The Portuguese territories in India were established at the last throes of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th, when Christopher Columbus had changed the course of humanity by showing our world was way bigger than we believed. The kingdoms of Spain and Portugal divided the world in two respective zones of conquest and navigation in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, and the Portuguese soon pounced on their part, the east, where they carved their own empire in the sunny coasts of Africa and the always mysterious Orient.
Unlike the Spaniards, who worked to fully conquer their lands in The Americas, assimilate their inhabitants as new subjects, and turn their states into provinces of their empire, the way smaller Portugal lacked manpower and resources to do the same, especially in lands like Persia and India where the local states were up to date in global politics, science and guns, the three things that create history. The Portuguese modus operandi, therefore, involved planting coastal trade posts and factories, their classical feitorías, from where they could create a network of sea commerce, using wisely their powerful armada whenever they needed to exert pressure on native states or capture strategic cities.
The perennial war between Christianity and Islam would also rear its ugly head here, as the Indian Ocean was in control of powerful Muslim domains such as the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire. In a succession of great fleets named armadas de Indias, the Portuguese would wrestle away the control of the ocean through the ruthless work of aristocratic admirals, chief among them Afonso de Albuquerque, basically the Portuguese Hernán Cortés (although we should rather call Cortés the Spanish Afonso for the timeline's sake). Albuquerque would become the first European after Alexander the Great to capture Indian lands - an irony considering that Alexander never fulfilled his dream of reaching the Iberian Peninsula, yet Iberians went to leave quite an impression in the land that stopped Alexander.
First contacts
As said above, the discovery of Columbus had opened Spain to a literal new world, which made Portugal realize they would fall behind if they didn't start exploring their own side of the map drawn in the Treaty of Tordesillas. Therefore, in 1497, King of Portugal Manuel I commissioned navigator Vasco da Gama to sail around Africa in order to open a new route to the rich India, one free from the clutches of the Mediterranean Muslim states and the Italian maritime republics. Repeating the feat of the ancient Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator, who had reportedly circumnavigated Africa, Da Gama turned around the Cape of Good Hope and successfully reached the Indian city of Calicut. Vasco enjoyed a warm welcome by the local chieftain, the Samudiri or Zamorin, and filled two ships with the famed eastern spices before returning to tell the good news.In order to open commercial relations with India, Manuel I then sent a bigger expedition under Pedro Álvares Cabral, who also claimed Brazil for the rising Portuguese Empire on account it fell on their side of the map (making it the first expedition ever to visit four continents) before continuing his travel to Calicut. However, his ventures there were disturbed by Arabian merchants, who attacked and destroyed their newly built trade post in order to remove any possible competition, especially given that it was Christian. Indignant, especially at the Zamorin's perceived lack of action, Álvares raided the local Arabian fleet and punished the city by cannonfire before switching alliances to the state of Cochin, a rebellious vassal of Calicut led by Rajah Trimumpara. Despite the damage suffered, the expedition had been a success anyway, as it set the first stone for the Portuguese domination of the coast of India, although Álvares would be ironically demoted when his gains turned out to be insufficient.
After another armada by João da Nova was forced to battle against Calicut, Vasco da Gama would be sent again in 1502 in a punitive fleet of 20 ships. In a classical strategy, Gama teamed up with local states through the road and helped them against their own enemies, gaining tributary allies in Mozambique and Cannanore, and in a uglier but not less effective strategy to announce his arrival to Calicut, he sunk a Muslim pilgrim ship with all its civilian passengers aboard. The Portuguese then blockaded and bombarded the city, hanging executed prisoners off the masts and sending boats full of severed limbs to show they were serious, and when Arabians privateers tried to beat them by sheer numbers, the Portuguese formed a line of battle with their more powerful ships and wrecked them. Despite the showing, Calicut didn't give up, and Gama returned with the lesson they would have to play even harder to protect their interests.
In 1504, Calicut attacked Cochin with an army of 50.000, but a Portuguese fleet arrived just in time to save their pals, making the besiegeres withdraw as soon as they saw it. The Iberians, actually part of an expedition that had become separated, put some order in the land and erected their first fort there, Fort Sant'ago. After being reached by the rest of their armada, they negotiate with Calicut in order to try to reboot things around, but relations by this point were obviously deader than dead. At the end, the most important events there would be planting another factory in Quilon and being the first visit to India by a certain Afonso de Albuquerque, a veteran nobleman who would become more relevant later.
