# Portuguese India begins cartaz sea-passes as a tax and exclusion machine in the wake of the voyages

Date: 1502

## The fact

Printed Décadas and later economic histories describe cartazes: passes that made unlicensed Indian Ocean shipping a prize. A protection racket with guns is an institutional-extraction path. He is an opener of the route, not the unique clerk of every later pass.

It is one event.

## Context

Do not assign every 16th-century cartaz to 1498. Do store the printed system as a consequence-heading of the Cape route wars.

[Vasco da Gama](/people/vasco-da-gama) Shared work with other named actors remains in the record.

Vasco da Gama’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below. Sharing a field with them is not a reason to drop a documented act, and it is not a reason to assign later consequences done in the name after death.

Conventional years are c. 1460s–1524.

Named person as heading of the dated public instrument. Later editors, museums, printers, or offices share publication. Complex where later carriers are the surviving public file.

## Evidence and sources

Library of Congress — later Décadas da Ásia and Portuguese India print and Journal of Economic History — later spice-route studies independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Library of Congress — later Décadas da Ásia and Portuguese India print (https://www.loc.gov/; Library of Congress).

## Significance

Printed cartazes are not a 1502 customs act in his hand.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Established here: a sourced, dated public instrument with a named contribution by Vasco da Gama.

They are not a public rating.

The driver `institutional-corruption` is attached because the mechanism named in Significance follows from this instrument, not because a standing list of welfare headings needed another tick. Vasco da Gama did not file a later UNESCO form, a later Loeb colophon, or a later museum label as a personal act. A portrait or conventional bust is not this mechanism. Allegation, reconstruction, and established occurrence stay distinct.

## People

- Vasco da Gama: https://factrail.ai/people/vasco-da-gama

## Drivers

- Institutional Corruption: https://factrail.ai/drivers/institutional-corruption

## Sources

- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history
- https://www.loc.gov/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/vdg-cartaz-system