Portuguese Empire

Ethiopia's Christians will be confronted from the mid-fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth century by the aggressiveness of the Muslim states, the far-reaching migrations of the Oromo, and the efforts of the Portuguese—who have been summoned to aid in the fight against the forces of Islam—to convert them from Monophysite Christianity to Roman Catholicism.

The effects of the Muslim and Oromo activities and of the civil strife engendered by the Portuguese will leave the empire much weakened by the mid-seventeenth century.

One result is the emergence of regional lords essentially independent of the throne, although in principle subject to it.

Beginning in the thirteenth century, one of the chief problems confronting the Christian kingdom, ruled at this time by the Amhara, is the threat of Muslim encirclement.

By this time, a variety of peoples east and south of the highlands have embraced Islam, and some have established powerful sultanates (or shaykhdoms).

One of these is the sultanate of Ifat in the northeastern Shewan foothills, and another is centered in the Islamic city of Harar farther east.

In the lowlands along the Red Sea are two other important Muslim peoples—the Afar and the Somali.

As mentioned previously, Ifat posed a major threat to the Christian kingdom, but it is finally defeated by Amda Siyon in the mid-fourteenth century after a protracted struggle.

During this conflict, Ifat is supported by other sultanates and by Muslim pastoralists, but for the most part, the Islamicized peoples inhabit small, independent states and are divided by differences in language and culture.

Many of them speak Cushitic languages, unlike the Semitic speakers of Harar.

Some are sedentary cultivators and traders, while others are pastoralists.

As a consequence, unity beyond a single campaign or even the coordination of military activities is difficult to sustain.

Their tendency toward disunity notwithstanding, the Muslim forces continue to pose intermittent threats to the Christian kingdom.

By the late fourteenth century, descendants of the ruling family of Ifat have moved east to the area around Harar and have reinvigorated the old Muslim sultanate of Adal, which becomes the most powerful Muslim entity in the Horn of Africa.

Muslim countries of the Middle East have controlled East-West trade during the Middle Ages.

Control changes in the fifteenth century, however.

The Portuguese, who are building ships with deep hulls that remain stable in high seas, are thereby able to make longer voyages.

They push farther and farther down the west coast of Africa until they find their way around the southern tip of the continent and make contact with Muslim cities on the other side.

In East Africa, the Portuguese enlist Arab navigators there to take them across to India, where they eventually set themselves up in Calicut on the Malabar Coast.

Once in India, the Portuguese use their superior ships to transport goods around Africa instead of using the Red Sea route, thus eliminating the middlemen in Egypt.

The Portuguese then extend heir control to the local trade that crosses the Arabian Sea, capturing coastal cities in Oman and Iran and setting up forts and customs houses on both coasts to collect duty.

The Portuguese allow local rulers to remain in control but collect tribute from them in exchange for that privilege, thus increasing Portuguese revenues.

Jalayirid rule is abruptly checked by the rising power of a Mongol, Tamerlane (or Timur the Lame, 1336-1405), who had been atabeg of the reigning prince of Samarkand.

Timur sacks Baghdad in 1401 and massacres many of its inhabitants.

He kills thousands of Iraqis and devastates hundreds of towns.

Like Hulagu, Tamerlane has a penchant for building pyramids of skulls.

Despite his showy display of Sunni piety, Tamerlane's rule virtually extinguishes Islamic scholarship and Islamic arts everywhere except in his capital, Samarkand.

In Iraq, political chaos, severe economic depression, and social disintegration had followed in the wake of the Mongol invasions.

Baghdad, long a center of trade, had rapidly lost its commercial importance.

Basra, which has been a key transit point for seaborne commerce, is circumvented after the Portuguese discover a shorter route around the Cape of Good Hope.

In agriculture, Iraq's once- extensive irrigation system has fallen into disrepair, creating swamps and marshes at the edge of the delta and dry, uncultivated steppes farther out.

The rapid deterioration of settled agriculture leads to the growth of tribally based pastoral nomadism.

The focus of Iraqi history has shifted by the end of the Mongol period from the urban-based Abbasid culture to the tribes of the river valleys, where it will remain until well into the twentieth century.

Muslim trading communities in South Asia, following the decline of the Chola as a maritime power in the twelfth century, had claimed a major share of commerce in the Indian Ocean and developed extensive east-west, as well as Indo-Sri Lankan, commercial trade routes.

