The arrival of European Christians in India during the 16th century
Alan Guenther
The arrival of European Christians in India in the 16th century was part of the Portuguese political and economic expansion. In competition with the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and with the Italian city states such as Genoa and Venice, Portugal sought to establish itself as a maritime power in the latter half of the 15th century. The Ottoman Empire’s expansion into the Balkans and its capture of Constantinople in 1453 had resulted in the Ottoman dominance of trade routes east of the Mediterranean Sea. That expansion coupled with the continuing monopoly of other trade in the Mediterranean region by the Genoese and the Venetians prompted Portuguese searches for alternative routes from Europe to Asia. The successful navigation around the Cape of Good Hope and eventual arrival to India by the Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, in 1498 was one such effort.
The 16th century ended with a series of Jesuit missions to the court of the Mughal emperor Jalal al-Din Muhammad Akbar in northern India. The Portuguese explorers who traversed the Indian Ocean in 1498, however, encountered a milieu not yet controlled by the three major Muslim empires of the Mughals, Safavids, and Ottomans who rose to dominance in the Muslim regions in Southern and Western Asia. In 1498, Akbar’s grandfather, Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur, had not yet begun his advance into the Indian subcontinent; his capture of Kabul from which he launched his military campaigns into the Punjab did not occur until 1504. In Persia, Shah Isma‘il I had not yet consolidated the Safavid control of the region; the decisive victory which gave him control of Azerbaijan and its capital Tabriz did not occur until 1501. The Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Hijaz under Sultan Selim which gave the Ottomans control of the Red Sea and its trade, did not occur until 1517. Nevertheless, even with the absence of the three major Muslim empires, the trading networks that dominated the Indian Ocean into which the Portuguese sailed were largely Muslim.
Portuguese perception of Muslims
The Portuguese saw the Muslims as their religious and
political rivals. Through the 12th century, Christian rulers had
been waging war with Muslim rulers of al-Andalus, the Iberian Peninsula. The
Christians saw this as a “Reconquista” and a vital part of the Crusades in
Western Europe. The final Muslim stronghold on the western coast of al-Andalus had
been defeated with the capture of Algarve (from the Arabic al-Gharb) in 1249 by
Afonso III, who declared himself King of Portugal and the Algarve. From that
base, subsequent kings of Portugal sought to extend their political control,
particularly in the 15th century. The taking of the Moroccan port
city of Ceuta in 1415 was the beginning of Portuguese overseas conquests, and
was legitimized as a crusade by a papal bull.[1] In a useful summary, C. R.
Boxer lists four main motives which inspired Portuguese rulers, nobles and
merchants to pursue maritime expansion: “(i) crusading zeal against the
Muslims, (ii) desire for Guinea gold, (iii) the quest for Prester John, (iv)
the search for Oriental spices.”[2] These motives, he notes,
appeared in chronological but overlapping order and in varying degree. While
the strong crusading spirit directed against the Muslims present at the capture
of Ceuta was still evident in the voyages to India almost 85 years later, the
primary motivation appears to have been the desire for a greater share of the
spice trade.
