The rise of the Portuguese empire during the
sixteenth century still stands foremost in the national consciousness of
today’s Portuguese. The epic The Lus´ıads by Luis Vaz de Camo˜es (1524–1580), a
romanticized version of the first discoveries, is still very popular. This
article discusses the political, military, and commercial driving forces behind
the Portuguese expansion in the Atlantic, Africa, Asia, and Brazil, and the
decline of the empire in Asia.
THE AFRICAN ADVENTURES
Portuguese expansion began in 1415 with the conquest
of Ceuta (a city in Morocco) by King John I (1357–1433). His son, Prince Henry
(1394–1460), sometimes erroneously called ‘‘the Navigator,’’ inherited his
father’s rights to discover, privateer, and trade in the Atlantic Ocean and leased
these privileges to his vassals. Some of them colonized the unpopulated islands
of Madeira and the Azores in the North Atlantic. These islands became
agricultural sources of sugar and wheat. Other Portuguese, driven by the desire
to advance in the ranks of the nobility, as well as by their thirst for gold
and the demand for slaves and pepper, accomplished the stepwise discovery of
the West African coast.
After Henry’s death, King Alphonso V (1432–1481) received
papal confirmation of his rights of conquest and mission. He declared a royal
monopoly on the trade in gold, pepper, precious stones, civet cats (for their
musk), and ivory, but leased the slave trade to private contractors.
Under King John II (1455–1495), Elmina (in Ghana)
became a center for trade in gold and slaves. John also pushed Portuguese
discoveries farther south along the African coast. In 1488 Bartolomeu Diaz (ca.
1450–1500)
rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached as far as present-day Mossel Bay,
South Africa.
THE ASIAN EMPIRE
After the 1492 discovery by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506)
of the West Indies, the two Iberian nations (Spain and Portugal) agreed in 1494
to divide the world in two halves. With the dividing line running through present-day
Brazil (which at that time was still unknown
to Europeans), the Portuguese crown would become suzerain
over the waters and lands in the eastern hemisphere, the Spanish crown over the
west.
King Manuel I of Portugal (1469–1521), in the belief
that he was ‘‘chosen’’ to defeat Islam, undertook his imperialistic task with
mystic zeal. In 1497 Vasco da Gama (ca. 1469–1524) was sent to discover the
Indies and find spices and Christians. Setting out along a course
that in the future would be followed by other
European sailing traffic to India, and after various friendly and hostile
encounters along the East African coast, da Gama arrived ten months later in
Calicut on the southwest coast of India. His return voyage took almost a year.
The Portuguese navigator Pedro A ´ lvarez Cabral
(ca. 1467–1520), leaving Lisbon in 1500, intended to follow the same route, but
when crossing the Atlantic, Cabral sailed too far west and landed in Brazil.
One of his ships returned to bring the news of its discovery; the rest of the fleet
continued to Calicut.
By the time the Portuguese entered the Indian Ocean,
it was a thriving trading area, with Arabs and Gujaratis (from Northwest India)
as the main carriers of pepper from the south and textiles from the north of India.
Arab and Gujarati traders exchanged these goods for East African products, as
well as horses, silver, gold, and European merchandise coming through the
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, or spices from Southeast Asia.
India’s Malabar Coast was divided into small
principalities, with such rulers as the kolathiri of Cannanore, the zamorin
(king) of Calicut, and the raja of Cochin. The Malabar trade, mainly pepper,
was in the hands of immigrants: Mohammedans in Calicut and Jews and
Brahmins in Cochin.
Not surprisingly, the attempts of da Gama and Cabral
to buy pepper and other spices in Calicut were thwarted by Muslim merchants.
Cabral therefore turned to the raja of Cochin, who was the archenemy of the zamorin
and was eager to supply the desired products.
On his second voyage, da Gama established a trading post
in Cochin, but in Calicut he pursued a policy of intimidation, terrifying the
other rulers of the Malabar Coast into expelling the Arab colonists. Da Gama’s
ruthless behavior toward ‘‘enemies,’’ alternating with diplomacy toward the
‘‘enemies of the enemies,’’ would set the scene for further Portuguese
expansion into Asia.
Upon da Gama’s return, King Manuel I widened the scope
of his policies, expanding his title—King of Portugal, the Algarve, and Lord of
Guinea—to include ‘‘the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia,
Persia, and India.’’ The closure of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and the opening
of trading and military posts throughout Asia became first priority.
