Lords of Spice and Sea: A Stream of Silver
The Spanish and Roman delegations that sail out of Suez in summer 1639 with the ceasefire order for eastern waters both want peace desperately. The Romans have the upper hand, but the costs have been utterly staggering, and the Spanish are by no means out. Meanwhile the Spanish want to cut their losses while they still have a strong bargaining position. Pereira, when questioned by the Spanish delegation, agrees, saying that while his bark can still frighten the Romans, he is unsure if his bite is enough to hurt them, and peace should be made before they figure that out.
After reviewing the situation on the ground, the two delegations agree that the simplest proposal is just to end the conflict on the basis of each side keeping what they currently hold. (Both Constantinople and Lisbon approve the treaty without revision once it reaches them.) This favors the Romans who thus keep Malacca and the Spanish-Malay territories associated with it. However Tidore and Ternate, both former Roman vassals but now Spanish holdings, remain under Spanish lordship.
In regards to Java and the fighting between Mataram and Sunda, both sides agree to a pledge of neutrality, with neither side providing military support to the Javanese combatants. The exception is the technical support the Romans have already pledged to Sanjaya which is exempted. Openly the Maharaja does not protest to this, noting that while it is only a minor inconvenience to him to lose direct Roman support, it is devastating to the Sundanese to lose their Spanish allies. However inwardly he is irritated, viewing it as the Romans running out on their obligations to him; they are supposed to be his allies yet are abandoning him in the middle of a conflict. That it is a conflict he can win on his own does not absolve the Romans.
The fighting will continue until 1640 but when the dust settles Sanjaya will be lord of all Java with the exception of the minor state of Blambangan in the southeast, a deed unseen since the glory days of Majapahit. Notably, once the Sunda state is no more, the Maharaja offers trading quarters in several port cities to Spanish traders, placing them next to the Roman districts with the intention of using both outsiders to keep the other honest. He trusts neither, also inviting Lotharingian and Arletian traders, reasoning correctly that Christian competition will focus on each other, preventing any one to become too powerful and threatening to Mataram’s interests.
Notably, the Spanish find more glory in their defeat than the Romans in their victory. The Spanish can take pride in the exploits of Pereira and their many victories despite the material advantages of their foe. In contrast, the Romans won, but took extremely heavy losses and succeeded only on the basis of said material advantage. It is a victory, but not one that inspires pride in one’s accomplishments.
Encouraging the rosy Spanish view despite their defeat is the fate of Pereira. Venkata Raya, immediately spying an opportunity, offers to purchase the Spanish warships in eastern waters and hire on the Spanish crews and officers, including Pereira. Tidore and Ternate alone cannot hope to support such a large flotilla. He is willing to pay most handsomely, particularly to get those magnificent third-raters and the valiant Pereira, of which he has heard much praise. The Spanish keep some smaller vessels but sell the larger vessels, earning for the used vessels slightly above what it would cost to build them new. Venkata Raya knows that he is paying more than what the ships are physically worth, but he has the cash to spare and he is thinking long-term.
Most of the Spanish crews, including Pereira, take up the Vijayanagara offer of employment. Considering the pay rate, that is unsurprising. Pereira soon works his way up to commanding the entirety of the Vijayanagara navy, the most famous example of how a successful outsider, if skilled enough, can prosper in Vijayanagara service, and it is in that capacity that he dies of old age in 1652. The Spanish third-raters are copied and teak-built versions of them soon become the mainstay of the Vijayanagara battle-line.
Meanwhile in Roman country the recriminations and accusations start to fly. The Roman delegation is also a house-cleaning affair, blaming the local Roman officials for the poor handling in the war. They have a point but their actions do nothing to solve the problem. The most apparent fix would be to have a permanent Exarch on-station to oversee the Katepanoi and ensure they cooperate on matters that cross Katepanate boundaries, but Constantinople dislikes the idea of investing any one individual with such a power. It seems far too easy for said individual to make a play for independence. So the ‘temporary Exarch’ model developed for the war is retained for possible future use, but otherwise there are no administrative reforms, unless one counts exhortations for the Katepanoi to cooperate better in the future.
Instead of structural reforms, the changes are primarily personal. All of the Katepanoi are encouraged to retire and they all take the hint, albeit with varying degrees of reluctance. This isn’t an issue in three of the four Katepanates but becomes a serious issue with Pahang and Katepano Alexandros Mavrokordatos, but that is because the delegation, assuming his incompetence, ignore his advice with disastrous consequences.
