PORTUGUESE MARITIME TRADE IN INDIA

Give an account of Portuguese maritime trade in India.

The appearance of the Portuguese on the Coast of Malabar in the closing year of the fifteenth century was one of the rare events in history, whose future implications were fully perceived by contour parries, Vasco da Gama’s ships reached Calicut in 1497. The first voyage was merely exploratory. Gama had expressed to the Zamorin as the King of Calicut is styled only a desire to trade with him, but his refusal to pay the customs of the Port was an indication of the Policy he had in mind.

The second expedition under Cabral was on a much larger scale. Cabral had definite views about the rights of the Portuguese on the seas. As Barros states, ‘It is true that there exists a common right to all to navigate the seas and in Europe we recognize the rights which others hold against us, but this right does not stand beyond Europe and therefore the Portuguese as lords of the sea are justified in confiscating the goods of all those who navigate the sea without their permission’.

Cabral was instructed to inform the King of Calicut of the ancient enmity which existed between Christians and Muslims, which imposed on every Catholic King the obligation to wage war on these enemies of holy faith. The moor merchants who resided and traded in Calicut could not clearly be exempted from that duty and the King must know that if the Portuguese encountered their ships at sea, they would take possession of them, of their merchandise and property and also of the moors who were on the ships.

During the first two decades of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese planned only individual attacks on Muslim shipping trade between the Red Sea and Western Coast of India with the aim of getting control of the spice trade. The two essential conditions for the success of the Portuguese plan were a clear Naval Supremacy over Asian ships and the reestablishment of few key outposts on land which could act as strategic basis for the naval fleets and men left in charge of the teaching operations.

To realize their goals the Portuguese bombarded Calicut in 1502, when it became clear that its King the Zamorin was not prepared to cooperate in expelling the Muslim traders from his port. Calicut’s natural enemy and rival on the Malabar Coast the Raja of Cochin proved pliable and the first Portuguese Fort on the Indian soil was constructed in his territory during 1503. In the year 1509, Francesco de Almeida had defeated and destroyed at Diu, an armada sent by Mamtuk, ruler of Egypt. But the foundation of Portuguese Maritime Empire was truly laid with the capture of the Island of Goa from the Sultan of Bijapur in 1510 which was followed by the capture of Malacca in 1511 which controlled the sea route to the far east with the conquest of Ormuz in Persian Gulf (1515), the Portuguese plan was virtually compete. In the coming years a number of settlements and trading stations were added to the list such as Chittagong in Bengal, Macau in China and Colombo in Ceylon.

This maritime empire later acquired the name of Estado da India.

The activities of the Estado da India in Indian subcontinent represented several institutional innovations and the general framework of Asian trade a complete state monopoly of an important commodity or commercial products was not unknown, but it was a rare phenomenon. For Indian merchants and political rulers, it was a novel experience to encounter an imperial scheme that was being directed from a center of power which was situated thousands of miles overseas, in another continent. It must have been even more disturbing to discover that pepper and spices were the main commodities on which the Portuguese founded their imperial ambitions.

Long distance trade was an object to invest to indigenous rulers and governments in Asia primarily for the revenue they could derive from taxing the merchant. From the Merchants’ point of view, the taxes paid to the political authorities was necessary in order to secure protection. Indian rulers had for centuries exercised such control over trade which passed through their territories. The whole practice may be described under the term ‘redistributive enterprise’.

The Portuguese introduced a new concept and claimed to control exclusively the sea routes and the maritime trade of states and empires in India and Asia. The absence of or inferiority of naval forces belonging to Asian powers greatly aided the polices of Estado da India.

In the process of establishing their naval supremacy, the Portuguese became absorbed in the existing structure of redistributive enterprise’.

A tribute was demanded form Asian traders and their ships which took the form of cartage system. Every Indian ship sailing to destination not reserved by the Portuguese for their own trade had to buy one of these passes from the Viceroy of Goa, if it was to avoid for seizure and confiscation of its merchandise. As a result of the Portuguese naval watch at the end of the sixteenth century few Indian ships could venture to East Africa, the spice islands or to China, Japan, unless of course the shipowners entered into direct partnership with Portuguese officials or merchants in Goa. There is little doubt that the prosperity and wealth of the Portuguese in the Indes depended greatly on the revenue earned through the redistribution enterprise.

But the view that Estado da India was wholly a practical and parasitic state which grew rich by ruthless plunder of unarmed Asian merchants has not gone without challenge.

While the Portuguese were reaping immense benefits from Eastern commerce, the defeat of the Spanish Armada at the hands of the British swing the pendulum of power in the West and paved way for the entry into India and other maritime nations of Europe. The Dutch and the English were now in no mood to pay the exorbitant prices demanded by the Portuguese for Indian goods and were preparing themselves for carrying on direct trade with India.

These were not the only reasons that led to the downfall of the Portuguese in India. They failed to maintain their aim – achievement of sea power in the Indian Ocean. When Brazil was discovered, the Portuguese were distracted from the Indian scene and were lured by the lucrative lands of the South American Continent. The Portuguese, therefore, could not give undivided attention to the Indian Ocean and they had difficulty in deploying their forces in two widely separated theatres of operation.

The amalgamation of Portugal with her more powerful neighbor, made Portuguese toe the Spanish line. Although in 1640 she regained her independence it was too late. The Dutch and the British were entrenched in India by then.