Global Crisis
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2. Details from Blake, Shahjahanabad. Although the Mongol Khan Batur Hongtaiji built a new capital at Zubak Zar in the 1640s and Coxinga built a Ming Memorial Capital on Amoy Island in the 1650s, these were towns not cities – and neither of them lasted long. Likewise the Dutch built new cities at Batavia (Java) after 1619 and at Recife (Brazil) after 1630, but these were colonial and not imperial centres. Finally, although the Maratha leader Shivaji created a new state, he chose an existing fortress, Raigad, as his capital.
3. Guha, India in the seventeenth century, I, 82 (from ‘A voyage to Suratt in the year 1689’ by John Ovington).
4. Dale, The Muslim empires, 107–8; Habib, The agrarian system, 4, 26–7.
5. Dale, The Muslim empires, 100.
6. Elliot and Dowson, The history of India, VII, 158.
7. Ibid., 156–9, print the description of Aurangzeb's exemplary piety in Bakhtawar Khan, Mirat-i Alam (1666).
8. Guha, India, I, 82 (Ovington in 1689); Sarkar, Anecdotes of Aurangzeb, 53, from Aurangzeb's advice to his son c. 1695. Beach and Koch, King of the world, 11, lists the major movements of Shah Jahan.
9. Guha, India, I, 82–3 (Ovington). He gave by way of example the Marathas' pillage of Surat in 1664.
10. Data from Richards, Mughal Empire, 138–40 (quoting Lahori's Padshah Nama). In 1689, Ovington gave much the same figure: see Guha, India, I, 82.
11. Begley and Desai, Shah Jahan Nama, 61–2 (a summary, composed in 1657–8, of the official chronicle compiled annually by the Imperial Historian: either Shah Jahan or his personal representative checked every word before it became the official record and could be copied). Habib, The agrarian system, 100–10, lists the famines.
12. Temple, Travels of Peter Mundy, II, 42–4, 47–9, 55–6: entries for Nov. – Dec. 1630; Foster, The English factories in India, 1630–1633, 122, 165, 178 and 218–19, letters from East India Company officials in Surat to London, 31 Dec. 1630, 8 Sep. and 9 Dec. 1631, and 8 May 1632 OS.
13. Temple, Travels of Peter Mundy, II, 265, 275–6, entries for April–May 1633; HAG Ms 1498/11–12, Viceroy Linhares to Philip IV, 10 Aug. 1631, copy. See also Disney, ‘Famine’, 260–1, based on the 78 entries in Linhares's diary between Mar. 1630 and Dec. 1631 concerning either the famine or problems arising from it. By 2010, although some 39 tree-ring series had been posted for India, only one included seventeenth-century data.
14. Foster, The English factories 1634–1636, 64–5, East India Company officials in Surat to London, 29 Dec. 1634 OS; Foster, The English factories, 1630–1633, 178–9, same to same, 9 Dec. 1631 OS.
15. Foster, The English factories, 1630–1633, 178–9, East India Company officials in Surat to London, 9 Dec. 1631 OS; Temple, Travels of Peter Mundy, II, 265, 275–6, entries for April–May 1633.
16. Elliot and Dowson, The history of India, VII, 24–5, quoting Lahori's Padshah Nama; Begley and Desai, Shah Jahan Nama, 62.
17. Raychaudhuri and Habib, Cambridge economic history of India, I, 184. See van Santen, ‘De Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie’, ch. 2, on the sudden Mughal decision to build great ships; Prakash, The Dutch East India Company, 34–41 and 234–40, on economic growth in Bengal under Shah Jahan; and Alam and Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, 26–7, and Moosvi, ‘Scarcities, prices and exploitation’, 49, on the increasing revenues.
18. Subrahmanyam, ‘A tale of three empires’, 73. See Eaton, The rise of Islam, 156–7, on Mughal expansion into Bengal.
19. Foltz, ‘The Mughal occupation’, 51–2, quoting the Shah Jahan-nama and Tazkira-i Muqim Kahni. Balabanlilar, ‘Lords of the auspicious conjunction’, 72–8, notes that the Mughals called themselves Guregeniyya (‘the dynasty of the son-in-law’) in honour of Timur, who married a descendant of Chinggis Khan and adopted that title.
