In which year was Sri Lanka discovered by the Portuguese?

The correct answer is C, Machilipatnam. Machilipatnam, also written as Masulipatnam, was the first Dutch factory in India, opened in 1605, and the English and the French also traded there; it was never a Portuguese possession. Option A, Bombay, was Portuguese until 1661, when it was given to Charles II of England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza and passed to the East India Company in 1668. Option B, Hooghly, was a Portuguese settlement in Bengal from the sixteenth century until Shah Jahan expelled them in 1632 for piracy and slave trading. Option D, Chaul, on the Konkan coast south of Bombay, was one of the early Portuguese ports and the site of a famous naval battle with the Egyptian fleet in 1508. Reading a settlement as Dutch when it is on the Coromandel coast is a reliable short cut in such questions.

The correct answer is C, Baroque and Manueline. The churches and convents of Old Goa, built after Albuquerque took the city in 1510 and inscribed on the World Heritage list, follow the styles that Portugal itself was using: the ornate late Gothic Manueline manner and, from the late sixteenth century, the Baroque. The Basilica of Bom Jesus, which holds the remains of St Francis Xavier, is the best known Baroque example, and the Se Cathedral carries Manueline and Tuscan features. Option A, Indo-Saracenic, is a nineteenth century British style that mixed Mughal and Gothic elements in buildings such as the Madras High Court. Option B, Mughal, belongs to the northern imperial tradition of Agra, Delhi and Lahore. Option D, Gothic Revival, is also a nineteenth century European movement seen in Bombay buildings such as the Victoria Terminus, long after Old Goa was built.

The correct answer is C, 1765. After the Battle of Buxar in October 1764, Robert Clive concluded the Treaty of Allahabad with the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II in 1765, and the emperor granted the Company the Diwani, the right to collect the revenue of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha. The arrangement created the dual system of government in Bengal, under which the Company held the purse while the Nawab kept the duty of administration and policing. Option A, 1773, is the year of the Regulating Act, the first attempt by the British Parliament to control the Company. Option B, 1791, falls in the period of Cornwallis, who was preparing the Permanent Settlement of 1793. Option D, 1782, is the year of the Treaty of Salbai that ended the First Anglo-Maratha War. Linking Buxar in 1764 with the Diwani in 1765 keeps the pair in order.

The correct answer is B, Francisco de Almeida. He reached India in 1505 as the first Portuguese Governor and held the office until 1509. His policy, remembered as the Blue Water Policy or Policy of Cartaz, was to make Portugal supreme on the sea rather than to conquer land, and he destroyed a combined Egyptian and Gujarati fleet at Diu in 1509. Option A, Albuquerque, succeeded him from 1509 to 1515 and is called the real founder of Portuguese power in India because he captured Goa in 1510, but he was the second Governor. Option C, Nino da Cunha, governed from 1529 and is remembered for moving the capital from Cochin to Goa in 1530 and for acquiring Bassein and Diu. Option D, Vasco da Gama, opened the sea route in 1498 and returned in 1524 as Viceroy, dying at Cochin the same year, so he was never the first Governor.

The correct answer is B, 1602. The Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, usually called the Dutch East India Company, was created in 1602 when the States General of the Netherlands merged several competing trading ventures and gave the new body a monopoly of eastern trade. Its first Indian factory was opened at Masulipatnam in 1605 and Pulicat became its chief settlement on the Coromandel coast. Option A, 1600, is the year in which Queen Elizabeth I chartered the English East India Company, two years earlier than the Dutch. Option C, 1616, is the year the Danish East India Company was formed, and the Danes set up Tranquebar in 1620. Option D, 1664, is the year Colbert founded the French East India Company under Louis XIV. Keeping the sequence 1600, 1602, 1616 and 1664 in mind answers a whole family of questions.