After Da Gama's voyage the Portuguese made haste to appropriate the wealth of the Indies. Fleet after fleet was sent out to establish trading stations upon the coasts of Africa and Asia. The great viceroy, Albuquerque, captured the city of Goa and made it the center of the Portuguese dominions in India. Goa still belongs to Portugal. Albuquerque also seized Malacca, at the end of the Malay Peninsula, and Ormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The possession of these strategic points enabled the Portuguese to control the commerce of the Indian Ocean. They also established trading relations with China, through the port of Macao, and with Japan, which was accidentally discovered in 1542 A.D. By the middle of the sixteenth century they had acquired almost complete ascendancy throughout southern Asia and the adjacent islands. [14]
PORTUGUESE TRADE MONOPOLY
The Portuguese came to the East as the successors of the Arabs, who for centuries had carried on an extensive trade in the Indian Ocean. Having dispossessed the Arabs, the Portuguese took care to shut out all European trade competitors. Only their own merchants were allowed to bring goods from the Indies to Europe by the Cape route. For a time this policy made Portugal very prosperous. Lisbon, the capital, formed the chief depot for spices and other eastern commodities. The French, English, and Dutch came there to buy them and took the place of Italian merchants in distributing them throughout Europe.
COLLAPSE OF THE PORTUGUESE EMPIRE
But the triumph of Portugal was short-lived. This small country, with a population of not more than a million, lacked the strength to defend her claims to a monopoly of the Oriental trade. During the seventeenth century the French and English broke the power of the Portuguese in India, while the Dutch drove them from Ceylon and the East Indies. Though the Portuguese lost most of their possessions so soon, they deserve a tribute of admiration for the energy, enthusiasm, and real heroism with which they built up the first of modern colonial empires.
EUROPE IN ASIA
The new world in the East, thus entered by the Portuguese and later by other European peoples, was really an old world—rich, populous, and civilized. It held out alluring possibilities, not only for trade, but also as a field for missionary enterprise. Da Gama and Albuquerque began a movement, which still continues, to "westernize" Asia by opening it up to European influence. It remains to be seen, however, whether India, China, and Japan will allow their ancient culture to be extinguished by that of Europe.
222. TO THE INDIES WESTWARD: COLUMBUS AND MAGELLAN
THE GLOBULAR THEORY
Six years before Vasco da Gama cast anchor in the harbor of Calicut, another intrepid sailor, seeking the Indies by a western route, accidentally discovered America. It does not detract from the glory of Columbus to show that the way for his discovery had been long in preparation. In the first place, the theory that the earth was round had been familiar to the Greeks and Romans, and to some learned men even in the darkest period of the Middle Ages. By the opening of the thirteenth century it must have been commonly known, for Roger Bacon [15] refers to it, and Dante, in the Divine Comedy, [16] plans his Inferno on the supposition of a spherical world. The awakening of interest in Greek science, as a result of the Renaissance, naturally called renewed attention to the statements by ancient geographers. Eratosthenes, [17] for instance, had clearly recognized the possibility of reaching India by sailing westward on the same parallel of latitude. Especially after the revival of Ptolemy's [18] works in the fifteenth century, scholars accepted the globular theory; and they even went so far as to calculate the circumference of the earth.