In addition to the papal bull declaring the military
actions against the Moroccan Muslims to be a Crusade, several other key
pronouncements by the Vatican helped define the religious nature of Portuguese
expansion. The Dum diversas of 1452
authorised the King of Portugal to attack, conquer, and subdue not only Muslims
but also pagans and other unbelievers, and to capture their goods and
territories, transferring them to his own possession. The Romanus Pontifex of 1455, after tracing the history of the
discovery and conquest by Prince Henry, declared that because expansion
furthered the interests of God and Christendom, the Portuguese should have the
monopoly of navigation and trade in the regions they had conquered or would yet
conquer south of the Moroccan coast all the way to the “Indies,” and should
have the right to safeguard that monopoly. Permission was given to trade with
the “Saracens” provided that that trade did not involve selling weapons or
other war material to those enemies of the Faith. This Bull also authorised the
King and his successors to build churches and monasteries and to send priests
to administer sacraments, though it contained “no specific mention of sending
missionaries to preach the gospel to unbelievers.”[3]
The Bull Inter caetera of 1456 not only confirmed the terms of the previous Bull, but specified that the spiritual jurisdiction of the regions conquered was to come under the Order of Christ, the successors to the Knights Templar in Portugal, of which Prince Henry was the administrator and governor. The Grand Prior of this Order would have the authority to appoint clergy and administer ecclesiastical discipline within those regions.[4] The headship of this order continued to be vested in a member of the royal family from then on, until it was formally incorporated in the Crown by a Papal Bull in 1551.[5] The provisions of these three Bulls, then, not only established the spiritual nature of the exploration and conquest, but also provided the framework for the missionaries that accompanied the explorers later in the 16th century. Subsequent Bulls reaffirmed these powers and responsibilities, culminating in the Praecelsae devotionis of 1514, and were collectively known as the Padroado Real or the royal patronage of the Church overseas.[6] The sphere of the Padroado stretched from Brazil to Japan at its height, and within those regions the Portuguese crown claimed the exclusive right to appoint Bishops, to create dioceses, and to send missionaries, and treated them as functionaries of the state.[7] The missionaries arriving in South Asia in the 16th century were therefore patronized by the Portuguese rulers and subject to their restrictions.
Portuguese arrival in the Indian Ocean
The Portuguese exploration and expansion into the regions of South Asia had their roots in the crusades against Muslims sanctioned by the papacy. However, John France argues, “Though the impulse to explore and seize territory and bases owned something to crusading ideas and the traditions of the past in execution it was fundamentally different.”[8] What predominated in the motivation of the Portuguese entering the Indian Ocean was the desire to control the sea trade in the region. “The Portuguese were very determined to break the Arab and Indian monopoly of the rich trade in spices and other luxury goods of the Orient which passed from India and the ‘Spice Islands’ (the Indonesian archipelago) to Iraq via the Straits of Hormuz, and to Egypt via the Red Sea.”[9] The Prester John myth had raised expectations of finding a powerful Christian ruler with whom they could ally themselves to defeat the Muslims. Even Ethiopia, referred to as the land of the Christians, had its external trade relations and port towns controlled by Muslims.[10]
The Mamluks in power in Egypt controlled the northern
Red Sea region, and since 1425 had increased their influence in the Hijaz, sharing
power with the Sharifs of Mecca. Yemen with its port city of Aden was controlled
by Arab Muslim tribal chiefs first of the Rasulid dynasty and then of the
Tahirid dynasty.[11] Further east, Hurmuz with its port city of
Jarun and its adjacent coastal regions were also ruled by Muslim princes who
paid tribute to the Timurids and other Turkic groups controlling Persian
territories before the Safavids had consolidated their rule. Their principle
source of revenue was custom collected on the trade from India.[12] The Mamluk state of Egypt
appears to have extended its influence beyond the Red Sea, to exercise a
suzerainty over some of the Western Indian states as well such as Gujarat.[13] In the 1420s, the Mamluk
Sultan began to create a series of commodity monopolies, eventually forbidding
“the sale of pepper to Europeans by anyone save his own official apparatus.”[14]
