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By Root 715 0

found it very difficult to do much about this. At different times three ports, Angoche, Mombasa and Pate, were able to keep going a trade which flouted the Portuguese and in effect continued the preceding system of open and free trade. In the first decades of the sixteenth century the Portuguese became aware that Angoche had become a major centre of trade from the ports further north, and was underselling the Portuguese in Mozambique and Sofala very substantially. To counter this the Portuguese established themselves on the Zambezi itself, at Sena and Tete, and also on the coast at Quilemane. Mombasa however continued to send ships south, laden with Gujarati goods, until this flouting of Portuguese aims together with their fear of the Turks led them to take this town in 1593. But no sooner was one gap closed than another opened, for now Pate and other ports in the Lamu area became centres of opposition and 'illegal' trade, despite several Portuguese attacks in the seventeenth century.35

When we move to the southern shores of the Middle East we find a rather different situation. In terms of markets there was one major, but temporary, change as a result of the activities of the Portuguese. For a few decades they were able by and large to monopolise the trade in pepper and spices, and this meant that markets which dealt in these commodities – Aden, Jiddah, Basra on the Gulf, Cairo and Alexandria and Aleppo on the Mediterranean – suffered, as did the Muslim traders who had dominated this trade. However, the Portuguese monopoly had been largely broken by mid century, and these markets revived as a result. Aden suffered more than most, and indeed even after it was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1538 it continued to decline, while a major new market, the port of Mocha inside the Red Sea, rose to prominence.

Moving along the Hadhramaut coast, there seems to have been little change in the predominantly coastal trade of this region. However, this was not the case for Hurmuz. This port city and major market, controlling the mouth of the Gulf, was taken by the Portuguese in 1515. The intention was to block the spice trade up the Gulf, and so overland to the eastern Mediterranean. However, the Portuguese needed to conciliate the Shah of Iran as a counterweight to their main enemy, the Ottoman Turks, and so they allowed some pepper to continue to pass through and into the Gulf. Nevertheless, Hurmuz certainly suffered a decline, and was no longer a major market populated by very diverse merchant communities. Many of them moved to Basra, or to the Persian port of Bandar Abbas.

In Sind the major port was Lahari Bandar, favoured by private Portuguese traders and Muslim merchants. The greatest markets, and the most dominant merchant communities, were to be found in Gujarat. Portuguese fleets were able to patrol across the entrance to the Gulf of Cambay, from their bases in Daman and Diu, and exercise quite close control over shipping entering and leaving this entrance to the great Gujarati ports of Surat, Cambay, Gogha and Broach. This patrolling, and also the demonstrations of military and naval ferocity from 1529 to 1534, and again after the second siege, from 1546 to 1548, convinced most of Gujarat's merchants that they would have to take cartazes and pay duties at Diu. Indeed, there is clear evidence of the Portuguese and the Gujarati traders cooperating and being prepared to be flexible when this was necessary. The Portuguese allowed trade to the Red Sea, even though this area was considered to be a hostile Turkish Muslim one. They also tacitly allowed the pilgrimage trade to continue. Indeed, they even accepted cargo valuations, on which customs payments were based, which were done by the Gujarati merchants themselves. Portuguese flexibility combined with Gujarati acquiescence to produce a quite harmonious relationship in which Gujarati ships routinely called at Diu to pay customs and collect their cartazes.

Overall then the changes in Gujarat's trade during the sixteenth century were rather slight. This however does not apply