Jacques de Coutre has a Scoop on Intersectionality of Diamond Miners in Early 17th Century South India

Proceedings of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences 3 (2025 – 1): 9-25 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16925422 Jacques de Coutre has a Scoop on Intersectionality of Diamond Miners in Early 17th Century South India* by Johan Verberckmoes** Keywords. — Cultural Diversity; Diamond Mining in India; Border Studies. Summary. — In 1591 Jacques de Coutre went as a young man from Bruges to Lisbon and from there with his elder brother to Goa, India. He travelled widely across Southeast Asia and India and returned twice to the Iberian Peninsula via Persia and the Middle East. De Coutre was a successful diamond trader and gave the king of Spain (who then was also king of Portugal) sound advice on trading in the East. The present paper will outline how de Coutre performed as a cultural mediator between the Dutch and the Portuguese, but also between Indian rulers and the Portuguese. He dealt in precious stones, but also served as a diplomat. In doing so, he crossed many borders: he spoke several languages; he regularly changed the social register of his language as he spoke to rulers as well as very poor diamond workers in central Indian mines; he explored many different political systems; he compared cultural practices. During his adventurous life he always crossed geographical and state borders which made him a Habsburg world citizen as well as an inhabitant of Goa with a firm knowledge of India and Southeast Asia. This paper will focus on India, as de Coutre’s written life story is one of the first extended European reports on the cultural diversity of the Indian subcontinent and the role of cultural mediator that he took up there as a migrant from Europe. Trefwoorden. — Culturele diversiteit; Diamantmijnen in India; Studie van grenzen. Samenvatting. — Jacques de Coutre heeft een primeur over de intersectionaliteit van diamantmijnwerkers in Zuid-India aan het begin van de 17de eeuw. — Jacques de Coutre vertrok in 1591 als jongeman vanuit Brugge naar Lissabon en vandaar met zijn broer naar Goa, India. Hij trok lang rond in Zuidoost-Azië en India en keerde twee maal terug naar het Iberische schiereiland via Perzië en het Midden-Oosten. Hij was een succesvol diamanthandelaar en gaf de Spaanse koning (die toen ook koning van Portugal was) adviezen over de handel in het Oosten. In dit artikel analyseer ik hoe de Coutre als cultureel bemiddelaar optrad tussen Nederlanders en Portugezen, maar ook tussen Indische vorsten en de Portugezen. Hij legde zich toe op handel in kostbare gesteenten, maar was ook als diplomaat actief. Op die manier ging hij vele grenzen over: hij gebruikte verschillende talen; hij wisselde geregeld van sociaal register, want hij onderhield zich zowel met vorsten als met steenarme diamantontginners in Indiase mijnen; hij leerde vele politieke systemen kennen; hij vergeleek culturele gebruiken. Tijdens zijn leven heeft hij voortdurend geografische en staatsgrenzen overgestoken die van hem zowel een Habsburgse wereldburger als een inwoner van Goa met een stevige kennis van India en Zuidoost-Azië maken. In deze tekst spits ik mij toe op voorbeelden over India, want zijn uitgeschreven levensverhaal * Paper presented at the meeting of the Section of Human Sciences held on 16 November 2021. Text received on 14 April 2022 and submitted to peer review. Final version, approved by the review ers, received on 15 March 2023. My sincere thanks to Eddy Stols who first gave me the opportunity to work on Jacques de Coutre, to the participants in my lecture in the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences and in particular to the two anonymous reviewers for their very valuable critical comments on an earlier version. ** Faculteit Letteren, Onderzoekseenheid Geschiedenis, KU Leuven, Blijde Inkomststraat 21, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium). — 10 — is een van de eerste uitgebreide rapporten van een Europeaan over de culturele diversiteit van het Indische subcontinent en de culturele bemiddelaarsrollen die hij als migrant daar opnam. * * * Jacques de Coutre was the son of a well-to-do broom maker living in Bruges in Flanders (Stols, 1974). He was born around 1575. Shortly after his father’s death, his mother, Anna van Houven, decided to send Jacques