Sea-Route To India

Vasco da Gama Transforms the Commerce of the World

The twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were an Age of Discovery, the fifteenth marking its greatest development and the final decade of the century, its final stage, consequent upon the discovery of America.

It was an Age of Discovery in a much wider sense than is repre­sented by the activities of European travellers to new places and among new peoples. It saw the rise and development of Gothic architecture; the beginnings of modern painting and sculpture, and music; the institution of universities; the revival of Greek philosophy and Roman law; and the earliest movements towards a freedom of thought in religion which was to reach fruition in the Reformation.

All these movements were signs of an increased vigour in Roman Christianity, and though the connexion may not be readily per­ceived at first sight, it was this same upsurge of renewed vitality which stimulated geographical discovery. The relationship between Christianity and the discovery of new lands and peoples was formed in this way.

The Christian Church, in its new strength, turned its energies once more to the work of conversion. Various religious and military Orders came into being dedicated to carrying out the missionary role of the Church. By the end of the tenth century, the Scandinavian peoples, the Poles and the Hungarians had all been partly converted; by the end of the eleventh, the Pomeranians, the Finns and the Estonians; while during the twelfth, the Russians had been Christianized by the Greek Church, and the followers of the heretical Nestorius had carried their particular brand of Christianity to Central Asia, where they are said to have converted a powerful ruler, who became a priest and whose fame spread throughout western Christendom as Presbyter, or Prester, John.

Side by side with these missionary endeavours, traders and secular travellers had pushed their activities farther and farther afield, until the Far East was brought into contact with Europe. The experiences of the Venetian adventurer, Marco Polo, led him to compile a handbook to the East for the use of European visitors.

While these inland discoveries were being made in Northern Europe, Central Asia and the Far East, at the same time a similar process was developing in the south, where the Mediterranean divided the Christian world from the Moslem world of North Africa.

Here, however, it was a reverse of the process, for, under the stimulus of fanatical missionary zeal, the Arabs of Islam were attempting, with some measure of success, to bring the benefits of their religion, and rule, to Europe.

The greater part of Spain fell into their hands, and though their invasion of France failed, they seized Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. They represented the dominant maritime power in the Mediterranean, and for several decades held in check the rising sea-power of Venice and Genoa.

In addition, as well as dominating the Red Sea area and East Africa as far south as Madagascar without rivals, the Arabs carried on an extensive caravan trade across the Sahara with the negro tribes of the Sudan. They were aware, too, that the great barren Atlantic coast of the Sahara terminated in a fertile tract watered by the River Senegal, for on a map constructed by an Arab cartographer in 1150 the territory was named Bilad Ghana, Land of Wealth.

It is improbable that they were in regular contact with Bilad Ghana. On the other hand, the Italians and the Portuguese, excluded from overland trading with Africa, saw in Bilad Ghana an outlet for their interests which was at the same time accessible, by sea. Thus the important events of the Maritime Age of Discovery begin on the coast of the Atlantic margin of the Sahara, with expeditions first by the Genoese in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and by the Portuguese in the first half of the fifteenth.

To trace the rise of Portugal to a first-class maritime power, it is necessary to go back to first events. As we have seen, in the tenth century the greater part of the Spanish peninsula was in the hands of the Moors, as the North African Arabs were called. By the second half of the following century the Moors had been driven south, and the lands as far as the River Tagus had been recovered for Christianity. In 1094, Alfonso VI of Castile, who had most successfully fought the Moors, bestowed the recently annexed province called Porto Callo, or Portugal, upon his son-in-law, Henry of Burgundy.

Henry’s son, Alfonso I of Portugal, carried on the war against the Moors, extended his territory, captured Lisbon and assumed the title of King instead of Count, and after a famous victory over the Moors at Ourique in 1139, won Castilian recognition of Portugal’s independent status.

The small independent kingdom of Portugal continued to wage war on the Moors successfully, and to prosper under a line of monarchs who, besides fighting vigorously, did not neglect the welfare of their people.

During the reign of Alfonso III (1248-1279) Portugal was extended to what were virtually permanent limits. Though his successor Diniz is regarded as the founder of Portugal’s commercial and industrial activities, the war with the Moors and the struggle to resist the domination of later Castilian rulers were the chief occupation of his son, Alfonso IV, the Brave.

The struggle with Castile was finally resolved by the brilliant Portuguese victory at Aljubarrota on 14 April. 1385, in the reign of John I, whose queen was Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt.

John I, who reigned for nearly half a century, laid the foundations of the Portuguese maritime empire, his chief assistant in the enterprise being his younger son, Prince Henry the Navigator. It was under Prince Henry’s direction that expedition after expedition sailed from the shores of Portugal, discovered the Canaries and the Azores, and crept round the great western shoulder of Africa, eventually reaching Bilad Ghana.

It was Henry’s plan to form a Greater Portugal by adding the Land of Wealth to the colonies of the Canaries and Azores; but it was a plan which involved a considerable financial outlay that had to be compensated by making a pecuniary profit, and this he hoped to do by trading in slaves.

