The Portuguese Presence In India

The author of this book hails from a Goan emigrant family and was born in British India and has had a rare exposure to British rule in India, to the Portuguese presence in Goa and to independent India, besides having lived in the United States for three years for post-graduate studies in engineering. After Independence, India raised objections to two forms of the Portuguese presence: (1) Portuguese government’s patronage over certain Catholic dioceses which had been evangelized by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, a dispute which was quickly resolved by July 18, 1969 and (2) the Portuguese political presence in Goa, Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, which India claimed on grounds of geography and Portugal claimed on grounds of history and juridical superiority,the absence of any significant desire of the people to merge with India. The author has been privy to a full set of diplomatic exchanges with India, few other countries and within the Portuguese Government, in four volumes published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lisbon, an official de-classification, on Goa and its dependencies, 1947 to 1967, some of which have been extensively used in their complete text for better understanding in the book.

This is a clear account, written from an Indian point of view, of Portuguese activities in India.

The studies brought together in this volume were published over the last thirty years and are concerned, directly or indirectly, with the Portuguese presence in India between about 1500 and 1650. They have been arranged into four groups of which the first, 'The Portuguese in India', includes pieces on the changing character of the empire in India, Goa in the 17th century, the Portuguese India Company of 1628-33, smugglers, the great famine of the early 1630s and the ceremonial induction process for new viceroys. A second group focuses on the life, career and background of the count of Linhares, before, during and after his term as viceroy at Goa. The third group consists of studies on travel and communications between India and Portugal, both by sea and by land. The collection concludes with studies under the heading of 'historiography and problems of interpretation', on Charles Boxer as a biographer, and on Vasco da Gama's reputation for violence.