THE WESTERN PART OF THE INDIAN OCEAN, 16th century.

The Indian Ocean extends from Madagascar in the west to Australia in the east with the Indian subcontinent in the north. The western portion is historically interested as all the islands in this territory were small trading posts and colonies of various European imperial powers. While the eastern part was mostly Dutch and British, the western region was distributed among French and Portuguese as well. And particularly the 16th century was interesting of all.

It was the 16th century when, with the incoming of the Portuguese to the Indian subcontinent, Europeans got to know about the goldmine of trading opportunities here. Stretching to Arabian Sea, the major trading ports of Muscat, Zanzibar, Aden, Mombasa, Mogadishu (spelled as Mogadoxo), Bharuch (Broach or Barygaza), the Malabar Coast and ports in Persia were the major players. But the tiny islands played crucial roles as well.

Renamed as St. Laurent's or Ilha de São Lourenço, Madagascar was one of the first islands to be colonized by the Europeans (the Portuguese in this case) in 1500. The Portuguese also discovered Mauritius in 1505 which first they named as Ilha do Cirne, then later in 1513 as Ilhas Mascarenha (Mascarene Islands). Around the same time Seychelles were discovered by Portuguese again and named as Amirantes Islands (which still are part of the island chain). Comoros (Grand Comoro, 1505), British Indian Ocean Territory (Ilha de Dom Garcia, 1512) and almost every island in these waters were early discoveries of the Portuguese. Even the island Union Territory of India, Lakshadweep, was once controlled by the Portuguese under the name of Laquedivas, although older maps shows a name as Isles de Divanduron.

Other smaller islands were Ilha de Diego Roiz (Rodrigues, part of Mauritius), San Brandaon (Cargados Carajos Shoals or St. Brandon, part of Mauritius), Baixos de Chagos (Chagos Archipelago, administrated under British Indian Ocean Territory), Ilhas de Cosmoledo (Cosmoledo, part of Seychelles), Bassas da India (part of French Southern and Antarctic Lands) etc. The French consequently arrived in the 18th century and later followed by the British. And the fate turned everything around that today these islands are either independent (Madagascar, Seychelles, Maldives, Mauritius) or are under the British or French. The only country that doesn't hold any power here, is Portugal.

Some of the islands one might find on older maps but not anymore. These are known as 'lost islands'. Baxo Ambar, Diego Ruiz, Gama, Turtle, Londons, Union Rks, Joao de Lisboa etc. are such names. Interestingly, even though these islands aren't on any modern maps, one can still find them on navigational charts, airline offices, commercial atlases etc. Some of them indeed were either poorly (or inaccurately) marked or wiped out due to volcanic eruptions or simply got forgotten and didn't slip in the pages of atlases.

But in any case, these Indian Ocean islands did open up Asia to Europe for colonization, all thanks to the Portuguese. Interestingly, the Portuguese arrived to Asia as the first European colonizer (early 16th century) and departed as late as 2002 (East Timor). The map here shows these islands and their current names (in green) as it was in 1595.