one factor maintaining a wedge between the
price of the one and the other in two places would be the cost of
transportation. Also, using these prices alone, it would not be possible to
understand 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, wages
paid 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 single
voyage (given the order of gross profit obtainable from the price differentials),
could not have been very large if rice alone were carried. A frequently
flow of
relative

observed pattern

was to use the rise as ballast, while carrying other more

profitable goods as well. This ballast function could as well be performed by
saltpeter, 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 light
that 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 evidence
of some Portuguese observers suggested a prosperous, merchant-dominated
town, which enjoyed a good deal of autonomy from imperial authority at the
time of Vijayanagar. The evidence also suggested a fairly strong form of
corporate organisation within the town, with a collective which empowered
merchants from the community to negotiate with outsiders. The Portuguese
chronicler Couto, whom we have quoted earlier, is emphatic on all these
aspects, and the contrast between the other Mapilla dominated ports along
the Kanara coast, such as Honawar and Bhatkal, and Basrur-which was
perceived by the Portuguese as a Hindu merchant dominated port-is
clear. 11
Unfortunately, little has survived of the history of the town itself, though
we do know that it was in a flourishing state even as late as 1800, after which
it 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 a
temple.&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.
72

See, for example, Couto, op. cit., n. 24, Decada Oitava, pp. 276-80.
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.
73

457
an enormously flourishing town, going on to state that there were among
them in olden times men who were so rich that many spoke in terms of
bahars of pagodas (i.e., the varaha, the most common Vijayanagar gold
coin), 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 Basrurs
connections with the inland courts.
After the extension of the power of Ikkeris Nayaks over the Kanara area,
it is not clear what the equation of the town and its inhabitants with the new
rulers 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 imagine
that the merchants of Basrur could have been particularly happy at this
While it was a minor concession for the Nayak to temporarily appease
the Portuguese, the customs-house was a far more serious matter where the
towns 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 apparently
had at least some control of his own over the riverbome traffic. In the late
1620s, this officials duties also extended to the collection of a newly imposed
chungam or toll which the Nayaks had decided to impose on the rice export,
particularly that to Muscat.&dquo; From all this, one may conclude then, albeit
without any great degree of certainty, that the Ikkeri regime probably
curtailed some of the autonomy enjoyed by the town-dwellers in the previous
century; in the absence of information of any detail, one cannot conclude
much more.
The Portuguese records also provide us some odds and ends referring to
individual 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, we
have a single record dating from December 1602, by which the Portuguese
Viceroy, Aires de Saldanha, is seen to have issued a cartaz to one Porsea
Chatim, 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
move.

75

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

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,
76

inadequate linkages with the inland courts.

77
See Júlio Firmino Judice Biker, ed., Colecç
o de Tratados
ā
volumes (Lisboa 1881-87), Vol. 1, pp. 270-72.

Concertos de pazes, 14

458
under attack, or under threat of attack, from the land side.78 The ship was
naturally 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 purely
commercial enterprise on that part of the Kanarese merchant. The name of
the merchant is too distorted to allow for restoration, and his surname may
be loosely construed to imply that he was a Hindu, and of a caste regarded by
the 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 merchant
to 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 other
evidence thus far of a trade between Basrur, the port of departure mentioned,
and Bengal. Further, the ship was a large one, of 800 khandis burthen, and
carried 30 sailors besides 40 Malabaris, from the region of Calicut and
Tanur, besides over a hundred passengers who were individual merchants
with their retinues. The ship was armed and carried some fifteen pieces of
artillery, and was commanded by one Cotta Muxa, a Mapilla. The cartaz
demonstrates 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 the
nature 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 ownership
of either these craft or the goods despatched in them. It would be foolhardy
to 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 at
least 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 delineated (the Estados administration, private Portuguese, and the native
merchants of Basrur) played a role. Where the last group was concerned, the
enterprise was largely a commercial one, with the profit-motive the operative
one, 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, the
word chatim had come to mean a crooked merchant, vide James L. Taylor, Harrap
Portuguese-English Dictionary (London 1970), p. 152. This naturally reflects Portuguese
prejudices as much as the morals of Indian traders.
79
See HAG, Livro de Consulta, MS 1043, fls 65-65v.

