Milk of Paradise

by Lucy Inglis

  When Marco Polo died in 1324, he willed ‘5 lire to every Congregation in Rialto, and 4 lire to every Guild or Fraternity of which I am a member’, finally putting God a whole lire above business.79 This is a simple demonstration of how important the guild system was to Venetian merchants, and not just in Venice. Across Europe, the commercial guilds that began to coalesce in ports and cities in the twelfth century had become forces to be reckoned with in all spheres of urban life. In Florence, nuns and monks, such as those associated with the Farmacia Santa Maria Novella (founded 1221), dominated in the thirteenth century, creating and selling herbal medicines and medicinal secrets, but in 1313, the Arte dei Medici et Speziali – the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries – was formed to regulate its members and promote their own interests, pushing the religious houses to the edge of commercial life. They were soon dominating town councils and church congregations. Committed to bettering themselves, their trades and their neighbourhoods and cities, they were the beginning of the urban middle classes. For physicians and apothecaries, the guilds were particularly important: they not only regulated and promoted the trades, they served to disseminate knowledge and raise standards internally. Quality spot checks were not unusual, such as the testing of merchandise and calibrating of scales for apothecaries. In terms of opium, the guilds were a vector for keeping high-quality Eastern opium latex in demand, thus ensuring supply. The Medici family made sure their own needs were met by having a retail druggist’s shop of their own, fittingly also called Medici, specializing in opium and other prestigious preparations, and run by Piero de’ Rossi & Co.

  As the careers of physicians and apothecaries became more clearly delineated, more regulated and highly respected, the moveable-type printing press was developed in Strasbourg by Johannes Gutenberg between 1440 and 1455. This led to a rush of manuals, dictionaries and treatises on medicine, as well as every other subject of interest in the Renaissance. El Ricettario (1499) was Florence’s famous contribution to medical recipe books, and it was declared to be a book that ‘no household should be without’. Such publications in turn led to more interest in all of these subjects from both professionals and literate laypeople. More students pursued a medical career, creating a shortage in cadavers available for study, leading medical establishments and physicians to request the bodies of executed criminals to further their studies.

  Gabriele Falloppio (1523–62), one of the finest anatomists of his time, euthanized at least one criminal in order to dissect his body, the details of which are not only grisly but central to opium’s mechanism: ‘The Grand Duke of Tuscany ordered a man to be given over to us, for us to kill as we wished and then dissect. I gave him two drams [i.e. drachm] of opium, but he suffered from quartan fever, and its crisis halted the effect of the drug. The man, exulting, asked that we give him a second dose, so that if he did not die, we would intercede for a pardon with the duke. I gave him another two drams of opium, and he died.’80 The bout of malaria the subject suffered had halted the effect of the drug, indicating that the body had metabolized the opium thus preventing an overdose, but two drachms – a quarter of an ounce – is a huge single dose, and four fatal.

  The Swiss-German philosopher and chemist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus (1493–1541), was active at almost the same time as Falloppio. After an extraordinary youth during which his physician father educated him in medicine, botany and natural philosophy, he became an army surgeon and travelled Germany, France, Hungary, Scandinavia and Russia, and possibly made it as far as Constantinople.

  Paracelsus was one of the foremost minds in an age of polymaths such as Vesalius and Leonardo da Vinci; his lasting legacy has been in mineralogy and chemistry rather than the medicine he practised in his lifetime. He was also condemned as a quack and a sorcerer who was in league with the Devil, comparable to Faustus. However, his medical legacy was to change the use of opium in western Europe forever. He introduced a preparation of the drug known as laudanum, or tincture of opium heated with alcohol, from the Latin laudabilis meaning ‘praiseworthy’. Evaporated and made into pills, he called it his ‘stone of immortality’.81 He referred to laudanum as an arcanum, or secret, to be relied upon over all other drugs to cheat death, playing on opium’s ability to relieve both pain and fear.

