The Paradesi Jews, also called “White Jews”, settled in the Cochin region in the 16th century and later, following the expulsion from Iberia due to forced conversion and religious persecution in Spain and then Portugal. Some went beyond that territory, including a few families who followed the Arab spice routes to southern India. Speaking Ladino […]
St. Francis CSI Church, in Fort Kochi (aka. Fort Cochin), originally built in 1503, is the oldest European church in India and has great historical significance as a mute witness to the European colonial struggle in the subcontinent. The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama died in Kochi in 1524 when he was on his third visit to […]
The 4th Armada of Vasco da Gama had left India in the early months of 1503 with little resolved. Despite terror, bombardment and blockade, Calicut remained defiant, and the two fledgling Portuguese factories in allied cities – one in Cochin, the other in Cannanore – were vulnerable to her revenge. And revenge was not long […]
Cochim is the largest city in the state of Kerala in India, about 220 km north of the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram. He was part of Portuguese India between 1503 and 1663. Today belongs to the Ernakulam district. It is also the largest city in India that has no more than half of the inhabitants professing […]