Battle of Cochin
1504 battle
The Battle of Cochin, sometimes referred as the second siege of Cochin, was a series of confrontations, between March and July 1504, fought on land and sea, principally between the Portuguese garrison at Cochin, allied to the Trimumpara Raja, and the armies of the Zamorin of Calicut and vassal Malabari states.
The celebrated heroics of the tiny Portuguese garrison, led by Duarte Pacheco Pereira, fended off an invading army several hundred times bigger. It proved a humiliating defeat for the Zamorin of Calicut. He not only failed to conquer Cochin, but his inability to crush the tiny opposition undermined the faith of his vassals and allies. The Zamorin lost much of his traditional authority over the Malabar states of India in the aftermath. The preservation of Cochin secured the continued presence of the Portuguese in India.
Background
Since the fragmentation of the Chera state in the 10th century, the ruler of the city-state of Calicut (Port. Calecute; now, Kozhikode), known as the Zamorin (Samoothiri Raja, 'Lord of the Sea') had been generally recognized as overlord by most of the small states on the Malabar Coast of India. Under the Zamorin's rule, Calicut grew as a commercial city, emerging as the major entrepot of the Kerala pepper trade and the principal emporium for other spices shipped from further east (see spice trade).
In the opening journey of the Portuguese to India in 1498, Vasco da Gama immediately made his way to Calicut and tried to secure a commercial treaty with the Zamorin.
“Battle of Cochin” enters the record as 1504 battle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Battle, Cochin and battle can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Cochin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.