Feeding Globalization. Jane Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ EIC records, for instance, are almost entirely absent from COACM, as are many VOC sources. When they are present, the editors provide highly abridged versions and historians have challenged the translations provided in the volumes. The very detailed logs and journals kept by VOC merchants have garnered attention in recent years, thanks to the efforts of James Armstrong and R. J. Barendse. Their publications further reveal the shortcomings of the COACM collection.⁵⁹ French documents are also poorly represented in COACM, particularly colonial records from the Mascarenes.

      In order to understand the role that the people of Madagascar played in feeding globalization, this book draws upon these colonial sources, in addition to English, French, and Dutch ship logs.⁶⁰ Regrettably, Portuguese archival holdings have not been consulted for this book, although publications by Edward Alpers and Thomas Vernet reveal that there is much to be done in those archives.⁶¹ The records kept by the European trading companies that were consulted provide detailed descriptions of the men, women, and children who approached the newcomers on the shores of Madagascar. When looked at individually, the records of a ship’s brief visit to a port or ports in Madagascar make few apparent contributions to our understanding of the history of the island. Usually only a few pages long, such accounts might note the purchase of a certain number of cattle and barrels of rice, in return for guns or coins. After a stay lasting a few weeks, a European ship would continue to sail toward harbors in the northern Indian Ocean, where the captain could engage in trade for more valuable items. European would-be merchants would not only examine the details of a single earlier voyage, but make their navigational decisions based on a history of regular successful visits to the island. An examination of multiple ship records, for instance, reveals how the negotiations that occurred on the coast of Madagascar between rulers and captains became more reliable and regimented by the middle of the eighteenth century, thanks to this accumulated knowledge of places and people. Ship logs regularly demonstrate that assumptions were made about the goods available in a particular region and the control certain island merchants and leaders exercised over the export trade. Such beliefs became self-fulfilling prophecies, as officers sought out certain titled rulers, identified on the basis of earlier trade, to fulfill their provisioning and slaving needs.

      These sources also demonstrate the challenges that European captains and officers faced over this entire period, not just in acquiring goods, but also in maintaining order on board their vessels. Life at sea enabled captains and officers to dominate the movements of their subordinates, but, once ashore, sailors were “notoriously free,” in the words of Michael Fisher, and were able to evade control to a much greater extent.⁶² Incidents of sailor disobedience, desertion, and disputes on the shore punctuated otherwise peaceful voyages and occurred on almost half of the recorded eighteenth-century EIC visits to Madagascar. The frequency of this resistance suggests that European leaders struggled to control their subordinates. Access to fresh food on the island could mean life or death for both sailors and slaves. Indeed, many acts of resistance were rooted, at least in part, in struggles for adequate food supplies.⁶³ The words of the merchants that visited the island thus illustrate the fears of Europeans as much as they provide insights into developments within Madagascar. This anxiety over provisioning only disappeared during the nineteenth century, after European states had developed firmer colonial holdings throughout the Indian Ocean and Europeans traveled in faster seagoing vessels.

      Despite opportunities for scholars to trace the shifting relationships between European traders and coastal rulers through these documents, the use of such sources can encourage us to overstate the impact of Europeans upon the island’s history, society, and culture. The provisioning trade presented new opportunities for many in Madagascar, allowing for the creation of new coastal trading enclaves as well as providing new idioms of power and leadership to the islanders. In spite of this fact, the most important (in terms of both quantity and frequency) and longest-running exports from the island were probably via the northwest ports of the island to the Comoros, East Africa, and the northern Indian Ocean. Europeans knew little of these exchanges or how the networks had become intertwined in complex ways with their own by the nineteenth century.

      The information found in ship logs is also limited by the nature of European visits to Madagascar. Europeans rarely had time to learn much of island cultural practices or their language during their stays. Most strikingly, European references to locations visited on the shores of the island were frequently confused and it is sometimes hard even to discern which parts of Madagascar they visited and with whom they traded.⁶⁴ The other major shortcoming of these sources is clear from the outset: the writers had only limited knowledge of the goings-on in the interior of the island. With their stays almost entirely limited to the beaches and direct shoreline, captains and trading officials knew little about (and demonstrated an overall lack of interest in) events occurring in the interior. This coastal focus limits our understanding of the sources of slaves for sale, the origins of rice sold in ports, and the expansion of highland states far into the interior during the eighteenth century. Europeans provide relatively reliable information about prices and items purchased, but their grasp of political dynamics on the island was limited and tinged by their own understandings of states and leadership.

      It is also worth noting that the unevenness of the sources, with some of the writers limiting their discussion of trade to a few sentences or pages, prevents reliable numerical analysis, such as about the exact amounts of food available for purchase in any given year or even the precise price given for each slave purchased. Moreover, records are not available for all voyages; the figures displayed in this book are based on the records I was able to consult or uncover, but there were certainly many more stops at Madagascar by ships in search of slaves and food. Not all voyages left a record of their travels. For instance, ship journals are unavailable for almost a hundred of the 211 EIC voyages that are listed as halting in Madagascar in the online catalog of the British Library.⁶⁵ While we know the itineraries for many of these voyages, most of the daily details have been lost.

      Despite the challenges presented by the use of European ship records, these sources provide valuable, if limited, glimpses into the opportunities presented by this rapidly globalizing world to coastal leaders and rulers. When examined in combination with the findings of archeologists and later recorded Malagasy traditions, these sources allow us to reach the conclusion that the provisioning export trade shaped political and economic developments on the island for more than two centuries. The sources also provide a potent reminder that European merchants relied on the assistance of local communities within Madagascar to complete transoceanic voyages that contributed to significant transformations back in Europe.

      CHAPTERS

      Feeding Globalization recounts the history of this global feasting table by starting with the first European arrivals on the island. The second chapter uses European letters, ship logs, and published accounts to uncover the optimism that visitors felt upon first encountering Madagascar. Perceptions of a verdant and relatively unpopulated island encouraged the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English to repeatedly send merchant vessels. Their experiences also led to efforts to colonize Madagascar, but European desires for unfettered access to the resources of the island were never fulfilled. Local leaders quickly forestalled all attempts to take control by refusing to provide European colonizers with adequate food and support. European optimism during this early period, however, did contribute to the island becoming a provisioning stop for merchant fleets entering the Indian Ocean.

      European sources only hint at the massive political transformations occurring on the island throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Two expansive military states formed during this period and began to take control of the export trade. Relying upon a variety of sources, including oral traditions, the next two chapters chart the rise of the Sakalava on the west coast and the Betsimisaraka to the east. The leaders of these states used violence to wrest control of coastal exchanges from other groups and to develop supply routes that stretched across the entire island. The less coordinated Betsimisaraka state had a harder time securing supplies of food and slaves for export than the Sakalava leaders who dominated СКАЧАТЬ