Ginger Without Borders

Kochi, as spelled in the Malayalam alphabet, has been the name of this city for centuries. When Western powers came to India (the Portuguese, the Dutch and then the British), the transcription of the name in the Western alphabet was spelled Cochi. In 1996, along with many other areas of India, the Western alphabet name was reverted to Kochi (although there is a city in Japan with the same spelling in English). In Malayalam, the name means “small river mouth” even though this is one of the major ports along the Malabar Coast of Southern India. It’s nickname is the “Queen of the Arabian Sea.” The name of the city first appeared in writen history in 1417. Kochi (or Cochi) has been an object of foreign interests almost since its founding due to the riches that can be derived from its spice trade.

In Antiquity, there was a port just to the north of Kochi that became a spice trading center well known to the Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Arabs. That port was destroyed by a massive flood originating in the Western Ghat mountians near Periyar in 1341. The flood also created the natural harbor that would be named Kochi.

Interestingly, Kochi first appears in written history in Chinese. So we get to explore a little-known part of Chinese history, during the Ming Dynasty, to be specific. In 1402, Emperor Zhu Di seized the throne of the Ming Dynasty from his nephew by force (and his reign would be one of the most properous periods of the Ming Dynasty and he would move its capital to Beijing). To prove his legitimacy to the throne, the new Emperor ordered the construction of a fleet of warships and trading ships to collect tribute from all the adjacent regional Asian powers (and expand the list of tribute nations further into Southeast Asia). The Emperor named his life-long friend (and a eunuch raised as a Muslim), Admiral Zheng He, to lead this fleet of over 317 ships into Southeast Asia. This fleet was the first time in Chinese history that it projected naval power beyond its borders. It was also the largest armada in world history until World War I. The largest junks in the fleet had technological innovations including a narrow prow design, divided hulls with watertight compartments, and balanced rudders that could be raised and lowered. These innovations would not come to European ships until the late 1700’s. They were also the largest wooden sailing ships ever constructed. These “treasure ships” were over 400 feet in length, 160 feet wide, and displaced over 10,000 tons. For comparison, the flagship of Columbus was only 85 feet long. The first voyage in 1405 came as far West as the Indian town of Calicut (about 115 miles north of Kochi), which was then the dominant port in Southeastern India. The fifth voyage of the fleet in 1417 named Kochi in its records as a rival port to Calicut. During this fifth voyage (which continued to the East African coast and returned to China with giraffes as presents for the Emperor), the Ming Dynasty offered protection to Kochi’s ruler is his struggle to become independent of his tribute to the King of Calicut. With protection from the Chinese Emporer’s fleet, Kochi became independent from Calicut. Unfortunatley for Kochi, the Chinese abruptly withdrew from naval voyages into the Indian Ocean after the death of Admiral Zheng in 1433. Emperor Zhu Di had died in 1424, and the new Emperor was forced to acknowledge that the trade and tribute from the fleet’s voyages was nowhere near the cost of maintaining the fleet (and nearly emptied the Ming treasury). So China withdrew from further naval adventures and closed itself to the world (and thus were unable to compete when the European fleets came to exploit trade with the East Indies). Jealous of the Emperor’s trust in a eunuch, the Confucian scholars of the Ming Dynasty also destroyed Zheng He’s maritime logs and allowed the fleet to rot in port. His voyages were rarely mentioned in later official court records. Only in the early twentieth century did Chinese intellectuals “rediscover” his voyages.

Without Chinese protection, the King of Kochi had to submit to Calicut domination. Then the Portuguese arrived in Calicut in May 1498 with an exploratory fleet commanded by Vasco de Gama, who thereby became the first European navigator to reach India by the ocean route around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. The Arab traders were not pleased when the Portuguese found a route that bypassed their land monopoly. And then Calicut tried to play both of its trade partners. While playing host by offering spice warehouses for the Portuguese, Calicut’s rulers were implicated when Arab traders attacked and destroyed those warehouses. Seeing another opportunity for independence from Calicut, Kochi offered an alliance to the Portuguese fleet in return for protection from Calicut. So in 1500, a “lost to history” Portuguese navigator named Pedro Cabral became the new “protector” of Kochi. And his is another “lost story” worth exploring.