abroad, to Spain. He was then around sixteen years of age and at least one of his brothers lived on the Iberian Peninsula. Arriving in Lisbon in October 1591 he met his elder brother Joseph and after some hesitation they both travelled to the East, settling in Goa, in southwest India, in September 1592. But not for long. It was against my character to remain in one place because I eagerly wished to see differences in the world (como era contra mi inclinación el estar quedo en un lugar por el deseo y gusto que tenía de ver variedades del mundo) (de Coutre, [1700], book 2, chapter 16). For three decades Jacques de Coutre constantly travelled in South India and Southeast Asia. From September 1593 to March 1603, he acted as a diamond and textile trader and informal agent of the Portuguese governor of Melaka, Francisco de Silva de Meneses. In that capacity de Coutre visited, traded and negotiated in Singapore, Pahang, Siam, Cambodia, Manila, Brunei, Palawan, Mindoro, Patani and Johor (Borschberg, 2014). In May 1603 he returned to Goa and married a Portuguese Old Christian and his sister-in-law Catarina do Couto (whose sister had previously married Jacques’ brother, Joseph). For two more decades Jacques continued as a diamond trader in South India, interspersed with two overland visits to Madrid to defend his interests. That was because since 1605 the Portuguese royal legislation had ordered the expulsion of foreigners from its overseas territories, mainly for fear of Dutch and English competition. This included the Flemish, subjects of the Spanish Crown, but not the Portuguese, notwithstanding the Union of the Crowns (1580-1640) at the time. However, in Goa, the implementation of the law took nearly two decades to materialize. Several gem traders, among whom the brothers de Coutre, fiercely resisted expulsion. In the end, their resistance was in vain. On 1 April 1623 the governor of Goa ordered the arrest of Jacques de Coutre, his son and his brother and their deportation to Portugal along with several others. He spent about five years under house arrest in prisons in Lisbon and Madrid. By royal decree of 29 June 1632, the Council of Portugal in Madrid acquitted the brothers. For his service to the joint Spanish-Portuguese Crown in South Asia Jacques de Coutre ultimately was honoured as a knight in the prestigious Order of Santiago. Jacques de Coutre died in June 1640 in Zaragoza, Spain. A voluminous manuscript of his life story as an ego-document was coauthored by his son Esteban (de Coutre, [1700]; Verberckmoes & Stols, 1988; Stols, Teensma & Verberckmoes, 1991). Notwithstanding his privileged status as Flemish-Iberian colonial agent, Jacques de Coutre identified intersectionality issues among diamond miners while in South India from 1603 to 1623. He was the first European to do so. De Coutre underlined the interweaving of their extreme poverty, miserable working conditions, spiritual desperation, gender issues, conditional payment and debt bondage to the private owners of the diamond mines on the Deccan plateau. — 11 — Overall, he emphasized their intricate marginality in a sector of economic activity in which he prominently participated as a merchant. Intersectionality refers to the aggregation of discrimination factors (Duran & Jones, 2020). Originally referring to the marginality of women (Crenshaw, 1989; Yuval-Davis, 2006), recent assessments on intersectionality point to the structures that accumulate inequalities among vulnerable workers (Bhattacharya, 2017; Bohrer, 2018), particularly in industries expanding in a global world (Mezzadri, 2016). Diamonds were such a global industry and early modern Goa one of its centres in Asia (Cunha, 2001). In that globali zing context Deccan workers extracting diamonds in underground mines faced social downgrading as a result of multiple discriminations (Plank, Rossi & Staritz, 2014). Two reasons stand out to explain de Coutre’s sensitivity to intersectionality. First of all, since his time in Melaka he had become an accomplished international diamond trader with above all expertise in the field of endless negotiations with unwilling local rulers (Bycroft & Dupré, 2019, p. 95). This pushed him to explore the sources of diamond extraction. During his visits to the diamond mines of Ramallakota, south of Kurnool, and the mines around Kollur, de Coutre came into close contact with miners