Indo-Portuguese Trade and the Fuggers of Germany: Sixteenth Century.

• Author: PTAK, RODERICH
• Position: Review

Indo-Portuguese Trade and the Fuggers of Germany: Sixteenth Century. By K. S. MATHEW. New Delhi: MANOHAR, 1997. Pp. viii + 307. Rs 550.

As expected, the Fuggers play a major role in Mathew's study, but their policy towards Lisbon and their activities in Indo-Portuguese trade cover only about one quarter of the entire book. Hence, a different title might have been chosen for this work.

The introduction (counted as the first chapter) is a chronologically arranged survey of foreign investment in Portugal's trade to Asia. All major merchant families, for the most part Italian and German, are briefly introduced, and their business transactions are discussed in a synoptical manner. Already in 1503, the Portuguese king, D. Manuel I, granted special privileges to some German merchants who were permitted to establish themselves in Lisbon; this is where the story begins. The story, however, is not told in a systematic way, from an economic historian's point of view--it is rather presented like a loose collection of mosaic pieces, often selected in an arbitrary manner. Some elements pertain to the European end--for example on family and business connections between major firms operating out of Germany; others are related to Lisbon and the Indian markets. Biographical details may also be found scattered here and there. Having briefly noted the cases of the Welsers, of Imhof, H[ddot{o}]chstetter, Hirs chvogel, Pock, and other entrepreneurs, the author then--finally--turns to the Fugger family of Augsburg. He sketches the Fuggers' activities and tells us that the present book is loosely linked to the five-hundredth birthday of Anton Fugger, one of the most prominent members of that family. The introduction ends with a few notes on relevant archival and other primary sources.

The second chapter deals with the Indian Ocean. It opens with a few remarks on Van Leur, Wallerstein, Braudel, and Chaudhuri, rejecting Van Leur's ideas on peddlers in the pre-industrial period. We are then told that India was always connected to other parts of Asia and Europe through maritime trade, from archaeological times down to the period of Portuguese expansion, and that powerful entrepreneurial groups became involved in international transactions long before the arrival of the first Europeans. This is linked to a brief survey of major Indian ports and the merchants active in them. In the course of the fifteenth century, Chinese, Karimi, and Gujarati merchants were among the...