20. Foltz, ‘The Mughal occupation’, 57, quoting the Tazkira-i Muqim Kahni. Borgaonkar et al., ‘Climate change’, 32, 34, Himalayan tree-ring data, shows poor growing seasons in the 1640s.
21. Levi, ‘Hindus beyond the Hindu Kush’, 280, quotes the Tazkira-i Muqim Kahni, and notes that the sale of so many slaves in Central Asia in 1647 ‘was unique in the history of the region’.
22. Elliot and Dowson, The history of India, VII, 96–103, quoting Inayat Khan, Shah Jahan Nama.
23. Richards, Mughal India, 132–5, quoting the estimates in Muhammad Sadiq's Shahjahan-Nama.
24. McChesney, Waqf, 141, quoting a Manshur (confirmation) issued by the ruler of Balkh in 1668–9.
25. Faruqui, ‘Princes and power’, 299, quoting the Waqiat-i Alamgiri.
26. Elliot and Dowson, The history of India, VII, 178, quoting Muhammed Kazim, Alamgir Nama.
27. Moosvi, ‘Scarcities’, 55; Moinul Haq, Khafi Khan's History, 93–4. Although this entry in the History lacks a date, it comes immediately after events that occurred in Sep. 1659.
28. Foster, The English factories, 1655–1660, 263 and 256, letters from the English factors at Masulipatam, north of Madras, in Mar. and Oct. 1659; and 210 and 310, letters from the English factors in Surat, Sep. and Oct. 1659 and Apr. 1660; Foster, The English factories in India, 1661–1664, 32, letters from the English factors at Madras, 28 Jan. 1661 (all dates OS).
29. Moinul Haq, Khafi Khan's History, 130–1; Singh, Region and empire, 116, ‘free kitchens’ in Punjab 1658–60.
30. Foster, The English factories, 1661–1664, 200 and 321, letters from the English factors at Surat, 28 Jan. and 4 Apr. 1664; de Souza, Medieval Goa, 172 (graph of food prices in the city), van Santen, ‘De Verenigde’, 90–6.
31. Foster, The English factories in India, 1661–1664, 329, letter from the English factors at Surat, 26 Nov. 1664. Dutch sources document Indian famines in 1659, 1660, 1661, 1663, 1664 and 1666: Boomgaard, ‘Fluctuations in mortality’, 5. Rice and wheat prices increased sharply in Bengal in 1662–3: Moosvi, ‘Scarcities’, 47, and Prakash, The Dutch East India Company, 252–3. Kerala droughts in 1663, 1665 and 1666 recorded by Borgaonkar, ‘Climate change’, 51.
32. Bernier, Travels, 205, letter to Colbert written ‘after an absence of twelve years’ from France, which he left in 1656; Moosvi, ‘Scarcities’, 49–50 and 55; Moosvi, ‘Indian economic experience’, 332 (excluding Bengal, Orissa and Kashmir, because their revenues had already declined sharply between 1646 and 1656). See also the tax figures in Guha, Health and population, 33–4.
33. Moosvi, ‘Scarcities’, a pioneering effort to remedy the ‘neglect of the short-term fluctuations in the cycle of production and consumption’, such as famine and climate, in the economic history of Mughal India.
34. Love, Indian records, 558, Appendix VIII, ‘Madras famines’.
35. Liu, Asian population history, 197–9 and 202–7. Peter Boomgaard, ‘Fluctuations in mortality’, documented poor harvests in Java in 1633–4, 1641–2, 1647, 1657 and 1659–62, and famine in 1618, 1625–7 and 1664–5; and poor harvests in the outer islands in 1633, 1638–9, 1644, 1646, 1648, 1651–3 and 1657, and famine in 1660 and 1664. See also ibid., 47–9; Reid, ‘The crisis’, 211–17; and Arakawa, Climates, 222.
36. Reid, Southeast Asia, I, 25, quoting Alcina, History of the Visayan Islands (1668); and, I, 18 and 19, quoting William Marsden, History of Sumatra (1783).
