GERMAN COFFERS, MERCHANT BANKERS OF ANTWERP AND GENOA... AND GOA The European Influence in Goa and the German Contribution to the Portuguese Trade and Commerce in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries.
Luis de Assis Correia [email protected] By one of the greatest ironies of history, the Sultan of Malindi sent an Omani plot, Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Majid al-Najdi, the most celebrated Arab navigator and theorist of navigation of the fifteenth century, popularly known as Ahmad ibn Majid, to Vasco da Gama, and piloted by Ahmad ibn Majid, the Portuguese caravels set sail from Malindi in late April. They traversed the Indian Ocean and made land fall at Calicut on May 20, 1498. Unwittingly, ibn Majid al-Najdi, not only helped the Portuguese in their discovery of the maritime route to India, but also was directly responsible for the destruction of Arab primacy in the seas and the extinction of Arab monopoly of trade in Oriental spices. Earlier, when the caravels weighed anchor in the Tejo on July 8, 1497, far away in the Arabian Sea, lay Goa, its citizens unaware that just 13 years later this monumental Portuguese voyage of discovery of the maritime route would inextricably intertwine itself with the fate of Goans for the next four-and-a-half centuries, after Afonso de Albuquerque's reconquest of Goa and the subsequent transfer of the Capital from Cochin to Goa in 1530. In the European context, Vasco da Gama's arrival at Calicut, gave India to Europe and to England. Vasco da Gama unknowingly became one of the three men -- the other two were Cristovão Colombo and Fernão Magalhães -- who saved the Europe of the Renaissance and of the Reformation from being laid waste by the Ottoman Sultans. MONEY FROM GERMAN MERCHANTS Had not Vasco da Gama, twenty years before the battles and successes of Frederick Barbarossa in the Mediterranean, bestowed upon Portugal the riches of the East Indies, the Habsburgh King Charles V could never have succeeded in driving back from the frontiers of Germany and the Italian coast, the hordes of Sulaiman Pasha, the Magnificent. The defenders of Christendom could not have achieved the victories had not the coffers of the German merchants and financiers provided the money, specially the Fuggars and Welsers operating in the Estado da India, the merchant bankers of Antwerp and Genoa, who derived their wealth from the newly discovered maritime route to Calicut and access to the Portuguese naus da India-Oriental [Portuguese merchant-men] to dominate the spice trade of South India and the Spice Islands. With the discovery of the maritime route to Calicut, Vasco da Gama made Lisbon and Antwerp the Emporia of the World. >From then on, the European nations awakened to Portugal's riches and vied with each other to outdo the Portuguese. But Portugal being a maritime nation of intrepid pioneers, with a strong naval tradition, controlled the seas. The European nations were unable to challenge the supremacy of the Portuguese in the East during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Portuguese had in their employ large numbers sailors from Cochin and Goa, and German mercenary gunnery experts, who helped the Portuguese navy to control the seas. ENGLAND TAKES A KEEN INTEREST It was only after the arrival in Goa of an English Jesuit priest, Thomas Stephens (Tómas Estevão) on 24th October, 1579 that England began to take a keen interest in the Portuguese Oriental spice trade. Fr. Thomas Stephens lived in Goa for forty years. He devoted his time for the acquisition of complete mastery of KonKani, Marathi and Sanskrit. He wrote in Portuguese, KonKani and Marathi religious texts for the education of the indigenous in the tenets of the Christian faith. Besides, the output of Religious works, the most important literary activity of Fr. Thomas Stephens were his letters from Goa to his father, also named Thomas Stephens, a City of London merchant and to his brother, Robert Stephens. Of the many letters, one dated 10th November 1579 written soon after his arrival in Goa is preserved and included in Hakluyt's Voyages -- Navigation, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation, Edinburgh (1886); and the one written in Latin to his brother, Richard in Paris, is preserved in part at the National Library in Brussels, Belgium. The first letter to his father, written in mercantile style. It described the Portuguese trade in the East Indies and held out the strongest inducements to the City of London merchants, which spurred them to embark on East Indies trade speculations. This was more so because Fr. Thomas Stephens showed a remarkably thorough grasp of commercial benefits of such an enterprise and the riches it would bring to England. Fr. Thomas Stephens exhorted his father to urge his countrymen, the City