The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

In one respect alone they had a right to complain, and that was, that the Portuguese, not satisfied with extending their commercial transactions, attempted also to overthrow the native religions, just as the Mohammedans did. For the Portuguese conquerors were not only traders, but ardent Christians, firmly convinced of the truth of their religion, and determined to spread it. The squadron commanded by Pedro Alvares Cabral, which had been despatched to India directly after the return of Vasco da Gama, had carried some Franciscan friars, who were left at Cochin, in 1500, to preach their religion. They were speedily followed by other missionaries, chiefly Dominican and Franciscan friars, who increased in number, after the capital of the Portuguese sovereignty was removed to Goa. Great convents arose there, and the missionaries began their labours by preaching in the neighbouring districts, which were divided into parishes after the European fashion, and regarded as ecclesiastical units. The fame of the Goa missionaries was greatly increased by the discovery or pretended discovery of the bones of St. Thomas the Apostle at the spot, which had long attracted the common worship of Mohammedans, Hindus, and native Christians, near Madras, where he was reported to have been martyred. These bones were brought to Goa in 1522, during the government of Duarte de Menezes, and buried with great pomp in the sacred shrine in the Church of St. Thomas at Goa, where they remain to this day. These first Portuguese missionaries were delighted to find native Christians in India when they arrived, and to find them a powerful military caste. They did not at first inquire too minutely into the doctrines and ceremonies of these Christians, who belonged to the Nestorian Church, and far from persecuting them with especial fervour, as was the case later, they regarded the very existence of these Christians as a proof of the vitality of their own faith. After the discovery of the bones of St. Thomas missionaries flocked in increased numbers to India, not only from Portugal, but from Rome itself; and in 1539 Goa was made the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric, and João de Alboquerque was consecrated its first bishop. But the greatest impulse given to the cause of the propagation of the Christian faith was the arrival in India of St. Francis Xavier in 1542, during the government of Martim Affonso de Sousa. This great preacher and great man was not long in making a deep impression upon the natives of India, and the news of the converts he had made without the limits of the Portuguese settlements, attracted a crowd of followers. The Society of the Jesuits, of which he was one of the founders, paid especial attention to this field of mission work, and the progress of Christianity became more and more rapid. This was the golden age of proselytising effort; the Hindus listened with patience to the Christian missionaries, and did not yet begin to persecute them, and the Inquisition which was to bear so heavily upon the native Church of Nestorian Christians, did not inaugurate its forcible methods of conversion until the year 1560.

The name of St. Francis Xavier suggests that of his illustrious friend, Dom João de Castro, who rivalled upon the battlefield the glories of Francisco de Almeida, Affonso de Alboquerque, and Nuno da Cunha, but who was distinguished above them all for the noble purity of his life. De Castro was the intimate friend of the king’s uncle, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, with whom he had been educated, and had won his spurs and the admiration of the Emperor Charles V., by his conduct in the expedition to Tunis. He had served with distinction under Garcia de Noronha and Estevão da Gama in the Indian seas, and on his return home had been employed in the difficult task of evacuating the various Portuguese stations in Morocco, which it had been decided to abandon. He was renowned for the purity and even austerity of his character, and it was for this reason that he was appointed, in 1545, viceroy of India. The situation there was a difficult one, for the Sultan of Turkey had, it is said, at the request of the Venetians, who were disgusted at losing their profitable trade with the East, sent a powerful fleet down the Red Sea to exterminate the Portuguese in India. When João de Castro arrived at Goa, he heard that Diu was being again besieged by Mohammed III. of Gujarāt. The news was true, and in spite of the gallant defence of Dom João de Mascarenhas, the besieged were driven to extremities. The viceroy at once proceeded thither, and not only relieved the fortress, but defeated the King of Gujarāt in a pitched battle beneath the walls. This victory, the greatest won by the Portuguese in India, exalted the fame of the general, which was further enhanced by his annihilation of the great Turkish fleet. After these victories João de Castro turned to matters of internal reform, and, by a policy which recalls that of Lord Cornwallis in Bengal in later history, he fixed the salaries of the various civil officials and tried to put an end to the system of corruption and peculation by which they had robbed the royal treasury and the natives alike. He looked with especial disfavour upon the loose and immoral life led by the Portuguese at Goa, and sternly discouraged their luxury, which, as he declared, could only be paid for by robbing the king of his dues. Unfortunately João de Castro, though he was to inaugurate reforms, did not live long enough to see them carried out, for he died in 1548, in the third year of his viceroyalty, in the arms of his friend, St. Francis Xavier, and it is recorded to the glory of this knight of the olden type, that, in spite of his opportunities, he died poor, and bequeathed to his son only his sword, “ornamented,” in the words of his biographer, “with a few stones of no great value, but with a glory beyond price.”

