Until late in the sixteenth century, over most of Asia, except the Spanish Philippines, the only Europeans wielding military and political power and engaged in corporate commercial activity were the Portuguese. Their officials, troops, settlers and traders, and the clergy working under the patronage of the Portuguese crown, were Europe's only representatives in wide areas from east Africa to China. Their eastern empire, the Estado da India, an established and familiar part of the Asian scene, thus represented the first solution to the problems of organising European enterprise in a very distant East. The problems were manifold: problems of management, the creation at home and overseas of instruments of control effective over unprecedented distances, technical problems of navigation, supply and defence, the political problem of relationships with powerful, aggressive, though often mutually hostile, Asian powers, the commercial problems of attempting to secure a monopoly in the spice trade and of securing the purchasing power to sustain trade when Europe had few products suited to eastern markets, and the moral problem of combining politics and trade with Christian duty. The pioneering solutions offered were not all equally effective, though some were taken over by other European powers in Asia, but all are interesting.

The original impulse to expand overseas had come from the Crown, and the Estado da India remained a royal enterprise throughout the sixteenth century. The main purpose was commercial, to tap Asian trade directly and secure the middleman's profits for the crown.