The portuguese in the adjacent seas: A survey of their identities and activities in the Eastern Indian ocean/burman sea

Abstract

The topic of the Portuguese, and, on the larger front, the Iberians, in the eastern Indian Ocean has been receiving increasing attention over the last two decades, championed by eminent historians such as S. Subrahmanyam and O. Prakash. This chapter intends to focus the survey on the Burman coast of which the Portuguese/Iberian presence has seen its peak and trough. At its height, the Portuguese empire (if informal) in the region was actualized by a mercenary-type adventurer who, after achieving a measure of glory, sought to obtain recognition from the centre (at Goa). The Portuguese in the late seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries was less written on. Questions probed into in this chapter include the following: How did the Portuguese presence evolved after the closure of their feitoria at Syriam? Were the Portuguese and mestizo groups in the region more susceptible to surreptitious activities beyond their heydays?