3.2: Europeans Enter the Indian Ocean

A Dominant Power?

While the Spanish explored and established colonies in the Americas, the Portuguese looked for trading opportunities in the Indian Ocean beginning in 1498 when Vasco da Gama arrived in India and purchased as much pepper as possible. Upon his return to Portugal, the sale of this pepper generated huge profits. As a result, subsequent Portuguese naval fleets set out into the Indian Ocean. Rather than trying to fit themselves into a trading world that exposed their own limitations, on these later voyages, the Portuguese would instead lean into their advantages. One of these was the presence of cannons onboard their ships that could be used in both naval warfare and for the bombardment of coastal cities.

To a greater or lesser extent, the Portuguese sought a monopoly on the most valuable goods that circulated in the Eastern seas: spices. That could literally mean controlling the world’s supply of nutmeg -- which at the height of its value in the mid-17th century was worth more per ounce than gold in European markets. In political terms, the Portuguese found that claiming territory was easier than holding onto it. Overall, the Portuguese were unsuccessful in their effort to monopolize spice trade from Asia to Europe – by 1600 Spanish had posts in Asia. In spite of naval power, the Portuguese were only one of a number of trade diasporas in the Indian Ocean.

Estado da India

We tend to identify these far-flung ports and bases as the Portuguese Empire, but the Portuguese themselves referred to their collection of territories in Africa and Asia as the Estado da India. This empire was at the same time an impressive achievement for a kingdom of barely more than a million people while also being less than it seemed. Certainly, the Portuguese were able to create a key role for themselves in the Indian Ocean world and in doing so made Portugal a major world power. However, their empire as well as later European maritime powers like the Dutch and English offer a lesson about the difference between pretensions and reality. Figure 3.2.1 shows a Portuguese nobleman on a horse who is accompanied by three other Portuguese men and two Indian servants.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Anonymous Portuguese watercolour illustration, Author Unknown, Códice Casanatense, in the Public Domain

Through savvy politics, intimidation, and exemplary violence the Portuguese were able to seize several ports ranging from the Mozambique Channel in East Africa to Malacca at the opposite end of the Indian Ocean. In addition, under an agreement with Ming China, they were allowed to establish a base on the island of Macao at the mouth of the Pearl River in southern China. They took over much of the silver trade from Japan. Indian Ocean commerce had three great naval choke points: Aden, Hormuz, and Malacca. During the 1500s, the Portuguese used their cannon to take control of these ports. They failed to hold Aden for long which meant that the Venetians still sold spices in Europe.

The Portuguese in Africa

During the 1500s and 1600s, the Portuguese became the dominant power on the east coast of Africa. Their goal was to acquire gold, and the Portuguese captured the port of Sofala in 1505. For the most part, they traded Indian textiles to get gold and ivory and then used this to purchase spices. However, the Portuguese made no effort to colonize east Africa and sought to control the different cities with puppets. In fact, there was no mass conversion to Christianity and very little adoption of Portuguese culture. The Portuguese only disrupted trade by going in and sacking towns on the east coast. The cities constantly were rebelling against the Portuguese, but they were not united enough to fight together.

For the most part, the Portuguese failed to dominate east Africa. Swahili merchants just bypassed the Portuguese controlled ports. A lot of the gold found its way to Muslim merchants in Angoche which was not controlled by the Portuguese. Additionally, the Portuguese tried but failed to take interior gold producing region, because they lacked the manpower and immunities to tropical disease.

Review Questions

• What advantages allowed the Portuguese to establish themselves in the Indian Ocean?
• To what extent did the arrival of Europeans represent a major change to the Indian Ocean?