Portuguese and The Sultanate of Gujarat (1500-1573)

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This valuable new book by Dr. K.S. Mathew is much to be welcomed. It will contribute to the renaissance in Indo- Portuguese history which has been so much in evidence lately. So far this revival of interest has mostly produced studies of the Portuguese in India, as seenjin the various papers read at the first three International Seminars on Indo-Portuguese History, and in such monographs as TR. de Souza's Medieval Goa (Concept, 1979) and Dr. Mathew's own Portuguese Trade with India in the Sixteenth Century (Manohar, 1983)

Dr. Mathew's new book marks an important advance. Historians have long been aware that Portuguese records can tell us much not only about the activities of the Portuguese themselves but also about events in India, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus P.S.S. Pissurlencar's numerous studies showed how valuable were Portuguese records for the history of the rise of the Marathas. But his studies were usually published in obscure periodicals or books, and in Portuguese. This meant they were completely inaccessible to most Indian scholars interested in the Marathas. Similarly, such distinguished older historians as Jadunath Sarkar and SN Sen reminded us of the value of Portuguese records, though they themselves lacked the time to explore thoroughly in the Goa archives.

Now, for the first time, we have a large scale investigation of the value of Portuguese records for a particular, and very important, area of India. There have been some past attempts to use Portuguese records for the history of Gujarat, my own Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: the Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley and New Delhi, 1976) being one example. It has not been practicable for me to see the complete text of Dr. Mathew's new book, but from what I know of it clearly it goes much further, and is much more comprehensive, than any previous work, for it contains both case studies and also documents with summaries in English. At long last historians of Gujarat have been given a complete picture of what the Portuguese records can tell us about their area of interest, at least for the very important period of the sixteenth century until the Mughal conquest.

**Contents and Sample Pages**