advantages could be gained from Dom Vasco da Gama’s discovery, and
despatched Pedro Alvares Cabral with a fleet of thirteen ships carrying
twelve hundred picked soldiers to establish “factories” on the Malabar
coast, for the collection of the most valuable products of the East,
which should be conveyed to Portugal in royal ships every year. And here
it is necessary to again insist upon the fact, that the Portuguese trade
with India was a royal monopoly. The Portuguese establishments in India
were not, as was the case with regard to Holland, England, and France in
later years, formed by companies of private merchants, who looked upon
the Indian trade as a speculation, but were royal factories, managed by
royal officers, and served by royal fleets. Private trade was
impossible, and not even dreamed of, because it was considered necessary
that these factories should be defended by bodies of troops and served
by powerful fleets, which cost an amount of money no private firm could
furnish. But these royal factories were intended not only to establish
and guard trade, but also to spread Christianity, and for that purpose
they included from the first not only soldiers, but missionary priests.
Pedro Alvares Cabral was driven by stress of weather to the coast of
Brazil, of which country he took possession in the name of his
sovereign, and then proceeded to follow the course laid down by Vasco da
Gama, and reached Calicut in safety. He immediately established a
factory at that place, but the Moplas showed the same unfriendly
disposition which they had before exhibited towards Vasco da Gama, and
at once murdered all the colonists. Cabral then cannonaded Calicut, and
proceeded to Cannanore and Cochin, at both of which places he was
favourably received, for their Hindu Rājās were unwilling
tributaries to the Zamorin of Calicut and his Moplas; and after
purchasing great stores of pepper and other Indian commodities, the
Portuguese admiral left establishments at these two places to open up
trade, and returned home. In 1502, Vasco da Gama arrived for the second
time on the Malabar coast with twenty ships, and after again cannonading
Calicut, and destroying all the shipping in the port, he strengthened
the factories at Cochin and Cannanore and returned. On his departure,
Vincente Sodre, one of the officers he had left, deserted the factory
and set up as a pirate in the Arabian seas, being the first of those
Portuguese adventurers in the Eastern seas whose stories read like
romances. In 1503, three separate Portuguese squadrons under the command
respectively of Francisco de Alboquerque, Affonso de Alboquerque, and
Antonio de Saldanha, reached India, and the first of these captains gave
effective assistance to the Rājā of Cochin, who had been attacked
by the Zamorin for his welcome of the Portuguese, and was being besieged
in the island of Vypin. Francisco de Alboquerque was only just in time,
and to guard against such extremities in the future, he built a strong
fort, guarded with artillery, at Cochin, and when the three captains
departed they left there a garrison of nine hundred men, under the
command of Duarte Pacheco. This officer performed the first great feat
of arms which illustrated the history of the Portuguese in India; with
his small garrison, enfeebled by sickness, he not only drove back the
great army which the Zamorin sent against Cochin, but utterly defeated
five thousand of his best troops in open battle. This victory
established the reputation of the Portuguese in India as soldiers; the
factories now found no difficulty in purchasing all the goods they
needed at a reasonable price; and what was more important, the fame of
Pacheco spread abroad, and he was able to send envoys into the interior
of India, who were everywhere favourably received, and generally
returned laden with presents. Pacheco’s success inspired the Portuguese
monarch with the idea that he could not only absorb the Indian trade,
but could conquer India, and Emmanuel decided that a powerful imperial
government should be established on the Malabar coast, instead of
isolated factories.
