Races. of the Armenian holy city of Etchmiazin, and PART I. made a Russian functionary of the Armenian patriarch, we are justified in regarding almost LECT. V. every Armenian as a Russian agent or spy.1 We now come to a Christian element, at one time of considerable political importance in India, though now of very little-the Portuguese. The actual Portuguese territory in India at the present day, is confined to three settlements on the western coast, Goa, Damaun, and Diu, comprising an area of 1066 square miles, with a population of 313,262 souls. But in addition to these last fragments of a once mighty empire, you will find all along the coasts, but especially the western one, in Bengal, and indeed more or less now, in the wake of the English, all over India, a population often scarcely to be distinguished in hue from the Hindoo, but professing the Roman Catholic faith, affecting the European costume, and the speaking of European languages, and bearing the name of Portuguese. The lowest 1 Russophobia and hydrophobia I look upon as diseases equally. The Afghanistan campaigns have had at least the advantage of teaching us, by very costly experience, what difficulties the Russians would have to surmount in reaching India. Still, it will be as well for us to keep steadily in mind that the invasion of India, at an earlier or later period, is the problem of Russian military science, the fixed idea of all Russian officers; and that, slowly and steadily, Russian dominion is forcing its way to the south-west. When General Perowski started for the Khiva campaign, he took with him a supply of preserved meats for two years; and the Russian outposts are now 300 miles beyond Khiva. After General Perowski's return, his house was the regular resort for the agents of the Russian Government in India; a numerous body of men of all classes, many of them natives of the latter country. I state these things on the authority of an ear and eye-witness, who had ample opportunities of observation. PART I. of these are boatmen and servants, the latter -uncovenanted servants, as they are termed. The designation of " Portuguese" is, in fact, nearly equivalent to native Roman Catholic; for many of them have certainly not a drop of Portuguese blood in their veins, many of them do not speak a word scarcely of any European language. This is owing to two causes; first, that when Portuguese dominion was at its height in India, its career was one of forcible proselytism; second, that at all times it has been the practice of the Portuguese, as a matter of course, to make their slaves and servants members of their church.1 The Portuguese made their appearance in India with Vasco de Gama, in 1497, and, like the Syrian Christians, on the west coast first. Calicut, then the capital of a powerful Hindoo prince, called the Samooree, or Zamorin, was the first place at which they landed. This first expedition has the good fortune of having been celebrated in one of the famous poems of the world,2 the Lusiad, or rather Lusiads, of Camoens. Portuguese had the good fortune to meet at their first arrival with a Moor of Barbary, who became their interpreter, and seems to have favoured his Christian neighbours against the Hindoos, and even against his own co-religionists. Camoens The 1 A so-called "Portuguese" ayah, or nurse, of my mother's, a perfectly invaluable servant at all points, was a native child who had been bought by a Portuguese lady of Madras from starving parents during a famine, and made a Christian of, besides being trained up with the utmost kindness. 2 One greatly over valued, in my judgment. describes the population of Malabar as divided into two classes, both of which exist there to this day-the Nyrs and Puliars, treating the Brahmins only as priests of the Nyrs. He mentions the curious Nyr custom of the wife being common to the brothers of the same family; the regular intercourse with the coast of Arabia; describes in glowing terms the splendour of the temples and palaces of Calicut. Both Hindoos and Mussulmen appear to have distrusted the new comers, and plotted against them; but they were suffered finally to leave with a rich freight. This was enough to stir up European cupidity. In 1501, Cabral was sent out with a fleet of thirteen sail and 1,500 men,-discovered Brazil by the way,—wrung from the Zamorin a treaty and permission to establish a factory, quarrelled with him after awhile, bombarded Calicut, and eventually left for Europe, after having concluded treaties with the rulers of Cochin and Cannauore, leaving factors at the principal posts of the coast. Having once obtained their footing, the Portuguese soon put forward the papal bull, which bestowed upon them all countries east of a given longitude, claiming the submission of the native princes by virtue of it, as the Spaniards in America. They were fortunate enough to be able to enforce such pretensions by means of two great men, Alphonso de Albuquerque (1510-1515), and Joao de Castro. The Portuguese power was chiefly naval, and was not confined to India. Albuquerque not only occupied Goa, making it the capital of the Portuguese empire in the East, but Ormuz in the Persian Gulf on the one side, and Malacca PART I. Races. LECT. V. PART I. Races. LECT. V. coast. on the other; studding moreover with military posts and factories the whole intermediate line of He succeeded in making himself popular among the conquered peoples; the native princes went into mourning at his death; and long after it, we are told that Mahommedan and Hindoo, when injured by his countrymen, would resort to his tomb and complain to him of their wrongs. Joao de Castro, celebrated by his relief of Diu, and his conquests in Guzerat and the Deckan, was an equally eminent ruler, under whose peaceful and just sway the Portuguese empire in the East attained its highest pitch of greatness. Though it never seems to have extended very far inland, it had spread by this time over the whole west coast of India, including Ceylon, and over the shores of the Persian Gulf; and besides forts and factories on the east coast of India, it comprised many of the Eastern Islands, with Malacca. In the course of their Indian conquests, the Portuguese had found themselves opposed not only by the Hindoo, especially the Mussulman inhabitants, but by fleets from Arabia and Egypt. The Venetians entered into a treaty with the Sultan of Egypt against them, and supplied timber from the Dalmatian forests for ship-building in the Red Sea, whence twelve men-of-war sailed against them with Mameluke forces on board. After the conquest of Egypt by the Turks, the rivalry remained the same; and one of the leading events in the history of Portuguese India, is the defence of Diu against the Turkish armament sent by Sultan Selim (1538). Their own rapacity and cruelty at last ruined them. A general massacre of the native seamen, Races. LECT. V. under Mesquita, on the Malabar coast, and other PART I. outrages, raised formidable insurrections on the mainland, in Ceylon, in the Eastern Islands. They were expelled in several instances, and from the period of the annexation of Portugal to Spain, in 1578, there is a rapid decline of the Portuguese power. The lowest depth of misgovernment was realized in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the Governor-General Azevedo received orders from Madrid, to put up every office in the Government, civil or military, to public auction. The latter part of their history is solely filled with religious struggles and squabbles. Jesuitism had made its appearance in India, early in the sixteenth century, with Francis Xavier, the noblest representative it ever had. The Portuguese rule became gradually identified with the progress, not only of Romanism, but of Jesuitized Romanism. The Jesuits were intent on making converts, were altogether unscrupulous as to the means of doing so, passing themselves off, for instance, as Hindoo devotees. The number of their converts was indeed considerable, -greater by far than that of the converts of any other religious body in the East. But the socalled Portuguese of India are generally (except in the higher ranks) a degraded class, unwarlike,. untruthful, unfaithful. Goa is a wreck of greatness, and all the Portuguese territories are thinly and wretchedly peopled.1 Next after the Portuguese, the Dutch made 1 There are, however, evidences of great prosperity under the Portuguese rule in territories conquered by the Mahrattas, and now held by us. See Mr. Savile Marriott's evidence before the Cotton Committee of 1848, queries 4686-4698. |