The extent to which the Portuguese transformed maritime trade in the Indian Ocean in the

sixteenth century, the Portuguese greatly influenced Indian Ocean trade, as they controlled
maritime trade by controlling territory, trade, and fighting battles, and they also controlled
maritime travel by controlling choke points and other strategies. The presence of the
Portuguese could be caused by the advancement in technology, like the compass, allowing for
more maritime travel.

The way Portuguese controlled maritime travel through the strategies they used when
controlling choke points in trade routes, like making vessels carry a safe conduct pass, and if
the ship didn’t have a pass, they would seize everything present on the ship (doc 5), and this
helped the Portuguese regelate trade to their will. The Portuguese just about 4 years before
would just capture ships and claim them as theirs in the narrow channels of the Maldives (doc
4), and this was just using brute force to gain control over maritime travel. Lastly, the
Portuguese had some serious competition with the likes of the Turks from the Ottoman Empire,
as it was said that if the Ottoman Empire was just allowed to freely trade with the Muslim
Merchants, the revenue of the Portuguese would decrease to a large degree (doc 3), so
controlling the Muslim ships would allow the Portuguese to control a big part of the economy as
Muslim Merchants were very important to Indian Ocean Trade, as a large majority of the trading
was done by these merchants.

The Portuguese also controlled maritime trade, through, territory, battling and controlling the
trade of certain things with things like monopolies. Muslim merchants in Calicut were already
concerned with the Portuguese coming to their place, they also predicted that the Portuguese
would gain control of Calicut (doc 2), this basically works like foreshadowing. Just 16 years
later, Portugal did eventually take control of Calicut, and that basically caused most muslim
merchants to leave, leaving only a few left(doc 1), the foreshadowing of doc 2 predicted that
portugal would gain control of Calicut, and since they have control, they can regulate trade and
since it is a major trade capital, they could be able to control a good part of Indian Ocean Trade
economy. Portugal also has an important base in SW India, and its also very close to a pepper
producing region(doc 5), where they could get quick and easy access to spice product for spice
trade, they do buy low quality cheap pepper, but that mean they could buy a lot for a good price.

I conclusion, Portugal controlled maritime trade through territory control in calicut, battles and
monopolies, they also controlled maritime travel through strategies from the choke points they
controlled, like seizing ships and requiring a safe conduct pass for passing ship.