The Treaty of Bassein, 1534: how Portugal came to hold Bombay

In December 1534 the governor of Portuguese India was at sea, heading north from Goa with an armada against the sultanate of Gujarat. When Nuno da Cunha's fleet reached Baçaim, the port the English later called Bassein and India now calls Vasai, an ambassador from Sultan Bahadur came to meet him. He brought an offer: Bassein and all its lands, as a gift to the King of Portugal, in return for peace.1 source1 source

The envoy, whom the Portuguese called Xacoes, carried full powers from the sultan. On 23 December, in the galleon São Mateus, where the governor had his quarters, the Portuguese put forward seven conditions, which Xacoes accepted, and Xacoes put forward five of his own, which the governor granted. The acting secretary of the Estado da Índia, Gaspar Pires, wrote them down. The governor swore on the Gospels with his hand on the book. Xacoes promised that his master would swear too, as soon as a Portuguese captain reached his court.3 sources3 sources

Diogo do Couto, the chronicler who later continued the official history of Portuguese Asia, says the peace was sworn by each man 'in his own manner' and recorded in Persian and Portuguese. Two copies were signed, one kept by the secretary and one taken by the ambassador.2 sources2 sources

The witnesses included Martim Afonso de Sousa, captain-major of the Indian sea, the chief judge of Portuguese India, Fernão Rodrigues de Castelo Branco, the governor's secretary Simão Ferreira, and two interpreters: Coje Percolim, a Persian Muslim, and Marcos Fernandes. The copy in Botelho's register was made from the secretary's original to replace the ambassador's, which Xacoes said had been lost in the sultan's camp.2 sources2 sources

The next day the governor went ashore with the ambassador, who handed the town over. Its leading men came to give their obedience, and criers went round the tanadarias, the revenue districts, ordering the local officials to obey the King of Portugal. Gaspar Correia, who was in India at the time, wrote that each tanadar presented a branch of a sweet-smelling plant to the Portuguese factor as a sign of allegiance.3 sources3 sources

On 25 November 1510 Afonso de Albuquerque stormed Goa, and it became the capital of what the Portuguese called the Estado da Índia: a chain of fortresses, trading posts and fleets around the Indian Ocean, run by a governor or viceroy. Its strength was at sea; on land it held little.2 sources2 sources

The richest state on that coast was Gujarat, a Muslim sultanate whose merchants traded to Mecca and the Red Sea. Its island port of Diu commanded the Gulf of Cambay, and for years the Portuguese wanted a fortress there.2 sources2 sources

In February 1531 Nuno da Cunha led an armada against it: nearly 300 vessels by the count in the Tombo, more than 400 by Danvers's. On the way his men stormed the fortified island of Beth with great slaughter, and it was known afterwards as the Island of the Dead. Diu itself, strong in walls, guns and men, held out, and the governor went back to Goa.3 sources3 sources

The Portuguese turned on the smaller ports. Fleets burnt towns along the Gujarat coast, and on 20 January 1533, St Sebastian's day, Nuno da Cunha stormed the new fortifications at Bassein, held for the sultan by a captain the Portuguese called Meliqueliaz. His men took some 400 guns and razed the fort. Thana, Bandra, Mahim and the island of Bombay were made to pay tribute.4 sources4 sources

Bahadur Shah had come to the throne of Gujarat in 1526, aged about 20. He took Mandu, the fortress capital of Malwa, and in 1534 he was gathering every lord in his kingdom to attack Chitor, the great Rajput stronghold, whose king had died and left a small boy under his mother's regency.2 sources2 sources

To the north stood a new power. The Mughal emperor Babur had died, and his son Humayun now ruled from Agra. Bahadur sheltered princes who had rebelled against Humayun, among them Muhammad Zaman Mirza, and would not give them up. The letters between the two rulers, preserved in the Mirat-i-Sikandari, a Persian-language history of the Gujarat sultans, turned from courteous to threatening, and Humayun warned that he would march.2 sources2 sources

Simão Botelho, who compiled the records of Bassein twenty years later, thought Bahadur's motive was fear of Nuno da Cunha. The governor had sailed with all his men, and with the sultan's army away at Chitor he might take Diu and ravage the coast. Modern historians add the Mughals. Under pressure from the Portuguese at sea and from Humayun on land, Bahadur gave up the district the Portuguese had been raiding, to keep them away from Diu and to buy time until the war inland went better.2 sources2 sources

