“…To cut off one alternative route for the spice trade, the Portuguese State of India (Estado da India) reached up to the Persian Gulf. Lisbon had already taken Hormuz, which dominates the narrow Strait of Hormuz, in 1507. The Estado took the strategic island of Qeshm around 1515. In 1515 it conquered Bahrain, which was notable for its pearl industry.
But by the early 1600s, Portugal was being challenged in the Persian Gulf by rival rising powers. On land, the Safavid Empire under Abbas the Great (r. 1588 – 1629) had begun attempting to recover Iranian territory along the coast at what the Portuguese called Camorao, which later became the Safavid port of Bandar Abbas once the Portuguese were defeated. The press to assert Iranian dominance was led by the governor of the southwest Fars province, Imam-Qoli Khan.
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“With the rise of Dutch and British mercantile and naval power in the first decades of the 17th century, the Safavids saw an opportunity to dislodge the Portuguese from the Gulf altogether. The Portuguese protection system, requiring that Asian merchants pay high tariffs and bribes to Portuguese officials in return for safety from Portuguese attacks, had grown so onerous to Indian merchants that they began reviving the overland route to Iran from Lahore through Qandahar. At the same time, new Dutch naval technology and trade routes allowed the Dutch to bypass the Portuguese factories. Gulf trade probably fell in the first decades of the 17th century which weakened the Portuguese at Hurmuz.
“In a joint 1622 Anglo-Iranian campaign against Hurmuz, the Iranians expelled the Portuguese, who retired to Goa. With Hurmuz now an Iranian dependency, the Safavids briefly reverted to the practice of administering Bahrain from that island. Later, Bahrain fell under the administrative jurisdiction of the Beglarbegi of Kuhgilu centered at Bihbahan in southern Iran. But the governor of Bahrain always exercised a great deal of autonomy. With Iranian dominance of Bahrain, the marketing entrepot for its pearls shifted to the Iranian Persian Gulf port of Congoun near the administra- tive center of Lar.
“The Dutch and British East India Companies, new economic institutions that by their control of the sea, their lower protection costs, and their knowledge of world prices represented an advance on the protection racket that constituted the Portuguese empire, began carrying Iranian and Indian merchants for a transport fee. The Companies traded with the local merchants, as well as competing with them, setting up a system of European-staffed Asian trade alongside their trade to Europe…”