of London and the Queen to also secure a share of the Indo-Portuguese trade. His letters stirred great interest among the City merchants, who saw mercantile chances and possibilities in the East to supplant their oldest ally, Portugal, who had pioneered the maritime trade in the Indian Ocean and the East. His first letter caused such amazement that one City merchant exclaimed: "A Roman Catholic ecclesiastic should enter with such eagerness and penetration with commercial affairs. His advices are the strongest inducements, which the City of London merchants have been offered in India speculation." (quoted from Anderson's English in Western India) At first an Association of English merchants was formed in 1599 for developing trade with the East Indies and the following year was granted the Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I on 1st December 1600. The Association was renamed The Honourable East India Company. The Company was transformed from a commercial trading venture to one that would eventually rule India. The impact of Fr Thomas Stephen's letters was the precursor of the British Raj. A DUTCHMAN, AND THE PEPPER FLEET In 1583 Felipe II of Spain succeeded to the throne of Portugal as Filipe I of Portugal and his first Carta Régia announced his choice of the Archbishop of all Indies and that Frei Vicente de Fonseca would sail for Goa in the first pepper fleet of that year. The household of the Archbishop was approved by His Majesty and among the forty recruits was a young Dutchman called Jan Huyghen, who was selected as valet and one of the lay accountants of the Archbishop's household and among the German recruits was Bernard Burcherts. The Archbishop with his retinue arrived in Goa on 21st September, 1538. The Spanish King treated the Estado da India as a colony of little interest except as a trading post and the first casualty of the Spanish succession was the City of Goa. In June 1587, the São Filipe, a carrack of the Carreira da India was homeward bound from Goa with a cargo of spices and Oriental goods. Sir Francis Drake, who was operating off Cabo Verde and Açores sighted the São Filipe and prepared to attack. The Portuguese, flying their national flag, did not believe that the English, their oldest ally would attack them, but Drake saw otherwise, as the carrack belonging to the King of Spain, an enemy of England. The crew of the São Filipe, after an arduous journey, was no match for the heavy guns of the English. The Portuguese Captain and the crew surrendered readily and were put on board of an English ship and transported to the island of São Miguel. Drake steered São Filipe to his home port, Plymouth. "NOT" AN ACT OF PIRACY The carrack was loaded with pepper, cinnamon, cloves, calicoes, silks and ivories, besides gold, silver and caskets of jewels. The total value was calculated by the City Merchants to be Pounds Sterling 150,000. Drake's share of the loot was over Pound Sterling 17,000. and Queen Elizabeth's more than forty thousand. Both for Drake and his Queen the capture of São Filipe in Drake's own words: "made the voyage a commercial venture and not act of piracy against Portugal, their ally". The loss of São Filipe not only aggravated the financial difficulties of Felipe II but also ruined the Goa based merchants, whose cargoes were mortgaged to the German banks, and many of the merchants went bankrupt. Drake claimed that he did care for the Portuguese merchants in Goa or their German bankers, so long as his Queen received her share of the plunder. But the greater loss to Portuguese shipping was the capture of the ship's Roteiro [Rutter]. The Portuguese Captains had always guarded their Rutters with their life from falling into enemy hands and it was the first time that a Rutter fell into the hands of the enemy -- the Ruttert of the São Filip. The English Navy was overjoyed with the capture of the Rutter and having studied the charts began to prepare its fleets to sail to India. Moreover, Queen Elizabeth having seen the wealth captured from the São Filipe readily granted the Honourable East India Company her Royal Charter. The loss of São Filipe ruined the plans of the Spanish King, Felipe II to attack England. When the Roman Catholic Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland sought to destroy the Protestant cousin Elizabeth Tudor, the Queen of England arrested Mary Stewart and ferried her to England and executed her on 28th February 1587. This led the Catholic Monarchs to support Felipe II of Spain in his 'Enterprise England', when Felipe II ordered Dom Alvaro da Santa Cruz to assemble a fleet of 500 hundred ships. To obtain the required fleet of five hundred--odd ships, Dom Alvaro stripped the harbours of Spain, Portugal and Italy almost bare of shipping, besides commandeering the Carreira da India, the naval