_ 128 _ Varthema who returned to Europe on a Portuguese vessel. By that time (1507) the Portuguese were already stablished on the Malabar coast and had begun to keep records of their activities and observations. Their journals kept when aboard inventories of cargoes and reports to the King are the sources that constitute the richest and most complete documentation for the history of the Indian Ocean. The first fifteen years of the 16th century were a time of great change compared with the preceding period, and the Portuguese were now on the eve of a new set of changes in which they were to be both actors and observers. As they sailed the seas, they gained a general view of the economic and social structures of maritime life, but their observations can only be fully understood if one also takes into account the oriental sources and existing traditions in Asia. At the turn of the 15th to 16th centuries the littoral of the Indian Ocean was not occupied by a series of land-based powers but by a string of more or less autonomous cities. In some instances, the ports with their territories comprised independent sultanates, as was the case with Quiloa, Ormuz and Malacca, whereas in others the merchant communities within existing states had gained independence on the sea, as had occurred in India and
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