page_title: Luso-Indian
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Luso-Indian / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: A panorama of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, shows several types of ships, shipbuilding, net fishing, dinghy traffic and a rugged, sparsely populated interior. Georg Braun and Franz Hogenbergs atlas Civitates orbis terrarum, 1572
context_page_description: Luso-Indian or Portuguese-Indian, is a subgroup ethnicity from Luso-Asians and are people who have mixed varied Indian subcontinent and Portuguese ancestry or people of Portuguese descent born or living in the Republic of India and the world. Most of them live in former Portuguese overseas territories of the Estado da India which are currently a part of the newly formed independent nation as a Union in 1947 called the Republic of India from British raj. Luso-Asians of the Indian subcontinent are primarily from Goa, Mangalore, Daman and Diu, Korlai, Bassein, Silvassa, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
context_section_description: In the 16th Century, a thousand years after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Portuguese became the first European power to begin trading in the Indian Ocean. They were in South India a few years before the Moghuls appeared in the North. In the early 16th century, they set up their trading posts (factories) throughout the coastal areas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with their capital in Goa in South West India on the Malabar Coast.
  In 1498, the number of Europeans residents in the area was merely a few tens of thousands. By 1580, Goa was a sophisticated city with its own brand of Indo-Portuguese society. Early in the development of Portuguese society in India, the Portuguese Admiral Afonso de Albuquerque encouraged Portuguese soldiers to marry native women and this was termed as Politicos dos casamentos.
  The Portuguese also shipped over many órfãs d'El-Rei to Portuguese India, Goa in particular. Orfas del Rei literally translates to "Orphans of the King", and they were Portuguese girls sent to overseas territories to marry either Portuguese settlers or natives with high status.
caption: City of Calicut, India, c.1572 (from Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg's atlas Civitates orbis terrarum)
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