The immediate successors of Dom João de Castro, Garcia de Sá, Jorge Cabral, Affonso de Noronha, and Pedro de Mascarenhas, found no great perils to meet, since the victory of Diu had terrified the Mohammedans for a time, and none of them left any important traces upon the history of the Portuguese in India. The government of Dom Constantino de Braganza, a scion of the most noble house in Portugal next to royalty, marked a return to the system of Dom João de Castro, whom he imitated not only in his internal reforms, but in his gallantry in the field. He it was who took and occupied Daman, which, with Goa and Diu, remains to this day a possession of Portugal. He was still in office when the death of John III. left the crown of Portugal to a minor, and the greatness of his country, and even its independence, was on the point of disappearing.

But the Portuguese power in Asia must not be regarded as being confined to India, though Goa remained its headquarters, and the centre from which the homeward-bound fleets sailed. It will be remembered that Affonso de Alboquerque made expeditions both to the east and west; and his successors, during the century of the Portuguese monopoly of the Asiatic trade, maintained and extended their commercial operations in both directions. But before touching on these extensions attention must be called to the care with which the greatest Portuguese governors kept up the establishments on the south-eastern coast of Africa. Mozambique, which still belongs to Portugal, Mombassa, and Melinda, were all fortified with the utmost science of the time, for the homeward-and outward-bound fleets always paused at one or other or at all of these places before facing or after meeting the perils of the Indian Ocean, in order to refit and take in provisions. The dangers of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope were also sufficiently serious to need rest or preparation, for to mention but two disasters, Francisco de Almeida, the first Viceroy of India was wrecked in Saldanha Bay, and died there on his way back from his command; and a few years after occurred the wreck, imprisonment among the savages, and death of Dom Manoel de Sousa and his wife, which Camoens has immortalized in touching words.[16] More important than these African settlements was the city of Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which became the headquarters of the Persian trade with Europe by means of the Portuguese fleets. It has been seen that Aden was too strong for Alboquerque to capture; one of his successors, Affonso de Noronha, was more successful in 1551, but he only held the key of the Red Sea for a single year, after which it was recaptured by the Turks.

Far more valuable was the settlement of Malacca, which was placed upon a secure footing by Alboquerque. It became the centre of a great trade with Java, Sumatra, and the Spice Islands, and from it Fernão de Magalhães and Francisco Serrão prosecuted their discoveries among the Moluccas and the Celebes. The history of this settlement is full of interest; it was repeatedly attacked by the Achinese and other natives, and some of its sieges are as famous as those of Diu, though not conducted against such civilized opponents. But Malacca was not only the headquarters of the Spice Islands trade, but the port from which explorations were directed northwards. It was from Malacca that Duarte Coelho started to explore the coasts of Cochin China, and made his adventurous journey into Siam, and from Malacca also Fernão Peres de Andrade started to open up trade with the mighty and populous empire of China. There can be little doubt, according to a most distinguished Portuguese historian,[17] that the embassy, which King Emmanuel despatched in 1517 to the emperor of China, was caused by a knowledge of Marco Polo’s travels, and by the interest inspired by his account of the far empire of Cathay. At any rate it was as an ambassador from one monarch to another, and not as a conqueror that Fernão Peres de Andrade was sent to China with letters and presents. And the very fact of this embassy suggests a doubt whether the Portuguese would have ever acted as they did in India had there been a monarch there of such power as the emperor of China was reported to possess, or would have been contented to be traders only. De Andrade safely reached Canton by way of Malacca in 1518, but in spite of his letters and presents he was long detained there and not allowed to proceed to Pekin until 1521. When the Chinese thoroughly understood that the Portuguese came only to trade and not to conquer, they permitted the new-comers to establish a factory, first at Lium-po; and in 1549 at Chin Chee; and, finally, in 1557, in the year of the death of John III., at the request of the Chinese Government, the Portuguese withdrew their other factories and established themselves in the island of Macao, at the mouth of the Canton river. Here they carried on a prosperous trade, and in 1583 they received leave to dispense justice within their island, and in 1587 were recognized as independent there.

