Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- General editor's preface
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 India in the Indian Ocean trade, circa 1500
- 2 The Portuguese in India, 1500–1640
- 3 The European trading companies: exports from Europe and the generation of purchasing power in Asia
- 4 The companies in India: the politics and the economics of trade
- 5 Euro-Asian and intra-Asian trade: the phase of Dutch domination, 1600–1680
- 6 The VOC and the growing competition by the English and the French, 1680–1740
- 7 The supremacy of the English East India Company, 1740–1800
- 8 European trade and the Indian economy
- 9 Conclusion
- Bibliographic Essay
- Index
- Misc-endmatter
- Map 1 Important trading centres in Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries"
- Map 2 Portuguese seaborne empire, c. 1580"
- Map 3 The Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, showing the settlements of the English East India Company and of other European nations"
- Map 4 India: main textile–weaving areas, 1600–1750"
- References
2 - The Portuguese in India, 1500–1640
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- General editor's preface
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 India in the Indian Ocean trade, circa 1500
- 2 The Portuguese in India, 1500–1640
- 3 The European trading companies: exports from Europe and the generation of purchasing power in Asia
- 4 The companies in India: the politics and the economics of trade
- 5 Euro-Asian and intra-Asian trade: the phase of Dutch domination, 1600–1680
- 6 The VOC and the growing competition by the English and the French, 1680–1740
- 7 The supremacy of the English East India Company, 1740–1800
- 8 European trade and the Indian economy
- 9 Conclusion
- Bibliographic Essay
- Index
- Misc-endmatter
- Map 1 Important trading centres in Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries"
- Map 2 Portuguese seaborne empire, c. 1580"
- Map 3 The Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, showing the settlements of the English East India Company and of other European nations"
- Map 4 India: main textile–weaving areas, 1600–1750"
- References
Summary
The arrival of three Portuguese ships under the charge of Vasco da Gama at Calicut on 20 May 1498 marked the inauguration of a new era in the history of Euro-Asian contacts in general, and of trade between the two continents in particular. Ever since the conquest in 1415 of the Moroccan city of Ceuta, the Portuguese had been increasingly involved in trading off the Saharan coast of Africa and importing gold and slaves from there. The legendary Prince Henry the Navigator participated in the profits from this trade, and in some sense personified the central role of the Portuguese Crown in encouraging further thrust into the Atlantic southwards. This phase culminated in the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 providing for the first time the potential of an all-water route connecting Europe to Asia. Apart from anything else, the Cape route implied the overcoming of the transport-technology barrier to the growth of Euro-Asian trade. The volume of this trade was no longer subject to the capacity constraint imposed by the availability of pack-animals and river boats in the Middle East.
EURO-ASIAN TRADE
Since it was the Portuguese who had discovered the Cape route, they promptly monopolized it and even asked the Pope to legitimize the arrangement. The result was that for a whole century, until this arrangement was successfully challenged by the Dutch and the English in the 1590s, the only merchant group engaged in trade between Europe and Asia along the all-water route was the Portuguese.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India , pp. 23 - 71Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998