Politica dos Casmentos - Fact or Fiction? (part 2) 6. Barely having nurtured their wounds and repaired their salvageable ships, to AA’s good fortune, a very large Portuguese armada heading for Malacca happened to stop at AnjadevaIslandto re-supply. They helped AA retake Goa(third battle) starting on November, 25. After the victory on December 10, likely the enabling armada and their soldiers and sailors proceeded on to its designated mission in the Malacca, leaving AA with his remaining soldiers and sailors on Tiswadi. Only a few, likely volunteered from the reinforcement to stay on in Goa, preferring (like most soldiers and sailors) a non-combat region (in the Malaccas) to a battle zone (in the Indies). 7. Certainly AA wanted his remaining soldiers to settle down in Goaand defend their new homestead. On getting older, these men could become Home guards and Reserves to an active military. AA’s goal and desire were simple, basic and self-serving. Likely AA had NO IDEA of the concept, terminology or desire for "the miscegeny of the newly formed Goan 'white' identity" which is being attributed to him. 8. Given Portuguese track-record of, failures against adversaries in the region, and AA first experience in taking Goa, it was uncertain AA would survive this second victory. Some modern PhD students and lusophiles may have the desire to give AA prophetic powers. 9. Many history accounts report that immediately after the victory, there was a large ceremony involving marriages between AA’s soldiers with widows of vanquished Muslim soldiers with enactment of ‘Politica dos Casmentos’. This ‘mass marriage ceremony’ was preceded by a ‘mass baptism ceremony’ of the Muslim widows.
10. Getting Portuguese soldiers married and live locally made sense for those who had no desire to return to Portugal. But likely many soldiers and sailors had already seen enough battles (and their comrades die) that few may have taken AA’s offer of FREE(read confiscated, unclaimed) land, if they settled in Goa. (See my prior goanet posts of direct and indirect impact and effects of three distinct but consecutive battles in one year on the Isle of Goa / Tiswadi). 11. There are several reports of prior insubordination of AA’s soldiers on many occasions. So reports of many wanting to stay in Goa under AAs' command may be suspect. Most sailors and soldiers who came to the Indiesdesired to return home to settle as fidalgos with their new accumulated wealth (see analysis); rather than to be laboring land-owners in a new tropical land. And this Goa settlement complicated with a new language, lifestyle, environment, culture, cuisine. Soldiers and sailors are prepared to a lifestyle of sacrifice for a short period, but not to a life of struggle and change for the rest of their life. Analysis to follow next. Please be patient.:=)) Please digest and understand the dynamics of events. Those with itchy fingers, please give those fingers a rest. Or use them for purposes other than banging on the key board.:=)) Yet constructive challenges to my writings supported by facts are as always welcome. Regards, supurlo Goenkar, GL