37. Boomgaard, ‘Fluctuations in mortality’, 5, noted the differing chronology of Indian and Indonesian droughts.
38. Reid, ‘The crisis’, 211 and 218–19. Dutch profits of course soared in proportion: Anthony Reid has calculated that ‘the Dutch sold spices in Europe at about seventeen times, and in India at about fourteen times, the price for which they had bought them’ in Indonesia.
39. Drewes, Hakayat potjut Muhamat, 167 (Prince Muhamat utters these words during an Achehnese civil war when he comes across abandoned fields); Reid, ‘The crisis’, 219, quoting the report of a Dutch factor in the southern Philippines, in 1699. See also the similar statement from a similar source in 1686: ibid., 218.
40. Skinner, Sja'ir perang Mengkasar, 215 (written 1669–70). On the Dutch struggle with Makassar, see
Andaya, The heritage of Arung Palakka, 130–3; and Parker, ‘The fortress’, 213–15.
41. Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, 106–7.
42. Foster, The English factories, 1637–1641, 228, William Fremlen to the East India Company, Dec. 1639 and 28 Jan. 1640. See also the similar verdict of Tavernier, Travels in India, 150–61.
43. Winius, The fatal history, 54–5, royal letter of Mar. 1641; Pissurlencar, Assentos do Conselho do Estado, II, 573–8, Viceroy Aveiras to John IV, 27 Sep. 1641.
44. Winius, The fatal history, 110, letter of 3 Apr. 1647, and 117, opinion of two councillors of war, Sep. 1649.
45. Boxer, Fidalgos in the Far East, 150, 153–4.
46. Bocarro, O livro das plantas, II, 155; Winius, The fatal history, 141, count of Óbidos, the deposed and imprisoned viceroy, to his brother. A replacement arrived from Lisbon two years later, arrested the conspirators and sent them back to Portugal in chains. See also de Souza, Medieval Goa, 115–17; and van Veen, ‘Decay or defeat’, 108–12.
47. Boxer, Portuguese seaborne empire, 128–9, quoting Manuel Godinho, Relação do novo caminho que fez por terra e mar (Lisbon, 1665). On Godinho, see Lobo and Correia-Afonso, Intrepid itinerant.
48. Boxer, Portuguese India, 7, viceroy to king, 26 June 1668.
49. Prestage and Laranjo Coelho, Correspondência diplomática, III, 354, Sousa Coutinho to Secretary of State Soares de Abreu, 4 May 1649; Boxer, Portuguese India, 23–4, viceroy to the king, Rio Licungo, 23 Oct. 1650.
50. Boxer, Portuguese India, 35, consulta of the Overseas Council to John IV, 9 Sep. 1649. Figures from Bruijn, Dutch Asiatic shipping, III, 75; and Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese empire in Asia, 163.
51. Boxer, Portuguese India, 7, letter of 14 Dec. 1658.
52. De Jonge, Opkomst, V, 248–9, van Diemen to the directors, 12 Dec 1641 (the Governor General himself added the italics).
53. Chardin, Travels in Persia, 128–9. On page 137, Chardin again stressed that ‘Persia is, generally speaking, a barren country’ but claimed that ‘the tenth part of it is uncultivated’.
54. Newman, Safavid Iran, 74–5 and 202, describes the revolt and executions.
55. Dale, The Muslim empires, 218.
56. Floor, The economy, 61–2, quoting Chardin, Voyages. Climatic details from Newman, Safavid Iran, 94–5 and 131–2, and from Matthee, Politics of trade, 175–7. On devaluation, see also ch. 2 above.
57. Subrahmanyam cited at page 406 above. Berchet, La Repubblica, 50–2 and 215–19, documents an important but unsuccessful Polish-Venetian embassy to Iran in 1646–9 seeking a declaration of war against the Ottomans.
58. Chardin, Travels in Persia, 130.
59. Musallam, Sex and society in Islam, 10 (Hadith), 57–82 (pharmacy stocks and literature on abortion and contraception, including the 176 methods listed in one treatise), 89 (on The Perfumed Garden, which notes eight methods of birth control) and 118 (quotations from the treatises of Ibn Nujaim and Shawkani). Hindu as well as Muslim teaching permitted birth control and saw the ideal age of marriage for girls as 15.