For some years he failed in his attempts to capture any Negroes at all. By degrees, however, he achieved more success and slowly built up a profitable commerce in slaves. But it was the searches of Henry’s slave-merchants that took his ships farther and farther south, down the West African coast, until by 1446 Cape Verde was reached and passed, and the coast of what is now Portuguese Guinea was explored.

The riches in ivory and gold which Portuguese Guinea produced encouraged further explorations, though it is doubtful whether these had extended much farther southward by the time Henry died in 1460. But the Portuguese had by now become commercially minded which made it both natural and inevitable that further sources of trade should be continually sought.

Within twenty-six years of Henry’s death three times the length of coast had been explored than during his lifetime, and Portuguese sailors had come within measurable distance of India, China and the Spice Islands. Europe’s trade with the East seemed to be within the grasp of Portugal.

As the African coast was progressively explored by the Portuguese and set down on charts, it began to occur to some that the realization of the idea of reaching the East by way of the West was merely a matter of effect. In 1474, a canon of Lisbon, while on a visit to Florence, consulted Toscanelli, the most eminent of Italian physicists, as to the feasibility of such a scheme, and brought back to Alfonso V a favourable opinion.

Twelve years were to elapse, however, before the breakthrough was achieved. In 1486, Bartolomeo Diaz set sail with two ships, and after a few months spent on the Gold Coast he sailed on south, and as the months passed, he went further south than any explorer before him, until early in May, while still following the coastline, he found that instead of being on a southerly course he was now sailing east, and realized that he had reached the southernmost point of Africa. He first named the place the Cape of Storms; but later, in consultation with the king, he changed it to the Cape of Good Hope.

There now appeared on the scene another sailor who was to achieve immortality by his discoveries. Christopher Columbus, though by birth a Genoese, had joined the Portuguese Navy as a youth and had taken a Portuguese wife. He had had no difficulty in finding regular employment on voyages to Guinea, and he had also sailed to Bristol and from Bristol far beyond Iceland. These experiences gave him knowledge of Atlantic navigation from the Arctic Circle to the equator.

Fired by the enthusiasms of his times, he conceived several plans of his own. These, however, were so extreme in their proposals that he could persuade no patron to give him the necessary support. But he was a persistent man, and coincidental with Diaz’s return from his discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, he had won the support of the Castilian monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella.

Under their patronage he made two voyages, the first in 1492, when he discovered the Bahamas, and the second in the following year, on which he visited Cuba and Haiti, and gained a general notion of the West Indian archipelago. The success of these two voyages awoke the Portuguese to the realization that now, if at all, they must press forward vigorously with their own project, and once having taken the decision King Manuel lost no time in summoning to him another of his outstanding explorers, Vasco da Gama, and commissioning him to undertake the task of finding a sea-route to India via the Cape of Good Hope.

Leaving Lisbon on 8 July, 1497, da Gama made first for the Cape Verde Islands. From here he set out on 3 August and first sighted land again ninety-three days later, and on 8 November he anchored in the bay of St Helena. Here he paused for eight days, taking on wood and careening his ships.

On 16 November he continued his voyage, and six days later he rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Once more he anchored, and on 16 December he entered waters never before crossed by European vessels.

Sailing up the east coast of Africa, on Christmas Day he reached the roadstead which he named Port Natal. Making halts in the bay of Lourenco Marques and at the mouth of the Kiliman river, on 2 March, 1498, he hove-to in the roadstead of Mozambique.

From here his task was easy. He was now in waters which had been navigated for centuries by the Moslem Arabic-speaking seamen of Mozambique who received him well and agreed to supply him with pilots, who guided him to Mombasa. At Malindi he acquired new pilots who undertook to navigate him across the Indian Ocean to Calicut, now known as Calcutta. He anchored off Calcutta on 20 May, ten months and twelve days after leaving Lisbon.

Calcutta was the great centre of Arab trade, the chief among the many ports of the Malabar Coast from which Europe drew its supplies of pepper, ginger, cinnamon and numerous other spices. The normal trade route was by sea to Jiddah in Arabia, from there to Tor, the port on the Sinai Peninsula, and thence overland via Cairo to Alexandria, where European merchants had established themselves.

At all the stops en route duty had to be paid on all goods in transit. If direct contact with Calcutta could be established, despite the cost of the voyages, the Portuguese merchants, by avoiding these duties, would be able to undercut other European merchants and still make a handsome profit. In addition, however, the establishment of a sea-route to the East opened up possibilities of trade whose horizons were too distant to discern.

After escaping assassination at the hands of Moslem merchants in Calcutta, da Gama was eventually given permission to trade. On 29 August, 1498, he embarked on his return journey, and reached Lisbon in September of the following year. Besides the valuable cargo he had acquired, he brought back with him detailed information of the coast of India as far as Bengal, and of Ceylon, Malacca and Sumatra.

This voyage of da Gama was the greatest feat of seamanship ever attempted. The discoverer of the New World had only to undertake a voyage of thirty-six days in which, with fair winds, to traverse 2,600 miles. Da Gama had to undertake a voyage nearly three times this distance and battle against contrary winds and uncharted currents.

But his greatest achievement lay in the fact that by opening up this route he transformed the commerce of the world.