ships in the Indian Ocean and all the big ships on the Goa intracoastal trade. Thus leaving Goa defenceless against enemy attacks, destroyed the East India spice trade, ruined Goa's domestic commerce and imperiled the very existence of the Estado da India. By 3rd September the Invincible Armada was lost and changed the course of European history and destroyed the Portuguese Estado da India, and pushed Goa, the Capital of the once great Portuguese Empire in the East, into the backwaters of History. Following the defeat of the Invincible Armada in 1587, the Dutch, with money and military and naval help from Queen Elizabeth of England threw off the Spanish yoke and began to pursue Spanish interests in the Indian Ocean. They disputed Portuguese supremacy in the East and gained control of the eastern spice trade. THE ESTADO, SEEN AS A SPANISH COLONY Having had early successes the Dutch began to treat the Estado da India as a Spanish colony and systematically attacked Portuguese settlements in India. In 1603, Goa was blockaded, again in 1643-44 and finally in 1656-1663 thereby ruining not only the Carreira da India's maritime trade but also the intra-Indian coastal trade of Goa, which was the monopoly of the indigenous traders of Goa, Chaúl, Diu, Baçaím and Damão. These traders were normally financed by the German factors in Goa. Having lost most of pilots mariners in the carracks and pinches of the Carreira da India to the Armada, and those who survived were held in Lisbon. The was an extreme shortage of seamen in India, be they Portuguese, Christians from Goa, Chaúl, Baçaim, or Mouros from Diu and Damão. At this juncture the English came to the rescue of their oldest ally. To overcome the Dutch blockade of Goa, the English offered to solve the movements of commodities by chartering English ships to carry the Goa trade of the Carreira da India and also the intra-coastal trade in the Indian Ocean. The German factors received their dues, the merchants recovered their investments and the Viceroy's Consultative Council having agreed to pay the English their charter fees, let Goa Treasury finances fall into a perilous state. In 1564, four Englishmen were arrested in Ormuz on suspicion of being spies of Dom António Prior do Crato, the Pretender to the Portuguese Crown. The Englishmen were sent to Goa for judicial investigation. These Englishmen could not speak Portuguese, but two of them spoke Dutch and the Portuguese officials at Ormuz allowed them to contact a Dutch-speaking Jesuit from Flanders. They told the Jesuit that they were Ralph Fitch, John Newbery, both merchants, William Leeds a jeweler and James Storie an artist and painter and they were sent by the English Colony of merchants in Aleppo to set up an English Agency to purchase diamonds, pearls and rubies. The Flemish Jesuit convinced the Portuguese Governor of Ormuz of their innocence and obtained permission to accompany the prisoners to Goa. On arrival in Goa, the Flemish Jesuit contacted Fr. Thomas Stephens to interrogate the prisoners. Fr. Thomas Stephens obtained permission from the Archbishop to allow two members of his staff: Jan Huyghen, the Dutchman and Bernard Bucherts, the German to help in his investigation. The two investigators believed that the Englishmen were innocent and the case report was sent to the Archbishop, who persuaded the Viceroy to release the four Englishmen and allow them to open a shop in Goa with the patronage of the Archbishop. The report of the spy scare at Ormuz reached Lisbon overland via Aleppo and as a result, the Viceroy received an Order from Filipe I for an immediate report on the investigations. However, the King's Order was secretly revealed to the Englishmen and they were allowed to make a hasty departure of the first three, carrying with them their gold. The fourth James Storie having converted to Catholicism entered the Jesuit Seminary in the City of Goa and later left the Jesuit Noviciate, settled in the City and set up his studio. He married a Luso-Indian lady and settled in Goa. It is believed, that their departure could never been allowed without the influence of the Jesuits and the connivance of the Viceroy. AN ADDED IMPETUS TO BRITISH INTEREST Ralph Fitch travelled throughout the East Indies and returned to Goa. He secured a passage on one of the Carreira da India ships in Goa and sailed to Lisbon and finally reached England on 29th April 1591 and submitted his report to his principals. Ralph Fitch's report gave the added impetus to the city of London merchants to prepare to set up the East India Company factory in Surat. On 4th August, Archbishop Vicente de Fonseca died on his way back to Goa from Lisbon. Jan Huyghen, following the death of his master, lost his livelihood and found himself in a hostile country. The new Archbishop, Dom Mateus de Medina was not