Vasco da Gama, Portuguese explorer and politician, Governor of Portuguese India (born 1469)

Vasco da Gama, was a Portuguese explorer and nobleman who was the first European to reach India by sea.

The government of Portuguese India started on 12 September 1505, seven years after the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, with the nomination of the first Portuguese viceroy Francisco de Almeida, then settled at Cochin. Until 1752, the name India included all Portuguese possessions in the Indian Ocean, from Southern Africa to Southeast Asia, governed – either by a viceroy or governor – from its headquarters, established in Old Goa since 1510. In 1752 Portuguese Mozambique was granted its own government, and in 1844 the Portuguese government of India ceased administering the territory of Portuguese Macau, Solor and Portuguese Timor, seeing itself thus confined to a reduced territorial possessions along the Konkan, Canara and Malabar Coasts, which would further be reduced to the present-day state of Goa and the union territory of Daman. Portuguese control ceased in Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954, and finally ceased in Goa in 1961, when the area was occupied by the Republic of India. This ended four and a half centuries of Portuguese rule in parts – though tiny – of India.