Os Portugueses e o Mar de Ceilao: Trato, diplomacia e guerra (1498-1543).

• Author: Ptak, Roderich
• Position: Review

By JORGE MANUEL FLORES. Cosmos Historica, vol. 23. Lisbon: EDICOES COSMOS, 1998. Pp. 368, with colored illustrations and maps.

This finely printed book opens with a preface by Genevieve Bouchon, one of the leading specialists on early Indo-Portuguese history. Mme. Bouchon is also cited on several occasions in the main text, partly owing to the fact that the author, Jorge Manuel Flores, by now a distinguished writer himself, was inspired by Bouchon's ideas and generous academic counseling.

Flores' account fills an important gap in our knowledge of the early Estado da India. Till recently, historians have mostly looked at the presence of the Portuguese on the coasts of Kerala and around the Bay of Bengal. Sri Lanka, or more precisely, the Gulf of Mannar, rarely attracted the attention of modern scholarship. Indeed, Flores' study may be called the first monograph to deal in its entirety with the Gulf of Mannar exclusively. The approach chosen by him is very much in the tradition of Fernand Braudel, although Flores is, of course, aware of the fact that not all attributes associated with the "conventional" Mediterranean can be directly transferred to the mini-scenario he describes in his book.

In Flores' understanding, the "Sea of Ceylon" comprises the Gulf of Mannar, Pamban Channel, Palk Strait, and the area between Jaffna and the Mannar Channel; however, the main interest rests with the stretch of water to the south of Adam's Bridge. The first chapter deals with the shipping routes and the rhythm of trade and traffic ("circulation") in these areas. This includes a detailed description of the physical conditions governing both local and long-distance shipping. Evidence found in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century sources suggests, for example, that natural obstacles, in particular shoals and reefs, took heavy tolls among the sailors and vessels traveling to and from Ceylon. Joao de Barros, to cite one source, refers to a Chinese fleet of eighty sail stranded off the Sri Lankan west coast, north of Negombo. The same disaster is also mentioned in an account by Gaspar da Cruz; it may be related to the great expeditions under Cheng Ho in the early fifteenth century. Generally, rounding Cape Comorin in either direction required an intimate knowledge of geographical and weather conditions; the dangers hidden below the surface of the sea were tremendous - nearly as many as in the case of the Maldive and Laccadive Islands. These island groups...