[Illustration: ALBOQUERQUE. (_From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 11._)]
The first viceroy he selected was Dom Francisco de Almeida, a Portuguese
nobleman of high rank, who had learned the art of war under Gonsalvo da
Cordova, better known in Spanish history as the “Great Captain,” and had
been a favourite of King John II. The fleet with which he set sail from
Belem on March 25, 1505, consisted of sixteen ships and sixteen
caravels, and carried fifteen hundred soldiers besides many officials
for the new establishment. On his way to India, Dom Francisco de Almeida
occupied Quiloa and Mombassa on the south-eastern coast of Africa, and
erected forts, which should make them safe resting-places for the
Portuguese fleets; and on his arrival at Cannanore on October 22nd he
took the title of Viceroy of Cochin, Cannanore, and Quilon. The great
Portuguese nobleman looked upon the state of affairs in India from a
very different point of view to Cabral, Vasco da Gama, and Pacheco; he
did not regard commerce as the sole purpose of the establishments of the
Portuguese in the East, and instead of trying to open up trade as
Pacheco had done, and only defending himself when attacked, the first
viceroy adopted a vigorous policy of active interference with native
states, proselytism, and offensive war. He established his seat of
government at Cochin, and sent forth expeditions along the Malabar
coast, which generally came to blows with the Mohammedan merchants, who
saw with dismay that their commerce with Egypt by way of the Red Sea
would soon disappear. His chief commander was his son, Dom Lourenço de
Almeida, a boy in years, but a hero in the fight. On October 19, 1505,
young Lourenço cannonaded and nearly destroyed Conlão, the modern
Quilon; on March 18, 1506, he almost annihilated the fleet of the
Zamorin of Calicut, consisting of eighty-four ships and one hundred and
twenty prahs, with only eleven vessels, and received a check at Dabul,
the modern Dábhol; in 1507, he discovered the Maldive Islands, and with
Tristão da Cunha sacked the port of Ponáni, and in 1508 the young hero
was killed at Chaul in a combat against an Egyptian fleet, which had
been sent by the Mamluk Sultan to expel the Portuguese from India under
the command of an admiral named Emir Hoseyn. But a more serious danger
was impending; the wrath of the Mohammedan sovereigns, whose domains
extended to the north-western coasts, and especially of the kings of
Bijápur and Gujarāt, was aroused by these aggressions, and they
collected powerful fleets and joined Emir Hoseyn. The Viceroy of India,
nothing daunted, sailed northward to avenge his son’s death, with only
nineteen ships, and after sacking Dábhol he entirely defeated the
Mohammedan fleet of more than one hundred ships, on February 2, 1509,
off the island of Diu. While the first Portuguese Viceroy was
undertaking these operations, his appointed successor, Affonso de
Alboquerque, with whom he had quarrelled, and the admiral Tristão da
Cunha were exploring the Indian Ocean, and after stopping some time at
the island of Socotra, they stormed the wealthy city of Ormuz at the
mouth of the Persian Gulf. These explorations had the most important
results, and Affonso de Alboquerque was glad, when the appointed time
arrived for him at the close of 1509, to take over the government of
India as second viceroy.
Affonso de Alboquerque was the greatest of all the Portuguese heroes who
served in India, and he owes his fame not only to his feats of arms,
numerous and glorious as they were, but to the wisdom and justice of his
civil government, and to the fact that he was a great and a far-seeing
statesman, as well as a brave warrior. Like Francisco de Almeida, he had
been a favourite and an intimate friend of King John II., in whose reign
he filled the Court office of Master of the Horse. He commenced his
viceroyalty by making a fresh attack on Calicut, the headquarters of the
Moplas. He succeeded in burning the palace of the Zamorin and wrecking
the city, but the populace then arose in force and drove the Portuguese
back to their ships, killing many of their leaders, including the
Marshal of Portugal, Dom Fernando Coutinho. Alboquerque then proceeded
to take a more important step; he soon perceived that Cochin was too far
south to serve as the headquarters of either the trade or the political
dominion of the Portuguese, and that it was necessary to occupy some
more central spot on the Malabar coast for a capital. The place he
selected was Goa, a port in the possession of the Mohammedan king of
Bijápur. Thither he sailed with twenty ships and twelve hundred men; and
one feat of arms, performed by Antonio de Noronha, at Panjim, at the
mouth of the river Goa, where the present capital of the Portuguese
possessions in India is situated, laid the city open to him. The
citizens, who had been discouraged by the prophecies of a holy mendicant
that they were about to be conquered by a foreign people from a distant
land, surrendered at once; eight leading men gave Alboquerque the keys
of the gates, and the Portuguese viceroy entered the city in triumph on
February 17, 1510. But he did not hold it long, for on August 15th,
Yūsuf Adil Shah, King of Bijápur, recaptured the city after fierce
fighting. Alboquerque did not despair; he received reinforcements from
Portugal, and on November 25th, he carried the city by storm, slaying
over two thousand Mohammedans, and firmly established himself there.
