BOOKS Slaughter and derring-do
J. H. PLUMB
Two well-known novelists, indeed two best sellers, have been attracted to the most dramatic period of European history when, between 1450 and 1550, the maritime nations of the West set out to rape the world in the name of God and in the hope of gold. The story has been well told by historians— Boxer, Parry, Simpson—but it will bear re- telling time and time again, especially in the hands of master craftsmen, writers who know how to vary pace in narrative and how to sketch a minor character vividly in a deft sentence. Historians may know the truth, they are not always adroit at telling it con- vincingly. Although not trained historians, Hammond Innes and John dos Passos betray their amateur status only when they deal with the deeper questions of historical causa- tion. Sometimes dos Passos, but very rarely Innes, uses doubtful evidence in a way that no historian would.
Hammond Innes is concerned in The Con- quistadors (Collins 75s) with the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru, with the in- credible stories of Cortez and Pizarro and the strange, highly complex yet deeply bar- baric societies of the Aztec and Inca which they overwhelmed. A handful of Spanish soldiers and horses toppled two great em- pires and changed the destiny of Europe as well as America. The human misery that en- sued appals the imagination—millions, literally millions, of. Indians died, victims of disease and brutality: those that remained were bound to a deeper servitude, a more pitiless subjection than they had ever known under the Aztecs. One could have wished that Mr Innes had spent more time on the consequences of the Conquistadors rather than their actions, but then he is primarily a storyteller and he tells his story excellently. He is admirably served by his publishers, who have illustrated his book superbly well: a beautiful, well written, moving book, ideal for Christmas.
In The Portugal Story (published in America by Doubleday) John dos Passos has set himself a more difficult task. Portugal is one of the enigmas of Europe. One would need to be a very learned man, or one of those rare specialists in Portuguese history, to name half a dozen of its monarchs, or of its painters, scholars and architects. Ontrits navigators and, to a lesser extent, its saints, are commonly known—Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama, Tristan da Cunha, Albu- querque, St Francis Xavier; above all Prince Henry the Navigator. These were the men who dominated the early age of discovery, when Europe threw out its tentacles across the whole world to suck in profit in the name of God—an enterprise that needed heroism, courage, endurance and, above all, faith. The profits might be illusory, or rare, but the hardships, the dangers, the sickness and suffering were constant. And for those for whom the adventures of actual meri are more compelling than any fiction, they left great epics of the sea, embroidered maybe at times by their imagination, but contain- ing the hard truth of the matter. These range 'rom Azurara's Chronicle, that tells of the '-st onslaught on the Moors and the early robings of the torrid coast of Africa, to • he sombre final requiem, The Tragic History of the Sea, which recounts the in- credible losses of the great Portuguese ships, piled high with goods and over- crowded with men, as they battled their way through the Southern seas.
It is this story of high adventure when, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Portuguese circled the world with their trading posts, when their missionaries were full of hope of converting Congolese, Chinese, Japanese, Hindus and even the Guarani Indians of Brazil, that dos Passos so brilliantly tells. He is particularly adept at the dramatic sketch—his few pages on Fermi() Meddes Pinto, the swashbuckling, greedy adventurer, possibly of Jewish stock, who pushed his way, even to Peking, but was caught in a crisis of conscience by his meeting with St Francis Xavier, is a masterpiece of skilful comprehension, and done with such art that never again will one be able to forget Pinto. Like myself, most readers will rush to Pinto's own fantastic narrative, The Pilgrimage; if so, they will be rewarded.
Certainly dos Passos brings alive these great Portuguese heroes: yet at the same time, as one reads, one realises the great distance that now lies between the pro- fessional historian and—without using the word in any pejorative sense—the amateur. Dos Passos's interest and imagination are caught by the men and events, by the stories which they told. He is too wise to accept their words as unalloyed truth, but too committed a litterateur not to use their heightened tales of slaughter and derring-do.
This is legitimate, for only the unwary might be misled. The yawning gulf between professional and amateur lies not in the story itself, but in the almost total absence of analysis. Why were the Portuguese initially so successful? Why did their possession of Empire have so little effect on Portuguese artistic and literary life? (Yes, there is the Lusiads, but think of the Netherlands, France, England and even Spain—the impact of their Empires on their cultural life was tremendous.) Again, why did Portugal as a world power fade so quickly? And again, there is the conundrum of the twentieth century (although this, to be fair, is not relevant to dos Passos's inten- tions)—that whilst empire after empire has Natives shipbuilding under Spanish super- vision, front 'The Conquistadors'. tumbled, the Portuguese have maintained theirs. So far only Goa has gone.
The Portuguese present fascinating prob- lems in the ebb and flow of European growth and decay, problems which need
professional treatment. Indeed, most of these questions cannot be decisively answered, for the work still needs to be done. So far the epic heroes have held the stage and the gritty labours in port books. the sifting of mountainous records in cos- toms houses, the wearying search for merchants' accounts and advocates' archives, now under way, need to progress further before the economic causes and consequences of Portugal's comet-like passage through world history can be fulls explored. Some has been charted, but this intellectual adventure does not stir dos Passos's imagination.
There are, however, better known aspects of this great adventure which dos Passos might have sketched in to give greater depth to his narrative, and a deeper understanding of the Portuguese story. Carlo Cipolla in his tiny masterpiece, Guns and Sails, has explained the reason for Europe's fabulous success in Asia and America; the tech- nological advantage of the more manoeuvre- able caravel. combined with more powerful artillery, gave a decisive advantage to the Portuguese and Spaniards—for a time, but only for a time. The Dutch, the English and the French exploited both guns and sails more quickly than the Portuguese and the decline of their Empire was partly the result of failing to maintain their early technological advantage.
There are two further matters, one of which dos Passos touches on, that illumin- ate the story of mankind and which could have been dealt with more fully because of their intrinsic fascination. One is that Europe came late into the great flowering of oceanic trade of the East. Long before the Portuguese, the Moslem traders from Alexandria or Baghdad or Ormuz had reached down almost to South Africa, creating sheikdoms and trading stations: likewise they had come to dominate the seaboard of western India, taken control of the rich spice trade of Indonesia, and secured a place for their merchants in China. They had already created westward lanes of commerce and set up the ports and pilotage, long before a European vessel appeared on the Eastern seas. Indeed all the paraphernalia of intercontinental commerce was ready for the Portuguese taking. The great step forward was to round Africa. after that all was prepared for them. This great Moslem enterprise is rarely stressed by Europe-centred historians.
But perhaps the most significant aspect of the Portuguese adventure is one which dos Passos touches upon, but I think too li4htly—the disastrous effects of the Counter-Reformation, which shuttered the windows to men's minds. When Portuguese exploration was most intensive and most effective, Portugal was a comparatively open society—Jews played an important role. Henry the Navigator's cartographer was the Mestre Jacome and, even after their forced conversion, the New Christians sat on King Manuel's famous council of mathematicians. Compared with Spain, Portugal was much more liberal in its attitudes.
That changed with the coming of the Jesuits. Their intransigence not only wrecked the Portuguese links with Abyssinia, but created difficulties in Japan and elsewhere. Rigidity and orthodoxy
clamped down on the Portuguese adventure and the intellectual excitements stirred W the opening vistas of new and old contin- ents passed to the great maritime nations of the north-west—to the Dutch, the English and the French.
Previous page
