The Theft of India: The European Conquests of India, 1498-1765

by Roy Moxham

We took a ship from Mecca in which were 380 men and many women and children, and we took from it fully 12,000 ducats, with goods worth at least another 10,000. And we burned the ship and all the people on board with gunpowder. – A Portuguese companion of Vasco da Gama, 1502.

Once again, however, there were disputes between the Portuguese and the Arabs. These were exacerbated when the Portuguese claimed they had been given the sole right to buy pepper. Events came to a climax when the Portuguese seized an Arab ship in the harbour. A riot ensued and thirty or forty Portuguese were killed. Cabral then ordered his fleet to bombard Calicut. He also seized some of the ships in the harbour, took their goods – including three elephants, which were later killed and salted for the homeward journey – and slaughtered their crews. The bombardment of the city lasted two days. Many of its wooden houses were destroyed, and many of its inhabitants were killed. Fortunately for the people of Calicut, however, the violent recoil of the guns began to damage Cabral’s ships. He was forced to

Da Gama then announced that, unless the Zamorin met his conditions, he would bombard Calicut the next day. The Portuguese had captured a number of small boats and their crews. At midday on 1 November 1502, they began to hang their prisoners. Thirty-four sailors were executed. As the dead men were taken down, their hands, feet and heads were cut off. These body parts were then piled on a boat, which was floated into the harbour together with a message saying that the actual killers of Cabral’s men could expect an even crueller death. The truncated bodies of these innocents were then thrown into the sea so that the tide would carry them ashore. The bombardment of Calicut then began. European ships of