  The combination of opium with alcohol was nothing new. From the ancient world to the dwale recipes, they were commonly used together, but owing to his expertise in chemistry, Paracelsus enhanced opium’s effects through heating it gently in alcohol. The pills he created were soon in great demand, and played into the revival of mystery of alchemy that was underway in the sixteenth century. He combined sophisticated chemistry with contemporary superstitions to create a medicine that became a legend. Laudanum marked a moment of huge change for opium consumption. It made the product more reliable and effective, and for the first time, moved towards standardized doses that could be prepared by an apothecary. With the proliferation of print culture at the same time, it was soon featuring in catalogues, medicine treatises and handbooks.

  The demand for opium in Europe was firmly established by the middle of the sixteenth century, and not only among the elite classes to which it had previously been prescribed by physicians. But supply lines from the East were increasingly shaky, as the rise of the Ottoman Empire dominated and disrupted overland routes into Europe. Further east, the Indian Mughal Empire was starting to expand, causing even more trouble for the old Silk Road traders. To meet Europe’s demand for the exotic, merchants had to find a new way to trade with the East; and they took to the seas.

  Chapter Three

  THE SILVER TRIANGLE AND THE CREATION OF HONG KONG

  The Age of Discovery: Part Two

  The progress made by science and medicine in the late medieval period was matched by achievements in seafaring, navigating and exploration, and international trade. The Hanseatic League was founded in Lubeck in 1159 by a group of like-minded merchants with interests in the Baltic, where Germany’s sudden dominance of the northern seas in the thirteenth century achieved great importance in such a short time that it surprised even its own members. Initially, the goods the league dealt in, primarily timber, hemp, resin, waxes, furs and basic crops such as wheat and rye, were profitable but limited. Kontors, or offices, for the Hansa were formed in London, Bruges, Bergen and as far away as Novgorod in Russia. Despite a conservative outlook and constant infighting, the league and its associated guilds established a strong and far-reaching interdependent trade network in the north that would come to fruition in later centuries.

  In the southern Mediterranean, the importance of sea trade to the city states was already well established and the maritime republics of Italy held the monopoly over trade with the East. A new age had begun, that of discovery, when various European countries including Portugal, Spain, Holland and England used new sea routes to explore and subsequently control vast territories. Goods, however, still made relatively short journeys before they were exchanged and further profits added by middlemen. The Ming dynasty came to power in China in 1368, and began to shut down the borders with their parts of the Silk Roads network as they pursued, once again, isolationist policies, and a revival of what they felt was the cultural heritage they had lost under Mongol rule. In eastern Europe, the Ottoman Turks had overcome the Balkans at the time of the plague to become the dominant force both there and in the Levant. European merchants, if they were to thrive, needed to establish the most direct routes to the luxury commodities their markets still clamoured for.

  Advances in shipbuilding and design, as well as navigation, came suddenly but not out of the blue. The galley trade of the Mediterranean was all very well over short distances, as it allowed independence from the wind, but the ships were unwieldy and feeding the large number of men they required was unsustainable over long distances. The Portuguese, in the course of fighting with the Moors of North Africa, had become increasingly familiar with middleweight, nimble craft and so they looked
to the East for a new way to build.

  The ships that had plied their trades across the Indian Ocean to Egypt for centuries were called dhows by Europeans (the Arabs called them baghla or mules), and they came in many forms and sizes. Built mainly from teak, and weighing up to 200 tons, they had a deep keel and were held together tightly with nails, an idea they had borrowed from European ships. The largest cargo dhows had a double keel filled with lime and crushed coral which set like cement to provide ballast. Sturdy and fast, they were rigged with lateen – triangular – sails and could, to an extent, beat into the wind, unlike European ships. By the early fifteenth century, the Portuguese had created their own hybrid of the European galleon, the African fishing boat, and the dhow, called the caravel. With a low bow, no clumsy castle structures fore and aft, and lateen-rigged throughout, it was the perfect ship for exploration and coasting. It could navigate the open seas to open up new trade channels, and could also access estuaries and inlets in order to actually make the trades. The Infante Dom Henrique, later better known as Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), was also obsessed with finding the kingdom of Prester John, which had eluded Europeans in India, and was subsequently thought to lie somewhere in Africa. Henry was twenty-one when in 1415 the Portuguese took their first colony, Ceuta, on the North African coast opposite Gibraltar. The gold that arrived there on trans-Saharan caravans was of great interest to the Portuguese.