Alexandros Mavrokordatos had the bad habit of rushing things and not planning everything out, best exemplified by his initial and disastrous attack on Malacca in 1636. But he knew the Malays. On his way out, in a final report he noted that Pahang’s Malay vassals had been more tightly bound to the Katepanate than Malacca’s Malay vassals had been bound to the Viceroyalty. He recommends just copying the Spanish vassalage terms for the Malays in the former Spanish holdings, substituting Romans in the top slot but changing nothing else.
The delegates disagree. Administrative uniformity dictates that vassalage terms for all Malay vassals should be the same, and there is the argument that the long-time loyal Pahang-Malays should not have more impositions placed on them than the Malacca-Malays who noticeably did not help the Romans take Malacca. The second argument has a point, but the Malacca-Malays don’t care about that, rising in revolt in late 1639. The rebellion, necessitating nasty jungle fighting where diseases kill 5 times more Romans than bullets or blades, is eventually put down in the early 1640s, but at the cost of yet more Roman blood and gold which has already flowed so copiously.
According to a Roman officer, a Malay chief, just before being burned to death by Roman soldiers as an example to ‘encourage the others’, gives the following last words. “You foul and loathsome people, who abandon your homes and families and travel halfway around the world to steal what does not belong to you and kill all those who object, kill me and be done with it. I am weary of being in the same world as you.”
Despite the losses, in 1640 Rhomania is the dominant Christian naval power in Island Asia, with Spain, its only serious rival, knocked down from that perch. Other potential contenders like the Lotharingians lack the proper naval bases to support squadrons of battle-line ships; trading quarters granted by native monarchs aren’t good enough for such a task. Economically though this is not such a boon as might be expected.
The depression in the Imperial heartland affects Rhomania-in-the-East relatively little. Heartland demand for eastern goods decline, but doesn’t vanish, and the local carrying trade of Asia is what generates most of the revenue anyway. The collapse in faith in the Imperial Bank means nothing out east, because the Imperial Bank lacked any presence whatsoever. For credit, the Romans relied on Indian moneylenders.
The main Roman advantage over other Christians is the possession of territory on which plantations can be placed. Roman control over the Banda Islands gives them a near monopoly (it is only near because smugglers are a common annoyance) on nutmeg and mace, which is only possible because of their territorial control. Cinnamon from Taprobane is a similar phenomenon. A trading quarter wouldn’t cut it. However Europeans tastes are changing and in a way that is damaging to the western spice trade. Pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon and the like are no longer rare exotic elements from the fabled east, losing that allure that was part of the attraction at the same time as increased availability drives down the bulk price in Europe. The combination means that Europeans want less spices and what is being shipped earns less when it gets there anyway. Demand doesn’t stop but it declines noticeably from its late medieval peak. [1]
The main money-maker is the local carrying trade, shipping Indian cotton textiles and metal-goods to Java for pepper, trading that pepper in Pyrgos for Chinese silks, chinaware, and tea, and then shipping the Chinese goods to Europe, and so on. But to engage in this carrying trade only requires merchantmen and trading quarters, much cheaper than territorial control which requires fleets and garrisons and forts. The Roman plantations do help some in that the Chinese want cinnamon and nutmeg and have to go to the Romans to get it, but it is a small boost at best. In bulk imports to China, a market literally as big as all of Europe combined, pepper vastly outweighs both combined, and Rhomania is in absolutely no position to monopolize pepper exports; pepper production is too diffuse with large sections controlled by native states like Mataram that are too powerful to be bullied.
The Lotharingians are well-poised to exploit this in the late 1630s and early 40s. They have destroyed most of the Triune presence east of Bengal, while the Romans and Spanish have conveniently gutted themselves, leaving them little serious competition. Much of the Roman merchant marine was destroyed by Pereira and Lotharingian merchants swoop in to take advantage of the commercial vacuum. The Ship Lords (as a class; several Lords are ruined and never recover) gradually rebuild their fleets but they face much stiffer competition than would’ve been the case if that vacuum hadn’t initially existed for the Lotharingians to fill.
To the delegation’s credit, they make two important and beneficial recommendations. The first is the need for expanded credit facilities for Roman merchants to lessen their dependence on Indian moneylenders. The second is the need to expand shipbuilding facilities, with Pyrgos the favored candidate. Taprobane is too remote from Island Asia with its own concerns, while being too close to Vijayanagar which crowds Roman freedom of movement.
