Garcia de Brito was referred to the Portuguese merchant corps at the Court of King João by his academic advisors at the University of Coimbra. He relished the opportunity. As a young boy in the 1530s, he often stood idly by the docks on the River Teju, watching cargoes of animals, spices, and slaves being unloaded from voyage-tattered ships. Many of these effects, like birds from Africa, were unlike anything ever seen in Europe at the time.
Garcia rose quickly in the commercial ranks because of his poise and acumen. One year he was responsible for reshipping spices to inland markets such as Cologne and Prague. Another year he took on a supervisory role for the precious gem inventory as it arrived on caravels from Goa. In a stroke of unexpected occupational fortune, he was sent as an official emissary to Mozambique to settle a feud between imperial and religious factions in the Portuguese enclave.
The House of Aviz fast recognized Garcia for his diplomatic skills. He was an obvious choice to be the king’s envoy to the burgeoning East Indies city of Malacca. At this coastal entrepot, he worked alongside successive captain-majors. These military officers technically controlled the administration of the city. An imperial directive for Garcia was to check the seemingly open-ended power of the church.
Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice.
The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires
The Portuguese earmarked Malacca as the epicenter for their regional trade network. They neglected to understand, however, that their militarized presence at that location upended centuries of local trade protocols. Nearby rulers were a constant source of irritation, if not warfare. Garcia’s ill-defined role was to temper at-times boiling relations with local sultans; he used a language of common faith with Islamic leaders to rebuild communication channels. But the most meaningful leverage was provided by the sale of imported metalworks, including tools and nails. Payment in cloves and nutmeg—among other spices—was willingly accepted.
Garcia’s particular success at mending the rift between the Portuguese and the Malay Sultanate of Johor meant that Lisbon enjoyed control of the Straits of Malacca by the mid-sixteenth century. That strategic accomplishment undercut the Venetians and other European states that traded by overland routes through the Middle East, crowning Portugal as a global power. There was tarnish on the septer, though. Garcia lamented in his diaries that he never had the same diplomatic successes with the Sultanate of Aceh, which he considered privately to be a debased nuisance in the region.
While Portugal basked in its conquests, Garcia acted with equanimity as a sort of commercial overlord from his Malacca base. During the reign of King Sebastian between 1557 and 1578—when imperial interests began to shift domestically—Garcia enriched himself lavishly on the flow of goods to Lisbon. The House of Aviz paid handsomely for each shipment that arrived in port. Business dealings between Sebastian’s advisors in Lisbon and Garcia’s network in the East Indies was a matter of convenience, if not expediency, for the faltering Portuguese dynasty.
Little is known of what happened to Garcia de Brito. His death remains a mystery. When the Dutch overtook Malacca in 1609, his legacy as a replete businessman had risen to mythical proportions. Johan van Twist, the first Dutch governor of Malacca, was haunted in his dreams by a Portuguese nobleman looking for a permanent resting place. He confided that it was probably the ghost of Garcia de Brito.
Some scholars have suggested whimsically that Garcia suffered a terminal case of wanderlust in his advanced years. One historian speculates that he may have been covertly captured by his nemesis, the Acehense. Still others believe that he left Malacca for Japan. Operating from a base in Kyushu, alongside Jesuit missionaries, he likely found that the profits from the sale of armaments to Hideyoshi were far more alluring than the income from the sale of spices to the House of Aviz.
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Garcia de Brito is a collage of historical figures. As spotlighted here, he did not exist. Rudimentary inspiration is drawn from the life of Jorge Cabral, a sixteenth-century Portuguese nobleman. Cabral served as the captain-major of Malacca in the 1520s.
In this site introduction, characters, businesses, places, and incidents are used in a fictitious or illustrative manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is coincidental.
Read the fine print. Cranganore operates worldwide. However, the company cannot offer all services in every jurisdiction or to all businesses. We may act in concert with locally-regulated entities in some cases.
Banner shows the Monument of the Discoveries (Lisbon) originally commemorated the 500-year anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator in 1960. Credit: Robwilson39 at Can Stock Photo.
How did a marginal nation on the edge 