  Portuguese caravels, swiftly copied by the Spanish, began to explore the seas surrounding them. Portugal quickly found Madeira and the Azores and began to work down the west coast of Africa. Iberian trade with Africa had been firmly established since the Middle Ages: the Catalan Atlas of 1375 was created by Abraham de Cresques of the Mallorcan Jewish community, and shows detailed knowledge of these Saharan trade routes, which worked on complex commodity exchanges of gold, slaves and Maldivian cowrie shells in place of coin. Because the trans-Saharan routes worked in such a long and convoluted way, by the time goods found their way to West Africa from the East African coast, there was little the Portuguese could offer that the West Africans wanted, so they had to find alternative ways to make their maritime adventures down the coast pay, and in capturing back their own men who had been taken by pirates and then sold to African slave merchants, they were introduced to a new large-scale commercial proposition altogether. Slavery, it became apparent, was very profitable.

  The early fifteenth century was a time of sea exploration not only for Portugal and Spain, but also for China. From 1405 until 1433, the Chinese-Muslim military commander, admiral and eunuch Zheng He explored the routes to India, Indonesia, Egypt, Arabia and the east coast of Africa. He did so with a massive fleet numbering 317 ships and some 28,000 crew, by the command of the Yongle Emperor, who wished to impose Chinese control over the Indian Ocean trade.1 The ships included some up to 400 feet long, as well as specialized water-carriers and others that were floating stables for the cavalry, one of which ended up housing giraffes brought back from Africa.2 Although he was not a true explorer, one of Zheng He’s most significant legacies was the opening up of Malacca in Malay. He died at sea on the 1433 voyage, and the successor to the Chinese Empire, the Xuande Emperor, stopped the expeditions as they did not sit well with isolationist policy. Zheng He’s missions were largely erased from Chinese historical records and the Confucianist bureaucrats regained control from the powerful faction of eunuchs at the Chinese court. The very real potential for complete Chinese dominance of the eastern oceans was no longer a possibility.

  Meanwhile, the Portuguese were making huge progress. In 1434 they succeeded in rounding the dangerous Cape Bojador on the West African coast, and started to bring back gold from Guinea, boosting their economy and that of neighbouring Spain. Making sure to build coastal forts to protect their new interests, they continued to explore and in 1444 navigated Cap-Vert, meaning they had managed to bypass the Sahara, a perilous overland obstacle. These longer journeys required bigger ships, more men and artillery, prompting another redesign of the fleet. On caravels ordinary sailors slept on deck alongside a firebox for cooking and any artillery that was aboard. Placing heavy guns below deck was efficient, but reduced cargo capacity and slowed the ship down. The large three-masted caravel redonda emerged, as well as naus or carracks (which were slow but could carry large cargoes and were better at defending themselves than caravels) and, later, galleons for fighting pitched sea battles. This rapid evolution, copied immediately by the Spanish, ensured Iberian dominance of the oceans for a century.

  In 1453 the Ottomans took Constantinople, and their control of the best East–West land route into Europe was complete. Yet after Henry’s death, the African explorations fell into a slump through lack of funds, and the Crown sold off the interests to a group of merchants from Lisbon who were more than happy to exploit the trade in gold dust, ivory and slaves, and expanded the African trade privately. When John II, the Perfect Prince (1455–95), came to the throne in 1481 he was determined to retake the advantage for the Crown, and the following year established the Portuguese Gold Coast colony in 1482. He also invested in maritime expeditions and, in May 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa, what he called the Cabo das Tormentas, or the Cape of Storms. The name was changed to the Cape of Good Hope, to represent the gateway to trade with the Indian Ocean, and the search for the ever-elusive Prester John. Returning home after a voyage of sixteen months, Dias helped design two ships, the São Rafael and the São Gabriel, that would change the history of the trading world. Across Europe, the race to reach the East by sea was underway.

