Portuguese Mercenary Networks in Seventeenth-Century India: An Experiment in Global Microhistory and its Archive

Abstract

Thousands of runaways left the Portuguese empire during the early modern period, but very little is known about the lived experience of this diverse group of individuals after they fled. This article questions the framework of analysis that reduces such a complex social phenomenon to the overarching category of “informal empire,” while testing the hypothesis that the issue of the archive lies at the core of the practice of global microhistory. A set of primary sources in Portuguese, Dutch, English, Marathi, and Persian is analyzed at close range to reconstruct the choices, motivations, and hesitations of a specific group of “Portuguese” – mostly dark-skinned mestiços of modest origin – who served as mercenaries in north-western Deccan. I argue that studying the networks of these mercenaries ultimately reveals localized forms of endurance and adaptation to rapid and disruptive changes brought about locally by imperial rivalry and long-distance commerce.