Casa da Índia

The Casa da Índia (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkazɐ ðɐ ˈĩdiɐ]; English: India House or House of India) was a Portuguese state-run commercial organization during the Age of Discovery. It regulated international trade and the Portuguese Empire's territories, colonies, and factories (trading posts) across Asia and Africa. Central to the Casa da Índia's objectives was the establishment and protection of a Portuguese mare clausum ("closed sea" – total control of the seas) in the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Arabian sea, and the Indies.

The House of India was founded by King Manuel I of Portugal in 1500 to direct Portugal's monopoly of the spice trade and to manage royal policy for Portuguese India. Following 1503, it absorbed the Casa da Guiné e Mina, an organization founded by Prince Henry the Navigator in 1443, which operated under a similar mandate for Portuguese Africa, thus making the Casa da Índia responsible for the regulation of all Portuguese imperial trade, the administration of Portuguese trading posts and military bases in Asia and Africa, and protection of the Portuguese Crown's commercial interests.

Founded with the intent of protecting Portugal's monopoly of the spice trade, the Casa da Índia in 1497 began financing and organizing the Portuguese India Armadas, annual armadas of galleons, carracks, and caravels transporting commodities such as gold, ivory, and spices to Lisbon from Portuguese trading posts and colonies across Africa and Asia. The Casa da Índia sponsored numerous famous Portuguese navigators, including Vasco da Gama (who discovered the sea route to India), Pedro Álvares Cabral (who discovered Brazil), and Afonso de Albuquerque (who established Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean).

Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, the Casa da Índia rapidly grew into an economically powerful institution that played a crucial role in the financing of Portuguese discoveries and expeditions throughout West Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, India, and the East Indies. The Casa da Índia also played an important role in the development of modern cartography, patronizing the Padrão Real, one of the first early world maps.

Between the origins of the Casa da Índia in the 1400s and its dissolution in 1833, its principal aims evolved, as did its relations with the Crown of Portugal and the imperial administration. After 1642 it lost all its trade monopolies on gold, silver, ivory, and spices and became solely a trade regulator and customs agency. Following the destruction of its Ribeira Palace headquarters and facilities in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, the Casa da Índia grew increasingly obsolete in relation to Portugal's evolving trade and colonial policies, and most of its functions were slowly absorbed into ministries and agencies of the Portuguese government, until the final dissolution of the Casa da Índia in 1833.