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 PORTUGUESE JEALOUSY OF SEA RIVALS 131 because such engagements became in the next century a factor in European diplomacy. One of the initial dif- ficulties which the English East India Company had to face was the Portuguese claim that the princes of the Indian coast and Spice Archipelago were, under these treaties, subjects of the Portuguese crown, and that their territories formed part of the Portuguese dominions. The Portuguese clearly understood that their power depended on their fleet, and showed a wise jealousy of sea rivals. But the shipbuilding of the Atlantic so greatly excelled that of the Indian Ocean, that only two states of Western India could seriously imperil the Christian squadrons. The navies of Calicut and Gujarat, aided by the Egyptian admiral, had matched themselves against the Viceroy Almeida, and their defeat at Diu was followed up by treaties to prevent their reconstruction. Calicut in the south was not allowed to keep war-vessels or even armed rowing- boats. Gujarat on the north had, in 1534, to agree that no warship should be built in any of her ports, a con- dition reinforced by subsequent treaties. The same unsparing policy which flogged and sentenced to death the Arabs of Ormuz who ventured to carry arms, also put an end to naval construction at alien Indian har- bours. Portugal further coerced the naval states of West- ern India by a chain of settlements at strategic points up the coast. Besides the fortress factories already mentioned on the southern Malabar seaboard, the four