THE SHOCKING LEGACY OF COLONIZATION

While AIDS is the major cause of the desperate and ever-increasing growth in the number of orphans world-wide today, it feeds off and thrives in the shocking conditions of most third world countries which are the legacy of European colonization. These conditions include depletion of natural resources, lack of food and corrupt and/or inept governments. Read on and see what a curse European intrusion into Africa has been. ___________________________________________________________________________ Roger Casement sat listening to the natives' tales, shocked. " We brought rubber into the white men's stations . . . when it was not enough, the white men would put some of us in lines, one behind the other, and would shoot through all our bodies. . . ." One after another, natives from each village he visited told him of atrocities committed by the colonial military and government. Investigating rumors in the Belgian Congo in 1903, the British Consul would not have believed many of the horrors reported to him but for the confirmation of Christian missionaries who had witnessed the atrocities themselves. Tales of forced labor, a rubber "tax," starvation, mutilation, beatings, murders, and other brutalities came to the ears of those who dared to investigate almost any of Europe's African colonies. What on earth had happened to the legacy of missionaries such as Robert Moffat, Mary Slessor, and David Livingstone with his "3 Cs" —commerce, Christianity, and civilization? In Europe's famous "Scramble for Africa," they had been left behind in the dust. Prior to the 19th century, the rest of the world knew very little about Africa -- the Dark Continent. What trade was transacted between Europeans and African traders occurred on the coast. However, beginning in the early 1800s, explorers began to explore the African interior. Many of the first European explorers in Africa were missionaries who felt called to minister to the pagan African tribes. Many of these missionaries also wanted to eradicate the poisonous trade that wrecked havoc on so many poor Africans, the slave trade. After seven centuries of being brutalized by the Arab slave traders, Europeans took great advantage of the existing system of blacks capturing blacks to feed the huge demand of large plantations in the Americas. So Swahili or black traders trekked throughout Africa, capturing blacks or buying prisoners from other native tribes to sell as slaves on the coast. Led by Christian officials such as Willberforce, Great Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1834. British ships started to patrol the African coast to try to prevent other nations from engaging in the slave trade. Meanwhile, more and more explorers, whether Christian or secular, British or not, began to explore Africa. At first African diseases and hostile natives repulsed most expeditions into Africa. However, as European society made progress with new inventions and discoveries such as the Maxim gun and quinine. Armed with these innovations, explorers began to cut their way through the African jungle — and natives. Great Britain led the way in African colonization with colonies in South Africa. Then France invaded Tunisia in 1881, and Great Britain took over Egypt which Great Britain and France had previously ruled jointly. Henry Stanley and Pierre de Brazza, exploring for Belgium and France respectively, rushed around in West Africa in an attempt to gain the Niger River for the countries supporting them. To avoid a European war that might arise from the conflicting claims, German chancellor Otto von Bismark held the West African Conference in Berlin from November 1884 through February 1885 which became known as "the Scramble". Ambassadors attended to talk about African policies, particularly the notification of any new conquest by one signing country to all the other signing countries. Although this conference had everything to do with Africa, not a single of the fourteen countries represented at the West African Conference was African. Of the seven European countries that would eventually control most of Africa, Great Britain, France, and Belgium together controlled most of Africa's territory. But what were the motives, policies, and abilities of these nations, and how easily would their colonization of the territory turn into independence? Numerous motives instigated Great Britain, France, and Belgium's colonization of Africa. For one thing, since Europe felt depleted of natural resources needed for industrialization, all the nations had an interest in the raw materials found in Africa. But besides this, the countries' major reasons for interest in Africa differed. After Napoléon Bonaparte was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815, the humbled Frenchmen saw colonization in Africa as a chance to gain back some of their dignity and prestige in their traditional competition against the English. As for Belgium, King Leopold II actually supported the idea of a colony in Africa, not the country. All of the king's advisors and counsel members thought that Leopold, who spent much of his own private fortune into the colony later called the Belgian Congo, must have lost his marbles. Leopold II expected great returns from his overseas colony. Unlike the purely