Casa da Índia
Casa da Guiné e Mina (Founded 1443) Casa de Ceuta (Founded 1434) | |
Founded | 1500 |
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Defunct | 17 September 1833 |
Headquarters | Ribeira Palace, Lisbon, Kingdom of Portugal |
Area served | Portuguese Empire |
Key people | Founder of the Casa da Índia: King Manuel I of Portugal Founder of the Casa da Guiné: Prince Henry the Navigator |
The Casa da Índia (Portuguese pronunciation:
The House of India was founded by King
Founded with the intent of protecting Portugal's monopoly of the spice trade, the Casa da Índia in 1497 began financing and organizing the Portuguese India Armadas, annual armadas of galleons, carracks, and caravels transporting commodities such as gold, ivory, and spices to Lisbon from Portuguese trading posts and colonies across Africa and Asia. The Casa da Índia sponsored numerous famous Portuguese navigators, including Vasco da Gama (who discovered the sea route to India), Pedro Álvares Cabral (who discovered Brazil), and Afonso de Albuquerque (who established Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean).
Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, the Casa da Índia rapidly grew into an economically powerful institution that played a crucial role in the financing of
Between the origins of the Casa da Índia in the 1400s and its dissolution in 1833, its principal aims evolved, as did its relations with the
History
Origins
The forerunners of Casa da Índia arose with the
As early as 1434 the Casa de Ceuta was founded in Lisbon, but it was not very successful because the Muslim merchants diverted the trade routes from
After the death of
The ascension of King John II of Portugal in 1481 revived the royal interest in African trade. In 1482, upon erecting the fortress of São Jorge da Mina to access the Akan goldfields and markets,[1] John II overhauled the old houses and organized the system into two new institutions in Lisbon - the royal trading house, the Casa da Mina e Tratos de Guiné, focused on commercial aspects of African trade (goods, licenses, dues), and the separate royal naval arsenal, the Armazém da Guiné, to handle nautical matters (ship construction, nautical supplies, hiring of crews, etc.)
In 1486, after the opening of contact with
Golden age
With the discovery of a sea route to India by Vasco da Gama in 1497-99, the spice trade became a new and important activity of the royal trading house, and the old Casa was reorganized into the Casa da Índia e da Guiné (the first written reference to a Casa da Índia was in a royal letter dated 1501).
From 1511, offices of the Casa da Índia were located on the ground floor of the royal
The Portuguese India Armadas (Armadas da Índia) were the fleets of ships, organized by the Casa da Índia in name of the Portuguese Crown, and dispatched on an annual basis from Portugal to India, principally Goa. These armadas undertook the Carreira da Índia ("India Run"), following the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope first opened up by Vasco da Gama in 1497–1499.
For about thirty years, from 1503 to 1535, the Portuguese cut into the Venetian spice trade in the Mediterranean. By 1510, the Portuguese throne was pocketing a million cruzados yearly from the spice trade alone, and it was this which led Francis I of France to dub King Manuel I of Portugal "le roi épicier",[This quote needs a citation] that is, "the grocer king."
Income started to decline mid-century because of costs of maintaining a presence in Morocco and domestic waste. Also, Portugal did not develop a substantial domestic infrastructure to support this activity, but relied on foreigners for many services supporting their trading enterprises, and therefore a lot of the income was consumed in this way.
In 1549 the Portuguese trade center in Antwerp went bankrupt and was closed. As the crown became more overextended in the 1550s, it relied more and more on external financing. By about 1560 the income of the Casa da Índia was not able to cover its expenses. The Portuguese monarchy had become, in
Decline
In 1709 at the Casa da Índia, the
The Great Earthquake of 1755 destroyed much of Lisbon, including Ribeira Palace, where the headquarters and naval yards of the Casa da Índia were located.
The final era of the Casa da Índia began in 1822, during the reign of King
Organization
Although initially (c.1500) consolidated in one unit, the Casa da Índia e da Guiné, it was separated again (c. 1506) into two distinct units, Casa da Índia and the Casa da Mina e da Guiné again. However, both houses were overseen by the same officers at the higher levels, so it was common to use the joint term, or simply just Casa da Índia, to refer to both.
The Casas were overseen by the same director and the same three treasurers (tesoreiros) - one for receiving goods, one for the sale of goods, and a third to handle everything else. There were five secretaries in charge of the administration - three for India, two for Mina and Guinea - and one chief factor (feitor) in charge of schedules and correspondence with all the Portuguese feitorias around the world. One of the most famous people to hold this position was the chronicler João de Barros, who was appointed feitor in 1532.
The Casa was in charge of monitoring the royal monopoly on the Asian and African trade, i.e. receiving goods, collecting
The Casa had various mesas (departments) focused on specific areas - the spice trade, finances, ship scheduling, maintenance, training, documentation and legal matters.