At this time in Portugal, “standing at court” was more important than qualifications to lead a major expedition. Vasco Da Gama’s first voyage was only an exploratory voyage to find a route that would eliminate the need to trade with the hated Muslin Arabs (expelled from Portugal in 1249 and only recently expelled from Spain in 1492) for Indian spices. Now Portugal was sending a large fleet to trade for spices. Cabral was named the military chief of this fleet over far more experienced navigators for what some historians have noted was “a deliberate attempt to balance the interests of rival nobel factions” in the Portuguese Court. Cabral was instructed to lead his fleet of 13 ships along Vasco da Gama’s new route to India. His fleet sailed from Lisbon in March 1500. For reasons not known (other than da Gama’s mention of land sighted in the west of the Southern Atlantic), instead of following the coast of Africa (like Da Gama), he sailed the fleet deep into the Atlantic following the trade winds of the Atlantic (a technique the Portuguese developed under Henry the Navigator some hundred years earlier) and made landfall in April 1500 (in what is now Brazil). Spain and Portugal had signed a treaty in 1494 dividing the “new world” neither had yet fully explored. Cabral verified he was not in “Spanish territory.” He spent several weeks exploring the landfall and erecting a huge Christian Cross. He sent one ship back to Portugal to report what he thought was the discovery of a large island. Cabral then sailed his fleet south along the coast and became determined he had in fact found an entire continent. Then he sailed east into the South Atlantic where a massive storm sank half his fleet (six vessels). His surviving ships landed in Calicut in September 1500 and built a spice factory. In a surprise attack later in December, the factory and storehouses were attacked by Arabs and Hindu Indians. The attack (and Hindu involvement) may have been prompted by the Portuguese demands that Calicut’s King grant them exclusive trading rights. To establish the superiority of the Portuguese fleet, he bombared Calicut for a whole day (the beginning of the “gunboat diplomacy” that the Europeans would use throughout the Far East) in retaliation for the attack. Aware of the vassal city Kochin from Da Gama’s voyage, Cabral then sailed his fleet south to Kochi, whose ruler offered not just warehouses but a site for a fort. So Cabral established a small fort in late December 1500 (the first European settlement in India), loaded his six remaining vessels with spices (one would founder in Africa and have to be burned) and returned to Portugal. The profit to the Crown upon the fleet’s return was 800% of the voyage’s expense (not just outfitting the fleet, but also indluding the cost of the lost vessels). The Portuguese King celebrated Cabral for his amazing accomplishments (despite his lack of experience). Initially selected to command the fleet that would return to India, he was then removed from command by King Manuel for reasons lost to history (but historians suggest it was related to further rivalries at Court). He retired to a private life, recurrent fever (perhaps malaria), and slipped into obscurity. He was replaced by Vasco Da Gama (supported by a rival faction at Court) for command of the next spice fleet to India. With the success of that fleet and his command of the Fourth Armada (the biggest spice cargo from India to that point), Da Gama would be named Governor of India. History (and Portugal) would acknowledge Da Gama as a leading figure of the age of exploration. The Americas would be named for the navigator who followed Cabral on the next Portuguese fleet to the “island” that turned out to be South America, Amerigo Vespucci. Cabral became lost to history until Emperor Pedro II of the newly independent Brazil began to investigate Cabral’s contributions to the Age of Discovery in the 1840’s. In 1896, the Emperor brought some of his bones back to Brazil from Cabral’s “newly” discovered but long forgotten grave. In Brazil, he is now a national hero and acknowledged as the European who discovered Brazil. History now also recognizes him as the commander of the first group of humans in history to set foot on four continents in one voyage (Europe, Africa, America, and Asia). Historians note that few voyages have been of greater importance to posterity but less appreciated in their own time. Even today, Da Gama still far overshadows Cabral in Portugal.

