The Portuguese in the Seas of Western India

The strategic survey of the Western Indian Ocean unveiled the major and minor players in the Western Indian Ocean region: the English, Dutch, Omanis, Sidis, Angria, sea bandits and smugglers. Britain’s acquisition of bases and advances in the abolitionist campaign indicated a gradual progression in the demarcation and politicization of the sea space, as discussed by E. Mancke. While attempts were made in Portugal to reform the naval establishment (to which the overseas colonies were linked in jurisdictional powers) in terms of organization, unit types, etc., the changes were not always effected in the colonies as jurisdictional powers were being devolved in the colonies during periods of tumultuous developments. Other than a survey of skirmishes on the western coast of India, the chapter will also probe whether this sea region had become a potentially more violent place as the British established a more sustained presence there.

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Notes

Abolition in the Indian Ocean was not strictly bounded in the period stipulated. Beyond the mid-nineteenth century, pockets of slave trade and smuggling continued in the western Indian Ocean, most notably those linked to the east African coast.

I. Burnet, East Indies: The 200 year struggle between the Portuguese crown, the Dutch East India Company and English East India Company for supremacy in the eastern seas (Kenhurst: Rosenburg publishing, 2017).

See for instance, J. Black, The British seaborne empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) and H.V. Bowen et al. eds., Britain’s oceanic empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds (Cambridge: CUP, 2012).

P. Ward, British naval power in the East, 1794–1805: The command of admiral Peter Rainer (Cambridge: CUP, 2013).

C. Pinto, Situating Indo-Portuguese trade history: A commercial resurgence, 1770–1830 (Kannur: Irish, 2003), p. 79. Goa served as a base for re-exportation trade (and not a good one at that) and feeder for Portugal’s trade.

The first strategic point involved the rounding of the African continent at (i) Cape of Good Hope. Although the Dutch had arranged for a group of Protestants to stay in the town of the namesake and it remained in their hands until 1814, there were other settlements-of-stop in the area and ships passing through were not interdicted. After circumventing the tip of Africa, a ship sailed up the eastern coast of Africa for some distance before crisscrossing the Western Indian Ocean. Colonial powers had at different times attempted to control part of this coast or the islands close to this (ii) for instance, Mombasa by Portuguese 1593–1698, Zanzibar by Britain in 1880s, Madagascar by France in 1880s. In sailing for the western coast of India from Africa, (iii) the Maldives or more directly, strongpoints along the Malabar Coast became points to interdict or repel ships attempting to trade on the lucrative coast. Ships sailing to India from the Persian Gulf (and increasingly the Red Sea especially after 1869) usually tried to secure points at the mouth of the gulf and/or along the coast of Persia, (iv) for instance, Muscat and Ormuz held by Portuguese in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Ports in north India (v) such as Bombay, Bassein, Surat had been held by the Portuguese but gradually relinquished to the British or reverted to indigenous portents. The city of Goa located roughly at the centre of the western coast of India has been discussed by E. Carreira (2014). Along the eastern coast of India, a series of settlements from the northeast to southeast (Coromandel) length of the Indian coast presented as stopover or replenishing points before going further east and leaving the Indian Ocean. These were (vi) Calcutta and Chittagong etc.; as well as (vii) Madras, Pulicut and Pondicherry etc. Between the western and eastern coasts of India, colonial powers had tried to secure (viii) Ceylon (Trincomalee) as the island could disrupt traffic between coasts. Ships leaving ports from the Coromandel coast could leave the Indian Ocean via the Straits of Melaka or Sunda Straits. See Ward, British naval power in the East, pp. 122–48.

S. Greville, “Said Ibn Sultan”, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Said-ibn-Sultan (accessed 01 Jun 2021). Foreign consulates were set up in Zanzibar by United States (1837), Britain (1841), France (1844).

Saturnino Monteiro, Batalhas e combates da marinha Portuguesa vol. VII (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa Editora, 1996), pp. 65–66 and 111–15.

Abdul Shariff, Slaves, spices and ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an east African commercial empire into the world economy (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987). See also Monteiro, Batalhas e combates da marinha Portuguesa vol. VII, pp. 155–56.

E. Mancke, “Early modern expansion and politicization of oceanic space”, Geographical Review vol. 89.2 (1999), pp. 125–36.

R. Allen, European slave trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014); R. Allen, “Re-conceptualizing the new system of slavery”, Man in India vol. 92.2 (2012), pp. 225–45; L. Subramanian, The sovereign and pirate: Ordering maritime subjects in India’s western littoral (Oxford: OUP, 2016).

R. Huzzey, “When is a slave not really a slave?”, History Today (Dec. 2012), pp. 48–55. B.V. Lal ed., The encyclopedia of the Indian diaspora (Singapore: Editions Didler Miller, 2009), p. 46.

G. Campbell, Structure of slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (New York: Routledge, 2004). See also G. Campbell, “Slavery in the Indian Ocean world”, in G. Heuman and T. Burnard eds., Routledge history of slavery (New York: Routledge, 2010), ch. 3.

Clarence-Smith, The third Portuguese empire, pp. 54–56. It might be noted that Brazil had become independent in 1822.

As discussed elsewhere in the book, the Portuguese resisted the British request to amalgamate their forces in Goa.

The structure would undergo further rationalization in 1656. See Moreira Silva, Das naus à vela às corvetas de ferro, p. 111.

