Frederick Noronha
There’s always an old gem which surprises you when you come across it. Campos’ ‘History of the Portuguese in Bengal with Maps and Illustrations’ is one such work, which doesn’t lose its charm decades after it was written.
Joaquim Joseph Antonio [JJA] Campos (1893–1945) was a Goan historian, scholar and civil servant, and a prolific writer on early Portuguese expansion in India and the interaction between Europe and Asia in the sixteenth century. He is known for his careful archival work.
With limited access to European archives then, Campos relied heavily on Portuguese chronicles, missionary records and travel accounts. The History of the Portuguese in Bengal is one of his best known works, now available in a 2025 reprint. Campos died relatively young in 1945, but his work lives on. Campos’s kin can be traced in Goa in a few cases.
Today, much of this might be dismissed as irrelevant, colonial history. Yet, “colonialism” has meant different things at diverse points of time. From overseas expansion to navigation and shipbuilding. Mediterranean trading colonies, permanent settlements and trading posts. For the Portuguese, new trade routes to Asian markets, forts, missionary activity, coastal enclaves. Sometimes, tiny choke points that controlled a thalassocracy (a state whose power is based on control of the sea and maritime trade routes, not large inland areas). At other times, large territorial empires like the British in India, the Spaniards in Latin America, Dutch in Indonesia, French elsewhere, the Portuguese in Brazil or Africa. Later on, racial ideologies, military presence, coercive power and intensive resource extraction. Today, one could say, we have new forms of imperialisms.
This book was first published by Butterworth & Co (India) way back in 1919. More recently, it has come out in a 2025 reprint, by BR Publishing Corporation, priced at Rs. 950 (hb) and available at Broadway, Panaji.. Of course, as the copyright has expired on these books, it is possible to reprint the same without restrictions.
Campos said that the work grew out of a series of lectures, and a book was needed on the history of the Portuguese in Bengal as “there is not a single comprehensive work on the subject”.
British colonialism had a love-hate, rivalry-collaboration relationship with its predecessor, the Portuguese. British colonial administrator FJ Monahan, ICS, comments: “The work done by the Portuguese as pioneers of European commerce in this part of India has not, perhaps, been sufficiently recognized, for it may truly be said that they paved the way for commercial ventures of the Dutch, the English and other European nations.”
He adds that at one time “Portuguese was the common language of the important centres of maritime commerce in India, spoken by Europeans of all nations, who came to trade in this country and by the Indians who did business with them”.
There are some sections of the book which are charming. For example, the way Portuguese has influenced many languages, including Hindi. We all know that Konkani has accepted some 2000 words of Portuguese origin. But would you guess that maybe 120 prominent Hindi words come from that language?
These includes words like achar (pickle), aya (ayah), alpin (pin), ama (wet nurse), ambar (amber), amin (amen), ananas (pineapple), anison (anise), almari (almyrah), ata (custard apple), basan (plate), baph (vapour or breath), bajra (arabic barque), baldi (bucket) and many more words. Right upto tufan (storm), sufa (sofa), pistol (pistol), peru (turkey), or mez (table).
The book, in 18 chapters (plus addenda, maps and illustrations) spans 283 pages. It focuses on Portuguese in that part of India, during their various phases — rise; decline and fall; and what remains (at the time of writing) of the Portuguese in Bengal. The bibliography is impressive, though dating back to another era.
Campos’ book starts with the memorable first line: “Four centuries have sped since the Portuguese first drank the waters of the Ganges. It was 1517. King Manoel, the fortunate (a venturoso), whose reign was immortalized by the discovery of the sea-route to India, was on the throne of Portugal. Queen Elizabeth was not yet born and over eighty years were yet to elapse before she was destined to sign the memorable charter which originated the East India Company.”
From the early “expeditions” to Bengal, in the early 1500s, we then move on to Portuguese settlements in the Hooghly district. The encounter with Afghan, Mughal and other rulers of east India makes for interesting reading. Later, they spread to Eastern Bengal, like Chittagong (now in Bangladesh).
Goa’s past can be an intriguing space. Unfortunately, our recent approaches, suffused sometimes with a ‘nationalistic’ overdose, can make us biased against adequately evaluating this period. Yet you never know what connects where though, and how it’s relevant to even understanding Goa.
This book is cluttered with detail. It tells us of the Dacca (today Dhaka) of 1586 “abundant in rice, cotton and silk goods”. It talks about connections between Akbar, Jahnagir and the “Portuguese Fathers”, among others. The Portuguese even landed up trading in what today is Orissa, and had a small settlement in Balasore.
There’s also the focus on the Luso trade in Bengal. Like all societies who know their peak was in the past, the Portuguese too look at their “period of decadence” (Chapter XI). It makes those of us outside the Portuguese world, but whose lives were shaped by it, wonder how this tiny region of three million could shape such large swathes of the planet in its heyday.
There’s a significant section on the Portuguese role in the Arakan, today’s Rakhine State in Burma, seen as the frontier between South Asia and Southeast Asia, and now known for its Rohingya population.
Amidst power-shifts from one colonial power to another, and then to the nationalistic heat of the 20th century, how we see such issues obviously changed many times. Given the era this was written in, the perspective is shaped by who’s telling the ‘story’. Nonetheless, it should be of interest to us in Goa, given the many connections (see the index as well).
Of special interest are the plants the Portuguese introduced in Bengal. The chapter on Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, an early poet in English of Luso-Indian descent, tells us more than many other sources.
Who should be reading this book? Anyone interested in colonial history, students wanting to understand the role of Goa (and its Portuguese rulers) in the wider world. It is also worth it for those keen to go deeper into Goaology, except that its reprinted hardbound shape today makes the book a bit pricey.