The sultan was not there to sign. Couto says that when the peace was made, Xacoes sent riders after his master, who was already on the march to Chitor, and then went back to Goa with the governor, to winter there as a hostage while a Portuguese envoy went to have the peace confirmed.1 source1 source

The treaty does not name Bombay. It handed over Bassein with all its lands, islands and seas, as the sultan's captains and tanadars had held them, and the islands of Bombay came as part of that district. Botelho's revenue rolls list Mahim, Mazagon and 'Monbaym', Bombay itself, among the lands the King of Portugal received, from the first full year of accounts.2 sources2 sources

Some clauses protected the sultan's people and men. The 200 pardaos paid from Bassein's revenues to the garrisons of the two border forts between Bassein and the Rajput lands would still be paid. Ships bound for Gujarat from anywhere but the Red Sea were not to be seized once they were within the port of Bassein. Four Portuguese held prisoner at Champaner, among them Diogo de Mesquita, were to be released, and the governor would then send a captain to the sultan.1 source1 source

Bassein was worth having. Botelho says possession was taken in December 1534, halfway through the local revenue year, which began on 9 June, so the first year brought in only half. In 1535 the town of Bassein and its hamlets paid 158,475 fedeas, a small coin worth about twelve réis, counting the dues on its oil, cotton, fish and other trades. The island of Salsette, to the south, paid 285,725, and Bombay paid 17,000.2 sources2 sources

Then Bahadur's war inland went badly. In 1535 Humayun invaded. He drove the sultan out of Mandu, chased him to Cambay, which he reached on the day Bahadur left it, and besieged and took the fortress of Champaner. The sultan fled to Diu, the one place where, because it was an island, he could save himself and gather his men.2 sources2 sources

Now he needed the Portuguese. Martim Afonso de Sousa hurried to Diu in four light rowing boats, and the governor's envoy Simão Ferreira agreed terms with the sultan in September. On 25 October 1535, on the landward bastion of Diu, where Nuno da Cunha was lodged, Xacoes agreed a new contract in Bahadur's name, to be signed by the sultan and the governor. The sultan granted a fortress at Diu on any site the governor chose and confirmed the gift of Bassein.2 sources2 sources

The price was a change to the 1534 terms. Ships bound for Mecca no longer had to call at Bassein and could use Diu as before. The revenues and jurisdiction of Diu stayed with the sultan, and Portugal held only its fortress. In return the two kings became allies, and the governor promised to help Bahadur against his enemies by land and sea.2 sources2 sources

The fort went up quickly. Nuno da Cunha left Manuel de Sousa in command, with 900 Portuguese and 60 heavy guns. The governor also kept his side of the bargain: he persuaded the sultan of Ahmadnagar to make peace with Bahadur, and Martim Afonso helped recover lost territory with 500 men.1 source1 source

Once the Mughals had been called away and his kingdom was his again, Bahadur regretted the fort. In February 1537 he went out by boat to meet Nuno da Cunha off Diu.2 sources2 sources

The accounts disagree on who planned what. Portuguese writers say each side meant to seize the other, the Gujarati history says the sultan was also plotting, and the Mughal Akbarnama blames the Portuguese alone. A scuffle broke out as Bahadur tried to return, and he died in the water, drowned by one account and cut down with a sword by another. Manuel de Sousa was killed too.2 sources2 sources

Among Bahadur's guns at Diu were three basilisks, cannon so large that Nuno da Cunha sent one to Portugal as a curiosity. According to Danvers it was kept at the fort of São Julião da Barra, at the mouth of the Tagus, and known as the Gun of Diu. In 1538 a Gujarati army and an Ottoman fleet besieged the new fortress. The garrison held, and the Ottoman commander sailed away on 5 November.1 source1 source

At first Bassein had only a weakly defended factory. In 1536, when a Mughal force approached, its commander thought of abandoning it; António Galvão argued against it, the Mughals withdrew without a shot, and Nuno da Cunha came to dig the foundations of a citadel, asking Galvão to lay the first stone. One of the oldest bastions carried an inscription that read, in translation: 'The first captain who built this fortress was Garcia de Sá, by command of the governor Nuno da Cunha in the year 1536.'2 sources2 sources

Bassein became the capital of what the Portuguese called the Province of the North. With the district of Daman, taken in 1559, it was a coastal strip between Bombay and Daman, from 7 to 30 kilometres wide. Unlike most Portuguese holdings in Asia it was farmland as well as harbours, and the crown granted out its villages and islands as manors to Portuguese tenants for a fixed yearly rent.3 sources3 sources

