Portuguese India

The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the Kingdom of Portugal. The capital of Portuguese India served as the governing centre of a string of military forts and maritime ports scattered along the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

Francisco de Almeida, the first viceroy, established his base of operations at Fort Manuel in the Malabar region, after the Kingdom of Cochin negotiated to become a protectorate of Portugal in 1505. With the Portuguese conquest of Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate in 1510, Goa became the major anchorage for the Armadas arriving in India. The capital of the viceroyalty was transferred from Cochin to Goa in 1530. From 1535, Mumbai (Bombay) was a harbour of Portuguese India, known as Bom Bahia, until it was handed over to Charles II of England in 1661 as part of the dowry of Catherine de Braganza. The expression "State of India" began regularly appearing in documents in the mid-16th century.

Until the 18th century, the viceroy in Goa had authority over all Portuguese possessions in and around the Indian Ocean, from Southern Africa to Southeast Asia. In 1752, Mozambique was granted its own separate government; from 1844 on, Portuguese Goa stopped administering Macao, Solor and Timor; and became an actual province of Portugal. Despite this, the viceroy at Goa only controlled limited portions of the Portuguese settlements in the east; some settlements remained informal private affairs, without a captain or câmara (municipal council). By the end of the 18th century, most of these unofficial colonies were abandoned by Portugal, due to heavy competition from European and Indian rivals.

In later years, Portugal's authority was confined to holdings in the Canara, Cambay and Konkan regions along the west coast of India. At the time of the dissolution of the British Raj in 1947, Portuguese India comprised three administrative divisions, sometimes referred to collectively as Goa: Goa (which included Anjediva Island), Damaon (which included the exclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli) and Dio district. The Salazar regime of Portugal lost de facto control of Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954. Finally, the rest of the overseas territory was lost in December 1961 with the Indian Annexation of Goa under Jawaharlal Nehru. Portugal only recognised Indian control after the Carnation Revolution and the fall of the Estado Novo regime, in a treaty signed on 31 December 1974.