INDIA (PORTUGUESE AND DUTCH.) 



55 



4th edition, 1824.) Until the end of the fifteenth 

 century, the Europeans obtained the precious mer- 

 chandise of India only second hand, partly through 

 Egypt, where it came by the way of the Arabian sea, 

 and partly from the long journeys of the caravans 

 through the interior of Asia. This commerce was 

 in the hands of the Venetians and Genoese, who fur- 

 nished the European markets with the productions of 

 Asia, and thereby became rich and powerful. 



Portuguese India. The doubling the cape of Good 

 Hope, which, in 1498, showed the way by sea to the 

 riches of India, led the Portuguese to the possession 

 of a kingdom in Asia. A few years after Vasco de 

 Gama (q. v.) had landed on the coast of India, they 

 were already the most favoured merchants upon the 

 whole coast, and in spite of the active jealousy of 

 the Mohammedans, who had hitherto monopolized 

 the lucrative commerce of India, they formed settle- 

 ments, and made commercial treaties with the Indian 

 princes, in which the latter acknowledged the king 

 of Portugal for their lord. Francis of Almeida, the 

 first Portuguese viceroy in India (from 1505 to 1509), 

 increased the fame of his nation in the Indian seas. 

 Wherever he landed, he formed commercial establish- 

 ments, and even took possession of Ceylon in 1506. 

 His more famous successor, Alphonso of Albu- 

 querque, who held the chief command between 1510 

 and 1515, confirmed the proud edifice of Portuguese 

 power in the Indies. He built fortresses for the pro- 

 tection of the factories, and conquered Malacca, to 

 which merchant ships from Japan, China, the Moluc- 

 cas, the Philippines, Bengal, Persia, Arabia, and 

 Africa, resorted ; and the terror of his arms, which 

 this conquest inspired, induced the most powerful 

 princes of farther India to seek the alliance of the 

 Portuguese. He afterwards acquired possession of 

 the Moluccas, and with them of the rich spice com- 

 merce, and ended his triumphant career by the con- 

 quest of Ormuz, the richest and most powerful city on 

 the Persian gulf, the possession of which he secured 

 by a castle. Soon after his death, the Portuguese 

 ruled from the Arabian to the Persian gulf ; nearly 

 all the ports and islands on the coasts of Persia and 

 India soon fell into their power ; they possessed the 

 whole coast of Malabar to cape Comorin, and had 

 settlements on the coast of Coromandel and the bay 

 of Bengal ; Ceylon was tributary to them ; they had 

 factories in China; and the ports of Japan, to which 

 a tempest had shown them the way, were open to 

 their merchant ships. Their power had attained this 

 extent in 1542 ; and, for sixty years, they carried on 

 their lucrative commerce without any considerable 

 rivals. They determined the price of merchandise 

 in all the European and Asiatic markets. No foreign 

 vessel could take a cargo in the Indian ports, before 

 the Portuguese ships were freighted ; no ship was safe 

 in the Indian seas without Portuguese passports; and 

 even those which carried on commerce by their per- 

 mission, could not trade in cinnamon, ginger, pepper, 

 steel, iron, lead, and arms, because these articles 

 were included in their monopolies. The central point 

 of the Portuguese dominion, after the time of Albu- 

 querque, was Goa, where the royal Portuguese gover- 

 nor, under the title of viceroy or governor, had his 

 seat. By bold and often revolting acts of power, 

 they secured their dominion in Asia. They bom- 

 barded the most powerful cities on the Indian coasts; 

 they burnt the ships of their enemies in their own 

 harbours ; they instigated the inferior native princes 

 to rebel against their sovereigns, that they might take 

 advantage of internal dissensions to extend their own 

 power ; and they granted peace and their alliance to 

 no prince who did not do homage to the king of Por- 

 tugal, and confirm his submission by permission to 

 build a castle in his capital. Even on the coasts 



where they merely trafficked without governing, and 

 where the natives were subject to the native princes, 

 they ruled indirectly by the terror of their name. 

 Portugal owed this power to a few able men, whose 

 adventurous spirit led them to this distant scene of 

 action. The inclination to knightly adventures, 

 which, after the overthrow of the Moors, had no ob- 

 ject of enterprise at home, found here a field for 

 action. But the successors of the men who estab- 

 lished the commercial greatness of their nation, were 

 not endowed with the same talents. Avarice and love 

 of plunder soon became the only motives of enter- 

 prise ; the honour of the Portuguese name was sul- 

 lied ; a revolting abuse of power excited the resis- 

 tance of the natives, who had been before armed 

 against each other by the artful policy of the stran- 

 gers, but now became united by the sight of their 

 common danger. After the powerful John II., and 

 the magnanimous Emanuel, weak princes succeeded 

 to the throne of Portugal ; under Sebastian, the dis- 

 ciple of the Jesuits, when the kingdom was fast 

 approaching to its ruin, the Portuguese dominion in 

 Asia was also lost. The union of Portugal with 

 Spain, in 1580, decided the fall of their commercial 

 power in India. The Spanish kings neglected the 

 Asiatic settlements. Robbery, pillage, and insubor- 

 dination prevailed there. Some commanders in India 

 made themselves independent; others joined the 

 Indian princes ; and others became pirates. The 

 Portuguese were treated as Spaniards by the Dutch 

 and English. 



Dutch India. The Dutch had previously gone to 

 the great commercial market of Lisbon for Indian 

 merchandise, but Philip II. closed the haroour of the 

 Portuguese capital to the Dutch ships, on account of 

 the revolt of the United Provinces, and thus obliged 

 that industrious people to go to the sources of this 

 commerce. They were engaged in fruitless attempts 

 to find a passage to India by the Northern seas, 

 where they might avoid their enemies, when Cor- 

 nelius Houtmann (q. v.), a Dutchman who had made 

 several voyages to India in Portuguese ships, offered 

 his services to his countrymen. In 1595, he was 

 sent, with four ships, to India, to explore the coasts, 

 and gain information concerning the inhabitants and 

 the commercial relations in that place, and he re- 

 turned with favourable accounts; for, in this very 

 first voyage, treaties of commerce were made with 

 the princes of the island of Java. The company of 

 merchants who had begun the undertaking, sent 

 out admiral Van Steck, with orders to enter into 

 treaties with the native princes, and to establish fac- 

 tories on the island, which was at a distance from 

 the centre of the Portuguese commerce, but was near 

 enough to the Spice islands to favour a contraband 

 trade, and was very well situated for trade with 

 China and Japan. The hatred of the natives against 

 the Portuguese, who had at times landed here, 

 assisted in the accomplishment of this enterprise. 

 Several societies were now formed in Holland to 

 prosecute the commerce with India; but the markets, 

 both of India and of Europe, were soon overstocked. 

 To avoid this inconvenience, and to be able to 

 oppose a firmer resistance to the jealous Portuguese 

 than they could do separately, the small commercial 

 societies united in 1602, and formed the great East 

 India company, which had power to make peace or 

 war with the princes of Asia, to build forts, to main- 

 tain garrisons, and to choose a governor. Now, that 

 they nad formed settlements at Java and upon other 

 points, and had made commercial treaties \\ ith seve- 

 ral princes of Bengal, began the long struggle be- 

 tween the rivals. The Portuguese had the advantage 

 of a better knowledge of the Indian sea, but the 

 Dutch could rely on more powerful support from 



