The World полностью

Sailing round southern Africa, da Gama raided up the Swahili coast, attacking Arab shipping off Malindi, where he found allies, recruited an Arab pilot in Mombasa and then sailed across to Calicut (Kozhikode) on India’s Malabar coast, the pre-eminent among a constellation of city states trading pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, jewels, ebony, amber and tamarind. India was fragmented, the north ruled by a weakened Muslim Delhi sultanate, the south divided between a Hindu raj of Vijayanagara and the Islamic sultanate of Bijapur.

In cosmopolitan Calicut, da Gama met Arab and Indian traders as well as an Italian-speaking Polish Jew, born in Alexandria and an envoy of the sultan of Bijapur. Da Gama first tortured, then baptized him as Gaspar da Gama and used him as interpreter and negotiator. The Portuguese mistook the Hindu temples with their statues for Christian churches, but the samoothiri (zamorin), Lord of the Sea, Hindu ruler of a partly Islamic city, was unimpressed by Vasco’s meagre gifts. These Indian merchant-princes were accustomed to dealing with foreigners – Chinese, Malays and Arabs in contact with the Mamluk sultans of Egypt. But Portuguese methods were an unpleasant surprise.

After barely surviving the return journey on which two-thirds of his men perished, da Gama was raised to the nobility, granted the title Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia, India and All the Orient and sent back by Manuel, who boasted of his exploits and now called himself Lord of the Conquest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India.

Inspired by his divine destiny, Manuel dispatched a series of fleets eastwards, eighty-one ships in five years, many of them funded by Fugger the Rich. In March 1500, the king saw off Pedro Álvares Cabral, a favourite courtier, and thirteen ships with Bartolomeu Dias and the converted Polish Jew Gaspar da Gama on board. Looping out into the Atlantic, Cabral landed on a new ‘island’ that he claimed for Manuel as Ilha de Vera Cruz (later known as Brazil), before heading round Africa (where Dias was lost in a storm) via Sofala and Malindi and onwards to India. When the samoothiri turned hostile, killing fifty of his men, Cabral bombarded Calicut, killing 600, then joined forces with the raja of Cochin, who resented his subordinate position to Calicut. Seven of the thirteen ships returned filled with spices that were sold profitably.

Manuel, sensing the opportunity of the ‘island’ (Brazil), sent more ships to investigate, including one under Amerigo Vespucci, who realized that it was not an island but a continent. Gathering information in his office of colonial affairs, the India House, Manuel resolved to challenge not just the Egyptian and Arab traders of the Indian Ocean but also his European rivals, Venice and Genoa. His vision was extraordinary – to dominate a vast territory controlled by Swahili, Arab and Indian traders – with tiny flotillas of Portuguese sailors, commanded by his top courtiers, using carracks, overwhelming artillery force and spectacular acts of murderous terror. His monopolistic rapacity made him the first truly entrepreneurial monarch: the French king, envious of his wealth, nicknamed him Le Roi Épicier, the Spice King.

Manuel created a Revenge Fleet to make the Indians pay for their impertinence to Cabral, who was appointed to command it. But the contest between allies of Cabral and those of da Gama was won by the latter. Now the killing started. Admiral da Gama, fitted out in satin crimson and blessed by the king, raided Kilwa (Tanzania), then, crossing the Indian Ocean, burned alive an entire ship of pilgrims on their way home from Mecca, then bombarded Calicut while hanging Indians from his masts and fighting off an Arab fleet of privateers. His cruelty was spectacular: victims were dismembered and decapitated, heaps of body parts sent to the rulers; he cut off the lips and ears of the samoothiri’s ambassador, then sent him back to Calicut with a dog’s ears sewn on to his head.

Manuel kept up the pressure, challenging the overlord of the Indian Ocean: al-Ghaury, sultan of Egypt. Manuel sent two further fleets, now packed with cannon, under Dom Francisco de Almeida, veteran of the Spanish conquest of Granada, as first governor and viceroy of the Portuguese State of India, whose crew included a young nobleman, Fernão de Magalhães – Magellan. But then he sent after him an irrepressible courtier-soldier, Afonso da Albuquerque, a white-bearded veteran who had helped take Tangier and defeat Mehmed II’s Otranto incursion.