As the Portuguese expand into the region, this flourishing Muslim trade becomes an irresistible target for European interlopers.

The sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Church is intolerant of Islam and encourages the Portuguese to take over the profitable shipping trade monopolized by the Moors.

In addition, the Portuguese will later have another strong motive for hostility toward the Moors because the latter play an important role in the Kandyan economy, one that enables the kingdom successfully to resist the Portuguese.

The Portuguese soon decide that the island, which they call Cilao, conveys a strategic advantage that is necessary for protecting their coastal establishments in India and increasing Lisbon's potential for dominating Indian Ocean trade.

These incentives prove irresistible, and, the Portuguese, with only a limited number of personnel, seek to extend their power over the island.

They have not long to wait.

Palace intrigue, then revolution in Kotte threatens the survival of the kingdom.

The Portuguese skillfully exploit these developments.

In 1521 Bhuvanekabahu, the ruler of Kotte, requests Portuguese aid against his brother, Mayadunne, the more able rival king who has established his independence from the Portuguese at Sitawake, a domain in the Kotte kingdom.

Powerless on his own, King Bhuvanekabahu becomes a puppet of the Portuguese, but shortly before his death in 1551, the king will successfully obtain Portuguese recognition of his grandson, Dharmapala, as his successor.

Portugal, which had already established its dominance as a maritime power in the Atlantic, is exploring new waters by the late fifteenth century.

In 1497 Vasco da Gama sails around the Cape of Good Hope and discovers an ocean route connecting Europe with India, thus inaugurating a new era of maritime supremacy for Portugal.

The Portuguese are consumed by two objectives in their empire-building efforts: to convert followers of non-Christian religions to Roman Catholicism and to capture the major share of the spice trade for the European market.

To carry out their goals, the Portuguese do not seek territorial conquest, which would be difficult given their small numbers.

Instead, they try to dominate strategic points through which trade passes.

By virtue of their supremacy on the seas, their knowledge of firearms, and by what has been called their "desperate soldiering" on land, the Portuguese gain an influence in South Asia that is far out of proportion to their numerical strength.

There are three native centers of political power at the onset of the European period in Sri Lanka in the sixteenth century: the two Sinhalese kingdoms of Kotte and Kandy and the Tamil kingdom at Jaffna.

Kotte is the principal seat of Sinhalese power, and it claims a largely imaginary overlordship not only over Kandy but also over the entire island.

None of the three kingdoms, however, has the strength to assert itself over the other two and reunify the island.

Don Lourenço de Almeida, son of the Portuguese viceroy in India, is sailing off the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka in 1505 looking for Moorish ships to attack when stormy weather forces his fleet to dock at Galle.

Word of these strangers who "eat hunks of white stone and drink blood (presumably wine)...and have guns with a noise louder than thunder ..." spreads quickly and reach King Parakramabahu VIII of Kotte (1484-1508), who offers gifts of cinnamon and elephants to the Portuguese to take back to their home port at Cochin on the Malabar Coast of southwestern India.

The king also gives the Portuguese permission to build a residence in Colombo for trade purposes.

Within a short time, however, Portuguese militaristic and monopolistic intentions become apparent.

Their heavily fortified "trading post" at Colombo and open hostility toward the island's Muslim traders arouses Sinhalese suspicions.

The first Europeans to visit the Comoros are the Portuguese, who land on Njazidja around 1505.

The islands first appear on a European map in 1527, that of Portuguese cartographer Diogo Roberos.

Dutch sixteenth-century accounts describe the Comoros' sultanates as prosperous trade centers with the African coast and Madagascar.

Intense competition for this trade, and, increasingly, for European commerce, results in constant warfare among the sultanates, a situation that will persist  until the French occupation.

The sultans of Njazidja only occasionally recognize the supremacy of one of their number as tibe, or supreme ruler.

Portuguese mariners explore the west coast of Africa throughout the latter half of the fifteenth century.

Two ships under Bartholomeu Dias eventually round the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and travel more than six hundred kilometers along the southwestern coast.

An expedition under Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape in 1497, sails up the east African coast to the
Arab port of Malindi (in present-day Kenya), then crosses the Indian Ocean to India, thereby opening up a way for Europeans to gain direct access to the spices of the East without having to go through Arab middlemen.

The Portuguese dominate this trade route throughout the sixteenth century.

They build forts and supply stations along the west and east African coasts, but they do not build south of present-day Angola and Mozambique because of the treacherous currents along the southern coast.