and diggers (Winius, 1988, pp. 20-21). The dire circumstances of the manual labourers and excavators of a hugely promising product (the potential of which these workers were well aware) arguably attracted Jacques de Coutre to intimately explore the accumulating factors of their exploitation and even give evidence of their fight against intersectional discrimination. For they continued to dig nevertheless, just as he persisted in trading gems although gains were highly insecure. In his life story he tells how on more than one occasion he lost everything (de Coutre, [1700], book 1, chapters 2, 12 and 17; book 2, chapter 10; book 3, chapters 2 and 11). However, his social status as a colonial agent was never at risk. So, arguably not a sense of injustice pushed him to investigate the lives of diamond workers, but a sense of high risk and structural social downgrading intimately connected to the volatile gem business (Siebenhüner, 2018; Bycroft & Dupré, 2019). Some exceptions notwithstanding (Hofmeester, 2012, pp. 23-29; Alam, 2001; Mukund, 1991), this aspect of de Coutre’s rich descriptions of the diamond mines of Vellore, Bijapur and Golconda has not been properly analysed in its own right. Historians have focused on trade (Disney, 1978; Chaudhuri, 1985; Maloni, 2021), travel (Rubiés, 2000) and religion (upanov, 2005; Barreto Xavier, 2022) as undergoing significant changes as a result of many intercultural exchanges in early modern India (Subrahmanyam, 1990), but hardly on subaltern workers. Secondly, driven by his curiosity — por curiosidad (Winius, 1988, p. 24) — de Coutre was always travelling and thus gained huge experience (Subrahmanyam, 2017, p. 27). His continuous travel among many different cultures in rapidly changing international political circumstances in South India and Southeast Asia consistently affected and undoubtedly altered the views Jacques de Coutre had on the world and its people. This turned him into a cultural broker and a go-between and led him to meet people from all layers of society (Ares Queija & Gruzinski, 1997). That is the zest of his memoirs, written down at the end of his life but never published. Presumably on the basis of his personal notes as well as his memory, Jacques de Coutre told his adventures to his son Esteban and he turned these into a manuscript, or they jointly did. It is labelled a vida, a life of Jacques, and told in the first person. In contrast to a traveller from a generation earlier, Jan Huygen van Linschoten from Enkhuizen, who also left home aged sixteen, but on a sober mission of gathering useful information (van Gelder, Parmentier & Roeper, 1998), de Coutre often left the trodden path and eagerly embarked on new horizons. He gained local cultural experience, learned languages and acquired a sensitivity to — 12 — human encounters. What gave his life and his travels urgency, however, and tested his gobetweenness, was the historical context, more specifically, the break-up of the Deccan during the early seventeenth century due to Christian — Hindu as well as Muslim — Hindu political and commercial tensions (Alam & Subrahmanyam, 2012, pp. 162-203). While de Coutre was definitely blind-sighted on religious pluralism, he was not on commercial opportunity linked to political upheaval. In striking contrast to the extravagant luxury of the rulers of Bijapur and Golconda, which he documented with clarity, horror and fascination, the diamond extractors and transport workers operating in horribly poor conditions, somehow caught his sympathy. Privilege and Peril: The Life of Jacques de Coutre Although often living in perilous conditions Jacques de Coutre enjoyed many privileges of a Flemish citizen participating in Portuguese colonial ventures. However, his life started in uncertainty. In the 1590s Bruges still suffered from constant warfare during the Dutch Revolt (Bauwens, Braekman & Lauret, 1987). Mother van Houven feared her son Jacques was inclined to take service in the army. A future in the Iberian countries seemed more secure. In June 1591 Jacques went aboard the Red Lion in Vlissingen, Zeeland. For three months the ship was sailing and fishing in the North Atlantic and once fought with English ships in view of the Irish coast. On that occasion the ship’s captain Gaspar Janssens lost both his legs when a cannon ball hit him and killed him. In October 1591 Jacques finally