Firangi

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Kubur

... My points were:
Portuguese and Venetians were not friends and not business partners.
The 16th c. trade is much more complicated than the 19th c. colonial trade.
It was not White Europeans and the others...

You are right in that the competition was dealt in a different mode; but not necessarily tougher or trickier than in the XIX century. Money rules remain in privilege... and merchants have a blind sight for politics. You will read that many a time both adversaries fought (and fight) with weapons of same provenance.
Still your source is not far from the truth in that:

" Initially, after the arrival of Vasco da Gama in Calicut in 1498, the Portuguese only intended to establish their economic dominance, having created several factories in Cochin, Cananor, Coulão, Cranganor, Tanor and Calecute. However, feeling the hostility on the part of several Indian kingdoms and other potentates (the Grand Sultan of Cairo, the Republic of Venice, the Sultan of Cambaia and the Samorin of Calicut), who allied themselves to expel them from India, ended up for making Portuguese rule official, strengthening the factories and creating a sovereign state (Goa, 1512)".

And we can add that the dance of power was in favor of Genoese long before that:

" In 1317 D. Dinis made an agreement with the navigator and Genoese merchant Manuel Pessanha (Emanuele Pessagno), appointing him the first admiral of the royal fleet with commercial privileges with his country, in exchange for twenty ships and their crews, in order to defend the country's coasts against (Muslim) piracy attacks, laying the foundations of the Portuguese Navy and for the establishment of a Genoese merchant community in Portugal. Forced to reduce their activities in the Black Sea, merchants in the Republic of Genoa had turned to the North African trade for wheat, oil (also a source of energy) and gold - sailing to the ports of Bruges (Flanders) and England. The Genoese and Florentines then settled in Portugal, which profited from the initiative and financial experience of these rivals of the Republic of Venice."
In 1453, with the taking of Constantinople by the Ottomans, trade in the Mediterranean between Venice and Genoa was very low. The benefit of an alternative commercial route proved to be rewarding. Portugal would directly link the spice-producing regions to its markets in Europe. When the project for the discovery of the sea route to India was signed, Portuguese expansion without forgetting the religious aspect is also dominated by commercial interest ...