INTRODUCING THE PRIVATE TRADER

In 1524 Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal to India for the third and final time, a quarter century after his celebrated first voyage of 1497–9. Tired and ageing, he undertook the journey most reluctantly, having been obliged to accept the office of viceroy on João III's personal insistence. The viceregal fleet duly reached southwest India late in the year, but by that time Gama was seriously ill and so was taken straight ashore at Cochin and lodged in the house of a certain Diogo Pereira, a prominent Portuguese settler. Hidden among coconut trees but strategically located close to the lagoon, the church and the fortress, Pereira's house was, we are told, richly decorated with Chinese porcelain. It was here, on Christmas Eve 1524, that the old admiral finally passed away, Pereira's half-Indian family anxiously hovering in the background.

In view of what Diogo Pereira actually stood for there is irony in this deathbed scene. A minor nobleman who had settled in Cochin almost twenty years before, Pereira had held the important offices of escrivão, factor and captain. But he had also pursued a long and successful career in local and regional private trade, building up an extensive network of Asian business contacts and maintaining a close association with the rajah of Cochin. He had married an Indian wife, founded a Eurasian family, learned to speak Malayalam fluently and integrated so successfully into Kerala society that he was nicknamed the Malabari.