of Paravas complained to the Portuguese authorities at Cochin about the atrocities inflicted on them by Arab fleets and sought protection. Seizing the opportunity, the Portuguese sent their Roman Catholic priests (Padres) who converted thousands of fisher people to the Catholic religion. Following this St. Francis Xavier, one of the founders of the Society of Jesus, arrived in Goa in and travelled as far as Thoothukudi and Punnakayal to baptize the converts.
Xavier established a network of Jesuit mission centres. His visit is evident from the shrines dedicated to St. Xavier and the towering churches that came up in the fishing villages on the Coromandel Coast. The Portuguese threatened disruption of trade by violence unless their protection, cartaz, was bought.
Under the cartaz system, the Portuguese exacted money from the traders as price for protection against what they termed as piracy. But much of this was caused by Portuguese freebooters themselves and so the whole system was a blatant protection racket. The Dutch The first Dutch expedition to the South East Asia was in by a trader (Jan Huyghen van Linschoten), a merchant from Netherlands who lived in Lisbon. There were several companies floated by the traders and individuals to trade with the East.
The state intervened and amalgamated them all and The Amboyna Massacre – twenty servants of British East India Company, Portuguese and Japanese were tortured and killed by the agents of Dutch East India Company at Ambon Island in Indonesia in the year . Amboyna Massacre XI History - Lesson - - The Coming of the Europeans The French The French attempted to establish a trade link with India as early as . Taking a cue from the Portuguese and the Dutch, the French commenced their commercial operations through the French East India Company, established in . Unlike other European powers which appeared in India through the private trading companies, the French commercial enterprise was a project of King Louis XIV.
His minister of finance, Colbert, was instrumental in establishing the French East India Company. As the French effort was a government