Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

by Roger Crowley

The Galle monument still exists. It is crested by two Chinese dragons contesting the world, but it was Portuguese seamen from primitive Europe who first linked the oceans together and laid the foundations for a world economy. Their achievement has largely been overlooked. It is a long-range epic of navigation, trade, and technology, money and crusade, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, reckless courage, and extreme violence.

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.

In the aftermath of Ceuta, Prince Henrique, who has passed into the bloodstream of history as Henry the Navigator, began to sponsor expeditions down the coast of Africa in search of slaves, gold, and spices.

the German Martin Behaim, later the creator of a prototype terrestrial globe.

The Europeans of the Middle Ages had less contact with the Orient than had the Roman Empire.

Dias and his companions named it the Stormy Cape, which King João changed to the Cape of Good Hope, “because it promised the discovery of India, so long desired and sought for over so many years.”

Like 1492 itself, the treaty marked a decisive moment in the end of the Middle Ages. Although what was agreed at Tordesillas was later ratified by Pope Pius III, rights to the world had effectively been removed from the hegemony of the papacy. They had been calculated by scientists and carved up according to secularized national interests.

The money spent on the few ships of this expedition was so great that I will not go into detail for fear of not being believed.

coast.

Geneva, Illinois 9/13/2016 mjp

This was the world of Sindbad.

Five hundred years later, Arab dhow captains would still be cursing this Muslim pilot who first let the Franks, the Europeans they called the ferengi, into the secrets of the ocean’s navigation.

It had taken just twenty-three days to make the voyage across; the return took ninety-three. The lessons of the seasonal monsoon were hard won.

Afonso de Albuquerque,

Pereira had been one of the cosmographers tasked with hammering out the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494; a man who may have secretly been to Brazil before it was officially discovered; who produced the first written account of the chimpanzee’s ability to use tools;

Pereira, probably the first man to scientifically study the relationship between tides and lunar phases,

The twenty-four-thousand-mile round-trip, with convoys now sailing out of the Tejo in March each year, was an extraordinary feat of seamanship.

Of the 5,500 men who went to India between 1497, on Gama’s first voyage, and 1504, some 1,800—35 percent—had not returned.

Fernão de Magalhães, the Magellan who would circumnavigate the world in the following decade.

but the honor code of reckless bravery created risks that would have consequences for the whole Portuguese enterprise.

It was a prescient awareness of the origins and benefits of long-distance trade: the runaway train of globalization that had started with Vasco da Gama.

“he ordered the ears and noses of the captured Muslims to be cut off, and sent them to Ormuz as a testimony to their disgrace.”

He had effectively come for the purpose of military tourism.

Ireland in two days! 9/28/2016 mjp

Repairs were hampered by a lack of lime from which to make mortar;

Sea Island, GA. October 18, 2016. Mjp

At sea, it was always survival of the most important.

Albuquerque himself was the first European since Alexander the Great to establish an imperial presence in Asia.

scandalous satirical pamphlet, The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno. He was housed in a specially

This extraordinary Manueline decoration,

Manuel ordered the construction of a defensive fort: the tower of Belém, a fantasy construction as much as a military bastion, standing alone in the sea and emblazoned with these decorative devices.

we saw that! 10/18/2016 mjp

According to the chroniclers, the governor was “so aghast at losing the city in this way, lost so shambolically, that he was unable to speak.”

Manuel died in December 1521. Though no one knew it at

In Almeida and Albuquerque, Manuel had had the luck of two incorruptible and loyal commanders, the latter one of the great conquerors and visionary empire builders of world history.

So long as they are upheld by justice and without oppression, they are more than sufficient. But if good faith and humanity cease to be observed in these lands, then pride will overthrow the strongest walls we have.

Fin. Sea Island, Georgia. MJP. 10/19/2016. Beautiful day!