The India They Saw- Foreign Accounts: 16th-17th Centuries (Volume 3)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The he arrival of Vasco da Gama on the western coast of India, near Calicut, on 27 May 1498, heralded the restoration of Europe's links with the subcontinent after an interval of almost eight centuries. With his landing, India became accessible to Portuguese conquistadors, traders, travellers, scholars and clergymen. The sixteenth century could, in a sense, be termed the Portuguese century, for no European power could challenge its mastery of the sea route to India.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 by Holland and England, however, signaled the end of this monopoly and in 1595, the first Dutch fleet entered the Indian Ocean. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch, with their British camp followers, seriously undermined the Portuguese. The French also entered the Indian trade in the second half of this century.

While several Portuguese accounts of India in the sixteenth century are available, for the seventeenth century, we also have the writings of travellers, scholars and missionaries from the latter three countries. Additionally, Jesuits of various nationalities wrote regular letters to home, providing valuable information on facets of Indian life, albeit tempered by their religious bias.

This volume confines itself to European writings of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It does not claim to be exhaustive but presents glimpses of the Indian reality as recorded by contemporary European visitors. Only English translations have been used. A sizeable number of accounts in European languages still await translation.

The arrival of Vasco da Gama on the western coast of India, near Calicut, on 27 May 1498, heralded the restoration of Europe's links with the subcontinent after an interval of almost eight centuries. The links, which could be traced back to the days of Alexander the Great, and even earlier to Harappan times, had been ruptured in the medieval era with the establishment of Arab control over the land and sea routes to India. The Arab monopoly of routes prompted Europe to embark on a centuries-long quest to re-establish contact with India, which reached its fruition with Vasco da Gama's landing.

India's communication with the Western world in ancient times had been through both land and sea. The land routes traversed the Khyber and Kurrum passes in the north-west (known as the Uttarapath) and meandered along the Makran Coast in the south-west. The former route, passing through Persia and Central Asia, ended at Constantinople on the Baltic Sea, the latter via Mesopotamia terminated at Syria on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

Indian traders using the sea route through the Persian Gulf would unload their wares on the northern tip of the Gulf from where these would be carried through Syria to the ports of Tyre and Acre on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Goods transported through the Red Sea were offloaded on the eastern coast of Egypt and taken to the ports of Alexandria and Carthage on the southern Mediterranean coast. Alexandria and Carthage were, in fact, the principle transit points for trade between India and Europe.

Available evidence indicates that at the outset only Indian ships sailed the Indian Ocean, crossing the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. It was only after the discovery of the direction of the south-west summer monsoon by the Greek, Hippalus, on the eve of the Christian era, that Roman ships began visiting Indian shores.