Shipyards
Separately from the Casa was the Armazém da Guiné e Índias, the new name for the naval arsenal. It was assigned all nautical responsibilities, such as the running of the Lisbon dockyards, the construction of ships, the hiring and training of crews and supplying the fleets with equipment - sails, ropes, guns, nautical instruments and maps.
The Piloto-Mor of the Armazém, a position held between 1503 and 1526 by Pero Anes, Gonçalo Álvares and João de Lisboa, was probably responsible for the training of pilot-navigators and the drafting of navigational charts.[3]
In 1547, the position of Cosmógrafo-mor (High-Cosmographer) was created for the famed mathematician Pedro Nunes and the cartographic duties passed over to him.
The Provedor dos Armazéns was in charge of screening and hiring of crews. The Almoxarife or Recebedor dos Armazéns, was the customs-collector, a highly-profitable job that was once held by Bartolomeu Dias in the mid-1490s.
Although theoretically separate, the Casa and the Armazém kept in contact and coordinated matters with each other, the expenses from one charged to the treasurer of the other, and officers moved seamlessly between them. As a result, it was common to use Casa da Índia to refer to the whole complex.
Operations
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In 1504 all trading activities in Africa and, especially, in Asia were merged in the Casa da Índia, becoming subject to state control under the Portuguese kings. Under the supervision of the Vedor da Fazenda (chief royal treasurer) all products had to be handed over to the Casa, taxed and sold at an agreed price with the proceeds paid to the owners.
Cartography
The Casa da Índia produced a secret map called the Padrão Real, one of the first early world maps. The Cantino planisphere is the only existing copy of the Padrão Real.
The Teixeira planisphere was made by Domingos Teixeira in 1573.
Customs
The Casa da Índia worked as
It fixed the prices and checked purchases, sales and payments. And also fitted the fleets, gathered the necessary military convoys, managed incoming and outgoing vessels and set out the various certificates and licenses. Through the Casa da Índia the royal officials were appointed overseas, and royal decrees and regulations were spread.
Between 1506 and 1570, Casa da Índia enforced the royal monopoly on all imports and sales of
Royal monopolies
The royal monopoly on
In 1506, about 65% of the state income was produced on overseas activity. The monopoly of trade remained profitable until 1570, and strengthened the equity and credit capacity of Portugal. The share of the Crown's total trade with Asia in 1506 amounted to about 25% and increased steadily to 50% or more, but never entirely displaced the private traders: the trade monopoly was accompanied always by free trade in other products such as textiles, weapons, paper and salted fish, such as Bacalhau.
Royal monopolies were also leased out sometimes by Casa da Índia to private traders for a certain period. After 1570, the monopolies were abolished, except for the purchase of spices and the trade in copper and silver.
See also
- Casa de Contratación, the Spanish counterpart of the Casa da Índia
- Company of Guinea
- Age of Discovery
- Portuguese Discoveries
- Portuguese Renaissance
- Economic history of Portugal
References
- ^ Wilks, Ivor. Wangara, Akan, and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (1997). Bakewell, Peter (ed.). Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas. Aldershot: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Limited. pp. 1–39.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ISBN 978-2-909961-40-8.
- ^ e.g. Teixeira da Mota (1969) "Os Regimentos do cosmógrafo-mor de 1559 e 1592 e as origens do ensino náutico em Portugal",Memórias da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, vol. 13, pp.227-91. J.I. Brito-Rebello (1903) Livro de Marinharia (Lisbon: Libânio da Silva) replicates the documents for the nominations of Pero Annes (18 February 1503), João de Lisboa replacing Gonçalo Álvares as "patrão" (11 December 1522) and "piloto-mor" (12 January 1525), and Fernando Affonso as "patrão" (15 November 1526)
- West African peoples in Guinea Coast, Gold Coast, see Chamberlain, C. C.(1963). The Teach Yourself Guide to Numismatics. English Universities Press. P. 92. From contemporary records, we know the earliest Portuguese were made in Antwerp; between 1504 and 1507 Portugal exported 287,813 manillas into Guineavia San Jorge da Mina. vide Einzig, Paul (1949). Primitive Money in its ethnological, historical and economic aspects. Eyre & Spottiswoode. London. P. 155.
Notes
- Note on the Castiglioni Planisphere, Armando Cortesao, Imago Mundi, Vol. 11, 1954 (1954), pp. 53–55
- House of India, Encyclopædia Britannica.
- The Dating of the Oldest Portuguese Charts, Alfredo Pinheiro Marques, Imago Mundi, Vol. 41, 1989 (1989), pp. 87–97
- Brazil depicted in early maps, Arthur Dürst, Cartographica Helvetica 6 (1992) 8–16.
- Sixteenth-Century Portugal, Chapter Twelve of A History of Spain and Portugal, Stanley G. Payne, THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE, Volume 1.