Despite the dominant political presence of the Mamluks, the Muslim presence in the Indian Ocean was hardly homogenous or uniform, though it may have appeared so to the invading Portuguese. The Sultanate of Gujarat on the western coast of India was a key element of maritime trade, with its important ports of Diu, Cambay, Surat, and Rander. It linked the Red Sea trade of Aden with the Malaysian trade of Malacca.[15] Malik Ayaz (d. 1522), a manumitted slave of the Muslim Sultan of Gujarat, was the governor of Diu, and had not only transformed the city into a central port linking west and east, but had also built up his own fleet of vessels.[16] He would play a key role as a Muslim ruler encountering the Portuguese incursion. The merchant network of Gujurat, however, also included other communities including the baniyas who were Hindus and Jains, the Parsis, and the Khojas and Bohras, two Ismaili communities.[17] Further south along the western coast of India were two other Muslim sultanates, that of Ahmadnagar and that of Bijapur, the latter having the key port city of Goa. At the start of the 16th century, Bijapur was being ruled by the founder of the Adil Shahi dynasty, Yusuf Adil Shah.[18] Still further south along the coast were other port cities nominally under the control of the Vijayanagara Empire in control of southern India, the chief of which was Calicut, ruled by the Samudri Raja. Under his protection, trade had flourished in Calicut, and again included a diversity of traders such as the Mappila Muslims of Malabar and Arabs from Bahrain, Baghdad, and Shiraz.[19] It was at Calicut that Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498. As Subrahmanyam notes in his biography of da Gama, the complexity of the various trading communities and their separate spheres of dominance would not have seemed strange to the arriving Portuguese. “Here, as in the Mediterranean, one found states operating on different scales, with a lesser or greater degree of integration with the interests of merchant communities. Religious identities played some role in determining the nature of solidarities and networks, but were by no means the sole factor to be taken into consideration.”[20]
Although
Muslims were perceived to be their political and religious rivals of the
Portuguese, Vasco da Gama had relied on Arab-speaking captives as pilots and
translators when arrived in the Indian Ocean on his first voyage.[21] Upon their arrival in
Calicut, the Portuguese responded to queries about their purpose with the
now-famous answer: “We came to seek Christians and spices.”[22] This response emphasizes
the multi-faceted motives of the Portuguese, including their search for the
Christian king Prester John as an ally against the Muslims, and their quest for
a share in the lucrative spice trade. Their encounter with the merchants and
the ruler of the region convinced them that while the ruler seemed favourably
disposed towards them and their mission, the Arab (Muslim) merchants were not
to be trusted. After a three-month stay that included several audiences with
the Samudri Raja and encounters with the people of the region, including a
visit to a Hindu temple which the Portuguese perceived as a Christian church,
Vasco da Gama sailed back to Portugal with his fleet of three ships.[23]
After da Gama’s return, a larger fleet under the direction of Pedro Alvares Cabral was sent by the Portuguese king in 1500 to return to India to set up a trading factory in Calicut. Once again, the Portuguese became suspicious of the merchants from the Red Sea, prompting them to seize one of the ships from Jeddah. This elicited a violent and deadly response directed against their newly established factory. Cabral retaliated by bombarding the city and sailed away to other nearby ports, thus permanently souring the relations with Calicut.[24] Cabral’s voyage being seen as a failure by the Portuguese rulers, Vasco da Gama was sent out once again in 1502, determined to make his expedition profitable by plundering ships and exacting tribute from port cities.[25] Even before arriving in India, he sought to blockade the pepper traffic between the Red Sea and Kerala, choosing to attack a ship returning to Calicut, laden not only with goods but also 240 men besides women and children returning from performing pilgrimage in Mecca. When the wealthy Muslim merchants sought to purchase their ransom, da Gama rejected their pleas, and looted and sank the boat, supposedly in retaliation for those killed in the destruction of the factory established by Cabral two years earlier.[26] Vasco da Gama proceeded to rob other vessels taking the booty to not only finance the expedition but to amass a personal fortune. As the fleet neared Calicut, the Samudri sent terms to make amends for the ill treatment of Cabral and his men, seeking peace and renewed trade with the Portuguese. Da Gama rejected the terms and insisted that the Arab Muslim merchants all be expelled from the city, “for since the beginning of the world, the Moors have been the enemies of the Christians, and the Christians of the Moors, and they have always been at war with each other, and on that account no agreement that could be made [between them] would be firm.”[27] This polarizing attitude would persist in the relations between the Portuguese and the various Muslim communities of India and other regions of Asia, though significant exceptions are also evident throughout the history of their interactions. When his demands were not met, da Gama bombarded the city and left for other ports where he engaged in trade to acquire the desired spices. It should be noted that it was at this time as well, that he finally encountered representatives of the St. Thomas Christian community.[28] Then, having established a couple of factories in port cities and having appointed a small fleet of five ships to remain behind to seize and loot other trading vessels, he returned to Portugal with his cargo.