lucrative interest in African colonization sought by France and Belgium, Great Britain had a Biblical motive to colonize the continent. Of course many Englishmen looked at Africa as an economic opportunity, but some Englishmen also wanted to open up the continent to Livingstone's "3 Cs." They wanted to end slavery, convert the blacks, and civilize the continent. One unfortunate result of the African colonization, however, was the fact that the colonizers often mistreated the indigenous inhabitants in African colonies. Officials in the Belgian Congo won first prize as the most abusive of almost any other colonizer in Africa. After Leopold finally got the Belgian Congo running and making a profit, rumors began to reach Europe of atrocities occurring in the Congo river basin. However, these remote rumors had few witnesses, and fewer who spoke up because Belgium often gave them tax cuts and other benefits to keep them quiet and happy. It was not until 1904 when the British Foreign Office published a report on the Belgian Congo by Casement, that the skeletons in Leopold II's closet became exposed. For in reality, Leopold II used the "Belgian" Congo as a private asset rather than a state colony. He did not care what happened to the inhabitants so long as he profited from the colony's resources. When the British Foreign Office published the report, France paid little attention to it because France had started to follow the lead of the Belgian Congo, exploiting the land at whatever cost to the natives. British humanitarians and Christians, however, were shocked. Great Britain certainly did not treat the natives in British colonies the best, but at least they did not treat them as slaves or wild animals as officials treated them in the Belgian Congo or French Equatorial Africa. As for missionary work in the French, British, and Belgian colonies, missionaries, either Protestant or Catholic, had freedom to work in any of the British colonies. They gave medical aid through hospitals they built, education through mission schools, worked at translating the Bible into the local dialect, and of course tried to win converts to Christianity. Missionaries in the French and Belgian colonies did not have as much freedom. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the French government fell out with the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, the French government stopped supporting all missionaries in the colonies. Nevertheless, the missionaries had the freedom to remain in the colonies. Ironically enough, the severance did their evangelism a good turn. "The blacks are far from ignoring that the colonial authorities are hostile to us and that our religion is not that of the whites who live in the [French] Sudan," reported one Mgr. Bazin. However, missionaries in the Belgian Congo had the toughest time of all. Before Belgium took control of the Belgian Congo (from Leopold II) in 1908, Leopold II had expressly forbidden any Catholic missionaries to work in the Belgian. Despite this, he did let several Protestant missionaries into the area. But of the three countries, Leopold limited missionary work in Africa the most. The African colonies eventually gained their freedom later on in the 20th century. Almost all of the British, French and Belgian colonies struggled as independent nations when they gained their liberty, though. Most of the new African nations did not have a capable citizenry. However, some of the former British colonies had more capable citizens than the former French and Belgian colonies because of the importance of the education due to the missionaries. On the whole, Europe's colonization of Africa underdeveloped the country. Europeans had exploited the resources throughout the nation without making much progress in developing the colonies it controlled. Due to the slave trade and the virtual slavery in many of the European colonies in Africa, the number of inhabitants in Africa dropped significantly, leaving an insufficient number of natives to cultivate and develop the country, particularly after the African countries had gained their independence. For example, scholars estimate that due to the cruelties perpetrated in the Belgian Congo, Leopold II reduced the area's population by at least 50%. Many Africans also did not have a sufficient education to rule a country, either, and the arbitrary boundaries of colonies set during "the Scramble" had originally been made regardless of indigenous ethnic diversity, preventing the formation of unified national spirit necessary to start a new country. To top that list off, some of the traditional superstitions and evil practices of the natives (despite the horrors carried out by the Europeans, the blacks were no angels either, by any stretch of the imagination) set back progress even after their independence. Starvation, immoral practices, idol worship, slavery, war, terrible diseases such as AIDs (which are often the result of sexual promiscuity), and other sins that disobey Biblical commands, wrack the country. SOURCE OF THIS ARTICLE READ ABOUT THE COLONIZATION OF AFRICA, COUNTRY BY COUNTRY