tolerant towards the Calvinist rebels and heretics in His Majesty's provinces in the Northern Netherlands. Jan Huyghen felt that he must leave for Europe, but was afraid that he would not get permission to leave Goa. He had abused his position in the Archbishop's service. As the secretary of the most powerful Archbishop of Goa, Jan Huyghen had access not only to the Government of Goa Archives, but also to the trade documents of Casa da India. In fact, he had a Carte Blanche to inspect whatever document he wished to see and copy, and he pilfered a vast amount of documentary information on the economy, maritime secrets and also had collected much data on the political and military situation in the Estado da India. He was toying with the idea to moot a plan to leave Goa overland to Aleppo, when an opportunity helped him to escape with the annual pepper fleet, which was getting ready to sail to Lisbon. Jan Huyghen was on friendly terms with the German factors working for the German financiers Fuggers and Welsers, who had financed the Crown Council's acquisition of the carrack, Santa Cruz, an additional nau for the pepper fleet, as there was a glut of spices in Malabar and needed an extra ship to carry the additional cargoes. Jan Huyghen, successfully negotiated to be employed as the German factors' representative of the 'Pepper Farmers' on board the Santa Cruz. This enabled him to obtain his passport and the necessary certificate to leave Goa with all the material filched from the Goa Government Archives: much indispensable navigational data and secret Portuguese records, charts and maps that he could lay his hands on. But he was not able to lay his hansds on the Roteiros. Dr. Germano Correia has called him the espião Holandês. In denouncing Jan Huyghen's activities in Goa Dr. Germano Correia said that the Goa Government made a grave error by allowing him to leave the country. On arrival in his home town Enkhuizen, Jan Huyghen, based on the stolen Portuguese documents, published his book, The Itinerário, in 1595/96 in the Netherlands. The Itinerário revolutionised the maritime and economic history of India Portuguesa and had direct effect upon conquests made by the Dutch, English and French navigators in the Far East. Jan Huyghen single handedly destroyed the Estado da India and annihilated Portuguese maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. THE GERMAN CONTRIBUTION TO PORTUGUESE TRADE, COMMERCE The German relations with the Estado da India began as early as the first three Portuguese ships in the Armada of Dom Francisco de Almeida anchored of the coast of Calicut in 1505. These ships were the São Jerónimo, São Rafael and São Leornardo sent by the German Financiers. Hans Meyer was the writer of the ship São Rafael and Balthasar Sprenger of São Leornardo and a third merchant was Ulrich Imhoff, who returned to Portugal in May 1506. The discovery of the sea-route from Lisbon to Calicut by Vasco da Gama at the end of the fifteenth century and the Portuguese establishment of trading posts on the West Coast of India at the beginning of the sixteenth century brought changes of considerable importance in the economic activities of Europe. The German merchants who maintained their commercial establishments in Italy, especially in Venice, now decided to shift their interests to Lisbon, and close down the Fundaco dei Tadesci in Venice. In 1503, King Dom Manuel I invited the Germans to establish a House in Lisbon and Simon Ausburg, an agent of Anton Wesler and Conrad Vahlim and Company, the well known merchants of Ausburg approached the King to permit them to establish a trading Company in Lisbon, on long term basis and asked for certain privileges to enable them to conduct trade in Portugal and its territories. Dom Manuel I issued a Carta Régia in 1503 granting the required permission and a few privileges, enabling them to conduct trade in Portugal and its territories. They were exempted from all kind of taxes and custom duties. They were allowed to send copper, lead, vermillion and quick silver to Cochin and to purchase spices and other commodities from India and bring to Portugal in the Carreira da India ships. These privileges were extended to any other German Merchant who wished to trade in Oriental commodities. On 3rd October, 1504 Dom Manuel I issued a Carta Régia renewing the privileges granted to the German merchants, so also on 16th March, 1508, 30th August 1509, 2nd February, 1512 and 7th February, 1511 and these are examples of His Majesty's liberal encouragement given to the German merchants and appointed Valentim Fernandes, another German, residing in Lisbon, as the mediator and interpreter to assist the German merchants. After the death of Dom Manuel I, Dom João III also extended still more privileges and on 3rd December 1534 renewed the special