But Alboquerque was not satisfied with conquering an appropriate capital
for Portuguese India, he determined to make his country supreme
throughout the Eastern seas. With this idea he undertook two famous
expeditions to the east and to the west. The first Portuguese settlers
upon the Malabar coast had been told by the native traders that spices
and other produce of Asia could be obtained more cheaply further to the
east, and these stories had been repeated to King Emmanuel, who
determined to send an expedition to these “Spice Islands,” under the
command of Diogo Lopes de Sequeira. This captain reached the Malabar
coast in safety, and was favourably received by the Viceroy, Francisco
de Almeida, who found an experienced pilot for him, and gave him sixty
well-seasoned soldiers, under the command of Francisco Serrão, and
Fernão de Magalhães, who, under the name of Magellan, was to leave his
mark upon the map of the world. The pilot led the fleet skilfully, and
on September 11, 1509, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira anchored off the city of
Malacca, where the Malay chief permitted him to found a factory. On his
return to India, he reported to Alboquerque on the wealth of Malacca and
of the island of Sumatra, and that spices were both better and cheaper
there than in India. The great viceroy at once determined to see these
rich countries for himself, and, after some sharp fighting with the
Malays, he established the Portuguese power in that quarter upon a firm
basis, and returned to Goa. His expedition westwards was not so
successful. During his former campaign, in which he had taken Ormuz, he
had observed that the greater portion of the Asiatic trade, which still
followed the old routes, went not by way of the Persian Gulf, but by way
of the Red Sea, and that the great _entrepôt_ was the city of Aden. In
order to secure the entire monopoly of the Eastern trade for the new
Portuguese route round the Cape of Good Hope, it was therefore necessary
to occupy Aden. With this intention Alboquerque sailed westwards in
1513, and on Easter Eve he arrived before the city. On Easter Day he
attacked it fiercely with a force of over two thousand soldiers; but he
failed, and had to content himself with destroying the shipping in the
port. He then explored the Red Sea, and returned to Goa for the last
time.
It has been said that Alboquerque was a great statesman as well as a
great warrior, and no better proof of this can be adduced than his
treatment of the Hindu princes. He alone of Portuguese viceroys
recognized the fact the Hindus did not take kindly to the rule of the
Mohammedans, and that they would much sooner be ruled by Europeans, if
they were only just and fair-minded. It was from Mohammedan powers that
the Portuguese had met with such bitter opposition, from the Moplas of
Calicut and the King of Bijápur, and if the successors of Alboquerque
had but grasped this fact they would have found little difficulty in
leading the Hindus against the votaries of Islam. They would then have
waged against Mohammedans in India the same relentless war that their
ancestors had waged in their own fatherland, and might have established
a protectorate over the Hindus without much difficulty. The wide-minded
tolerance which Alboquerque showed in his communications with the Hindu
princes, he also showed in the details of administration. He maintained
the village system, which he found existing in Goa at the time of his
conquest, and avoided all appearance of fresh taxation with as much care
as a modern English collector. The expedition to Aden was the last he
ever undertook, and on December 16, 1515, this truly great man died at
Goa, and was buried there by his own directions in the costume of a
commander of the Order of Santiago. “In such veneration was his memory
held, that the Hindus, and even the Mohammedans, were wont to repair to
his tomb, and there utter their complaints, as if in the presence of his
shade, and call upon God to deliver them from the tyranny of his
successors.”[15] What better proof of the qualities which have won for
him the title of Alboquerque “the Great” could be given than this!