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 captains
of 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, the
administration of the Estado actually held an enquiry into the decline in food
supply that had occurred and, as a result, several persons who had commanded
the 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, Duarte
Peixoto da Silva. The administration in Goa was consequently presented
with a petition signed by the people of Barcelor, Christian and Gentio. In
this petition, it was stated that this extortion had grown so excessive that it
had forced many merchants to leave Basrur for other places, including
many Brahmins who were the principal merchants and who had capital
which they (i.e., the petitioners) could avail of in any necessity.8 The
signatures appended include those of such persons as Narayana Balo, Shiva
Balo, Timmayya Sinai, Damu Balo, Coqumalo, Sandopor, Bala Nayak,
Sante Komatti and the widow of Chenayya Komatti, among others. Some of
these names are so distorted as to be unidentifiable, but at least two communities can be identified. One of these are the Saraswats, with their caste
names such as Sinai and Nayak. The mercantile activities of the Saraswats in
the Kanara region and even in Goa have been substantially documented in
the 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-the Komatti Chetties. The activities of this group, whose origins
are in the northern Coromandel, are reported as stretching in the direction
of central and southern Coromandel in the seventeenth century, and their
trading interests also extended into South-east Asia. 12 However, to find
them 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 quite
as 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
80
81
82

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

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

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.

460
trade is clear and evidence exists of cartazes being passed to enable their
ships to sail to the Red Sea in particular. It would appear, however, that for a
variety of reasons, these ships were normally operated from Bhatkal, which
in many ways was still identified in the seventeenth century as a port
relatively free from Portuguese interference.83 On occasion, these ships
appear 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 had
been off Basrur. Not much more is known about the Nayaks shipping, or
about the extent and ownership of the capital that was sunk in these mercantile
ventures.84 We may, however, add these princes to the fairly long list of
seventeenth century Indian potentates who were involved in directly trading
overseas, 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 of
the credit went to the Companies. In the long procession of disasters from
Siriam in 1612, through Hormuz, Malacca, Ceylon and Cochin, the expulsion
from 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 them on the Kanara coast. It was only in 1668 that the V.O.C.
established a factory at Basrur to procure rice to supply its strongholds at
Cochin 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 the
seventeenth 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 the
seventeenth century. The port lay in the midst of some of the most prosperous
rice producing land in India. The agrarian economy was dominated on the
one hand by communities of Saiva Brahmins and their institutions, particularly
83

This is evident from the fact that whenever the Nayaks of Ikkeri

sent

invitations

to

the

English Company at Surat, it was always with respect to Bhatkal. See, for instance, W. Foster,
ed., The English Factories in India 1618-21 (Oxford 1906), pp. 56, 60, 66, 69, 70, 81, passim. An
instance of the confusion of the Malabar and Kanara coasts also exists here. Up on occasion we
that are
are informed of breach of peace twixt the Portingalls and a people their neighbours
Mallabar gentiles, their countrie called Ekaria and the porte Batacala, p. 81. It was no
coincidence that Weddells fleet chose Bhatkal as their factory site in 1636.
84
Judice Biker, op. cit., n. 77, pp. 272, 299-302.
85
See H.K.s Jacob, De Nederlanders in Kerala (s-Gravenhage 1976), Inleiding, p. LII.
....

