Portuguese asian trade

Portuguese brought, starting in the 1480s a new system of trade in asia. They established, beyond some ports, a system of protection to secure their ships in the asian trade regions and also sold this protective system to the asian traders. They also installed taxes for the transit of goods on ports dominated by them. The tax was first established at 6 percent but would later rise to 10. At the origin, the intention was to creat a monopoly of the asian trade but it would not work. The majority of the european ships would be used to transit goods within the asian trade area because of the important risk of long distance travel from and back to europe. However, portuguese culture left an important impact in the asian trade in which one is the wide spread of portuguese as the used trade language intill english later came to dominte. Efforts to repress muslims influence in the area were vain. The asian trade shows a large interconnected system of exchange of goods and people throughout asia before and after portuguese intervention which remained fairly narrow compared to the projected control intended.