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The Erotics of Mercantile Imperialism: Cross-Cultural Requitedness in the Early Modern Period Carmen Nocentelli

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The Erotics of Mercantile Imperialism: Cross-Cultural Requitedness in the Early Modern Period Carmen Nocentelli University of New Mexico From the SelectedWorks of Carmen Nocentelli Spring 2008 The rE otics of Mercantile Imperialism: Cross- Cultural Requitedness in the Early Modern Period Carmen Nocentelli, University of New Mexico Available at: https://works.bepress.com/nocentelli/3/ The Erotics of Mercantile Imperialism: Cross-Cultural Requitedness in the Early Modern Period Carmen Nocentelli Abstr act This article explores the early modern vogue for intermarriage narratives, arguing that cross-cultural unions served as both a crucial instrument of and a privileged metaphor for European imperialism. Adapting medieval precedents to the exigencies of colonial governance and mercantile penetration, plots of interracial requitedness exorcized the specter of European “degeneration” abroad and legitimized the subordination of coun- tries from which enormous profits could be extracted. At the same time, these popular narratives bolstered a regime of domestic heterosexuality that increasingly confined eroticism within the bounds of marriage. With their exotic backdrops and amorous ex- ploits, they celebrated heteropatriarchy while racializing practices and behaviors that Europe was progressively marginalizing. In this manner, the interracial romances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries discriminated not just between Europeans and non- Europeans, but also among members of each group—thereby problematizing facile di- chotomies of difference and identity. X arly in the fall of 1617, an elaborate civic pageant was performed in the EEnglish capital to celebrate the installation of George Bowles as Lord Mayor of the City of London.1 Titled The Tryumphs of Honor and Industry, it had been penned by Thomas Middleton and paid for by the “noble Society of Grocers”—a guild whose business in exotic drugs and “other rich Aromatick Commodities” (Ravenhill 1) was intimately linked to the still-uncertain for- tunes of England’s expansion overseas. After an opening show of “dauncing Indians” bagging pepper and harvesting fruits, there followed an emblem- the journal for early modern cultur al studies Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2008) © 2008 Nocentelli X 135 atic arrangement composed of India, Trafficke, and Industry—the latter holding in her hand a golden globe surmounted by a Cupid. “Behold this Ball of Gold, upon which stands/ A golden Cupid wrought with curious hands” (A4v), urged Industry in her address, lest the significance of her insignia be lost on the audience. She went on to explain, “The mighty power of Industry it showes,/ That gets both wealth, and love” (B1r). Considered by itself, Industry’s “Ball of Gold” recalls the golden pomes of Hesperidian memory, a recurring symbol for the precious spices, food- stuffs, and minerals that early modern Europeans were busily trading and plundering across the globe. In his 1598 translation of Jan Huygen van Lins- choten’s influential travelogue, for instance, the Englishman William Phillip turned Hercules’s theft of the golden apples into a mercantile exemplum, en- couraging his countrymen to seek the “importation of those Necessities whereof we stand in Neede: as Hercules did, when hee fetched away the Golden Apples out of the Garden of the Hesperides” (A4r). The little Cupid standing atop Industry’s pome, however, links this insignia to a globus cru- ciger, the cross-surmounted orb that was a quintessential sign of temporal authority. Conjoining golden apple and royal orb, the “Ball of Gold” aligns the special interests of the merchant classes with those of the monarchy, equating profits with royal concerns. Yet even as Industry’s orb derives its suggestive power from the symbolic valence of the globus cruciger, it also dif- fers from the latter in profound ways: it is not a cross, but an emblem of love, that surmounts it; it is not from God, but rather from Cupid, that Industry derives its authority and legitimacy. At the imbrication of empire and desire, Industry’s “Ball of Gold” sentimentalizes Europe’s geopolitical onslaught, metaphorizing expansion as a quest for erotic as well as material rewards. In hindsight, Middleton’s transmogrification of imperialism into ama- tory courtship is all too ironically descriptive of England’s early experiences abroad. A belated entry into the expansionist race, the fledgling empire had found itself everywhere beset by rivals and confronted by its own inadequacy. “England may well spare many more people then Spaine, and is as well able to furnish them with all manner of necessaries . it is strange we should be so dull, as not maintaine that which wee have, and pursue that wee know” (42), noted John Smith in 1616, contrasting Spanish successes with England’s co- lonial difficulties in America. “Heere wee found the people very rude, fol- lowing us . and flinging stones at us,” wrote John Saris in his account of the first English voyage to Japan, “the gravest people of the Towne not once re- proving them, but rather animating of them, and setting them on” (142). 