The Arrival of Portuguese in India
GS PAPER — 1, INDIAN HISTORY, MODERN INDIAN HISTORY
The arrival of Vasco da Gama, a nobleman from the household of the King of Portugal, at the port of Calicut in south-west India on 27 May 1498 inaugurated a new chapter in Indian history. For some time, the Portuguese, among other Europeans, had been trying to find a sea route to India, but that they had been unable to interrupt freed from the stranglehold exercised by Egyptian rulers over the trade between Europe and Asia. The Red Sea trade route was a state monopoly from which Islamic rulers earned tremendous revenues.
By the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), all new territories were divided between Spain and Portugal. The stage was thus set for the Portuguese incursions into the waters surrounding India. In 1487, the Portuguese navigator, Bartholomew Dias, rounded the “Cape of excellent Hope”, then opened the ocean route to India. An expedition of 4 ships headed bent India in 1497 and arrived in India in slightly but eleven months. The coming of the Portuguese introduced several new factors into Indian history. As almost every historian has observed, it not only initiated what could be called the ECU era, it marked the emergence of naval power. Doubtless, the Cholas, among others, had been a naval power, except for the primary time a far off power had come to India by way of the sea; moreover, Portuguese dominance would only reach the coasts, since they were never ready to make any significant inroads into the Indian interior. The Portuguese ships carried cannon, but the importance of this is often not commonly realized, especially by those that are merely inclined to look at the Portuguese together as a series of invaders of India, or maybe as specimens of ‘enterprising’ Europeans.
For centuries, the numerous participants in the Indian Ocean trading system — Indians, Arabs, Africans from the east coast, Chinese, Japanese, Sumatrans, among others — had plowed the sea routes and adhered to various tacit rules of conduct. Though all were within the trade for profit, as could be expected, no party sought to possess overwhelming dominance; certainly, nobody had sought to enforce their power through arms. Trade flourished, and every one the parties played their role in putting down piracy: this was a trade zone. Into this arena stepped forth the Portuguese, who directly declared their intention to abide by no rules except their own, and who sought immediate and decisive advantage over the Indians and over the Indian Ocean trading system.
The conduct of the Portuguese in India was ‘barbaric’. Vasco da Gama’s initial conduct sets the tone. On his thanks to India, he encountered an unarmed vessel coming back from Mecca; as an up to date Portuguese source states, da Gama ordered the ship emptied of its goods, and then had it assail fire, prohibiting “any Moor” being taken from it alive. He then spent four months in India. Having waited out the monsoons, he began to return to Portugal with a cargo worth sixty times what he had brought with him and refused to pay the customary port duties to the Zamorin, the ruler of Calicut. To ensure that his way wouldn’t be obstructed, he took a couple of hostages with him.
When he returned to Portugal in 1499, the pepper he brought with him was sold at a huge profit; and zip underscores the importance of direct access to the pepper trade the maximum amount because of the incontrovertible fact that elsewhere the Europeans, who relied on Muslim middlemen, would need to spend ten times the maximum amount for an equivalent amount of pepper. Emboldened by this success, King Dom Manuel sent another expedition of six ships headed by Pedro Cabral. With their usual ignorance of and disdain for, local customs, Cabral and the Portuguese sent a low-caste Hindu as a messenger to the Zamorin upon their arrival at the port.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese were claiming the sole right to the sea. Cabral attacked all Arab vessels within his reach, which provoked a riot at the port that led to the destruction of the Portuguese factory. Cabral retaliated within the only way known to a Portuguese marauder and bandit of his times: he massacred the crews of the boats and burnt all the ships that were not his own. The intent, which would be repeatedly witnessed in the history of Portuguese interactions with the Indians (and with others), was to brutalize and terrorize the native population, and with evident justice, that Cabral’s behavior persuaded the Indians that “the intruders were uncivilized barbarians, treacherous and untrustworthy”.
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