How did early modern Europeans come to understand Sri Lanka as a territory that could and should be conquered militarily? This is the question addressed by historian Zoltán Biedermann in this thoughtful and thought-provoking monograph. The established historiography provides a ready answer. The 1580 annexation of Portugal by Spain led to the application of a fundamentally Castilian model of empire building in Portuguese Asia. Under Castilian influence, what had been a diplomatic and commercial relationship morphed during the 1590s into a concerted military campaign that attempted to convert the island into a territory of the Hapsburg Empire, not unlike Mexico or Peru. Biedermann does not deny that the annexation played a role in the late-sixteenth-century transformation of Portugal’s relationship with Sri Lanka, but he insists that the existing arguments place too much emphasis on changes taking place at the European center, and falsely identify “national” patterns of empire building. Like many historians of imperialism and colonialism, Biedermann emphasizes the role played by non-Europeans, specifically the Lankan elites of the kingdom of Kotte, in cocreating with Lusitanian interlocutors the diplomatic, political, and ideological circumstances that led to conquest. His account of how Sri Lanka came to be conceived as a territory that could and should be conquered thus becomes a story about the possibilities and pitfalls of cross-cultural communication during the sixteenth century.
The point of departure for the argument will be familiar to those readers interested in contemporary historiography that emphasizes themes of connectedness and commensurability. At the moment of first contact in 1506, Biedermann argues, ideas of empire were prominent components of the political cultures of both Portugal and Sri Lanka. These ideals were quite different in many important ways, but they were surprisingly similar in at least one key respect: They emphasized suzerainty over sovereignty as the principal mechanism of imperial authority. For both the Portuguese and the Lankans, an “emperor” was a king who ruled over other kings as vassals, rather than ruling directly over subject territories. This made it possible for the two polities to relate on the basis of the so-called Matrioshka principle, which held that one empire, the Lankan, could nest intact within the Portuguese empire without losing any of its former prestige or integrity. The king of Kotte became a vassal of the king of Portugal and could count at least in theory on military support from Portuguese Goa in his effort to maintain suzerainty over the other kings of Sri Lanka. The Portuguese, in turn, enjoyed a beneficial commercial relationship with their vassal without having to assume the full costs of empire building.
The purpose of the book, however, is not to add to the long bibliography of “connected histories” that have emerged since Sanjay Subrahmanyam coined the concept two decades ago, but rather to provide a critical perspective on the entire paradigm. This is one of the reasons that this book should enjoy a broad readership, because of its deep commitment to methodological reflection. On these pages, Lankan history becomes a case study in how communication can break down even as everyone involved continued to talk with each other. Biedermann traces the Luso–Lankan relationship in detail, examining how it was altered by shifts in the balance of power among the kingdoms of Sri Lanka and the vicissitudes of intra-imperial rivalries among the Portuguese themselves. Under João III, Portuguese political culture became more heavily invested in Catholic Universalism and the project of converting non-Christians. Finding themselves suffering at the hands of their Lankan rivals, the Kotte elites responded to the new climate in ways that they hoped would draw the Portuguese closer to them. King Dharmapala converted and the royal court of Kotte moved to the port of Colombo. Most important, Dom Jõao Dharmapala designated the king of Portugal as heir to the throne should the royal line fail. This “donation” would one day serve as the legal justification for conquest and direct rule, but Biedermann resists any attempt to characterize this moment and others like it as a stepping-stone on the inevitable path toward military intervention. Throughout the book, he emphasizes the roles played by Lankans who had no interest in submitting to Portugal beyond the terms of the Matrioshka principle (pp. 82–93) and Lusitanians who were in no way eager to enhance the role of the crown in Portugal’s Asian affairs. His is a story of how actions taken under a given set of circumstances often have unforeseen circumstances. Dharmapala’s donation provides the clearest example of the overall pattern.
The Luso–Lankan relationship changed dramatically after the annexation of Portugal, but not immediately, Biedermann argues, and not because of a shift to a model of empire building that can be associated exclusively with Spain. During the fifteen years between the annexation and the moment that Madrid issued orders to invade Ceylon, a variety of factors aligned to produce the eventual shift in royal policy (pp. 185–89). The economic decline of the Estado da India strengthened the hand of those Lusitanians who advocated dramatic reform in the organization of Portugal’s Asian empire. The Spanish conquered the Philippines and began to talk of conquests on the mainland of Asia, infecting Portuguese Asia with thoughts of military action as a mechanism of reform. A relative of the famous captain Afonso de Albuquerque became viceroy in Goa, and began to consider the possibility of making his mark by following his uncle’s military adventures. These stars aligned to produce the first significant attempt to conquer Ceylon, which was carried out in the absence of orders from Lisbon or Madrid. The military option, it seems, emerged from the internal dynamics of Portuguese Asia. It was not originally imposed from without.
One of the changes that took place during this period was decisive, and it is also the aspect of the argument that will probably be of most interest to readers of this publication. According to Biedermann, the late sixteenth century saw a shift in European notions of empire from a model based on suzerainty to one based on sovereignty. In halting and uneven ways, European political culture began to adopt the idea that a king did not rule over people, but over territory. Although this principle would not be fully consolidated until the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, it was already at work in the sixteenth century, and it marked the approach of the Spanish Hapsburgs to their overseas dominions. In a fascinating chapter section, Biedermann tracks the change by comparing two maps of Sri Lanka, a nautical chart drawn in 1568 by Fernão Vaz Dourado and a printed map edited by Jacobus Hondius in 1606. In the first map, the island appears as a collection of political centers. On the second, it appears as a homogenous geographical space clearly defined by the coastline roundabout. We see the island territorialized in ways that would have been unimaginable to both Lankans and Iberians at the beginning of the sixteenth century. We see it transformed into a space ready and available for conquest and direct rule, a Ceylon of the Iberian imperial imagination that did not and had never existed. We see dialogue collapse and violence ensue (pp. 202–10).
At last, Biedermann allows a significant causal factor to enter the Luso–Lankan world from without, and significantly alter the course of Sri Lanka’s history. The new emphasis on sovereignty and territoriality on the Iberian side of the encounter plays a crucial role in bringing about a significant divergence between two imperial ideals that had formerly had enough in common to make communication and more or less constructive diplomacy possible. Biedermann’s point, however, is that the internal dynamics of the Luso–Lankan relationship as it had developed over the course of the sixteenth century had created the circumstances that made it possible to imagine and execute the new strategy. The sixteenth-century dialogue produced a hybrid plant onto which conquest was eventually grafted (p. 216). Biedermann insists, however, that there was nothing uniquely Spanish or even European about the graft, the new territoriality. He even resists characterizing it as “modern” (p. 213). This exemplifies the author’s resistance to overly facile explanatory structures, particularly those that rely on binary distinctions. In a way, the whole book can be understood as a concerted attempt to make a historical argument while keeping at arm’s length such convenient binaries as Portugal and Spain, European and Asian, premodern and modern, and even “connection” as the paradigm that governs Old World encounters and conquest as the paradigm that governs New World encounters.