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
Pacific Ocean for the elixir of immortality. From 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, and with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached