Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

by Roger Crowley

The Vasco da Gama era of history set in motion five hundred years of Western expansion and the forces of globalization that now shape the world.

The crusading remit from Rome was “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ…and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

This first blurred view of India stands as a significant moment in world history.

Calicut, despite the lack of a good natural harbor, had established itself as the premier center for the trading of spices along the Malabar Coast because of its rulers’ reputation for good governance and fair dealing with merchants.

These impatient simplicities were ill suited to the complexities of the Indian Ocean, where Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and even Indian Christians were integrated into a polyethnic trading zone.

The voyage had been epic; they had been away a year, traveled twenty-four thousand miles. It was a feat of endurance, courage, and great luck. The toll had been heavy. Two-thirds of the crew had died.

Cabral’s expedition marked the shift from reconnaissance to commerce and then conquest.

“the best thing in all the world, after the love of God, was honor.” “Honor”: a word that rang down through all the decades of Portuguese conquest, resistance, and defeat.

It had been Albuquerque’s genius to understand the strategic importance of Goa, on the fault line between the two warring powers and a better commercial hub than Calicut or Cochin could ever be.

Albuquerque had come to understand the extent of the Muslim presence in the Indian Ocean and that realistically, it was ineradicable.

Though its supremacy lasted little more than a century, Portugal’s achievement was to create the prototype for new and flexible forms of empire, based

on mobile sea power, and the paradigm for European expansion. Where it led, the Dutch and the English followed.

the Portuguese set rolling endless global interactions, both benign and malign. They brought firearms and bread to Japan and astrolabes and green beans to China, African slaves to the Americas, tea to England, pepper to the New World, Chinese silk and I...