Portuguese India

The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the Kingdom of Portugal. The capital of Portuguese India served as the governing centre of a string of military forts and maritime ports scattered along the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

Francisco de Almeida, the first viceroy, established his base of operations at Fort Manuel in the Malabar region, after the Kingdom of Cochin negotiated to become a protectorate of Portugal in 1505. With the Portuguese conquest of Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate in 1510, Goa became the major anchorage for the Armadas arriving in India. The capital of the viceroyalty was transferred from Cochin to Goa in 1530. From 1535, Mumbai (Bombay) was a harbour of Portuguese India, known as Bom Bahia, until it was handed over to Charles II of England in 1661 as part of the dowry of Catherine de Braganza. The expression "State of India" began regularly appearing in documents in the mid-16th century.

Until the 18th century, the viceroy in Goa had authority over all Portuguese possessions in and around the Indian Ocean, from Southern Africa to Southeast Asia. In 1752, Mozambique was granted its own separate government; from 1844 on, Portuguese Goa stopped administering Macao, Solor and Timor. Despite this, the viceroy at Goa only controlled limited portions of the Portuguese settlements in the east; some settlements remained informal private affairs, without a captain or câmara (municipal council). By the end of the 18th century, most of these unofficial colonies were abandoned by Portugal, due to heavy competition from European and Indian rivals.

In later years, Portugal's authority was confined to holdings in the Canara, Cambay and Konkan regions along the west coast of India. At the time of the dissolution of the British Raj in 1947, Portuguese India comprised three administrative divisions, sometimes referred to collectively as Goa: Goa (which included Anjediva Island), Damaon (which included the exclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli) and Dio district. The Salazar regime of Portugal lost de facto control of Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954. Finally, the rest of the overseas territory was lost in December 1961 with the Indian Annexation of Goa under Jawaharlal Nehru. Portugal only recognised Indian control after the Carnation Revolution and the fall of the Estado Novo regime, in a treaty signed on 31 December 1974.

The first Portuguese encounter with the subcontinent was on 20 May 1498, when Vasco da Gama reached Calicut, now Kozhikode, on the Malabar Coast. Anchored off the coast of Calicut, the Portuguese invited native fishermen on board and bought some Indian items. One Portuguese convict accompanied the fishermen to the port and met with a Tunisian Muslim, who greeted him in Castillian Spanish, saying, "May the Devil take you! What brought you here?" On the advice of this man, Gama sent a small group of his men to Ponnani to meet with the ruler of Calicut, the Zamorin. Over the objections of Arab merchants, Gama managed to secure a letter of concession for trading rights from the Zamorin, but the Portuguese were unable to pay the prescribed customs duties and price of his goods in gold.

Later, Calicut officials temporarily detained Gama's Portuguese agents as security for payment. This angered Gama, who captured several natives and sixteen fishermen, whom he took with him by force.

Da Gama left for Portugal in August 1498, landing in January 1499. Whilst the valuable items he brought back with him were few, they ignited a "fever of excitement and activity" at the opportunities for wealth that they represented.

Pedro Álvares Cabral sailed to India to trade for black pepper and other spices and arrived at Calicut on 13 September 1500, where he established a factory. When Cabral siezed a ship belonging to a resident of the city as part of a dispute with the Zamorin, the factory was attacked by the city's residents, resulting in the deaths of more than fifty Portuguese. Cabral was outraged by the attack on the factory and seized ten Arab merchant vessels anchored in the harbor, killing about six hundred of their crew, confiscating their cargo, and burning the ships. Cabral also ordered his ships to bombard Calicut for an entire day in retaliation for the violation of the agreement.