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The Colonial Empire of the Portuguese to the Death of Albuquerque

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

C. Raymond Beazley
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Extract

The first of modern colonial empires, the dominion of the Portuguese on the coasts and seas of Africa and India is in one sense more interesting than any of its successors. For it is, of course, essentially and peculiarly connected with the beginnings of that expansion of Europe and Christendom which, above all else, marks off the modern from the mediæval world. In other words, the growth of Portugal through discovery into a position of commercial and naval leadership is of general value to the whole of the Western world, in a way that is not shared by the similar and later growth of Spain, Holland, France or England. The development of these states belongs mainly to their own history. Immensely as they influenced one another, they none of them, to the same extent as Portugal, opened the way by which alone Europe could expand at all. None of them can rival her in the credit of breaking down the middle wall of superstitious terror which parted the unknown worlds along and beyond the ocean from the Christendom of Dante and Chaucer. None of them, in the same special originative way, can claim the glory that Camoens claims for his nation, the glory of

Opening up those wastes of tide,

No generation openèd before.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 8 , December 1894 , pp. 109 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1894

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References

page 115 note 1 Albuquerque also set the example of a shortened and more direct sea-route from the Mozambique Channel to Malabar.

page 116 note 1 These successes have been considered the turning point of Portuguese fortunes in India.

page 116 note 2 In a sense, perhaps, the colonial empire of Portugal begins with the assumption of this title in 1501.

page 118 note 1 Cf. his letter quoted in Stanley's, preface to Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama from Correa, pp. lxvi. lxviiGoogle Scholar. From the Lisbon Annals of Science and Literature (1858). ‘As to the fort in Coulam, the greater the number of fortresses you hold, the weaker will be your power: let all our forces be on the sea: if we should not be powerful there, everything will be destroyed. … All the rest is of little importance. As long as you may be powerful at sea, you will hold India: if you do not possess this power, little will avail you a fortress on shore. … Our past wars were waged with animals, but now we have wars with the Venetians and the Turks of the Sultan.’

page 119 note 1 Quite twenty stations in all, from the Cape to Arabia; on the Arabian coast some fourteen more; in W. India more than both these groups together.

page 120 note 1 Albuquerque's imperious temper seems to have involved him in difficulties with his colleague, as with his subordinate captains. Da Cunha, also, was before all things an explorer (though selected by D. Manuel as his first Governor-general, a post which his blindness prevented his accepting), while Albuquerque was a political leader and conqueror. Thus Tristan wanted to stop and explore Madagascar, while Albuquerque wanted to push on to Arabia.

page 121 note 1 ‘The greatest port in the world,’ its merchants told Albuquerque, (Comm. iii. 165–204)Google Scholar when they implored him to stay and guard it, offering him money to maintain it, if this were needed. His mere presence and name, they said, could keep Malacca safe for 100 years.

page 122 note 1 Under a Rajah who was commonly supposed to be a practised poison-eater ‘…whose food was ape and basilisk and load’ (Butler's Hudibras).

page 123 note 1 Albuquerque, too, looked on Goa as typical of his empire and policy, and held the strongest views as to its retention. Writing home to D. Manuel, he tells him he (the king) will merit more if he will guard it from his courtiers than he (Albuquerque) deserved by his capture of the town (Comm. iii. 42).

page 124 note 1 Through his intercourse wilh the Chinese junks at Malacca.

page 125 note 1 At the final capture of Goa Albuquerque entertained a Russian deserter from the Moslem service.

page 125 note 2 Cf. Correa, Second Voyage of Da Gama, c. vi. viii. ix. and Stanley Preface, xxix. So Gonsalvo Vaz Goes in 1509 captured a ship, plundered it, sewed up the crew in the sails, and scuttled the vessel. Da Gama knocked his prisoners' teeth down their throats on other occasions, cut off hands, feet, noses, ears, and lips, tied their mutilated limbs in strings round their necks, and piled up heaps oi his wretched victims in open boats which he let drift out to sea.