DEVASTATING INTRUSION OF PORTUGESE INTO AFRICAN COUNTRIES In West Africa, the Portuguese missionaries began their work on kings and notables. There was nothing new in this approach. The Africans were so anxious for the new education and its vehicle, Christianity, that the priests found their tasks easy. First of all, to become a Christian one had to be baptised and given a 'Christian' name. Christian names were western names, and they all took the form used in the conquering country. The first Kongolese king to become a Christian was Nzinga Kuwu in 1492, taking the Portuguese name of Joao I. Hundreds of other Africans followed his example -- princes, chiefs, ministers and some of the masses. Overbearing Jesuit fathers were installed as councillors to the king, one functioning as a prime minister. This move at once destroyed the traditional council that controlled chiefs and kings, and with such councils no European power could operate. With this Portuguese wedge between the king and the people, the African king started to make important decisions without reference to his own local African councillors. The African kings then became absolute monarchs insofar as their own people were concerned, in the hands of Europeans. The arrival of Vasco Da Gama in 1498 marked the beginning of European encroachment in this lucrative system of oceanic trade between East Africa and India. Sailing up from the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, Da Gama and his crews were astonished and relieved at Quilimane in southern Mozambique to find that they had swum once more into a zone of trade and frequent ocean voyaging. They had news of ships still bigger than theirs, and pressed on up the coast. When the Portuguese saw the wealth of these Swahili cities and the extent of their trade, they were determined to seize control of it, if necessary by force. The tactic they adopted was to sail with heavily-armed ships into the harbours of the more important towns. They then demanded that the ruler of the town become a Portuguese subject and pay a heavy annual tribute to the king of Portugal. If these demands were not met, the town was attacked, all its possessions were seized and any Muslims who resisted were killed. The whole process was justified in the name of a holy Christian war against the Moors. (Moor was the name used by European Christians at this time to refer specifically to the Muslims of North Africa. They also used it more generally to refer to all Muslims, whether African or Arab). Zanzibar was the first Swahili city to come under serious Portuguese attack. In 1503 a Portuguese sea captain, Ruy Luourenco Ravasco, blasted at the townspeople with his ship's cannon until the sultan of Zanzibar agreed to pay an annual tribute of 100 miticals. It set the pattern for things to come. During 1503 Ravasco and his companions sailed up and down the Swahili coast, seizing ships and ransoming them for payment in gold. This was followed in 1505 by a more determined and official Portuguese assault. Francisco d'Almedia, who went on to become a governor of the Indian island of Goa, was sent with a fleet of eleven heavily armed ships to seize control of the more important towns. The following is a Portuguese eye witness account of what happened: "From our ships the fine houses, terraces, and minarets with the palms and trees in the orchards, made the city [Kilwa] look so beautiful that our men were eager to land and overcome the pride of this barbarian, who spent all that night in bringing into the island archers from the mainland ... "After some hand to hand fighting the following day the sultan fled and the Portuguese took the town. Then the Vicar-General and some of the Franciscan fathers came ashore carrying two crosses in procession and singing the Te Deum. They went to the palace, and there the cross was put down and the Grand-Captain [d'Almeida] prayed. Then everyone started to plunder the town of all its merchandise and provisions. "After two weeks spent securing the town, building a fortress and appointing a new puppet sultan, the Portuguese fleet sailed up the coast to Mombassa. The Grand Captain met with other captains and decided to burn the town that evening and to enter it the following morning ...Once the fire started it raged all night long, and many houses collapsed and a large quantity of goods were destroyed .... "The Grand Captain ordered that the town should be sacked and that each man should carry off to his ship whatever he found, so that at the end there would be a division of the spoil, each man to receive a twentieth of what he found. The same rule was made for gold, silver and pearls. Then everyone started to plunder the town and to search the houses, forcing open the doors with axes and iron bars. A large quantity of rich silk and gold embroidered clothes was seized, and carpets also; one of these, which was without equal for beauty, was sent to the King of Portugal together with many other valuables." [Adapted from eyewitness accounts of Joao de Barros and Hans Mayr printed in GSP Freeman-Grenvill, "The East African Coast", Oxford, 1962, pages 86, 102, 108-110]. The sultan of Mombassa refused to pay tribute to the Portuguese and continued to maintain direct trading contacts with Arabia and the Persian Gulf. As a result of this defiance, Mombassa suffered two further Portuguese sackings in 1528 and 1589. After the third and final sacking of Mombassa the Portuguese realised that to dominate the