Portugal was able to keep its route to India a secret for over 100 years. It soon replaced Venice as Europe’s spice source (begining the decline of Venice as a naval power). The first spices were pepper and cinnamon, but they were able to create a demand for many other spices of Kerala. Their spice trade monopoly powered the growth of a huge trading fleet and the expansion of the Portuguese Empire across the globe. The Portuguese Empire became one of the longest lasting European colonial empires (ending when Macau was returned to China in 1999). From their small fort in Kochi, the Portuguese soon sidelined the Kochi King. They attempted unsuccessfully to merge the St. Thomas Christians into the Latin Church, ultimately pushing them into intercommunion with Eastern Orthodox Churches. Unfortunately for the St. Thomas Christians, Muslims and Jews, they also introduced the dreaded Inquisition into India. Vasco Da Gama would die of malaria in Kochi in 1524 and be buried locally in the first European church in India. His son claimed his remains and returned them to Portugal in 1539.

By the late 1500’s, the Portuguese spice monopoly had difficulty satisfying the growing demand for pepper in Europe. Then in 1580 the Portuguese and Spanish crowns were united. The Protestant Dutch Republic had been at war with its former Catholic sovereign, the King of Spain, since 1568. With this alliance, the Dutch now considered the Portuguese spice trading empire an appropriate target (during a war that would last until 1648, now known as the Eighty Years War). Beginning in 1591, Dutch merchants began attacking Portuguese interests in the Far East, starting with shipping in the Indonesian Islands (to be known as the Spice Wars to distinguish it from the many European wars which were not always related to the trade wars in East Asia). In 1600, England created a monopoly enterprise, the “English East India Company,” to bundle their merchant interests into one enterprise for a period of 15 years (later extended for an indefinite period). The Dutch government responded to this threat by uniting its merchants into a single “Dutch East India Company” that was granted a monopoly over all Asian trade. The Dutch Company was given a 21 year life and the authority to build forts, maintain an army and make treaties with Asian rulers. It’s stock could be bought and sold in the newly opened open-air secondary market (now the Amsterdam Stock Market, the oldest in the world). The Dutch East India Company is now considered the first multinational corporation. The new Company’s naval forces destroyed Portuguese Asian naval power in a battle in Malaysia in 1615 and expelled the Jesuits from Japan in 1639. Then the Company’s army moved on Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1640 which they completely controlled by 1659. To protect their control of Ceylon from the Portuguese (and the English East India Company), the Dutch moved on the Malabar Coast of India. Their naval forces captured Kollam in 1661, a port about 90 miles south of Kochi. Entering into an alliance with the hier to the King of Calicut, Dutch and Indian forces staged a siege of the Kochi fort in October 1662. The fort surrendered in January 1663 and its Portuguese residents were expelled to Goa (the Portuguese colony about 500 miles north – much more on Goa later in our trip). The Portuguese (and its hated Inquisition) were gone from Kochi. In 1664, the Fort Kochi Municipality was established by the Dutch, the first municipality in India (the other parts of Kochi were under the nominal control of the local princely ruler). The Malabar Coast was now Dutch Malabar. However, almost immediately, the Calicut King established an alliance with the British East India Company in 1664 which would regularly challenge Dutch interests until 1795. By 1669, the Dutch East Indian Company was the richest private company the world had ever seen owning over 150 merchant ships, with its own private army and a dividend payment of 40% on an original investment. ”Dutch Malabar” was a separate command of the Company with Kochi as its capital. However, while India would never to be a major profit center of the now vast Far East holdings of the Dutch East India Company, Kochi had its greatest prosperity under the nominal control of the Dutch.