arrived in Lisbon. He was so shaken by his three months as an ordinary sailor that he collapsed and fell to the ground in the house of Herman Vermeire, the Flemish owner of the Red Lion who lived in Corpo Santo near the waterfront. There Jacques met with his elder brother Joseph, whom he had not seen for five years. Living a life of destitution in the Portuguese capital, Joseph and Jacques soon decided to sail to Asia (de Coutre, [1700], book 1, chapters 1 and 2). Before commenting on his Asian venture, the exact status of de Coutre as a Flemish in the Portuguese-Spanish overseas empires under one Crown needs to be defined. The most detailed source on de Coutre’s life is his autobiography written in the Spanish language (de Coutre, [1700]; Stols et al., 1991). The text was penned between 1623 and 1628 while Jacques de Coutre and his brother Joseph were under investigation from the Crown, first in Lisbon and from 1624 in Madrid. Seven memorials with advice for the Spanish king Philip IV on how to conduct trade in South and Southeast Asia and East Africa complemented the autobiography (Stols et al., 1991, pp. 359-438). Whether the de Coutre brothers acted as willing or unwilling spies for the Dutch East India Company or were loyal citizens of the joint Portuguese-Spanish Crown is still open for discussion (Borschberg, 2014, pp. 21, 33). This was the period when the Portuguese Estado da India, its official empire in the East, was in fierce competition with the Dutch United Provinces, the latest newcomer in the highly competitive South and Southeast Asian markets. Since the 1590s the Dutch Republic had been very active in the Indian Ocean and South Chinese Sea, culminating in the fusion of several existing companies into one East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC) in 1602. Although Jacques de Coutre had occasional contacts with Dutch mariners in Manila and Melaka and evidently spoke their language, most evidence suggests Jacques de Coutre and his brother never actively sought any involvement with the VOC. On the contrary, as Flemish they fully participated in the Portuguese Estado da India as their marriages to an Indo-Portuguese family do Couto of Old Christians in Goa and diplomatic interventions on behalf of Portuguese — 13 — officials throughout South and Southeast Asia confirmed. Moreover, two centuries of intimate dynastic and commercial connections between Portugal and Flanders (Everaert & Stols, 1991) had paved the way for the Flemish, though subjects of the Spanish Crown, to be considered as also loyal to the Portuguese Crown. On the other hand, early modern imperialism was a mixture of public and private enterprise and distinctions blurred rapidly (Antunes, 2017). The gem business in particular easily transcended cultural, social and legal barriers (Bycroft & Dupré, 2019; Siebenhüner, 2018; Vanneste, 2011). As diamond traders, Jacques and Joseph de Coutre worked for their own pockets as well as for Portuguese officials and local rulers throughout Southeast Asia and India, including Jahangir, fourth Moghul Emperor. Jacques de Coutre was a fixer, a go-between in empires (Subrahmanyam, 2021) and a merchant mediating between cultures (Ares Queija & Gruzinski, 1997). In 1592 he travelled to Goa on board of a Portuguese ship that consisted of a multinational crew. Although the Crowns of Portugal and Spain from 1580 to 1640 belonged to the same Spanish Habsburg king, colonial institutions of the two countries were not merged nor were their colonial laws, although Madrid had the last word. As Flanders was not subject to the Portuguese Crown, de Coutre was technically a foreigner in Goa. However, to start off his career, he ignored his mother’s advice and became a soldier, a soldado in service of the Portuguese to obtain the protection of local Portuguese officials in Melaka (Subrahmanyam, 1999, p. 316). This was a rational choice, though, enlisting as a soldier was a legal way for the Flemish to participate in Portuguese ventures. On the other hand, arriving in Melaka in late September 1593, the ageing Venetian gem merchant Sequin Martinela took Jacques de Coutre under his protection (de Coutre, [1700], book 1, chapter 2). Sequin was a second father to Jacques. He learned the young man from Bruges all tricks of the trade in diamonds and other precious stones. As Venice was a crucial link in the