trade of western Indian ocean they needed to control the northern cities as well. In order to do this they built a huge fortress at Mombassa which they called Fort Jesus. Completed in 1599, Fort Jesus became the main centre of Portuguese authority in eastern Africa for the next 100 years. Its massive threatening walls amply symbolised the violence with which Portuguese domination of the trade of the east African coast was maintained for much of the 16th and 17th century. In 1526, a Muslim general called Ahmad Ibn Ibrahim also know as "Gran the left handed" became leader and saw Christian Ethiopia as a constant threat to Muslim security in the region. On declaring Jihad, Ethiopia responded by appealing to Christian Emperor for assistance against the common enemy of Islam. The Ethiopian kings had been in touch with the Portuguese for a number of years and Portuguese ambassadors had been present since at least 1520. The Portuguese responded by landing a small but well-equipped force in the north of the country. The combination of Portuguese and Ethiopians managed to save the Christian kingdom by inflicting a sharp defeat upon the Muslim army in 1543. Ahmad himself was killed in the battle and his state collapsed. Roman Catholic missionaries from Portugal followed the early Portuguese coastal penetration of tropical Africa to convert a number of African rulers so that they would become allies. But once African rulers realised the strong political motivation behind their presence, the missionaries initiative was doomed to failure. In one African state after another Portuguese missionaries were expelled or even killed. African rulers were interested in contact with Europeans, but they wanted new trading openings, technical assistance and firearms. They did not want new ideas that threatened to undermine the "traditional" religious basis of their authority. With the growth of the slave trade the Portuguese soon gave up the pretence of treating converted Christians as fellow believers. Even Christian Ethiopia did not respond to converting to the Roman Catholic version of the faith and in mid-17th century, missionaries were expelled for political interference. Leo Africanus mentions in his “Geographical Historie of Africa” the existence of magnificent stately temples in various African countries, prior to European intervention. He laments the destruction of ancient African texts by invading Europeans, and in most cases Leo emphasises that those destroying Africa and its people are “Christians,” particularly the “Portugals.” He also refers to the abundance of fertile soil and crops in the Niger delta “...no places can be devised to be more fruitful.” He boasts of temples, hospital inns to be found throughout the teeming cities of Africa. He mentions the abundance of precious metals -- gold, silver and also iron. He talks also of the “excellent leather” produced in his country, along with the most cunning goldsmiths, carpenters and such like artificers. Leo describes Morocco as a thriving noble city ... accounted to be one of the greatest ... in the world. He talks of the colleges, bookstores and temples that match and even surpass many palaces of Italy. Leo describes the magnificent city of Rebat, built at the top of a hill as a fortress against “Christian” invasion. He boasts of that city's colleges, palaces, temples, and a water-system conducted by pipes and canals, quite similar to those of the modern-day western world. Leo boasts of the elaborate city of Fez: its colleges, its fifty stately and sumptuously built temples, made of marble and other excellent stones unknown to the Italians. [Picture shows modern day Fez] He boasts of roofs adorned with gold, rich carpets in residences, an intricate water and sewer system, also similar to that of the previously-mentioned city of Rebat and the modern Western world. Still referring to Fez, he talks of a public assistance system for the destitute, of free colleges and hospitals and an elaborate legal system. He talks of heated water baths, the corn mills, notaries, books shops, stationers, scriveners, children's shoe stores, fruit markets, dairy shops, restaurants and cafes, linen stores, meat stores, fish stores, liquid soap stores, fourteen leather shops, a hundred and fifty tailor shops, laundromats, silk merchants, haberdashers, lingerie shops, bedding stores, wool stores, carpet and embroidery stores, every trading place that one could expect to find in modern-day New York city - grocers, apothecaries, physicians. He even talks of water-proof shoes that were manufactured for “foul weather.” Leo goes on to state how the architecture of Fez surpassed those of Persia in beauty and adornment. He describes Fez also as a thriving tourist centre, “a Paradise” from April to September. He also talks of its strongly built house of detention and its sophisticated legal system, whereby criminal, civil and religious disputes were all handled separately. Leo describes the pomp with which marriage and circumcision ceremonies were held and the solemnity of funeral services. Fez fell to greedy clutches of the Christian European plunderers, the Portuguese in particular. Ancient cities over a hundred years old (of which Ansa was a classic example), were known to be laid to complete waste within one single day.

