Editing Openai/691d9c1d-d468-8006-890d-7854f5b6223f (section)

=== When Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498, he crashed into a fully formed, vibrant, 2000-year-old trade system dominated by: ===
* Arab merchants
* Persian merchants
* Gujarati traders
* Tamil guilds
* Malay sailors
* Javanese and Acehnese kingdoms

Europe was the outsider, arriving late.

The Portuguese didn't “discover the Indian Ocean world”:
they invaded it.

And they came with a mindset nobody else had.

==== The Portuguese crown had one goal: break the Arab-Persian monopoly on the spice trade. ====

To do this, they:
* burned ships
* seized ports
* bombarded cities
* forced local rulers to accept treaties
* demanded protection payments (cartaz system)
* executed merchants who refused Portuguese inspection

This was a shock.

Arab and Persian merchants had competitors, yes —
but not someone trying to impose military control over the entire ocean.

==== The Portuguese attacked: ====
* the Red Sea route (to starve Cairo)
* the Persian Gulf (to seize Hormuz)
* the Arabian Sea (to police shipping)
* East Africa (conquering Kilwa, Mombasa)
* India (capturing Goa)
* Southeast Asia (Malacca)

They inserted themselves between producers and consumers and weaponized choke points.

Imagine if a foreign navy seized Singapore, Aden, and Istanbul in 10 years. Same vibe.

==== Arab and Persian merchants: ====
* fled
* re-routed goods
* built alternative circuits
* shifted to the Red Sea (Ottoman protection)
* used clandestine shipping to avoid Portuguese patrols

The Indian Ocean became a cat-and-mouse game.

==== Their naval empire was brutal but brittle. ====
Within a century:
* the Dutch VOC
* the English EIC
* Omani Arabs
* Gujarati merchants
* Safavid Persians

all challenged them.

The system didn’t die — it hybridized.

But the older world where Arab and Persian merchants were the spinal cord?
That era ended.