diamond trade between Portuguese India and the Habsburg Netherlands (Everaert, 2004), this made much sense also for Sequin Martinela. During his decade of service to the Portuguese in Southeast Asia, Jacques de Coutre undoubtedly raised his status as trustworthy subject (Borschberg, 2014, p. 35). However, Dutch-Portuguese tensions ran so high that on 18 March 1605 a law was declared in Portugal that ordered all foreigners to be driven out of the Portuguese settlements in the Estado da India, as well as the Atlantic islands, Brazil and the African coast (Subrahmanyam, 1999, p. 297). On 28 November 1606 King Philip III of Spain ordered the viceroy in India, Dom Martin Afonso de Castro, to implement this law (Borschberg, 2014, p. 15), as the informal capital of Portuguese Asia, Goa, teemed with strangers — Persians, Armenians, Jews, Germans, French, Italians, and Flemish. Although Habsburg subjects, according to Portuguese colonial law, Flemish were also foreigners. That is why starting in 1606 Jacques de Coutre travelled over land via the Persian and Ottoman empires to Lisbon and Madrid to defend his actions (among other reasons because he had talked in Manila in Dutch to a Dutch ship captain of the VOC) and present the monarch with detailed petitions (de Coutre, [1700], book 2, chapters 5 to 12). For instance, he argued that he was not only loyal to the Portuguese Crown, but had also carried letters by the viceroy of Goa on his overland journey (Borschberg, 2014, p. 15). He then returned to Goa, apparently having satisfied authorities. Finally, it took a very long time before action was taken against gem traders such as de Coutre and the most prestigious and rich among them all, the German Ferdinand Cron from Augsburg (Malekandathil, 1999, pp. 97-111). In the meantime, the de Coutre brothers confirmed their loyalty with donations to churches and hospitals in Goa (Borschberg, 2014, p. 11). In 1620 Jacques de Coutre undertook — 14 — a second voyage to the Iberian Peninsula to justify his doings to the Portuguese Crown, but got no further than Aleppo and returned to Goa (de Coutre, [1700], book 3, chapters 9 and 10). Perhaps accusations of collaborating with the Dutch VOC began to weigh. He even planned a third visit to Madrid in 1621, but that did not materialize, as he was taken prisoner by the Portuguese not far from Goa (de Coutre, [1700], book 3, chapters 11 and 12). Clearly, Portuguese patience had run out, as the Dutch and the English became ever more fierce competitors and gem traders Jacques and Joseph de Coutre and Ferdinand Cron were all expelled. Finally, the arrest in and deportation from Goa of Jacques and Joseph de Coutre in the company of Jacques’ son Esteban, on 1 April 1623, brought them first to Lisbon and then to Madrid for almost a decade of legal battle (de Coutre, [1700], book 3, chapter 15). In 1632 they were acquitted of any charges of spying for the Dutch and acknowledged as loyal to the Crown. Although under suspicion as foreigners with a possible double agenda, until 1623 the de Coutre brothers always enjoyed the privilege of working in complete freedom in and from Goa. They earned significant wealth in the gem trade and vouched for others. As economic agents they belonged to a privileged social group of high-end traders working for rich buyers and took every opportunity and risk (Cunha, 2001). In the light of this, the autobiography of Jacques de Coutre gains special significance. It has been suggested that it was written in the style of a picaresque novel (Winius & Chorba, 1998). Humour and ironic self-deprecation, but also fury and indignation at the actions and words of others, fuel the narrative. The manuscript has a title-page drawing with a coat of arms, an I-character telling a story of many adventures with numerous twists and turns and uses a Spanish language fused with Portuguese (Teensma, 1989). This suggests a popular genre (Borschberg, 2014, pp. 31-33). As accomplished as more famous early modern travellers, Jacques de Coutre surged on a wave of authorship that demonstrated eagerness to know the world intimately (Subrahmanyam, 2011). In that perspective, the examples that Jacques de Coutre gave of the destitution he was living in and the hardship he encountered cater to the popularity of the genre of travel narratives (Mancall, 2007). For instance, on their first voyage, he and his brother