D. Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (/ˌvæsku də ˈɡɑːmə, - ˈɡæmə/ VAS-koo də GA(H)M-ə;[1][2] European Portuguese: [ˈvaʃku ðɐ ˈɣɐmɐ]; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and nobleman who was the first European to reach India by sea.[3]
His initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope[4] (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans. This was a milestone in Portuguese maritime exploration as and marked the beginning of a sea-based phase of globalization.[5] Da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India opened the way for an age of global imperialism and enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire along the way from Africa to Asia. Traveling the ocean route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Mediterranean Sea and traversing the dangerous Arabian Peninsula. The sum of the distances covered in the outward and return voyages made this expedition the longest ocean voyage ever made until then.[6]
After decades of sailors trying to reach the Indies, with thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks, da Gama landed at Kozhikode on 20 May 1498. Unopposed access to the Indian spice routes boosted the economy of the Portuguese Empire, which was previously based along North and coastal West Africa. The main spices at first obtained from Southeast Asia were pepper and cinnamon, but soon included other products, all new to Europe. Portugal maintained a commercial monopoly of these commodities for several decades. It was not until a century later that other European powers were able to challenge Portugal's monopoly and naval supremacy in the Cape Route.
Da Gama led two of the Portuguese India Armadas, the first and the fourth. The latter was the largest and departed for India three years after his return from the first one. For his contributions, in 1524 da Gama was appointed Governor of India, with the title of Viceroy, and was ennobled as Count of Vidigueira in 1519. He remains a leading figure in the history of exploration, and homages worldwide have celebrated his explorations and accomplishments. The Portuguese national epic poem, Os Lusíadas, was written in his honour by Luís de Camões.
Vasco da Gama was born in the town of Sines, one of the few seaports on the Alentejo coast in southwest Portugal.[7] According to the Portuguese historian Teixeira de Aragão, he was born in a house near the church of Nossa Senhora das Salas.[8] Some authors write that he was born in or around 1460, while others give 1469 as the year of his birth.[9]
Vasco da Gama's paternal grandfather and namesake was born in Olivença.[10] Vasco's father was Estêvão da Gama, who had served in the 1460s as a knight of the household of Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu.[11] He rose in the ranks of the military Order of Santiago. Estêvão da Gama was appointed alcaide-mór (civil governor) of Sines in the 1460s, a post he held until 1478; after that he continued as a receiver of taxes and holder of the Order's commendas in the region.[10]
Estêvão da Gama married Isabel Sodré, a daughter of João Sodré (also known as João de Resende), scion of a well-connected family of English descent.[12] Her father and her brothers, Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré, had links to the household of Infante Diogo, Duke of Viseu, and were prominent figures in the military Order of Christ. Vasco da Gama was the third of five sons of Estêvão da Gama and Isabel Sodré – in (probable) order of age: Paulo da Gama, João Sodré, Vasco da Gama, Pedro da Gama and Aires da Gama. Vasco also had one known sister, Teresa da Gama, who married Lopo Mendes de Vasconcelos.[13]
Little is known of da Gama's early life. Teixeira de Aragão suggests that he studied at the inland town of Évora, which is where he may have learned mathematics and navigation. Da Gama's near-contemporary Gaspar Correia and others have claimed that he studied under Abraham Zacuto, an astrologer and astronomer, but da Gama's biographer Sanjay Subrahmanyam thinks this dubious.[14]
Around 1480, da Gama followed his father (rather than the Sodrés) and joined the Order of Santiago.[15] The master of Santiago was Prince John, who ascended to the throne in 1481 as King John II of Portugal. John II doted on the Order, and the da Gamas' prospects rose accordingly.