Portuguese establishment of the Estado da Índia
After Vasco da Gama’s return, Dom Manuel, the king of
Portugal, considerably expanded the penetration of Portuguese interests in the
Indian Ocean. In 1505, the decision was made to send a viceroy in order to
establish the Estado da Índia Portuguesa, designed with the dual purpose of
“war with the Moors and trade with the heathen,” according to a contemporary
historian.[29]
More than simply seeking a share in the spice trade, Dom Manuel was now
prepared to establish a Portuguese state in India that would provide military
security for the factories, ports for its ships, and bases from which to seize
control of shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, all governed by its own regional
government. The legal justification for such conquest lay in the Padroado Real issued from the Vatican.
“If the rulers of Bijapur or Vijayanagar could levy taxes and issue passports,
maintain armies, make treaties and do justice over the populations under their
sway, then so could the king of Portugal in his dominion which was the sea.”[30] The first viceroy that
was sent was Dom Francisco de Almeida, with powers to control all trade,
negotiate with local rulers, and wage war with any of those rulers, as he saw
fit. Establishing a foothold on the Malabar Coast of India, this new state was
to take control of the spice trade in the Indian Ocean. Ships were to be
required to purchase a cartaz or pass
from the Portuguese and declare their cargo and passengers, as well as pay
custom dues. To enforce these regulations, the viceroy would have to fortify
his factories on the coast and maintain a war fleet on the ocean. Afonso de
Albuquerque, who was to become the viceroy replacing Almeida, was sent out the
following year with another fleet. In addition to fulfilling the king’s
mandate, both commanders also took to pillaging and looting coastal towns along
the way to amass personal fortunes as Vasco da Gama had.
At this point, the Mamluk rulers in Egypt chose to send their own fleet under the command of Amir Husain to confront the invaders. An alliance was made with Malik Ayaz, the ruler of the port of Diu on the Gujarat coast. In 1508, the two fleets united and engaged a Portuguese fleet commanded by the son of the viceroy, soundly defeating it, killing the commander, and taking a number of the Portuguese prisoner. Subsequently, however, Ayaz repudiated his alliance with Husain and the Mamluks, aligning himself with Almeida instead and assisting him in defeating the Egyptian fleet the following year.[31] This incident highlights once again the complex nature of the intra-Muslim relationships in the trading networks of the Indian Ocean. The Mamluks did not repeat the attack, having to defend their own realm from the advancing Ottoman Empire, which would conquer Egypt in 1517, taking control of the Red Sea and its ports as part of the conquest.
In 1509, Afonso de Albuquerque was appointed Viceroy,
and set about to establish a secure land base for the Portuguese. After another
defeat at the hand of the inhabitants of Calicut, he turned his attention to conquering
Goa, one of the key ports of Bijapur under the rule of the Adil Shahis. Albuquerque’s
initial conquest of the city was relatively easy, but holding it against
renewed army under the new Sultan of Bijapur proved more difficulty. After
being driven from the city, Albuquerque returned with replenished forces of his
own and took the city in 1510. The Muslims of the city, including the Turkish
mercenaries who had assisted the Sultan, were massacred by the Portuguese.[32] The Hindu residents had
vacillated, initially supporting the Portuguese in driving out the Muslims,
then supporting the Bijapur army in driving out the Christians, and finally
throwing their lot in with the Portuguese once again, and so escaped the
slaughter. More than another chapter in the continual animosity between the
Portuguese Christians and the Indian Muslims, this event led to the permanent
establishment of Portuguese territory on the South Asian subcontinent.
Albuquerque laboured intently to restore Goa to its former position as a key
port city, cementing alliances with various rulers in India as well as other
parts of Asia.