136 X the journal for early modern cultur al studies 8: 1 Letters to the East India Company, in particular, brimmed with tales of un- requitedness: “[T]he Governor and chief brokers with all the rest of the peo- ple . are much addicted to the Portingalles and slightly esteem of our Eng- lish,” complained an English merchant in India; unless the Portuguese were rooted out, he concluded despairingly, there would be “no hope of any good to be done there for us” (Foster 38). “[A]s yet our condition and usadge is so bad . that [it] will require much patience to suffer, much Industry to sett upright,” echoed Thomas Roe in a 1616 letter from the Mughal court (120). One would be hard-pressed, however, to find the same despondence in the plays, poems, and travelogues produced in England during the same years. John Donne’s elegy “To His Mistress Going to Bed” (c. 1595), for example, ex- udes a disconcerting confidence in the seductive powers of empire; Samuel Purchas’s oft-reprinted Purchas his Pilgrimage (first published in 1613) and en- cyclopedic Hakluytus Posthumus (1625) are both underwritten by optimistic expectations of requitedness. Buoyant anticipations of mutuality and reciproc- ity also shape many Continental works: Lope de Vega’s play Los Guanches de Tenerife (1604-06), for one, revolves around the love of a Spanish captain and a native princess; André Thevet’s La cosmographie universelle (1575) alleges great Amerindian affection for the French; and Luís de Camões’s Os Lusíadas (1572) quite literally climaxes in the union between Vasco da Gama’s men and native Asian women “in a thin mythological disguise” (Quint 119). Within this dis- course of requitedness, interracial desire became a crucial ideologeme that drove both conceptual and narrative developments.2 Perhaps the most conspicuous of these developments centered on inter- marriage plots that enjoyed great vogue throughout the early modern period. Dispersed across a transnational corpus, these interracial narratives adapted well-worn topoi of medieval romance to the exigencies and values of a rising mercantile bourgeoisie, supplying with precious cultural capital those “idyllic proceedings” that characterized the process of primitive accumulation.3 Often set in colonial locales and unfailingly ending in connubium, interracial ro- mances exorcized the specter of European degeneracy abroad while legitimiz- ing the subordination of countries from which enormous profits could be ex- tracted in the form of labor, commodities, and consumer markets. At the same time, these much-circulated narratives also responded to, and participated in, the establishment of an erotic regime that increasingly confined desire within the bounds of marriage. Although scholars rarely place this reorganization of eroticism in the context of early modern globalization, the interracial plots of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries evince an intimate connection be- Nocentelli X 137 tween the emergence of mercantile imperialism and the rise of new socio-sex- ual ideals that placed erōs at the very center of conjugal life.4 By underscoring the imperial dimension of the period’s investment in domestic heterosexuality (and its attendant gender constructions), interracial romances suggest that just as sugar, tobacco, and other colonial crops revolutionized European taste, the practices and arrangements of the imperial periphery inflected and trans- formed the aspirations and values of the metropole. * * * The first thing to be said about interracial romances is that a profoundly evocative power resides in the border crossings they depict. Happily resolv- ing social tensions, religious conflicts, and cultural differences, they articu- late a compelling “ideal of cultural harmony through romance” (Hulme 141). This ideal, however, is severely limited by the fact that such border crossings are both unidirectional and gender-specific. As in the well-known case of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, it is always the native woman who enters the world of the European man—never the other way round. While seem- ingly expressing a vision of cross-cultural reciprocity, then, early modern plots of interracial desire naturalize native subordination while authorizing European presumptions of moral and cultural superiority. The heroine’s at- traction for the “Christian” hero becomes in these narratives a neoplatonic medium for spiritual ascent, thereby guaranteeing native acquiescence and even complicity in foreign domination; European manners and values are embraced wholeheartedly, while native mores
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