Manuel’s first viceroy of India, Francisco de
Almeida (ca. 1450–1510), erected forts at Sofala, Kilwa, and Mombassa on the
East African coast. His son Lourenc¸o (d. 1508) established the first
Portuguese treaty with one of the kings of Sri Lanka, promising protection
against the king’s enemies in return for tribute in the form of cinnamon and
elephants.
Almeida’s successor, Afonso de Albuquerque (ca.1460–1515),
a great believer in Manuel’s imperialism, captured the island of Socotra (off
the coast of presentday Yemen), hoping that it would be a suitable base from which
to block the Red Sea trade to and from India.
However, Socotra was too far away to effectively
control traffic through the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. Another attempt in 1513
to close the Red Sea with an attack on Aden failed, and the flow of spices to
Europe via this route did not stop until 1610, when the Dutch were able
to undercut pepper prices in the Mediterranean.
In 1510 Afonso de Albuquerque captured Goa, a state
on the west coast of India, which was to become the capital of the Portuguese
State of India. In 1511 he took Malacca, the center of trade between South
Asia, the Far East, and the Indonesian Archipelago. And in 1514 he managed to
capture Hormuz, thereby gaining control over the traffic from the Persian Gulf.
Thus, within fifteen years, a chain of military settlements was established that was expected to maintain control of sea traffic
and to demand payment of license fees and excise duties.
However, after his death in 1515, Albuquerque was succeeded
by Lopo Soares de Albergaria. Albergaria, who was in favor of free trade, set
in motion the opening of the Asian seas to Portuguese private military and
commercial initiatives, in total opposition to the centralism of
Albuquerque. The discovery in 1521 of the
Philippines and the Moluccan spice islands by Ferdinand Magellan (ca 1470–1521),
who sailed under the Spanish flag and made the awesome voyage through the
straits that bear his name, caused the Portuguese to push further east and
build a fort on Ternate, which was later relocated at Amboina (Ambon). In 1529
the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V (1500–1558), sold his rights in the Moluccas
to the Portuguese crown, and the demarcation line with the Spanish hemisphere
on that side of the globe was established east of these islands. As a result,
the Portuguese believed they had the right of access to the Philippines, China, and the western part of the Japanese island
of Honshu. However, the Spaniards refused to leave the Philippines, and after
1571 Manila became their gateway for imports from China and Japan and for the
export of South American silver to Asia.
In 1534 Diu and Bassein (both in Gujarat,
northwestern India) were added to the official Portuguese Empire, and in 1543
the Indian provinces of Salcete and Bardez were added. However, Portuguese
private interests went far beyond the reach of state officials.
Although sea captains sometimes played the roles of diplomats
and ambassadors between Goa and the indigenous rulers of the ports, they also
sometimes assembled their own private armies to support their demand for trade
or booty. Many Portuguese who had originally come as soldiers escaped from the control of the Portuguese
state to become embedded in the local economies and trading networks of the
Coromandel Coast, the Bay of Bengal, the Indonesian Archipelago, and the Far East.
Futhermore, although their mission was financially dependent on Goa, Portuguese
religious orders acted independently and spread their nets widely all over
Asia.
In 1543 the Portuguese made their first appearance in
Japan, and their Jesuit mission became particularly successful. In 1549 the
Ming imperial court of China prohibited the Chinese from trading overseas and
the Japanese from entering China. This gave Portuguese merchants the chance,
with the Jesuits in Japan as intermediaries, to establish a monopoly in the
exchange of Chinese silk, gold, and porcelain for Japanese
silver. After 1557 Macao (on the southern coast of China) became a center of
Portuguese private trade and missionary activity.
THE ATLANTIC BASIN
The contrast between Brazil and the countries the Portuguese
encountered in Asia could not have been sharper. The land had no proprietors,
money did not exist, birds’ feathers were the main form of wealth, and many of
the tribes were cannibals. In the early 1530s the Portuguese crown began to
dispense land in the form of hereditary captaincies to people it wanted to
reward. As a result, Brazil became a settlers’ colony, with plenty of room for
private enterprise, including the hunting of Brazilian Indians to work as
slaves on the plantations.
In addition, the Catholic Church found a wide-open field
for missionary activities.
In 1533 large-scale sugar cultivation was introduced
in Brazil. The Indian slaves who performed the heavy work were in the course of
time replaced by African slaves shipped from the coasts of Guinea, Congo, and
Angola.
