Portuguese, Dutch and Danish Trading Companies in India

Three European flags flew over Indian ports before the British ever ran the country. Portugal arrived first, in 1498, chasing pepper and converts.

The Dutch and the Danes followed within a century. Each power left a different mark, and each lost out in a different way.

1How did Vasco da Gama’s voyage open the door for Portugal?

One voyage ended centuries of Arab and Venetian control over the spice trade.

• Vasco da Gama reached Calicut on the Malabar coast on 20 May 1498, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.
• The Zamorin of Calicut, the local Hindu ruler, allowed da Gama to trade on ordinary terms, not the warm welcome Portuguese accounts often claimed.
• This sea route broke the old monopoly held by Arab traders and Venetian middlemen over pepper and spices reaching Europe.
• Da Gama later died in Kochi in 1524, during his third voyage to India, by then serving as Portuguese Viceroy.

2How did Portugal turn trade into conquest?

Within twelve years, Portugal shifted from trading partner to armed conqueror.

• Francisco de Almeida became Portugal’s first Viceroy in India in 1505, and pursued a “Blue Water Policy” focused on naval dominance.
• Afonso de Albuquerque succeeded him and captured Goa in 1510, making it Portugal’s permanent base in Asia.
• Albuquerque introduced the casados policy, encouraging his soldiers to marry local women and settle permanently in Goa.
• Portugal enforced the cartaz licence system, forcing Asian ships to pay for safe passage through waters its navy patrolled.

3How did Portugal actually run its Indian colonies?

Portugal’s rule mixed religious control with a shifting territorial base.

• The Goa Inquisition was established in 1560, urged by the missionary Francis Xavier, to police converts’ religious practice.
• It was briefly suspended in the 1770s by the reformist minister Pombal, revived in 1778, then finally abolished in 1812.
• Bombay passed from Portugal to England in 1661, part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry on her marriage to Charles II.
• England leased Bombay to the East India Company in 1668 for just £10 a year, and the Company moved its headquarters there from Surat by 1687.

4How did the Dutch break Portugal’s hold on the coast?

A newer, better-funded company dismantled Portugal’s trading empire piece by piece.

• The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded in 1602, and opened its first Indian factory at Masulipatnam in 1605, then Pulicat in 1610.
• Between 1658 and 1663, the Dutch ran a sustained campaign against Portuguese Malabar, capturing Tuticorin, Nagapattinam and Quilon in turn.
• Admiral Rijckloff van Goens led the final capture of Cochin in January 1663, ending Portugal’s naval dominance on the Malabar coast.
• The VOC’s focus soon shifted east toward the more profitable Indonesian spice islands, leaving its Indian gains only partly developed.

5What did the small Danish settlements achieve?

Denmark’s footprint was tiny, but it left a surprising cultural legacy.

• The Danish East India Company made Tranquebar, on the Coromandel coast, its main Indian base.
• Admiral Ove Gjedde signed the Tranquebar Treaty with the Thanjavur ruler Raghunatha Nayak on 19 November 1620, building Fort Dansborg there.
• At Serampore, outside direct British Company control, the missionaries William Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward founded the Serampore Mission.
• The “Serampore Trio” translated the Bible into Bengali and founded Serampore College, work the stricter British-run territories would have restricted.

6Why did none of the three powers outlast the British?

Each power lost its grip in a different way, and at a different pace.

• At the Battle of Colachel in 1741, Travancore’s king Marthanda Varma defeated the Dutch, breaking their control of the Malabar pepper trade.
• Historians call Colachel the first clear victory of an Indian force over a well-armed European power.
• Denmark, never able to compete commercially, sold Tranquebar and Serampore to Britain in 1845 for about 1.25 million rupees.
• Portugal held on longest. Goa, Daman and Diu stayed Portuguese until India’s Operation Vijay annexed them in 1961.