The Chemistry of the Portuguese Empire II: Eugenol

This is the second post inspired by the book Napoleon’s Buttons – 17 Molecules that Changed History, by Penny Le Couteur & Jay Burreson.

Myristica fragrans, the nutmeg tree, and Syzygium aromaticum, the clove tree, are precious plants that originally could be found only on the Molucca Islands.

Just as for black pepper, the paramount importance of nutmeg and clove, and the role they had in shaping history, lies in their chemistry. Eugenol in clove and isoeugenol in nutmeg are two aromatic molecules very similar in structure and with a smell close to that of ginger. They only differ in a double bond position (in red in the figure).

Produced by the plants for protection against animal grazing, insects eating and microorganisms’ infections, these substances full of aroma have been used for centuries in traditional medicine as analgesic, antiseptic and to treat a series of diseases.

These spices were traded for centuries by Chinese, Malay, and Arab merchants, arriving in Europe after a lengthy route along which their price and value increased constantly. They were a major reason for Afonso de Albuquerque to conquer Ceylon and Malacca in 1511, while he looked for indications on how to reach the Banda Island and other spice locations. Venetian merchants were quickly ruled out from the spice commerce between the Moluccas and Europe.

In the 17th century, the Dutch replaced the Portuguese in the control of clove and nutmeg trade. Curiously, it was the Dutch botanist Maartyn Houttuyn who described and gave the scientific name Myristica fragrans to the nutmeg plant in 1774.

The Dutch tried to protect their monopoly as hard as they could, but eventually clove cultivation started in the French colony of Mauritius and then spread along the East African coast. Nutmeg cultivation, on the other hand, proved more difficult to export, since the plant requires specific soil characteristics and climatic conditions. However, tropical areas provided suitable conditions and today Grenada in the Caribbean is the major producer of the spice. [Silvana Munzi]

Fernão de Oliveira: a Globalization Agent of Iberian Maritime Knowledge

Fr Fernão de Oliveira (1507-1581?) was a significant author in 16th century nautical science. In 1555, he published the Arte da Guerra do Mar (The Art of Sea Warfare) and around 1570 he wrote another work, which remained in manuscript, named Ars Nautica (a treatise on nautical construction). In 1580, he also wrote the Livro da Fábrica das Naus (The Book on Shipbuilding). Oliveira’s works are intimately connected with his adventurous life between Portugal and Europe.

Oliveira completed initial studies in Évora at a Dominican Convent. He then went to Spain for unclear reasons. After his return, he published the first ever Portuguese grammar in 1536, and became the preceptor of important figures at the Portuguese court. During the 1540s, his life took other paths. In 1541 he intended to travel to Italy, but he only went as far as France. His maritime knowledge impressed the French baron of Saint Blanchard, who employed him as his pilot. By this time, Oliveira had already learned much on board Spanish, Italian and French ships in European waters. When France invaded England in 1545, Oliveira participated in the expedition and was captured by the English in a naval fight. Brought to Henry VIII’s court, Oliveira gave his contributions to the English art of naval construction. When he returned to Portugal in 1547, he was jailed by the Inquisition because of his sympathies for Henry VIII’s position towards Rome. Soon afterwards he was released, but by the time of his death (circa 1580), Oliveira had been imprisoned again by the Inquisition. While working on his books, he also considered leaving Portugal again. In 1566, the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon reported that Oliveira received proposals to pass to France. He did not depart because the Spanish ambassador prevented him from going to France by enlisting him in the service of Philip II. It remains unknown whether Oliveira left Portugal to serve Philip II, but it seems improbable.

Throughout his career, Father Oliveira became an object of attention for the main maritime powers of the period: Spain, France and England. His ties with all of them motivated their interests in hiring him and learning from him. This is explained because as a skilled pilot, Oliveira’s 1555 Arte da Guerra no Mar (The Art of War at Sea) is the first important European treatise on maritime warfare, and the 1570 Ars Nautica is a systematic encyclopaedia on navigation. Not innocently, the Ars Nautica’s manuscript is held at the University of Leiden, as the Dutch Republic during the 1590s also became interested in Oliveira’s work for its maritime expansion.

Thus, Father Oliveira’s agitated life and works are a good example of how far an important humanist could contribute to the globalization of Iberian nautical knowledge and produce a major impact on the overall process of European maritime expansion. Nevertheless, Father Oliveira works’ circulation was not a unique case in 16th century Europe, as the circulation of maritime knowledge was truly unstoppable by any power. [Nuno Vila-Santa]

The Chemistry of the Portuguese Empire I: Piperine

This is a short series of posts inspired in the book Napoleon’s Buttons – How 17 Molecules Changed History by Penny Le Couteur & Jay Burreson, and to show that, after all, everything is about chemistry.

Before refrigerators existed, pepper mainly and other spices were crucial in storing and preserving food, and, probably, in disguising the bad taste and smell of rotten meat. The commerce of these goods was so lucrative that kings and merchants in the 15th century decided to challenge the Venetian monopoly of spice trade—the Age of Discovery was about to start.