From about 1590 the town got a new ring of stone walls with eleven bastions. Only Portuguese of rank lived inside, among churches, squares and two-storey houses with covered balconies. There was a cathedral, five convents, thirteen churches and a Misericórdia, and the city was called the 'Corte do Norte', the Court of the North. A great man was proverbially called a 'fidalgo de Baçaim'.2 sources2 sources

The man who won Bassein and Diu got little thanks. His successor, the viceroy Garcia de Noronha, arrived on 11 September 1538 and pushed him aside. Nuno da Cunha left India in January 1539 in a hired merchant galleon, fell ill on the voyage and died off the Cape of Good Hope; at his own request he was buried at sea. Before he died he declared that the only things of the king's he carried were five gold medals from Bahadur's treasure.1 source1 source

For more than a century Bombay was one of Bassein's lesser manors. The change came from Europe, where Portugal had broken away from Spain in 1640 and was looking for allies. The marriage treaty between Charles II of England and the Infanta Catherine of Braganza, sister of King Afonso VI, was signed at Whitehall on 23 June 1661.2 sources2 sources

Article V promised a dowry of two million Portuguese cruzados, half before the princess sailed. Another article gave England the city of Tangier. Article XI gave 'the port and island of Bombay' with all its rights, revenues and territories, for ever, so that England could better defend the Portuguese in the East against the Dutch. A secret article bound England to seek peace between Portugal and the Dutch and, failing that, to send forces to defend the Portuguese lands in the East Indies.2 sources2 sources

Handing it over took years. The Earl of Marlborough reached Bombay in September 1662 with five ships and 500 soldiers, and the Portuguese in India refused to give it up. The English found the island a much smaller prize than they had been told. The instrument of cession finally left Goa on 17 January 1665, and on 18 February Humphrey Cooke took possession, signing in the manor house of Dona Inês de Miranda, the lady of the island.1 source1 source

Charles II did not keep it long. By a royal charter of 27 March 1668 he passed the port and island to the East India Company for a rent of £10 a year. The rest of the Province of the North, Bassein included, stayed Portuguese.1 source1 source

The end came from inland. The Marathas, whose power had been spreading along the Konkan coast since the later seventeenth century, attacked the Province of the North in the 1730s. In 1738 they took the fort of Arnala north of Bassein and closed the creeks around the city.2 sources2 sources

Goa, under attack itself, could send no help. The English at Bombay stayed officially neutral: the Thana gazetteer says they refused help, but Bombay's own records show them quietly sending munitions, supplies, workmen and money. On 17 February 1739 Chimaji Appa, brother of the Peshwa Baji Rao, began the siege.3 sources3 sources

The Maratha engineers dug mines under the walls. On 13 May they blew a breach wide enough for twenty men abreast at the bastion of Remédios and attacked it six times, and the bastion of São Sebastião fourteen times. Each assault was beaten back, but the garrison was small, its commander was dead and its powder was running out. Terms were signed on 16 May.2 sources2 sources

They were honourable. The troops marched out with loaded arms and colours flying, families could leave for Bombay, Daman or Chaul with their goods, and Christians who stayed could practise their religion, with three churches the Maratha commander undertook to maintain. The garrison left on 23 May. The Thana gazetteer of 1882, citing an earlier article in the Bombay Quarterly Review, put the Portuguese losses at about 800 and the Maratha dead and wounded at about 12,000. Danvers, working from Portuguese records, says only that the Portuguese losses were very heavy.2 sources2 sources

With the Mughals distracted by the Persian ruler Nadir Shah's capture of Delhi, the Marathas could take the whole district. The years 1739 and 1740 ended Portuguese rule over almost all of the Province of the North, 205 years after the contract in the São Mateus.1 source1 source

The islands that came with Bassein in 1534 were joined to each other over the following centuries by causeways and land reclaimed from the sea, and the single island that resulted is the old core of Mumbai. Mahim and Mazagon, both in the revenue rolls of 1535, are still the names of Mumbai neighbourhoods.3 sources3 sources

Bassein itself never recovered its old rank. Under the Marathas it was renamed Bajipur and served as a district headquarters, and in December 1802 it gave its name to a second, unrelated Treaty of Bassein, signed there between the British and the Peshwa Baji Rao II. The walls of the Portuguese city still stand, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.2 sources2 sources