Saturnino Monteiro, Batalhas e combates da marinha Portuguesa vol. VII (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa Editora, 1997); see also Y.H. Teddy Sim, Portuguese enterprise in the East (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

The Maratha fleet withdrew back to Vijayadruga (Griem) apparently fallen into Maratha hands even though it was supposed to be returned to Goa by Angria. See Monteiro, Batalhas e combates da marinha Portuguesa VII, pp. 187–88.

Monteiro, Batalhas e combates da marinha Portuguesa VII, p. 256; S. Monteiro, Batalhas e combates da marinha Portuguesa vol. VIII (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa Editora, 1997), p. 13.

Teddy Sim, Portuguese enterprise in the East, p. 34. See further in J.H. Parry, Trade and dominion: European overseas empires in the eighteenth century (London: Praeger, 1971).

Pélissier, As companhas coloniais de Portugal, p. 27. In the 1880s, comparing Holland with Portugal, a country of comparable size in population and territories, the former was able to field 797 mercantile ships (with a total tonnage of 875,000) while Portugal was able to put up 491 ships (with a tonnage of 90,000). The strength of the Portuguese according to Pélissier did not increase significantly for the second half of nineteenth century up till the end of the monarchy.

A. Tambe and H. Fisher-Tine, The limits of British colonial control in South Asia (New York: Routledge, 2008); C. Anderson, Subaltern lives: Biographies of colonialism in the Indian Ocean world (Cambridge: CUP, 2012).

H. Furber, Rivals of trade in the Orient (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976); O. Prakash, European commercial enterprise in pre-colonial India (Cambridge: CUP, 1998); P. Marshall, “Private British trade in the Indian Ocean before 1800”, in O. Prakash ed., European commercial expansion in early modern Asia (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 1–25.

C. Anderson, Subaltern lives: Biographies of colonialism in the Indian Ocean world, 1790–1920 (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), pp. 8–9. Refer M. Vink, “Indian Ocean studies and the new thalassology”, Journal of Global History vol. 2 (2007), p. 52.

Anderson, Subaltern lives: Biographies of colonialism in the Indian Ocean world, p. 9. Refer M. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003).

See A. Tambe and H. Fischer-Tine eds., The limits of British colonial control in South Asia (New York: Routledge, 2008) and M. van Rossum and J. Kamp, Desertion in the early modern world (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016). See also Teddy Y.H. Sim, “The Portuguese in the adjacent seas: A survey of their identities and activities in the Eastern Indian Ocean”, in Piracy and surreptitious activities in the Malay Archipelago and adjacent seas, 1600–1840 (Singapore: Springer, 2014), pp. 163–77. Instances of Portuguese lançados have been noted to clamor for the recognition of the Estado after they had made their fortunes.

M.S. Naravane, The heritage sites of maritime Maharashtra (Mumbai: Maritime History Society, 2001), pp. 26–29.

The VOC was dissolved in 1799. The EIC on the other hand was forced to abdicate its divested itself of its commercial trading assets in India to the UK government in 1833.

P. Havik and M. Newitt, Creole societies in the Portuguese colonial empire (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015).

Pinto, Situating Indo-Portuguese trade history: A commercial resurgence, p. 71. Profits were four times lesser in Estado ports compared to non-Estado ports.

Pinto, Situating Indo-Portuguese trade history: A commercial resurgence, p. 69. Antonio de Souza (younger brother of Minguel) asked for protection for vessels trading in Asian waters; especially from pirates which ‘infested the coasts of Malabar, Konkan, Damão and Diu’. He also asked for a fixed duty to be ‘charged on all goods irrespective of the quantity sold’. Special exemption and rates are further requested for goods going to Portugal, Asia or inland (India), transshipment, specie as well as for the different merchants (Portuguese, Armenian or Asian).

Pinto, Situating Indo-Portuguese trade history: A commercial resurgence, p. 73. Jose Barreto (senior and junior) were nephews of Minguel de Lima e Souza and Antonio de Souza.

Pinto, Situating Indo-Portuguese trade history: A commercial resurgence, p. 74. Where ever they were, the Barretos and Souzas were involved in philanthropic activities. Recent research on mixed race Chinese merchants in China reveals that philanthropic activities were important channels in building the business network; see B. Goodman, “What is in a network? Local, personal and public loyalties in the context of changing conceptions of state and social welfare”, in N. Dillon and J. Oi eds., At the crossroads of empires (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 155–78.

From the search of the Mhamai family collection in XCHR (1827, 1828, 1805–80), documents relating to the transactions and activities of the (Mhamai) family was greatly diminished after 1830. See also Pinto, Trade and finance in Portuguese India, pp. 55–56.

E. Carreira, Globalising Goa, 1660–1820: Change and exchange in a former capital of empire (Goa: Goa 1556, 2014), p. 128.

Pinto, Trade and finance in Portuguese India, pp. 58–60. de Faria was beholden to Jamsetji Jejeebhoy and Motichund Amichund subsequently and lost his credibility with the merchants and financiers of western coastal India; before further misfortune “befell him”.

A.D.S.F., serie nos. 1241 and 1251, Livro das receitas (e despezas) dos effeitos […] construção da curveta nova.

AHU, India CU, Maço 384, entry on sailing along the western coast of India (to Bombay) and probability of encountering pirates.

C. Pereira, “Cogwheels of two empires: Goan administration within the nineteenth century British Indian Ocean empire”, conference paper, nd, np. B. Nicolini, “Slave trade in the western Indian Ocean during the nineteenth century: The role of Baloch mercenaries”, in A. Koen et al. eds., The Baloch and others: Linguistic, historical and socio-political perspectives on pluralism in Balochistan (Np: np, 2008), pp. 327–44. A. Karras, Smuggling: Contraband and corruption in world history (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).