200 YEARS OF BRITISH RULE LEFT INDIA DESTITUTE

On receiving silver bullion from Spain for the provision of 4,800 African slaves, Britain had a surplus of silver which it then used for trading with India. At Battle of Plassey in 1757 British troops commanded by Robert Clive defeated the Bengal ruler a Mughal viceroy and put in British puppet. Robert Clive said there would be little or no difficulty in obtaining absolute possession of these rich kingdoms. At this point silver was no longer needed for trading with India. Before British rule, there was no private property in land. The self-governing village community handed over each year to the ruler or his nominee a share of the years produce. East India Company put a stop to this and introduced a new revenue system superseding the right of the village community over land and creating two new forms of property on land - landlordism and individual peasant proprietorship. It was assumed that the State was the supreme landlord. Fixed tax payments were introduced based on land whereby payment had to be made to the government whether or not crop had been successful. As one British put it we have introduced new methods of assessing and cultivating land revenue which have converted a once flourishing population into a huge horde of paupers. Indeed the first effect was the reduction in agricultural incomes by 50% thereby undermining the agrarian economy and self-governing village. In 1769 the Company prohibited Indians from trading in grain, salt, betel nuts and tobacco and discouraged handicraft. Company also prohibited the home work of the silk weavers and compelled them to work in its factories. Weavers who disobeyed were imprisoned, fined or flogged. Company's servants lined their own pockets by private trading and bribery and extortion. Goods were seized at a fraction of their price and resold to their owners at five times their price. In 1770s one writer said of Bengal : one continued scene or oppression. Systematic plunder led to a famine in which 10 million people perished. Bengal was left naked, stripped of its surplus wealth and grain. Famine struck in 1770 and took the lives of an estimated one third of Bengal's peasantry. A Commons Select Committee report in 1783 said that natives of all ranks and orders had been reduced to a State of Depression and Misery. In 1787 a former army officer wrote: In former times the Bengal countries were the granary of nations, and the repository of commerce, wealth and manufacture in the East...But such has been the restless energy of misgovernment, that within 20 years many parts of those countries have been reduced to desert. The fields are no longer cultivated, extensive tracks are already overgrown with thickets, the husbandman is plundered, the manufacturer (handicraftsman) oppressed, famine has been repeatedly endured and depopulation ensured. As India became poor and hungry, Britain became richer. Colossal fortunes were made. Robert Clive arrived in India penniless - activities of Company investigated by House of Commons. The Hindi word loot was introduced into English language because of the plunder of India. Colossal fortunes helped fund Britain's Industrial Revolution e.g.: * 1757 - Battle of Plassey. * 1764 - Hargreaves spinning jenny. * 1769 - Arkwright's water frame. * 1779 - Crompton mule (whatever that is). * 1785 - Watt's steam engine. When British first reached India they did not find a backwater country. A report on Indian Industrial Commission published in 1919 said that the industrial development of India was at any rate not inferior to that of the most advanced European nations. India was not only a great agricultural country but also a great manufacturing country. It had prosperous textile industry, whose cotton, silk, and woollen products were marketed in Europe and Asia. It had remarkable and remarkably ancient, skills in iron-working. It had its own shipbuilding industry in Calcutta, Daman, Surat, Bombay and Pegu. In 1802 skilled Indian workers were building British warships at Bombay. According to a historian of Indian shipping the teak wood vessels of Bombay were greatly superior to the oaken walls of Old England. Benares was famous all over India for its brass, copper and bell-metal wares. Other important industries included the enamelled jewellery and stone carving of Rajputana towns as well as filigree work in gold and silver, ivory, glass, tannery, perfumery and papermaking. All this altered under the British leading to the de-industrialisation of India -- its forcible transformation from a country of combined agriculture and manufacture into an agricultural colony