are sick and are taken care off in a hospital in Mozambique. When the ship leaves, he hears that his brother has gone away and fears the worst, that he is dead. But then he finds his brother and is overcome with joy, yet at the same time the tears stream from his eyes as he reflects on their extreme poverty. His brother has only trousers, a shirt and a woolen cap, but no stockings or shoes (de Coutre, [1700], book 1, chapter 2). This is one of numerous examples in the vida of rapid social downgrading as a result of several factors, in this case disease, isolation and theft. Although inversely self-glorifying in the best picaresque fashion, the ultimate experience of his adventurous life was to assess structural dangers at every instance. Throughout his autobiography, Jacques presents himself as a picaresque hero surfing on contradictory emotions. However, arguments about having lost everything, including every piece of clothing he carried with him, wear thin against the overall impression of his memoirs that he is a finely skilled negotiator who always finds a way out. This is exactly what a picaresque traveller does. He takes up an impossible assignment, gets into deep trouble but emerges triumphant, at least for the time being. A second function of the narrative is that it presents life as an ongoing affair with unexpected turns at every corner. This has the flavour of storytelling for its own sake. The story gives very much an impression of having been dictated to his son Esteban (Rubiés, 2000, p. 381). “I go on with my story” and similar interventions suggest long sessions of storytelling. In contrast to most other European travel narratives, — 15 — eagerly copying each other and plundering older narratives, de Coutre’s life story is full of details little read elsewhere. Misspelt names of rulers and cities and inaccuracies suggest Jacques de Coutre was speaking from memory to his son while presumably also using notes, as the many attestations testify he presented to the Crown. The closest we come to de Coutre’s mind is when he tells us he cannot stay at one place yet always wants to see something new. This sums up his boundless curiosity and charming passion. Go-between in South India From the moment his mother sent him in 1591 from Bruges on board a Spanish ship to his time in Madrid in the 1620s awaiting the final verdict of his case before the Council of Por tugal and his death in 1640 and burial in the San Andrés Hospital of the Flemish in Madrid, Jacques de Coutre was a privileged subject of the Spanish-Habsburg monarch under whose protection he lived and to whom he was responsible. His upbringing in a family of burghers and craftsmen of Bruges had set him on that path. His personal achievement of being good at languages and as a clever and cunning go-between was an additional asset to consolidate his position and social status. Nevertheless, he always bumped into inconsistencies and that made him sharply aware of imminent social downgrading in adverse circumstances. Perhaps this was his motivation to resettle several times over during his lifespan. Structural discrimination was best avoided by starting all over again in a different place. This was also what diamond trade was all about. Throughout his career, gem trading secured him access to the highest rulers in any country. From these encounters he quickly learned that he was a mere pawn in their hands. It made him sensitive to labour relations. Early modern global encounters implied the use of several languages. When he started off from Bruges and Vlissingen, Jacques de Coutre presumably only spoke Flemish/Dutch. When he sailed from Lisbon to Goa in 1592, he spoke neither Portuguese nor Spanish. At the end of his life he wrote in Spanish advice for the king on policy matters in South and Southeast Asia. His autobiography was written in Spanish with a vocabulary full of Portuguese twists that perhaps alluded to the conversations between father and son at the basis of the document. Portuguese was arguably his common language while in South Asia. Travelling on the Deccan plateau in South India, he learned Marathi, the language of communication in a region with numerous other languages. He also often relied on local interpreters as he travelled in so many countries and regions. Jacques de Coutre lived in a time when merchants were still allowed to travel on