Expanding Portuguese Empire and the Tamil Economy: Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries

This book examines the politics of trade in horses, elephants and the phenomenal growth of bulk goods in Asia besides export of saltpetre, pearls and diamonds to Portugal. Bullions were imported and it resulted in the monetization of economy and accumulation of capital on the Tamil coast. The Tamil coastal region is taken as a micro-historical unit which constituted the fulcrum of the entire maritime commercial system between South India and South-East Asia. The aims and policies of the Portuguese and the economic effects, their success and failure and how their significant role changed the then existing commercial topography and the traditional pattern of trade are brought out clearly in this volume. The author convincingly argues on the basis of the Portuguese sources that the years of Portuguese presence in the Tamil coast was a period of great economic revival and prosperity, a period of extensive contacts which signaled the growth of a vibrant regional economy that was integrated with the then emerging global economic system.