------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     **** http://www.GOANET.org ****
------------------------------------------------------------------------

       International Cuisine Conference on Traditional Asian Diet 
    Panaji, Goa, September 2-5, 2007  -  http://www.indologygoa.in
              Online Media Partner:  http://www.goanet.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prof. M. N. Pearson of the Univ. of Sydney has written extensively on 
Portugal and Goa. He expands on the political and military defeats suffered 
by Portugal in the East by looking at administrative weakness, aka 
'corruption', as a contributing factor. I now quote : Some perquisites, some 
peculation, were part of all administration in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. It is when they shade over into excess, into abuse, that we see a 
contribution to decline.  In all Portuguese forts, at least a third of the 
soldiers on the books were phantoms whose pay was drawn by a very real and 
very corrupt commander. In 1550, a captain of a major fort like Mallacca, 
Hormuz or Sofala could make a 30,000 cruzados in a year. This had risen to 
300,000 by century end, all from private trade and extortion.The effects 
were serious,  both local traders and Portuguese casados fled inland to 
escape their rapacious fellow countrymen. Casados abandoned fine houses in 
Bassein by 1630, matched by miltary desertions
     The New Cambridge History of India, The Portuguese in India.  Cambridge 
University Press. 

Reply via email to