With a secure base on the Indian coast, Albuquerque
returned to his earlier ambition to control trade in the Red Sea and the
Persian Gulf, as well as to a long-range goal of defeating the Mamluk power in
Egypt. On his initial voyage to India, he had delayed his arrival by capturing
the city of Ormuz on the mouth of the Persian Gulf and seeking to erect a
fortress there. Dissension among his crew had forced him to abandon the
project. But in 1515 he conquered the city once again and built a fort,
maintaining the ruler as a puppet king.[33] He attempted to take the
port of Aden on the Red Sea as well, but that proved too difficult.
Nevertheless, the first two viceroys had secured for the Portuguese crown three
of the major port cities in the trading network of the Indian Ocean, Diu, Goa,
and Ormuz, in each case defeating Muslim rulers who were in power. Malacca in
the east was taken in 1519, extending Portuguese control even further. While
recognizing the complexity of the inter-relationships between the various
Muslim communities in the region, it nevertheless becomes apparent that from
the Portuguese perspective, to accomplish their goal of securing a monopoly of
the spice trade in the Indian Ocean, defeating the Muslims had been a key
strategy if not a goal in itself.
The intention to attack the Mamluk power in Egypt was pre-empted by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim I. After the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, the Hijaz and, consequently, the Red Sea ports, a letter was written to the Sultan of Gujarat declaring the Ottoman victory, indicating that the Ottomans were not only aware of the Portuguese invasion of the Indian Ocean, but also taking responsibility for providing peace and security for the region once again. “If God so wills, with numerous troops and soldiers beyond count, he [the sultan] will shortly drive those mischief-making [Portuguese] infidels … to their black destiny and [with his troops] who will act as a tempest, he will force them like waves, one army after another, into the wind of destruction … and there will be tranquillity and security, if God so wills!”[34] While the Gujarati Sultan’s response to the Ottoman Sultan did not mention the Portuguese, Malik Ayaz prepared his own response in which he described the invasion in some detail and made suggestions how they might be defeated.[35] After having made peace with the Christian foreigners, Ayaz was now prepared to shift his allegiance once again, hopeful that the Ottomans would be able to do what the local Indian rulers had been unable to accomplish. No less than the Portuguese Christians, the Indian Muslims saw the conflict not only in terms of competition for the control of trade and land, but also in terms of religious difference.
Portuguese missionaries
Although the first Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier,
did not arrive until 1542, there had been a missionary presence starting with
the Cabral expedition. Franciscan friars and other priests had accompanied the
Portuguese fleets both to care for the needs of the sailors as well as to
engage in evangelization among the Indian people. In Cabral’s conflict with the
port of Calicut, three of the eight Fransicans were reported to have died in
the subsequent uprising. [36]
Records indicate that Roman Catholic Christian community consisted primarily of
the Portuguese sailors, traders and settlers and their families. At times,
financial incentives were provided by the governor to induce the local Indians
to convert, but difficulties was encountered in providing pastoral care
following baptism.[37] Afonso de Albuquerque
himself became involved in seeking to convert the Raja in the port city of
Cochin who was actively opposing the conversion of his people. Efforts were
also made to convert local women as partners for the foreigners.[38] The building of churches
and monasteries proceeded at a slow pace, the first Franciscan monastery being
established only in 1518.[39] Despite the papal bulls
of the Padroado Real and despite the
commitment to spread the Church on the part of the Portuguese monarchy and
their viceroys in India, concern for the expansion of the Church was initially
dwarfed by geopolitical and economic concerns.
Consequently the Christian engagement with Muslims ranged from military conflict to political diplomacy for the most part. While sustained theological engagement such as that represented by Jerome Xavier in the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar would be delayed until the end of the 16th century, Jesuits were already active in the late 1550s, when they were invited by the latest member of the Adil Shahi dynasty in Bijapur to discuss their faith.[40] What had begun as a violent relationship of conquest and defeat had evolved into courtly debates of religious law and beliefs. While the Portuguese certainly had arrived in India with a crusading zeal to fight and defeat the Muslims wherever they might encounter them, the reality of the trading relationships proved to be more complex, involving numerous Muslim populations, some of which were needed as allies against other groups. Nevertheless, the various Muslim communities that had gained control of the lucrative trade in the Indian Ocean were decisively displaced by the Christian Portuguese, who came with papal authority to not only spread the Christian gospel, but also to monopolize trade in the region. It is against this backdrop that the subsequent relations between Christians and Muslims during the 16th and into the 17 centuries must be seen.