privileges granted to the German merchants. In view of the extraordinary privileges afforded by the Kings of Portugal, the German Merchants concentrated on their trading and commercial activities in Lisbon, Goa and Cochin. They were allowed to send to Lisbon, the jewels and precious stones collected by their factors in India, and from Lisbon to Antwerp, Breman, Hamburg, Lubeck, Dantzig, Ausberg, Nurberg, and Ulm. Lucas Rem and later his brother Hans Rem worked in Lisbon as the factors of the Welsers. The profits accrued to the Germans from the fleet of 1505 and the reports sent by the factors, the Rem brothers, created a great excitement among the German traders and financiers and moved them to have a closer contact with the Estado da India. The German merchants and financiers applied for permission to trade directly with the Estado da India. As the King of Portugal, held the monopoly of trade, rejected the German merchants' request for monopoly of trade in spices and other commodities of Oriental origin. The German merchants had to be satisfied with contracts to purchase the merchandise in Lisbon, as stipulated in the Order. They later took the stipulated merchandise from Lisbon to Antwerp and other centers. They now began to advance money and metals: copper and silver to the King of Portugal for the merchandise that would be made over to them according to the terms of the contract concluded from time to time. The Merchant House of Welsers paid 7,000 cruzados to the King in 1516 for the purchase of pepper. The Indian commodities purchased by the Welsers were taken to their factories in Nunberg, Lyons, Saragossa, Venice, Milan, Rome,Genoa, Freiburg, Berne, Zurich and Antwerp. The Fuggers of Germany also advanced large sums of money to purchase of spices and other commodities that were taken to Lisbon from India. Their participation in the Portuguese trade with India became inevitable because of their hold on the copper from Tyrol, Sweden and Denmark, and Hungary. TO THE JEWELS, VIA GOA Since pepper and other spices from the Indian Sub-Continent continued to be the Royal Monopoly till the last quarter of the of the sixteenth century the German merchants could purchase jewels, diamonds, rubies and precious stones and import the merchandise into Lisbon hence they established their contacts in Goa and sent their specialists in jewels and pearls of the East. Jorge Herwart was their specialist in jewels and precious stones. He had a workshop in Lisbon in 1511, where stones were cut and polished. The Herwats had their agents in Goa and in Antwerp. Christoph Van Stetten was their dealer in precious stones in that port-town. Sebastian Neidhart along with Lazarus Nuremburger worked for the Hearwarts for some time and had great experience in the business of jewels and precious stones in Seville. The latter had been to India for the Herwarts. It is recorded, that in 1534, the Herwarts in Lisbon used to cut and polish 365 precious stones at a time, and as they had better contacts with India, they concluded a contract with Jorge Imhoff according to which the latter agreed to serve Jorge Herwart for a period of eight and a half years in India from 1st February 1526 to 15thAugust 1534. The Herwarts purchased a large variety of commodities in Europe and Africa and through Imhoff exchanged these goods for the precious stones and jewels from India. They sold in India red scarlet, knives, tapestry, brocades made in Cordova, black and red velvets, door curtains from Lisbon, red cloth and scarlatins from Toledo, velvet and textiles from Santarém, Toledo and Valencia, tritena from Valencia and luxury items from Italy, specially from Venice, black cloth, silver and gold items, wine, coffers from Flanders and France, glass jars, cups, chamber pots from Lisbon, precious metals in bars, copper, quick silver, money and ivory in Moçambique. Hans Schwertzer, the agent of the Weslers of Nurnberg was in Goa and Vijayanagara in the 1530s. When Schwertzer was ready to leave Lisbon for India, the King's orders came in his way. The King decreed that he did not want to send to India any one without having a household in Portugal, so Schwertzer married a Portuguese lady and stayed the mandatory one year in Lisbon to enable him to proceed to India under the protection of the King. At that time, Vijayanagar, was the centre of trade in diamonds, attracted the agents of the German merchants and financiers. It was chiefly through Goa that diamonds of the Deccan were exported to Lisbon. The diamond mines of Kollur and the kingdom of Golconda were connected to Goa by land routes from the East via Hydrabad. The trade in the diamonds conducted by the Germans gave them the opportunity to be in Goa and this continued to be the aspect of the presence of Germans for a considerable period, and the liberal policy of