The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama

Outras Margens

by Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Vasco da Gama (?1469–1524) is well known as one of a generation of discoverers, along with Magellan, Cabral, and Columbus. Yet little is known about his life, or about the context within which he 'discovered' the all-sea route to India in 1497–99. This book, based on a mass of published and unpublished sources in Portuguese and other languages, delineates Gama's career and social context, focusing on the delicate balance between 'career' and 'legend'. The book addresses broad questions of myth-building and nationalism, while never losing sight of Gama himself.

Genres: History, Portugal, Biography, India, Nonfiction

424 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

He taught Delhi School of Economics, then EHESS (Paris), then Oxford, before becoming Holder of Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair of Indian History at UCLA which he joined in 2004.
In 2013, he became Holder of Early Modern Global History Chair at Collège de France.

Reviews

[Manish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caravan magazine, in a recent review of one of Subrahmanyam's collection of essays quoted his response in the context of the debate between writing popular/readable history versus academic history. The quote is reproduced here:

“such readable books cannot replace or do away with the proper academic monograph, which is based on textual or archival research, and can’t be read that easily by non-academics ... we are constantly trying to push the frontiers of research, rather than those of readability”.
Full review can be found here: http://caravanmagazine.in/books/maste...

After browsing through "The career and legend of Vasco da Gama', I've got a fair understanding of what historiography means, what it means to be a 'historian' in the classical sense and my own inadequacy in grasping the amount of detail which Subrahmanyam gathers and disburses through the pages. But somehow, being a native of Calicut, this was one book that had to be on my shelf. Someday, I might revisit it once again.

da Gama's three voyages to India, his ruthlessness towards the Zamorin of Calicut, alliances with Cochin and Cannanore (Kannur), the visceral hatred of the Portugese towards the Moors (Muslims), the dynamics over the Arabian sea trade of the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt etc were some of the takeaways for me from this dense piece of academic work. Planning to systematically approach the history of Portugese imperialism in India soon. :)

[Rosa Ramôa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Salientamos a grande desconfiança de Vasco da Gama em Calecute.Ele espera que os navios indianos se aproximem das suas naus em vez de tomar a iniciativa e ir a terra.Manda a terra um degredado (condenado) em vez de alguém com autoridade.
Os portugueses- com os seus insignificantes presentes de tecidos,chapéus e produtos agrícolas-não conseguiram criar uma impressão favorável no Samorim.De facto,havia um sentimento de desconfiança mútua nos contactos." (adaptado)

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obra de referência que agitou as águas da historiografia portuguesa, ao revelar como foi construída a lenda de Vasco da Gama, sempre contextualizando os acontecimentos na realidade portuguesa e na realidade do Índico.

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subramanyam sets out to do - in this book - what he claims traditional Portuguese philosophers have seldom done: contextualise.

He shows how Vasco da Gama has become a part of the Portuguese national legend and how he occupied a place in the pantheon of national heroes. How - Subramanyam asks - was he a "national" hero when Portugal was still in the midst of squabble between the three christian knightly orders of his time and Portugal itself was not an independent unit.

Subramanyam argues that Vasco da Gama was more a man of feudal times with landholdings than a chivalrous knight. He was more a suspecting warmonger than a warrior himself. He was driven largely by religious and sectarian xenophobia. In fact, even before he struck a trade deal with the Samudri of Kozhikode he tried flushing out all Muslims (or who the Europeans called "Moors").

Subramanyam demands from historians a critical analysis of history. His own critical analysis take him to look closely at courtly affairs in Lisbon, often making the book excessively exhaustive. Nationalism he feels makes the historian parochial. Parochial historians are no better than bards.

[Prashanth Randadath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama is an incisive and brilliantly researched work that strips away the layers of myth surrounding one of Europe’s most celebrated explorers. Rather than repeating the heroic narratives of empire, Subrahmanyam situates Vasco da Gama in the messy realities of 15th–16th century global trade, diplomacy, and violence. The book shows how da Gama’s career was shaped as much by propaganda and legend as by actual achievement, revealing the complexities of early modern cross-cultural encounters. Scholarly yet accessible, it is a must-read for anyone interested in colonial history, the Indian Ocean world, and the making of historical memory.

[luciel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this neutral stance on such a figure of European colonialism. Each page you read makes you hate de Gama a little bit more, as one should when actually discovering what colonisers did

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, this is not friendly for the layman at all! But I guess I did learn a few things.