Empire of Contingency : How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World

Explores the information and communication practices of the Portuguese empire in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century India Empire of Contingency explores the information and communication practices of the Portuguese empire in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century India-a period during which Portuguese imperial ambitions were struggling for survival, while the Mughal empire was at the height of its power and influence.Jorge Flores uncovers the tenuous but ingenious apparatuses of intelligence through which the Estado da Índia (the "State of the Indies," the name given to the Portuguese political administrative unit in the region between the Cape of Good Hope and East Asia) endeavored to survive in a vast Indo-Persian world shaped by the influence and power of the Mughal empire. Detailing the complex relations that the officials of the Portuguese empire, particularly in Goa, the capital of the Estado da Índia, maintained with the Mughal empire as well as the sultanates of Ahmadnagar and