the Portuguese King during this period in pepper trade offered the German merchants and financiers a beter opportunity for investments in Goa. The Welsers of Ausburg and a branch of the Fuggars under Philip Eduard and his brother Octavius Secundus participated in the contract trade along with Giovani Batista Rovelasci from Milan and Giraldo Paris another merchant from the region of Acken in Germany. The King ratified the Order of 1st December 1585, the contractors had to undertake the responsibility of send 30,000 quintals of pepper every year from India to Lisbon and fit out five vessels to India with the necessary copper for exchange and funds. Markus Mathaus of Welsers took 5/12 parts of the contract. The Fuggar brothers, Philip Eduard and Octavius Secundus took 3/12 parts of the contract and Ferdinand Cron, was sent to India as a representative of the Welsers and Fuggars. Fernando do Crom, as the Portuguese called him, married Dona Maria Leytoa, a daughter of a nobleman in Goa in 1592, with the blessings of the Viceroy Mathias de Albuquerque. This matrimonial alliance paved the way for him to secure citizenship in Goa. He entered into the administration in the City of Goa as well as the House of Mercy (Hermandade da Santa Misericordia). Fernando do Crom extended personal and financial assistance to the Viceroy to wage his battles in the Northern parts of the Estado da India. Since he was a morador y casado the King bestowed upon him the Order Fidalgo da Minha Casa and on 10th Dember 1609 he received the habit of Christ, a Knight of the Order of Christ (Cavalheiro da Ordem de Cristo). In 1624, on account of his association with Viceroys and Officials in Goa, he was forced to leave Goa. On arrival in Lisbon, he found that he was unpopular in certain quarters and applied to the King for permission to settle in Madrid. In 1627 he moved to Madrid, where he continued he continued to live as a person of importance till his death 1637. THE FUGGERS: FROM INFLUENCE TO MONOPOLY The rise of the Fuggers and individual members of the Fugger family, their financial operations within Europe specially Rome and their relations with the Spanish Crown, Naples, Hungary, the Netherlands, Antwerp, Florence and Venice and their control of the mining industry, gave them the monopoly of copper and other metals. The Fuggers saw a great potential in the Luso-Asian trade and moved to Lisbon to avail of the liberal policy of King Dom Manuel I, which enabled them to provide the much needed copper and other metals and, in return the King offered them a share in the spice trade. The Fuggers sent to Lisbon copper, silver and mercury and German money was advanced to finance major transactions. The Fuggers imported from India pearls, diamonds, and other commodities and the Fuggers moved with times. Philipp Eduard and Octavius Secundus restructured the Fugger trading operations. The Fuggers secured the services of Valentim Fernades and Simon Seitz . The Fuggers were involved in providing German Bombardeiros in the Portuguese services. The Fuggers revived the spice trade in Italy. They also suffered the Portuguese losses because of the piracy of the English. And there is a little publicised fact that the Fuggers also undertook the import from India to Europe animals and their activities included in bringing to Lisbon rhinoceroses, horses, elephants, monkeys, birds and may other species. German relations with the Estado da India began as early as the first Portuguese Armada of Dom Francisco de Almeida in 1505 when German mercenaries entered India as artillery-men. Their military service in the Estado da India ended in 1663 when the Dutch systematically conquered the Portuguese trading posts. . Though the Dutch, English, French and Danes, who vied with each other to supplant the Estado da India either by diplomacy or by force; the activities of the Germans did not fall within the traditional colonial ambitions; nevertheless the German had a very vital role in the history in Luso-Indian German relations The Germans who came to India during the Portuguese era were not only merchants, financiers and mercenary artillery-men. With the prosperity brought by the Oriental spice trade to Portugal, created a desire among the Germans to take part in the trading activities and the Portuguese expansion in the East, and more and more Germans began to establish in Lisbon especially in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries. The Germans were associated with the Portuguese in their early expeditions that led to a long series of geographical discoveries. Cartographers in Lisbon contributed to the early Portuguese successes. Portuguese prosperity also attracted several German intellectuals to Lisbon. In this category of Germans could be included publishers, cartographers and geographers. Among