of British capitalism. British annihilated Indian textile industry because a competitor existed and it had to be destroyed. Shipbuilding industry aroused the jealousy of British firms and its progress and development were restricted by legislation. India's metalwork, glass and paper industries were likewise throttled when British government in India was obliged to use only British-made paper. The vacuum created by the contrived ruin of the Indian handicraft industries, a process virtually completed by 1880, was filled with British manufactured goods. Britain's industrial revolution, with its explosive increase in productivity made it essential for British capitalists to find new markets. India turned from exporter of textile or importer. British goods had to have virtually free entry while entry into Britain of India goods was met with prohibitive tariffs. Direct trade between India and the rest of the world had to be curtailed. Horace Hayman Wilson in 1845 in The History of British India from 1805 to 1835 said the foreign manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms. While there was prosperity for British cotton industry there was ruin for millions of Indian craftsmen and artisans. India's manufacturing towns were blighted e.g. Decca once known as the Manchester of India, and Murshidabad-Bengal's old capital which was once described in 1757 as extensive, populous and rich as London. Millions of spinners, and weavers were forced to seek a precarious living in the countryside, as were many tanners, smelters and smiths. India was made subservient to the Empire and vast wealth was sucked out of the subcontinent. Economic exploitation was the root cause of the Indian people's poverty and hunger. Under Imperial rule the ordinary people of India grew steadily poorer. Economic historian Romesh Dutt said half of India's annual net revenues of £44m flowed out of India. The number of famines soared from seven in the first half of 19th Century to 24 in second half. According to official figures, 28,825,000 Indians starved to death between 1854 and 1901. The terrible famine of 1899-1900 which affected 474,000 square miles with a population almost 60 million was attributed to a process of bleeding the peasant, who were forced into the clutches of the money-lenders whom British regarded as their mainstay for the payment of revenue. The Bengal famine of 1943, which claimed 1.5million victims was accentuated by the authority's carelessness and utter lack of foresight. Rich though its soil was, India's people were hungry and miserably poor. This grinding poverty struck all visitors -- like a blow in the face as described by India League Delegation 1932. In their report Condition of India 1934 they had been appalled at the poverty of the Indian village. It is the home of stark want...the results of uneconomic agriculture, peasant indebtedness, excessive taxation and rack-renting, absence of social services and the general discontent impressed us everywhere. In the villages there were no health or sanitary services, there were no road, no drainage or lighting, and no proper water supply beyond the village well. Men, women and children work in the fields, farms and cowsheds ... all alike work on meagre food and comfort and toil long hours for inadequate returns. Jawarharlal Nehru wrote that those parts of India which had been longest under British rule were the poorest: Bengal once so rich and flourishing after 187 years of British rule is a miserable mass of poverty-stricken, starving and dying people. India was sometimes called the “milch cow of the Empire,” and indeed at times it seemed to be so regarded by politicians and bureaucrats in London. Educated Indians were embittered when India was made to pay the entire cost of the India Office building in Whitehall. They were further outraged when in 1867 it was made to pay the full costs of entertaining two thousand five hundred guests at a lavish ball honouring the Sultan of Turkey. In India, the hunger and poverty experienced by the majority of the population during the colonial period and immediately after independence were the logical consequences of two centuries of British occupation, during which the Indian cotton industry was destroyed, most peasants were put into serfdom (after the British modified the agrarian structures and the tax system to the benefit of the Zamindars - feudal landlords) and cash crops (indigo, tea, jute) gradually replaced traditional food crops. Britain's profits throughout the 19th century cannot be measured without taking into account the 28 million Indians who died of starvation between 1814 and 1901.