[Illustration: _J. C. Silva sculp. Olisip. in Typ. Reg. An. 1774._
Alboquerque. (_After the Engraving by Silva._)]
The tyranny of the successors of Alboquerque has been much exaggerated,
and in recording the accusations against them it must be remembered that
the Portuguese viceroys and governors were regarded at home as being
placed in power for two reasons, the one to send home yearly large
fleets laden with the commodities of Asia, purchased at such a low price
as to afford the king a handsome profit for his treasury, and the other
to propagate the Christian faith. Neither of these causes for the
Portuguese dominion were likely to be regarded as satisfactory by the
natives of India. The orders of the Directors of the English East
India Company to Warren Hastings, to take care that they should have
good dividends to declare in England, were not more imperative than the
orders of King Emmanuel and King John III. to the Portuguese governors,
that fleets heavily laden with Asiatic goods should be despatched to
Lisbon without their demanding any money from home for their purchases.
This of itself was enough to make the demands of the Portuguese viceroys
upon the natives oppressive, and it must also be remembered that men do
not leave their fatherland to live in an unhealthy climate for their own
pleasure, and that the Portuguese official was as much tempted in the
sixteenth century to “shake the pagoda tree” for his own benefit, and to
exert his authority to that effect, as an English civil servant in the
eighteenth century. Yet this search after gain was not wholly sordid,
and many gallant deeds mark the period between the death of Affonso de
Alboquerque, and the arrival of the greatest of his successors, Dom João
de Castro.
The rule of Lopo Soares de Albergaria, from 1515 to 1518, was chiefly
notable for his buildings at Goa, and for his success in opening up a
trade with Ceylon by establishing a factory and building a fort at
Colombo; and his successor, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, the discoverer of
Malacca, and fourth governor, did much to increase the development of
this trade. The fifth governor, Duarte or Edward de Menezes, had to meet
so many difficulties, and to put down so many insurrections at Ormuz,
Malacca, and Ceylon, that he begged earnestly to be relieved; and in
1524 John III. determined to send out Vasco da Gama again, with the
title and powers of Viceroy, which had not been conferred since the
death of Alboquerque. But the great navigator was now an old man, and
never reached Goa to take up his office. He did, however, reach the
Indian coast, which he had first seen a quarter of a century before, and
died at Cochin, on Christmas Day, 1524. His body was buried in the
principal chapel of the Franciscan convent at Cochin, but it did not
long remain there; for in 1538 it was removed to Portugal, and finally
interred at Belem. Henrique de Menezes, who succeeded Vasco da Gama as
governor, managed to put down most of the insurrections, and after a
short interval of the rule of Lopo Vaz de Sampaio, Nuno da Cunha, the
son of the great navigator, Tristão da Cunha, succeeded to the
governorship in 1526. His government was marked by more important events
than any since that of Alboquerque, for he extended the influence of
Portugal along both the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, and established
settlements at Diu, off the coast of Kathiawār on the western, and at
Hūgli, at the mouth of the Ganges, on the eastern coast of India. The
Portuguese had, ever since the days of Dom Francisco de Almeida, desired
to obtain possession of the island of Diu, which could be easily
fortified, and would form a good headquarters for their trade and
political influence on the north-western coast of India. But all their
efforts had been in vain until the year 1535, when Bahādar Shah, the
Mohammedan king of Gujarāt, permitted them to build a fortress on the
island, and garrison it with their own troops. This he did because he
was being closely pressed by Humāyūn, the Moghul emperor, and
father of Bābar. But the Mohammedan monarch soon regretted that he
had given the Portuguese such an important foothold in his dominions,
and it was after a visit he had paid to Nuno da Cunha there that he was
killed in a scuffle while disembarking from a Portuguese ship. His
successor, Mohammed III. of Gujarāt, regarded the murder of his uncle
as a proof of treachery on the part of the Portuguese, and at once
besieged Diu by sea and land. But the fortress was nobly defended; the
Portuguese women vied with the men in gallantry, and after being reduced
to the greatest extremities, the commandant, Antonio de Silveira, beat
off the assailants. The other important event of Nuno da Cunha’s rule
was the establishment of a Portuguese factory at Hūgli, at the mouth
of the Ganges, in the dominions of the King of Bengal, which for the
first time tapped the trade of that most wealthy province. These great
services during his long rule of twelve years did not protect Nuno da
Cunha from malicious accusations being brought against him at Lisbon;
exaggerated accounts of his cruelty and of the corruption of his
government were reported against him, and in 1538 he was superseded by a
viceroy, Dom Garcia de Noronha. Nuno da Cunha died on his way back to
Portugal, and the absence of his strong hand was soon felt in India.
