The sea unites the lands, it separates."
— Fernand Braudel, (The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II)
By the late fifteenth century, the Bay of Bengal was a thriving hub of global commerce.
At these maritime crossroads, Arab dhow captains, Bengali riverine fleets, Malay sailors, and Chinese treasure ships regularly met. The tides of the Bay had already become deeply intertwined with the Indian Ocean's monsoon economy, linking Bengal with East Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the Malay world, KN Chaudhuri wrote in "Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean" (1985).
In this oceanic domain, Bengal had long exported textiles that clothed the world, while its ships transported rice, salt, metal goods, and horses to distant shores from Chittagong to Malacca and Hormuz, according to Dhriti Ray's 2005 research article "The Portuguese in Bengal and the Bay of Bengal".
The Bay was not a remote or marginal sea; it served as a vital artery within what Chaudhuri famously called the "Asian commercial system", flourishing centuries before Europeans arrived.
At the same time, Europe—traditionally introspective—was compelled to look outward. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 sent shockwaves through Christendom, cutting off Europeans from access to luxury goods from the East. The Catholic monarchs feared not only the rise of a rival power but also the possibility that Islam could economically and spiritually overshadow Christianity. This fear, coupled with Europe's increasing hunger for wealth and spices, motivated Portuguese and Spanish monarchs to sail across the oceans, writes JH Parry in "The Age of Reconnaissance" (1963).
Columbus: The eschatological navigator
Christopher Columbus sailed into the western Atlantic not merely as a curious traveller but as a crusader with a theological mission. He genuinely believed that his voyage would bring him to Asia's riches, which would finance the ultimate Christian campaign: the reconquest of Jerusalem.
In his Book of Prophecies, Columbus described a theological vision in which God commanded the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre as a precursor to the end of time. In his journals, he repeatedly urged Ferdinand and Isabella to use the profits of his discoveries "to prepare for the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre".
Even in his final will, he directed that a dedicated fund be used for a renewed crusade, according to Carol Delaney's 2011 book "Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem". For Columbus, navigation was an extension of religious war.
His mission gained legitimacy from the Catholic Church. Papal decrees such as Dum Diversas (1452) and Inter Caetera (1493) authorised Christian monarchs to govern over and dispossess non-Christians, a legal principle later known as the Doctrine of Discovery (Williams 1990).
Columbus's planting of a flag on Caribbean sands was therefore violent both in fact and in principle, justified by theological conviction.
Columbus never set foot on Asian shores; yet the ideology that guided his journey initiated a new era of imperial conquest and religious claim. It was an accidental start to Europe's global maritime endeavour—one that would eventually extend to the Bay of Bengal.
Da Gama and the militarisation of the sea
Vasco da Gama's voyage of 1497–1499 marked the culmination of decades of Portuguese efforts to sail around Africa and access the Indian Ocean directly. Unlike Columbus, da Gama did reach Asia, landing at Calicut in 1498. His mission was not solely commercial; it was also deliberately political and religious.
Avoiding the Ottoman-controlled land routes meant depriving Muslim powers of their lucrative role in Eastern trade, writes Sanjay Subrahmanyam in "The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama" (1997). The Portuguese Crown sought to divert wealth from Cairo, Aden, and Istanbul to Lisbon, thereby shifting the balance between Christianity and Islam.
From the moment da Gama arrived, the Portuguese presence was confrontational. They refused to pay the customary trade duties that governed commerce in Calicut and openly declared that they had come "in search of Christians and spices", according to Charles R Boxer's 1969 book "The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825". Their fleets bore cannon, not gifts, and their diplomacy relied on gunpowder. A new form of maritime violence entered the Indian Ocean.
Portuguese imperial strategy soon took shape: focusing on controlling sea routes rather than inland expansion. Their naval power, combined with enforced missionary activities and the use of trading permits called the cartaz, showed that European influence in Asia was based on coercion justified by faith (Mathew 1985). Within just two decades of da Gama's landfall, Portuguese ships entered the Bay of Bengal.
The Bay meets the Western ocean
By the 1510s, Portuguese mariners had reached Bengal, recognising that its textile-rich coasts and riverine granaries were vital for feeding the broader Asian world. Chittagong, known as Porto Grande de Bengala, quickly became a centre of exchange, while the later settlement at Hooghly developed into a hub of trade and Catholic missionary activity, according to "History of the Portuguese in Bengal" (1919), written by JJA Campos. The Portuguese exploited existing political rivalries, forming opportunistic alliances with the Arakanese to raid delta settlements. This led to a trafficking network that forcibly removed thousands of coastal Bengalis to slave markets in Goa and beyond (Ray 2005).
