The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c14.5

c14.5

Shivaji’s ports offered him a brilliant chance of improving his finances. Foreign merchants, attracted to these new marts, would not only improve the general prosperity of the country by purchasing its products but would contribute directly to the coffers of the State in the shape of customs duties. He could also derive greater profit by embarking on commercial enterprises on his own account, in consonance with the practice of the Portuguese rulers of Goa and the English traders of Bombay. But free navigation of the sea was in those days denied to all who could not enforce their right. The sovereignty of the sea had been for many years effectively claimed and exercised by the Portuguese. No merchant dared to launch his bark on the Arabian Sea or the Indian Ocean without first purchasing the permission of the Government of Goa. Even sovereign powers like those of Golkonda and Bijapur had to undergo this humiliation.¹ It is true that they obtained Portuguese cartazes to a specified number merely for the asking; but these permits were accompanied in all cases by vexatious conditions. They were not to import or export certain articles mentioned in the cartaz, they were not to visit the ports of the Imam of Muscat and of other enemies of the Portuguese and they were not to carry with them any Christian slave. To ascertain whether these conditions were being loyally observed the Portuguese claimed and exercised the right of search.¹ In short they denied their weaker neighbours the freedom of the sea. But such was the dread of the Portuguese name in those days that even the mighty Emperor of Delhi deemed it prudent to provide for the safety of the pilgrim boats bound for Mecca by soliciting the *cartaz* of the Portuguese Viceroy. Although Indian traders and Indian rulers had accepted the Portuguese sovereignty of the sea as a settled fact, this assumption of authority had been from the very beginning disputed by the merchants of other European nations. And in Shivaji's time the English, the Dutch and the French successfully demonstrated the possibility of defying the Portuguese in their own element. Shivaji, possessed of a strong fleet, could secure for his subjects the same rights, the same immunities and the same advantages.