Many undiscovered manuscripts still lurk in the archives and libraries of the Americas and Europe which can shed new light on the processes of early European expansion. Leaving aside spectacular, but controversial, finds like the so-called Vinland map, most of them illuminate details and sometimes processes. On the subject of Portuguese Asia, for instance, the memoirs of a Flemish jewel trader, La vida de Jacques de Couttre, provides the first eyewitness account of the Siamese court and picture of the jewel trade centering on Goa. It was recognized only in the late 1960s, in Madrid. Similarly, but of lesser import, the narrative of Martín Fernández de Figueroa was discovered in the Palha Collection of the Harvard College Library. This added some interesting information about the early Portuguese conquests, including the capture of Goa in 1510. And perhaps the chief significance of the Codex Bratislavensis is that sections of it pertain to this Gründerperiode of Portuguese Asia. Its various parts, written by a Spaniard and a Dutchman, and by Germans, give an international flavor to the Portuguese conquests, as well as suggesting, contradicting, or confirming a few suppositions about them.
The Codex Bratislavensis, as its name would suggest, is a manuscript found in the Lyceum Library at Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. It contains a medley of copy accounts collected by a German merchant residing in Seville or Lisbon during the first decades of the sixteenth century. Six of the accounts are in Latin and six in German. The first of these are cosmological essays and contain little of importance; they are only summarized by the editors. But then there are seven documents pertaining to Portuguese Asia and three to the Spanish Indies. Of these, the three Latin documents on the Spanish Indies are not very earthshaking. One is completely fanciful and depicts an imaginary Spanish expedition to Prester John, though without enough flair to amuse. Another, written around 1500, is interesting because it takes an early dig at Columbus for his bad treatment of the Amerindians. And there is a fragment pertaining to the discovery of Yucatán, but the historical fraternity will not be excited by it. Rather, it is just two of the Portuguese items which merit attention.
What most attracted my eye is the one called, “The First Discovery of Calicut.” It lists German firms which outfitted ships as early as 1505: these included the Weiser, Fugger, Hochstetter, and Hirschvogel. In 1506, the account mentions loss of a ship in Tristão da Cunha's fleet in which the Weiser and Imhofs had a share. Up to now, it has always been believed that the Germans were not allowed to participate in the India trade until much later. The longer account is by Lazarus Nuremberger, a German who describes his stay in Goa during 1517-18. His second-hand report of Lopo Soares’s expedition to Aden and the Red Sea is the earliest known, and came from sources very close to the events themselves. The report suggests that the governor was indeed unfocused and overly cautious —he bungled the last and best Portuguese opportunity to capture Aden and put the Asian empire on a paying basis. Nuremberger’s remark that commanders did not pay their soldiers and that these frequently deserted is interesting. One reads the same thing at the end of the century, but this is the first evidence, to my knowledge, that the syndrome was of such long standing.
The volume is well planned and edited: it gives the original texts, their translations into English, and, finally, two of those pertaining to Asia are translated into Portuguese. It is also handsomely produced and illustrated, but the coating on the paper gives off a strong odor which tends to abbreviate one’s reading time.