  Meanwhile, a westward route to the Indies was suggested in 1470 to the Spanish king, Alfonso. He rejected it, but a successful Genoese sailor picked up on it. After lobbying the various courts of the maritime nations, the enterprising Christopher Columbus (c.1451–1506) finally secured support for a westward journey to the East Indies from Queen Isabella of Castile in 1492. Columbus, famously, had vastly underestimated the distance to Japan, and was unaware of the fact that the Americas lay in his path. He set out on 3 August 1492 with three ships and ninety men, and reached the Bahamas on 12 October. Columbus was, of course, an unmitigated disaster for the First Nation peoples he encountered, the people who ‘got into the sea, and came swimming to us’, each carrying a gift, but Columbus’s tremendous miscalculation was the first of a series of events that changed the world.3

  As Columbus sailed for Japan, sailor and navigator Vasco da Gama was defending Portuguese ships against the French. Portugal, at the behest of its king, John II, had been sending spies overland to Egypt, Africa and India to scout possible new trade routes. Coupled with what Dias had discovered on his 1488 expedition, the Portuguese were confident they could find a way to connect the two and bypass the troublesome Ottoman Turks. In the São Rafael, the São Gabriel and three other ships, da Gama set out for India on 8 July 1497 with 170 men, including his brother and the best Portuguese navigators of the time. They reached Calicut, India on 20 May 1498. On reaching the Malabar Coast, they were treated to the traditional lavish hospitality, upon which da Gama scraped together ‘twelve pieces of lambel [a striped cloth], four scarlet hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, a case containing six wash-hand basins, a case of sugar, two casks of oil, and two of honey’.4 The Malayali were distinctly unimpressed with these offerings, and the local, established Muslim merchants branded the Portuguese as opportunistic pirates rather than trade envoys. The return trip, badly planned and unlucky, saw the loss of half the hands, da Gama’s brother amongst them, and two vessels of the fleet. Nevertheless, da Gama had managed to purchase enough spices, including opium, to allegedly make a gross profit on his return to Portugal. Sick and grief-stricken, it was four years before da Gama ventured to the East Indies again.

  Venice, tracking Spain and Portugal’s movements closely, was terrified that its control of the Levant would be undermined; as the Venetian ambassador to Cairo said, da Gama’s voyage would be the ‘causa de granda ruina del Stato Veneto’.5
In 1502–3, da Gama returned to India, and was far more successful commercially, returning with 1,700 tons of spices, equivalent to Venetian imports for an entire year.6 But da Gama’s second voyage was one of conquest, with the intention of clearing the Indian Ocean of Muslim competition for the spice market, and creating a Portuguese colony on the Malabar Coast. He failed, but the brutality meted out to the Muslim populations he encountered made him infamous in India, and unpopular in court circles on his return to Portugal. The majority of Muslim merchants trading across the Indian Ocean retrenched to Aceh, Sumatra, where they had already established a stronghold.

  In a state of near panic, Venice proposed building a Suez Canal in 1504. It went nowhere. Although complicated navigable networks had existed between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean before 1000, they’d fallen into disrepair because of the territorial disputes over such a valuable tract of land. In the face of Portuguese dominance, Venice was on the wane, and would not be able to compete again for the best part of a century. The decline of Venice profited one European city over all others. Antwerp became the centre for the drug trade, and also diamonds, which were an increasingly important commodity as they began to appear in abundance from India. Amsterdam also benefitted, and both cities emerged as centres of wealth and trade in the sixteenth century.