These are good ideas, but much easier to suggest than implement. The issue hampering both is the need for money. The obvious source is silver garnered from Pyros. However the Mexicans and Japanese come to Pyrgos with their silver to buy Chinese and Indonesian goods with said silver. The Romans provide none of the former and only some of the latter, so the bulk of the silver that goes through Pyrgos does not end up in Roman hands. They get some in the form of tariffs, but they can’t be raised too much lest the goose that lays the silver eggs decides to make its nest somewhere else. (Ryukyu is an obvious alternative, predating Pyrgos in this role. It is also a tributary of both China and Japan, meaning that a Roman attack on it to eliminate the would-be competitor would be an effective declaration of war on the two largest and most powerful states of East Asia.)
Another problem is that nature is emphatically not cooperating. As the calendar enters the 1640s, the Little Ice Age is spreading its baleful influence. The oceanic currents that carry the Pyrgos galleons to and fro across the Pacific are destabilized. The galleons continue to make the journeys but the passages take longer and shipwrecks are more common. Obviously none of the silver in the sunken ships ever makes it into Roman hands, so even less silver is available at the moment when the Romans are trying to implement these reforms.
That is only the mildest cruel twist of the Little Ice Age. Between 1638 and 1644, the Ring of Fire will resoundingly live up to its name with twelve known volcanic eruptions in that period. In late 1640 Pyrgos is buried under a volcanic cloud of ash so dense that according to inhabitants, at 2PM people could not see their own hands. The cloud came from an eruption that was a level 6 on the volcanic explosivity index [2] and it is reported that the eruption was heard as far away as southern Champa. [3] And the Little Ice Age is hardly done even with that.
The need to fulfill the second goal ends up killing the first. To get that moving requires turning to local sources of capital. Aside from the traditional Indian moneylenders, Chinese merchants get in on the business. It is just much easier to rely on the local sources than to attempt to create a new one. Furthermore it is much faster. Ship Lords need new ships to make up their losses to compete with the Lotharingians, and the longer the Lotharingians are left unchallenged, the harder it will be to claw back the market share. In addition to credit, the moneylenders and their kinship networks provide access to market information, products, laborers, and buyers. Any Roman (or any westerner) looking for economic success in eastern waters cannot afford to not work with these eastern financiers.
The Pyrgos shipyards are expanded and by 1670 are the main source of Roman shipping in Island Asia, but with local capital. The proposal of an ‘Imperial Bank, Far East branch’ is a dead letter, unable to get off the ground. Roman silver gained at Pyrgos is siphoned off for various needed tasks with not enough remaining to form a credible reserve alternative to pre-existing moneylending options.
This is galling to the pride of heartland Romans, but notably less so to Romans in the East. All of the westerners, from Ethiopians to Triunes, rely heavily on Easterners for trade goods, manpower, business partners, financial information, and loans. Without those native contacts, none of their successes in eastern commerce would be possible. Getting financial capital from either India or China, either of which individually is a market, population pool, and economy comparable in size to all of Europe, is simply how the game is played.
The rise of Pyrgos is a harbinger of change in Rhomania in the East. Taprobane, crowded by the great empires of India that dwarf it, has no room to grow. With the decline of the spice trade, New Constantinople’s glory days are past (although this is lessened with the schadenfreude that Spanish Tidore and Ternate suffer the same decline). By the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Pahang and Pyrgos, especially the latter, are the driving forces of Rhomania in the East.
Both provide raw materials; while tin, lumber, and rice lack the glamor of spices, they are of more practical use. They also have large native populations that are gradually converting to Orthodox Christianity, although the completely tone-deaf initial handling of the Malacca-Malays substantially delays progress there by at least a generation. Both are prominent nexuses of the carrying trade, especially Pyrgos, unquestionably the chief nexus by 1670. In 1690 it is the fifth-largest Roman city in terms of population.
Demetrios III, had he lived long enough to see it, would have been amused by the historical irony of it all. The Spanish and Romans had massacred each other to make themselves Lords of Spice and Sea, but the sea answers to no one and the spice was losing its preeminence even as the rivers of blood poured. As the worms and ants and flies and the other true victors of war ate their fill, the true prize, Pyrgos, was never even contested.
There’s probably a lesson in that.
[1] Note how IOTL spices are all the rage in the 1400s and 1500s, but not the be-all and end-all in the 1700s. Furthermore the ‘spices were used to hide the taste of rotting meat’ argument is utter bunk. Any late medieval European able to afford pepper for their table would be able to afford good meat.
[2] IOTL, Krakatoa was a 6 on the VEI.
[3] Details taken from OTL. See
Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker, pg. 83-84.