The Mughal Empire responded decisively in the end. In 1632, imperial troops and naval forces drove the Portuguese out of Hooghly. Many were killed or captured in retaliation for decades of piracy, kidnapping, and interference in local trade (Boxer 1969). Yet, even this harsh punishment did not erase Portuguese influence. Christian communities persisted in the delta; gunpowder technology enhanced Bengal's arsenals; and Portuguese maritime architecture and vocabulary became part of the region's naval heritage, Sugata Bose writes in "A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire" (2006).
Thus, Bengal was not a passive recipient of European advances. It selectively absorbed foreign influence, resisted when necessary, and preserved control over its maritime affairs.
Oceanic knowledge: The Bay teaches the world
European ships did not teach the Bay how to sail. Instead, the Bay taught Europeans. Long before da Gama, Arab navigators, South Asian pilots, and Malay seafarers had mastered astronomical navigation, latitude sailing, and monsoon-based routing. The works of Ahmad ibn Majid, such as Kitab al-Fawaʾid, provided detailed sailing instructions, mapping winds and currents with scientific precision (Tibbetts 1971).
South Asian shipbuilders produced durable vessels capable of surviving cyclonic seas, while lascars—highly skilled sailors—became indispensable to Portuguese fleets, says Linoln Paine in "The Sea and Civilisation: A Maritime History of the World" (2013). European success depended on understanding and utilising this inherited maritime knowledge. The age of exploration was therefore not strictly a European invention; it was the forced globalisation of pre-existing Asian oceanic science.
A clash of maritime civilisations
European entry into the Indian Ocean sparked a conflict between the rising Western naval power and the longstanding Muslim trade networks. Across the Red Sea, Ottoman, Mamluk, and Yemeni leaders viewed the Portuguese as existential threats to centuries of commerce. In the Bay, resistance was equally intense. Bengal Sultanate fleets, Arakanese warships, and Acehnese allies challenged Portuguese efforts to control local waters (Subrahmanyam 1997). From the Ganges delta to the Straits of Malacca, the Bay became a frontier of rivalry where trade and cannon fire clashed.
Even as European influences spread through trade and missionary efforts, cultural life along Bengal's coasts maintained its continuity. Fishermen strictly adhered to the monsoon timetable. In the afternoon, river markets thrived with daily exchanges. Rafts of bamboo and timber still moved with the tides from upstream jungles and forests. The rhythms of the Bay remained rooted in ancient human-sea interactions, resisting foreign control.
Crusading legacies and the Bay's global role
When examined together, the motivations of Columbus and da Gama reveal a clear pattern rooted in Europe's struggle against Islam and its aim to reshape global trade. Columbus, driven by apocalyptic religious urgency, sought wealth to retake Jerusalem. Da Gama's route was planned to weaken the economic dominance of Muslim trade. Their successes and failures both contributed to what John Darwin describes as Europe's "global history of empire" (2007).
Their legacy was no accident. It was part of a wider historical shift in which European Christianity sought to expand its political, military, and economic reach across the seas. The Bay of Bengal—vibrant, rich, and interconnected—became caught up in that movement. The flags planted by Columbus on Caribbean islands and the cannon fired by da Gama into Calicut ultimately shaped the history of coastal Bengal through new trade routes, naval conflicts, and cultural exchanges.
The Bay, once the heart of a flourishing Asian maritime economy, was drawn into a new system driven by European imperial ambitions. However, it also remained a place where foreign powers never fully displaced indigenous maritime identity.
Conclusion: A sea connected, a sea contested
The arrival of Europeans did not change the tides of the Bay of Bengal itself, but it altered what sailed upon them. The Bay of Bengal became a stage for both global integration and conflict. It represented the new world—an era where oceans connected empires, faith inspired warfare, and commerce defined sovereignty.
Moreover, still, beneath every imperial endeavour, ordinary coastal life persisted. Tidal fishermen pulled nets from waters rich with history. Salt-makers harvested crystals along ancient shores. River sailors navigated channels mapped by their ancestors' memories long before any European cartographer drew lines on a chart. Empires touched the surface. The Bay endured.
Lead-In to Episode 8 – The fishermen and the salt: livelihoods on the Bay
As global empires carved their territories across the seas, Bengal's coastal communities continued working along its shores—fishing, trading, and harvesting salt. Beneath the sails of these empires, the quieter rhythms of daily life remained steady. The next chapter shifts focus from imperial maps to human experiences and natural elements— from explorers' horizons to fishermen's nets, from the broader world to the world within.
0 Comments
Post a Comment