From the first days of European enterprise in the East, the coasts of
India were regarded as a favourable field for filibusters, the earliest
we hear of being Vincente Sodre, a companion of Vasco da Gama in his
second voyage. Intercourse with heathens and idolaters was regulated
according to a different code of ethics from that applied to intercourse
with Christians. The authority of the Old Testament upheld slavery, and
Africans were regarded more as cattle than human beings; while Asiatics
were classed higher, but still as immeasurably inferior to Europeans. To
prey upon Mahommedan ships was simply to pursue in other waters the
chronic warfare carried on against Moors and Turks in the Mediterranean.
The same feelings that led the Spaniards to adopt the standard of the
Cross in their conquest of Mexico and Peru were present, though less
openly avowed, in the minds of the merchants and adventurers of all
classes and nationalities who flocked into the Indian seas in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With the decadence of buccaneering
and the growth of Indian trade, there was a corresponding increase of
piracy, and European traders ceased to enjoy immunity.
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