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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Write brief essay on Portuguese control of the Indian Ocean and its impact.

  • UPSC 1992
  • The Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century: Political History

Vasco da Gama's arrival at Calicut in 1498 opened a century in which the Portuguese Estado da India attempted, with real but never total success, to convert an open, multi-ethnic Indian Ocean trading world into a maritime system policed and taxed by a single European power.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • From Calicut to Albuquerque's Maritime Empire
  • The Cartaz-Armada System of Coercive Control
  • Impact: Rupture of an Older Trading Order
  • The Limits of Portuguese Control
  • Erosion by the Dutch and English

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