Twilight of the Sultanate c17.s8.46

c17.s8.46

About the close of the fifteenth century, a new race had entered the arena of overseas trade when Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast in A.D. 1498. The Portuguese were quite welcome in India,¹⁶² but when they started to show their hand, Malabar resisted their encroachments. Besides, their commercial and practical activities also broke the monopoly which the Egyptians and Indians had so long enjoyed in the Red Sea.¹⁶³ In 1508 Gujarat and Egypt entered into an alliance and their united fleet attacked the ships of the Portuguese¹⁶⁴ and did them great damage, but their power went on increasing till the Dutch ousted them. The commercial and colonial expansion of the Portuguese on the west coast of India is a very significant event of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, because the Portuguese were the first among the Europeans to come to a land which in course of time they were to influence in so many ways.¹⁶⁵