60. Maussion de Favrières, Les voyages, 89 (La Boullaye-le-Gouz in 1644), and Babayan, Mystics, 441 (Chardin in 1676). The shah's predecessors had been less liberal: see ibid., pp. 442–3.
Chapter 14 Red Flag over Italy
1. I thank Brian Pullan, who first introduced me to Masaniello in his lecture course at Cambridge University in 1965, for commenting on this chapter, and Mario Rizzo, who has shaped my interpretation of ‘Spanish Italy’ ever since we first met in the Archivio di Stato in Naples in 1995. Early modern Italians used a twenty-four-hour clock, with each ‘day’ beginning half an hour after sunset: thus, regardless of the season, sunset occurred every day at ‘ore 2330’. When Italians wrote that something happened ‘ad un'ora di notte [at one o'clock at night]’, they meant ‘at 90 minutes after sunset’. In this chapter, I have converted the times given by contemporaries into their modern equivalents.
2. Grotius, Briefwisseling, XI, 609, to Nicolaes van Reigersberch, 10 Nov. 1640; Jacobs, Epistolae, I, 420–1, Howell letter from late 1640 (the date in the text – 3 Mar. 1638 – cannot be correct).
3. Gil Pujol, ‘“Conservación”’, 88: ‘Si busques bon govern/Napols, Messina y Palerm/bon exemple te an donat’.
4. Data from the pioneering articles of Maurice Aymard: ‘La Sicilia’ and ‘In Sicilia’ for population; ‘Commerce et production’ for silk exports; ‘Rese’ and ‘Rendements’ for crop yields; and from Davies, ‘Changes’, 387–8.
5. Ribot García, La revuelta, 57.
6. Di Marzo, Biblioteca Storica, III, 35–8 (‘Diario’ of Vincenzo Auria); AHN Estado libro 455, n.p., consultas of the Council of Italy 25 July 1645 and 14 Mar. 1646; Aymard, ‘Bilancio’, 990; and Ribot García, ‘La época’, 669.
7. Pocili, Delle rivoluzioni, 1; Collurafi, Tumultazioni, part I, 8. AGS SP leg. 1444, n.p., consulta of the Council of Italy, 3 Aug. 1647, on Los Vélez letters of 31 May and 5 June stating that Palermo spent 300 ducats a day on the bread subsidy. All Sicilian grain prices in this chapter come from the annual ‘mete del frumento’ (grain contract price) for Palermo, Trapani and other towns printed by Cancila, Impresa, 314–17.
8. Di Marzo, Biblioteca storica, III, 40–67 (Auria); ibid., IV, 64–6 and 70 (Rocco Pirri).
9. AGS SP leg. 1,444, n.p., Los Vélez to Philip IV, 23 May 1647. Los Vélez stated that he had reduced the loaves from 11.75 to 10 ounces ‘para ajustar el gasto con el coste’.
10. Details from Pocili, Delle rivoluzioni, 4–5; Marzo, Biblioteca storica, III, 68–71 (Auria).
11. AGS SP leg. 1,444, n.p., Los Vélez to Philip IV, 23 May 1647.
12. Lionti, ‘Cartelli sediziosi’, 450–1, the petition of Caltabellotta, 23 June 1647.
13. Pocili, Delle rivoluzioni, 36–42, prints the new tax edict. On 11 July a felucca arrived in Palermo bearing news of the Naples uprising: AGS SP leg. 1,444, n.p., Los Vélez to Philip IV, 16 July 1647.
14. Capaccio, Il forastiero, 847. Opinions differ on the size of Naples. In 1634 Capaccio, op. cit., 846, estimated 300,000; while Jean-Jacques Bouchard, who spent eight months there in 1632–3, thought the city and suburbs housed ‘between seven and eight hundred thousand souls’ (Kanceff, Bouchard: Journal, II, 254). In 1647 Viceroy Arcos opted for 600,000 (BNE Ms 2662/6, ‘Relación del tumulto’); and a Jesuit guessed it was 800,000 (Cartas de algunos padres, VII (MHE, XIX), 94, ‘Relación’, 30 Aug. 1647). I follow De Rosa, ‘Naples, a capital’, 351, who suggested that 300,000 people lived in the city in 1630 and 365,000 on the eve of the plague of 1656.
