Portuguese East India Company Portuguese East India Company The Portuguese East India Company ( or ) was a short-lived ill-fated attempt by Philip III of Portugal to create a national chartered company to look after interests in Portuguese India in the face on encroachment by the Dutch and English following the personal union of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns. Portuguese trade with India had been a crown monopoly since the Portuguese captain Vasco da Gama opened the sea route to India in 1497-99. The monopoly had been managed by the Casa da Índia, the royal trading house founded around 1500. The Casa was responsible
Fishing in Portugal preserve the codfish; drying and salting are ancient techniques to keep many nutrients and the process makes the codfish tastier. The Portuguese tried to use this method of drying and salting several fishes from their waters, but the ideal fish came from much further north. With the "discovery" of Newfoundland in 1497, Portuguese fishermen started fishing its cod-rich Grand Banks. Thus, ' became a staple of the Portuguese cuisine, nicknamed ' (faithful friend). From the 18th century the town of Kristiansund in Norway became an important place of producing bacalao or klippfish, which is also exported to Portugal. In Portugal,