Portuguese mariner Vasco da Gama, spurred by …
Years: 1492 - 1503
Portuguese mariner Vasco da Gama, spurred by the discoveries of Columbus, and accompanied by Portuguese navigators, traders, soldiers, and missionaries, becomes the first European to sail around Africa to reach India.
Stopping on the East African coast, the expedition breaks up the storeship, and reaches present Mozambique, where, as Arab traders have preceded them, they are assumed Muslims.
The sultan of Mozambique supplies them with pilots, who guide them on their journey northward, sailing past the city-states of eastern Africa.
Before sailing east, they stop at Malindi and Mombasa, where Arab traders have settled, in present Kenya.
En route to India, the Portuguese sight the Laccadive Islands.
Da Gama’s three small ships cross the Indian Ocean in twenty-three days, aided by a local pilot, and reach Calicut, a town on India’s Malabar coast, on May 20.
Calicut’s ruler, the Zamorin, welcomes the Portuguese, who at first believe that the Indians, actually Hindus, are Christians.
The expedition’s traders purchase spices, but the trade goods and presents provided by the Portuguese king are suitable for Africa, not India, and the Arabs who already dominate trade in the Indian Ocean region rightly regard the Portuguese as rivals.
Da Gama is consequently unable to conclude a treaty or commercial agreement in Calicut.
After one further stop on the Indian coast, the Portuguese set out to return with a load of spices.
Their recrossing of the Indian Ocean takes three months, however, and so many men die of scurvy that da Gama is forced to burn the São Rafael for lack of a crew.
The expedition makes a few stops in East Africa, including the island of Zanzibar, then heads south for the Cape of Good Hope.
Two years later, Da Gama’s countryman Cabral rounds the Cape with a small fleet to reach Mozambique and Madagascar, where Arab traders have established coastal trading posts, and eventually India, where he establishes a trading factory at Cochin before returning to Lisbon.
Portugal will subsequently establish coastal forts in the area of present Mozambique and implement a thriving trade in gold, ivory, and enslaved East Africans.
People
Groups
- Hinduism
- Arab people
- Christians, Roman Catholic
- Cochin, Kingdom of
- Portugal, Avizan (Joannine) Kingdom of
- Portuguese Empire
- Portuguese Mozambique
Topics
- India, Medieval
- Sub-Saharan Africa, Medieval
- Interaction with Subsaharan Africa, Early European
- Age of Discovery
- Colonization of Asia, Portuguese