Early European History Part 110

The expeditions sent out by Prince Henry began by rediscovering the Madeira and Azores Islands, first visited by Europeans in the fourteenth century. Then the Portuguese turned southward along the unchartered African coast. In 1445 A.D. they got as far as Cape Verde, or "Green Cape," so called because of its luxuriant vegetation. The discovery was important, for it disposed of the idea that the Sahara desert extended indefinitely to the south. Sierra Leone, which the Carthaginian Hanno [11]

had probably visited, was reached in 1462 A.D., two years after Prince Henry's death. Soon Portuguese sailors found the great bend of the African coast formed by the gulf of Guinea. In 1471 A.D. they crossed the equator, without the scorching that some had feared. In 1482 A.D. they were at the mouth of the Congo. Six years later Bartholomew Diaz rounded the southern extremity of Africa. The story goes that he named it the Cape of Storms, and that the king of Portugal, recognizing its importance as a stage on the route to the East, rechristened it the Cape of Good Hope.

DA GAMA'S VOYAGE, 1497-1499 A.D.

A daring mariner, Vasco da Gama, opened the sea-gates to the Indies. With four tiny s.h.i.+ps he set sail from Lisbon in July, 1497 A.D., and after leaving the Cape Verde Islands made a wide sweep into the South Atlantic.

Five months pa.s.sed before Africa was seen again. Having doubled the Cape of Good Hope in safety, Da Gama skirted the eastern sh.o.r.es of Africa and at length secured the services of a Moslem pilot to guide him across the Indian Ocean. In May, 1498 A.D., he reached Calicut, [12] an important commercial city on the southwest coast of India. When Da Gama returned to Lisbon, after an absence of over two years, he brought back a cargo which repaid sixty times the cost of the expedition. The Portuguese king received him with high honor and created him Admiral of the Indies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VASCO DA GAMA From a ma.n.u.script in the British Museum.]

CAMOENS, 1524-1580 A.D., AND THE LUSIADS

The story of Da Gama's memorable voyage was sung by the Portuguese poet, Camoens, in the _Lusiads_. It is the most successful of all modern epics.

The popularity of the _Lusiads_ has done much to keep alive the sense of nationality among the Portuguese, and even to-day it forms a bond of union between Portugal and her daughter-nation across the Atlantic--Brazil.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MARITIME ROUTE

The discovery of an ocean pa.s.sage to the East came at the right moment.

Just at this time the Ottoman Turks were beginning to block up the old trade routes. [13] Their conquests in Asia Minor and southeastern Europe, during the fifteenth century, shut out the Italians from the northern route through the Aegean and the Black Sea. After Syria and Egypt were conquered, early in the sixteenth century, the central and southern routes also pa.s.sed under Turkish control. The Ottoman advance struck a mortal blow at the prosperity of the Italian cities, which had so long monopolized Oriental trade. But the misfortune of Venice and Genoa was the opportunity of Portugal.

221. THE PORTUGUESE COLONIAL EMPIRE

PORTUGUESE ASCENDANCY IN THE EAST

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 j.a.pan, 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 compet.i.tors. 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 j.a.pan 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 lat.i.tude. 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 circ.u.mference of the earth.

MYTH OF ATLANTIS

In the second place, men had long believed that west of Europe, beyond the strait of Gibraltar, lay mysterious lands. This notion first appears in the writings of the Greek philosopher, Plato, [19] who repeats an old tradition concerning Atlantis. According to Plato, Atlantis had been an island continental in size, but more than nine thousand years before his time it had sunk beneath the sea. Medieval writers accepted this account as true and found support for it in traditions of other western islands, such as the Isles of the Blest, where Greek heroes went after death, and the Welsh Avalon, whither King Arthur, [20] after his last battle, was borne to heal his wounds. A widespread legend of the Middle Ages also described the visit made by St. Brandan, an Irish monk, to the "promised land of the Saints," an earthly paradise far out in the Atlantic. St.

Brandan's Island was marked on early maps, and voyages in search of it were sometimes undertaken.

