Good day Hivers and Book Clubbers,
It's been a while since I wrote my last review. Real-life events have kept me busy over the last month. And while I've kept on reading quite a bit during that time, writing about said books had fallen by the wayside a bit. So let's remedy that today! The book I'm reviewing here is titled 'Conquerors; How Portugal forged the first global Empire', written in 2016 by Roger Crowley. The story proper amounts to about 370 pages, with middle-sized lettering, so it's a mid-sized read as well.
Discovery
Do you use Google Maps often? I sure do, whether it is to find specific places in a city where I'm not familiar, or when I'm on vacation, or figuring out a place mentioned in a book, for example. Sattelite imaging can pinpoint any place on earth, the distances etc. with amazing precision.
Now imagine you don't know anything about the lay-out of the world, except for the three continents that you consider to be the entire world. This was the position of Portugal, and that of most other European countries, in the early 15th century. There was Europe, there was Asia, there was Africa. How far Asia and Africa stretched on wasn't quite known either, sources were limited to centuries-old travellers (like Marco Polo) and hearsay.
The Portuguese were the first to change this, and their role in discovering the world (from the European perspective) is a central pillar of this book. Portuguese kings lived on the outskirts of Europe; to the west of them, a seemingly endless sea-blue. To the east, the soon-to-be united Kingdom of Spain (Castile and Aragon), and to the south the Islamic Morocco.
Portugal was sparsely populated (about a million people at the time) and not really endowed with useful natural resources. Agriculture and fishing were the bulk of its economy. And fighting/plundering Morocco meant that the Portuguese had experienced soldiers.
From the early 15th century onwards, under kings like Henry the Navigator (cool title), the Portuguese started to round the west-African coast, to start their own trade with the natives there, mostly to obtain gold and slaves.
Profits they made here fell into nothing compared with the European spice trade with the Indies. To their regret, the Portuguese had no part in this. The Italian mercantile states, principally Genoa and Venice, traded with India (divided between many princes at the time) with the Mamluks (Egypt) as the unavoidable middle-man. This middle-man was able to use taxes and tariffs to make hefty profits themselves, and made spices a very expensive luxury in Europe.
But what if this middle-man could be avoided somehow? There was the idea that Africa had to end somewhere, and that it would be possible to reach the Indies by sailing around Africa. Many successive voyages were set up, led by well-known names like Bartholomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama, to figure out the route. The Cape of Good hope was rounded, and Vasco da Gama reached the Indies.
While figuring out how the Atlantic winds would carry them around the Cape the fastest, one expedition discovered what would become Brazil by accident. The discovery of the Americas was also a consequence of the search for a route towards India: Columbus had the innovative idea to just sail straight west: if the earth was indeed round, you'd have to reach the East at some point this way.
Conquest
The voyage that Vasco da Gama and others made to India was a staggering 40.000 kilometers. For a there-and-back trip, it took at least 1,5 years. But the establishment of trade led to the establishment of a permanent presence, both on the east-African coast and in the Indies themselves. In some of these conquests, the Portuguese would stay for centuries, like Mozambique and Goa.
Communication was very slow. News back home was always one year behind the times, and dependent on the success of the journey back. If a fleet was completely lost on the journey home (which did happen sometimes) there would be no news at all from the East for 2 years.
Yet the Portuguese kings kept on building and sending ships, and there were always enough men to volunteer. The ships that made it back were making a large profit, and the Italian states that had a monopoly on the spice trade quickly noticed what was going on. Instead of fighting the Portuguese, they joined them; Cities like Florence often sponsored ships of their own to become part of the Portuguese trade fleet.
And the qualities of the fleet were a decisive factor in Portuguese success. The carracks were durable enough to last the long voyage, roomy enough to carry supplies, and most important of all; the cannons aboard were able to blast their rival designs in the Indies to pieces. The Arabian-style dhows were good ships, but they did not have the necessary fire-power to overcome the Portuguese. Thus, the Portuguese were quickly able to disrupt the trade of the competition, which put their rivals out of business.
Conclusion
The book follows the Portuguese voyages in chronological order, and uses the first-hand accounts, of which quite a few survived, fortunately. Some things are completely unknown as well; fleets that disappeared without a trace, and without an idea of what happened.
The book is a steady narrative; it flows well, and does not get sidetracked into academic inquiry, for example, which is good for the 'average' reader. It's widely available; I picked up my copy from Amazon, though I'm not sure if it's available in other languages too (mine's in English). I can recommend it if you want to get an overall grasp on the European era of discovery.
That puts to an end the one-month-drought of reviewing from my part. I hope the next one will be sooner than that. I'll see you all then,
-Pieter Nijmeijer