Portuguese State

The general tendency is to underestimate the Portuguese hold in India. However, the Estado Português da India (State of the Portuguese India) was in fact a larger element in Indian history than it is given credit for. Many of the coastal parts of India had come under Portuguese power within fifty years of Vasco da Gama’s arrival. The Portuguese had occupied some sixty miles of coast around Goa. On the west coast from Mumbai to Daman and Diu to the approaches to Gujarat, they controlled a narrow tract with four important ports and hundreds of towns and villages. In the south, they had under them a chain of seaport fortresses and trading-posts like Mangalore, Cannanore, Cochin, and Calicut. And though their power in Malabar was not consolidated, it was enough to ensure influence or control over the local rulers who held the spice growing land. The Portuguese established further military posts and settlements on the east coast at San Thome (in Chennai) and Nagapatnam (in Andhra). Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a wealthy settlement had grown at Hooghly in West Bengal.

Envoys and ambassadors were exchanged between Goa

and many of the major kingdoms in India of the time. Treaties were signed between Goa and the Deccan sultans in 1570 which were regularly renewed as long as their kingdoms

lasted. The Portuguese always had a role to play in the successive battles for the balance of power between Vijayanagara and the Deccan sultans, between the Deccanis and the Mughals, and between the Mughals and the Marathas. Interestingly, the Portuguese, the first Europeans to come to India, were also the last to leave this land. It was 1961 before the Government of India recaptured Goa, Daman

and Diu from them.