The treasury of the Dutch Republic was also supported by the another private corporation, the Dutch West India Company in the Americas. The income from the trading colonies and monopolies (including the exclusive monopoly with Japan) of these two private companies funded a Dutch fleet of over 2,000 ships, larger than the fleets of France and Britian combined, making the Dutch Republic a world power. Due to the shallow draft of their home waters, these ships were smaller than their French and British counterparts but their sheer numbers made up for their smaller size. Inevitably, the competition for trade routes (particularly in North America) resulted in the first Anglo-Dutch War where the British captured present day New York in 1665 and the Dutch destroyed the British navy in its home port in 1667 (now considered one of the most humiliating defeats in British history). Then the French King (supported by England) invaded Holland in an attempt to replace the King of Spain as their overlord (1672-78). Initial French successes were followed by the withdrawal of England from the conflict, and enough Dutch victories that the French King sued for a settlement. The discipline of the Dutch armies in preventing French seizure of Dutch land secured William of Orange the position of Stadholder (the civil servant leader of the Dutch Republic) and marriage to Mary, the cousin of the King of England, Charles II.

Two more naval wars with the King Charles II over trade issues followed. Then in 1688, forces of the Protestant Dutch Republic (at the behest of Protestant interests in England) invaded Britian to assist Queen Mary (with a claim to the English throne) and her husband, William of Orange, to depose Catholic Charles II and take the British throne. This was the last successful invasion of British soil by a foreign power. With the two former adversaries now united by joint leaders, commerce between them increased and many Dutch traders moved to London. International trade now centered in London (and English per capita income soon exceeded that of the Dutch Republic), the Dutch economy went into decline and the Dutch navy was not maintained. William continued to rule Britian after Mary’s death but he died in 1701 and was succeeded by Mary’s cousin, George I (a German Protestant).

Back in India, the Kingdom of Travancore (originally a small kingdom on the Malabar Coast south of Kochi) began to expand and attacking Dutch trading partners in Malabar. So in 1739, the Dutch Governor of Sri Lanka sent an army to Kochi to protect the interests of the Dutch East India Company. With some assistance from the British East India Company, the Europeans were intially successful against Travancore. But after a Travancore cannonball blew up the Dutch garrison’s ammunition store, the Europeans were forced to surrender. It was the first defeat for Europeans by an organized Asian native power and ended all further Dutch attempts to expand their influence in Malabar. In fact, the Dutch Captain defected to Travancore’s ruler, became head of his personal guard, and trained his army in Western military tactics. He then commanded the Travancore army until 1758 as it successfully annexed most of the other kingdoms in Malabar. Travencore was eventually able to dominate the pepper trade in Malabar (and signed an alliance with the British East India Company in the 1795).

Then in 1779, the Dutch Republic offered shelter to the ship of a privateer (a government sanctioned pirate) named John Paul Jones. His new country still did not have a name since it was just a collection of Britian’s North American colonies who had declared independence from the British King George III. So Britian declared war on the Dutch Republic. John Adams succeeded in getting the Dutch Republic to recognize the colonies’ Continential Congress in 1782, the second European country to do so. Unfortunately for the Dutch Republic, its anemic naval forces were no match for the now dominant British navy. The British attacked Dutch colonial interests and the 1784 peace treaty forced the Dutch Republic to cede certain trading monopolies and colonies (not Dutch Malabar formally just yet) to Britian. But the British East India Company, in conjunction with its 1795 alliance with Travancore, forced the Kochi prince to pay it tribute, thus displacing the Dutch.

Meanwhile in Europe, the French King had been executed and the new French Republic invaded the Netherlands and toppled the Dutch Republic in 1795. In an 1814 treaty between Britian and the French puppet Kingdom of the Netherlands (as Napoleon was being defeated), the Dutch were forced to formally cede Kochi and Dutch Malabar to the King of Britian (in return for being granted a spice island in Sumatra).

Kochi under British rule (much as it had been under the 150 years of Dutch rule) was largely left under the direct rule of its native princely rulers. The British Madras Presidency sent an engineer in 1920 to help address the growing commerce in Kochi’s port. He spent 21 years reclaiming the inner harbor and transforming the port into one of the safest facilities in India with a long line of steam cranes. 

In 1947 when India became independent, Kochi was the first princely state to willingly join India. In 1956, India created the new state of Kerala out of various parts of Malabar, largely incorporating the areas that spoke Malayalam. While not the governmental capital of Kerala, Kochi is today the largest city in Kerala and its financial and commercial capital. It is also a major training center for the Indian Navy.