SOME ASPECTS OF PORTUGESE COLONIZATION

European interest in India has persisted since classical times and for very cogent reasons. Europe had much to steal from India such as spices, textiles and other oriental products. The best classical accounts are in fact the commercial ones. When direct contact was lost with the fall of Rome and the rise of the Muslims, the trade was carried on through middlemen. In the late Middle Ages it increased with the increasing prosperity of Europe. It should be remembered that the spice trade was not solely a luxury trade at that time. Spices were needed to preserve meat through the winter (cattle had to be slaughtered in late autumn through lack of winter fodder) and to combat the taste of decay. Wine, in the absence of ancient or modern methods of maturing, had to be 'mulled' with spices. This trade suffered two threats in the later Middle Ages. There was the threat of Mongol and Turkish invasion which interfered with the land routes and threatened to engulf the sea route through Egypt, and there was the threat of monopoly shared between the Venetians and Egyptians. In 1510 Affonso de Albuquerque captured the island of Goa on the west coast of India from the Sultan of Bijapur and made it the capital of the Portuguese eastern empire. Its strong points besides Goa were Socotra off the Red Sea (he could not take Aden), Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, Diu in Gujrat, Malacca, the entrepot for the Far East and the spice trade in the East Indies, and Macao in China. The function of Goa was to supervise Malabar, to control the pilgrim traffic to Mecca as well as the general trade to Egypt, Iraq and Persia, and of Malacca to control the East Indian spices at their source. However, the Portuguese irked some of the Mughal and preceding rulers because of the toll they took of the trade from the port of Surat and the pilgrim traffic. In seizing and retaining their strong points they acquired a reputation for cruelty and peridy because their practice on both these points was below the current Indian standard. They were deeply impregnated with the idea that no faith need be kept with an infidel. It was from this period that the word feringi (lit.farangi, frank) acquired the opprobrium of which echoes may still be heard today. However, the Mughal Emperor, Jahangir admired their pictures and had them copied. Emperor Akbar listened with interest to Jesuit Father's discourses. The New Testament was translated into Persian. However, during the whole of the 16th century the Portuguese disputed with the Muslims the supremacy of the Indian seas, and the antagonism between Christianity and Islam became gradually more intense. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator commanded the first expedition to sail around the world. In the Collins Encyclopaedia it is written that Magellan set sail to check the power of Muslim navy and fleet that was dominant. In 1560, the Portuguese being intolerant in religion, introduced the Inquisition with all its horrors. This was regarded as sub-standard from the Indian standpoint, advertising this trait in their rough handling of Syrian Christians of Malabar to secure their submission to the Catholic faith. Socially the policy of Albuquerque in encouraging mixed marriages had important results. His object was to rear a population possessing Portuguese blood and imbued with Portuguese Catholic culture who would be committed by race and taste to the Portuguese settlements and so form a permanent self-perpetuating garrison. The result was the race long known as Luso-Indians and now as Goansese or Goans. They are mainly Indian in blood, Catholic in religion, and partially western in outlook. In recent times, they have spread all over India as traders and professionals, a less successful version of the Parsis. (Of all the Asians in Britain, a majority of whom are Muslim, the first Asian MP had to be a Roman Catholic of Goanese descent, Keith Vaz). Some Portuguese words have even crept into the Urdu language such as the names of items for furniture (mayze for desk, almaari for cupboard/wardrobe). Also vindaloo (curry) is part Portuguese and part Urdu: vian is Portuguese for meat and aloo is the Urdu for potato -- thus we have meat and potato curry. The Portuguese were soon followed by European rivals like the French, Dutch and British. Rivalry between the Dutch and English resulted in the Dutch East India Company "winning" Southeast Asia and Indonesia (known to Europeans as the East Indies); and the British East India Company having to settle for "second-best," that is India. The first Englishman who actually visited India was Thomas Stephens in 1579. He became rector of Jesuits College in Goa. His letters to his father are said to have roused with great enthusiasm in England to trade directly with India. India had an active trade with the Middle East and Europe, the main articles of export being textiles, indigo, saltpetre and spices (Gujrat benefited from the indigo industry and Malabar from the spice trade). In return she received luxuries like wines and novelties and metals, specially bullion, which was in chronic short supply in northern Europe. This constituted the Indian silver drain which was the bugbear of English mercantilists.