Free The Indian Ocean by Michael Pearson Page A

caused a frontal attack on the fort from the neighbouring state of Gujarat. 'The captain of the fort caused the siege of Diu because he behaved so badly to the king of Gujarat and the local Muslims that if they had been Christians they would have had good cause to become Muslims.'
     
    It is probable that the Portuguese could have traded on a basis of equality in all the major Asian port cities. As we noted, these thrived by welcoming all, and providing facilities for trade. Certainly existing traders would have competed hard, but on past performance it seems unlikely they would have been the first to use force. As for the rulers, initially they, before Portuguese intentions became clear, were happy to welcome them as another group of foreign merchants come to trade and so increase their customs receipts.
    Peaceful trade would have had economic consequences, apart from the obvious moral ones. The huge expense of the fleets and forts would have been avoided. A Venetian ambassador as early as 1525 noted the consequences of the huge expenditure on military and naval matters:
    Having had information concerning the affairs of Portugal, I believe first of all, as has been affirmed to me by men most familiar with the kingdom, that that King has a far smaller sum of money than is commonly believed, for he spends a very large sum in maintaining that voyage to India, and the needs of the various fortresses and diverse fleets, which cost him a considerable amount of money.... 48
    The Portuguese could have sat in Calicut, just as the Middle Eastern merchants, the pardesi, did and not have to go to southeast Asia. Or they could have followed the very successful Dutch model of the seventeenth century. The Dutch East India Company certainly used force in the Maluku Islands in order to get a monopoly on fine spices, but they made more money from more or less peaceful involvement in the 'Country Trade'. Indeed the Portuguese did this to an extent. If we look at areas where the Portuguese were more successful, these turn out to be the same as areas where there was less crown interference and consequently much less use of violence. Leaving aside the intercontinental trade, much local country trade in Asia made large profits both for the Portuguese state and for private Portuguese. The voyages between Japan and China, and on to Melaka and India, made vast profits, and these were not based on the sort of exclusionism characteristic of the carreira back to Portugal. In many ways the Asian empire operated independently of the metropole, self-financing and self-controlled. Right outside of it thousands of private Portuguese trafficked more or less successfully as part of the rich warp and weft of traditional Asian trade, participating on a basis of equality with the vast array of others engaged in the same sorts of trade, with no particular advantages or disadvantages.
    It is even likely that if the Portuguese had achieved a monopoly on the supply of spices to Europe, this would have caused little concern or interest amongst Asian traders. Muslim merchants would have continued to trade with their co-religionists from the Malukus to Egypt, retaining control of some 90 per cent of the total trade in spices, for Christian Europe consumed less than 10 per cent of total production. But alas, this strategy of peaceful mercantile competition was never tried, for the reasons outlined above (pages 120–2) relating to Portuguese aims, andPortuguese preconceptions. There was, given these, no option but attempts at monopoly based on violence.
    Not everyone will accept these arguments about the basic flaws in Portuguese designs. Nevertheless, it is interesting that many Portuguese in effect acted in the same way as I have argued the state should have; in other words, they 'went native' and operated quite happily and profitably
outside
the Portuguese system, and
within
the existing indigenous one. We will come to this matter of accommodation and mingling