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