Wars of religion
Lupo Soares de Albergaria arrived later into 1504 to find a repeat of the previous situation, as the Zamorin had returned to besiege Cochin with an even bigger army that included Turks and Venetians, though a Portuguese-Indian garrison headed by the brilliant Duarte Pacheco Pereira had miracuously delayed them. Soares solved again the situation by cannonfire and returned the strike in Cranangore and Tanur with a strike force of 1,000 Portuguese and 1,000 Cochinese Indians, who helped those who were friendly and sacked and razed those who weren't. In their way home, they also sailed unto a huge Arab-Egyptian fleet of 4,000 men that had supposedly come to evacuate local Muslims, as by this point it was clear to everybody that the Portuguese were a force to fear in the Indic Ocean, and Soares proved their point further by assaulting and plundering the fleet.Angry at those affronts, the Egyptian Mamluk Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri threatened Pope Julius II with revenge against Christians in his own territory, but King Manuel I only saw this as an extra reason to reinforce his positions in Africa and India. Knowing a Muslim fleet was coming, he appointed a Viceroy of the India, the ambitious Francisco de Almeida, and gave him the biggest expedition up to the point, 21 ships with 2,500 men. In his way around Africa, Almeida installed a better Puppet King in Kilwa, captured and sacked the common enemy state of Mombassa, and after arriving in India, erected the first true Portuguese fortresses, São Miguel de Angediva and Santo Ângelo de Cananor. He engaged in some gunboat diplomacy with vassals of the Vijayanagara Empire, whom he accused of breaking treaties and helping Arabians, but ended up striking an alliance with them after some contact with the emperor Viranarasimha.
Almeida was appointed Viceroy of the Indias, but an ugly incident in 1505 would mark the beginning of a seemingly promising career. Unknowingly to him, a quarrel had broke out in the allied city of Quilon, where Portuguese director António de Sá had unsuccessfully tried to convince the Hindu authorities to seize some Muslim spice ships coming from Calicut. Undaunted, De Sá had enlisted one of Almeida's carabels and attacked the Arabians himself, an act of disobedience that shocked the city and caused a huge riot against the Portuguese, who ended up being massacred. Almeida sent a flotilla under his son Lourenço to try to solve the situation, but Quilon was now openly hostile, and all the Iberians could do was bombarding the harbor and destroying the Calicut ships before returning. Almeida then took care to strengthen their ties to the next rajah of Cochin, Candagora.
War was again on the menu. In 1506, the Zamorin of Calicut invaded Cannanore with a fleet of 200 ships, and although Lourenço de Almeida managed to trounce them, the new ruler of Cannanore, Kolattiri, suddenly turned on the Portuguese, who were forced to besiege the city to renew the ties. The following year, eager to destroy the Portuguese commercial dominance, the Venetians convinced the Egyptian Sultanate to ally with Calicut and Gujarat and send a large fleet under admiral Amir Husain Al-Kurdi, a campaign that gave the Portuguese their first loss at Chaul and killed Lourenço. However, when all looked lost for the Portuguese, those bounced back in 1509 with an improbable naval victory in Diu under the command of Francisco de Almeida, who managed to rout the enemy entente, avenge his son, and expel the Mamluks and Ottomans from the Indian Ocean, in a turning point that has been described as a predecessor to the Battle of Lepanto.
Enters the lion
While all this mess happened in India, the commander of the 1503 armada, Afonso de Albuquerque, returned to the Indian Ocean with an ambitious plan: building the structures needed to keep the Muslims out of the Indian Ocean for good. Albuquerque raided the Arabian-allied cities of the East African coast and, while most of the fleet under Tristão da Cunha (an understudy of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba) continued their travel to reinforce Cannanore, he led six ships to capture briefly the Persian Merchant City of Ormuz. When the Shah Ismail of Persia demanded the Portuguese the tribute he used to receive from Ormuz, Albuquerque only sent him arrows and cannoballs as a Badass Boast, announcing those were the new currency around. However, Albuquerque's men fleet mutinied against him on the claim he was overworking them, after which Almeida imprisoned him in Cannanore to ensure Albuquerque couldn't relevate him as the king had ordered, so Afonso had to sit out of the Battle of Diu.The arrival of the Marshal of Portugal, Fernando Coutinho, pushed the campaign back into place, sending the troublesome Almeida home and giving Albuquerque the Viceroyalty of India. However, especially in India, it never rains, but it pours. Coutinho turned out Too Dumb to Live and trounced Albuquerque's plan to capture Calicut in 1510, falling in an ambush while sacking in midst of the battle and forcing the Portuguese to retire with big losses. With Coutinho conveniently dead, Albuquerque changed plans and, after learning from the Viyanagara privateer Timoji that the remnants of the Muslim fleet of Diu were patching up in Goa, a city of the Sultanate of Bijapur, they went there with a large Portuguese-Indian fleet. Afonso and Timoji made the city surrender, but only to be forced to abandon it and literally hold on to their seats due to a moonsoon, a revolt of Muslims that had been allowed to stay, a massive army brought by the Sultan Adil Shah, and a mutiny. The Portuguese managed to escape very narrowly.
Albuquerque didn't give up easily, though, so when they managed to return to Cannanore, he assimilated a couple of Portuguese fleets under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira and Duarte de Lemos and returned to Goa for the second round. Although they found Goa reinforced, they assaulted the city and eventually captured it, sparing the Hindu civilians but executing the Muslims in order to prevent another betrayal. Albuquerque rebuilt the city in Portuguese style and put Timoji as its alguazil, and the strategic presence of the new Goa eventually intimidated the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat, who sent envoys of peace. With the place secured, Albuquerque organized its next objective, the Malay city of Malacca, at the other side of the ocean. Not only there were Portuguese merchants imprisoned under Muslim law there, it was the most strategically placed city possible for the Portuguese Empire at the east.
