The Arrival of Portuguese in India

the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), all new territories were divided between Spain and Portugal. The stage was thus set for the Portuguese incursions into the waters surrounding India. In 1487, the Portuguese navigator, Bartholomew Dias, rounded the “Cape of excellent Hope”, then opened the ocean route to India. An expedition of 4 ships headed bent India in 1497 and arrived in India in slightly but eleven months. The coming of the Portuguese introduced several new factors into Indian history. As almost every historian has observed, it not only initiated what could be called the ECU era, it marked the emergence of naval power. Doubtless, the Cholas, among others, had been a naval power, except for the primary time a far off power had come to India by way of the sea; moreover, Portuguese dominance would only reach the coasts, since they were never ready to make any significant inroads into the Indian interior. The Portuguese ships carried cannon, but the importance of this is often not commonly realized, especially by those that are merely inclined to look at the Portuguese together as a series of invaders of India, or maybe as specimens of ‘enterprising’ Europeans. <a href="https://medium.com/vanicademy/the-arrival-of-portuguese-in-india-7bed41361ed3">Website</a>