Portugal/India: Pedro Mascarenhas (1480 - 16 June 1555), explorer and Viceroy of India for one year (1554-55). Woodcut portrait, 1674. Dom Pedro Mascarenhas was a Portuguese explorer and administrator. He was the first European to discover the island of Diego Garcia in 1512, and was ambassador from Portugal to the Holy See. He was forced by King John III to become the new viceroy of Portuguese India, despite his resistance due to his age, and served for only a year before dying in 1555.
Under King Manuel I, the Portuguese set up a government in India in 1505, six years after the discovery of a sea route to Calicut in southwest India by Vasco da Gama. The Portuguese originally based their administration in Kochi, or Cochin, in Kerala, but in 1510 moved to Goa. Until 1752, the ‘State of India’ included all Portuguese possessions in the Indian Ocean, from southern Africa to Southeast Asia, governed by either a Viceroy or a Governor. In 1752 Mozambique got its own government, and in 1844 the Portuguese Government of India stopped administering the territories of Macau, Solor and Timor, restricting themselves to the Malabar coast. At the time of British India's independence in 1947, Portuguese India included a number of enclaves on India's western coast, including Goa proper, as well as the coastal enclaves of Daman and Diu. Portugal lost the last two enclaves in 1954, and the remainder in 1961, when they were occupied by India (although Portugal only recognized the annexation in 1975, after the Carnation Revolution and the fall of the Estado Novo regime).
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Photo credit: © Pictures From History / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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