Lords of the Sea TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Interaction Edited by Leonard Blussé VOLUME 14 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/tamo Lords of the Sea The Ali Rajas of Cannanore and the Political Economy of Malabar (1663-1723) By Binu John Mailaparambil LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012 The TANAP programme is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mailaparambil, Binu John. Lords of the sea : the Ali Rajas of Cannanore and the political economy of Malabar (1663- 1723) / by Binu John Mailaparambil. p. cm. — (TANAP monographs on the history of Asian-European interaction, ISSN 1871- 6938 ; v. 14) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18021-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Malabar (India)—Commerce—Europe—History. 2. Europe—Commerce—Malabar (India)—History. 3. Malabar (India)—Economic conditions. I. Title. HF3789.M27M35 2012 382.0954’83—dc23 2011036930 ISSN 1871-6938 ISBN 978 90 04 18021 5 Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all right holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. v To the loving memory of my father John Mailaparambil vi vii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD Probably nowhere in the world have such profound changes in historio- graphy been occurring as in the nation states of Monsoon Asia that gained independence after the conclusion of the Pacific War in 1945. These tra- ditionally outward-looking countries on the rims of the Indian Ocean and the Eastern Seas have been interacting with each other through maritime transport and trade for more than two millennia, but the exi- gencies of modern nation-building have tended to produce state-centred historical narratives that emphasise a distinctive heritage and foster cultural pride and identity on the basis of such heroic themes as anti-colo- nial resistance. No one will deny the need for and utility of such ‘nation- building’ agendas, but an inward-directed national historiography does not necessarily prepare one’s citizens for our present age of regional co- operation and globalisation. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the coastal societies of Monsoon Asia witnessed the entry of European traders, the emergence of global maritime trading networks, and the laying of the foundations of colonial empires that reached their apogees in the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries. The difficulties of studying this pre-colonial and early colonial past should not be underestimated. Local sources are often rare because of wars and the frequent changes of both indigenous and colonial regimes. The hot and humid tropical climate is also unkind to the preser- vation of manuscripts. The mass of western-language data preserved in the archives of the former East India Companies and those of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in Asia often have an undeniably Europe-centred character and bias. Thus we face not only a highly imbalanced supply of source material, but also the very complex problem of how to decode the hidden agendas that often colour these primary materials. Over the past fifty years there has been a pronounced effort in academ- ic circles in North America, Australia, and the former European colonial nations to ‘decolonize’ historical writing on Asian-European interaction, albeit for reasons totally different from those in their Asian counterparts. Increasingly doubt has been cast on such longstanding paradigms as the superiority of the dynamic West over static Asian societies. Historians of international trade such as the late Holden Furber, whose description of this period as ‘The Age of Partnership’ inspired the name of the TANAP programme, have taken an interest in the various ways and means by which Asian-European interaction began in various kinds of competition, rivalry, collaboration, diplomacy, and military confrontation. This viii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD approach has forced historians to return to the archival sources and the places where these events unfolded with the result that new frontiers of research have opened up in which close partnerships between Asian and European historians, with their specific cultural tool kits and linguistic backgrounds, are now starting to bear fruit. In anticipation of the four hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, members of the History Department of Leiden University proposed the establishment of an inter- national research programme aimed at training a new generation of Asian historians of Asian–European interaction in the early modern period. It was taken for granted that any such drive towards international educa- tional co-operation should be carried out in carefully planned collabora- tion with the National Archives in The Hague, the Arsip Nasional of the Republic of Indonesia in Jakarta, and the archives of Cape Town (South Africa), Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Chennai (India), which together hold several kilometres of archival records from the former Verenigde Oost- indische Compagnie. The TANAP—Towards a New Age of Partnership —educational and archival preservation programme was started in 2000 thanks to generous grants from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands Organi- zation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), the Netherlands UNESCO Commission, and Leiden University. Twelve universities in Asia sent some thirty young lecturers to Leiden during 2001–2003. Under the auspices of the Research Institute for Asian-African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), these historians participated in an advanced master’s programme that included intensive courses on histori- ography, palaeography, and the old Dutch written language. With additional funding from several Asian foundations, in 2002 seventeen of the TANAP graduates from Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Africa, and the Netherlands began working towards a Ph.D. degree at Leiden. Three others went on to pursue their doctorates at universities elsewhere in the world. The TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Inter- action, which include two studies on early modern South African society, are the offspring of their doctoral theses defended at Leiden. Leonard Blussé, Leiden University ix CONTENTS Acknowledgements xiii Glossary xv Notes on place and personal names xvii Notes on weights and currencies in Cannanore xviii Maps xix Introduction 1 Kolathunadu, 1663–1723 2 Sources 3 Historiographical antecedents 4 Analytical framework 6 Chapter One: The Geo-Political Setting of Kolathunadu 9 Kolathunadu through the ages 9 Malabar: a regional perspective 11 Region within the region: the social world of Kolathunadu 16 Brahmanism in Kolathunadu 18 Nayars as local elites 18 Other social groups 19 Mercantile groups in Kolathunadu 21 Conclusion 22 Chapter Two: The Rajas of Kolathunadu 25 The ‘state’ in pre-colonial Kerala 25 The ‘little kingdom’ model 26 The swarupam polity 28 The concept of sakti 30 Houses by the sea 33 The co-sharers of Kolathunadu 37 Lords of the horses 41 The Arackal Ali Rajas 44 Legitimacy and sakti 47 Conclusion 50 Chapter Three: Lords of the Sea 53 The fifteenth century: decline or continuity? 53 The sixteenth century: changing port order in Malabar 54 The rise of the Mappila trading network in Cannanore 57 x CONTENTS The Cannanore Bazaar 59 The Cannanore thalassocracy 63 Cannanore and the commercial world of the Indian Ocean 66 1. The Arabian Sea 67 2. Ceylon, Coromandel, Bengal, and South-East Asia 71 3. Asian traders in Cannanore 73 4. Cannanore exports 74 5. Cannanore imports 75 Conclusion 77 Chapter Four: Jan Company in Cannanore (1663–1723) 81 The Malabar commercial scenario on the eve of the Dutch conquests 81 The Dutch in Malabar 82 The Cannanore fort 83 The Dutch garrison in Cannanore 85 Jan Company and the local political elites 87 The Dutch and the local political practice of gift-giving 88 The Company and local communicators 89 Jan Company’s commercial policy in Cannanore 90 The Company and local commercial partners 91 Jan Company and its rivals in trade 94 The Mappila merchants of Cannanore 95 Maritime control system and its failure 96 The English and the French 99 Conclusion 102 Chapter Five: The VOC Trade in Cannanore (1663–1723) 105 The VOC trade in Cannanore: exports 105 1. Pepper 105 2. Cardamom 109 3. Timber 112 4. Ambergris, wild cinnamon, and coconut products 113