Goa under the Habsburgs: from a global to a regional capital?

Classical scholarship on the history of Estado da Índia tends to consider the period of the Iberian Union (1580-1640/1668) as a key moment to understand the decline of Goa, its capital. This historiography associates the “Spanish period” with a general crisis in the Portuguese empire, with a dramatic expression in its Asian territories. Following recent interpretations on this, we argue that other variables, namely the inter-imperial rivalries in the Indian Ocean (European and non-European), the new ambitions of the Papacy, were as important as the Iberian Union (in which context, Goa became one among many capitals, and the Indian Run lost some of its strength with the Atlantic turn of the Portuguese empire). Altogether, and adding to it, the behaviour of the local elites, enlighten the transformation of Goa from a global capital, during the 16th century, to a regional one, by the 18th century.