their own to the diamond mines, a practice that disappeared later when the big companies had to use Indian go-betweens to get diamonds from the mines. Like other diamond traders in his days de Coutre was eagerly sought after by both Asian rulers and the Portuguese authorities in supplying them with diamonds, benzoin, and textile. But, more than his contemporaries Jacques de Coutre wrote about how we explored all stages of the trade itself, the acquisition of rough stones from the mines, their transport and sale, selling gems to other traders and looking for new consumers. Early modern global trade networks hovered between official and unofficial practice and encouraged individuals to cross borders, cultures and institutions (Antunes, 2017). Jacques de Coutre fitted perfectly in this ecosystem. However, the dealings he had with the powerful also implied that he was in a position of inferiority to Portuguese authorities as to Indian and South-Asian rulers and dependent on their goodwill and protection. This was the — 16 — reverse side of the big gains that he made with the highly volatile diamond trade. Perhaps the fact that as a Flemish he was an outsider to the monarchs of the East as well as to the big empires of the West stimulated him to cross cultures at his ease. De Coutre had learned to trade in rough precious stones from the Venetian Sequin Martinela in Melaka and others who had been in the business for a long time. The gem trade had been a motor of Eurasian exchange already before Vasco da Gama set sail to India. Italian, Jewish and Armenian traders used overland routes through Persia to connect to the rich gem trade networks in South and Southeast Asia. However, the tense political situation in the early years of the seventeenth century gave de Coutre’s activities as a diamond merchant an extra twist. This was so in the 1590s, when Jacques de Coutre was in the front line of Portuguese-Dutch rivalry in Southeast Asia. In 1595 de Coutre was part of the embassy sent by the Portuguese Captain of Melaka, Francisco de Silva de Menezes, to the King of Siam to negotiate the release of Portuguese captives during the war of Siam with Cambodia in 1594 (de Souza, 1989). Two of these prisoners were the Flemish brothers Antonio and Miguel Ans. They were the sons of a Flemish man who had married in Melaka. The father and his sons had provided many services to the King of Cambodia, Chey Chettha I, last of the Varman dynasty and the Lovek period of Cambodia, who had been defeated by the Siamese in 1594 and had fled the country. During the Portuguese embassy of 1595 to Siam, Antonio and Miguel Ans worked as interpreters while they were also captives of Siamese King Somdet Phra Naresuan the Great. Although de Coutre hoped to benefit from the luxury of the Ayutthaya court and get substantial profit from royal gifts, nothing came of it. On the contrary, the Ans brothers apparently were loyal to King Naresuan and did not give in to attempts by de Coutre to get them on his side (de Coutre, [1700], book 1, chapters 7 to 11). Confrontations between the Portuguese and the Dutch in Manila and Patani in 1600-1602 alerted Jacques de Coutre that the trade in precious stones, bezoar and textile was fraught with threats of captivity and worse. He decided in 1603 to take safer Goa as his base. But also in South India political tensions ran high. In the 1590s the Mughals set their eyes on the Deccan (Alam & Subrahmanyam, 2012, pp. 162-203). By 1600 the Ahmadnagar Sultanate was subdued to Mughal rule. The frontier for the coming decades were two other sultanates, Bijapur of the Adilshahis and Golconda of the Qutbshahis, both to the northeast of Goa. Precisely on the borders of these two sultanates Jacques de Coutre acted as an indefatigable trader. He had close contacts with their rulers, but his relations with them always seemed precarious. Ibrahim Adil Shah II (r. 1580-1627) of Bijapur and Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (r. 1580-1612) and his nephew and son-in-law Muhammad Qutb Shah (1612-1625) ruled independently, although under Mughal threat. Their close connections with the Shi’i Safavid rulers of Persia, enemies of the Sunni Mughals, resulting in many Iranians at their courts, secured the Adilshahis and Qutbshahis of some autonomy. Jacques de Coutre alleged that Ibrahim Adi Shah II of Bijapur paid expensive gifts to