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.

Camoens, 1524-1580 A.D., and the Lusiads

time route

The discovery of an ocean passage to the East came at the right moment. Just at this time the Ottoman Turks were Significance beginning to block up the old trade routes.1 of the mari- Their conquests in Asia Minor and southeastern Europe, during the fifteenth century, shut out the Italians from the northern route through the Ægean and the Black Sea. After Syria and Egypt were conquered, early in the sixteenth century, the central and southern routes also passed 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.

Portuguese ascendancy in the East

221. The Portuguese Colonial Empire

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 Japan, which was accidentally discovered in 1542 A.D. By the middle of the

1 See page 540.

sixteenth century they had acquired almost complete ascendancy throughout southern Asia and the adjacent islands.1

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, Portuguese the Portuguese took care to shut out all European trade monopoly competitors. 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.

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 Collapse

Empire

of the Oriental trade. During the seventeenth of the century the French and English broke the power Portuguese 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.

The new world in the East, thus entered by the Portuguese and later by other European peoples, was really an old worldrich, populous, and civilized. It held out alluring Europe in possibilities, not only for trade, but also as a field Asia 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 Japan will allow their ancient culture to be extinguished by that of Europe.

1 The Portuguese colonial empire included Ormuz, the west coast of India, Ceylon, Malacca, and various possessions in the Malay Archipelago (Sumatra, Java, Celebes, the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, and New Guinea). The Portuguese also had many trading posts on the African coast, besides Brazil, which one of their mariners discovered in 1500 A.D. See the map between pages 628-629.

The globular theory

222. To the Indies Westward: Columbus and

Magellan

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' refers to it, and Dante, in the Divine Comedy,2 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,3 for instance, had clearly recognized the possibility of reaching India by sailing westward on the same parallel of latitude. Especially after the revival of Ptolemy's works in the fifteenth century, scholars accepted the globular theory; and they even went so far as to calculate the circumference of the earth.

In the second place, men had long believed that west of Europe, beyond the strait of Gibraltar, lay mysterious lands.

Myth of
Atlantis

This notion first appears in the writings of the Greek philosopher, Plato," 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, after his last 2 See page 591.

3 See page 133.

1 See page 573. 4 A Latin translation of Ptolemy's Geography, accompanied by maps, was printed for the first time probably in 1462 A.D.

See page 275.

See page 560.

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.

The outlines of North America and South America do not appear on the original 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 Behaim's was made by a German navigator, Martin Behaim, globe 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 Japan (Cipango) 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 circumference to be about one-sixth less than it is, and Marco Polo had given an exagger

ated 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 Cipango.

Christopher Columbus was a native of Genoa, where his father followed

Columbus,
1446 (?) 1506 the humble trade
A. D.
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 Mediter-

ranean 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. Columbus was a well-read man, and in Aristotle, Ptolemy, and other ancient authorities he found apparent confirmation

Researches

of Columbus

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 Cipango. Furthermore, Columbus brought together all the information