Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
77. The Rise of England, Part 3 of 6
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The Protestant Reformation freed the mercantile energies of northern Europe. Since the sack of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders (1204), wealth had displaced faith as the motivation for the Crusades. Nonetheless, rituals and the talisman retained a strong hold on the imagination of northern Europe. The Church, as the sole keeper of the talisman and the dispenser of indulgences, maintained a stranglehold on temporal as well as religious affairs.
Merchants begged and monarchs trembled before the heavenly power of the Church. The Reformation changed it all. No longer were the merchants bound by the constraints imposed from Rome. Money could be made-and kept-without buying indulgences from the Church. The Spanish and the Portuguese had sailed on the high seas with a dual burden of conquest and spreading Catholic Christianity. The Dutch and the English had no such pretenses. Their motives were entirely mercantile. If in the process of trading and capital accumulation they amassed world empires, it was a byproduct of their primary focus on money. Their cannons did not roar in the name of God. They bellowed out cannon balls in pursuit of profits.
The resolution of the dialectic between the Protestants and the Catholics was not without a fight. Religious warfare raged in Europe through much of the 16th century. When the dust settled, Norway, Sweden, England, Holland as well as the northern counties of Germany had become Protestant. In England, Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Church of England in 1534, and issued an edict that the clergy must submit to the crown. By 1540, most of the relics and shrines in England were destroyed. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a military alliance was formed between the English and the Dutch (1579) against the Catholic Iberian powers, Spain and Portugal. The alliance survived until 1650 when the British, alarmed at the growing power of the Dutch in the Indian Ocean (Sri Lanka, 1640; Cochin, India, 1641), and their occupation of the American mid-Atlantic coast (New York, 1626), switched sides, and a three-way rivalry between England, France and Holland began for control of trade with India and America.
The British East India Company was by far the most successful of the joint stock companies. Until the discovery of America (1492), the key to the riches of the world lay in the Indian Ocean trade. A look at a map of the world in the year 1500 would show that the Indian Ocean region was by far the most prosperous area of the world. Its combined output of raw materials and manufactured goods was many times that of the Mediterranean region. China, India, Indonesia and Persia were part of its littoral states as were the prosperous ports of East Africa and southern Arabia. Together, this region had a population in excess of three hundred million, while the total population of Europe and North Africa was about a hundred million. Black pepper from Malabar, cinnamon from Sri Lanka, sugar from Surat, ginger from the Malaccas, ivory and iron ore from Mombasa were traded as far away as Alexandria, Egypt, and Venice, Italy. World class manufactured goods included fine muslin from Bengal, cotton goods from Gujrat, silk and porcelain from China, carpets from Persia, perfumes from Arabia, finished steel from Basra and Bijapur.
The great empires of China and India maintained embassies in the littoral states. Freedom of navigation and trade on the high seas was guaranteed by consensus. On occasions, the emperors of the great littoral states, China and India, sent fleets to visit the major ports and promote their manufactured goods. Such was the case with the mighty fleets from China (1402-1415) under the Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng Yi (also called Admiral Ho), who organized a series of expeditions to Sumatra, Sri Lanka, Calicut, Aden, Mombasa, Shofala and around the tip of South Africa. Sultan Muhammed bin Tughlaq of India made a similar attempt in 1335, but as it often happened with that hapless monarch, the fleet was caught in a storm off the coast of Malabar and perished. During the first half of the 15th century, the Ming dynasty of China maintained a merchant fleet of over 3,000 vessels, of which 300 were the giant multi-deck, multi-mast ships that dominated the Indian Ocean.
India, in particular, was a pivot to this multi-national trade. Jetting out into the Indian Ocean, its fine harbors at Calicut, Cochin, Surat and Chittagong provided natural anchor points for the east-west trade. Endowed with bountiful natural resources, its harvest of spices was highly sought after. Its manufactured goods included fine cloth, smelted iron, brassware, polished diamonds and carved ivory that were in high demand in the Mediterranean region and East Africa. The annual harvest of spices ensured that the balance of trade was always in favor of the vast subcontinent. Gold and silver accumulated in the treasuries of the Sultans and the maharajas, and these in turn attracted invaders hunting for gold, first from Central Asia and later from Europe.
The monsoons shaped the pattern of trade and commerce in the Indian Ocean. The word monsoon derives from the Arabic word “mausam”, meaning climate and weather, and has been incorporated into Farsi, Urdu, Swahili and Malay languages. (Some linguists contend that it derives from the Arabic word “maa-an-Chin”, meaning, water or rain from China). Celebrated in ancient ragas, in ballads of wandering dervishes, in songs of love and longing, as well as modern classics, the monsoons dictate the rhythm of life in South Asia. When the monsoons arrive on time, people rejoice. When they fail, they starve. In late summer, as the relentless sun bakes the dusty Indo-Gangetic plains, cooler air from south of the equator drives in. Moving roughly in the northeasterly direction, it is saturated with the moisture of the Indian Ocean. As it meets up with the majestic Himalayas and the high plateaus of Central Asia, the air rises, cools and parts with its moisture, drenching a parched earth. The floods replenish the soil, sustaining man and beast alike, and bring forth the fauna of the tropics. In January, when the northern hemisphere cools, the process is reversed. Cold air from the landmass of Asia pushes roughly in the southwest direction, bringing rain to the east coast of India. From ancient times, this drama of life and death has been played out, sustaining powerful empires and on occasions, destroying them.
In the year 1500, the Indian Ocean was an Islamic lake. Since the time of Harun al Rashid (786-809), merchants from West Asia and Persia had sailed forth, riding on the monsoons, to India, Africa, Sumatra and China. They had established themselves all along the rim of the Indian Ocean in an unending chain of trading posts extending from Shofala in Africa to Canton in China. Included among the more important towns were Zanzibar, Dar as Salaam, Malindi, Mombassa, Aden, Oman, Basra, Hormuz, Surat, Calicut, Cochin, Colombo, Tiruchi, Chittagong, Malacca, Acheh and Canton. By the end of the 15th century, this trade had matured into a stable interchange of men and material.
The Indian Ocean also provided the highway for pilgrimage to Mecca. The Hajj is obligatory on every Muslim, who is physically and financially able. Muslims from Indonesia, Malaya and China could only reach the shores of Arabia by sea. Although many Muslims from the northwestern provinces of India traveled to Mecca by land, many others traveled by sea from the ports of Surat and Cochin. The peace of the Indian Ocean and its open etiquette guaranteed the safety of the pilgrims.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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