In Congo, conversion of the local king and his sons
to Christianity was a convenient inroad into the slave trade. Business in
Angola was contracted out to private entrepreneurs.
As a result, freight traffic on the Atlantic became
triangular: from Lisbon to Congo or Angola with brassware and textiles that had
been bought in Antwerp, from there to Brazil with slaves, and from Brazil back
to Lisbon with sugar.
Until the discovery of gold in the 1690s the further
development of Brazil remained closely connected to the production of sugar,
which in turn was dependent on the availability of black labor. By the end of
the sixteenth century, Brazil was replacing Madeira in the sugar market.
In 1600 there were about thirty thousand Portuguese living
in Brazil; by 1612 this number had grown to fifty thousand. In contrast, from
Hormuz to Macao, there were not more than sixteen thousand people who
considered themselves Portuguese at that time.
THE ASIAN TRADE
The king of Portugal controlled the building and
equipage of ships for the Carreira da India (the Portuguese passage to India),
as well as their navigation and trade, but others were allowed to share in this
monopoly in exchange for a quinto (one-fifth) of the value of the merchandise brought back to Portugal.
Fleets of carracks and caravels would leave Lisbon annually
by the end of March, arriving in Goa between September and November. Their
cargoes consisted of people, arms, artillery, and other necessities to maintain
the Portuguese presence in Asia, as well as silver and gold to buy merchandise for the return voyage. The return
cargoes included pepper and other spices, cotton and silk, indigo, opium,
camphor, furniture, ivory, gold jewelry, precious stones, Bahrain pearls,
Persian silk and carpets, and porcelain and other Chinese products. Most of
these goods were brought to Goa via established indigenous trading systems,
which included the use of ca´filas, large fleets of small indigenous ships that
had previously navigated along the west coast of India, but now sailed under the
protection of the Portuguese maritime fleet after payment of a license fee
(cartaz).
The crown organized ‘‘royal voyages’’ to areas where
the Portuguese State of India had little or no control over local traffic. Most
famous was the annual Great Voyage from Goa to Japan and back, with stops in
Malacca (Melaka) and Macao. Other royal voyages traveled from Goa, Diu, and
Cochin toward Coromandel, Bengal, Arakan, Pegu, the Malay Peninsula, Thailand,
and the Indonesian Archipelago.
Because of the monsoon, the return vessels of the Carreira
da India had to leave Goa before mid-January. The time available for carrying
out repairs and loading cargoes was therefore relatively short, and late
departures, bad maintenance, and overloading caused many ships to wreck during the return voyage, making the Carreira
a high-risk business.
The Crown’s Withdrawal. The participation of the Portuguese
crown in Asian trade diminished during the 1570s. Not only were Portugal’s
royal voyages to Asia now leased in the form of concessions, but beginning in 1575
the Carreira da India underwent significant changes as German and Italian
merchants were awarded contracts for its financing, operation, and pepper sales.
During the mid-1590s Portuguese New Christian merchants
(descendants of Jews who by the end of the fifteenth century had been converted
to Christianity) replaced the German and Italian merchants. Private
merchandise, in particular cotton and silk, represented the major share of the
value of their cargoes. In 1629 these financiers of the Carreira were allowed
to leave Portugal to become moneylenders to the Spanish crown.
An attempt was made to establish a Portuguese East India
company, but the project was abandoned in 1633.
By that time the shipping volume leaving Lisbon was
less than half of what it had been earlier.
THE DECLINE OF PORTUGUESE IN ASIA
The decline
of the Portuguese Empire in Asia is often attributed to corruption by
Portuguese officials, the preference for South America within the Spanish House
of Habsburg that ruled Portugal from 1580 to 1640, or simply Dutch and English
aggression. However, from the early 1620s the Portuguese State of India lost
control of events mainly because of major indigenous political changes in Asia,
such as the expansionist wars of Shah Abbas (1571–1629) of Persia (Iran) and of the Mughals in India,
as well as the formation of a centralized state in Japan, which the English and
the Dutch took advantage of. Low supplies of pepper and spices to Europe during
the 1590s incited both the English and the Dutch to go and buy it for
themselves. Besides trade, the Dutch United East India Company, established in
1602, aimed to thwart the Portuguese and Spanish, both of whom were under the
reign of Philip II (1527–1598), the archenemy of the Dutch. As a result, Dutch
shareholders had to wait until the early 1630s before their investments were
fully honored.