In 1492, John II dispatched da Gama on a mission to the port of Setúbal and to the Algarve to seize French ships in retaliation for peacetime depredations against Portuguese shipping – a task that da Gama rapidly and effectively performed.[16]
From the earlier part of the 15th century, Portuguese expeditions organized by Prince Henry the Navigator had been reaching down the African coastline, principally in search of West African riches (notably, gold and slaves).[17] They had greatly extended Portuguese maritime knowledge but had little profit to show for the effort. After Henry's death in 1460, the Portuguese Crown showed little interest in continuing this effort and, in 1469, licensed the neglected African enterprise to a private Lisbon merchant consortium led by Fernão Gomes. Within a few years, Gomes' captains expanded Portuguese knowledge across the Gulf of Guinea, doing business in gold dust, melegueta pepper, ivory and sub-Saharan slaves. When Gomes' charter came up for renewal in 1474, Prince John (the future John II), asked his father Afonso V of Portugal to pass the African charter to him.[18]
Upon becoming king in 1481, John II of Portugal set out on many long reforms. To break the monarch's dependence on the feudal nobility, John II needed to build up the royal treasury; he considered royal commerce to be the key to achieving that. Under John II's watch, the gold and slave trade in West Africa was greatly expanded. He was eager to break into the highly profitable spice trade between Europe and Asia, which was conducted chiefly by land. At the time, this was virtually monopolized by the Republic of Venice, which operated overland routes via Levantine and Egyptian ports, through the Red Sea across to the spice markets of India. John II set a new objective for his captains: to find a sea route to Asia by sailing around the African continent.[19]
By the time Vasco da Gama was in his 20s, the king's plans were coming to fruition. In 1487, John II dispatched two spies, Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, overland via Egypt to East Africa and India, to scout the details of the spice markets and trade routes. The breakthrough came soon after, when John II's captain Bartolomeu Dias returned from rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, having explored as far as the Fish River (Rio do Infante) in modern-day South Africa and having verified that the unknown coast stretched away to the northeast.[19]
An explorer was needed who could prove the link between the findings of Dias and those of da Covilhã and de Paiva and connect these separate segments into a potentially lucrative trade route across the Indian Ocean.
On 8 July 1497 Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four ships[20] with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. The distance traveled in the journey around Africa to India and back was greater than the length of the equator.[20][21] The navigators included Portugal's most experienced, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro Escobar, João de Coimbra, and Afonso Gonçalves.[22] It is not known for certain how many people were in each ship's crew but approximately 55 returned, and two ships were lost. Two of the vessels were carracks, newly built for the voyage; the others were a caravel and a supply boat.[20]
The four ships were:
The expedition set sail from Lisbon on 8 July 1497. It followed the route pioneered by earlier explorers along the coast of Africa via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands. After reaching the coast of present-day Sierra Leone, da Gama took a course south into the open ocean, crossing the equator and seeking the South Atlantic westerlies that Bartolomeu Dias had discovered in 1487.[23] This course proved successful and on 4 November 1497, the expedition made landfall on the African coast. For over three months the ships had sailed more than 10,000 kilometres (6,000 mi) of open ocean, by far the longest journey without landfall made by that time.[20][24]
By 16 December, the fleet had passed the Great Fish River (Eastern Cape, South Africa) – where Dias had anchored – and sailed into waters previously unknown to Europeans. With Christmas pending, da Gama and his crew gave the coast they were passing the name Natal, which carried the connotation of "birth of Christ" in Portuguese.
Vasco da Gama spent 2 to 29 March 1498 in the vicinity of Mozambique Island. Arab-controlled territory on the East African coast was an integral part of the network of trade in the Indian Ocean. Fearing the local population would be hostile to Christians, da Gama impersonated a Muslim and gained audience with the Sultan of Mozambique. With the paltry trade goods he had to offer, the explorer was unable to provide a suitable gift to the ruler. Soon the local populace became suspicious of da Gama and his men. Forced by a hostile crowd to flee Mozambique, da Gama departed the harbor, firing his cannons into the city in retaliation.[25]
In the vicinity of modern Kenya, the expedition resorted to piracy, looting Arab merchant ships that were generally unarmed trading vessels without heavy cannons. The Portuguese became the first known Europeans to visit the port of Mombasa from 7 to 13 April 1498, but were met with hostility and soon departed.[citation needed]
Vasco da Gama continued north, arriving on 14 April 1498 at the friendlier port of Malindi, whose leaders were in conflict with those of Mombasa. There, da Gama and his crew contracted the services of a pilot who used his knowledge of the monsoon winds to guide the expedition the rest of the way to Kozhikode, located on the southwest coast of India. Sources differ over the identity of the pilot, calling him variously a Christian, a Muslim, or a Gujarati Hindu. One traditional story describes the pilot as the famous Arab navigator Ibn Majid, but other contemporaneous accounts place Majid elsewhere, and he could not have been near the vicinity at the time.[26] None of the Portuguese historians of the time mentions Ibn Majid. Vasco da Gama left Malindi for India on 24 April 1498.[citation needed]
The fleet arrived in Kappadu near Kozhikode (known as Kozhikode at the time, subsequently known as Calicut and now renamed Kozhikode) on the Malabar Coast (present-day Kerala state of India) on 20 May 1498. The Zamorin of Kozhikode, who was at that time staying in his second capital at Ponnani, returned to the city on hearing the news of the foreign fleet's arrival. The navigator was re