One final post to cap off the year, and as always it is excellent. I like seeing the focus shift from the war itself to the consolidation of gains made by Portugal because of it.
The Verneyist Church was introduced immediately, establishing a number of churches giving sermons in Portuguese, and officially disenfranchising the Islamic religion in favor of the native Hindu;
Religious law was also increasingly harsher the further you were away from Diu, while Maruva, Caixão and Cachala still tolerated Hinduism somewhat (largely for the populist nightmare it would be to burn all their temples and symbols), Hinduism was repressed on equal ground with Islamism in Talaja and, most particularly, Gernão, where the religious holy site of Girnar hills was located
You don't really go into detail what is meant by "disenfranchising" and "repressed". Are temples being closed? Are non-Christians not allowed weapons? It isn't clear. Also, it seems at odds with the assimilation strategy implied with the quotes below, among others:
Traditions like the Hindu Sati were forbidden in Greater Diu’s premises, attracting women of the outlying province possessions to make families in the Portuguese center under its influence
The Indian system of estates based on race, lineage and breed was replaced with Tagus Declaration style social structure, allowing Gujarat of all creeds to rise to capitalist, bureaucratic and military ranks for as long as they resided in Greater Diu
These policies triggered a migration event in southern Kathiawar, where many impoverished, disenfranchised and religiously unstable communities flocked to the fields north of Diu Island to work, build houses and have families under Greater-Dian policies, while the remaining territories like Junagadh were allowed to continue their traditional rule and ended up losing, in some cases, almost 30% of their population over the following five years.
The strategy here (a clever one, I might add) seems to be to attract the groups most susceptible to assimilation (low caste individuals and women who aren't thrilled with the prospect of Sati) to Greater Diu, while letting those who would most resist change remain in their ways, unwittingly giving the Portugese time to let their assimilation efforts go to work and to strengthen their presence on the peninsula. Why would repression of Hindus be the most blatant in the area of the local holy site, almost as if to stoke anti-Christian sentiment as much as possible? Why confirm the worst fears of native reactionaries?
Of course, this strategy of attracting people open to change also means the outermost provinces are deliberately filtered of Portugese-sympathetic nativea - the people who remain in those areas overwhelmingly would prefer nothing more than for Baroda to return and kick the Portugese out. I suppose that's what the fortresses are for.
If I was Forbes, I would be very conscious on using the issue of the Sati as a lever with which to break the power of the traditionalists. Girls' schools in Greater Diu, and tutors hired by native families in the other provinces, couldn't
tell their female students to run away to Greater Diu, but they could, y'know, "generally mention" the experiences and opportunities they know that women can find there, and "just put it out there" that the leader of the local church or chapel may "know a guy who knows a guy" who can get one to Diu no questions asked. Losing 30% of your population in 5 years is bad, that 30% being disproportionately young women is a harbinger of demographic collapse. This influx of young women could also be matched by an influx of young immigrant men - integration of even the deep rural countryside is going to need to involve a lot of people who can seamlessly cross the divide between Gujarat and Portugese traditions, and since making those people is a lengthy and involved process it's best to start as soon as possible.
The Malava and Taluja districts possessed some minor gem reserves which included diamonds, but not in a prospected portion that justified a significant portion of the economy for the Portuguese administration, as it was hard to motivate a resentful population to shift gears from farming and work in mines for the white man.
Seems like an opportunity to declare the area the deposits are in "public land" and allow the locals to make a stake and pocket whatever gems they dig up. By the time the easier pickings dry up and more organised mining is required in order to dig deeper, the area would have already gone through significant change to support the prospecting boom - somebody has to sell the prospector his stuff, give him lodgings, feed him, and attend to his "other" needs.
Of the fisherman population, a large portion of the population that wasn’t vital for the feeding of the territory was recruited into sailing, usually serving the first few years in the Portuguese Indic navy but given promotion opportunities should they be willing to migrate to East Africa or Europe
I admire the political sensibilities of this. Aside from their experience of the sea, it also allows more Gujarati to receive integration via the military without necessarily making them face the prospect of leaving home
or fighting members of their own people, like they might if in the Army - with Baroda's navy trashed and left in no state to fight for a very long time, the only foes on their horizons are common pirates, even in the event of another war with Baroda these fishermen-turned-seamen won't get put in the position where they might prove unreliable.
While Luso-African Cotton would historically surpass Diu quantities, the port of Diu remained a stamp of quality but also of profitable agricultural labor even in comparison to slave plantations, contributing to the demise of the surviving slave-based economies lingering all over the empire, though this would, unfortunately, only effectively replace it with virtual slavery, meaning work that was not equivalently corresponded with company salary, agricultural outcrop or market sale.
This seems like it might cause trouble: the pro-slavery faction in the empire is dissipated and abolitionism/race equality as a movement grows stronger every day, there's no reason why they'd overlook this just because it isn't
technically slavery. The prospect of revolts in Portugal's cotton-profucing regions against slave-like conditions during the 1790s, when Portugal is going to be fighting for its life and when it will need cloth and cash the most, might force a confrontation and an intervention by the government before it boils over.