In 1605 the Dutch United East India Company occupied
the Portuguese fort at Amboina, and the Spanish took over the remaining
Portuguese positions in the Moluccas. Portuguese merchants fled to Makassar (a
port on Sulawesi in present-day Indonesia), where they continued their spice
trade. Several Dutch attempts to conquer Malacca failed, and Dutch privateering
in the South China Sea and blockades of Goa met with scant success. From the
beginning of the seventeenth century, political changes in India brought new
rulers who abolished existing contracts with the Portuguese and were looking
for trade with European newcomers. For example, in Kanara on the southwest
coast of India, where political and territorial divisions had enabled the
Portuguese to obtain the lowest prices for rice, wood, and pepper, the Nayaks
of Ikkeri gradually expanded their territory and absorbed the smaller
principalities. Their next step was to contact the English for the sale of
pepper, and to play them off against the Portuguese. The textile and
indigo trade of Gujarat was the backbone of the Portuguese monopolistic cartaz
system.
In 1612, however, the Mughal emperor Jahangir (1569–
1627), the successor of the conqueror Akbar (1542–1605), allowed the English to
establish a trading post in Surat, and in 1620 a similar concession was made to
the Dutch. Further Mughal expansion led in 1632 to the
conquest of Ahmadnagar, which brought the Portuguese
forts at Chaul, Bassein, and Daman under Mughal protection.
In 1637 the English and the Dutch set up factories
in the neighboring state of Bijapur. However, the most serious blow to the
Portuguese State of India, both in terms of finances and prestige, was the
conquest in 1622 of Hormuz by Shah Abbas of Persia, who thereafter allowed English and Dutch companies to establish trading
posts in Bandar ‘Abbas, the port of Isfahan (in present-day Iran).
During the second decade of the 1600s, the
increasing number of Christians in Japan (some 222,000 in 1609) came to be seen
as a political threat for the ruling class. Harsh persecution of Christians and
the expulsion of Portuguese missionaries were followed by a ban on both
Christianity and Portuguese ships in Japan. The Japanese authorities allowed
the Dutch to stay, however. The Dutch factory on the Japanese island of Deshima
remained Japan’s only window to the Western world until well into the
nineteenth century. In 1636 theDutch initiated a strategic siege of Malacca, along
with seasonal blockades of Goa. Simultaneously supporting the Sri Lankan king of Kandy against the Portuguese,
in 1640 the Dutch traders obtained access to the cinnamon trade in Sri Lanka.
The Portuguese surrendered Malacca in 1641.
In China, the Manchu emperor’s entry into the palace
of Beijing in 1644 marked the beginning of the Ching dynasty. Under the Ching,
Canton (now known as Guangzhou) became a free harbor for foreign trading companies,
although Macao remained an important point of departure for Portuguese merchant fleets. Another
remainder of the Portuguese State of India was East Timor, which, after being
ruled by a Dutch renegade and his descendants, was left in Portuguese hands in
1694.
The restoration of the Portuguese crown under the
Braganca (Braganza) family in 1640 brought peace in Europe. However, the
Anglo-Dutch conflicts of the 1650s and the rumor that the Portuguese might
allow the English India Company free access to Portuguese possessions in Asia
provoked the Dutch to capture the Portuguese settlements in southern India and
Sri Lanka. Portuguese civilian communities in such places as Goa, Macao, and
East Timor survived, under the Portuguese State of India, for another three
hundred years.
VICTORY AROUND THE ATLANTIC
In 1621 the Dutch established the Dutch West India Company,
which aimed to break the Iberian monopoly of colonization and trade in the New
World and along the West African coast. In 1633 the Dutch conquered Pernambuco
in northeastern Brazil, but an attempt to occupy Bahia failed. In 1637 Governor Johan Maurits van
Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679) took control of the Portuguese city of Elmina in
Ghana, a conquest followed in 1642 by the seizure of Luanda in Angola and the island
of Sa˜o Tome´.
After the Portuguese restoration of 1640, however, the
Dutch became more interested in trading with Portugal than in expanding their
Brazilian colony. The number of Dutch troops in Brazil was reduced, and following
a revolt of the Brazilian population the Dutch were only able to maintain
control over Recife and a few other sites in Brazil. In 1648 the Portuguese
recaptured Sa˜o Tome´ and Luanda, and in 1654 all Dutch troops in Brazil were
withdrawn. In the treaty of 1661 the Dutch were indemnified for their loss of
Brazil and received the same trading privileges as the English.
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