Goa

Abstract

The Portuguese began to rule in India two centuries before the British. They first established a settlement in Goa in 1510, and later set up smaller ones at Damao, fifty miles north of Bombay, and on the island of Diu. Portugal took no part in the struggles for India between Britain and France in the eighteenth century; and, apart from a brief occupation by the British during the Napoleonic wars, the Portuguese possessions remained, together with five small French settlements in the subcontinent, undisturbed throughout the period of British rule.