The Indian Ocean Read Online Free

of East Africa, Mozambique in the south had several advantages. It was conveniently located to control trade on the southern coast, and to block trade from the hostile Muslim world down to the gold available in Sofala. Also, and here Mozambique was unusual as compared with the other ports which they conquered, it was to be the vital way-station for the
carreira
from the colonial capital of Goa to the metropolitan capital of Lisbon, fulfilling the same function that the Cape of Good Hope later provided for the Dutch. In theory this voyage was to be done in one passage, but in practice the great ships often needed to call in on the African coast to heal their sick, to get supplies, on the outward voyage to collect cargo for India, or to await the next monsoon. Mozambique became the vital link in the chain between Goa and Lisbon.
    These strategic sites were acquired with several ends in view. Their conquest helped the Portuguese to undermine the Muslims who had previously dominated Indian Ocean trade, especially that in spices. They functioned as nodes in the vast seaborne network of the Portuguese maritime empire. They provided facilities for the vital armadas, and the carreira to Portugal. They were beach-heads from which conversion drives were launched. They provided places where the Portuguese elite could give themselves fancy titles and indulge in an anachronistically feudal lifestyle, and from which they made vast private profits during their terms of office. In a more general sense the Portuguese were trying to create or impose a hierarchy
de novo
in the Indian Ocean. From a situation of autonomous port cities and free trade in which competition was economic but not military, they now wanted to establish an articulated structure where Lisbon controlled Goa, and Goa controlled all the conquered port cities. The nature of the political aspiration, and also its extent, has to be seen as quite revolutionary.
    What were the Portuguese trying to achieve by these conquests? What they setup was not an empire, not even a maritime empire. Subrahmanyam and Thomaz note that
    in the first half of the sixteenth century, 'Portuguese India' did not designate a space that was geographically well defined but a complex of territories, establishments, goods, persons, and administrative interests in Asia and East Africa, generated by or subordinate to the Portuguese Crown, all of which were linked together as a maritime network. 13
    Within this network, the aim was very largely economic. From early on they unilaterally declared that all trade in spices was to be done only by themselves, or by people licensed by them. Offenders against this, that is the traders who had previously handled this trade, were to be severely punished, and their goods confiscated. To achieve this aim they captured a series of strategically located port cities, and patrolled the waters of the Indian Ocean searching for 'illicit' traders.
    The patrols and the capture of ports had a wider aim also. The Portuguese wanted to direct, and tax, all trade in the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese required that all ships trading in the ocean take a licence, or
cartaz
, from a Portuguese authority. The key point was that the cartazes required Asian ships to call at Portuguese forts or towns and there pay customs duties before setting off on their voyage. What the ship could carry, and where it could trade, was strictly limited. In particular, Muslims from hostile areas, weapons, and spices were prohibited. Portuguese fleets cruised around checking all ships they came across. Those without a cartaz, and those who infringed its terms, were subject to confiscation at best, and sinking at worst.
    This system was a vast protection racket, for the Portuguese were selling protection from violence which they themselves had created. Obviously it was most effective only when the Portuguese had established customs houses at which the Asian traders could call. This took some time, and this