Paper short abstract:

The Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean has always been based on a careful network of fortresses and the State of India only existed thanks to the men who were constantly going from Portugal to these region, to represent their king there. It was these men who allowed Portugal to dominate the ocean.

Paper long abstract:

It was a demonstrated relevance of the strengths of the Indian and his officers to the maintenance of Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean that led us to try to understand how the captain's selection process was managed during years of conflict and insecurity like those who were contemporaries of the reign of Philip II of Portugal. The task of appointing these officers was considered at the time one of the most important things to the administration of the portuguese overseas space.

In fact, we can say that if Portugal was able to dominated the waters of the Indian Ocean for centuries, it owes to the network of factories that has never stopped growing since the reign of King Manuel I. And, consequently, the role that was played by the men who were being named as captains of these fortresses.

Based on Andreia Martins de Carvalho's study of the Indian captains in the time of Nuno da Cunha, and applying to the ten years of the Council of India (1604-1614) the same topics of analysis that were used by the historian in his work, we could find a series of continuities and ruptures associated with the process of choosing the fortress captains between the reign of King John III to Philip III and relate them closely to the continuities and ruptures of the empire that these men served.