Portuguese India was tiny—a handful of trading posts and enclaves, centered on the colony of Goa. The Estado da Índia faced the Mughal Empire and the Deccan Sultanates, large Muslim and Persian-based societies that ruled the subcontinent. How did Portuguese India survive? Well, by spying.

Jorge Flores in his book Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World explains how the Portuguese tried to learn more about their more powerful neighbors. Jorge Flores is Senior Researcher at the Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon.

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Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio host based in Hong Kong.