the Mughal to soothe him (Alam & Subrahmanyam, 2012, pp. 193-194), but there was more political expediency in the tactics of the sultan than mere flattery. As a result of Mughal pressure, Bijapur, and to a lesser extent, Golconda, befriended the Portuguese, while previously they had been rivals. This provided traders such as Jacques de Coutre with the excellent opportunity to undertake private trading in gems and textile in the Deccan. Profits were huge and de Coutre made his fortune. Jacques de Coutre happened to be the right man in the right place in this quarter century during which the Muslim sultans of Bijapur and Golconda maintained accommodating relations with Portuguese. By the 1630s this — 17 — was over. Goa declined, the Dutch East India Company settled in the region and Mughal expansion into the Deccan regained momentum. At that time, Jacques de Coutre was already in prison on the Iberian Peninsula. In 1604 and 1605 Jacques de Coutre spent much time in Bijapur. Farmers and ordinary people in the region were among the most destitute he had ever met, he noted, while the ruling elite was immensely wealthy (de Coutre, [1700], book 2, chapter 2). According to his own testimony, de Coutre was good friends with the sultan and the crown prince, but on other occasions in his story the de Coutre derided Ibrahim Adil Shah as a perverted, arbitrary despot. Similar attitudes characterized his relationship to other rulers in the Deccan and beyond. Good personal relations were key to the survival of foreigners in the region, but were never guaranteed. Moreover, the region was multi-religious. The sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda ruled over extensive populations of Hindu and Jain. Invariably, de Coutre rejected their rituals, temples, practitioners such as brahmins and yogis, and worship of cows and monkeys as superstitious (de Coutre, [1700], book 2, chapter 17). Nevertheless, he also indulged in extensive descriptions of religious practice. Further south large Christian communities added up to the diversity. Not surprisingly, local rulers tolerated Armenians, Jews, Italians, Portuguese, Flemish and Dutch in the region. From 1604 de Coutre was very active in the gem trade and especially in the 1610s he became a successful and wealthy merchant. On his numerous journeys on the Deccan plateau and South India he found out that textile and precious stones had created a country of innumerable riches. The cities were well built and protected and surpassed those of Flanders, he alleged (de Coutre, [1700], book 2, chapter 16). The contrast between the wealth of local rulers and the destitution of the local population continued to draw his attention. It had a faint echo of his own life story, or at least that is what he wanted to emphasize in the picaresque retelling of his life. Jacques de Coutre made several successful business deals, but on as many occasions he suffered great losses. A few times, he and his brother Joseph were totally ruined. Private trading was a risky business, especially in such goods as precious stones that always needed secrecy. The margins between official trade and mere smuggling were thin. In that sense, de Coutre was not different from what other gem merchants experienced. What is different in his case, is that he is extremely detailed about his dealings with local rulers and owners of diamond mines. Even more exceptional, and spectacularly, is that at the height of his experience as a gem trader he turned his attention to the diggers of rough stones. The first description of a diamond mine from Dutch East India Company officials dates from 1615. At that time Jacques de Coutre already had extensive experience of diamond mines. He had visited several of them in 1611 and 1612, as will be explained in more detail in the next section. In 1616 he went on another tour, visiting no less than eight diamond mines in Bijapur, Golconda and other sultanates in the Deccan on the edge of what remained of the Vijayanagara Empire (de Coutre, [1700], book 3, chapter 3). By then, his reputation was well established. A Jew from Istanbul, who spoke excellent Spanish, joined him as de Coutre was by now more familiar with the region. In fact, the Flemish diamond merchant amply demonstrated he was at home on the Deccan plateau and beyond in South India. 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