Portuguese Colonialism

Written by Marco Ramerini, Photos and Information by Michele Ziolkowski The town of Bidyah in the United Arab Emirates, is found midway along the coast between Fujairah and Dibba. According to the Portuguese souces, the Portuguese had in the area a fort called Libidia. A team consisting of Australian and local archaeologists excavated the area in 1999. The site of ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. DUTCH AND PORTUGUESE REMAINS IN NORTHERN SRI LANKA JAFFNA The Portuguese built the fortress Nossa Senhora dos Milagres in 1560. Jaffna was the last place in Portuguese hands in Ceylon. They lost it in 1658. The Dutch strengthened the fort around 1680. The old Dutch fort of considerable size with ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. The first Portuguese visiting Ceylon was Dom Lourenço de Almeida in 1505 or 1506. Accidentally, after a storm, adverse winds drove him to the island’s coast near Galle. In the last months of the years 1505 or 1506 Dom Lourenço’s fleet anchored off Colombo. A memorial of this first landing ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. COLOMBO: The city of Colombo, the main city of today’s Sri Lanka, was founded by the Portuguese. The first Portuguese attempt to settle in Colombo was done in 1518, when the Viceroy Lopo Soares de Albergaria landed in Colombo with a large fleet. Here the Portuguese soldiers began to build ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. Continued from: The first British occupation and the definitive Dutch surrender 9.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY CONSULTED MATERIAL You can also look for the sources quoted in the notes. SOURCES: – Various Authors “Livro das plantas, das fortalezas, cidades e povoações do Estado da Índia Oriental”, 1991 Codex n° 1471, Paço Ducal of ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. Continued from: The arrival of the Danes, the Dutch and the construction of the Portuguese Fort 4.0 THE DUTCH CONQUEST AND THE ABANDONMENT OF THE FORT The first attack of the Dutch on the Portuguese forts of Ceylon was directed towards the eastern coast of the island, where the Portuguese ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. Continued from: The first contacts with the Portuguese 3.0 THE ARRIVAL OF THE DANES, THE DUTCH AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PORTUGUESE FORT The strategic importance of the control over the bays and the ports on the eastern coast of Ceylon discovered, it was clear with the arrival of the ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. Continued from: Introduction 2.0 THE FIRST CONTACTS WITH THE PORTUGUESE A first interest of the Portuguese with regard to Trincomalee has been in the first years of the 1540s. All had begun, when the king of Kandy, Jayavira, on the advice of Nuno Alvarez Pereira 1, asked the Portuguese governor ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. INDEX: 1.0 The History of Trincomalee during Portuguese and Dutch rule: Introduction. 2.0 Trincomalee: The first contacts with the Portuguese. 3.0 Trincomalee: The arrival of the Danes, the Dutch and the construction of the Portuguese Fort. 4.0 Trincomalee: The Dutch conquest and the abandonment of the Fort. 5.0 Trincomalee: The ...

The city of Khor Fakkan (Corfação) is located along the east coast of the United Arab Emirates (25°20’N – 56°22’E). Here, the Portuguese, around 1620, built a triangular fortress with triangular bastions and a round tower in the center. In the log book of the Dutch vessel the Meerkat (1666) we read: “Gorfacan is a place on a small bay, which has about ...

Situated in a natural harbour near the Oman capital Muscat, tha city of Matrah (Matara). The Portuguese built a fort in Matrah in 1588, the fort was part of the defenses of the city of Muscat. The Portuguese controlled the fort between 1588 and 1648. The fort at Matrah was a square fort with four bastions at the corners. For the image ...

The city of Sohar (24 ° 21’N – 56 ° 43’E) is located along the Omani coast about 200 km north-west of Muscat. The Portuguese came to Soar in 1507 and made ​​the city tributary. After several rebellions, the Portuguese retook the city in 1516 and again in 1523. The Portuguese fortified Soar probably between 1559 and 1561 building a square ...

Sibo (As Sib) (23°40’N – 58°12’E) is a coastal town located along the Oman coast 50 km north-west of Muscat, where the Portuguese in the 17th had a triangular fortress with bastions in the angles. Here a description of this fort extracted from António Bocarro “O livro das plantas de todas as fortalezas, cidades e povoações do Estado da Índia Oriental”: ...

The Portuguese first conquered and sacked Mascate in Oman in 1507. The Portuguese retained the control over Muscat for more than a century. The Turks conquered from the Portuguese Muscat on two occasions: in 1552 and in 1581-1588. The fortifications of Muscat were reinforced by Belchior Calaça in 1588 by order of the governor of Portuguese India Don Manuel de Sousa Coutinho. The fortifications ...

The two fortresses of Mada and Libedia were located along the eastern coast of the present United Arab Emirates. Libedia has been identified in the present town of Bidyah (25 ° 26’N – 56 ° 21’E) along the coast midway between Fujairah and Dibba. The two forts were square or rectangular shape with bastions at each corner. For the image ...

The fortress of Doba, probably the present town of Diba al Hisn (25 ° 36’N – 56 ° 17’E) today in the emirate of Al-Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, was a square fortress with round bastions and a tower in the center. The Portuguese controlled the city from 1624 to 1648. For the image thanks to Prof. Nuno Varela Rubim and ...

Curiate (Kuriyat/Qurayyat) is a town situated south-east of Muscat along the Oman coast. The Portuguese fortress of Curiate (Kuriyat/Qurayyat) was rectangular fortress built by the Arabs and conquered by the Portuguese in 1507. The fort was probably rebuilt in the last quarter of the 16th century. The Portuguese lost this fort in 1648. Here a description of this fort extracted from António ...

Borca was a Portuguese fortress that stood at 12 (?) leagues from Muscat along the coast of Oman. The fortress had a triangular shape with three bastions at the corners of the triangle. In the fortress lived a Portuguese captain with 8 Portuguese soldiers and 30 lascarins. Probably the Portuguese fort of Borca corresponds to the present city of Barka ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. English text revision by Dietrich Köster The Portuguese decided shortly after their arrival in the Eastern Seas to prevent the Arabs’ trade by the conquest of Ormuz. For its strategical position, dominating the entrance to the Persian Gulf, Ormuz was one of the two strategical strongholds on the trade routes between the Arab world and Asia ...

Written by Marco Ramerini. Photos by Fritz Gosselck and João Sarmento. English text revision by Dietrich Köster. Oman is a country rich in fortifications, some of these were built along the Omani coast by the Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, often altered from the original forms several forts built or modernized by the Portuguese are still visible today. ...