The Portuguese in India

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What happened to India when the Portuguese arrived?

European interest in India has persisted since classical times and

for very cogent reasons. Europe had much to steal from India such as

spices, textiles and other oriental products. The best classical

accounts are in fact the commercial ones. When direct contact was

lost with the fall of Rome and the rise of the Muslims, the trade

was carried on through middlemen. In the late Middle Ages it

increased with the increasing prosperity of Europe. It should be

remembered that the spice trade was not solely a luxury trade at

that time. Spices were needed to preserve meat through the winter

(cattle had to be slaughtered in late autumn through lack of winter

fodder) and to combat the taste of decay. Wine, in the absence of

ancient or modern methods of maturing, had to be 'mulled' with

spices. This trade suffered two threats in the later Middle Ages.

There was the threat of Mongol and Turkish invasion which interfered

with the land routes and threatened to engulf the sea route through

Egypt, and there was the threat of monopoly shared between the

Venetians and Egyptians.

In 1510 Affonso de Albuquerque captured the island of Goa on the

west coast of India from the Sultan of Bijapur and made it the

capital of the Portuguese eastern empire. Its strong points besides

Goa were Socotra off the Red Sea (he could not take Aden), Ormuz in

the Persian Gulf, Diu in Gujrat, Malacca, the entrepot for the Far

East and the spice trade in the East Indies, and Macao in China. The

function of Goa was to supervise Malabar, to control the pilgrim

traffic to Mecca as well as the general trade to Egypt, Iraq and

Persia, and of Malacca to control the East Indian spices at their

source.

 

However, the Portuguese irked some of the Mughal and preceding

rulers because of the toll they took of the trade from the port of

Surat and the pilgrim traffic. In seizing and retaining their strong

points they acquired a reputation for cruelty and peridy because

their practice on both these points was below the current Indian

standard. They were deeply impregnated with the idea that no faith

need be kept with an infidel. It was from this period that the word

feringi (lit.farangi, frank) acquired the opprobrium of which echoes

may still be heard today. However, the Mughal Emperor, Jahangir

admired their pictures and had them copied. Emperor Akbar listened

with interest to Jesuit Father's discourses. The New Testament was

translated into Persian.

 

However, during the whole of the 16th century the Portuguese

disputed with the Muslims the supremacy of the Indian seas, and the

antagonism between Christianity and Islam became gradually more

intense. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator

commanded the first expedition to sail around the world. In the

Collins Encyclopaedia it is written that Magellan set sail to check

the power of Muslim navy and fleet that was dominant. In 1560, the

Portuguese being intolerant in religion, introduced the Inquisition

with all its horrors. This was regarded as sub-standard from the

Indian standpoint, advertising this trait in their rough handling of

Syrian Christians of Malabar to secure their submission to the

Catholic faith.

 

Socially the policy of Albuquerque in encouraging mixed marriages

had important results. His object was to rear a population

possessing Portuguese blood and imbued with Portuguese Catholic

culture who would be committed by race and taste to the Portuguese

settlements and so form a permanent self-perpetuating garrison. The

result was the race long known as Luso-Indians and now as Goansese

or Goans. They are mainly Indian in blood, Catholic in religion, and

partially western in outlook. In recent times, they have spread all

over India as traders and professionals, a less successful version

of the Parsis. (Of all the Asians in Britain, a majority of whom are

Muslim, the first Asian MP had to be a Roman Catholic of Goanese

descent, Keith Vaz).

 

Some Portuguese words have even crept into the Urdu language such as

the names of items for furniture (mayze for desk, almaari for

cupboard/wardrobe). Also vindaloo (curry) is part Portuguese and

part Urdu: vian is Portuguese for meat and aloo is the Urdu for

potato - thus we have meat and potato curry.

 

The Portuguese were soon followed by European rivals like the

French, Dutch and British. Rivalry between the Dutch and English

resulted in the Dutch East India Company "winning" Southeast Asia

and Indonesia (known to Europeans as the East Indies); and the

British East India Company having to settle for "second-best", that

is India.

 

The first Englishman who actually visited India was Thomas Stephens

in 1579. He became rector of Jesuits College in Goa. His letters to

his father are said to have roused with great enthusiasm in England

to trade directly with India. India had an active trade with the

Middle East and Europe, the main articles of export being textiles,

indigo, saltpetre and spices (Gujrat benefited from the indigo

industry and Malabar from the spice trade). In return she received

luxuries like wines and novelties and metals, specially bullion,

which was in chronic short supply in northern Europe. This

constituted the Indian silver drain which was the bugbear of English

mercantilists.

http://www.khyber.demon.co.uk/history/naval_crusades/india.htm