The expedition, another Portuguese-Indian contingent of eighteen ships and 1,000 men that included a then unknown Ferdinand Magellan, reached Malaysia in 1511. It was either victory or death, knowing they were very far from home and the moonsoon winds would impede them from returning soon, but they found a local ally in the island of Kampar, and also learned that the local Chinese, Burmese and Indians would appreciate to be freed from the Sultan Mahmud Shah. The battle was crazy, as Mahmud had 20,000 defenders only in the city and also old school War Elephants, but the weapons and tactics of the Iberians prevailed, and they conquered the city on two assaults, in what would be the farthest territorial conquest in the history of mankind until then. Ironically, the Portuguese would the lose the entire treasure of the city in the bottom of the sea for choosing a dangerously old ship to take it home.
The conquest of Malacca was the doom on the Muslim sea trade, whose spice, as it was said once, stopped flowing, or almost. For the Portuguese, however, it was the door to the Pacific Ocean, and after making allies and vassals out of the nearby kingdoms of Burma, Siam and Sumatra, Albuquerque opened a route to the famed spice islands, the Maluku or Moluccas. He finally returned to the Portuguese India in 1512, where he had to suffocate a mix of revolt and Muslim capture that had seized Goa.
End of the conquest
In 1512, an embassy of Christian Ethiopians requested the Portuguese Empire help to fight off local Muslim influence. Albuquerque redirected him to Portugal so King Manuel I and Pope Leo X could be adequately delighted at finding proactive Christians over there. Meanwhile, Albuquerque led another of their usual Indian-Portuguese armadas to the Red Sea, seeking to threaten the Mamluks Sultanate, and besieged their naval base in Aden, Yemen. However, this time there was no luck, and he had to depart without any progress other than giving the Muslims a scare. He did propose Manuel I some projects of Cartoonish Supervillainy, among them deviating the course of the Nile to dry off Egypt and stealing the corpse of The Prophet Muhammad to blackmail all Islam, but nothing came from this, for good or bad. At his return to India, the Zamorin of Calicut died and Albuquerque could place a Puppet King there, finally ending its opposition.Albuquerque invested the next years in building the Portuguese India, developing native structures and encouraging his people to marry Indians in true Iberian conquering fashion (mestiçagem), until in 1515 he decided it was the right time to resume his unfinished business in Ormuz. The city was now governed by the young king Turan Shah under the control by the classically devious vizier Reis Ahmed, so Albuquerque traveled personally there in 1515 and played a card of Refuge in Audacity. After intimidating the city with his 25-ship armada, Albuquerque requested a hearing, and then murdered the vizier in front of the king and convinced the latter that surrendering to the Portuguese Empire was an excellent idea. However, this shocking way to seize Ormuz would be the last of Afonso's plans, though, as a pile of political enmities back in Portugal got him demoted from his job, and the man himself fell ill and died shortly after, being mourned by Christians and Hindus alike. The lion's roar finally faded away.
Most of Portugal's expansion around the Indian Ocean finished after that, and the Portuguese spent the next decades strengthening their trade network and their alliances with the Vijayanagara Empire and other Indian allies. In 1528, King John III granted Goa the same rights as Lisbon itself, giving privileges to the local Hindu community in gratitud for their support, even although the Christians typically never really stopped hammering their religion wherever they could, inquisition included. The Ottoman Empire would return in 1538, besieging Diu under the command of the eunuch Suleiman Pasha and with the help of a seriously huge cannon (unrelated points, presumably), but the skilled defense of António da Silveira overcame an absolutely massive numeric disadvantage and beat the Turks. The same happened with another siege eight years later, which a Portuguese Amazon Brigade led by Isabel Madeira helped to frustrate.
The Ottomans kept trying to weaken the Portuguese Empire for years, harassing them through Africa and the Indian Ocean, but were defeated, with an especially sound loss in the Gulf of Oman in 1554. Realizing they could not directly beat them, the Ottomans switched to support local Muslim sultanates in Asia to do the job, supplying a massive multi-alliance "League of the Indies" that tried to expel the Iberians in 1570s, but even this enterprise went ultimately All for Nothing. Further war between Portugal and the Ottomans would bring the Portuguese new territories in the horn of Africa, and this would be culminated with independent annexation of the kingdoms of Ceylan in 1617, the last chapters of the Portuguese conquest.
In fiction:
- Perhaps the most famous Portuguese in India in pop culture is Yáñez de Gomera, Sandokan's faithful sidekick.
- Age of Empires II - African Kingdoms features a Portuguese campaign about Francesco de Almeida and his exploits in Africa and as Viceroy of India. The famous feitorías also appear, depicted as a building that provides a constant supply of resources.
