Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/206

 164 THE POETUGUESE POLICY EST THE EAST through which they passed. The Portuguese sovereigns were wining to allow their subjects to benefit by East- ern commerce. Prince Henry the Navigator had, in the first half of the fifteenth century, encouraged a company formed for trading with his discoveries on the African coast. It soon became evident that the fifteenth-century world could not be opened up by private enterprise. The African and Canaries trade became a monopoly of the royal family, and merchants engaging in it had to take out a license and render a part of their profits to the sovereign or his representative. A charter of June 29, 1500, shows that on the finding of the Cape route King Emmanuel in like manner offered to share the Indian trade with his subjects, on condition that one-fourth of the returns should be paid to his Majesty. Again, however, private enterprise proved unequal to the task, and for the next eighty-seven years the trade of India was conducted at the risk and for the behoof of the sovereign. The royal monopoly of spices alone was estimated at 45,000 a year, and his Majesty's profit from the general trade at 150,000. Adding this to the 225,000 from prizes, customs, etc., the king's share should have amounted to 420,000 a year. But the profits were eaten up by the expense of the arma- ments. The king, however, still desired to interest his sub- jects in the enterprise. In the second voyage of Vasco da Gama (1502), each mariner and officer of the Indian fleets was allowed to bring home for himself a certain quantity of spices, paying as freight one-twentieth of