Portuguese India

The sea route

Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498 by rounding Africa, opening a route that bypassed the Ottoman and Venetian control of the eastern trade. Portugal's objective was not territory but the monopoly of the spice traffic, pursued through a system of armed force and licensing: the cartaz, a pass that Asian ships were required to buy and carry, enforced by patrols and by the fortification of chokepoints — Goa, Diu, Hormuz, Malacca.

Afonso de Albuquerque took Goa in 1510 from the Sultanate of Bijapur and made it the capital of the Estado da Índia, which at its height administered Portuguese possessions from East Africa to Macau.

The Portuguese introduced to India the chilli, the potato, the tomato, the cashew, tobacco, maize and the papaya, all of them from the Americas. Indian cooking as it now exists is not conceivable without that exchange.

Religion and the Inquisition

Portuguese policy in Goa combined missionary activity with coercion in a way the later European powers did not attempt. Francis Xavier arrived in 1542; the Goa Inquisition was established in 1560 at his urging and operated until 1812. It had jurisdiction over converts and prosecuted the retention of Hindu and Muslim practice, and over two and a half centuries it tried thousands of cases; temple demolition in the Old Conquest districts was systematic, and Hindu families moved their deities inland beyond Portuguese reach, where many of those temples still stand.

The Portuguese also attempted to bring the Syrian Christians of Malabar under Roman authority, at the Synod of Diamper in 1599, which split that ancient community into churches that remain separate.

Goan Catholic culture — its churches, its music, its Konkani hymnody, its cuisine — is the other result of the same centuries, and Old Goa's Bom Jesus basilica, which holds Xavier's body, remains a pilgrimage site.

The end

Portugal ceded Bombay to England in 1661 as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry, and lost most of its other holdings to the Dutch and English. What remained by the twentieth century was Goa, Daman, Diu, and the enclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

After Indian independence Portugal refused to negotiate, holding that these were not colonies but metropolitan territory. Dadra and Nagar Haveli were taken by volunteers in 1954, and in December 1961 the Indian armed forces entered Goa, Daman and Diu in a two-day operation. Portugal recognised the annexation only after the revolution of 1974.