This page presents information related to the fourth class session of J. B. Owens's fall 2002 upper-division undergraduate and graduate course, History 360/560, The Spanish Empire. This course is part of the core curriculum in comparative and world history of the Department of History, Idaho State University. The sole purpose of this page is to provide an orientation to the reading assignments and class session for those students enrolled in History 360/560. See the source page for the complete Dublin Core standard metadata.

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Africa and the Estado da India

West African commerce and production. The relationships between European countries and merchants, on the one hand, and West African centers of production and trade, on the other. A consideration of Portuguese attempts to "participate" in Indian Ocean commerce through the conquest of a series of major ports and an examination of the Estado da India as a form of seigniorial administration. Particular attention will be given to the relationship between this type of lordship and Portuguese penetration into the commercial life of the vast region between East Africa and Japan.

Reading: Thornton, ch. 2; Payne, vol. I, ch. 10 (pp. 198-200) and ch. 12.

  1. What were the motives, nature, and short-term significance of the major Iberian military and commercial expeditions to Sub-Saharan Africa in the fifteenth century?
  2. What was the relationship of African trade with the Portuguese in the fifteenth century to overall economic production and trade in West Africa?
  3. What is the importance in a hierarchical society of the importation of novel luxury goods produced at some distance locus?
  4. What factors lead to changes in fashion/taste/demand for certain products?
  5. Why did governments in the first global age so often feel that they had to control the long-distance trade involving their subjects?
  6. Why were Italian merchants so often involved in Castilian and Portuguese economic ventures in the Atlantic?
  7. Why did European traders in the Atlantic so often try to resort to monopoly practices?
  8. What factors did a government have to consider when deciding to establish a trade monopoly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries?
  9. Why was the Portuguese Crown never able to dominate West African trade with Europe?
  10. Why were the chartered trading companies of northern European countries unable to impose trade monopolies in West Africa?
  11. To what extent did Iberian ideas about market control derive from Muslim examples?
  12. Despite all the African and European attempts at control, why did African trade remain competitive from the period of first European contact through the seventeenth century?
  13. What was the impact of Portuguese intervention on the social environment of the region from East Africa to Japan?
  14. Why were the major territorial monarchies of the Ottoman Empire, continental India, the Ming Empire, and Japan able to restrict European commercial, military, and political penetration in the sixteenth century?
  15. Why did the Portuguese decide to use expensive, violent means to intervene in the generally peaceful trade of the Indian Ocean instead of exploiting the advantages of their all-water route around Africa to profit from the peaceful marketing of Asian products in Europe?
  16. Why did the Portuguese Crown select Antwerp, rather than Lisbon, as the financial and marketing center for its pepper monopoly?
  17. Why did the early Portuguese authorities in the Indian Ocean make a distinction between native Muslims and Muslims from Southwest Asia and North Africa?
  18. Why did the Portuguese Crown take nine years to exploit Bartolomeu Dias's expedition around the Cape of Good Hope?
  19. What impact did the hostile reception of East African rulers to Da Gama's expedition have on Portuguese economic and military policy in the Indian Ocean?
  20. What impact did events during Da Gama's long stay in Calicut have on Portuguese economic and military policy in the Indian Ocean?
  21. Why did East Africa become important in Portuguese economic relations with the Malabar Coast of India?
  22. Why was the Portuguese monarch willing to permit pirate activity in the Indian Ocean by his European subjects? What were the consequences of this attitude?
  23. What were the two patterns of Portuguese activity in the Indian Ocean, and what were the consequences of having two patterns of Portuguese activity in the region?
  24. What were the sources of opposition to the policies of Afonso de Albuquerque (d. 1515) as Portuguese governor in the Indian Ocean?
  25. Why was it significant that Goa was a center for the importation of horses into India?
  26. Why would rumors that Afonso de Albuquerque wanted to become seigniorial lord of Goa have seemed plausible in the political context of the Portuguese Crown?
  27. Why would Gujarati merchants have become a major source of anti-Portuguese activities in a variety of West Indian ports?
  28. Why did the carreira system develop as part of Portuguese economic activity in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia?
  29. Why did the Portuguese fail to maintain a united front in their contacts with East Africans and South and Southeast Asians?
  30. Why did the Portuguese continue to allow Indian Ocean commodities to be traded through Hurmuz to Syria?
  31. How did the Portuguese cartaz (official pass) system develop?
  32. Why were the Portuguese never able to control commercial interactions in the Indian Ocean?
  33. Why did king Manuel of Portugal want to receive tribute payments, however small, from as many East African and Asian rulers as possible?
  34. Why didn't large numbers of Portuguese and other Iberian peoples emigrate to East Africa and Asia?
  35. Why was the Portuguese presence in the areas from East Africa to Japan primarily an urban one?
  36. Why did the greatest percentage of Portuguese who emigrated to the Indian Ocean and Asia come from the region of Entre Douro e Minho in northern Portugal?
  37. In what ways were the divisions within the Portuguese casado population in the Estado da India like those in Brazil?
  38. Why did considerable numbers of members of monastic orders (Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits) emigrate to the Indian Ocean and Asia?
  39. Why did the Portuguese authorities permit Asian mercantile groups with their own trading networks to play such a significant role in the major Portuguese administrative and commercial centers?
  40. Why was the Câmara Municipal (Municipal Council) of such great importance in the political life of the Estado da India?
  41. Why did the Santa Casas da Misericórdia (Holy Houses of Mercy) become major institutional sources of political authority and prestige?
  42. Why were casado leaders often seriously divided into bandos (cliques, factions)?
  43. What impact did the religious enthusiasm generated by the Catholic Reformation have on Goa and its immediately dependent territories?
  44. What advantages did Crown officials in Portuguese Asia derive from their administrative positions?
  45. What factors often made the position of Crown authorities, even viceroys, weak relative to casado interests?
  46. Why did the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean and Asia maintain their ties to the Crown government in Europe?
  47. Why was it so easy for Europeans who were not born in Portugal to become subjects of the Portuguese Crown?
  48. Why did hatred of New Christians intensify among the populations of Portuguese Asia in the first half of the seventeenth century?
  49. What factors led to the rise of the solteiro as a social type in Portuguese Asia?
  50. What aspects of the European Portuguese cultural environment took root in Portuguese Asia?

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J. B. Owens
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Revised: 31 August 2002




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