15. Capaccio, Il forastiero, 703. Kanceff, Bouchard: Journal, II, 242, 265–70, and Capaccio, Il forastiero, 850, both mentioned the high-rise apartments. Benigno, Specchi, 276–82, discusses ‘Who were the Lazzari?’
16. Details in Benigno, L'ombra del re, ch. 2, and Comparato, Uffici, 289–324.
17. Comparato, ‘Toward the revolt’, 291–2, quoting Francesco de Petri, Responsa sive consilia (Naples, 1634); Tutini, Dell'origine e fundazione de’ Seggi (Naples, 1644). Tutini, a priest, claimed that the nobles never forgave him for his book and, after the revolt, insisted that he stay in permanent exile (which he did): Tutini and Verde, Racconto, xliii, letter of Tutini, 12 July 1649.
18. G. M. Novario, De vassallorum gravaminibus tractatus (3 vols, Naples 1634–42). In May 1647, even before news arrived of the revolt of Palermo, some 400 furious peasants attacked the noble administrator of a formerly royal domain near Cosenza: see Comparato, ‘Toward the revolt’, 306–7.
19. Villari, Revolt, 240 n. 89, consulta of the Sommaria, 3 Nov. 1643. Rovito, ‘Rivoluzione’, 374, quoting a consulta of the Council of Italy in August 1647, claims that 70,000 Neapolitans had invested in loans to be repaid from taxes.
20. Comparato, ‘Toward the revolt’, 280–1 and 315 (quotation from the ‘Istoria’ of Carlo Calà,); AGS SP libro 324/53, consulta of Council of Italy, 8 July 1647, noted that the tax on meat ‘almost exceeds twice the sale price’.
22. Graniti, Diario di Francesco Capecelatro, I, 8–9 and 12–13, on the ‘pessimo consiglio’, ‘gravissimo errore’ and ‘il secondo gravissimo errore che fece el duca d'Arcos’. Capecelatro was a colonel and so knew whereof he spoke. Santa Coloma had made exactly the same error in Barcelona in 1640 (ch. 9 above), which make Arcos's failure to learn from experience seem even more foolish.
23. Howell, Exact historie, 13; Capograssi, ‘La rivoluzione’, 178, Andrea Rosso to Doge, 9 July 1647. Tutini, Racconto, 19–21, claims the first leader of the revolt was ‘un tale siciliano’ who urged the crowd to demand the repeal of all gabelles, as in Palermo, until he was shot in a street brawl, opening the way for Masaniello to take over.
24. Graniti, Diario di Francesco Capecelatro, I, 15 and II, 67 (‘Tenevano i popolari, come solevano, alberato lo stendardo rosso al torrione del Carmelo in segno di guerra’). On the goading by Sicilian refugees see BNE Ms 2662/4v–5, ‘Relación del tumulto’ prepared by or for Arcos (‘Mezcláronse algunos Palermitanos …’); and Cartas de algunos padres, VII (MHE, XIX), 37–8, duchess of Arcos to her uncle, [15 July] 1647.
25. Palermo, Narrazioni, 385, Filomarino to Innocent X, 12 July 1647; Comparato, ‘Toward the revolt’, 306, quoting the diary of the notary Giovan Francesco Montanaro. Many sources dispute Masaniello's age and place of birth, but Graniti, Diario di Francesco Capecelatro, I, notes pp. 28–9, printed his entry in the baptismal register of Santa Caterina in Foro on 29 June 1620. He also married there in 1641. On the number of ‘ragazzi’, see ch. 19 below.
26. BNE Ms 2662/5–5v (‘Relación del tumulto’) and 41, Arcos to Philip IV, 15 July 1647, copy; Howell, Exact history, 26–30.
27. Howell, Exact history, 36–7, printed the list of 60 houses scheduled to be burned; Comparato, ‘Toward the revolt’, 308–10, categorized their owners; Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, 103, showed the overlap between the list of those whose houses must be torched and Genoino's enemies.