A version of this essay was published in the Encyclopedia of World Trade published by ME Sharpe Publishers, Armonk, New York.
Calicut (Kozhikode) © Anup Mukherjee
Calicut is situated on the on the Malabar Coast of the Kerala province in India. It is connected to hinterland through the Palghat gap. The place is famous for the spice production and trade. Also, from Calicut is derived the name “Calico".
Foreigners called Calicut by different names. Arabs preferred Kalikat, Chinese called it Kalifo, for Europeans it was Calicut, while for the locals it was Kozhikode. Ibn Batuta had visited this place during the mid thirteenth century and was witness to the commercial prosperity. He found it an equal of Alexandria. Later on Abdur Razzak (1443), a Persian Ambassador to the Vijayanagar kingdom found Calicut to be a safe harbour. That time, it was a safe harbour for ships from Africa and Arabia. Over seventy years later, Duarte Barbosa found the trade very flourishing and merchants from different lands including Persians and Arabs residing here. Shipbuilding flourished. The principal exports were (black) pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, myrobalan, tamarind, canafistula, precious stones, seed pearls, musk, ambergris, rhubarb, aloes, cotton cloth and porcelain. Many of these, pepper being most important, were exported to Lisbon, Ceylon and Malacca. Pepper from this region was considered far better in quality than from Malacca, Java, and Canara. Increase in pepper production was also due to its demand from the Mughal and the Safavi empires. For Europe the requirement of pepper was especially for preservation of meat.
The Hindu king of Calicut was the most powerful among the rulers of the different kingdoms on the Malabar Coast. He was called Samutiru or Samoothiri in Malayalam, Samurai by the Arabs, and Zamorin by the Portuguese. Calicut under the Zamorins enjoyed great prosperity. The ruler of nearby Cochin was subordinate to Calicut. However the weakness of Calicut was its dependence for its food supplies from the Coromondal, also it faced hostility from the nearby kingdoms. Later on the Portuguese took benefit of these deficiencies in its aim to monopolise trade.
Merchants from various places - from Mecca, Tenasseri, Pegu, Ceylon, Turkey, Egypt, Persia, Ethiopia, Tunis and various parts of India resided at Calicut. However, the Arabs dominated the trading network particularly that between Calicut and Red Sea ports. This monopoly was threatened with the coming of the Portuguese. Chinese merchants also frequented this place. The city had also received Ming Chinese explorers in the fifteenth century, whose ultimate aim was to establish nominal Chinese suzerainty on the Malabar Coast of India. However this ambition ended abruptly in 1433, when the Ming government cancelled future expeditions to the Indian Ocean.
It was at Calicut that Vasco da Gama reached in search of the Indies. Vasco da Gama had left Lisbon on July 8, 1497 and circling around Cape of Good Hope, giving name to Natal, (in remembrance of birth of Christ), passing Sofala and Zanzibar. And then cutting straight northeast across Arabian Seas, finally touched here on May 17, 1498. He had indeed reached the fabled land of the Indies that had been missed by Christopher Columbus in 1492. He was welcomed by the Zamorin and given permission to trade in spices and also to set up a factory (warehouse) on the coast. From this initial sojourn, the value of spices carried back by Vasco da Gama was sixty times the cost of the entire trip and highly profitable.
The arrival of Portuguese threatened Arab control of trade, as Portuguese aimed at monopolising the trade. This led to hostility. While the Asian convention was of open trade and governments did not use military force to promote or protect it, the Portuguese belonged to the Mediterranean tradition that combined trade with warfare on land and sea. Consequently, after getting aware of the situation in this region and the strategic importance of Calicut in the international trade, Portuguese in their next voyages were clear on their goals- to monopolise trade they had to root out the Arab trade and force Calicut into submission. Calicut was bombarded by the Portuguese during 1500 by Cabral and later in 1502 by Vasco da Gama.
As part of trade, Portuguese imported to this place copper, quicksilver, vermilion, coral, saffron, coloured velvets, rose water, knives, coloured camlets, gold and silver. All these items were not from Portugal, but the Portuguese procured them from places like Flanders, Germany, England etc. Also, as the Portuguese did not have enough commodities that they could exchange because their commodities had limited market. This meant that precious metals, particularly silver, minted or bullion was brought from the west for buying eastern goods.
Later in the eighteenth century, Calicut was in conflict with Mysore. Ultimately, in 1792, Calicut became part of the British East India Company territory.
Bibliography:
K.V. Krishna Ayyar, A Short History of Kerala, (Ernakulam: Pai & Co, 1966)
A. Das Gupta, Malabar in Asian Trade (Cambridge, 1967)
R.J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas, (ME Sharpe, 2002)