Vasco da Gama’s voyages and the conquest of Calicut (Kozhikode) gave Portugal control over the pepper trade, and the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 sanctioned the Portuguese supremacy over the only countries where Piper nigrum, the pepper plant, grew.

Peppercorns contain an active ingredient called piperine which is responsible for the hot sensation we experience when we eat pepper. Curiously enough, this sensation is not a taste or flavor, but the response that the chemical stimulus caused by piperine evokes in our pain receptors.

Molecule of piperine

In the meantime, Columbus was looking for a western route to India. When he landed in Haiti, he found another hot spice: chili pepper. While chili peppers became soon a main ingredient in African and Asian cuisines, Europe remained faithful to pepper and piperine. However, the Portuguese dominion of the spice route was doomed to end in less than two centuries, with the English and Dutch enlarging their areas of influence in the East Indies in the 17th century. [Silvana Munzi]

“On the Trees that are Used for Wood”

From oxygen production to precious active principles used in medicine, from food to wood, trees have always provided important resources for all the animals on Earth.

The discovery of a new land or a new territory meant access to new species and to a new knowledge mainly learnt from uses and traditions of local populations.

The Portuguese Jesuit Fr. Fernão Cardim (1540–1625) witnessed the luxurious natural environment of Brazil in the 16th century and left us detailed descriptions in his “On the climate and land of Brazil and on some remarkable things that can be found on land as well as at sea”, written around 1584 (Do clima e terra do Brasil e de algumas cousas notaveis que se achão assi na terra como no mar).

In a short paragraph of this text, Fr. Fernão lists a variety of uses known for wood. The first aspect he highlights is the presence of “trees of remarkable thickness” that were used to build canoes and planks of timber for engines. “There are many varieties of timber,” he says, “that don’t rot when placed in the ground, and others that become greener and tougher every time they are put in water.” Then he mentions the “Pau Santo”, “Pau do Brasil” and other kinds of wood that were highly appreciated to produce furniture and dyes. Some trees were so common and strong enough to be used for shipbuilding, while others could release wonderful fragrances. Finally, spices could be found there that, although “not as delicate and smelly as those from India, are little far and are of great price and esteem.”

Page of the manuscript “On the trees that are used for wood”

The editorial history of this Portuguese text, like others of its kind, is symptomatic of a more general problem in accessing knowledge. Leaving Salvador de Bahía in 1601, Fernão Cardim, who carried with him his well-informed and fresh Brazilian report, was captured by the English pirate Francis Cook. Through this channel, for the first time, the narrative of Cardim became available to the European audience. The English version of the manuscript, presented as sold by Francis Cook to Richard Hakluyt, was published in the travel collection Purchas his Pilgrimes (London, 1625) and only three centuries later deserved an edition in its original language (Rio de Janeiro, 1925). [Silvana Munzi & Luana Giurgevich]

Paubrasilia echinate – Pau do Brasil

A Magellanic Christmas: Celebrating Around the World

In the complex and varied story of the first circumnavigation of the world, religious life has received less attention than other aspects of daily routine. However, religious rites were very important for early modern sailors and seafarers. During the voyage undertaken by Ferdinand Magellan and ended by Juan Sebastián Elcano, which lasted three years, some important holy recurrences emerge from the sources. For example, the celebration of Easter 1520 in the Bay of San Julián, prior to the infamous mutiny. The celebrations of Christmas, however, go largely unnoticed, perhaps because of the exceptional circumstances in which they took place.

Christmas 1519, the first after departure, for example, was celebrated in the Land of Verzin (Terra del Verzin, today’s Brazil), where Magellan’s ships arrived on December 13th. Antonio Pigafetta informs us that the fleet left thirteen days later, for the feast of St. Stephen, on December 26th. In his narrative, Pigafetta makes no mention of Christmas celebrations. His attention was probably focused on the local populations, and their traditions. The tropical climate, so different from the cold European winters, did not contribute to the Christmas spirit, but surely the priests aboard the ships celebrated the holiday for all the crews, and it was no coincidence that the departure took place after December 25th.

The second Christmas, in 1520, was celebrated under tragic circumstances. In the month of December, Magellan's ships were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, facing death from starvation and scurvy. Also in this case Pigafetta does not mention celebrations or masses on board, but it is very plausible that religious rites were celebrated as the only comfort for the sailors in their dire hours. The third Christmas experienced in 1521 by the sailors, now few in number after the death of their captain and of many companions, was probably the loneliest and most uncertain. On December 21st, 1521, in fact, the two remaining ships, the Victoria and the Trinidad, had to separate. The Victoria left alone to return to Spain via the Indian Ocean, the Trinidad had remained in the Moluccas to repair damage, waiting to resume the route to the Pacific. By this time many of the religious who had left in 1519 had died, and the weary sailors probably remembered the birth of Jesus in their hearts alone.

