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Rita Banerjee the Ocean and Its Traffique: Miscegenation And

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Rita Banerjee the Ocean and Its Traffique: Miscegenation And 1 Rita Banerjee The Ocean and its Traffique: Miscegenation and Conversion in The Island Princess and The Renegado In the very first volume of Purchas His Pilgrimes, Samuel Purchas showers encomiums on the sea and the art of navigating it. The most important way the ‘multitudinous seas’ served humankind was by uniting it, through trade: “Uniter by Traffique all Nations,” providing an “open field for Merchandize in Peace.”1 It was international trade that connected Jacobean England to the East. Purchas echoes the sentiments expressed in Elizabeth I’s letter to six kings in the Indies which she sent with the East India Company in 1601: That one Countrie should have need of another, and out of the abundance of the fruit which some region enjoyeth the necessities of another should be supplied: By which means men of several and far remote countries have commerce and traffic one with another, and by their interchange of commodities are linked together in amitie and friendship.2 Likewise, the sea enables the spread of the message of Christianity to all lands. Purchas hopes that “as there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptisme, one Body, one spirit, one Inheritance, one God and Father, so there may thus be one Church truly Catholike, one Pastor and one Sheepfold? And this also wee hope shall one day be the true Ophirian Navigation, when Ophir shall come into Jerusalem, as Jerusalem then went unto Ophir.”3 Conversion was closely related to marriage between Christian and non-Christian partners, and ‘connubium’ often facilitated ‘commercium.’4 While Pocahontas’s much- publicized case in the New World provided an example to the East-Indian ventures, conversion and marriage, like trade, acquired its own distinctive character in the East. This paper looks at the different ways that international trade functions in The Island Princess (1621)5 and The Renegado (1624)6. In the Moluccas, the desire to monopolize spice 2 trade caused intense rivalry among European nations and often motivated European powers to conquer islands in the interest of trade. Sometimes, islands accepted the sovereignty of a European power, as Polaroon ceded to the English in 1620. By contrast, the Mediterranean was dominated by the Ottomans during the seventeenth century. Tunis, where The Renegado is set, had become an Ottoman province by 1577. It was a cosmopolitan and a wealthy city, thanks to the corsairs, many of them Christian renegades like Grimaldi in the play, who carried on their raids off the coast. Piracy thrived as a practice parallel to legitimate trade. The power relations of each region determined the character of trade and exchange in the region. I argue that the exigencies of international trade in the East Indies and the Mediterrranean and the realities of political and religious supremacy in each determine the mercantile and Christian identities of the Europeans and their conception of the natives. Both plays, and especially the Renegado, look back to The Tempest ,7 performed more than a decade back in their staging of mixed marriages. Alonso’s act of “loosing” Claribel to an ‘African’(2.4.126) and an Islamic monarch in Tunis, was a loss to Naples and Europe. The threat of miscegenation through Caliban’s attempted rape is, of course, thwarted by Prospero who safely marries his heir to Naples. By contrast, the later tragicomedies present miscegenation as a gain, materializing in the Christianized brides, Quisara and Donusa. In Fletcher’s play, conversion of the princess Quisara of Tidore to Christianity and marriage with the Portuguese Armusia facilitate not only trade but also colonization. In The Renegado, Vitelli, a Venetian gentleman who comes to Tunis, disguised as a merchant, to rescue his sister, Paulina, who had been sold as a slave to the Viceroy of Tunis by Grimaldi, the renegade, marries the Turkish princess, Donusa. While the colonizing Portuguese face the prospect of reigning in Tidore on the demise of the present king (5.5.71), the redeemed Paulina, Vitelli, and Donusa “with all their traine / and choysest jewels” (5.8.26-27) escape in the reclaimed renegado’s recovered ship, “shewing a broad side” (5.8.30) to the Tunisian 3 Viceroy “in scorne of all pursuit” (5.8.29; emphasis added). Writing in 1624, Massinger redeems Alonso’s and Naple’s loss in Tunis by Vitelli’s, and Venice’s gain. The variant situations in the East Indies and the Mediterranean virtually create the varying identities of the Europeans in the two plays. In The Island Princess, the Portuguese see themselves as “stirring, unwearied soules,” who seek adventures and honor in sea voyages and feature as a latter-day version of medieval knights. Their courage and hardiness in the oceanic voyages towards unknown lands reward them with wealth. The “new worlds disclose their