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in these products all the way from Melaka to the Red Sea. So also with the second strand of Portuguese concern with Asian trade, the cartaz system. If this were to work anywhere, it would be in Gujarat, where most of the great ports in the Gulf of Cambay could be monitored by Portuguese fleets cruising off the mouth of this narrow gulf. Another central aim was to acquire goods, other than spices, which could be sent back to Lisbon on the carreira. Gujarati cloths came to make up a very large part of the homeward bound cargoes. Finally, as the Portuguese got more involved in the inter-Asian trade they realised that access to products from Gujarat was vital, for they were widely known all over seaborne Asia and found a ready market wherever the Portuguese travelled.

Like the other great Islamic territorial states, the Mughals concentrated on the land rather than the sea. This meant that most of the time Portuguese maritime activities did not bother the Mughals. On occasion the Portuguese would attack or capture a ship belonging to the Mughal elite, and then the Mughal state would respond. However, the main area where the Mughals were concerned was the pilgrimage to Mecca. The port of Surat, one of the most important ports in the world, was the main exit point for Indian Muslims going on hajj, and the Mughals were concerned that this passage not be blocked. On the other hand, the Portuguese knew that their forts in Gujarat, in Diu, Daman and Bassein, were vulnerable to attack from the land. Equally important, Goa relied on Gujarat for the bulk of its export products, and especially cotton cloths. They could not afford a long war with Gujarat, and nor could they allow any blockade to go on too long, for this would mean that Portuguese trade all over the Indian Ocean and to Europe was denied goods to trade. In effect it was a stand-off, with both sides prepared to be conciliatory most of the time. The Portuguese tacitly allowed the hajj passage to continue, and gave the Mughals 'free' passes for some of their ships. Portugal's other contact with the Mughals had to do with their well-known attempts to convert the emperors. The Jesuit missions to the court failed to achieve this, but their activities have provided us with some fascinating accounts of life at the Mughal court.

In southeast Asia the Portuguese were not faced with any major maritime or territorial power, but this was not the case in China. The Ming dynasty there was powerful in the sixteenth century, and extremely ethnocentric. Foreigners had to behave with due subservience to Chinese officials, and the Ming accounts present the Portuguese as cannibals or malicious goblins. The Portuguese were very much in an inferior position. In the early 1520s a Portuguese fleet was heavily defeated by a Chinese coast-guard fleet. Later, in the mid 1550s, they were allowed to establish themselves in Macau, but always on terms of strict subordination to Ming officials. From late in the century, however, the Portuguese were able to fill a gap and profit from a very lucrative trade which linked Macau and Japan.

The conclusion has to be that Portugal's relations with major states around the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century were mostly civil enough, in part because the maritime interests of the Portuguese seldom conflicted with the major interests and activities of these land-oriented states. Certainly it is impossible to see the arrival of the Portuguese as affecting the progress or decline of these states in any significant way.

If the political consequences of the Portuguese presence were relatively minor, what can be said of their economic impact? On the East African coast they were trying to disrupt, and take over, a well-integrated trading system. Once Portuguese intentions became clear, the existing Muslim traders sometimes worked in cooperation with the Portuguese, but many of them continued their trade in locations outside of Portuguese control. Given the length of the coast, and tortuous navigation especially in the vast and complex Zambezi delta, the Portuguese