Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/202

 150 THE POKTUGUESE POLICY IN THE EAST 1550 held such schemes in abeyance during nearly two hundred years. The fall of the Moghul empire rendered possible a revival of the old Portuguese policy, and from the struggle which ensued, England emerged the sovereign power in India. The drain upon Portugal for her armies and fleets in Asia, although far beyond her normal resources, was for a time richly repaid by the monopoly of the Indo- European trade. The volume of that trade may be inferred from the statements that 806 Portuguese ships were employed in it between 1497 and 1612, and that the ordinary cost of construction and equipment of a single vessel intended for India, with the pay of the captain and crew for one voyage, was calculated at 4076. Such returns do not include ships captured in Asiatic seas or built in Indian dockyards, and, assuming their accuracy, the total number of vessels engaged in the trade can scarcely have been less than one thousand during the century of the Portuguese monopoly. The annual fleet which brought home the Indian cargoes numbered, in the palmy days of the Portuguese com- merce, twenty sail. Regarding the value of the trade it is more difficult to form an estimate. To the Portuguese cavaliers and chroniclers the achievement of their na- tion in India was a romance of military prowess and of missionary zeal. The commercial aspects they kept as much as possible in the background. Indeed, Faria y Sousa apologizes for referring to the expeditions of certain years, as " what they did was in relation to trade, a subject unbecoming a grave history." We have