ALBUQUERQUE, AFONSO DE

ALBUQUERQUE, AFONSO DE (1459–1515), viceroy of the Portuguese empire in India and Asia (1509–1515) Born to a family that traced its origins to an illegitimate son of King Dinis of Portugal (r. 1279–1325), Afonso de Albuquerque was indisputably the founder of the Portuguese empire in India and Asia. Before sailing to India in 1503, he had served KingManuel I (r. 1495–1521) in Morocco, where he developed a fanatical hatred for all Muslims after a Moroccan Muslim killed his younger brother there. Returning in 1504 to Lisbon, Albuquerque convinced the king of the desirability of establishing a monopoly of trade with the East by building forts at strategic ports around the Indian Ocean. Two years later the king approved his plan and dispatched him to the East. In a secret letter, he promised Albuquerque an appointment as viceroy of the Portuguese possessions at the expiration of the term of the incumbent, Francisco de Almeida. During the next nine years, Albuquerque established Portuguese maritime supremacy over the Indian Ocean, seizing crucial bases on the Asia-Europe route to Goa in 1510. A year later, he took Malacca, the principal distribution port for spices in Southeast Asia, and in 1515 he captured Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. Portugal's share in the Asia-Europe trade rose to three-quarters of the total, causing major losses for the Venetians, who had previously maintained a quasi-monopoly over the Asiatic trade through ties with Arabs and Persians. Albuquerque made Goa the headquarters of the extensive Portuguese empire in the East. In 1509, he was made viceroy, a position he held until his death in 1515.

Albuquerque's imperial zeal was matched both by religious fanaticism and a ruthlessness that had few equals even among his contemporary conquistadores, both Portuguese and Spaniards. In a letter to the king of Portugal, Albuquerque boasted "I leave no town or building of the Mussulmans. Those who are taken alive, I order them to be roasted." One of Albuquerque's major initiatives was to encourage mixed marriages between Portuguese soldiers and sailors and the widows and abducted wives and daughters of the fallen combatants. He forcibly converted the women to Catholicism, gave them dowries of land and cash, and encouraged them to settle down and produce offspring, who he hoped would be loyal pillars of Portuguese power in the East. The policy failed in several ways. The "half-castes" it produced never lent effective strength to Portuguese imperial power. In Western India, his policy of religious intolerance produced hostility between Muslims and Hindus, who had, during the preceding centuries, lived in peaceful coexistence along the coast, promoting gainful trade.

Albuquerque's many detractors, both among his contemporaries and later historians, have condemned his excessive ambition in building an overextended empire of ports and forts while simultaneously pursuing a policy of forcible conversion. There is no doubt, however, that he was the founder of the Portuguese empire and initiator of the "Portuguese century" in Asia, making his country (along with Spain) an object of envy among contemporary European states.

D. R. SarDesai

See alsoGama, Vasco da ; Goa ; Portuguese in India

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albuquerque, Afonso de. The Commentaries of the Great Afonso de Albuquerque, Second Viceroy of India, translated from the Portuguese edition of 1774 by Walter de Gray Birch. 4 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1875–1884.

——. Cartas de Afonso de Albuquerque para el rei D. Manuel I Lisbon: Royal Academy, 1884.

Earle, T. F., and John Villiers, eds. and trans. Albuquerque, Caesar of the East: Selected Texts. Warminster, U.K.: Aris and Phillips, 1990.

Stephens, Henry Morse. Albuquerque. Rulers of India Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892.