[1]
Nigel Cliff, The last crusade: The epic voyages of Vasco da Gama, New York,
2011, p. 62. On the conquest, see also the entry on Gomes Eanes de Zurara by
John Tolan in Christian-Muslim relations:
A bibliographical history, vol. 5, (1350-1500),
ed. David Thomas and Alex Mallett, History of Christian-Muslim Relations, ed. David
Thomas, et al, no. 20, Leiden, 2013, pp. 415-418.
[2]
C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire,
1415-1825, The history of human society, ed. J. H. Plumb, New York, 1969,
p. 18.
[3]
Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire,
p. 20-22.
[4]
Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire,
p. 22-24.
[5]
Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, p. 229-230.
[6]
Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, p. 228-229.
[7]
Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, p. 230.
[8]
John France, The crusades and the expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000-1714, London,
2005, p. 288.
[9]
France, The crusades, p. 296.
[10]
André Wink, Al Hind: The making of the
Indo-Islamic world, vol. 3, Indo-Islamic
society, 14th-15th centuries, Leiden, 2005, pp.
171-172.
[11]
Wink, Al Hind, p. 172.
[12]
Wink, Al Hind, p. 192.
[13]
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The career and
legend of Vasca da Gama, Cambridge, 1997, p. 97.
[14]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, p. 99.
[15]
M. N. Pearson, Merchants and rulers in
Gujarat: The response to the Portuguese in the sixteenth century Berkeley,
1976, pp. 10-12.
[16]
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Writing
the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics, New York, 2012, pp.
39-40.
[17]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, pp. 106-107.
[18]
Pius Malekandathil, The Mughals, the
Portuguese and the Indian Ocean: Changing Imagerries of Maritime India,
Delhi, 2013, pp. 60-61; see p. 76, n. 8 on the increasing Muslim population
during this period.
[19][19]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, pp. 103-105.
[20]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, p. 109.
[21]
Joan Pau Rubiés, Travel and ethnology in
the Renaissance: South India through European eyes, 1250-1625, in Past and
Present Publications, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 167-168.
[22]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, p. 129.
[23]
For an explanation of the Portuguese misperceptions of the Hindu temple, see Subrahmanyam,
The career and legend of Vasca da Gama,
pp. 131-133.
[24]
Malyn Newitt, A history of Portuguese
overseas expansion, 1400-1669. London, 2005, pp. 64-66.
[25]
Newitt, A history of Portuguese overseas
expansion, pp. 67-68.
[26]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, pp. 205-208.
[27]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, p. 214.
[28]
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of
Vasca da Gama, pp. 228-219.
[29]
Newitt, A history of Portuguese overseas
expansion, p. 72.
[30]
Newitt, A history of Portuguese overseas
expansion, p. 73.
[31]
Alam and Subrahmanyam, Writing the Muslim
World, pp. 40-42,
[32]
Bailey W. Diffie and George D. Winius, Foundations
of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580, Minneapolis, 1977, pp. 250-254.
[33]
Newitt, A history of Portuguese overseas
expansion, p. 88.
[34]
Alam and Subrahmanyam, Writing the Muslim
World, p. 45.
[35]
Alam and Subrahmanyam, Writing the Muslim
World, pp. 47-50.
[36][36]
A. Mathias Mundadan, History of
Christianity in India, vol. 1, From
the Beginning up to the middle of the sixteenth century (up to 1542),
Bangalore, 1989, pp. 355-356.
[37]
Mundadan, History of Christianity in
India, p. 359-361.
[38]
Mundadan, History of Christianity in
India, pp. 359-366.
[39]
Dauril Alden, The Making of an
enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750,
Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 43.
[40]
Alam and Subrahmanyam, Writing the Muslim
world, pp. 252-255.
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