College Board Theme:
4. Creation, Expansion & Interaction of Economic Systems; Trade and Commerce.
- The exploration and voyages taught European Mariners how to sail to almost any coastline in the world.
- Portuguese mariners built the earliest trading -post empire.
- They did not want to conquer territories, but to control trade routes by forcing merchant vessels to call at fortified trading sites and pay duties there.
- Vasco da Gama obtained permission from local authorities to establish a trading post at Calicut when he got there in 1498.
- In the mid- sixteenth century the Portuguese had built more than fifty ttrading posts between west Africa and east Asia.
- The Portuguese were equipped with heavy artillery and were able to over power most other craft that they encountered.
Afonso d’Alboquereque
- Afonso d’Alboquereque was the architect of their aggressive power (Commander of portuguese forces in the Indian ocean during the early sixteenth century.) His fleets stopped Hormuz in 1508. Goa in 1510, and Meleka in 1511. He sought to control trade in the Indian ocean. He was confident of Portuguese naval superiority and its ability to control trade in the Indian ocean.
- After taking Melaka,he boasted that the arrival of Portuguese ships sent other vessels scurrying and that even the birds left the skies and sought over.
- Alboquerque’s boast was an exaggeration. Even though they were heavily armed, the Portuguese forces didn't have enough vessels to enforce the commander’s orders.
- The Arab, Indian, and Malay merchants continued to play prominent roles in the Indian ocean commerce .
- They transported about half of the pepper and spices that Europeans consumed during the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century.
- By the late sixteenth century, Portuguese hegemony in the Indian ocean was growing weak.
- Portugal was a small country with a small population.
- The Portuguese ship crews included Spanish, English, and Dutch sailors. The sailors of the ships became familiar with Asian waters.
- In the late sixteenth century, investors in other lands began to organize their own exploration to Asian markets.
- Most prominent of those who followed the Portuguese into the Indian ocean were english and dutch mariners.
- English and Dutch merchants built trading posts on Asian coasts and wanted to channel trade through them.
- Sometimes they seized Portuguese ships, but they didn't try to control trade on the high seas.
- Goa remained the capital of Portuguese colonies in Asia until Indian forces reclaimed it in 1961.