them was the celebrated Martim de Bohemia -- a geographer, mathematician and astronomer and took part in the African expeditions. Martim de Bohemia came to Lisbon 1480. It is said that Martim came to Lisbon through his contacts with the Herschvogel. He made the first astrolabe for Portugal, the use of which enabled mariners to calculate the distance according to the height of the sun and the stars, and was used during the first voyage of Vasco da Gama India. Dom João II invited Martim to join the expeditions to Africa and the voyages of Diogo Cão in the years 1484, 1485 and 1486 which reached up to the river Congo, as well as São Tomé, Cabo Verde and other parts of the West African coast and Martim marked the rivers clearly on the globe. Dom João II bestowed upon Martim, the Knighthood of the Order of Christ as "Martim de Bohemia de la isla de Fayal" and these discoveries persuaded Cristovão Colombo to seek a westward sea-route to India and which finally led to the discovery of America, which was earlier identified by Martim. In Goa the first printing press was set up by the Jesuits in 1556 and the first printer was probably João Bustamante. In 1563 João de Endem published Dr. Garcia da Horta's book Os Colloquies dos Simples e Drogas da India There was also another printing press owned the German João Blávio, which he bequeathed to Francisco Correia, but there are no extant works from this printing press. DISAPPEARED FROM GOA And finally we come to the year 18th September, 1740, by which time the German merchants and financiers disappeared from Goa, but in the Portuguese-Maratha war that year, the Portuguese forces were defeated at Baçaím and the Portuguese surrendered the Província do Norte to the Marathas. At the same time the Maratha Southern Command had attacked South Goa and occupied the villages of Assolna, Ambelim, Cuncolim and its fort and Velim in Salcete. Despite the peace treaty signed by the Maratha General Chimnaji Appa, he retained the four villages, which he wanted for himself and were only saved for the Portuguese by the diplomacy and political acumen of the German origin, Portuguese Plenipotentiary Dom Francisco Barão de Gallenfell, assisted by the able interpreter and diplomat Bogona Camotim, impressed upon the Viceroy, Dom Pedro Mascarenhas, Conde de Sandomil that since the Goa Treasury was empty, due the war, could ill afford to maintain these two forts in the vicinity of the enemy territory. Dom Francisco through his mediation along with Capt. Inchbird representing the English General of Bombay, after prolonged negotiations, and persistence of Dom Francisco, after the death of Chimnaji Appa, ultimately convinced the Maratha Peshwa, Baji Rao II to sign the peace treaty. Under this treaty the Portuguese ceded the forts of Chaúl and Korlai as demanded by the Marathas, and the Peshwa in return restored the four villages Ambelim, Assolna, Cuncolim and its for and Velim in Salcete to the Portuguese, and the long drawn hostilities between the Marathas and the Portuguese ultimately came to an end. The Estado da India was reduced to Goa, Damão, Diu and Nagar Aveli and stagnated without even the intra-coastal trade of old was once financed the German Bankers. EPISODE, ALMOST FORGOTTEN And to end I would like to add that during the Napoleonic Wars, there is and episode almost forgotten by historians: The British occupation of Goa for sixteen years and exerted a great influence in all walks of life in Goa. This occupation was engineered by Lord Wellesley and his younger brother Arthur Wellesley ostensibly to protect Goa from an attack by Tipu Sultan of Mysore. The British occupied Cabo and the Fort Gaspar Dias in 1798/99, where they stayed till April 1817 and where they built a cemetery, and also forcibly took possession of Fort Aguada. During this period of occupation, the Viceroy of Goa, Francisco da Vega da Câmara Pimentel provided the British officers with domestic staff as the Viceroy was only too happy to provide jobs for the impoverished Goans, drawn mainly from the Christian peasant and poor classes. The withdrawal of the British forces was, in fact, a boon to the impoverished Goans. The returning British officers were so impressed with their domestic employees that they requisitioned the Viceroy to allow them to take their employees to Bombay and elsewhere in their Cantonments in British India. This was the beginning of the exodus of Goan Christian economic migrants in search of employment not only in the domestic service but also in the commercial and industrial sector, followed by the elite Goans and from then onwards is the lot of Goans to play an unique part in British Imperial history, -- Luis Assis Correia [email protected] has authored three books on Goan history. This talk was delivered at the Fundacao Oriente, Fontainhas, Goa, recently.
