O sistema das viagens e a rede comercial portuguesa na Ásia Oriental

Abstract

The present article endeavours to react against a tendency of the old Indo-Portuguese historiography, which still survives nowadays: the tendency to confuse the economic evolution of the Portuguese Estado da Índia with that of the so-called Carreira da Índia, i. e., the exploitation of trade between Europe and India by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. The latter was mainly exploited by the Crown, and its profits benefited the metropolitan finances. Conversely, the finances of the Estado da Índia lay on the custom-houses. The revenues of the custom-houses, where commerce conducted by private merchants was taxed, almost continuously increased along the 16th century, reaching its peak in 1609. The custom houses benefitted by the commerce of local traders as well as of Portuguese merchants, most of them casados, i. e., Portuguese who married local women and settled in the East. The most profitable lines were that from Goa to the Moluccas and Banda islands, and that from Goa to Malacca and then to Macao, with an extension to Japan. Their decline was precipitated by the conquest by the Dutch of the Moluccas in 1605 and of Malacca in 1641, and by the expulsion of the Portuguese from Japan about this latter date.