Free The Indian Ocean by Michael Pearson

most of the time their pay for a post included extensive trade privileges. In 1604 an official decree complained of this, noting that the captains of Mozambique too often ignored their obligations to guard the fortress and instead spent their time up the Zambezi river looking after their own trading interests. Then the captains were faced with householders in the forts, who all traded, and then again by transfrontiersmen (more correctly transfrontiersfolk, for some were women) who were completely outside the system.
    The captains of Diu frequently took bribes in return for allowing 'illegal' trade. One even sold off cannon from the fort to enemies of the state. The prevailing attitude was well expressed by a newly appointed captain of a fort, who visited areligious house to say goodbye. One of the clerics counselled him: 'Be content with what is yours, favour the poor, and do justice.' The captain retorted that he fully intended to get all he could, as did all the others, 'because I am not going to my fort for any other reason than to come back rich.' The great chronicler Diogo do Couto summed up the state of the administration late in the century when he wrote 'for the king's property to increase, it should pass through few hands, and the fewer hands of officials it has contact with the greater will be its increase.' 43
    Finally, can one mount a counter-factual case that the Portuguese would have done better to engage in peaceful trade? There is adequate evidence that the initial Portuguese demands for control and even monopoly went quite contrary to accepted practice in the Indian Ocean. We have earlier written extensively about how trade was conducted before the Portuguese (see pages 97–9), and can merely add here a little detail from East Africa. There is some evidence that trade there was in something like a state of nature when the Portuguese arrived. Barros claimed that when Gama reached Mozambique he was greeted by a native of Fez, who said the custom of the sultan 'was when strange ships arrived to send and enquire what they sought; and if they were merchants they might trade in that country, and if navigators bound to other parts he provided them with whatever was to be had there.' 44 Four years later, in Sofala, the Portuguese claimed that they wanted peace and friendship, and to be treated like all other merchants in this port. The ruler replied that this was quite acceptable. All merchants were welcome, as he derived much profit from them. The Portuguese were welcome to trade on the same terms as everyone else. 45
    Godinho has discussed this matter in his magisterial work. He says that in 1501 and 1502 the Portuguese got access to the gold trade of Sofala without using violence. But beginning in 1505, with the arrival of Viceroy Almeida with his very militant instructions, this all changed for the worse, and the policy became one of loot and plunder, compulsion and forced monopoly. 46 The reasons are various, but one problem was that in East Africa the Portuguese claimed that there was serious opposition to their presence from Kilwa and Mombasa. This however was a matter of chickens coming home to roost, for the ruler of Kilwa had been influenced by Muslims from Calicut, who had told him of the barbarities the Portuguese had inflicted on this Indian port city. 47
    Even at the time some contemporary Portuguese commented on this strange mixture of trade and violence. One simply noted that 'war is contrary to trade', another, a Venetian on Cabral's voyage in 1500, said, 'If you wish to trade you do not rob competitors' ships', and in 1532 a noble noted that 'To trade and fight are more opposed than the north and south poles.'
    Sometimes Portuguese violence was clearly counter-productive. They produced one inveterate opponent in the ruler of Cannanore after they sewed up his nephew and six others in a sail and threw them overboard to drown. According to one contemporary the tyranny of the Portuguese captain of Diu