461

off the coast, and on the other by a Sudra cultivating caste, the Bants, to the
inland. What can we conclude on the relationship of the agrarian economy
such as it was, with the trading sector and the mercantile community of the
town or Basrur, which handled the bulk of the trade in rice?
At the outset, awe had mentioned that the pre-modem trade in agrarian
products could be conceived of as taking place by means of different
mechanisms. On the one hand, the state could collect a land tax in kind, and
itself proceed to directly participate in the trade. From what we know of this
region this was not the case here. There did exist a market-intermediated
form of trade rather than an administered one. Even where a marketintermediated form of trade existed, it is quite conceivable that the states
demand for land revenue was the propelling force behind the sale of, and the
existence of a market for foodgrains. Is there evidence to support such a
forced commercialisation hypothesis in this instance?
While it would not be possible to settle this question beyond reasonable
doubt in the present state of information, one can only point to the fact that
it would appear that the region was not very harshly taxed. On the contrary,
large tracts of land which were owned by certain institutions, in particular
the Saiva temples along the coast, were rather lightly taxed.&dquo; Further, it is
more than probable that the land in the Brahmin dominated settlements
along the coast was also lightly taxed. All this would not suggest, of course,
that no grain was marketed for the purposes of payment of land revenue.
There is, however, considerable circumstantial evidence which points to
production for the market, quite independently of the exigencies of forced
commercialisation. Whether the one or the other, it would be worthwhile to
investigate the mechanism of surplus mobilisation and sale, the possible
existence of a hierarchical system of markets and the relations between the
Saraswat merchants who were in charge of retailing the product and the
producers in the agrarian economy. If the evidence from the early nineteenth
century is anything to go by, the relatively large and prosperous landholdings
along the coast might well have been willing to survive without resorting to
crop hypothecation or the indebtedness of landlords to merchants. We may
note here that the overlap between the two classes was not extensive, and
only a few Saraswats possessed tracts of land in the region around Basrur in
even the later period. 87
The study in this paper has been partial and somewhat biased by the
nature of the records used. The portion of the trade that is best documented
is that which was carried out on the account of the Portuguese Estado da
India. These rice consignments were sent to the beleagured Portuguese
fortresses and garrisons in various parts of Asia as well as to Goa, and were
86
For details of temple holdings in Gangolli, for instance, see the treaties between the
and first Virappa and then Virabhadra Nayak in Judice Biker, op. cit., n. 77,
pp. 270-72 and 299-302.
87
Buchanan, op. cit., n. 6, Vol. 3, p. 100-2, table facing p. 102.

Portuguese

462
motivated by strategic and military rather than commerical considerations.
On most occasions, this trade involved the use of private shipping thus
causing an intersection between the spheres of operation of private entities
and the state. The two sets of private entities involved in the trade were
private Portuguese on the one hand and the Indian merchants of Basrur on
the other.
It has been particularly difficult to capture the trade carried on by the
native merchants of Basrur. The trade of the town to places not of direct
interest to the Portuguese remains almost completely in darkness. Further,
the trade to the town of Muscat (as opposed to the fort) to the Red Sea ports
and to Malabar and Ceylon has not been created as fully as might have been
wished. How the rice that was exported from Basrur was distributed across
destinations is still in the realm of conjecture.
It is important to note that Basrur was only one of the many rice trading
ports along the Kanara coast. It would appear that it was, like Mangalore,
one of the more important ports but the total dimensions of the trade from
Kanara were considerably larger than the exports of this single port. It is
only natural that the bulk of the importing areas should have been urban
areas. We may fruitfully recall Braudels remarks on the grain trade, that
normally only large cities could afford the luxury of importing so bulky a

commodity over long distances, except in the event of a crisis of some

proportions.88 Were one to compare the rice trade to some of the foodgrain
movements in the pre-modem world, such as that in the sixteenth century
the Indian west
rice
trade cannot
of somewhat smaller dimensions. However, the
be dismissed, given its importance for not only the importing economies,
which is undeniable, but also the exporting economy.
This paper has attempted to unravel a few threads in the vast tangle of the
rice movement. Future studies of other regions, and even perhaps of other
such commodities might enable us to eventually attempt the synthesis
mentioned at the outset, furthering our comprehension of the interaction of
the trade in agricultural goods, that in manufactures, and the domestic
economy as a whole.

Mediterranean, it would be obvious that the rice trade on

coast

was

Table of Weights, Measures and Currencies

"

Braudel, cit., n. 2, Vol. 1, pp. 570-71.

op.