Languages of subalternity and collaboration: Portuguese in English settlements across the Bay of Bengal, 1620–1800

Abstract

The substantial Portuguese populations across the Bay of Bengal, seeking protection in the fortified settlements of the English East India Company, were more compliant than those populations in western India, for whom the English often remained an enemy. On the east coast of India there were not twenty-four, but only one Portuguese fortress. Thus the Portuguese formed groups of subaltern collaborators, contributing to the well-being of English settlements in different ways including: through the provision of civil defence, freight services and active capital investment; as intermediaries in the diamond trade, as tavern-owners, registrars, doctors and even aldermen, but also as concubines and domestic slaves. Many Portuguese converted to Protestantism, supported by contemporary Portuguese translations of the Book of Common Prayer, while others sought other assimilationist strategies, including sending children to Britain for schooling. While scholars have attached due importance to renegadism and to service to various Indian rulers, these defections to rival Protestant powers have gone unnoticed.