Travels in India (Tavernier) 31.2.4

31.2.4

The people of the country called Kanarese do not hold any offices under the Portuguese save in reference to law as agents, solicitors, or scribes, and they are kept in subjection. If one of these Kanarese or black men struck a white or European, there was no pardon for him, and he had to have his hand cut off. Both Spaniards and Portuguese, especially the Spaniards, use them as receivers and men of business, and in the islands of Manilla or Philippines there are blacks so rich that some of them have offered the Viceroy up to 20,000 croisats for permission to wear hose and shoes — this was not allowed them. You see certain of these blacks with bare feet, though followed by thirty slaves, and superbly clad; and if the Portuguese had been pleased to allow them to equip vessels, and to appoint the captains and other officers according to their own wishes, the former would not have made so many conquests in India, or at least would not have made them so easily. These blacks have much intelligence and are good soldiers, and the clerics have assured me that they learn more in the colleges in six months than the Portuguese children do in a year, whatever the science may be to which they apply themselves. It is for this reason that the Portuguese keep them down.