PORTUGUESE STATE

🏮 PORTUGUESE STATE

#EuropeanarrivalinIndia

📍  Coastal parts of India had come under Portuguese power within fifty years of Vasco da Gama’s arrival.

📍 Portuguese had occupied some sixty miles of coast around Goa.

📍  On west coast from Mumbai to Daman and Diu to the approaches to Gujarat, they controlled narrow tract with four important ports and hundreds of towns and villages.

📍  In the south, they had under them a chain of seaport fortresses and trading-posts like Mangalore, Cannanore, Cochin, and Calicut.

📍  And though their power in Malabar was not consolidated, it was enough to ensure influence or control over the local rulers who held the spice growing land.

📍  The Portuguese established further military posts and settlements on the east coast at San Thome (in Chennai) and Nagapatnam (in Andhra).

📍 The Portuguese, the first Europeans to come to India, were also the last to leave this land. It was 1961 before the Government of India recaptured Goa, Daman and Diu from them.