Garcia de Noronha, a former officer of Alboquerque, died almost
immediately after his arrival, and his successors, as governors, Estevão
da Gama and Martim Affonso de Sousa distinguished their governments by
an expedition to the Red Sea, during which Da Gama was defeated by the
Turks at Suez, and by the defeat of De Sousa at Tebelicavi. These checks
greatly affected the profits of the Indian trade, and John III.
determined to make a fresh departure by despatching to India Dom João de
Castro, a hero of the old Portuguese type, and the intimate friend of
his uncle, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja.
In summing up thus briefly the history of the Portuguese in India,
weight has been laid only upon its political and commercial aspect. It
was for purely commercial reasons that Prince Henry “the Navigator” had
striven to find a direct sea route to India, and Vasco da Gama’s success
had at first been looked upon merely as opening up the Indian trade; the
idea of dominion had not then occurred to the minds of the Portuguese,
and it was not until it became obvious that the commercial stations or
factories would have to be guarded and defended, that troops were
despatched as well as factors. The successful defence of Duarte Pacheco
against the army of the Zamorin of Calicut, showed how easy it would be
for the Portuguese to do more than just defend their factories, if
attacked, and Francisco de Almeida commenced a war of offence by
attacking native potentates, who refused to allow factories to be
established in their dominions. Affonso de Alboquerque originated the
idea of playing off the Hindu princes against the aggressive
Mohammedans, but none of his successors followed out his policy in this
respect. It must not, however, be thought that the Portuguese had any
idea of establishing such an empire in India as the English have built
up during the last century. Their great system was to occupy, by force
if necessary, all important centres of trade along the coasts, and there
to erect powerful cities and fortresses, whither the native merchants
could bring down their commodities to be purchased and placed on board
Portuguese ships for passage to Lisbon. They made no attempt to force
their way into the interior, and only sent envoys to native princes to
secure protection for the native traders coming to their ports. They
occupied, indeed, small rural districts around their most important
stations, such as Goa and Diu, which they ruled, according to the
fashion adopted by Alboquerque in Goa, by regarding the village
communities as units, and regulating taxation accordingly. If these
facts are grasped, the tales of Portuguese tyranny and oppression fall
to the ground, for the only natives they could oppress were the
merchants, who brought goods down to the ports, and the inhabitants who
chose to dwell within the Portuguese borders. The merchants and traders
did indeed suffer, because they had to sell their merchandise by a scale
which cut their profits down much more than they relished, and the
inhabitants of the cities were ruled as inferiors, who were bound to be
subject to the Europeans in every respect. The Portuguese judges
naturally favoured their own people, and thus in many instances treated
the natives unjustly, but it may be pointed out that no merchant could
be forced to come down to the ports, and that no native could be
compelled to dwell in the Portuguese cities against his will. These
considerations, joined to a recollection of the inevitable accusations
always brought by a subject population against a race of foreign
rulers, tend to prove that the accusations of tyranny and oppression
brought against the Portuguese have been greatly exaggerated, and it is
quite certain that the Hindus were quite as badly, if not worse, treated
by their Mohammedan conquerors.