ABSTRACT
This chapter explores three episodes of conflict in the Portuguese Estado da India which often served as rhetorical examples of Portuguese corruption and decline. In modern scholarship, these three episodes of conflict have often served to illustrate broader themes: administrative chaos and social disharmony within the Estado da India, the clash of civil and ecclesiastical authority, the ubiquity of colonial violence, the competing pull of God and Mammon on colonial policy. Many travellers' descriptions of Portuguese Asia revelled in accounts of violence, lewdness and irreligion, creating a 'black legend' of a colonial society riven by internal conflict. Malacca and Macao developed as colonial settlements in different ways but there were a number of similarities in how the conflicts were sparked and resolved in each. Disputes over jurisdiction, foreign policy and allocation of revenues were important background tensions to each incident.