BEHAIM'S GLOBE

The ideas of European geographers in the period just preceding the discovery of America are represented on a map, or rather a globe, which dates from 1492 A.D. It was made by a German navigator, Martin Behaim, for his native city of Nuremberg, where it is still preserved. Behaim shows the mythical island of St. Brandan, lying in mid-ocean, and beyond it j.a.pan (c.i.p.ango) and the East Indies. It is clear that he greatly underestimated the distance westward between Europe and Asia. The error was natural enough, for Ptolemy had reckoned the earth's circ.u.mference to be about one-sixth less than it is, and Marco Polo had given an exaggerated idea of the distance to which Asia extended on the east. When Columbus set out on his voyage, he firmly believed that a journey of four thousand miles would bring him to c.i.p.ango.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEHAIM'S GLOBE The outlines of North America and South America do not appear on the original globe.]

COLUMBUS, 1446(?)-1506 A.D.

Christopher Columbus was a native of Genoa, where his father followed the humble trade of a weaver. He seems to have obtained some knowledge of astronomy and geography as a student in the university of Pavia, but at an early age he became a sailor. Columbus knew the Mediterranean by heart; he once went to the Guinea coast; and he may have visited Iceland. He settled at Lisbon as a map-maker and married a daughter of one of Prince Henry's sea-captains. As Columbus pored over his maps and charts and talked with seamen about their voyages, the idea came to him that much of the world remained undiscovered and that the distant East could be reached by a shorter route than that which led around Africa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, (Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid) The oldest known portrait of Columbus.]

RESEARCHES OF COLUMBUS

Columbus was a well-read man, and in Aristotle, Ptolemy, and other ancient authorities he found apparent confirmation of his grand idea. Columbus also owned a printed copy of Marco Polo's book, and from his comments, written on the margin, we know how interested he was in Polo's statements referring to Cathay and c.i.p.ango. Furthermore, Columbus brought together all the information he could get about the fabled islands of the Atlantic.

If he ever went to Iceland, some vague traditions may have reached him there of Norse voyages to Greenland and Vinland. Such hints and rumors strengthened his purpose to sail toward the setting sun in quest of the Indies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ISABELLA]

FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS, 1492 A.D.

All know the story. How Columbus first laid his plans before the king of Portugal, only to meet with rebuffs; how he then went to Spain and after many discouragements found a patron in Queen Isabella; how with three small s.h.i.+ps he set out from Palos, August 3, 1492 A.D.; how after leaving the Canaries he sailed week after week over an unknown sea; and how at last, on the early morning of October 12, he sighted in the moonlight the glittering coral strand of one of the Bahama Islands. [21] It was the New World.

[Ill.u.s.tration: s.h.i.+P OF 1492 A.D.]

SUBSEQUENT VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS

Columbus made three other voyages to the New World, in the course of which he explored the Caribbean Sea, the mouth of the Orinoco River, and the eastern coast of Central America. He lived and died in the belief that he had actually reached the mainland of Asia and the realms of the Great Khan of Cathay. The name West Indies still remains as a testimony to this error.

NAMING OF AMERICA

The New World was named for a Florentine navigator, Amerigo Vespucci. [22]

While in the Spanish service he made several western voyages and printed an account of his discovery of the mainland of America in 1497 A.D.

Scholars now generally reject his statements, but they found acceptance at the time, and it was soon suggested that the new continent should be called America, "because Americus discovered it." The name applied at first only to South America. After it became certain that South America joined another continent to the north, the name spread over the whole New World.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NAME "AMERICA"

Facsimile of the pa.s.sage in the _Cosmographiae Introductio_ (1507), by Martin Waldseemuller, in which the name "America" is proposed for the New World.]

THE DEMARCATION LINE, 1493 A.D.

Shortly after the return of Columbus from his first voyage, Pope Alexander VI, in response to a request by Ferdinand and Isabella, issued a bull granting these sovereigns exclusive rights over the newly discovered lands. In order that the Spanish possessions should be clearly marked off from the Portuguese, the pope laid down an imaginary line of demarcation in the Atlantic, three hundred miles west of the Azores. All new discoveries west of the line were to belong to Spain; all those east of it, to Portugal. [23] But this arrangement, which excluded France, England, and other European countries from the New World, could not be long maintained.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map, PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH COLONIAL EMPIRES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

FERDINAND MAGELLAN, 1480(?)-1521 A.D.

The demarcation line had a good deal to do in bringing about the first voyage around the globe. So far no one had yet realized the dream of Columbus to reach the lands of spice and silk by sailing westward.

Ferdinand Magellan, formerly one of Albuquerque's lieutenants but now in the service of Spain, believed that the Spice Islands lay within the Spanish sphere of influence and that an all-Spanish route, leading to them through some strait at the southern end of South America, could be discovered.