Latest / The Hidden History of Bengal: Kingdoms, Empires, and Revolution — Fexingo History / The Portuguese Pirates of Bengal: Sandwip's Lost Mercenary Kingdom
Transcript
- Lucas: So if you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we've touched on the Portuguese in Bengal before — the firangis, the Hooghly settlements — but there's one wild chapter we haven't really unpacked yet. The pirate kingdom of Sandwip. Luna: Sandwip — that's the island off Chittagong, right? Lucas: Exactly. It's a low-lying island in the Meghna estuary, part of the Sundarbans delta. And in the early 1600s, it became the base for a Portuguese renegade — a man named Gonzales. Not his full name, we actually don't have it — just Gonzales. He was a deserter from the Portuguese armada, and he basically set himself up as a pirate king. Lucas: Now, to understand how this happens, you have to remember that the Portuguese presence in Bengal was never really a formal colony. It was a patchwork of traders, missionaries, and mercenaries. Some of them were licensed by the Portuguese crown, but a lot were just adventurers who saw opportunity in the chaos of the Mughal expansion. Luna: So Gonzales was one of those adventurers who went rogue? Lucas: Completely. He arrived in the Bay of Bengal around the 1620s, probably as a sailor or a soldier. At some point he jumped ship or was left behind, and he ended up on Sandwip. The island was sparsely populated — mostly fishermen and farmers. But it had a strategic position: it controlled the sea lanes into Chittagong and the Hooghly River. Lucas: So Gonzales gathered a crew — other Portuguese runaways, some local Bengalis, maybe even a few Dutch and English deserters — and built a fort. Earthworks, timber palisades, mounted a few cannons. And from there, he started raiding. But he wasn't just any pirate — he was a mercenary king. Luna: What do you mean by 'mercenary king'? Lucas: He didn't just rob ships. He sold his services. The Mughal governors in Bengal were constantly fighting the Arakanese kingdom to the east — the Magh people, based in what is now Myanmar. The Magh had their own fleet of war boats, and they raided the Bengal coast for slaves. So the Mughals needed naval allies. Gonzales offered them his little fleet. Lucas: But here's the twist: he also worked with the Magh. He was completely amoral. One season he'd be raiding a Magh village for the Mughals, the next he'd be guiding Magh pirates into the Sundarbans to capture Bengali peasants. He was a free agent of violence. Luna: And nobody tried to stop him? Lucas: Oh, they tried. The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan sent a fleet in the 1630s to dislodge him, but Gonzales knew the shallow waters and the channels. He evaded them. The Portuguese viceroy in Goa officially disavowed him — but privately, some Portuguese merchants traded with him for looted goods. He was a paradox: outlaw to everyone, useful to everyone. Lucas: And here's a detail I love: he married a local woman, from a Bengali Muslim family. By all accounts, he converted to Islam temporarily to cement a political alliance, then later reverted to Christianity. He played every side. Luna: Wow. So he was really playing the long game. Lucas: For a while, yes. His heyday was roughly 1620 to 1640. But the Mughal state was getting stronger. Under Shah Jahan and later Aurangzeb, the empire's navy expanded. And then came Shaista Khan. Lucas: Shaista Khan was Aurangzeb's uncle, appointed governor of Bengal in 1664. He was determined to crush the Portuguese pirates and the Magh raiders once and for all. He built a massive fleet — over 300 ships — and launched a campaign to retake Chittagong and Sandwip. Luna: This is the same Shaista Khan who built Lalbagh Fort, right? Lucas: That's him. He was a builder and a general. In 1666, his fleet surrounded Sandwip. Gonzales was old by then — maybe in his sixties. His fort fell after a short siege. Gonzales himself was captured and executed. The island was absorbed into the Mughal empire, and the Portuguese pirate era in Bengal was effectively over. Lucas: But the legacy? The slave trade they helped fuel continued. The Magh raids went on for decades. And the island of Sandwip — it's still there, a quiet place now, but if you walk the beaches, local legend says you can still find old Portuguese cannons half-buried in the sand. Luna: That's haunting. A whole forgotten kingdom on a mudflat. Lucas: Quick honest thing — this is the kind of story we dig into because a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's literally what funds making this many of these episodes possible. Luna: Yeah, it's a small group, but it keeps us independent and ad-free. Lucas: Exactly. No ads, no sponsors — just listeners who love history and want more. And it means we can spend time on stories like Gonzales, not just the big battles everyone knows. Lucas: So back to the pirates — what's interesting is that after Shaista Khan's victory, the Mughals didn't just expel the Portuguese. They also signed a treaty with the Arakanese, which included an agreement to stop slave raids. But it didn't hold. The Magh continued their raids, and the Portuguese survivors scattered — some went to the Sundarbans, some to the Nicobar Islands, some just disappeared. Luna: Are there any descendants of those Portuguese on Sandwip today? Lucas: That's a complicated question. There are communities in Bangladesh and West Bengal who claim Portuguese ancestry — often called 'Firangi' or 'Portuguese Christians'. Some are in Chittagong, some in Dhaka. But they've mostly assimilated. There's a small Catholic community on Sandwip itself, but whether they're direct descendants of Gonzales's men or later missionaries, it's hard to say. The records are thin. Lucas: One thing we do know: the Portuguese left a linguistic trace. Bengali has a few words borrowed from Portuguese — 'almari' for cupboard, 'sabun' for soap, 'janala' for window. And the word 'firangi' itself stuck around, used for any European foreigner. Luna: So the pirate king's legacy is in everyday words. Lucas: In a way, yes. But also in the memory of a time when the Bay of Bengal was a lawless frontier. The Mughals eventually pacified it, but for a few decades, a Portuguese renegade ruled an island kingdom, playing empire against empire, and getting away with it — until he didn't.