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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 14 Jun 2023

Taken: 14 Jun 2023

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Roger Crowley •

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From Portugal to India c. 1500

From Portugal to India c. 1500
Vasco da Gama's route to India in 1497


www.gutenberg.org/files/46440/46440-h/46440-h.htm

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
. . . . The ‘Berrio’ sailed into the mouth of the Tejo and landed at Cascais, near Lisbon, on July 10,1499, with the news; the ‘Gabriel’ followed soon after. Paulo, who had faithfully accompanied his brother on the epic voyage, died the day after reaching Terceira and was buried there. The mourning Vasco did not make it back toLisbon until, probably the end of August. He spent nine days in retirement with the monks at the chapel of Santa Maria de Belem mourning the death, before making a triumphant entry into Lisbon in early September.

The voyage had been epic; they had been away a year, traveled twenty four thousand miles. It was a feat of endurance, courage, and great luck. The toll had been heavy. Two-thirds of crew had died. Unaware of the rhythms of the monsoon, they had been fortunate to survive; scurvy and adverse weather could have taken all of them in the Indian Ocean, leaving ghost ships floating on an empty sea. ~ Page 79

Conquerors
11 months ago. Edited 11 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
. . . Of the 5,500 men who went to India between 1497, oin Gama’s first voyage, and 1504, some 1,800 – 35 percent – had not returned. The majority of these had gone down in shipwrecks. Yet the rewards were excellent. Vasco da Gama’s first voyage had covered the capital investment sixty times over. It was calculated that the crown was making a million cruzados a year after costs – a vast sum – and the smell of spices on the quays of Lisbon attracted avid recruits to the boats. Many had nothing to lose. Portugal was poor in natural resources, peripheral to the political and economic hubs of Europe; the lure of the East was irresistible. The French king Francis I came to dub Manuel “the Grocer King,” an envious gibe at the vulgar pretensions of a pretty monarch who lived on trade, yet this aspect of the Portuguese monarchy was an innovative within medieval Europe as the voyages themselves. The kings of Portugal were royal merchant capitalists, sucking the large monopolistic ;rofits. ~ Page 131
11 months ago.