Vasco da Gama had ended the isolation of Europe. This first blurred view of India stands as a significant moment in world history. They had sailed 12,000 miles and already lost many men. They had watched their loved ones wading into the sea at Restelo 309 days ago. These were the Western Ghats, the long chain of mountains belting southwestern India, on the Malabar Coast the men could see densely forested slopes, a narrow plain, surf breaking on white sand. As the storm cleared, the pilot was able to recognize the coast: “He told us that they were above Calicut, and that this was the country we desired to go to.” Through the breaking rain, they surveyed India for the first time: high peaks looming through the murk. They had hit the early prelude to the monsoon. The following day shattering rain thundered on the decks, blotting out visibility fierce flashes of lightning split the sky. On Friday, May 18, after only 23 days away from land and 2,300 miles of open water, they spied high mountains. On April 29 they were comforted by the return of the polestar to the night sky, lost to view since the South Atlantic. With a continuous following wind, the diagonal crossing of this new sea was astonishingly quick. ON APRIL 24, WITH THE MONSOON WINDS turning in their favor, the crews headed out to sea “for a city called Calicut.” The turn of phrase suggests that the anonymous diarist on the expedition was hearing this name for the first time-and perhaps the whole expedition, blindly breaking into the Indian Ocean, had only the vaguest sense of their destination. In their armed violence, described by Roger Crowley in the following excerpt from his new book, Conquerors, they set the tone for the next 500 years of Western global expansion. With red crosses on their sails and bronze cannons on their decks, they meant to capture the rich spice trade of Asia and destroy the Islamic cultures they’d first blooded in the Mediterranean. He and his crew of 150 veteran mariners first sailed around the African continent, then crossed the Indian Ocean to land on the Malabar coast of the Indian subcontinent. While Christopher Columbus has gotten most of the ink for his 1492 transit of the Atlantic Ocean, which proved that a hitherto unknown (by Europeans) but populated hemisphere lay over the western horizon, Portuguese mariner Vasco da Gama’s voyage, just five years later in 1497, was longer and introduced Europeans to the far wealthier cultures of south Asia. Portuguese explorers reached India in the 15th century, establishing a legacy of misunderstanding, suspicion, hostility-and violence.
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