riches, / Their beauties and prides to our embraces” (1.3.10-11; emphasis added). Although it emphasizes conquest, the overtones of profit are not forgotten and later receive greater stress in Armusia’s depiction of the islands courting the Europeans with spices, their commercial wealth. Commerce and heroism coalesce and commerce is sometimes exalted into heroism in the description of Portuguese traders. The Portuguese identity in The Island Princess also reflects the intense competition in trade by rival European powers and also (as I intend to show) the respective colonial policies. The Portuguese initially had their stronghold in the East Indies. However, by the seventeenth century, the Dutch had virtually monopolized the spice trade, while the English were new- comers. Significantly, the colonial identity in the play is a divided one. Ruy Dias and the new-comer Armusia appear as rivals in love for the princess of Tidore, Quisara, who, though partial to the Ruy Dias, had set a condition that she would marry her brother’s liberator. Armusia redeems the king from the prison of the enemy governor of Ternate and gains her as a prize. Later, he supersedes his countryman in her love by his courtesy, sincerity, selflessness, and zeal. The Ruy Dias-Armusia rivalry in the text may be interpreted from various perspectives. With respect to class, the Ruy Dias-Armusia opposition demonstrates the 4 difference between two groups of colonizers in England: the earlier group representing the gentry voyaging to the New World and the latter group, constituted by newcomers, the profit- seeking merchants, especially of the East India Company.8 Captain Ruy Dias is an aristocrat and primarily a soldier while Armusia is an adventurer-cum-merchant. Armusia’s mercantile identity is emphasized as he tours the streets of Ternate in the guise of a merchant and rents a lodging as a merchant. Unsuspected because of his mercantile identity, he lights a fire, which keeps the governor and his men busy while he rescues the king. Armusia’s language, which contrasts with Ruy Dias’s Petrarchan metaphors, invites identification with commerce. His use of paradisal metaphors to glorify the spice, which constitutes the commercial wealth of the islands, and his use of economic and contractual metaphors to define Quisara as the prize he labored for would argue for a commercial identity: “A recompense so rich and glorious / I durst not dreame it mine, but that ‘twas promised; / But that it was propounded, sworne and sealed” (2.6.43-45; emphasis added).9 However, the complexity of the characters as well as the intense fluidity of the colonial situation in the islands enables us to recover manifold facets of representation. While, on one level, the Ruy Dias- Armusia divide represents a class division, on another level, it could signify the Portuguese- English or Dutch-English divide.10 Neill interprets the erotic conflict in terms of the enmity between the Dutch and the newcomers English,11 which seems plausible in view of the fact that the Portuguese themselves at this point of time had been ousted from the Moluccas by the Dutch, who occupied a dominant position. There was considerable enmity between the Dutch and the English. Despite the nations signing a treaty in 1619, Robert Hayes of the East India Company reports how the Dutch displaced the English by force at Lantore, which had surrendered to the English and had acknowledged James I as their king.12 This was not an isolated instance. The story was repeated in 5 Poolaroone, and the two nations were fast progressing towards the Amboyna Massacre in 1623. However, I would suggest that the fluidity of identity that exists in the colonial situation and is almost a generic requirement in the tragicomedy,13 would prevent us from categorically and statically interpreting the enmity and subsequent reconciliation between the two Portuguese in terms of inter-European rivalry. Interpreting the Ruy Dias-Armusia opposition in terms of colonial policies would lead us to argue for a Dutch- English divide in East Indian colonial policy. By his treacherous design of murdering Armusia, Ruy Dias initially seems to justify identification with the Dutch, who had been characterized as false and guileful and cruel in their dealings with the natives as well as with the English. However, the later resolution of the conflict14 and Ruy Dias’s gallant action of defending his countryman would make more likely an internal division about the colonial policy among the English, some following the Dutch principles and others supporting free trade. While the Dutch colonial policy in the East Indies was military suppression to monopolize trade, the English advocated free trade. The English criticized the 1619 treaty between the two nations that compelled the English to share equally in the expenses of the Dutch for building defensive fortifications against the Portuguese and the Spanish but got them only a third of the share of the spice trade.
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