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By Root 699 0

completely to the first port city we come across as we move south and east. In the late fifteenth century Diu had become a great market, dominated by Turks. Large trading ships called here to collect Gujarati products, and those from further east, in exchange for goods from the Middle East and Europe. The capture of Diu was a central aim of the Portuguese, and this was achieved in 1535. In consequence the Muslim merchants left. Diu now became just a place where Indian Ocean ships were forced to call in and pay customs duties. Its role as a market declined. The main merchant communities were now Hindus, collectively often called banias, and Jains from Gujarat. In the great port city of Cambay some hundred or so private Portuguese settled, usually married to local women. They joined a very heterogeneous mosaic of merchants. The internal economy – the inland traders, the bankers, the shopkeepers, the brokers and the main 'capitalists'- was dominated by merchants who were Hindus and Jains. Many of these people also loaded cargoes on ships, and settled overseas, even in the Muslim-dominated Red Sea area, but the main sea traders were Muslims. Most of these were now local people, descendants usually of local converts to Islam, though many wealthy foreign groups, from Shiraz, the Red Sea, and even Turkey, were also there. The effect of the Portuguese on the activities of these people was slight. For the Portuguese Gujarati goods from Cambay and other ports were vital to make up the cargoes for Portugal, especially the large private cargoes sent home on the great naus, which were overwhelmingly cloths from Gujarat. This however made up only a very small addition to the total trade of Gujarat.

In any case, Cambay declined during the century because the Gulf of Cambay, at whose head it was located, silted up. Large ships found it more and more difficult to get to Cambay. It was replaced by Surat, which was also favoured by the integration of the independent sultanate of Gujarat into the Mughal empire in 1572 (see page 34). By the end of the century Surat was the greatest market in India, in the Indian Ocean, and indeed maybe in the whole world. Here were found the fabulously wealthy Hindu and Jain merchant communities which so many Europeans wrote of so admiringly. Here also were found products from all over the world, including those which the Portuguese hoped to monopolise. There was a host of merchant communities: not only Hindus and Jains (and these anyway were often subdivided according to caste or to economic speciality) but also Armenians, Jews, Portuguese, and Muslims from Persia and Turkey.

The economic relationship between Gujarat and Goa was quite assymetrical. From the Portuguese side, trade with Gujarat was vital and essential, so much so that even the most martial governor had to realise that wars with Gujarat could not be allowed to go on for too long, for a protracted war would be disastrous for the economic health of Portuguese India. João de Castro's reprisals after the end of the second siege of Diu, in 1546–48, drew a barrage of complaints from residents of Goa whose trade was blocked by his actions.

Two elements can be distinguished. Some of the Portuguese settled in Gujarat were agents for rich merchants in Goa, others traded in a small way on their own account. Their main task was to acquire cargoes for the several convoys of small trading ships which each year went from the Gulf of Cambay to Goa. Two or three such convoys sailed each year, guarded from pirates by Portuguese warships, and with 200 or more ships in each one. These convoys were absolutely central for the economic health of Goa. Most of the cargoes sent home on the carreira were goods from these convoys. The private fortunes of many of Goa's residents, including senior political and ecclesiastical figures, depended on these fleets of small trading ships.

Further peaceful and mutually beneficial ties were formed by Gujarat's role as a major money market in the Indian Ocean area in the sixteenth century. Its great Hindu and Jain merchants provided