Portuguese India

Portuguese India was Portugal's Asian empire from 1505 to 1961, the Estado da India ruled from Goa. Seven years after Gama rounded the Cape, Almeida came as first viceroy; Albuquerque, the terrible second, took Goa in 1510, Malacca in 1511 and Hormuz in 1515, strangling the spice routes at three choke points and building a string of forts from Mozambique to Macau. Goa Dourada, Golden Goa, grew churches, a viceroy's palace and Francis Xavier's tomb, capital of an empire of factories and fortresses rather than fields. The Dutch took the spice islands, the English took Hormuz trade, and the Estado shrank to Goa, Daman, Diu and Macao, living on. Lisbon's dictatorship clung to the remnants as provinces of Portugal itself; Nehru's patience ended in December 1961, when Indian troops walked into Goa in Operation Vijay in two days of token fighting. The first European empire in Asia, begun with Gama's caravels, ended with the last lowering of a European flag on the subcontinent, four hundred and fifty six years after it was raised.