At this point we can wonder why Christmas is never mentioned by Pigafetta, who instead mentions Easter and several times the apparitions of the holy bodies, as proof of the importance of the religious dimension in oceanic navigation. Christmas was considered less important than Easter, but this silence was probably due to the exceptional occasions overshadowing the celebratory aspect of Christmas in the eyes of the chronicler of Vicenza. The fact remains that for centuries religion remained an central aspect of life on board, a scansion of time, a tool for rationalizing the unknown, a way of making sense of the new. [David Salomoni]

Nautical Rutters and the Notion of a Global Earth in Early Modern Europe

In 1596, Jan Huygen van Linschoten published within his Itinerario, a section named the Reys-gheschrift. It contained the first published compilation of nautical rutters comprising the navigation made on those days in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Van Linschoten’s goal in organizing all these nautical rutters was to try to simplify as much as he could the technical information of rutters to mariners (shallows, tides, nautical dangers, geographical signs and descriptions of several places). Meanwhile, he attempted to make available to the Dutch audience sixty-three Portuguese and four Spanish nautical rutters, detailing the main sailing routes that both Iberian Crowns always tried to keep secret from their maritime rivals. For the Indian Ocean section, this comprised rutters detailing the Portuguese India Run navigation and the technical details of the routes between the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian subcontinent, as well as routes from India to Sri Lanka, Siam and Malacca. Regarding the Pacific Ocean, Van Linschoten printed rutters on the navigation to China and Japan, and also recent nautical routes such as the Manila Galleon’s route and a pioneering route that sailed directly from Macau to Mexico, first tested in the 1580s. In the Atlantic Ocean section, Van Linschoten published rutters detailing navigation to the Caribbean and Brazilian coasts, to Angola and the Strait of Magellan. These three sections were supplemented by a more technical one in which a regiment of the nautical compass in the voyage between Lisbon and Goa, a list of latitude of ports worldwide and a quick set of questions and answers for sailors were also printed.

But who aided Van Linschoten in this titanic and encyclopaedic task? What were the original sources he used? Did he introduce changes to them? These are some of the questions I attempted to answer in my recent article Jan Huygen van Linschoten and the Reys-gheschrift: Updating Iberian Science for Dutch Expansion. The Reys-gheschrift impacted the Dutch maritime expansion, but also the French and English ones (due to several 17th century translations). However, Van Linschoten’s publication played also a role in fuelling an idea already being developed through the 16th century: humans lived in a Global Earth that could all be known by the technical mastery of the rutters for voyages into the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. One of the bases for this idea was precisely the nautical rutters that Van Linschoten published, which through their rich information, not only ensured a safe navigation and successful maritime expansion to the Dutch, the English and the French in the 17th century, but also made a contribution to the development of the so-called Scientific Revolution. [Nuno Vila-Santa]

Locating Land: In a Swarm of Butterflies

The observation of land signs was a priority of life on board. The presence or absence of a specific sign, or the combination of a number of them, could define with precision the location of the vessel, the proximity to the coast or even the weather conditions. The natural signs were rather diversified and went from marine mammals to seabirds, from algae to insects. Sometimes, a natural sign could be very controversial. Knowledge only came with the practice of navigation, the repetition of voyages and the improvement of descriptions.

An example of the serious difficulties in interpretation of a land sign is given by the Portuguese pilot Vicente Rodrigues. In 1591, Rodrigues warned the readers of his Roteiro da Carreira da Índia about the presence of butterflies in the Laccadive Sea. The pilot underlined the danger of misinterpreting such an indicator. In fact, the butterflies were not an indicator of proximity to the continental coast, as generally expected, on the contrary, they signified the presence of islands, the Laccadive Islands. Around 1621, another pilot, Aleixo da Mota, was observing the presence of butterflies in a zone far from the same islands 60 nautical miles westwards. Aleixo da Mota explained the phenomenon as a result of the wind force. Butterflies and wasps were easily carried by the wind, and for this reason, concluded the pilot, “they were so far from them” (Roteiro da navegação da carreira da Índia, c. 1621).

“Departure of The Winged Ship”, by Vladimir Kush

From the beginning of expeditions, butterflies were considered an interesting element. Sometimes, observations were quite impressive. Approaching Cuba, Christopher Columbus and his crew entered literally in a whirl of butterflies. The narrative of the logbook highlighted countless myriads of insects: “[...] the day after came to the vessels such a vast number of butterflies that obscured the air, which lasted until night, when they were dispersed by a heavy rain” (Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo, Venezia: 1571). Centuries later, the naturalist Charles Darwin witnessed a similar phenomenon. After passing through the Strait of Magellan, 10 nautical miles from the Bay of San Blas, his ship was invaded by butterflies. “The seaman cried out ‘it was snowing butterflies’”, while Darwin was confirming that “even with the aid of a glass it was not possible to see a space free from butterflies” (Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H. M. S. Beagle, London: 1840).

Delving deeper into this rich, varied, and representative set of nautical sources, every observed and gathered natural element, like butterflies, gains a broader sense and reflects the particular relevance attributed to each one of these signs in navigators’ experience. [Luana Giurgevich]