The first communication of the Portuguese with Japan is still more curious, and is connected with the history of one of those adventurous travellers who boldly traversed the most distant lands of Asia, long before Englishmen or Dutchmen had ventured to assail the Portuguese monopoly. Fernão Mendes Pinto has for generations been regarded as a typical liar, an accusation generally believed in England from the famous line of Congreve in “Love for Love:” (act ii. scene v.) “Mendes Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.”

But modern inquiry has shown that though he doubtless exaggerated, and drew strange inferences, his curious “Peregrinação” or Travels, which was first published in 1614, and was translated during the seventeenth century into English, French, and Spanish, contains essentially a true account of his adventures. His career is typical of that of many another Portuguese adventurer in the East. He first went to Asia in 1537, and during his wanderings was five times shipwrecked, thirteen times taken captive, and seventeen times sold as a slave. On his way out he was taken prisoner between Socotra and the Persian Gulf, and sold as a slave at Mocha, where he remained until ransomed by the Portuguese governor of Ormuz. After many daring adventures, which savour of piracy, he was engaged in 1542 in a strange expedition to Calempin, near Pekin, which he had organized to plunder the tombs of seventeen Chinese emperors there. On his way back from this sacrilegious attempt he was wrecked off the Chinese coast, and set to work in repairing the Great Wall of China. While there he was made a prisoner by the Tartars during one of their invasions, and after being present at a Tartar siege of Pekin was carried away into Tartary. After various adventures he managed to get back to China, and he then paid his first visit to Japan. His account of the wealth of the Japanese islands excited the minds of the Portuguese officials on the Chinese coast, and a fleet of nine ships was placed under his command at Ning-po, with orders to open up a trade with Japan. Ill luck again pursued him; eight of his ships foundered, and the one upon which he himself sailed, was wrecked on the Loo-Choo Islands. Undiscouraged by all his reverses, he continued to represent the wealth of Japan to his superiors in China and at Malacca, and in 1548 he established a factory in the neighbourhood of Yokohama. Here he did good service, and besides opening up a trade in Japanese goods, he made a large fortune for himself. With this fortune he was on his way back to Portugal in 1553, when the ecclesiastics at Goa worked upon his religious sentiments, which, as in other Portuguese adventurers, must have been very deep, though they do not seem to have influenced him in his dealings with Asiatics, and persuaded him to devote nearly all his wealth to the establishment of a seminary at Goa for the education of missionaries to Japan.

The career of Mendes Pinto illustrates the extraordinary energy and indomitable courage of the Portuguese in Asia, and it is a subject for wonder how one little country, one of the very smallest of the European states, could produce not only great governors and conquerors, like Francisco de Almeida, Affonso de Alboquerque, Nuno da Cunha, and João de Castro, and their lieutenants; and military heroes like Duarte Pacheco, Antonio de Silveira, and João de Mascarenhas, and their soldiers; but also daring adventurers like Duarte Coelho, who boldly penetrated into the interior of Siam, and Mendes Pinto. These men, from the highest to the lowest, seem to have had unbounded confidence in themselves, and, as will be seen later, two Portuguese adventurers, with hardly any support, Sebastião Gonzales and Philip de Brito, established themselves as practically independent princes in Arakan. It has been shown that this extraordinary energy and enterprise exhausted the kingdom of Portugal. Of the thousands who left their homes in Europe, but an infinitesimal portion ever returned. Not one of the early governors of Portuguese India died in Portugal until the time of Dom Constantino de Braganza; they either died in India, like Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Noronha, or on their way home, like Almeida and Nuno da Cunha. The drain upon the energies of the people was immense, and the wonder is not that Portugal was soon exhausted, but that it ever put forth such vitality at all. The greatness of the Portuguese in India was due to the courage and heroism of the Portuguese people, and these qualities they owed to a succession of great kings, who had trained the people to freedom, self-reliance, and constancy; were it not for great kings like John “the Great” and John “the Perfect,” and great princes like Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, and Prince Henry “the Navigator,” the Portuguese nation would never have done what it did, and the Story of Portugal teaches the useful lesson that a people, trained to lofty thoughts and a high conception of duty, will be sure to find scope for its energies, and exhibit the result of its training in noble deeds.