Everything about Nuno Da Cunha totally explained
Nuno da Cunha (c.
1487 –
March 5,
1539) was a governor of
Portuguese possessions in India from
1528 to
1538.
He was the son Antónia Pais and
Tristão da Cunha, the famous
Portuguese navigator, admiral and ambassador to
Pope Leo X.
Nuno da Cunha proved his mettle in battles at Oja and Brava, and at the capture of Panane, under the viceroy
Francisco de Almeida. Named by
João III ninth governor of Portuguese possessions in
India, he served from April
1528 to
1538.
On his passage to
Goa, he subdued the pirates at
Mombassa who had been harassing the coast of
Mozambique. Mozambique had been brought within the Portuguese trading orbit and provided watering stations essential to Portugal's lifeline to the west coast of India. Nuno's brothers Pero Vaz da Cunha and Simão da Cunha were expected to serve under him as second and third in command, a form of
nepotism that was expected in the Portuguese
Estado da Índia. However, they died on the voyage, and Nuno was forced to rely upon local networks of clientage in
Goa during his long rule.
In
1529, Nuno sent an expedition that sacked and burned the city of
Damão on the
Arabian Sea at the mouth of the Damão River, about 100 miles north of
Mumbai in the Muslim state of
Gujarat. Forces under his control captured Baxay (now Vasai, often mistaken for Basra in Iraq) from the Muslim ruler of Gujarat, Bahadur Shah, on January 20, 1533. The next year, renamed Bassein, the city became the capital of the Portuguese province of the North, and the great citadel of black basalt, still standing, was begun. (It was completed in
1548).
Forced to return to Portugal as a result of court intrigues, he was shipwrecked at the
Cape of Good Hope and drowned.
His first marriage was to Maria da Cunha, and his second marriage was to Isabel da Silveira.
The main source for Nuno da Cunha's career is the Portuguese historian
João de Barros (
1496-
1570), famous for his history of the Portuguese in their overseas territories. The work,
Asia de Ioam de Barros, dos fectos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descobrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente, is full of lively detail, with incidents described like the king of Viantana's killing of the Portuguese ambassadors to
Malacca with boiling water and their bodies thrown to dogs.
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