Only from the second or European phase in the annals of the India-Jewish alliance can the research of India’s place in Jewish history or the role of Jews in Indian history be set on a firmer foundation and based on more trustworthy data. This period began with the arrival of Europeans in India at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese, English, and Dutch East India Companies established trading ports, factories, and colonies along India’s west and east coasts.
When the Portuguese King Manuel (14691521) began sending continuous naval expeditions to the West Coast of India from 1497 onwards to control and monopolize the spice trade between India and the West, the Portuguese succeeded in establishing their first firm foothold on the Malabar Coast, the very territory on the Indian West Coast that had been a seat of Jewish settlement for many centuries.
Alvarez Pedro Cabral first set foot on Indian soil in 1500; Vasco de Gama established a Portuguese factory in Cochin in 1502; and Alfonso Albuquerque, Viceroy of India, built the first European fort there in 1503.
Source: https://www.penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/ProcAmAcadJRes/30/Cochin_in_Jewish_History*.html
